Chapter 35
THIRTY-FIVE
ALLERIA
The Guard erupts as soon as Mirisath is out of hearing. One moment the Spear is silent, the next every warrior in the room seems to move at once. Chairs scrape against stone. Hands hit armrests.
Vel launches to her feet first. “We should ride for Sorynmar now. Today. While they’re choking on the fact that we still exist.”
“Agreed.” Iorel leans forward, expression hard. “They sent that creature to take our measure. Let’s give it to them.”
“And learn nothing.” Kaelith hasn’t moved from his seat.
“We’ve been gone for three hundred years.
We have no idea who holds the Sea Court now, what has changed under them.
If we ride in blind, then they set the terms, not us.
” His gaze moves down the row. “We need to find out what Sorynmar has become first.”
“I don’t need to scout the court that sent us to die to guess what it wants from us now!” Vel rounds on him.
“Half of Underhill owes the Guard in blood. Do we let the Sea Court decide how it gets paid?” Riahn is on her feet.
Cairn says nothing. He sits on the dais, one arm draped over the armrest, and watches them. He could stop this with a word, but he doesn’t. His eyes move from one face to the next while they argue.
He is letting them do this. Letting them spit out three hundred years of rage in a room that can take it, instead of letting it fester and exploding somewhere he can’t control.
I reach for the bond, and find it closed. It isn’t gone, but whatever he is holding back from the room, he’s also holding back from me. His features are too still for me to guess what he’s thinking, and for the first time since he returned to Nightward, his attention is entirely elsewhere.
I sit beside Vessara and stay quiet, while the rest of the Guard shout to be heard over each other.
Sorynmar. Sea Court. Debt. Blood. Queen.
Words I don’t understand. Names and actions that make Vel’s hand close around the back of her chair, and Caelum’s jaw lock tight. Every time I think I’ve found the thread of the argument, someone else drags it in another direction.
They all look furious. Wounded. Ready for battle.
I want to ask Vessara for more information. I want to ask whether Sorynmar truly left them in the mortal world, whether the fae of Underhill abandoned them to the cages. But no one has room for my questions.
The Spear grows too loud. Too bright. The sea beyond the open wall flashes black and silver, and the obsidian beneath my boots throws the whole room back at me in broken pieces.
Cairn above us. Vel standing. Riahn’s hand on her weapon. Therin’s eyes cutting from face to face.
I press my fingers to my temples and try to breathe through the noise.
Alleria.
My name slips through the shouting so softly that, for a second, I think I’ve imagined it.
I look around, wondering if one of the Guard has mentioned my name, but they’re all ignoring me, still fighting over whether they should leave now or tomorrow.
Vel is speaking over Kaelith. Brael, returned moments ago, is staring at Cairn as though willing him to stand.
Maerwyn has taken two steps from her chair.
No one is looking at me.
Alleria.
The second time, it comes from my right, near the archway Brael took Mirisath through. It’s almost gentle. Patient. My fingers tighten on the armrests.
I know the voice.
I don’t know the voice.
That contradiction should be enough to make me speak. To make me reach for Vessara. To make me say Cairn’s name.
My mouth doesn’t open. The thought slides away before I can hold on to it.
Alleria.
The third time it comes, it’s firm and clear, and I feel it inside. It isn’t the same way Cairn tugs at me, but it is close enough to make my breath catch.
I turn my head, and my gaze catches on something just past the archway, where the light turns to shadow. A shape that beckons to me as I watch. The need to follow swells until there’s no room for anything else.
I need to go to it.
I want it to say my name again.
More than I want to be afraid.
I stand up. Vessara is a handspan from my elbow and she doesn’t turn her head. None of them do. Cairn doesn’t even look at me.
That almost breaks whatever has a hold on me.
Cairn always looks. Even when he’s speaking to someone else. Even when he’s across a room. Even when I think I have hidden every trace of what I’m feeling, he knows. His attention finds me every single time. But his eyes stay on the Guard.
The thought is there, clear and terrifying.
Something is wrong.
All their voices run together into one long roar that means nothing to me now. The Spear seems farther away with every breath, although I have only moved a few steps. The seats. The black floor. The sea beyond the open wall. Cairn on the dais with the weight of the Guard’s anger fixed on him.
All of it slips behind me.
I walk forward until I’m beneath the arch. Ahead of me, the figure is already drawing away, and I go after it, leaving the fae still arguing behind me.
It keeps ahead of me. However fast I move, it stays the same few steps away, slipping around each turn, down each stair, along each passage, seconds out of my reach.
The first few turns make sense. Or, at least, I think they do.
The hallway outside the Spear. An arch with silver veins running through the stone.
A narrow stair curving down into greenish light.
Then the pieces stop joining together.
I’m at the top of a stair. Then I’m halfway down it. Then I’m standing in a hallway with my hand against the wall and no memory of putting it there. The stone is warm beneath my palm. Something moves inside it, a slow pulse that presses against my skin.
Turn back.
The warning is mine. I know it is. It comes from the same part of me that knows Nightward is full of old magic and dangerous things.
But that part of me is small now. Quiet.
I don’t want to slow. I want the next corner, and the one after that, and whatever waits at the end of them.
Alleria.
The figure reaches a door at the end of a passage I don’t remember entering.
It's rotting and splintered, with narrow seams of green light showing around the frame.
Moss grows across the hinges. Roots have pushed through the gap at the base, knotting over one another as though trying to hold it shut.
The figure doesn’t open it. It pours away through the dark gap beneath it just as my fingers touch the latch.
The metal is so cold it hurts.
Then a low sound passes through the wood and into my hands. The roots at my feet loosen. Moss pulls back from the hinges in thin, curling strips.
There’s a loud click as I push down, and the door swings inward.
Heat rolls over me, and I step through.
Above my head, the roof is choked with moss. Thick sheets of it hang between cracked panes of glass, dripping water onto the wilderness below. The ground has gone wild, roots breaking through paths and walls, layer on layer, climbing toward the roof.
The air is too hot, too wet. It fills my mouth with the taste of soil. Somewhere, water drips. Somewhere else, something drags itself through the dark undergrowth with a slow scrape that should make me run.
But I don’t, because the figure stands on the half-visible path moving deeper into the wilderness. It waits until I see it, then turns away.
I follow.
Vines drop from above, thin and pale, every one hooked with yellow thorns. One drags across my cheek, and the sting of it barely reaches me. Another catches in my hair, tugging my head back hard enough to make my eyes water.
I stumble to a halt, blinking against images coming at me in rapid succession.
Green light. Hair trapped. The open door behind me. The distant memory of shouting. Cairn.
Cairn.
The figure ahead of me turns.
Alleria.
My hands lift. I tear my hair free, leaving strands caught on the thorns, and keep walking.
Red flowers swing their heavy heads to follow me. Their petals part, long green tongues rolling free to lick at my skin as I move between them.
Gray ferns lift and hiss. The sound travels from one bed to the next, until the whole garden seems to know where I am.
Roots tangle around my shins. I stumble, catch myself on the edge of a raised bed, and something beneath the soil knocks once against my fingers. I jerk away, but the roots tighten, dragging one foot sideways.
“Let me go,” I whisper. My voice sounds wrong. Thin and far away.
The roots release one leg and catch the other. I pull free, leaving one boot behind. My bare foot hits damp earth, and the ground seems to soften under me, taking the shape of my step before I make it.
That should frighten me. But the figure is waiting. And nothing matters more than the voice whispering my name, and the shadowy figure leading me forward.
Then it’s in front of me.
Less than an arms’ length away.
It should have a face by now. The thought drifts through me. It should have eyes, and hands.
Instead, it becomes clearer in stages. A shoulder. A throat. A mouth too red against the green gloom. Hair that moves as though underwater. Skin that looks almost like bark, split by thin lines of darker green.
I hear someone breathing, and it takes me a second too long to realize the sound is coming from me.
The figure leans closer. The red mouth opens.
Say it.
I don’t hear the words, but I feel them.
Say it.
My lips move. I don’t know what I say. I only know the garden answers. The roots still. The ferns go quiet. Every flower turns its open center toward me.
The figure smiles, and its arm reaches toward me—
“Alleria!” The voice comes from behind me.
The garden lurches sideways. My knees buckle, and I catch myself on a root slick with moss. For a second, I can’t remember how to breathe. Heat presses against my face. My throat burns. My mouth tastes bitter.
I spin around.
Caelum is standing a few steps behind me, and the look on his face …
I don’t understand it.
I don’t understand anything. One moment I was in the Spear with everyone shouting around me, and now there is dirt under one bare foot, thorns in my hair, and Caelum staring at me.
“Alleria.” There’s a cautious note to his voice, and he doesn’t move toward me. “Who were you talking to?”
“No one.”
“Yes, you were.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Alleria, I heard you.”
I look around, but there’s nothing here except green shadow, black trunks, and hanging vines.
“There’s no one here. I wasn’t talking to anyone.”
“We’ve been searching for you for almost half an hour.”
I stare at him. “What?”
“The entire Guard broke off the discussion when we realized you were gone. Your Nightwild thread went dark.” He says the last part carefully, watching my face as though he expects it to mean something to me.
It doesn’t.
“I’ve been standing here calling your name for ten minutes. You were talking to someone.”
His words knock half a memory loose. “There was something,” I say slowly. “There was. They were right here.”
Caelum’s expression changes. Only slightly, but enough to send a spark of fear through me.
“Alleria, there wasn’t anyone in here but you.”
I feel him a breath before he appears in the doorway.
Fear slams down the bond connecting me to Cairn, and it rocks me back a step. I’ve never felt anything like it. Not from him. Anger, pain, or need—he contains everything, locking it down before it can reach me.
But not this time.
He’s through the door, and in front of me, moving too fast for me to follow. His hands close over my face, and he tilts my head up. His eyes move over every inch of me. My cheek. My throat. The thorn caught in my hair. The scratches on my skin. My missing boot.
His thumbs press once beneath my jaw, feeling for something. A pulse, maybe. I don’t know.
“Cairn?”
He doesn’t answer. His gaze flicks over my shoulder, and something flickers across his face, gone so fast I almost miss it, but the bond gives him away.
Fear.
Recognition.
Rage.
Then nothing.
He cuts it off so completely the sudden absence leaves me colder than the fear did.
“Leave us.” He doesn’t look at Caelum.
Caelum turns and leaves without a word.
Cairn’s hands are still on my face. His touch has gentled, but there is nothing gentle about the rest of him. His shoulders are locked. His jaw is tight. His eyes keep moving from mine to the scratches on my cheek, then past me to the garden behind my back.
“Why did you leave the Spear?” His voice is low and even. Too even. “What did you follow?”
“Nothing. I …”
There’s the flash of an image. A dark figure. Red lips. An arm reaching for me. “I don’t know.”
“Think.” The word comes out hard.
I flinch, and his grip immediately loosens.
“Aethryn.” The harshness bleeds out of his tone. “Look at me. How did you get in here?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
“Did you open the door?”
“Yes … No.”
“Did something open it for you?”
“I don’t know!”
Somewhere behind me, a fern gives a low hiss. Cairn’s eyes lift at once. The hiss stops. He takes a breath, and his touch gentles.
“The door to this garden locked one hundred years before we were trapped in the mortal realm. It sealed itself when Chiarna died, and has never opened since. Not for me. Not for any of the Guard. We all tried.”
I stare at him.
That makes no sense. Locked. Sealed. Never opened.
But I opened it.
I remember the latch beneath my hand. The cold of the metal. The click. The roots pulling back from the door. The heat rolling over me.
“Who is Chiarna?”
“She was Wild Court before she became Nightwild.” His eyes move to look over my shoulder. “This was her garden.”
A shiver runs up my spine.
“It died when she died. For four hundred years, no living soul has crossed its threshold.”
Behind me, the garden is silent now. No hissing ferns. No snapping flowers. No roots dragging through the soil. It went quiet the moment Cairn came through the door. But quiet is not the same as dead.
I can feel it behind me. In the vines hanging from the roof. In the red flowers. In the roots beneath my bare foot.
Cairn looks past me again. This time, I don’t think he’s looking at the plants. I think he’s looking at a memory. His thumb moves against my cheek. I’m not even sure he’s aware of it. Then his gaze returns to mine.
“So tell me, Moirthalen, why did it open for you?”