Chapter 54
ISI
“Iwant to share the burden with you,” I said.
“I can’t ask you to do that.” The raw emotion in Trew’s voice made my throat close off.
“Please don’t push me away.”
He didn’t say anything for a few moments before he sighed. When his arm tightened around me, and he curled forward to kiss my cheek, I knew I’d won. Not that this was a battle.
Or maybe it was.
He was king of this court. I was a runaway princess from another.
But she was my sister, and I knew Addie.
“I’d bet anything she volunteered,” I said.
He stilled.
“Addie’s smart. Conniving. And ruthless.”
Humor bloomed in his voice, and that eased my tension more than anything else could. “She got all that from you.”
I snorted, the sound whipped away by the wind. “Careful, Your Majesty. That almost sounded like a compliment.”
His chest rumbled with a laugh, a warm, solid vibration that chased away the sky-high chill. “It was. Don’t get used to it.”
I leaned into him, the dragon’s powerful glide a steady rhythm beneath us.
The world unfurled in a tapestry of emerald valleys and silver-ribbon rivers.
From up here, it was impossible to imagine the wasteland existed, that Skathes tore through places just like these. This was a land worth fighting for.
And Trew was a king worth fighting beside.
“There’s more,” I said, deciding to hold nothing back. “You know about Addie’s journal. It was in code, but Kerralyn was able to read it. She wrote that she was safe, that she’d found love here with your cousin.”
And then she was murdered. I swallowed but the horror of it wouldn’t go down. “How did she end up dead in my court if she was on a border mission?”
His golden eyes darkened, the easy humor replaced by the sharp focus of a king sifting impossibility. “Your father blamed us. You said a large bird delivered the body, that it disappeared with magic.”
The body.
“Magic’s forbidden in all the courts except yours,” I said.
“What else would we believe? I can’t believe that now, but someone killed her.
They dumped her…” I plunged on, wanting to tell him everything before I fell apart.
“I also found a book about the Skathes in the library.” I winced.
“Sort of found. It was inside a hidden room, behind a wall. I also…interfered with your library sentinels.”
His arm tightened around my waist, and he leaned in, his voice a low growl in my ear. “Are you telling me you broke something inside my castle, Amarissa?”
“I didn’t break anything.” Or maybe I had. “I…circumvented the wards.”
“You circumvented ancient, layered, sentinel-forged wards? How?”
I shrugged. “With magic. I unbound the threads, and the sentinels stopped trying to kill us.”
“You’re…amazing.” His voice held disbelief and something that sounded dangerously like pride. “I’ll have to renew them.”
“You should,” I shoot back. “They were surprisingly easy to slip through.”
His laugh rumbled against my back. “My impossible woman. Is there anything you can’t break into?”
“I’m waiting to find out.”
He shook his head, a lock of dark hair falling across his brow. “What did you learn from the book about the Skathes?”
“That they’re mindless beasts, driven by hunger for magic.
But a master is controlling them, someone who has turned them into an army.
” I relayed what I’d read, including Velacross Blyte’s theories and their fear of a will guiding the will-less, of the wasteland spreading in their wake, plus the odd line and the drawing that looked eerily similar to my mother.
When I finished, I waited to hear what he’d say. At his command, Kyreth banked, her massive wings tilting us toward a village nestled in the crook of a wooded valley.
“I don’t know what that line means, but your mother?”
I explained her history, the little I knew of it. Only now did I wonder if what I was told was true.
“We need to solve this mystery.”
I nodded. “Doing so may show us how to permanently take care of the Skathe problem.”
“The person who controls the Skathes might’ve killed her.”
“You think it’s someone who learned to use their magic?”
He shrugged. “I assume it would take magic to control the Skathes.”
“Perhaps.”
“Whoever it is could have Fenmark.”
“Do the Skathes bond with beasts?”
“Not that I’ve seen, but I suspect whoever controls them is not Skathe.”
The world tilted again, the breathtaking view below suddenly feeling treacherous. My sister was a pawn in a war we were nowhere close to understanding.
“We will find them and kill them,” he said simply.
The certainty in his voice made me believe impossible things.
“I want to see the book when we get back,” he added, his tone all king, all commander.
“Of course.”
He didn’t say anything else for a long moment as he guided Kyreth into a wide, slow spiral toward the valley floor. The village below grew clearer, a cluster of stone-and-timber houses with vibrant gardens and smoke curling from chimneys. A place of life, not only survival.
“You think your cousin is still alive.”
“I think we have a mission, Minx. And we’ll do it together.”
Kyreth landed with a ground-shaking thud that was surprisingly gentle when seated on her back. Her claws sank into the soft earth of the village commons. The moment we touched down, people began to emerge from homes, welcoming smiles on their faces.
A murmur of Trew’s name rippled through the small crowd. They bowed, but it wasn’t the stiff, formal gesture I’d seen so often in my court. This was respect, warm and genuine. Like those back at the castle, these people adored him.
“Your Majesty,” an older woman called out, her face a lovely map of wrinkles, her silver hair secured in a thick braid down her back. She strode toward us, wiping her hands on an apron, her eyes sharp but kind.
Trew swung down from the saddle before helping me, his hands lingering at my waist as my feet found solid ground. Every touch was a claim, a public declaration.
“Fern,” he said, his voice softening. “Behaving yourself, I hope?”
Stopping beside us, she swatted his arm. “Someone has to run this place while you’re off playing with dragons.” Her gaze landed on me, assessing but not unkind. “And you’ve brought company.”
“Isi, this is Fern.” Trew slid his around the back of my waist. “She’s the true queen of this village and everyone in it.” He gestured to a long, rambling building with a wide porch and lots of windows. “She houses and cares for all of our newest arrivals.”
I saw the children then. Dozens of them, spilling from homes and the large buildings, their laughter echoing in the air.
They chased after small, glowing lightwings, giggling.
One little girl sat on a stoop, her brow furrowed in concentration as she made a handful of pebbles hover and dance in a swirling pattern above her lap.
A boy laughed as he touched a wilted daisy, urging it back to full, brilliant bloom with a whisper of magic.
Here, magic wasn’t a death sentence. It was child’s play.
My stomach plummeted as I recognized them. Not all of them, but enough. A boy with shockingly red hair who’d been reported for making his toys fly. A girl with tiny braids all over her head whose root-spell had made her mother’s garden bloom out of season.
The children Trew had “stolen.”
My children of Caldrith.
The memory of the last Day of Mercy slammed into me. The ceremonial mask, cold against my skin. The scent of incense and sweaty dread of those wearing white. The weight of the sapphire blue robes on my shoulders as I stood on the platform, while men and women drank ashwine from simple mugs.
They died for the crime of having the same power that now hummed beneath my own skin. And their children… I’d believed they were sent for reformation, a gentle re-education.
I suspected it was all a lie.
The truth was here, laughing and playing in the sunlight. Trew hadn’t stolen them. He’d saved them.
From me. From my father. From a court that would rather poison its people than see them use their power. The realization sent a shard of ice through my chest, so painful I could barely take in a breath.
I’d been a Lady of Mercy who had shown very little to the people who should matter the most.
“Isi?” The small, tentative voice sliced through the storm in my head.
A boy with a riot of dark curls and wide, familiar eyes rushed toward me, a carved wooden bird soaring through the air beside him.
“Isi!”
Leo.
Mae’s son. Her precious seven-year-old boy.
My heart shattered and reformed in the space of a single, ragged breath. I dropped to my knees on the ground. Leo launched himself into my arms, wrapping his limbs around my neck in a fierce hug.
“I missed you,” he mumbled into my shoulder.
Tears streamed down my face. I squeezed him tight, burying my face in his hair, breathing in the scent of sunshine and boyish mischief. I’d been there the day he was born. I’d held him, so tiny and perfect. I’d loved him as if he were my own.
Children forgave so easily.
The question was: Could I forgive myself?
“Leo,” I choked out, my voice thick with grief. “I missed you, too. So much.” I pulled back, framing his face with my hands, wiping away the dirt on one cheek. “Are you alright? Are you happy here?”
He nodded, his expression earnest. “Fern makes honey cakes, and we get to play with magic all day. No one gets yelled at. Are you going to stay here with us?” He peered around. “Is Mummy with you?”
His question held the power of a battering ram, knocking down the last of my defenses. He was safe. He was happy. He was free.
But he missed his mother. Why wouldn’t he?
“No, she’s not.” I hugged him again, a wave of gratitude barreling through me, leaving me dizzy.
This boy was everything my court had tried to extinguish.
I looked for Trew.
He stood with Fern, watching me. I found no judgment in his golden gaze, no, “I told you so.” Just quiet understanding. He’d brought me here not to shame me, but to show me. To let me see the truth with my own eyes.
This man, this king of rebels and dragons, saved children.
He built sanctuaries while my father built funeral pyres.
Everything I thought I knew, every loyalty I’d ever held, burned away in the heat of that single, soul-altering realization.
The bond between us wasn’t only attraction or the strange pull of fate.
It was this bone-deep recognition of a goodness so profound it humbled me.
This man hadn’t stolen my heart with kisses in a garden, but with an act of rebellion so compassionate it had remade my world.
“Isi?” Trew’s voice came out gentle. He didn’t rush me, didn’t demand explanations. He waited while I pieced my shattered world back together.
I looked up at him through my tears, and something settled into place in my chest.
“Thank you.” The words held everything.
His golden eyes softened. “For what?”
“For showing me who I want to be.”
This was love. Not a fleeting thing, but a truth. The kind that reshaped a person from the inside out.
In that moment, on my knees and with a child in my arms, I knew that I would burn for Trew. I would fight for him. I would follow him into any wasteland and face down any army.
I would love him until my last breath.
And long after that.