Chapter 31 #3
The fabric moves as soon as my bare feet touch the pale patch of floor. It loosens from the air in long, drifting pieces and comes toward me.
One strip slides over my shoulder, cool enough to make me flinch. Another crosses beneath my throat. More follow, winding around my ribs, my waist, my hips, until the separate pieces become a single garment against my skin.
Starlight pale over my chest, smoke-dark at my waist, moon-white where it falls around my legs.
The fabric covers me, but only just. My shoulders are bare.
My back is bare almost to the base of my spine.
The skirt parts high when I move, then closes again before I know whether I should be scandalized or not.
Maerwyn comes closer with a fine silver chain gathered between her fingers.
I only catch a quick glimpse of it before she moves behind me and begins working it through my damp hair.
It is cold against my scalp, each loop settling into place with a tiny pull.
Something small and hard rests above my brow when she finishes.
All four step back, staring at me.
“What?”
“It’s time.” Serath steps forward and kisses my cheek. “We will go ahead. Vel will bring you shortly.”
“Bring me where?”
She tuts softly. “So many questions, Alleria. We will see you soon.”
They file out, and then it’s just me and Vel.
“When I saw you leave the village with your handmaiden, I followed you. I thought you were going to meet the humans, and bring them back to ambush us.”
“I—”
“I do not like humans, Alleria. I do not trust them.” She moves closer, and I tense, horribly conscious of how she could kill me where I stand. “But the magic has claimed you. The Eldráfn has claimed you. To mistrust you is to mistrust him and Nightwild.”
She touches my cheek first, then my ear. “You have shown your loyalties. You have shown your strength. You were willing to die for us. I will never forget that.”
She turns away, leaving me speechless.
“Come. It is time.”
I follow her out of my chambers, and down the hall to the staircase. We move down the stairs and cross the great hall. She stops just before the archway that leads outside. I can hear the fountain, and the sea beyond it.
“Count down from ten, then come out.” She steps outside and I'm left alone.
Ten … Nine … Eight …
My heart is hammering against my ribs.
Seven … Six … Five …
My mouth is dry.
Four … Three … Two …
I take a deep breath.
One …
I walk out into the courtyard.
Silver lights have been set into the ground, their glow angled so the center of the courtyard is bright while everything beyond it falls into shadow. The fountain rises ahead of me, and gathered before it in a long curve stands the Nightwild Guard.
All eleven of them.
My steps slow on the stone as my gaze searches the courtyard until I find Cairn.
He is set apart from the line, facing them, seated in a chair carved from dark stone, its high back worked with thorns that remind me of his armor. He sits in it as though the whole night belongs to him, one leg stretched out, one arm draped over the side.
His black shirt is open at the throat. The marks I watched burn beneath the moon gleam with cold light along his collarbones and the backs of his hands. His hair hangs loose around his face.
And his eyes—
They are fixed on me, and only me.
He looks like the fae who held me while I slept. He looks like a warrior who can command the sea.
I want to go to him.
Everything inside me leans that way, toward the one part of this I understand. I half-turn, taking a step in his direction.
Vel’s hand closes on my shoulder. Firm and steady. Stopping me from forgetting that this is not only about him … about us.
She turns me back.
She walks me forward until Cairn is behind me and the Guard face me. It feels deliberate. Cairn at my back, and the Guard before me. Then she releases me and steps back into her place in the line.
“The magic has chosen,” they say together. “Let the claim be witnessed.”
The words move through the courtyard, low and even, and something answers beneath the stone.
It rises through the soles of my feet.
Vel steps forward first.
“Alleria of Shentari,” she says, “claimed by the Nightwild, blood-bound to its Eldráfn. Call your steed.”
Doubt fills me. I’m sure nothing will happen. Everyone will stand here watching while I reach for something and it fails to appear.
I take a breath. Then I find the strand inside me.
Heat comes up out of the stone—smoke, the smell of cinders—and then he’s there. Taller than me, pale as ash, with eyes like live coals and smoke coming off his flanks. He throws back his head and pushes his muzzle into my shoulder.
“The steed came to her call,” Vel says.
“We witness the claim.”
Vel moves back, and Brael moves forward.
“Name your steed.”
I open my mouth to say I don’t know his name, but that isn’t what comes out.
“Tempest.”
Brael inclines his head. “In our tongue, he is Nytheros.”
“Nytheros,” I repeat.
“She has named what answered.”
“We witness the claim.”
Maerwyn replaces Brael. “No crown has command over your bond.”
“We witness the claim.”
Caelum replaces Maerwyn. “No bloodline has command over the Guard.”
“We witness the claim.”
My blood. My father, watching the floor drop out from under me. My sister in the crowd with her gaze turned away. The crown that put the rope around my neck.
Eleven fae I was raised to hate and kill, standing in the dark and swearing it follows me no further than this.
One by one, the others step forward.
“What she does not know, we will teach.”
“We witness the claim.”
“What threatens her place, we will answer.”
“We witness the claim.”
“What she owes the Guard, the Guard may demand.”
“We witness the claim.”
“What the Nightwild asks of her, she may refuse.”
“We witness the claim.”
“What the Nightwild gives her, no Court may take.”
“We witness the claim.”
“What was done to her in the human world has no hold here.”
For a moment, I can’t breathe.
The rope. The trapdoor. My father’s face. Brennan’s hands. My sister looking away.
No hold here.
“We witness the claim.”
Therin steps forward last, no trace of humor on his features.
“What she has chosen, we accept.”
“We witness the claim.”
Silence falls, and then as one, the Guard take a step toward me. Therin and Vel take up positions on either side of me, their hands curving around my arms. They turn me toward the chair at my back.
Toward Cairn.
“Eldráfn,” Therin says. “The claim is witnessed. The steed is named. Her place is made.”
Cairn rises fluidly to his feet. “By whose witness?”
“Ours,” says Vel.
“By whose choosing?”
“The Nightwild’s,” the Guard answer at my back.
He looks at me.
“Do you accept the place made for you?”
For less than a heartbeat, something comes through the bond.
Pride. Hunger. Relief.
Then it’s gone, shut away before I can do more than feel the edge of it.
I lick my lips.
Every eye in the courtyard is on me. The Guard. The Steed. Cairn. The stone beneath my bare feet feels warm. The air feels cool. My skin feels hot.
“I … I accept.”
One corner of his mouth twitches up. “Then take your place with the Nightwild Guard.”