Chapter 33
Veyyr and I stood beside one another at the foot of the rope bridge, Zane twenty feet behind us.
We’d agreed to a thirty-minute head start. Enough time that our challenge would be fully in play, and Nemain distracted, her powers split between our challenge, and Zane stepping forward to challenge her.
When I looked over my shoulder, Zane stood leaning on his weapon of choice—a spear that had a curved blade on each end. Even from a distance I knew it was shadowsteel.
Veyyr didn’t ask if I was ready.
Sorrow was above me, on a current of air that I suspected Veyyr was manipulating so the bird didn’t get ahead of us.
I took a step—I would go across first to make sure that not only would the bridge hold, but that it wouldn’t dip into the water. If something went wrong, Veyyr could lift me across and Zane would in his words Yeet his brother in arms across to the island.
It was a word from the time before the breaking. At first I didn’t understand, but I felt the humor in it, and it made me smile to think of Veyyr being yeeted anywhere.
The bridge ended up being the simplest part of the last trial.
I swayed my way across, the rough rope digging into my hands, tearing into a few softer spots, but other than those few scratches, it was nothing.
Veyyr followed and once he was with me on the other side, we both looked back.
Zane stood, a silent watcher. He gave a sloppy salute, a lazy smile on his lips as if this wasn’t a turning point for all three of us.
Veyyr turned away first, and I found myself staring back for a few heartbeats longer, almost certain that dragon of his reappeared in a flicker.
Backing up, I turned on my heel and picked up the pace. The silence between us was heavy as we strode toward Nemain’s Cauldron. Her home.
The place of her power.
“You have not asked me about what you saw in the scrying pool,” Veyyr said.
I did a double blink, caught off guard by the direction he chose to take this close to a battle. “There is nothing to ask.”
He paused and I caught up to him. Veyyr looked down at me, his face unreadable. Questions bubbled in him, the bond whispered something more than questions though. The sensations were not something I’d felt from him before, and it took me a moment to identify just what he was feeling.
Uncertainty.
And more than that, fear that whatever had begun between us was damaged because of what I saw.
“Veyyr, I—”
Something picked me up by my spine before I could tell him nothing would change what I thought of him.
It was as if an iron rod had been jammed all the way down my spine and then bent backward. I could not stop the scream that ripped out of me, the pain was like nothing I’d ever felt before.
It wasn’t sharp. It wasn’t clean.
It was wrong. Dirty.
Every vertebra felt pried apart, each one screaming its own protest as my body arched beyond what it was ever meant to do.
Fire flooded my nerves, white-hot and blinding, so intense it erased thought entirely.
There was no room left in me for fear or defiance—my immunity was still blocked by the spell Zane had given me.
In short, I was screwed.
There was only pain, vast and absolute, filling every hollow place until I was nothing but a vessel for it.
My muscles betrayed me, locking and shuddering as if they were trying to tear free of their attachments to my bones.
Breath left me in wet, broken screams that I could not hold in and then there was nothing.
My lungs refused to work around the agony crushing my chest. I tasted blood, copper and bile, my jaw clenched so hard my teeth rang.
I felt myself coming apart.
Not dying. Worse.
Breaking.
The world narrowed to fragments: the pull on my spine, the sickening stretch of ligaments, the way my vision collapsed inward until all I could see was darkness laced with sparks as if I were being cast out into the night sky, my body and soul separated.
Somewhere distant, I was aware of someone else yelling, rage filled words, the feel of an icy wind dragging me away from the power that held me. The caw of a sorrowbird, talons dragging through my hair as if he were trying to hold me together.
I would have begged for true death if I could have found the breath for it.
I would have promised anything.
But the pain owned me, and the magic of it would not even let me fall into unconsciousness.
As hard as the magic hit me…it was gone, cut off like the switch of a button.
Falling, I was falling from the sky my body limp, no part of me feeling anything but relief that the pain was gone.
That I was no longer held captive.
Darkness surrounded and held me, and I could not fight it, blessed unconsciousness rolling me under its weight.
Coming to felt like waking from a nightmare, opening my eyes to a new nightmare. There were no chains on me, and yet my body was held down. Rolling my head to the side, I blinked several times, trying to clear my vision.
But what I saw didn’t make sense.
Zane on his knees, his arms spread wide, wrists wrapped and tied to posts ten feet on either side of him. At his back was a single pole that was driven down into the ground so he could not go backward. Staked. But I couldn’t move further, which meant I could only see Zane.
There was no Sorrow.
No Veyyr.
“Veyyr,” a woman’s voice purred. “So lovely of you to come to see me, and bring me not one, but two gifts.”
“Nemain,” Veyyr all but snarled her name. “You will let them go.”
“Oh, no, that is not how this works. You want the Water from the Heart of the Veil, yes? You want the last ingredient to your spell working? Then the cost is up to me.”
I could hear the smile in her voice, the sheer fucking glee at having him over a barrel.
At having me and Zane at her mercy.
“The Tracker,” I felt her gaze swinging my way and I closed my eyes, feigning sleep, “would have been plenty to pay the price, of that much I will tell you. But bringing me Zane…I would give you a boon along with the Water.”
“You can’t have either of them,” Veyyr said.
“Please, don’t play coy,” She scoffed. “You…oh dear, you are serious? You wish to face my magic, and take the Water by way of rite of passage?”
“Yes, with the Tracker at my side. Zane set free when we are done.”
Laughter rippled out of her. “She will be on the ground until I let her rise. My magic is no small thing to recover from, Veyyr. Your mother could have told you that if you’d ever listen to her. How is she, well, I hope? I have not seen her in a dog’s age!”
That was a strange word to lean heavy on. It had to mean something.
“I will see this through, Nemain. But as I have made this journey with the Tracker, you know that I must end it with her as well. Or you will forfeit all.”
She was silent and I lay there, breathing as shallowly as I could, marking the different scents I picked up. Veyyr, Zane, and the dirt under my nose were the strongest markers.
But there was another scent I was trying to truly identify.
Nemain smelled…off. Odd. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it tickled my memories as if trying to remind me of someone or something I’d known before.
Demon?
“Fine. Bring your pet with you. Sad, I hate to kill someone as talented as you,” Nemain said.
“But not Zane?”
“Oh, he is talented, in some ways more than you, but he is not as malleable. Your mother broke you well, Veyyr, and I am more than happy to keep you as a pet. Zane would be a problem at best.”
My guts churned and it took all I had to remain on my belly. A shadow fell over my face and Veyyr brushed a hand across my cheek.
I opened one eye.
“She needs a bit more time.”
There was a huff of irritation and then a second shadow fell over me. “I am impatient, Veyyr. You have one hour to rouse her. If you cannot then she will be considered out of play, and there will be no forfeit.”
A swoosh of material, maybe skirts, maybe a cloak, and the feeling of gossamer brushing across my cheek.
I kept still. “Veyyr?”
“She is gone.”
I pushed to my hands and knees, feeling every ache, every wound that had been inflicted in the last few weeks. “Hammered shit.”
“Her magic…I knew it could inflict fear. But I did not know it could inflict pain.” Veyyr’s voice was quiet, broken.
I sat back on my heels. I looked around, but Zane was gone. She’d taken him with her.
Veyyr’s eyes were downcast, staring at our hands tangled with one another. “What happened?”
A nod, one section of his white hair sliding forward. “He came when he heard you screaming. She used us as bait for him.”
A shiver rippled through me. “Of course she did. But the pain is gone now, and whatever damage to my psyche I’ll manage it later.”
His eyes lifted finally, the depth of sorrow, of absolute horror within them made me catch my breath. I found his hand, gripping it tightly. “Veyyr. How do we beat her?”
“Conquer fear, battle through the pain. It will be spread across us both, this time.”
The shudder turned to full on shaking. “You mean what I experienced…”
“She will inflict on both of us.”
Half the amount, could I handle half the amount? “Did you know how strong she was?”
“No.” He pulled me into his arms, wrapping me in his embrace, holding me tight. “I thought…I thought she’d killed you, Mallory.”
His mouth was buried against the crook of my neck, and I did the same, just breathing him in. “It will take stronger magic than that to end me.” I laughed though it came out more like a strangled karruk.
We stayed on our knees, holding tight to one another. Like children trying their best not to be afraid of the monster in the dark, only…this monster was worthy of every bit of our fear.
“Your immunity?” He asked quietly. “Why do you think it failed you?”
I pulled back. “I think maybe Zane’s potion is still in me. I don’t know how long it will take to work out, Veyyr.”
His nod was immediate. “Her concentration will be split, that is in our favor. Another hour, and hopefully Zane’s potion will have faded completely.”