Chapter 31
“What I had to.” Veyyr’s voice wasn’t angry, or loud, or even defensive. Four words that summed up what he was—he did what he had to, and I understood that because I was the same.
Survival at all costs. Deal with the fall out later.
The surface of the scrying pool shuddered, light fracturing across it like breaking ice.
Something pale and furred and scaled pushed through, water streaming from a skull shaped too triangular to be feline and yet there were lines of a cat under there.
The creature hauled itself free with deliberate grace, claws scraping softly against the stone under the water as its long body followed, spine rising in a crown of backward-angled spikes.
Feline in structure for sure, but serpentine in movement, the creature’s hide was white as winter bone, armored in overlapping scales that caught the light without reflecting warmth.
Icy blue eyes lifted, unblinking and intelligent, fixing on nothing and everything at once, roving past me and pausing, then moving on.
Its mouth parted just enough to show teeth built for certainty, not rage. Smaller teeth, but deadly in their shape and sharpness.
The serpentine cat circled Veyyr once, slow and intimate, climbing his body, lower half wrapping around his legs and chest, then like a living mantle, its head settling near his shoulder as if it belonged there.
Like a Riftborn hybrid, created for a purpose.
Not a summoned thing.
Not a guardian.
A truth given shape.
Veyyr didn’t close his eyes though I saw his chest rising and falling faster.
Zane shook his head, his voice thick. “Brother…I had no idea.”
“Finish this, Zane. Name it.” Veyyr’s voice was the opposite to Zane’s. Hard.
I felt it then, a flicker of something he did not want me to see through the bond. Shame.
This creature that represented his truth caused him to flinch when nothing else I’d seen him face had.
Zane struggled, his voice cracking. “This is both your mercy and your fracturing, Veyyr. A creature like this is not born of cruelty, but of choice. It was not forced upon you. You opened the door, let it inside, and made it your own. And now you must carry it until it either destroys you, or destroys that which matters most.”
The creature cocked its head as if hearing Zane’s proclamation, and only then slowly dissolved, not on the wind, not blowing away but sinking into Veyyr’s flesh. Becoming one with him once more.
I wanted to reach out and take his hand, to tell him whatever truth it was that he’d chosen, that I would help him carry it. That he was not alone. Because in that creature I saw the solitude…which made the weight of it that much greater.
His eyes never came to mine, not even when I gently tugged on the bond.
My heart cracked at the edges, his pain becoming mine. And there as nothing I could do to take it from him.
Veyyr stepped out of the water, scooped up his shirt and boots and kept walking until he was gone from the courtyard, not a single word from him. I reached harder for the bond, but his emotions were blocked off from me.
I knew him enough to let him go. As much as I wanted to grab him and shake him, to tell him his truth was a lie he’d wrapped around himself…I stood and waited.
Zane didn’t move either, standing there as if a sentinel to the pool, not even turning to watch Veyyr go. Were they both going to act like that hadn’t just happened?
I didn’t know if I could speak yet, but I did anyway. “Could he not choose to set it aside, if he chose to let it in?”
Zane looked at me, his blue-green eyes shimmering—hurting for his friend. “I do not know. That will be for him to battle within himself. Neither you nor I can help him.”
I didn’t understand, but I wanted to—especially since I was about to step into the same pool. “You knew, before it even climbed out that it was not right.”
Zane nodded. “This is not our first time, that we have done this scrying. The last, the reflection of his truth was simple. A snow leopard, a symbol of the mountains—scarred, bloodied, injured, but a snow leopard. Balance, strength of mind, and a form of guardianship that he was destined to be called to. But this…creature…” He shook his head and I wondered at the scales, the other pieces that Veyyr had spackled together within himself in order to survive.
“Could Thorn have done this to him?”
Zane shook his head. “No. Your truth is yours and yours alone. No matter the outside influences, your truth is yours.”
I looked to the pool. “Does it matter that I have no memories?”
“No. Who you are, is who you are, and the scrying pool goes past memory of mind, and into the truth you carry and live, even if you are unaware. It brings the core of you to the surface.”
I thought about the creature that had wrapped around Veyyr, how content it had been to sink into him, and how he’d been unsurprised at what had emerged from the pool.
At how he’d fully blocked the connection between us, so I could pick up nothing past the moment of sadness and shame.
I had no idea what would come out of the water for me.
Because what truths did I know about myself?
From the moment I’d climbed out of the Rift I’d been fighting for my life, fighting to find my place in this world, feeling things shift and change around me.
For all I knew I’d have a hundred creatures blended into one monstrous thing.
“Let’s get this over with,” I bent and untied my boots, slipping them off, tugging off my socks next.
With a quick yank I had my shirt over my head and I turned to face Zane.
Maybe I should have been self-conscious about standing in front of him in just a bra, baring so much skin to him.
But his eyes did not linger on anything but my face.
A quick flash of disappointment popped my eyes wide. Gods, this was not the time or the place.
He lifted his hand and pressed his palm over my heart, the tips of his fingers spreading up and over my shoulder, holding me steady. “Let the truth speak.”
I wasn’t sure what he was waiting for, but his hand stayed over my heart, skin warm against mine, waiting for…right. “Let it speak.”
“Do not close your eyes, Mallory,” he didn’t stumble on my name this time, “do not look away from your truth, no matter how it might frighten you.”
“You didn’t say all that to Veyyr.”
“I speak to you as if you were a Novix. Veyyr has stood in the scrying pool before.”
I turned and walked forward, stone under my bare feet, making my way to the middle of the pool. The water wasn’t warm or cold, just wet—the temperature was such that I couldn’t feel it. Just like the wind around us had been.
Facing Zane, I kept my eyes open and again, waited. The minutes ticked by, far longer than the time it had taken for Veyyr. Maybe it was because I didn’t have any magic?
“Oh fuck,” I said.
“It’s a ritual, Tracker,” Zane growled. “Show some—”
“My immunity to magic,” I said. “Could be blocking this.”
Zane crooked his finger and I walked back out of the pool. “And you just thought of this?”
“You didn’t remember, did you?”
“I didn’t know that you inherited that from…your mother. Give me a moment. I have something that will block it.”
I wasn’t sure that was a good idea, blocking my immunity, but at the same time, I needed the help if this was to happen. Maybe I could learn to…pull my immunity back? I frowned not really sure if that was even a thing...
“Here.”
Something small, the size of a rock flew toward my head, and I reached out and snatched it mid-air.
It felt like a rock, about the size of a cherry pit.
Dark orange, it reminded me of a tiny berry I knew I’d seen somewhere.
Sweet and tart. Ridiculous to pick very many of them, but worth it if you had the patience.
Somehow, I knew I’d never had the patience to pull more than one or two off. “What is it?”
“A woven spell. It will block your immunity for a few hours. Tops.” Zane held up a leather bag. “I have more. If needed.”
I looked that small orange spell in my hand a second longer before popping it in my mouth and swallowing it down whole.
Weirdly, I felt it land in my belly and pop, like the spell exploded on impact.
I coughed and shook my head, certain I was going to get a mouthful of smoke or see it pour out of my nose but there was nothing.
“How long?”
Zane lifted his hand and flicked his pinky, ring and middle finger at me one at a time. I blinked as his magic curled around me, lifted me off the ground and held me there. “I’d say fairly instant. My guess is your immunity isn’t the same as your mother’s. A variant, something that comes and goes.”
“Sometimes it’s non-existent. I never know when it will work, or when it won’t.” I motioned for him to put me down, but he held me there a beat longer, his eyes drifting away from my face to the rest of me. “Zane.”
Slowly he lowered me to the ground. “In you go.”
For the second time I walked into the water.
Only this time, it was very different.
The scrying pool rippled once, shallow and familiar, before darkening to a silvery sheen. Like with Veyyr, something swam under the surface, fighting to get to the surface.
I stared, wondering at what I would see. A monster?
A frightened animal? Because underneath everything else, I was…afraid. Afraid that I would never figure this life out. Afraid of failing my veilrunner, of never finding what was left of those I loved.
Afraid that I would not save whoever it was I needed to save.
Afraid that somehow, I was not going to be enough.
The water didn’t harden like it seemed to for Veyyr, but instead it turned into a dense fog that floated up to my knees.
And from the fog, a dark nose pushed through followed by a long muzzle. The wolf lifted itself from the shadows, broad-shouldered and steady, water and mist falling from the coat that was the color of hardened steel. I let myself go to my knees, so I could look my truth in its eyes.
They were a light green flecked with gold. She pushed her nose toward me and closed her eyes, my thoughts scattering at her touch. She was a predator shaped by necessity rather than hunger, but as strong as she was, she was driven by something more than food.
Family.
She sat in front of me, calm and unbothered. This was my truth and I could not and would not argue her presence.
This was the part of me that hunted, chose to fight, and protected those around me. She was the reason I’d taken on the riftwolves. The reason that I’d fought to protect Rana.
She was my inheritance both in my bloodline, and in my inner self that did not ask permission to do what I believed was right.
“Well met, Mallory,” Zane said softly and again I heard the emotion in his voice.
I didn’t look away from my wolf though; he’d told me not to.
“The wolf speaks to you still. The core of who you are, of what you have always been, that has not changed. Loyalty. Instincts. Ferocity when those you love are threatened. Like a wolf though, it can go too far. It can be too violent.”
I reached for the wolf, and she leaned into my hand. “I know. I am…different now I think.”
“You are,” Zane said.
I didn’t want to leave the scrying pool. There was a calm between me and the she-wolf even if it felt as though there was something missing. I stood slowly but my feet would not take as much as a step.
Then the pool stilled a second time.
“Do not move,” Zane said.
Light bent inward around me, collapsing rather than spreading, and the fog was blown away. Beneath the surface something larger began to rise. Darker, larger than the wolf.
What pierced through the scrying pool pulled a gasp from Zane.
A veilrunner launched up in a single smooth movement, not one drop of water on it. Her horn was golden, just as I’d seen in my fractured memory, her coat black as the star-less sky. Not an empty black, but layered.
Her hide was scattered with colors if you looked too long, as if entire constellations had been pressed into a single hide to take on the night sky itself. Like Sorrow’s feathers.
Like the stained glass window.
I held a hand out to her and she lowered her muzzle to my palm. I let my fingers slide over her forehead, knowing it wasn’t real, that she wasn’t here but also…that she was.
“Impossible,” Zane whispered.
I smiled. “Never say that to me.”
Power rolled off the mare in slow, controlled waves.
Not the gentle promise of healing, but the kind of power that draws a line and dares the world to cross it.
She was no creature of purity alone. She was a defender of family and the world, a guardian that would break bones to protect what it claimed.
She would bow to no one.
And neither would I.
The black mare stepped to my other side and stood silent, sentinel as I turned to face Zane.
One hand on the mare’s neck.
One hand on the wolf’s head.
Zane stared then slowly pulled his face covering off. A smile ghosted over his lips.
“And so even in this, you are unique, Mallory, for I have never seen two separate truths…balanced. Fear will come. Grief will come. I see them in you. This is your truth—through all that comes, let your truth guide you. Your heart, Mallory. That is the answer of who you are at the core of it all.”
My wolf did not flinch.
My unicorn did not soften.
They did not merge.
They did not compete.
They remained separate, equal, and unmistakably…mine.