Chapter 30
THIRTY
CAIRN
“—spotted another patrol on the road leading toward the Dell yesterday. That’s the third this week.”
I try to focus on what Therin is saying, forcing myself to study the map spread across the table and not how the connection inside my head is telling me where Alleria is.
She’s sitting on the furs near the sleeping platform, far enough from my chair that I can almost pretend she isn’t there.
Almost. The bond won’t let me forget her entirely.
It’s changed since the kiss. Before, I only felt her when emotions ran high—terror, humiliation, that unwanted spike of heat when I touched her.
Now, there’s a constant pull at the edge of my awareness.
I know when she sleeps. I know when she wakes. I know when she’s thinking about me, even when she’s trying not to.
Especially when she’s trying not to.
It’s been six days. Six days of leaving before she wakes and returning once she’s asleep. I’ve been keeping my distance from her as much as possible, because every time I’m near her, the connection pulls tighter.
The Nightwild magic is claiming her, threading itself through the connection between us and weaving her into the Guard the way it’s woven in the others.
“Did you pick up any information when you were getting supplies?” I refocus on the discussion going on around me. I finally agreed to let Vel take a small group to the nearest town for supplies and check for news three days ago.
“They know the princess is missing.” Vel’s mouth curves. “Again. The king has soldiers out looking for her.”
Through the connection, I feel Alleria’s attention sharpen. She doesn’t make a sound, but her focus shifts toward Vel’s voice.
“There’s a reward,” Vel continues. “Enough gold to make a peasant wealthy for life. And people are talking. A fae escapes, everyone inside a preserve is slaughtered, and then the princess disappears from a locked room.”
I glance toward Alleria. She’s sitting stiff, fingers pressed flat against her legs, her face a blank mask, but her emotions bleed through to me. Fear, longing, and grief.
“Anything else?”
Therin glances at Vel. Serath looks down at her hands. Vel lifts her chin and meets my eyes.
“We need to talk about Caelum.” Her voice is flat.
There it is.
“What about him?”
“He’s not improving.” Her voice is cold, but I know Vel. What she shows isn’t what she feels. She cares about Caelum. She just doesn’t want anyone else to know she cares. “He doesn’t respond to anyone, Cairn. He doesn’t eat unless someone feeds him. He just lies there.”
“I know.”
“We’re prolonging his suffering. The merciful thing—”
“No.”
“—is to let him go. Quickly and cleanly. Before—”
“I said no.”
“Cairn … Eldráfn. We did what was merciful at the Dell for those who were too far gone. Why should Caelum be forced to remain?”
The question hangs in the air between us.
Because he’s mine. Because I’ve known him for eight hundred years.
Because I’m not ready to give up on him.
“Because I don’t think we’ve lost him.”
“Based on what?” Vel’s eyes are hard. “Hope? You’ve been sitting with him every single day. We all have. Has he responded? Has he even looked at you? Can you feel his thread?”
No. He hasn’t.
“Cairn, we’re not helping him. If there’s nothing left inside—”
“We are not killing one of our own because waiting for him to heal is inconvenient.”
Vel’s eyes flash. “That isn’t what I said.”
“Isn’t it? Because that’s what I’m hearing.”
“Keeping him alive like this isn’t mercy. It’s cruelty. We are making ourselves feel better while he suffers.”
“You don’t know that he’s suffering.”
“You don’t know that he isn’t!”
We stare at each other, while the argument our eyes are having crackles in the air—the one where she tells me I’m letting sentiment cloud my judgment, and I tell her she’s letting cold calculation cloud hers.
Therin clears his throat. “We don’t have to decide today, but Vel’s right that we need to consider it. And Cairn’s right that we can wait for a little longer.”
“How much longer? Another week? A month?” She steps closer. “I love him too, Cairn. We all do. But this is wrong.”
I slam one hand down onto the table. “We wait.”
Vel makes a disgusted sound, shaking her head. “There is no reasoning with you.” She stalks past me and walks out.
Therin looks at me and then Serath. “I need a drink. Coming?”
Serath gives him a smile, then touches my arm. “I believe he’s still in there.”
“I know you do.”
She pats my arm, then follows Therin out.
Silence falls over the shelter. I sink into my chair, staring at the map but not really seeing it. Vel’s words turn over in my mind. Maybe she’s right and I am being selfish by keeping him alive. Maybe I can’t face what it means if he’s gone.
“He spoke to me.”
The words are so quiet I almost miss them.
I turn my head. Alleria is still sitting on the furs, but she’s looking at me now. There’s tension in every line of her body, but she holds my gaze.
“What did you say?”
“Caelum. He spoke to me. This morning when Serath took me to sit with him. I was talking about …” She swallows and looks away. “He blinked, and then spoke.”
I go very still.
Caelum. Who hasn’t spoken a word since we freed him. Who I’ve visited every single day. Who Vel just argued that we should mercy kill.
He spoke to her?
“You’re lying.”
Her chin comes up, eyes flashing. “I’m not.”
“I’ve been talking to him every day. So have Therin, Serath, and Vel. He doesn’t respond. And you expect me to believe he spoke to you? A human?”
“I don’t expect you to believe anything.” There’s a flash of defiance in her eyes. “I’m just telling you what happened.”
“And what did he say?”
Her tongue sweeps over her lips. “He said … ‘Not how it was.’ And then he was gone again.”
Not how it was. What does that mean?
“What were you talking about?” Something in what she was saying must have made him surface. Something important enough to drag him back from wherever he’s been hiding.
She bites her lip, and looks away.
“Tell me.”
“I was …” Her throat moves as she swallows again. I asked Serath what Eldráfn means.”
I lean forward. “And what did Serath tell you?” My voice is soft, silky. Her face pales further.
“She … she told me what it means. What you are. I was trying to make sense of it.”
My head tilts. “And what am I, Moirthalen?”
She stares up at me. The smart thing right now would be to look away. To be silent.
She doesn’t do the smart thing.
“You’re … the Hell-Thorn. The lord of the Wild Hunt.”
My lip curls at the title the humans gave me. The Wild Hunt is nothing to do with the Nightwild Guard, but they don’t know that.
“The … the stories I grew up hearing … the war songs, and legends … they were about you.”
I don’t say anything.
“You were in a cage and no one knew. The Hell-Thorn of the Wild Hunt was in a collar in a cage. And women chose you for—”
Her teeth snap together, cheeks turning red.
“For what?”
“You know what.”
“Say it.”
Her teeth bite into her lip so hard, I’m surprised it isn’t bleeding.
“I said, say it.”
“While women chose you for their beds. The most feared warrior in fae history, and they used you. And no one knew. How is that possible? How did you hide? How did no one know who you were?”
I rise from my chair, and she scrambles to her feet, backing up until she hits the edge of the sleeping platform. Fear spikes through the bond.
“You want to know how I hid?” My voice comes out soft and low. “How I survived three hundred years without anyone figuring out what they had in their cages?”
Her pulse is racing, I can see it fluttering like a trapped bird at the base of her throat.
“They didn’t recognize me because I didn’t let them.” I stop in front of her, close enough to touch. “I became what they wanted. What they needed. The dangerous creature who made them feel alive.”
My hand comes up, fingers brushing along her jaw.
“And they came back for more, again and again. They chose me over every other fae in those cages.” My thumb traces her lower lip. Her mouth parts. My other hand finds her waist, and slides around to the small of her back. “Do you want to know why?”
She doesn’t answer. Her breath is coming faster, her body rigid under my palm.
“Because I made them forget.” I lean closer, my mouth near her ear. “I made them forget everything except what I could make them feel.”
Her breath catches.
I should stop. I should step back and put distance between us. I should remember all the reasons this is a terrible idea.
I don’t stop. I kiss her.
I take her mouth the way I used to take the noblewomen who used me, taking my time and coaxing her mouth to open.
She makes a sound against my lips, surprise or protest I don’t know, and I take the opening to slide my tongue against hers.
My hand fists in her hair, tilting her head back, and she lets me.
She opens for me. Her fingers curl into my shirt the way they did before, and this time … this time I don’t pull away.
The bond ignites between us.
Her want floods through me, tangled up with shame and fear and desperate confusion. She doesn’t want to feel this. She hates that she feels this. But she wants it anyway.
The Hell-Thorn from her histories is kissing her, and she’s kissing him back and hates herself for it.
And she can’t stop.
I feel it all through the bond. The heat building low in her stomach, the ache between her thighs, the way her body is responding.
I pull her away from the wall, and walk her backward, my mouth never leaving hers, until her thighs hit the edge of the table.
One hand on her hip, I lift her onto it without breaking contact.
She makes another startled sound against my lips, her hands grabbing at my shoulders, then I’m standing between her legs, and pressing her back until she’s lying across the surface, sprawled beneath me.