Chapter 32 #2
The Guard is filtering into the courtyard one by one, forming a long unbroken curve in the pale light. Brael moves to join them.
For those long, endless years I was collared, I was certain that I’d lost more than one of them. Yet, eleven stand strong.
And our new twelfth is coming.
I cross to the chair, and let it take my weight for the first time since we left for Therison Vale.
I feel her long before the archway gives her up. The blood bond tightens in my chest, vibrating with a sudden spike of adrenaline. Then she steps out into the light.
They have dressed her in moonlight. It clings to her—pale silver across her breasts, smoke-dark at her waist, falling to moon-white around her legs.
Her shoulders are bare. So is her back, almost to the base of her spine.
A fine silver chain weaves through her dark hair, ending in a single, moonstone glittering with light above her brow.
Her steps slow on the stone, and I track the movement as her gaze sweeps across the Guard until she finds me.
The moment our eyes lock, she half-turns toward me.
Everything inside me answers—Nightwild magic sings, the blood bond heats, and my body responds in ways that aren’t appropriate for what is coming.
Vel’s hand stops her from coming to me, and turns her back.
“The magic has chosen. Let the claim be witnessed.”
I track the shifting emotions tumbling down the blood bond. The spike of adrenaline when Vel instructs her to summon her steed. The quiet, focused stillness as she reaches into the Nightwild magic.
The courtyard fills with the scent of smoke and cinders, and her steed materializes at her side.
I watch her name him. Watch her accept the fierce, absolute protection of the fae standing in the moonlight. And with every ‘we witness the claim,’ that echoes off the stone walls, the Nightwild magic drives deeper into her, weaving her tighter into our ranks.
They swear to teach her, to protect her, and to strip away the authority of the human crown she was born under. I watch her absorb their words, and the thread connecting us to her changes from a fragile, new thing into a cable of undeniable strength.
And when the vows come to an end, silence falls over the courtyard.
Therin steps forward from the curve of the Guard, his silver-bright eyes finding mine.
“Eldráfn. The claim is witnessed. The steed is named. Her place is made.”
I rise fluidly to my feet, and the humming weight of the Nightwild magic shifts as I step into the center of the moonlight.
“By whose witness?”
“Ours.” Vel’s reply comes without hesitation.
“By whose choosing?”
“The Nightwild’s,” the Guard answers as one.
I look down at her. At the delicate chain woven through her dark hair, the delicate points of her ears, and the tense perfect stillness she holds.
She is a halfling, a former princess of a kingdom that kept us in iron for three hundred years.
And yet, she is here.
Chosen by the magic. Claimed by the Guard. Looking at me as though I am the only thing in the courtyard.
“Do you accept the place made for you?”
Her tongue comes out to touch her lips, and heat rocks through me, hard enough to spill down the blood bond before I lock it down. Her eyes widen. She caught the edge of what I felt. I find I’m not the least bit sorry.
“I … I accept.”
I fight to stop a smile forming, and one corner of my mouth twitches. “Then take your place with the Nightwild Guard.”
She’s led back to the Guard, where a gap between Serath and Iorel has opened up.
She takes it and turns to face me. The moment she takes her place, the final thread of the Nightwild magic snaps taut.
The magic surges through the courtyard, thick with the scent of ozone and sea salt, locking into place and making her ours.
Making her mine.
Beneath our boots, Nightward Keep vibrates with a deep, resonant thrum. The pulse of it ripples outward, past the walls, down the cliffs, and into the black water churning below. The sea roars in answer, crashing against the island with renewed, violent strength.
The sentient magic of Underhill rises to meet it. The moon flares bright for three heartbeats, and starlight falls from the sky.
Tonight every fae in every court will feel this.
The Guard is returned.
The twelfth is named.
The circle is closed.
I open myself and draw down the moon’s power.
“The Guard is twelve.” My voice rings out, sealing the words into truth. “The circle is closed.”
“The circle is closed,” the Guard answers.
“We hold no court. We kneel to no crown. We answer to no bloodline. We guard the boundary, the balance, and the debt. We are the Nightwild Guard.”
A fork of lightning splits the sky, flooding the courtyard with light. The face of every Guard lights up, caught in expressions of joy and relief. A shout goes up, started by Therin, and quickly added to by the rest, until every voice is raised in celebration.
I retreat back to my chair and sit, closing my eyes and letting the sounds wash over me.
When I open them again, the courtyard has transformed.
A long table has appeared against one wall, lit with tapers in polished holders, and weighed down with platters of cold meats, roasted joints, bowls of fruit, still-warm bread, and cheeses sealed in wax.
A goblet appears at my elbow, filled with dark wine the color of old garnets. The first sip steals my breath, firing my senses to life, and dragging up memories of a time before iron stripped me of everything I was.
I had forgotten wine could taste like this.
Music rises from one corner, the musicians invisible to the naked eye.
I drink the wine the brownies chose for me, and watch my Guard.
Therin has Vessara by the elbow and is walking her in some loose, lazy circle that I think is meant to be a dance. Her head is thrown back in a laugh I haven’t heard in centuries.
The sound catches somewhere beneath my ribs.
Sorel is at the table, piling a plate so high I have no doubt the food mountain he’s building will collapse the second he steps away. Brael is shoulder-checking him out of the way to get at the cold venison. Both of them are grinning.
Caelum is standing close to Maerwyn, her cheek resting against his shoulder as she smiles at something he’s saying. Riahn is talking to Kaelith, her hands moving rapidly, her face animated. Iorel is with Vel, sampling the bottles of wine clustered at one end of the table.
And there, beside Serath, is Alleria.
The dress moves around her in the small breeze coming off the sea, sending me flashes of bare leg that last less than a second.
Serath has put a goblet in her hand, and as I watch, Brael walks over with two plates of food.
He catches me watching, and sweeps Alleria a bow of such grotesquely exaggerated courtliness that she laughs.
Then she looks at me. It’s a brief glance, quick enough that she clearly believes I haven’t noticed. I take another sip of wine and let her think that.
Movement to my right catches my eye, and I turn just as a shadow peels away from the wall.
Dubh-chrá.
“There you are. I wondered when you’d show yourself.”
He sits down, his tail curled around his paws, and ignores me, his green eyes fixed across the courtyard. I don’t need to follow his gaze to know what he’s focused on, but I do it anyway.