Chapter 22
TWENTY-TWO
CAIRN
The journey takes twice as long as it should.
Twelve horses. Three carts. And over fifty fae who haven’t walked farther than the length of a cage in centuries. The math was never going to work in our favor.
We keep to the road longer than I want. The carts won’t make it through heavy undergrowth and half our number can barely stay upright on flat ground. Every mile we travel in the open is another mile of tracks for the humans to follow. We might as well be leaving a trail of breadcrumbs.
I could mask them using magic, but I need to save my power for when we reach our destination. So there’s no other alternative for the moment. We have to hope that the road is quiet and no one crosses our path.
I walk the line constantly. The fae in the carts are safe enough.
It’s the ones on foot who need watching.
A female tumbles and goes down hard. I haul her up before she can panic, set her back on her feet and keep moving.
Vel and Therin guard the front and back, watching for threats that could come from any direction.
Before the Sealing, I commanded warriors who could march for days without rest. Now I’m herding broken fae through a world that wants to kill us, and hoping we can find some way to survive.
We’re vulnerable. If the humans found us now, we’d lose most of our number before we could mount any kind of defense.
Yet somehow the humans don’t come.
When we finally reach the forest’s edge, I call a halt.
The road twists to the west, and the hollow I found lies deep in the forest to the north.
There’s an old road through this forest, abandoned and overgrown at the entrance where saplings and brush have reclaimed it.
But further in, where the canopy blocks light, it’s still passable.
Therin stops beside me. “Through there?”
“It clears out past the first hundred yards.”
He eyes the tangle of brush. “We’ll have to cut our way through.”
“And cover our tracks behind us.”
He nods, drawing his sword. Vel appears beside him with a blade of her own.
Together they hack at the undergrowth while the rest of us wait.
When the gap is wide enough for the carts, we set off again.
The first fifty yards are slow, but eventually the undergrowth thins and the old road emerges beneath us.
Behind the last cart, a handful of the stronger fae work to hide our passage, dragging branches back across the entrance and scattering leaves over wheel ruts. It won’t fool a determined tracker, but it might buy us time against a casual search.
“I need to mask the tracks that lead here,” I tell Therin. “Keep following the road, I’ll catch up.”
I don’t go all the way back to the Dell, only as far as I need to so I can ensure the tracks don’t lead the humans, who will eventually come to investigate, to the forest we’ve gone toward.
I use a combination of glamour and manual labor to hide the evidence of our presence, then hurry back to join my people again.
The hollow appears as daylight starts to fail. The carts roll down the gentle slope, and come to a stop near the water. Therin peels away to walk the perimeter of the space. He disappears behind a rocky outcrop, then reappears a moment later.
“There’s a cave back there. Small but dry, if we need it for anything.” His mouth curves. “Do you remember that cave in the Windwhistle? After the battle at Springwood?”
“The one that flooded every time it rained?”
“The one where Serath woke up with a rat on her face.” He’s grinning now. “She screamed so loud I thought we were under attack.”
“And Vel asked her if she’d checked the bedding properly first.”
Therin chuckles. “Serath didn’t speak to her for three days. Vel said it was the most peaceful three days of her life.”
The memory is so vivid I can smell the damp stone, and hear Serath’s shriek echoing off the walls. We were being hunted then too, but we had our power. We had each other … and we weren’t dragging half-dead fae through human territory and hoping no one noticed.
A sound reaches me, almost lost under the creak of cart wheels and the shuffle of feet. I turn to see Serath climbing down from one of the carts, and she’s humming. The same song she hummed in her cage, the old one from Underhill, and the knot in my chest loosens a little more.
Therin follows my gaze. “She’s one of us,” he says quietly. “If anyone can claw their way back …”
“Go and check on everyone. We need to raise the veil as quickly as possible.”
Therin dips his chin and moves off to organize the fae, directing them to unload supplies and help the weaker ones find places to sit. I turn my attention to the hollow itself, walking along its outer edges, searching for the anchor points I can use to lay the foundation of our camp.
A veil-camp is not a thing any human would recognize as a shelter.
There are no canvas tents or wooden frames.
Instead, the structures will rise from nothing—walls that shimmer faintly silver at the edges, roofs that arch overhead like frozen moonlight.
They will be solid enough to touch and lean against. They will keep out wind and rain.
But they’re made of magic, not material.
Before the Sealing, we could raise a camp like this in minutes. Now, after centuries of iron stifling our powers, it could take hours.
Vel appears at my elbow as I’m marking the first anchor point with a drop of blood.
“I found six whose magic has started to return. They’re weak, but they want to help.”
“Bring them.” They might not be able to do much, but allowing them to help will give them purpose.
She returns with them a few minutes later.
“I need anchor points around the perimeter,” I tell them. “Blood and intent at each marker. Can you manage that?”
They nod. I show them where to place the markers—twelve points around the hollow’s edge, spaced evenly, each one requiring a drop of blood and a push of will to hold, and they scatter to their positions while I move to the center.
The structures will be mine to build.
One by one, I feel the anchor points flare to life as the others complete their work.
The first is tentative, barely a spark. The second is stronger.
By the sixth, I can sense the framework taking shape—invisible lines of power connecting each point, forming a web that will hold whatever I build on top of it.
When the last anchor catches, I close my eyes and reach for the power inside me.
It answers more readily than it did a week ago, and silver light bleeds from my fingers as I push outward.
The walls rise, shimmering at the edges and solidifying as I pour more into it.
Then a roof. I flick a finger to add a doorway, and then move on to the next.
By the time I’ve built the last shelter, the light has nearly gone, but the hollow has transformed. Structures stand where there was only forest floor. Not quite tents, not quite buildings, but something between.
The concealment comes next. I weave it through everything—the structures, the trees, the hollow itself—until the eye slides past without catching. Anyone walking by would see nothing but more forest.
When I’m done, I’m breathing hard and my hands are shaking. Using that much magic has cost me, but the camp holds. I can feel it humming against the edge of my awareness, stable and solid.
There are enough shelters to house everyone in small groups. A separate one for me, larger and set apart from the others slightly, which will be used as a base. Another close by which Therin and Vel will share. The rest are scattered through the hollow.
They glow faintly in the gathering dark, silver-white against the shadows, visible to us, but concealed from anyone else. I watch as Vel and Therin move amongst our people, settling them into the shelters in small groups, and distributing food and supplies.
I walk through the camp, checking each group, and answering any questions. Most of them don’t speak, watching me pass with eyes that haven’t quite accepted any of this is real. Others have fallen asleep already, exhaustion finally winning out over fear.
I find Serath near the stream, sitting on a flat rock at the water’s edge, her feet dangling in the current. She’s humming again, that same melody, soft and steady.
She doesn’t look up when I approach, but she shifts slightly to make room on the rocks.
I sit beside her, saying nothing, and after a while, her hand moves across the rock to cover mine. At her touch, a third thread beside Therin and Vel’s comes to life inside me. Serath. Her presence is like moonlight on still water, a voice raised in song.
“You’re back.” My voice is soft.
She squeezes my hand once, before rising to walk back toward the camp, still humming. I remain there, the night deepening around me. I should sleep too. I’ve been running on nothing for days, but I can’t quiet my mind.
The bonds keep pulling at my attention, demanding to be noticed. And underneath them, at the very edge of my awareness, there’s something else. A sensation I almost missed, faint and distant.
I close my eyes and reach for it.
It’s not Therin, or Vel, or Serath. It’s not Caelum, whose space in the bond remains dark and silent. It’s elsewhere. A distant flicker.
East.
The direction is clear, even if nothing else is. Somewhere to the east, there’s a thread that wants to connect to me. A presence reaching toward me.
My breath stills. Another of my warriors is out there. Not here with us, but out there somewhere. Still alive. Free, or the bond wouldn’t be reaching me at all. The iron would have smothered it the way it smothered everything else.
For centuries, I assumed they were all either caged or dead. But this tenuous thread means someone remained free somehow.
I reach harder along it, trying to identify who it belongs to. The sensation slips away. It’s too faint, too far, for me to hold on to. All I get is the direction—east—and an impression of alive. Nothing more.
But alive is enough. Alive and free means we’re not alone. It means that we have something to move toward. But that’s something for later. When we’re more stable. When we have the strength to move forward.
I rise from the rock and start walking the perimeter of the camp, checking every thread of the veil, every anchor point, and every place where the concealment might fray.
Therin has set up a watch rotation—four fae at a time, stationed at the cardinal points, and armed with human swords. I stop and speak with each of them, making sure they know what to watch for and telling them to come for me if anything moves in the forest.
I’m almost to my quarters when a wave of revulsion hits me so hard I stagger sideways. I catch myself on a tree trunk and close my eyes, chasing down the thread of emotion to its cause.
Her. The Moirthalen. The human princess. Her horror is flowing through the bond I forced on her.
The images come fragmented at first. Her chambers. Afternoon light slanting through the window. Her hands shaking.
I focus harder, riding the emotion until the connection snaps into place, and I’m inside her head.
Her attention is focused on the dressing table in front of her, and a small, unwrapped package. On the cloth is something small, pale, and pointed.
An ear.
A fae ear, bloody and fresh with a tag attached to it. Beside it is a note bearing the words From my kennels.
But there’s a quality about the images that suggests she’s dreaming.
I’m not seeing events as they happen the way she did at the Dell.
She’s asleep. Yet the emotion pouring through the bond suggests that she’s not simply dreaming but reliving something that happened.
The horror is as fresh as when she lived through finding that ear the first time.
I pull back, tasting copper where I’ve bitten my tongue.
“Cairn?” Therin’s voice reaches me as he crosses toward me.
I straighten, pushing off the tree trunk. His eyes scan over me, noting the palm still pressed against the tree, the slight tremor in my other hand.
“What’s wrong?”
I don’t answer straight away, still untangling myself from the emotions still coming at me through the bond.
“The woman who walked the cages the other day. She was the one who I’d been chosen for.
I used her to break my collar, and then the forest wards.
” I rub one hand along my jaw. “When I drew her blood, I forced a bloodlink on her, so I could see through her eyes. I needed a way into the Dell, and that seemed the best way.”
“All right.” His tone makes it clear he’s waiting for the problem.
My lips quirk. “I miscalculated.” I made a mistake because I was too desperate to think it through. “It’s not a one-way link. When she feels something strongly, her emotions bleed through to me.”
Therin frowns. “That’s not how a bloodlink works.”
“No.”
We both know what a bloodlink is. A temporary connection, one way, lasting a day at most. This is something else.
“She was looking at a severed fae ear.”
His eyes narrow. “Did she sever it?”
“No.” I’m certain of that. The horror pouring through the bond was that of someone confronted with something that appalled them. “Someone else cut it off and left it for her to find.”
Therin’s jaw tightens. “Fucking humans.”