Chapter 19
NINETEEN
CAIRN
It’s been three days since the Guard returned to Underhill. Three days of small groups of fae finding us in the Vale. Three days of me opening the doorway and sending them home.
There have been forty-seven so far. From the threads linking me to them, there are at least sixty more coming toward us.
Too many threads have gone dark since the magic connected them to me.
Too many deaths that might have been prevented if I hadn’t shattered every collar at once without warning.
There are moments when the silence of those threads is worse than the pull of the living ones.
I can’t allow guilt to take hold. What’s done is done.
I have no doubt that the fae who won’t make it to Therison Vale preferred to die free than wrapped in iron that burns.
The last group came through just before sunset. Three of them, on the brink of exhaustion. One could barely stand. Another kept touching the place where the collar had been, fingers shaking every time they found bare skin instead of iron.
Therin and I healed them as best we could. Neither of us has Serath and Caelum’s talent, or their gentleness. Ours is battlefield healing. Fast and brutal. It didn’t matter, because once they saw the doorway open to Underhill, they fell on their knees and wept.
The sun set hours ago, and the fire has burned down to coals, but the heat from them is enough to keep the chill of the night at bay. I sit with my back against a tree and watch the mist creep across the open ground.
The breeze shifts, bringing with it a faint howl. My head snaps left, and I nudge Therin’s shin with my boot.
“We have company.”
He’s on his feet before I finish speaking, his head turning in the same direction as mine.
His nostrils flare at the low, baying note that carries through the air toward us.
I tilt my head, listening harder. Beneath the soft sound of the breeze rustling the leaves, and the hound’s call, there’s the jingle of a horse’s harness.
Moving to the edge of the trees, I scan the Vale until I find the figure running across the grass. Female, fae, and from the way she has one arm wrapped around her torso, she’s hurt.
She stumbles, her legs giving out beneath her, and collapses to her hands and knees, head hanging. We move forward quickly, reaching her as she fights to get back to her feet.
I drop to one knee beside her and press a hand under her jaw to lift her face.
Her cheeks are streaked with dirt and old blood.
Her hair is matted to her scalp on one side, where there’s an open wound at her temple.
There’s a puncture through her tunic, and blood has stained the material.
The skin at her throat is raw and weeping where iron used to sit.
Her hands shake. Her breath rattles in her chest. One of her boots is gone, and the foot is black with bruising.
Yet she made it to us. With all that damage, she’s made it this far.
The fury inside me heats my blood, and magic crackles in the air around me.
“Are you alone?”
“There are soldiers,” she gasps. “Maybe six … They have hounds and—”
“We have you now.” I rise to my feet, and Therin scoops her up into his arms. “Take her into the camp.”
Selveryn forms beneath me before Therin has gone more than two steps. Armor flows over my body, and my blades shape themselves into my palms. I turn my steed’s head toward the hillside that runs down into the Vale.
Behind me, Therin carries the female toward the clearing. I don’t look back. If I do, I’ll see the blood on her body, and I’ll be up that hill before Therin can join me.
So I sit still.
And I wait.
We’ve been lucky humans haven’t discovered the massacred garrison sooner. But I knew it wouldn’t last. Eventually someone was going to discover the bodies and come to investigate.
The hounds arrive first. Four of them, lean and pale, with iron studs set into their collars and dark muzzles flecked with foam.
They pause when they see me, the one in the lead lifting its head, displaying teeth filed to points.
The smell of them reaches me on the breeze—sweat, fear, dog, iron, old blood crusted into their fur.
I take the first out from under the ribs as it comes at me, blade angling up and through its chest, hot blood splashing across my face.
The second goes for Selveryn’s throat. I flick my wrist and open it from jaw to hip in one motion.
Its guts spill before its paws hit the ground, and it slides through them, still snapping at the air.
The third tries to circle behind. Selveryn pivots faster than the animal was trained to expect, and his hoof comes down through its spine with a sharp crack that carries across the open ground.
The fourth has the sense to bolt back to the soldiers, who are racing forward, bowed low over their horses’ necks. They wear green cloaks, with iron-banded mail showing beneath them. The lead rider lifts his sword arm, pointing at me.
Therin appears on his right in a blur of movement, and the man’s head leaves his shoulders before he utters a sound. Blood sprays across the face of the rider beside him. The man jerks his reins and his horse stumbles half a stride.
The smell reaches me, the copper tang of blood followed by the sourness of emptied bowels. The body remains in place for the length of three strides before it slides off, and the horse bolts back for the trees. The other horses around the body sidestep, ears flat and eyes rolling.
The remaining riders fight to calm their horses and scatter, two to my left, two to my right, and the last tries to wheel his horse, shouting frantically to the others. His commands pitching high with panic. I ignore him, focusing on the closer pair first.
One on the right lifts a crossbow. I see the moment his finger finds the trigger, and I am no longer where he’s aiming.
The bolt passes through the space my shoulder occupied a half a heartbeat ago.
By the time he can reload it for a second shot, my blade has found the underside of his jaw, punching up through tongue, palate and bone.
He hangs off my blade for a heartbeat before I free it with a jerk, and the body drops sideways out of the saddle.
The second swings a heavy mace at my head. I lean back, letting it fly past my face, then take the arm off at the shoulder while the weapon is still in motion. He stares at the place where his arm used to be, then his head rolls, my blade separating it from his neck.
Therin has the two on the left. He’s toying with them, letting them think they have him trapped between them.
Foolish humans.
He hasn’t been able to indulge that habit for three centuries, and he’s savoring it.
“Stop toying with the humans,” I call.
Therin laughs, and without missing a beat, runs one man through the chest, then gives his full attention to the other.
I leave him to it and search out the remaining soldier. He’s finally got his horse turned around, and he kicks it hard back toward the hill. I let him run.
I flick one finger toward him. My magic races across the ground. It catches him about fifty strides up the hill. The horse’s legs lock, then fold under it, and the boy goes over its neck and crashes to the ground, rolling back down the hill in a tangle of flailing limbs.
By the time he’s at the bottom, I’m there. I haul him up by the back of his cloak, ignoring his attempts to break free, and drag him across the ground. He scrabbles at the grass with his hands, trying to slow me down, and begs for his life the entire way back to where Therin waits.
Therin’s eyes gleam with amusement as he watches me approach. “He looks delicate enough to break simply by breathing on him.”
“Let’s find out.” I drag the human the rest of the way into the clearing, where the fae female is huddled in front of the fire, clutching a waterskin in one hand.
She goes still as silver light streams from my fingers, wrapping around the boy and binding him against the trunk of a tree.
The stink of fresh piss comes off him in waves.
His pants are soaked through. There’s a thin line of blood at the corner of his mouth where he bit his lip going down the hill, and snot from his nose runs into it.
His shoulders shake as he strains against the magic holding him.
I crouch in front of him.
His breath comes in fast, shallow pants, and the pulse in his throat beats so hard I can see it ticking under the skin. His eyes meet mine, slide away, come back, then jerk away again.
“I am going to ask you some questions. You are going to answer them. If you don’t, I will hand you to my friend here, who will kill you … slowly.”
Therin bares his teeth. The boy turns white, then nods so hard the helm protecting his head falls off.
“Good. Are there any more men in your patrol other than the ones we killed?”
“No. That was all. B-but we’re part of a bigger company, which is camped at the crossroads. Patrols were sent out from there, and are expected to return at dawn.”
I nod. “And what are you looking for?”
His attention darts toward the trees, then back to me.
“Escaped fae,” he whispers.
“I see. And what are your orders when you find any?”
“To …” He swallows. Tears track down his face, leaving trails in the dirt on his cheeks. “To run them down and kill them. No prisoners. No mercy.”
“How many have you killed?”
“I haven’t. I—”
“Don’t lie to me. I can smell the fae blood on your blade.”
He looks at the ground. A sob tears out of him. “Four.” His voice breaks on the word.
“How did you do it? Did you cut them down from the back of your horse or did you face them like a warrior?”
“I … I …”
“That’s what I thought.”
A snap of my fingers loosens the bindings holding him in place. “Then allow me to give you the same chance that you gave them.” I point toward the gap in the trees. “Run.”
For a heartbeat he doesn’t move. His face is blank with the shock of being released.
Then hope hits him. His entire body changes with it, his breath catching, his fear turning frantic and bright.
He scrambles to his feet, slipping once in his own piss before he catches his balance and bolts for the trees.
I let him run.
I let him think he’s going to make it.
He clears thirty strides before he looks back over his shoulder. Fifty before he risks a second glance. Sixty when he begins to believe he’s going to survive.
That’s when I summon Selveryn.
His head snaps around at the sound of hoofbeats, and the moment he understands is worth every stride I let him take. He tries to make for the hill.
He doesn’t reach it.
Selveryn rears up on two legs behind him, his front hooves coming down against his back and breaking his spine.
He folds without a sound. The second rear comes down and goes through the back of his skull.
The third goes through his ribs as Selveryn wheels.
The body lies still, one arm twisted at an angle no living thing would hold.
The grass beneath him is dark and wet. There’s a piece of his skull beside Selveryn’s right hoof, white against the blood soaked into the grass.
I sit, staring at it, and the rage under my skin settles into satisfaction. Four fae died under this boy’s hand, and this is how he has paid for their deaths.
His death won’t bring them back. The four threads he cut remain silent. But he is dead, and he won’t cut another one.
When I return to the clearing, Therin is staring up at the sky.
“Now one patrol has been here, more will come. How much longer can we wait?”
I close my eyes and reach down the threads. “The rest should be here by dawn.”