Chapter 33 Kaelen
Kaelen
Freedom feels like a physical thing I can touch as Eres and I finally batter down the third bar of this godforsaken cage so we can squeeze through. Sweat trickles down my back.
For a witch raised in Solvandyr discipline, Lyra has certainly learned the art of making prisons. Pushing Eres out first, I climb out after him. The loss of my erevas feels like missing a limb. I can’t remember ever being quilled in my life. “We have to go. Where’s the antidote?”
“In the healing quarters.” Eres slings his cloak around his neck, his feet already moving for the door. “It’s been a long time.”
Hours, we’ve been locked in here. And even the banging against my door and our shouts brought no help, as if she’d blocked the sound as well as our exit.
Darian and Lyra are far ahead of us by now, and possibly far ahead of any help they might need. If they don’t come back, either of them, I will never forgive myself.
We take the stairs two at a time, shoving through the doors of the healer’s quarters. I almost run into Eres’s back. Stepping out from behind him, I take in the sight of Valcor and several guards, positioned at the end. “What’s going on?”
Eres ducks past me, already making his way to his shelves as Valcor approaches. “The shadowscout, Beckett. He’s a spy.”
My brows scrunch. “What?”
“It was the Lightbringer.” He shifts back, as if sensing that my temper is close to the verge of eruption. “She burst in here and went to speak to him. I don’t know how she knew, but she’s right. He hasn’t stopped talking.”
My heart turns over. “She left?”
He nods. “Kaelen… he’s saying that he shared information we thought came from Raedyn Veyr.”
Eres comes up beside me. But I can’t move. “Kae. We have to go.”
Valcor’s gaze swings between us. “You’re going after her? Now?”
Raedyn Veyr wasn’t a traitor, and this is the proof. After six months of suspicion hanging over Darian’s head, his father’s legacy tainted by perception, this is the confirmation we needed. And Lyra found it. “How long ago did she leave?”
“Three hours, give or take.” His gaze swings between us. “We’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
“I was tied up.” I take the antidote from Eres’s outstretched hand and swallow it. “Yes, we’re going after her.”
“But—”
“Not a word,” Eres says quietly. “Not a single fucking word, Valcor. Not after what’s happened. After what she’s done for you today.”
“She asked me to let her go.” He straightens. “As payment for a debt.”
For fucks’ sake. “Next time, bring her a fucking gift basket.” I run my hands down my face. “Find out as much as you can.”
“It would help if we had Nythen for interrogation.”
He just doesn’t learn. My eyes open, and he blanches. “We’ll make do.”
As the antidote works through my body, my erevas rushes back to my hands in a surge, and I nearly stagger from the sensation as we make our way to the courtyard.
Eldritch is waiting. “We seem to be losing a lot of people tonight. Darian. Lyra.”
“We’re going,” I snarl. “Don’t try to stop us.”
But my old instructor steps into my path, blocking the archway to the stable. “We need you here, Kaelen. You know that. We won’t last an hour if the Lightbringers hit early.”
“They won’t hit early,” I snap, though I don’t know that. None of us do. “They’re still probing the Veilspire.”
And Darian and Lyra are in the middle.
“And if they commit?” Eldritch’s voice stays calm, infuriatingly so.
“Umbraxis falls. Everyone dies. You. Lyra. Eres. Darian. The council. Every darkwielder still breathing, and the whole reason for our position. You’re not just theirs, Kaelen.
You’re the hinge this entire defense turns on, and we need you here. ”
“Don’t you think I know that?” My voice rises to a shout. “I can’t leave them out there!”
Eldritch’s jaw tightens. “Darian chose to go. Lyra too.”
Darian chose to go because I hurt him.
A shout from the ramparts comes from above our heads. “Rider!”
My head snaps up. Rider.
Just one.
Eres and I both sprint toward the front gate as it peels open.
The horse is galloping hard down the approach path. One rider slumps forward in the saddle, limp. The other sits behind, arms wrapped around him, posture rigid with exhaustion and determination.
Even at this distance, I know the shape of Lyra’s shoulders. I know Darian’s dark hair, and relief hits me so hard my vision blurs.
The rage floods in right behind it.
Lyra gallops through the gate as if a thousand Lightbringers ride on her heels.
Her horse lathers at the sides, breath steaming in frantic bursts.
Grabbing the reins of her horse and steadying it, I sweep my gaze over them.
Lyra’s face is pale, her cheeks chapped.
Her eyes are bright and far too focused for someone who should be on the verge of collapse from everything she’s put her body through today. “He’s unconscious. Help me.”
Darian is slumped in front of her, held upright only by her arms. His weight is solid and familiar and fully fucking infuriating, now that he’s safe. When I shift him, he groans faintly, eyelids fluttering.
“Idiot,” I grit out, voice rough. I’m tempted to drop him. Instead, I lower him slowly to the ground, but I don’t let go.
Lyra slides off the horse and nearly sways. Eres catches her elbow, his eyes scanning her face and body for any hint of injury. “Are you hurt?”
“No. Some scrapes.” Her gaze flicks to Darian. “He was hit several times. And he had a dimmer.”
“A dimmer?”
She shakes her head. “A quill.”
And now, I suspect we know how the Lightbringers got hold of them in the first place, since we issue more of them to our shadowscouts than anyone else. My gaze locks on Lyra, but she avoids my stare.
“I see it,” Eres is already checking Darian’s scalp, his fingers gentle. “Bump. Cuts. Scrapes.”
Darian’s eyes crack open, unfocused as he attempts to struggle upright while I’m still holding him. “Kaelen,” he rasps, and the sound of my name in his wrecked voice makes something in my chest twist painfully.
I should be yelling. I should be shaking him.
Instead, I lift him into me, clutching him tightly in case he disappears again. “You’re a damned fool, Dare.”
Lyra’s gaze flicks to me, braced for my anger. And Erevan knows, I am furious. I want to scream at her for doing this, for risking herself, for thinking that she was worth any less than Eres and I. I want to grab her shoulders and shake her and demand she never do it again.
But when I look at her—really look—at the way she’s trembling with exhaustion, at the way her eyes keep flicking to Darian’s face—
Something else slides beneath my anger, cooling it. She risked her life for him. For us, and my throat tightens.
“Inside,” I order, all too aware that if I stay here another second I might say something I can’t take back. “All of you. Now. Eres, take Darian.”
I don’t want to let him go. But there’s something I need to do. Eres and I pull him upright, and Eres pulls Darian’s arm over his shoulder as he shakes his head. “Still dizzy.”
“That’ll be the bump. You idiot.” But Eres’s face is filled with relief, his eyes shining.
I watch them leave before I turn to Lyra. Her arms are wrapped around herself, but her shoulders straighten more with every step I take toward her until she’s glaring at me. “I’m not apologizing.”
I stop a hairs-breadth away, and she doesn’t flinch. “You locked me in a cage.”
She hesitates. “And I stole your horse.”
My brows draw together. “My—,”
Fucking hell. She did. She stole my damn horse. “I’m surprised he let you. He doesn’t like strangers.”
She licks her lips. “We came to an agreement.”
“You could have died.”
“But I didn’t.” Witch-fire eyes stare back at me. “I told you I’d bring him back.”
Putting my hands on either side of her face, I tilt up her cheeks and slam my lips down over hers. A startled noise sounds in the back of her throat, her body tensing before it softens.
She softens. One hand moves to the back of her head, cradling her, before I rip myself away and shove my finger into her face. “Don’t you ever fucking think that you’re expendable again.”
She staggers. Blinks. “What?”
“You heard me.” Bending, I sweep my arm against the backs of her knees, catching and lifting her. She sucks in a breath before her hand swats at my chest. “I can walk. Put me down.”
“No. You might run off and steal my horse again.”
I catch Eldritch’s eye as I storm through the courtyard, tilting my head in silent request to put him back in the stable. He looks as if he might be holding in laughter. Lyra humphs, and I stare down at her. “Don’t pull your attitude with me, witch. I’m this close to putting you over my knee.”
When we reach my bedroom, Eres is leaning over a sleeping Darian. “Put her down here, so I can check her over.”
His voice is cool. Markedly so, and I feel Lyra tense before I place her down on the bed, my hands smoothing back the stray strands of hair from her face. She looks over at him. “I’m not injured.”
“Would you even tell me if you were?” His movements are jerky as he steps over to a tray he must have asked for.
He pours her water before thrusting it at her, not looking at her face.
“Would I have even known if you’d died out there, or would I have had to have ridden out to find your body in the snow, again? ”
She stares at the cup, uncertain.
“Take the damned water and drink it,” Eres snaps. He turns away from her startled face, his hand rubbing at his chest. “I’d tell you to rest, but you won’t listen. Do what you want.”
Both of us stare at his back as he retreats into the bathing chamber and slams the door behind him. Her hand is still gripping the cup in mid-air. “I don’t understand.”
She looks genuinely bewildered.
“He was scared.” Her eyes slide to mine, brow furrowing. “For you, Lyra. He was petrified that you’d die out there before we found you.”
She takes a sip of the water. Another, draining the cup before she sets it on the side. “Excuse me.”
My hand captures hers as she tries to walk past me. “Is it so hard to think we might care what happens to you? That we might want you to be safe?”
“Maybe,” she says after a moment. She gently tugs her hand from mine. “Nobody ever did before.”