Chapter 48
FORTY-EIGHT
CAIRN
The men who came through weren’t random travelers. They might have been dressed in plain clothes, but their bearing gave them away. The way they dismounted, followed the lead of one man, and scanned the entire area before entering the inn.
King’s Guard. I’m certain of it.
They ate, rested their horses, were polite to Sharla and her staff, and left without incident.
So, why can’t I shake the feeling that I’m missing something?
I’ve been turning the same question over in my head for the past half hour.
“—think it was just a patrol passing through.” Kaelith’s voice pulls me back to the present. He’s sitting across from me, one ankle crossed over his knee. “It’s not the first time it’s happened.”
“It was the King’s Guard.”
Kaelith frowns. “Are you certain?”
“I know the king’s colors when I see them, even hidden under wool.”
“King’s Guard don’t patrol random villages.” Therin is leaning against the wall near the door. “They go where they’re sent.”
“Could be a coincidence.” Sorel doesn’t sound like he believes his own words.
“Perhaps.”
The thought has been crawling around in my head since I watched them ride away. The timing is too convenient. Alleria has been here for weeks now, and suddenly the king’s men show up?
But if they knew she was here, they wouldn’t have left. They would have searched, tearing the village apart until they found her.
“We stay cautious. Keep out of sight for a few days. If anything else happens, we reassess.”
Kaelith nods. Therin isn’t satisfied, but doesn’t argue. I look around the room, expecting a response from Vel.
Except … she isn’t here.
Was she here when I came in? I don’t recall seeing her at all.
“Where’s Vel?”
They all look at each other, then at me.
I lurch to my feet. “We need to find her.”
“Why? What’s wrong?” Therin straightens.
But I can’t tell him. All I know is that there’s an itch at the base of my skull that I can’t—
Pain tears through the Nightwild bond, ripping along the thread that connects me to Vel.
My legs buckle, and my hands slam onto the table, the only thing keeping me from hitting the floor.
Fire burns through my left shoulder, except it’s not my shoulder, it’s hers, and underneath the pain is something worse.
Iron. Iron buried in flesh.
The wrongness of it makes my magic recoil. There’s iron in Vel. Someone has attacked her.
I try to breathe through it the way I’ve learned to breathe through the blood bond’s intrusions, and work to separate her pain from my awareness so I can think, but before I can get control another wave hits.
This one comes from Alleria.
Terror slams into me. Raw, animal panic that floods my senses so completely I lose track of where I am. Her heartbeat pounds in my ears, too fast, stuttering with fear, and underneath the fear there’s something worse.
Betrayal.
She trusted someone. She trusted—
I’m pulled down the bond and into her head.
The images come in fragments, overlapping with Vel’s pain until I can’t separate them.
Hands grabbing her arms. A voice she knows.
A face she knows. Nella crying. Soldiers in the trees.
The whistle of an arrow. Vel appearing from nowhere, fast and furious, then jerking backward as an arrow takes her in the shoulder. Vel going down.
Alleria trying to scream. A hand clamping over her mouth. The world tilting as someone lifts her off her feet. A man’s face—one she recognizes—followed by a blow to the side of her head. And then—
Nothing.
One moment she’s there, screaming through the connection without making a sound, and the next there’s nothing. The bond still exists, I’d know if she were dead, but she’s not conscious. Someone hit her hard enough to knock her out.
Someone took her.
I’m thrown back into my body with a violence that leaves me gasping. I’m on my knees, on the floor. I don’t remember falling. Sweat drips down my face, and my hands are shaking where they’re braced against the wood.
“Cairn.” Therin’s hand is on my shoulder. “Talk to me. What’s going on?”
I try to answer, but the words won’t come. The Nightwild bond is still pulsing with Vel’s pain, while the blood bond echoes with an emptiness where Alleria should be.
“Vel.” I force the word out. “She’s hurt. Iron.”
Therin’s hand tightens on my shoulder. “Can you tell where?”
I reach for the thread, push past the pain, and follow it. “Not far. Edge of the village, maybe.” I swallow hard. “But that’s not all. Someone has taken Alleria.”
Kaelith is already standing, and Sorel is halfway to the door.
“Let’s go.” Therin hauls me to my feet.
My legs feel like they belong to someone else. The bonds are still screaming—Vel’s pain, Alleria’s absence—and I have to shove it all down to make my body work.
We go through the inn and out into the street, and I track Vel through the Nightwild magic, letting the thread of pain guide me like a rope.
Twenty feet from the clearing where Therin trains Alleria, we find her. She’s on her knees, one hand pressed to her shoulder. Blood seeps between her fingers, where they’re clutching the arrow protruding out of her.
I can smell the iron from where I’m standing. That flat, metallic, wrongness that makes my magic want to crawl out of my skin.
When she sees us, she tries to stand.
“Don’t.” I drop to my knees beside her. “Stay still.”
“It’s barbed.” She spits the words through clenched teeth. “I tried to pull it out. Made it worse.”
Therin crouches on her other side, examining the wound without touching it. Kaelith and Sorel have separated, moving through the trees. Vessara stands over us, her eyes moving constantly. Serath and Caelum position themselves at our back.
Old instincts. Old formations.
“What happened?”
Vel’s mouth twists. “I saw them leaving the inn. Alleria and the maid. They walked to the edge of the village like they didn’t have a care in the world. Not an hour after the King’s Guard rode through.”
I wait.
“I thought—” She stops, then starts again. “She’s been looking for a way to contact her father. That’s what I thought. Every day she’s here, every day she doesn’t try to escape, I keep waiting for the knife in our backs. So when I saw her walking out of the village with the maid, I thought—”
She breaks off. Her hand is shaking where it’s pressed to the arrow in her shoulder.
“I thought I was finally going to catch her betraying us.”
The words hang in the air between us. Vel, who has argued from the beginning that Alleria would destroy us. Vel, who warned me again and again that humans couldn’t be trusted. She followed Alleria into the woods expecting to find proof that she’d been right all along.
“They stopped at the edge of the clearing. The maid started crying.” Vel’s laugh is bitter. “Alleria kept trying to calm her down.”
Her voice shakes, just barely. If I didn’t know her so well, I’d miss it.
“And I was standing there in the trees, watching, waiting for the moment when she’d signal the soldiers.
Waiting to finally have proof that I’d been right about her all along.
” She meets my eyes. “The soldiers were hiding in the trees. I was right about that part. I didn’t see them, though.
I was so focused on watching Alleria, that I missed them completely.
One of them walked out to meet her. He was at the Dell.
The one who was with her.” She pauses. “That’s when I understood.
The look on her face when she saw him. She wasn’t meeting them.
She didn’t know they were there. The whole thing was the maid’s doing. ”
The one who guarded her. I think back through everything Alleria has said, looking for a name.
Brennan.
“I should have moved then. The moment I realized what was happening, I should have been running. But I hesitated.” She stops again. “I’ve spent weeks waiting for her to prove me right. And for one second—one fucking second—I couldn’t make myself believe I’d been wrong.”
She isn’t just telling me what happened, she’s confessing something that’s been eating at her since the moment she went down.
“By the time I moved, the archer had me in his sights. I went down before I got within ten feet of her.” She glares at the arrow like she wants to rip it out. “By the time I got back up, they had her on a horse. She was unconscious, and they were riding away.”
Silence falls, broken only by the sound of her breathing. Then she looks at me again.
“Three hundred years in a cage.” Her voice is quiet now, stripped of its sharp edges. “Three hundred years of humans treating us like animals. And I let that turn me into someone who couldn’t see past her own hatred long enough to protect an innocent.”
I’ve seen Vel angry. I’ve seen her cold. And I’ve seen her lethal as death. But I’ve never seen her like that, overtaken by guilt.
“I was wrong about her, Cairn. I should have listened to you. And now she’s gone because I was so focused on waiting for her to be the betrayer that I missed the real threat.”
“That arrow needs to come out.” Therin cuts in. “The longer the iron stays in the wound, the worse it’s going to be.”
“I know.” Vel lifts her head. “Do it.”
Vessara moves behind her sister, wrapping both arms around her to hold her still. Therin wraps his fingers around the arrow shaft.
“This is going to hurt.”
“Everything hurts.” Vel’s teeth are clenched. “Get it over with.”
He doesn’t warn her again, just braces himself, and pulls.
Vel screams, writhing in Vessara’s grip. The shaft has caught on something inside her. Muscle. Bone. The barbs doing exactly what they were designed to do.
“Again.” Vel’s voice is a rasp. “Don’t stop.”
Therin adjusts his grip. I move to Vel’s other side and take her hand. Her fingers clamp down on mine.
“You’ve suffered worse. You can do this.”
“Have I?” She laughs. “I’m not sure anymore.”
Therin pulls. Her body arches against Vessara’s grip, her fingers crushing mine.
The arrow comes free with a wet, sucking noise.
Blood follows it. Vel slumps against Vessara, her breath coming in harsh, ragged gasps.
I release her hand and place my palm over the wound, letting magic flow through me to slow the bleeding.
It’s not a full heal, iron wounds don’t heal easily, but it will hold her together until we get back to the village.
Therin holds up the arrow. “They knew we’d be here, otherwise why would they be armed with iron-tips?”
I take it from him. “I think it’s clear that them coming here wasn’t a coincidence.”
“The maid led her right to them. Her own servant. We should have killed her when Therin brought her to the camp.”
I don’t answer her. Part of it is anger, but beneath it I can hear her guilt. She’s trying to find somewhere to put the blame that isn’t on herself.
“Can you walk?”
Vel pushes out of Vessara’s arms, and rises, swaying slightly. “I can walk.”
I turn to face the others. “If I’m right about who has her, then they’ll be taking her back to her father.”
Therin nods. “If they wanted her dead, they would have killed her here.”
“They want what she knows.” I think about everything Alleria has seen. “When they get her back to the palace, the king’s mages will dig through her mind until they find all of it.”
“She won’t betray us.” Therin’s voice is certain. “She’ll fight them.”
“It doesn’t matter. The mages won’t ask for permission. They will take it. Even if it kills her.”
I’ve seen what human mages can do. Peeling back consciousness until there’s nothing left but a hollow shell. The thought of them doing that to Alleria—
I shut that thought down. I can’t afford to think about that right now.
“How long do we have?” Therin asks.
“Three days to the capital. Maybe four if they’re being cautious.” But they won’t be cautious. They have the king’s daughter. They’ll ride hard.
Three days. Seventy-two hours. And every one of them brings her closer to her father's mages, closer to having everything she's seen ripped out of her head.
Everything she's seen. Everything she knows.
Everything she's chosen.
She chose to stay. When I gave her the chance to leave, when Therin was ready to take her back to the palace, she chose to stay with us.
With me. And now she's being dragged back to the life she rejected, and the people who sent her to kill me are going to tear her apart looking for information she'll die to protect.
“Sorel, take Vel back to the inn. Get that wound healed properly. We leave in an hour.”
Vel catches my arm before I can move. Her grip is weaker than usual, but her eyes are fierce. “You need to be careful.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” Her gaze searches my face. “Because right now, you don’t look like the Eldráfn leading his Guard. You look like a male about to burn down a kingdom for his female.”
I could lie to her. But she isn’t wrong. That’s exactly what I am.
“Both things can be true.”
She stares at me for a long moment. Then slowly she nods. “I’m coming with you.”
I look at her. She should stay here and rest. “Vel—”
“Don’t. You’re not leaving me behind. Not for this. I let her get taken. The least I can do is help get her back.”
I could order her to stay. She’d obey … eventually. After a fight that would waste time we don’t have.
“Fine, but if you slow us down, I’ll send you back.”
“I won’t slow you down.”
“Then let us show them what the Nightwild Guard does to those that take what doesn’t belong to them.”
I turn and start walking back to the village.
Hold on, Moirthalen. I push the words toward her. I don’t know if she’ll hear me while she’s unconscious, but I send them anyway.
Hold on. I’m coming for you.