Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
CAIRN
I’m in my quarters supposedly reviewing the maps we took from the Dell to learn about what has changed in the world when Therin finds me. The reality is that my thoughts have been elsewhere for hours.
The fae we freed are starting to look less like the broken creatures I pulled from cages.
Their magic is slowly working to heal them.
Most of them eat without being told now, and sleep without screaming.
Serath spoke yesterday, just two words—thank you, when Vel brought her food—but after doing nothing but humming for decades, those two words are better than any battle cry.
Unfortunately, there’s been no change for Caelum. He sits where we put him, stares at nothing, and doesn’t respond to his name or when I touch his shoulder. I check on him twice a day, crouching in front of him, searching for any flicker behind those empty eyes.
Vel and Therin don’t say anything. They don’t have to. We all know what will need to happen if this goes on much longer.
But … it’s Caelum. I want to give him time. I want to believe the magic threading back through us will reach him eventually, and pull him out of whatever deep place he’s drowning in.
I want a lot of things I’m not going to get.
“We need to start thinking about supplies.” Therin comes to a stop beside me, his shoulder brushing mine. “We have enough food for another week, maybe two, but after that we’ll need more, and we shouldn’t leave it until the last minute.”
“I know.” I scan the map, then tap one of the markings.
“There’s a village here, maybe half a day from here.
We could send a small party, glamoured to pass as human, and see what can be taken without drawing attention.
” I pull my hand back. “But not yet. I want the camp to be stable before we start sending people out.”
He nods, then leans one hip against the table and folds his arms. “How long are we planning to stay here?”
It’s a question I’ve been turning over in my head since we arrived. The hollow is defensible, hidden, and close to fresh water. It’s strategically sound, but it’s also a dead end. There is nowhere to go from here except back the way we came.
“Until we know more about what the humans plan after discovering what we did at the Dell, we have no choice but to stay here.”
“I could scout around.”
“Not yet. I need you here.”
He doesn’t argue, shifting his weight to look out at the camp beyond my shelter. “Some are getting restless. The ones whose magic has returned faster. They want to do something.”
“They’ll get their—”
Fear hits me, slamming down the connection. My vision doubles, splits, and then I’m somewhere else.
A hallway, with paintings of humans on the walls, their gilt frames catching lamplight.
Her fear is a living thing, crawling up my spine, while her heartbeat pounds in my ears. I take a second to separate her emotions from mine—hers, not mine. Hers—then focus.
Someone attacked her. I can feel the echo of it. Hands grabbing. A blade dragging down her arm, the edge parting skin in a line of fire. Words whispered against her ear, still repeating in her head.
Fae lover. This is your only warning.
She pushes off the wall and starts walking. Each step sends a pulse of pain up her arm, but she doesn’t stop or call for help. She just keeps moving, one foot in front of the other, until she’s back in her chambers, blood dripping from her fingers.
I watch as she cleans the wound, then I pull back.
The map swims back into focus. My hands are gripping the table, and Therin is demanding to know what’s wrong.
I blink and turn my head to look at him.
“This bond is a problem.”
A bloodlink is supposed to be one way, temporary, and controlled. This is none of those things. She saw through my eyes at the Dell, watching while I killed Cowen. And this is not the first time her emotions have bled through to me without warning.
I don’t know what I created when I mixed our blood. But it’s not what I intended.
“Cairn, talk to me.”
I hold up one hand, asking for silence while I think.
Someone in the palace wants the princess dead. Or at least frightened. Today, a cut and a warning. Tomorrow might be a blade between the ribs. And if she’s captured instead of killed … if they decide to interrogate her, or bring in a mage to dig through her mind …
If the humans discover this bond, they could use her to trace it back. To find me, and the fifty fae I just freed. She’s not an asset anymore. She’s a liability. One I created through my own desperation.
I have two options.
I kill her or I bring her here. Dead, the bond might snap clean. Or it might take part of my magic … or my life.
Alive, I might be able to figure out what this bond actually is. How to sever it safely, if that’s possible. Or how to use it.
The alternative is leaving her in the hands of people who already suspect she’s been tainted. It’s only a matter of time before they peel her open and find the thread that leads to me. I hate not knowing which path is the one to choose.
“Someone just tried to cut open the princess.”
One of Therin’s eyebrows arches. “What do you want to do about it?”
“I need to bring her here.”
“To our camp? You want to bring a human here? To a place you’ve hidden fae who have spent centuries being tortured by her kind.”
“There’s no other option.”
“There’s always other options. You just don’t like them.”
He’s not wrong. “If she dies there, I don’t know what will happen to me. If she’s captured and questioned, they’ll find us. Either way, we’re exposed in some way.”
“And bringing her here solves that?”
“It buys time for me to understand what I’ve created.”
Therin is quiet for a long moment. His eyes search my face, looking for cracks, the places where the mask might slip. “Vel isn’t going to like it.”
“Vel will have to deal with it. Without knowing exactly what this bond is, I can’t kill her. For all I know, her death might kill me as well.”
He nods. “When do we leave?”
“Tonight. Before whoever attacked her decides a warning wasn’t enough.”
As predicted, Vel is not happy with the plan.
But she agrees to stay behind, to protect the hollow if needed.
The hollow’s concealment wards part for us.
One moment we’re standing inside the veil, the silver shimmer of the wards visible at the edges of my vision.
The next, we’re outside, and the forest closes around us.
Therin falls into step beside me, his movements as silent as mine. We’ve done this before—ridden out together, hunted together, killed together. Before the Sealing, before centuries stripped away everything but the bone-deep knowledge of how to move through darkness without being seen.
“Do you have enough magic for this?”
“Since the bond returned, my power has been restoring faster.” His lips twitch into a smile. “I think it missed me.”
We stop in a clearing where moonlight pools between the trees. I close my eyes and reach for the power that’s been slowly uncurling inside me since the collar broke.
Summoning my steed used to be as easy as breathing. A thought, a flicker of will, and it would be there, loyal to no one but me. Now it takes effort. The magic resists, sluggish from centuries of suppression, and I have to pull—
Silver light bleeds from my fingers. It pools on the ground, swirling, thickening, taking shape.
Legs first. Long and slender, ending in hooves that gleam like polished bone.
Then the body, the arch of a neck, the proud lift of a head.
The form builds itself from moonlight, piece by piece, until something stands before me that isn’t a horse, and never was.
Its eyes, chips of moonlit ice, meet mine.
Selveryn. My steed.
The edges shimmer faintly where they should be razor-sharp, the form not quite as solid as it once was. But it’s here.
I rest my palm against its neck. The not-flesh is cool against my skin, solid enough to touch but vibrating faintly. The connection hums between us, familiar and welcome.
Still here, that hum says. Still waiting. Still yours.
The rage that lives in my chest shifts, making room for something else. Something I haven’t felt in so long, I almost don’t recognize it.
Peace.
Beside me, Therin’s mount takes shape. His comes slower than mine. He hasn’t been free as long. The magic seeps out of him, coalescing into form with aching slowness. Where mine is moonlight given form, his is the darkness between the stars, with eyes of obsidian.
When he finally swings into the saddle, his jaw is tight. The summoning cost him more than he’ll ever admit.
“Ready?”
He answers by touching his heels to his steed’s flanks.
The forest blurs past, trees streaming by in dark ribbons.
Our steeds move without sound, covering ground in ways that don’t obey the rules of mortal distance.
They eat miles the way flames eat kindling.
Each stride bends the world slightly, taking shortcuts through space that only exists when something like us moves through them.
If you heard their hoofbeats, you were already dead. That's what the humans used to say about us. Mothers used stories of my warriors to frighten children into obedience. No one outran them. No one hid from them. And no one who saw them ride ever saw anything else again.
The stories were true, once. They'll be true again.
By sunset, the forest has given way to farmland. Neat rows of crops stretching toward the horizon, farmhouses glowing with lamplight, and roads cutting through the fields. We keep to the tree lines, the hedgerows, and the spaces between.
By moonrise, the palace sits on the horizon.
It’s larger than I remember. Sections have been added since I was last here. Towers that didn’t exist, walls that stretch in new directions. Human architecture sprawls where fae would soar, everything built outward instead of upward, everything afraid to leave the ground.