Chapter 40
Roark
The woman kept looking at Lyra like she might be near tears, gentle and loving. But when she drew nearer and I stepped in her path, the woman’s glare turned so vicious that if I was not determined to keep my wife unharmed, it might’ve brought me to pause.
“Hmm. You have walked a trying fate, boy.” The woman tilted her head side to side, studying me.
Memorizing me. “But those steps have been bold and brave. For you, I will always hold affection for how you have protected my elskan. But there is another fate you may yet alter by stepping through these gates.”
I’m not going anywhere without her. The woman would not understand me, no mistake, but I would speak it anyway.
To my stun, she laughed. “I have no doubt that if Lyra became a towering tree, you would join its roots.”
“You know hand speak?” Lyra asked.
“I know many things.” Gammal trapped her face between her wrinkled palms. “Forgive me for using your blood from all those seasons ago. But it was needed to prepare for days as this, elskan. We knew he would strike at us again. He would come looking for what he lost, and I could not risk my people. But I will remove them now so that you might enter.”
“What’s going on?” Thane spoke, one hand on the hilt of his sword. “You used Lyra’s blood to ward her out when she was a child?”
“Well, I could not get to the dark melder, now could I? He was not the one near me. Now, come.”
What was she even talking about? Lyra hesitated, then, with her hand still in mine, she took a step after the old woman.
Near one of the posts of the main gate, Gammal stopped. Her spine was crooked and bent, but she knelt as though her knees were spry as a child’s. Placed in front of her was a totem hanging over a clay bowl.
“I’ll be needing a drop of blood to reverse the ward, elskan.”
Lyra knelt beside the woman. “Are you a blood crafter?”
“No.” Gammal rested a palm on Lyra’s shoulder. “But I have met many who’ve crossed those ledges. Some have traded their blood casts in return for our hospitality. This, you see, is one such cast I requested when I returned over the Night Ledges. Now, just a drop.”
The others gathered close. Yrsa tilted her head. “I’ve seen blood wardings crafted before.”
And? I pressed when she did not go on.
The princess faced me, one brow arched, her voice a low whisper. “Roark, when someone’s blood is warded, it will shield against them and…their kin.”
Shit.
I watched Lyra wince when the seer woman pricked her fingertip. The drop of blood fell to the bottom of the bowl with a hiss, like it boiled against the surface. Across the gates a fleeting shock of white sliced down the wooden walls, gone before I was certain if it had been real.
With Lyra’s aid, Gammal rose again. “There. You shouldn’t be stopped now.”
A rosy flush filled Lyra’s cheeks. “Gammal, why does my blood ward against me and Fadey if craft has nothing to do with it?”
She suspected. The tremble of fear, of a desire to fall away into the cracks of the soil, was there in her question. Lyra had been raised sheltered from craft, but she’d learned to be suspicious, untrusting, and press for answers.
I feared the proclivity to yearn for knowledge would serve her too well now.
My palm slid across the small of her back, there for her should she need it. A vow to be the force to hold her upright if she should stumble.
The Unfettered seer looked between us, holding her response inside for a breath, then another. With a heavy sigh, the woman took Lyra’s hands in her own. “This dark melder who hunts you is your blood, elskan.”
Lyra stumbled backward, her shoulders striking my chest. “No. No, what do you mean, my blood? He…he can’t be—”
“You are his daughter, elskan.” Gammal’s voice hardened. “But he is no father.”
—
“Should we, I don’t know, make her speak?” Gunter, arms folded over his chest, stood at my side, watching Lyra pace near the river’s edge.
I shook my head.
“Would it help if we spoke to her?” Emi gnawed on her thumbnail.
Again, I shook my head.
“Fadey.” Thane rubbed the back of his neck. “It was well-known that the man was not a stranger to bedding folk, but…I think we should speak to her.”
I pressed a palm against Thane’s chest, stopping the prince from approaching Lyra.
Someone chuckled at our backs.
Darkwin, still bound by his wrists and ankles, sat against a stack of bushels filled with the strange moonlight blooms. “You all wish to pester her. Leave her be. She will speak when she has a moment of solitude to think through what she’s learned.
Pester her, and she will wear those masks she once hid behind and convince you all she is well inside. ”
Brynn and the two wolves stood near, ready to ram a blade into Darkwin’s skull should the berserksgangur take hold again. The grimace on her features made it appear like proximity to Kael left her in physical pain.
His voice was not the same light, carefree tone I once knew the man to have, but it was not laced in venom. More aggravation than anything else.
Darkwin used his bound hands to point at Lyra. “And when she wishes to speak, it will not be to you lot.”
“Think you deserve to speak to her, Darkwin?” Thane rolled his eyes. “You tried to force her back to the bastard who wants to meld her bones to his body.”
“I didn’t say it would be me.” His laugh was dead, flat, and cold when he looked to me. “I’ll give you a bit of advice: Don’t be a bloodthirsty fool and leap straight to slaughter for what Fadey’s done to her. Keep your head, Ashwood.”
With all the dark souls melded to Kael, perhaps he could feel the tangle of hate boiling in mine.
No part of me wanted Fadey to take another breath in peace. In truth, what would soothe every piece of my soul would be to know he could not find comfort. I yearned for his steps to ring out such pain that it made him retch. I craved for his screams to lull me to sleep like a sweet tune.
I desired nothing more than to be the one who watched the light leave his eyes, preferably with his own blood staining his skin.
Beneath the hate and rage was a sharp, needling barb. Pain, hurt, betrayal. Emotions that were not my own. Through the threads of our connection, Lyra’s pain seeped into my soul.
All at once, Lyra stopped pacing. Her arms hugged her middle, and her shoulders slouched.
No more space, no more waiting.
With the others silent, I went to the river’s edge. Hands clasped behind my back, I stood beside Lyra. I did not touch her, did not make a move to speak.
Lyra released a long shudder of a breath. “He doesn’t know. Fadey, I mean. He doesn’t know, I’m sure of it. The way he speaks of me, of our connection and the bones, he believes Ingir crafted a blood spell to connect us. But she was using a blood bond that was already there.”
I did not know what to say. What did it matter if Fadey was unaware that he’d fathered the child he’d been hunting? He was a dead man either way.
“You once saw melding craft as monstrous. You hated Fadey for his brutality. Everything about him lives in me—blood and craft.”
I dragged my knuckles down her arm, waiting for her to look at me. You are insinuating that I will come to think of you as something wicked like Fadey.
When she blinked, a tear rolled down her cheek. I used my thumb to brush it aside.
“It is not so hard to make the insinuation.” Lyra looked down at her palms. “I have felt the darkness in my craft. I’ve desired to slaughter with it. Perhaps when we find the Wanderer, I will be no better than Fadey.”
There is a problem with your logic, I began on her palm.
Slowly, I slid my hand up her arm, holding one side of her face.
I have seen the darker edges of your heart.
It has only made me want you more. I have also seen Fadey’s.
It has only made me want to rip out his spine.
Listen to me now: you are not the same as him.
A bit of the weighty shadow brightened in her eyes and, gods, what worlds I would burn to see the light blaze every damn day.
“I want to destroy him.” Her voice was low, dangerous.
Then I will drop him at your feet and hand you the blade.
“I feel as though I should take pause, knowing our connection, but it only deepens the desire to end him.”
You owe him nothing, and certainly not your empathy and loyalty.
Lyra studied the flow of rippling water for a breath. “I had a father, Horace Bien, and he was kind, strong, firm, and gentle.”
She spun on me, practically spitting out her words. “Fadey learned of me, and I have no doubt he fueled the lust for craft to inspire the raids.”
I pinched her chin between my fingers, drawing her mouth close. House Bien fought for you to live. They wanted you to live.
“I know. And I will. For all of us. Fadey did not just seek House Bien during the raids; he wanted the Wanderer. He wanted us all. His actions killed Nivek and my family, but most of all, his greed nearly ended you.”
My fingers tangled in her hair, gripping the roots. And what do you plan to do about it, wife?
“No lines for you.” She pressed her palms to my chest. “I want to know everything. I want to learn what Nivek needs us to find. I want to discover whatever power the Wanderer left behind. Then, I want to bathe in Fadey’s blood.”
I grinned against her lips. This is not the time nor place to seduce me.
Her laugh was a sound I would die to protect. Cheeks still wet with tears, she kissed me sweetly. “Come on then, Ashwood. We have fate to face.”
—
Gammal, Keela, and a line of Unfettered watchmen led us through the main roads of the township.
Unlike coastal villages in the Stìgandr realms, the Unfettered Folk depended on routes of trade to distant townships I did not know, or to the passes to our kingdoms.
Homes were made from stone foundations, wooden walls, and thatched rooftops. With the chill, some longhouses had young ones in the windows along with an ewe or a goat kept out of the damp air.
Scents of smoke and spiced lamb tangled with savory herbs and sweat in the main market.
Small shacks bustled with folk dressed in furs and thick wool coats and skirts.
Unfettered traded silver and jade rings, fishbone hooks, blossoms, speckled eggs that were larger than those I’d seen back home, and colorful threads, wool, and linens.
“You do not trade by sea?” Thane asked the old seer, unable to muffle his curiosity.
“Sea trade is done,” said Gammal. With a crooked finger she pointed to distant roads. “The Long Sea curls around the eastern edges of our lands.”
Gammal shuddered.
Thane chuckled. “Does that trouble you?”
“Do you know much of the lands beyond your three kingdoms, Prince?”
Thane flushed. “The longer I have been on this strange journey, the more I am horrified to admit I know very little of what lies here beyond the ledges.”
“Well, there are troubles here the same as there are troubles where you are from.”
“I thought Unfettered lived as they wished. There is no king or queen.”
Gammal hummed. “I assure you, the lust for power lives everywhere.”
Like the prince, I did not know a great deal of how the distant Unfettered territories worked, but if different clans were scattered across the whole of the territories, no doubt there were those who’d seek power much like Damir and Fadey.
“But back to your question,” Gammal said, her voice lighter than before.
“There is trade by sea, but the hub is quite a distance, so the journey is only made twice a season. There are many villages along the Elfr River for trade.” She opened her hand to the glisten of the river beyond the gates.
“That is where our commerce is strongest.”
The township was larger than it seemed. Roads webbed to distant gates. Homes were all sizes, but larger farms and longhouses seemed to take up the far edge. Gammal led us near one of the estates with several pens for creatures, stables, and a few workers tilling the soil.
A man—by the rich shade of blue on his coat and the silver on his fingers, I took him for the owner—shouted at a woman who clutched a lanky boy against her body.
The boy’s limbs were long and awkward, trapped in the seasons before his body determined he could look more like a man.
He could not have been older than fourteen, but he was nearly half a head taller than the woman.
The way she shielded him, I suspected her to be his mother.
No doubt the sod who berated her was his father.
One glance and I hated the man.
Strange. I’d witnessed enough shouting and disrespect from pompous men not to be drawn to a halt so viscerally.
But I placed one hand on the post of the fence and simply…watched.
The woman was bold, to be sure. Smaller than both the boy and the man, she stood straight, chin lifted between her son and his father. Her hair was a fiery shade and grew down to her waist. The boy’s was untamed and like the darkest night.
When the man made an abrupt move, like he might shove the woman, her son stepped in front of her. From where I stood, I could not hear the words spoken, but something about his son caused the bastard to fall back a pace.
He jabbed his finger at the woman once more before turning on his heel and striding away.
“Roark?” Lyra touched my arm. “What is it?”
I shook my head, watching the mother speak to her son. I don’t know. I thought her husband might strike her.
It was more than that, crueler. A rage took me from behind, there and gone, when the moment faded. I didn’t understand it.
Injustices lived in every land. I could not stop them all.
“Ah, you may wish to meet Jordis the Gentle.” Gammal stood in front of a rounded house with smoke billowing from the top.
She used a wooden walking stick and pointed toward the farm.
“Her son is called Sindri the Wild. An interesting boy. Unique. I think you will find his gifts curious, but it is why Brokk has a distaste for the child. Now, hurry on. We have much to discuss.”
Lyra took hold of my hand, guiding me toward the hut. Before the boy stepped into the stables, he faced the road. He looked at me straight on. My pulse quickened at my disconcertment.
For half a breath, I could’ve sworn I was looking right at my brother.