Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Kiernan doesn’t speak. He’s fallen to the back of our little group as we climb the mountains. Leif’s at my side, muttering curses under his breath. Faelon’s ahead, making pithy comments we’re all ignoring.
The path twists higher through the mountains than I expect—narrow and steep. Fog swallows the Synod behind us, until all that remains is stone, wind, and sky. The crown of Godswatch Peak is buried in these dense clouds.
“Why did you lose so many men this year?” I ask Leif, my voice a murmur. For once, I don’t worry about others overhearing. This fog absorbs everything. “Is that normal?”
He looks over at me but takes a minute to answer as he methodically navigates each treacherous step.
“No,” he finally answers, his voice carefully even.
“It’s not normal.” There’s another heavy pause before he goes on.
“Aelric disappeared right before you arrived, actually. He didn’t come back from a patrol mission.
I want to think he’s alive, but normally when someone goes missing on a patrol mission the archons send out search and rescue teams. This time, though, the Elder refused to send out teams, so the rumor is he somehow knows that Aelric’s dead. ”
“As for the rest … They died in a single battle. I was the only ward they managed to save, and Kiernan wasn’t there because he doesn’t have his faravar yet.”
“But I thought Stormriven had one of the highest survival rates in the Synod?”
“We do,” Leif said. “Thanks to Ryot. But that battle was—” He stops. Just cuts off, as if he can’t get the words out.
Faelon—who I didn’t even know was listening—finishes, as serious as I’ve ever heard him. “That battle was like Kheris herself tore open the Veil and reached out with bloodied claws to drag us from the sky.”
Fuck.
“You’re falling behind!” Thalric shouts.
“Get up here or there’ll be hells to pay!” This from Caius.
We bolt—Kiernan, Leif, Faelon, and me. The air’s thinner here, and I’m doing my best not to sound like I’m choking on it. My legs ache. My vision tunnels. But I don’t stop.
Several grueling minutes later, we catch up, chests heaving. The silence stretches for so long I’m sure no one has the breath to speak, until Faelon says quietly, “Sweet Serephelle, Kiernan. You stink, man.”
Kiernan flushes a bright red. “Fuck you, Faelon.”
“Hush, you two,” Caius says, but he puts a hand on Kiernan’s shoulder. “You men,” Caius stops himself, shoots me an embarrassed look. “You all —go ahead. We’ll catch up.”
Thalric nods and we continue up the path. Kiernan and Caius disappear from view within seconds as we climb on, but I can still smell Kiernan’s fear and hear the beginning of their conversation.
“Building a wall around your mind doesn’t make sense, Master Caius. Is there a different metaphor?” Kiernan asks, his voice cracking with panic.
“It’s not a metaphorical wall, Kiernan,” Caius replies, his patience clearly stretched thin. “It’s one you train into existence. Like this …”
I prick my ears, eager to hear the lesson, but the fog is so thick it blocks the sound.
Our group moves on in near silence, and we climb for three more hours before the fog disappears, rolling away as if it had never been to reveal the sun nearing mid-day.
Here, the air is thin and sharp with the altitude .
A metallic scent rides the breeze—lightning and rain and sun-warmed feathers.
My skin prickles. The hairs on my arms lift.
We round the final bend, and the mountain opens before us.
The galehold is unlike anything I could’ve imagined.
The side of the mountain looks as if the gods reached down and scooped out a piece of the world to make space for something divine.
Massive ledges spiral along the rock face, and sunlight glitters on shallow pools of water dotting natural terraces.
Black feathers litter the stone like windblown offerings.
High above, the open sky yawns wide—no ceiling, no walls, just clouds and possibility.
And they’re here. The faravars.
They don’t line up in neat rows or wait in tidy stalls.
They’re scattered across the ledges, their bodies gleaming in the sun.
Some perch on high crags, wings half-unfurled.
Others doze, heads bowed, feathers ruffling in the shifting wind.
They are huge—larger, somehow, than I remembered. And there are hundreds of them.
Countless obsidian eyes turn to face us in eerie unison—ancient, unblinking, and impossibly aware.
The wind presses against my skin and carries the scent of something unbearably old. A dozen of them flutter their wings, but even that soft whisper of feathers bends the wind. A few tilt their heads, curious; others look like they’re simply stretching.
A dark faravar lifts his head, his nostrils flaring, and I swear he almost grins before he ambles over to Faelon.
They meet like friends, pushing and shoving on each other with a joy that feels out of place coming from a creature so massive, so clearly built for war.
Another peels away from the group and moves toward Thalric.
A third makes a deliberate approach to Nyrica, and a fourth prances over to Leif.
They’re all black at first glance. But up close, there are subtle differences.
In fact, they almost look like the men who ride them.
Thalric’s has a silver streak down the bridge of its nose, and silver streaks through its mane.
Leif’s moves more like a companion than a warrior, and its eyes are gentler than the others’. Nyrica’s is as bulky as he is.
A darker one near the center flaps its wings once, sending a gust of air spiraling across the stone.
Einarr.
He comes to Ryot not like a beast answering a call, but like a shadow drawn to its source.
His steps are heavy but controlled, the kind of movement that speaks of unfathomable power barely contained.
For the first time, I notice that Einarr has wings that glimmer with hints of midnight blue when they catch the light; they reflect the color of Ryot’s eyes.
And then Einarr turns to me and lowers his massive head to press his forehead against mine.
My breath whooshes out of my body as everything else vanishes.
The wind, the cliffs, the others—they all cease to exist while his warm, coarse fur presses against my skin.
Then, the moment is gone, and Einarr pulls away, stepping back.
Following his lead, the other faravars return to the clearing. They took our coming as the tribute it was, and now we’ve been dismissed.
As we leave the clearing to re-enter the fog, I glance at Ryot. Somehow, the two of us have ended up walking side-by-side as we take one cautious step after another down the path.
“Why did we go to the galehold today?”
“You needed to see them, and they needed to see you.”
I snort. “That’s the most non-answer answer I’ve ever been given, and my mother was an expert at hedging her vague responses.”
He smiles, as if his mother was the same. But then he stops and turns to me, and his eyes are hard.
“Something’s coming,” he says.
I quirk an eyebrow at him, and gesture to the golden-edged scar that covers my face. “What was your first clue, there?”
He slashes a hand through the air. “This isn’t a joke, Leina.”
I stop, cutting off the sarcasm. He’s right.
“I’m not a superstitious man,” he continues. “And I refuse to live my life based on fear, especially fear of inevitable death. But I feel—” He clears his throat, awkwardly. He breaks eye contact and starts walking down the mountain again.
“We need to be ready,” he settles on. “I don’t know for what. I don’t know when. I don’t even know why. But we—you—need to be ready.”
I stand there, the wind tugging at my cloak. I think about my nightmares, about how they’ve changed since he found me. I don’t dream of Alden anymore or of Irielle’s screams. I dream of darkness. Suffocating, unending, darkness.
I catch up to Ryot, falling into step beside him.
“I’m never ready,” I warn him. “It used to drive my father crazy. But I show up anyway.”
He doesn’t look at me, but the corner of his mouth twitches. Not a smile. A smirk of annoyance, like he knows exactly what I’m talking about. It makes me think he grew up with sisters.
“I guess that’ll have to be enough,” he mutters.
I smile, feeling lighter than I have in years. Experiencing the faravars loosened something in me. I can feel them in the wind, distant but present, watching from somewhere above the cliffs.
I fall behind, and my eyes catch on Ryot’s back as he strides forward with sure, confident steps. But … maybe it’s not just the winged beasts.
“I have a lot to learn.”
He snorts a little, like what I’ve said is an understatement. Well, there’s no time like the present.
“How do you talk to them, the faravars? How do you communicate with something like that?”
“You don’t. Not at first.”
“You communicate with Einarr. The Elder talks to Sigurd.” I protest. “You won’t convince me otherwise.”
He smiles. “I do, yes. And yes, the Elder talks to Sigurd.” He calls up to the men ahead of us. “Leif, what’s your beast’s name?”
Leif sighs, and the sound is defeated. “I don’t know,” he mumbles, clearly embarrassed.
“What do you mean?”
Leif mumbles something else that I don’t catch.
“Like everything that matters, your bond with your faravar grows strong over time, from the time you meet at Elandors Veil,” Ryot explains.
Thalric cuts a hard look at Ryot, and cuts in.
“There’s no ‘catching up’ with that bond, no staying up all night to rush it.
You have to nurture it, work at it. As your trust in each other grows stronger, so does your bond.
Eventually, you’ll get flashes of your beast’s intentions, and they’ll know yours.
Your understanding of each other will grow until you can sense each other’s emotions.
Someday—it could take years, like with Leif—you’ll learn your beast’s name. ”
I let that settle. The thought of not bonding with my faravar is terrifying, but I don’t let it show. Leif has survived four years without even knowing his beast’s name. I wait another few seconds, catching my breath from the steep, downhill-trek, and then ask my next question.
“What’s Elandors Veil?”
All the men stop so abruptly I almost run into Ryot’s back.
Like one, they each turn on their heels to study me through the fog. I can’t read their faces, but the shock on the air is cold and sharp.
Faelon mutters, “You really are fresh.”
Someone whacks the back of Faelon’s head. “Dammit, Nyrica!” Faelon says. “What was that for?”
“Someone had to do it, and Caius isn’t here,” Nyrica replies, dryly.
Thalric ignores them and takes a step closer to me, his features emerging from the mist. “It’s the mountain where the gods tore existence in two and left us on this side of the Veil. They sealed themselves on the other.”
“The summit of Elandors Veil is where the Veil between the realms is the thinnest,” Ryot adds.
“It’s like you can feel the gods watching,” Leif adds.
“Feel them watching?” Faelon scowls. “Fuck that. I heard them. Those nonsensical voices were the most terrifying thing I’ve ever experienced.”
“No Altor has ever reached the summit and come back without a faravar,” Ryot says. “And those who fail don’t come back at all.”
“Some—like Faelon—say the mountain speaks, that it tempts you or lies to you. It drives some of them mad, until they run or jump to the bottomless chasms below,” Nyrica adds.
Faelon shivers, wrapping his arms around himself like he’s unbearably cold.
“But for most of us, the difficult thing is the climb,” Thalric says. “The gods made it impossible on purpose. They don’t want mortals reaching their grubby hands into the divine.”
I shiver when I remember the price of my time in Sol’vaalen with Thayana. I don’t want to imagine how they’ve guarded the Veil that separates our realms.
“This is something I’ll need to do?” I ask.
Thalric’s mouth is tight. He looks at me, and for the first time, something close to pity is in his eyes. That scares me more than any glare.
“If you want a faravar. And there’s no being an Altor without one,” he says.
“Sweet Serephelle,” I mutter.
Nyrica glances at me, one brow lifting. “You’re praying to the wrong goddess, love. It’s not the goddess of luck who will see you through.”
I swallow the lump rising in my throat. Climbing a mountain is one thing. Climbing a mountain the gods themselves designed to kill you is something else entirely.
“Lovely,” I mutter. “You guys don’t make it easy around here, do you?”
Faelon smiles, quick and flirty. “Easy is for soft hands and silk sheets.”
Nyrica snorts. “I don’t know what kind of sex you’re having, Faelon, but you’re doing it wrong.”
“Hey!” He turns to Thalric. “Can I whack him on the back of the head?”
Ryot interrupts. “Easy is for people who stay on the ground—the grounded.” His eyes are hard on me. “Do you want to stay on the ground, Leina of Stormriven?”
I meet his gaze, though my pulse is racing. He’s not trying to scare me, I don’t think. Maybe he’s giving me a choice. Choices in my life are rare enough to taste like honey, even when they’re laced with something bitter.
“No,” I say. “I don’t.”
He jerks out a nod and then continues making his way down the mountain.
“That’s Master Ryot to you, rebel girl,” he tosses back over his shoulder.
My lips twitch, and I fall in line behind the guys. “Yes, Master Ryot.”
He snorts, and I know the sarcasm landed this time.
If this is what it takes to earn a faravar, to rise above the dirt and bleed for something bigger than survival?—
Then I’ll climb.
Even if I have to bleed every step of the way to the top.
Even if it kills me.