Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
No matter how hard he tried, Nocren couldn’t convince his legs to move faster. He trudged away from the underground cave, the wellspring project… Calya.
She’d made her choice. It wasn’t him. She would never choose him over her career, her company—the only thing she’d ever deemed fit for love.
He’d never stood a chance, and the wind had shown him as much.
Warned him over and over again of the change Calya would bring.
The change she’d bring about in him, slowly lowering his guard.
Worming her way in, even though he’d always known better than to open himself up for such pain.
He’d thought he could keep any attachments at bay.
He was wrong.
The bitter realization did nothing to stem the sense of failure that plagued him, that slowed his feet, urging him to go back.
He hadn’t tried hard enough to convince her.
Hadn’t explained well enough how the wind worked, or the extent of the danger it had imparted to him.
If he had, Calya would’ve seen how reckless her vendetta against the Coalition and Avenor was.
How flawed her risk assessment had been.
Or was he wrong to have thought he could? That what he’d seen was true? Had he fallen into old traps again, succumbed to guilt and stress like a novice diviner—let his bias turn to fear and not seen how tainted the images were in turn?
It wouldn’t have mattered, his bitter mind supplied. Her ambition was always going to trump your words.
Natural light shone up ahead, heralding the entrance to the cavern.
Nocren slogged onward; he just needed to get above ground and hope the horses hadn’t wandered off too far.
The open air would slap sense into him, and he desperately needed it.
There were messages to be sent. No doubt the Rhellian king would dispatch ships to investigate right away.
Ezzyn Sor’vahl was likely setting the ocean on fire at that very moment in his haste to reach the Landing.
Nocren needed to inform Captain Malek’ko of his findings.
The Sentinels and the Order of Sylveren would need to move quickly if they were going to claim authority over the site.
What remained of it. Nocren had every intention of destroying it, just as he’d said.
But he would need backup in securing what remained and to keep the Coalition at bay.
They were already in flight, perhaps to set up in yet another location.
He couldn’t let them get too entrenched.
At least his mission could be considered a success.
The murky circumstances and lack of communication regarding the Sylveren researchers had only been the start.
Even if they never found Matthias and got his confirmation, there was the attempted wellspring.
The abandoned site. The village where the others were treating the victims, no doubt sickened from runoff or some other evil seeping out of the Coalition’s experiments here.
The Sentinels had more than enough cause to assert dominion over the Landing, bringing it back into the Valley’s boundaries.
He’d need to get word to his superiors as quickly as possible so they could get the declaration in motion before any Graelynd authorities mounted a defense.
The Order would put their weight behind the Sentinels’ claim, and Graelynd would be hard-pressed to refute it, considering what had gone on under their nose.
Maybe Froley would help. Nocren couldn’t make them any guarantees, but the Sentinels would likely be able to come to an agreement with the mildly questionable smuggler. Certainly something better than the implied knife to the throat that was the Coalition.
Victories, yet they rang hollow for him. He’d never considered that the cost would be a personal one. He might still be struggling with the decision of whether or not he could bring himself to pay it if Calya had not decided for him. For them both.
Nocren went into the container office and grabbed the box of neutralizing stones. He tossed them one by one into the remaining test plots, grim satisfaction rising up as each flashed and went inert.
Pocketing the leftover stones, his gaze swept across the clearing a final time.
He lingered over the faded mark on the outside of the closest container, the initials of Avenor Guard barely visible in the fading light.
Could Orren and his men be counted on to stand against Avenor and the mayor now?
Maybe, but Nocren’s shallow well of trust had run dry.
Another thing he’d have to beg from Froley—the town’s own militia, or whatever passed for it.
Enough backing to force Orren’s compliance if necessary.
The wind swirled around Nocren, plucking at his sleeves as he went in search of the horses.
He ignored it.
It persisted, shifting from a breeze to a personal gust, tugging at his cloak, whipping his hair about his face.
“No, I’ve heard enough from you today.”
He raised his hand up in defense, attempting to bat it away. A futile endeavor, considering how with the wind there was nothing to hit, and it fucking knew it. It blew again, directly in his ear.
“Enough,” he growled, brushing hair from his eyes. “I don’t want to hear—”
He blinked, focus sharpening on a point above him.
A beam of light flashed three times in rapid succession, illuminating the top of the strange, delicate tower at the far end of the clearing.
It was reminiscent of the lighthouse farther out on the Landing’s point, though the brief pattern of light seemed more like a signal than a guide. A different type of warning, perhaps?
Going to the base of the tower, Nocren looked up. Another triple burst of light, then all was dark. But in the short span between eye-searing brightness and nothing, he thought he saw a gem of some kind at the top of the structure.
With a gentler but still insistent buffet, the wind gave him a nudge closer to the tower. It continued to curl around his hands, calling to his magic until his palms tingled.
Nocren closed his eyes and allowed himself a frustrated scream behind sealed lips. Then, with an aggrieved exhale, he opened his eyes and began to climb.
Not up the structure itself—he didn’t have a death wish—but up the closest tree.
He was nearly level with the gem when it lit again.
At closer range, Nocren saw that the gem was housed in a box-like container with only the front panel left off.
It concentrated the direction of the light so it was visible only to the north.
If he hadn’t been practically underneath the tower, he’d never have seen it.
Not a protective tower, then, for they were too far from the water for it to serve the role of a proper lighthouse.
Craning his neck to look in the direction the gem’s light faced, Nocren squinted into the evening gloom. Trees and mountains were plentiful in the region. If it had been daylight, maybe he could have spied some of the coast between breaks in the tree, but now…
Except, there was something in the distance below him. A small dot of light. Not a flash but steady, maybe a touch flickery like a lamp. Not just flickering, either, but weaving slightly from side to side.
Like the light was on a boat.
“Gods all break,” Nocren muttered. The inlet from the map. It was real. A hidden, narrow cove lay in front of him, though its exact distance was hard to estimate given the darkness. Definitely not on any of the maps he’d seen while working on his ill-fated deal with the Coalition.
The wind tore through the trees, shrieking around Nocren, making the branch upon which he perched shake.
It called for his magic, more insistent than he’d ever seen it.
For it to be offering him possibilities with such fervor rather than playing hard to get, it was more than annoying or a bit of fun—it unnerved him.
Especially after the last time. His faith in himself, shaken.
“Fine, fine. Calm down,” he mumbled, letting a drop of his light float up to be caught by the wind. Only one impression came to him, bright like a star. Change.
Nocren’s chest went tight, but he made himself follow the feeling. “What is it?”
Calya stood a few feet from him, her body turned partially away as she looked off somewhere else.
“I didn’t lie to you before.”
There was a weariness in her words, in her voice. An echo of the bitter disappointment he felt. The anger, at her, but more so at himself for daring to hope.
She slowly raised her eyes to his, letting her carefully neutral mask fall, her sadness bared for him to see.
“I’ll never love you back.”
Nocren flinched, his hands digging into the tree’s bark. He didn’t need to put himself through this again.
“Not the way you deserve.”
He blinked. The wind whistled in his ears, Change pressing at the edges of his mind.
It was… different.
A different outcome. The outcome the wind had been teasing him with for weeks.
While not without pain, it was different.
And, for the wind to still be so insistent, did that mean it was still a possibility?
Rarely did the wind spend time on what had been, and when it had, it always showed him true memories.
But this, this alternate meeting with Calya, had not yet come to pass.
Could still be.
The sounds of a door being shoved open and voices nearby had Nocren shrinking back against the tree’s trunk. Carefully, he looked down—and nearly lost his grip.
Three men moved swiftly down a path, headed for the cove. One was Avenor, and he spoke in low, urgent tones to a burly man carrying something over his shoulder: “…with the others.”
The burly man grunted a question, but Nocren couldn’t make out the words.
Avenor shook his head. “…yet. I’m checking… others.”
Avenor and the third man split off, keeping on toward the water and leaving the big man to take a different path winding back into the underground base.
As he passed beneath a torch, Nocren gasped, shock robbing him of common sense.
Fortunately, the wind blew the sound away, and the man carried on, ignorant to Nocren hidden above.
Slung over his shoulder like a sack of flour was Calya. She flopped limply with his every step, no sound or struggle from her. The sight was ice through Nocren’s heart. Made his mind come to a standstill as it tried to process what his eyes saw. She couldn’t be…
No. Her wrists were bound. They wouldn’t bother to bind a corpse.
The burly man was nearly out of sight, his path leading through another door in the rock.
Nocren didn’t hesitate. Didn’t think about warnings or consequences or lessons from the past. Didn’t consider whether what he did was safe or inviting true catastrophe.
Golden sparks jumped from his fingertips, caught up in a rush of wind that raced away toward the ground. Toward Calya, as she disappeared before his eyes.
“Help her. Let her see. Make her,” he whispered, pushing his last drops of magic into the wind. “Whatever it takes.”
He tore out of the tree, taking the last dozen feet in a slide-fall the consequences of which reminded him he wasn’t quite so young anymore. He didn’t care.
All other thoughts and plans abandoned, Nocren ran back into the mountain.