Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
Ferris filled me in on everything her sister had told her while I reclined in a mouldering chair and she paced back and forth in front of me, getting herself riled up into a storm.
“I’ve been here so many times before, Hendrix, born to die and be reborn over and over again, coming to this forest to end the curse.
What does it mean? Am I some pawn in the Great Hunt?
Does the forest own me?” She turned her blazing eyes on me and I shoved to my feet, capturing both of her wrists in my hands to make her focus.
“You are no one’s pawn, lightwing,” I growled, a river of turmoil winding through me at the hypocrisy of my words.
Because hadn’t that been exactly what I’d been planning to use her as from the start?
But now… now everything had changed and my attachment to her had grown to a thread spun from iron, and I didn’t know how I would ever let her go.
But that didn’t make her my possession, just as the forest had no claim on her.
The information she had fed me had rattled my mind at first, but it was becoming clearer now.
I’d refuted the words of a Lost Child of the forest, but there was no denying what I saw in front of me when I looked at Ferris.
I had seen it all along. That touch of magic, that glimmer of power. It ran deeper than I’d ever known.
Her soul was born from the forest itself.
She was no human, not in any natural way at least. Not fully.
She may have worn the flesh of a mortal but her soul was built of magic itself.
It was why the forest moved for her, why she didn’t struggle to walk its treacherous paths.
And it must have been the reason for so many other things.
“The forest may be in your blood but you get to choose what you do with that power, lightwing. Not the Great Elm or any spirit between these trees. You. Do you understand?” I demanded, but she shook her head, uncertainty spiralling through her eyes.
“Doesn’t it mean the opposite? Aren’t I made for something, Hendrix?
If I’ve been here time and again, then there has to be a reason.
Rissa said I’d failed every other time. This is my last chance to get it right, but I don’t even know what I did wrong previously.
This is the thirteenth Great Hunt. I’ve failed at whatever I’m meant to do twelve times, and we all know there won’t be any more chances. ”
My throat tightened, the acknowledgement that she might just be the answer to the curse that gripped Rathian.
But if she was destined for such a path, then the boon could never be mine.
And I couldn’t grapple with that possibility without agony splintering through me.
Because I needed that gift more than she could ever understand.
“Ferris,” I sighed. “We don’t know anything yet. We need more information. This girl, Rissa-”
“She’s not any girl, she’s my sister,” she said fiercely, her love for her sibling burning in her gaze. I knew that love for family as deeply as she did. There was no force greater than it in this world.
“Are you sure she wasn’t some trickster wearing her face?” I voiced my own doubts.
“I’m certain.”
“You have to be,” I pushed.
“I am. And it doesn’t matter anyway because what she said is undeniable.
” She pressed a hand to her heart. “I felt the truth of her words. I saw a Cursed One who had my face. It makes so much sense. Why I’ve been drawn to the forest all my life, it’s why from the moment I got here, the forest has offered me paths and practically guided my feet through it. ”
“It’s why you were marked by the Dragon,” I agreed roughly, lifting a hand to take hold of a lock of her hair. “And why it speaks to you.”
She nodded, her throat bobbing and eyes gleaming with all the knowledge she had gained.
A wild protectiveness rose in me as I thought of Islasees hunting humans and all the other dangers that lurked in this forest. If she had been here before many times, then that meant she had perished here many times too. And I could not let that happen again.
“I always knew there was something special about you,” I admitted.
“It doesn’t make me anything more than I already was. I’m human, Hendrix. I’m not better than them. Don’t you dare go seeing me as more than they are, because you should be seeing all of us for what we are.”
I frowned, unsure if I was wholly convinced by her claim to humanity, but I knew one truth that couldn’t be denied. “If they are anything like you, then they are fine creatures indeed.”
“Thank you,” she said, emotion burning in her voice, and I realised some part of her had just forgiven me for what my people had done to hers.
“We are not all monsters,” I said in a low voice, knowing my reality would paint me to be the worst kind of beast. I was not among the Fae who should be offered Ferris Creed’s forgiveness.
She said nothing and I stepped closer to her, the draw I felt to her only seeming to have intensified with this revelation, like I should have known it all along. And like it somehow was my secret to unveil too.
“I should be thanking you,” I said, brushing my fingers under her chin and tilting her head back so that those endless eyes met mine. “Without you, the Children of the Forest would have claimed me.”
“Without the Dragon you mean,” she laughed hollowly.
“No,” I growled. “You are its master.”
“It doesn’t like when you say that.” She shifted from one foot to the other, and I guessed the Dragon had spoken to her again.
“Well, Dragon, if you are listening.” I leaned down to speak in Ferris’s ear, brushing her hair back from her shoulder as I did so. “You would do well to heed her demands, for she is the purest thing in this forest. There is no better master here for you than her.”
I drew away and Ferris’s brows lifted at whatever the Dragon said in reply.
“Have I angered it?” I mused.
“Yes. It called you a devious fiend.”
“Did it now?” I gritted out irritably. “Listen, lightwing, I think we should work together from here on out.”
“Isn’t that what we’ve been doing all along?” she accused.
“Yes, but under the guise of me capturing you. I believe those chains have fallen to the wayside now, don’t you?”
She thought on that, stepping away and gazing at the fireplace where we’d managed to build a decent fire.
“I pledge to protect you,” I vowed. “I’ll guide you to the Great Elm.”
“And then what?” She glanced back over her shoulder at me.
I shrugged. “May the best of us win the boon. I’ll fight fair if you do.”
A smile broke across her face. “Alright then. Yes. We’ll make it there together.”
I offered her my hand to shake, but she knocked it aside as she came at me, looping her arms around my shoulders and drawing me into an embrace. I crushed her to me, scenting oak on her skin and breathing her in for too many breaths.
“I need to understand my place in this forest and what fate it has planned for me here,” she whispered. “Will you help me, Hendrix?”
“I will,” I swore, unable to deny this request from her lips. “Come fire or fury, I will.”