Chapter 20 #2
We move to the next. A female. Her hands are curled into claws, and her joints frozen in positions that must have been agony before her mind retreated too far to feel it.
Vel doesn’t know her name, so I just place my hand on her head, find the spot at the base of her skull and give her the same death I gave Beanagh.
Two.
The third is a male so thin his ribs stand out like the bars of the cage that held him. The fourth is a female with scars crisscrossing her back.
The fifth. The sixth. The seventh.
By the eleventh, I’m numb.
By the thirteenth, I stop counting the bodies and start counting how many are left.
A couple look young, too young to have been alive at the Sealing. Born in captivity, bred for the cages, knowing nothing else. I stare at their faces the longest, trying to imagine what their lives might have been if the humans had never learned to collar us. I can’t.
I give them the same death I’ve given to the others.
And when it’s done, I stand in the middle of the barracks with blood on my hands and my tunic, and the knife gripped in fingers that won’t unclench.
The bodies are arranged neatly now, laid out in rows, arms crossed over chests.
Vel did that, moving silently behind me, preparing them for burning.
“Cairn.” Vel’s voice cuts through the fog in my head. “Release the knife.”
I look down at my hand and will the dagger to disappear.
“You did what had to be done.” Her voice is steady, but not soft. Vel doesn’t do softness. But there is recognition and sorrow there. “They were already dead. You just freed them from the cage of their bodies.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
I meet her eyes. I’ve killed humans and fae over the years, watched them fall beneath my blades with nothing but satisfaction. This shouldn’t be any different.
But it is.
“I know.” I say it again. “But it … wasn’t easy.”
“No. But easy isn’t what we need. What we need is to survive long enough to make their deaths mean something.”
“And if they don’t mean something?”
“Then at least they died free.” She turns toward the door, and speaks to someone. Four fae males follow her back inside. “Help carry them out. We need to build a pyre for them before we leave.”
The bodies are carried one by one to the field behind the cages.
The same field where the Dell burned the remains after their hunts.
The irony of that isn’t lost on me. Therin joins us, taking his place at my right, and we move in silence, ferrying the dead from barracks to field, stacking them with a care that won’t matter to them.
The pyre takes shape slowly. Bodies layered with wood from the Dell’s stores, arranged so the flames will catch and spread evenly. When the last body is in place, Therin hands me a torch.
I step toward the pyre.
“Go well. Whatever comes after, go well, knowing you died free.”
I touch the torch to the base of the pyre. The flames catch, spreading through the dry wood, and licking at the bodies above. Smoke rises, thick and dark, carrying the smell of burning flesh.
I stand and watch them burn. Therin moves up to my right, Vel takes position at my left. We stay until the pyre collapses into embers, until the bodies are gone, reduced to ash and bone fragments that will scatter in the next strong wind.
Ashes, not trophies. That much, at least, we could give them.
I’m still staring at the embers when there’s a pulse of sensation behind my ribs. I go still, every sense turning inward, reaching for the source.
There.
The thread is fragile, but it holds when I reach along it, trembling like spider silk in wind, and through it I feel—
Therin. A warm, steady presence that’s unmistakably him.
He’s standing right beside me, close enough to touch, but the reformed bond tells me the things his physical presence doesn’t. He’s tired, worn thin, holding himself together through stubbornness and not much else.
I reach further, careful, and find another thread spinning itself into existence beside the first.
Vel.
Her presence is different to Therin’s. Sharper, cooler.
More like touching the edge of a blade rather than a hearthfire’s warmth.
She’s still standing at my other side, her attention fixed on the dying embers.
The thread connecting me to her pulses with grief …
or relief. With Vel, it’s hard to know for sure.
For three centuries, these bonds have been dead. Burned away by the iron, leaving nothing but absence where they should have been. I’d forgotten what it felt like to carry them—the constant low awareness of where they are, how they are.
And now those threads are reforming. Thin and fragile, barely more than whispers yet, but real.
I press my palm flat against my chest, feeling the bonds pulse in time with my heartbeat.
Therin. Vel.
Not Serath or Caelum. Those spaces are still dark, still silent. But if these two are returning, maybe others will follow.
“Cairn?” Therin’s voice breaks through the sensation. “Is everything all right?”
“The bonds.” The word comes out rough. “I can feel them again. Both of you.”
Silence. Then Therin’s hand grips my shoulder, warm through my tunic.
“It’s coming back,” he whispers. “All of it. The iron is finally letting go.”
Vel doesn’t touch me, but when I glance at her, there’s an emotion in her expression I haven’t seen since before the Sealing. Hope.
“Then we better make sure we survive long enough to use it.” Her voice doesn’t give any hint of that hope. “There’s still work to do before we can leave.”
And just like that, we go back to preparing everyone.
We separate and split duties. I check harnesses, and answer questions from fae who still can’t quite believe they’re free.
All the while, the bonds pulse steadily in the back of my mind, telling me that Therin is near the gate, and Vel is by the stables.
Both of them moving through my awareness like currents of deep water.
It’s strange having that awareness back. Every few minutes I find myself reaching along those threads to confirm they’re still there, and check if any more are forming. It remains just the two of them, but they’re growing stronger by the hour.
The fae who can walk gather near the gate in the groups Vel organized. The ones who can’t walk at all are loaded onto carts, arranged among supplies and handled more gently than they’ve been handled their entire time in the cages.
Caelum is on the third cart, tucked between sacks of grain with blankets cushioning his body. His eyes are still fixed on nothing, but when I check on him, his fingers twitch against mine.
“Still fighting. Good.”
I move to Serath. When I approach, her head turns toward me. Yesterday, she sat with her face tilted toward the sky, tears running down her cheeks. Today, her eyes are dry, and while her eyes aren’t alert, they’re aware.
“Serath.”
“North.” Her voice is soft. “Trees.”
“Yes. We’re leaving soon.”
She nods once, and turns to face forward again. Her hands rest in her lap, fingers still instead of clenching. She might not be humming, but she’s clawing her way back.
The sun begins its descent, shadows lengthening across the courtyard. I find Therin at the front of the line, checking the horses one final time.
“Ready,” he says before I can ask. “Everyone is accounted for, supplies are loaded. Carts are hitched.”
I look at the line stretching back toward the lodge. Fifty fae. Broken, damaged, barely holding it together. Fewer than we started with this morning. But alive.
“Move out.”