Chapter 34
Igrowled through bared teeth, beckoning my own wolf to the surface, even as I set my sword down.
Nemain threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, such big words from you! I love it, so much more to watch you die with no weapon than to fight back!”
Holding a hand to my side, palm down, I reached for the wolf that was mine and mine alone, drawing her closer and closer until I could feel her under my fingertips.
The thick ruff around her neck, the warmth flowing from her to me, and more than that…
the power that came with such certainty that the wolves were more mine than Nemain’s.
My wolf at my side, I walked into the pack of riftwolves, and they parted around me. But how did I free them?
“The unseen,” Zane groaned. “Your heart…already knows. Own it.”
I looked to the wolf I’d spared, the one that had run from me, dragging her mate back to safety. Ignoring Nemain, I let Zane’s words guide me.
The female riftwolf lifted her head beneath my other hand, and the connection snapped into place like a struck nerve.
Not gentle. Not cautious.
Instant and brutal, flowing from my wolf to me, and from me into the riftwolves as if there had never been a boundary at all.
What flooded back wasn’t instinct or hunger. It was a memory that was not my own, but that burrowed into my skin.
Their creation was nothing short of torture.
Wolves stolen as pups from roaming packs, ripped from dens still warm with the scent of their mothers and milk. Families shattered in a single night, the echoes of their howls cut short and unanswered. The pups didn’t die. That would have been mercy.
Instead, they were remade.
Their bodies submerged in the viscous touch of a demon’s magic, skin burned and reshaped, bone rewritten while they were still soft enough to be easily molded.
Fear was poured into them where safety should have been, hammered in until it became the first thing they learned to breathe in their new bodies.
They were taught terror before they ever learned trust.
And so, when they called out in the dark, when they cried for their own the way all wolves do, the answer never came. Their voices were wrong. Twisted. Steeped in fear so thick that even their kin recoiled from it.
Their own kind would never recognize them. There was no going home—a truth that drove them over the brink into madness.
All that was left, was fear—in them, from them, surrounding them.
Something inside my chest rose incandescent, rage blooming so fast it stole my breath. Not hot and wild. Cold. Focused. The kind of fury that doesn’t roar… it sharpens.
No soul should be made to suffer like this. No child of any should find themselves taken and destroyed by evil.
No pack should be broken so completely.
I will free you. And we will destroy her.
The answer was immediate and simple. Not loud, not a roar, a quiet acceptance that meant all the more for its certainty.
Yes. Together. Pack.
I finally lifted my eyes to Nemain—I wanted her to see just who she was fucking with before she died—let her see who I was as my wolves left her side and gathered around me, as they slipped from the darkness of the demon who’d created them…to me.
Wolf Daughter, Tracker, Immune…let her see what I did to those that came at the ones I loved.
Her strange eyes widened as I took a step forward and they widened further, blinking as if seeing me for the first time. Truly seeing me. “You…that’s impossible, You are…Thorn said you were dead!”
She looked to her riftwolves as they faced her, bodies crouching low before they launched.
There were no howls—they did not waste breath on something that would not affect her.
Their minds and my own slipped in and out of each other’s thoughts. I felt the first riftwolf she killed.
Felt its pain and the pain of its pack—my pack.
My blade was suddenly back in my hand, Veyyr was screaming at me to fall back. But I knew only one thing. This bitch was dying.
Now.
I ran straight at her, the riftwolves knowledge of their creator telling me exactly how to fight her. How to kill her.
They parted as I leapt not up and at her. But to the side, my feet against the stone wall, taking two steps that brought me above her head. Her magic, the blow intended for me missed me completely.
As I came down off the wall, I slashed the falcata through her neck—the blade hesitating for a moment, as if her spine was made of the same steel as the sword, the thwack of it rolling up my arm, rattling my teeth, before the blade slid through.
I hit the ground, and her head rolled to the side, free of her body and the riftwolves… they slunk to the ground, tails tucked. Fear rolling from them as they waited for me to make a command or…to kill them.
Shaking my head, I pushed Nemain’s body over with a foot. “You are free, if you wish it.”
A leathery muzzle shoved under my palm.
The female wolf.
I looked down at her. “You are free. You are wolves first, so go be wolves.”
She huffed and sat like a dog heeling to a master, amber eyes wide as she panted, a long tongue lolling out over her teeth.
One by one, the others bopped me against my thigh, my hand, the back of my calf, gratitude and a sense of pack rolling from them to me, before they slid back into the Rift and away.
But not the female. She stayed, pressed against my leg. I kept my hand on top of her head. Wolf. Monster. Pack.
Thren. Wolf name.
“Thren?”
She huffed, the precursor to a bark, that noise of agreement only a true canine can pull off. “You’re staying then?”
Another huff. I smiled and let my hand learn the curves of the top of her head. “Good. Glad to have you with me, Thren.”
Maybe that was me too. Part wolf. Part Tracker. Part monster? Would the scrying pool show me a different wolf after this?
I turned and looked at the two men. Zane seemed to be out cold again. Veyyr. He stood behind me, his hair caught in a bit of a breeze. Strange to see the wind touch him here, of all places.
I smiled. “We did it.”
“You, you did it.” He pointed at where Nemain’s body lay. “The flask at her side, Mallory. Take it. It’s yours now.”
That was it? I went to the demon’s skirts and moved them until I saw the flask belted just under the first layer of gossamer red. Hidden, but with her.
Waters of the living Veil.
The last ingredient needed for Veyyr’s resurrection spell.
I tied it to my own waist.
“You get that to Harrison.” Veyyr sounded…off.
I turned to see him dropping to his knees, blood trickling from his mouth. “Veyyr!”
“Was meant to be.” He mumbled, the blood making his words sloppy.
“Thren, get Zane free!”
The riftwolf loped away from me as I ran to Veyyr, catching him before he could hit the ground.
“Sorrow!” I screamed for my friend, but I realized then that he’d been away from me since I’d been trapped in Nemain’s power.
Had she killed him?
“Was meant…” He coughed and blood bubbled up, trickling down his cheek.
“No, it was not meant to be!” I searched his body quickly but there was no wound, nothing that I could see.
A hand dropped to my shoulder as Zane went to his knees beside me. “She caught him with the spell meant for you. He broke free as she cast it and stood right into it.”
Because I’d dodged her, using the riftwolves knowledge and Veyyr…had been right behind me. Charging into battle with me.
The blood continued to pour up and out of his mouth. “On his side,” I said even as I rolled him. “Zane. You can heal him?”
His silence gutted me.
“Zane?”
“Mallory…this is a demon’s strike. How we didn’t know what she was…I will never forgive myself for this, but there is no…there is no healing this.”
Stethno’s words took that moment to remind me of a terrible truth.
Let him die, should the time come, Tracker.
But she’d also given me a way to save him. I fumbled to draw out the vial of the gorgon’s blood. “This, it’s gorgon’s blood. Tell me it’s enough, Zane.”
“Fuck, he might…you might have a chance then—this might keep him alive long enough. A little now, and the time to…maybe…” We tipped Veyyr’s head and poured a few drops into his mouth as a downdraft slammed into us, the rush of massive wings.
I looked up as Laz and Sorrow landed.
Zane stood, one hand raised, magic crackling around him. I grabbed him by the calf. “The dragon is a friend, Zane.”
He glanced back at me. “I should not be surprised at this point.” Laz landed and snaked his head toward me and Zane.
“Demons? You were fighting demons? If I’d known that I would have stayed and scorched the earth myself!”
“Another time, Laz,” I said. Veyyr’s breathing had steadied under my hands, the gorgon’s blood pushing back the curse that Nemain had laid on him.
But he was not healed.
“Dragon, take them to the north shores, beyond your cliffs. The only healer who might save him is there.” Zane pointed to the north. “You know of who I speak?”
Laz ducked his head.
“The bird came for me, said you were in trouble. But you are not hurt…my rider is dying and I am not pleased.”
This was not the time to discuss who was whose rider. “I killed her, Laz.”
“Good.”
Zane helped me get Veyyr onto Laz’s back, laying him face down so that he would be less likely to choke should the blood begin again to pour from him.
“Zane, come with us.”
“I…cannot.” Zane’s eyes found mine, and perhaps before either of us thought better of it…
he grabbed hold of me in a hug that I felt all the way to my soul—I breathed him in, his warmth, the familiarity…
the strength and safety. “I will find you, Mallory, I swear it. Even if some fool tells me you are dead again, I will find you.”
A sob caught in my throat as I let him go. “You’d better.”
He cupped my face, his hands gentle, the moment stretching into an almost, what could have been, and then he stepped back. “Go. You have little time to save him, go.”
Thren huffed at me and dove into the open Rift without another sound. I had no doubt she would find me too, using the passageways under the earth to connect again.
I climbed on Laz’s back and held tight to Veyyr as the dragon leapt straight up, his wings launching us high enough to catch an air current.
Sorrow flew alongside until Laz began to pick up speed. Only then did he drop and tuck himself against my chest, standing on Veyyr’s back.
“You went to get Laz, when she caught me, didn’t you?”
Sorrow clucked. “Bad. Dying. Scared.”
“I’m sorry,” I held him tight with one arm. “Tell her…I’m sorry if I scared her. And you.”
He clucked his beak and ruffled his feathers as he settled in.
I needed something to distract me from the possibility of Veyyr’s death. “Laz, who is the healer?”
“I don’t know if I’d call her a healer. We dragons know her as the Blood Queen.”
A chill slipped through me. “That…does not sound good.”
“I will tell you what I can,” Laz spoke directly to my mind, but I could still feel the strain in his words. The fear that Veyyr would die. A fear that I was choosing to ignore. We would get him to this Blood Queen, and we would save him. There was no other choice.
“Laz?”
“I do not know if she is human, or witch, or perhaps even elemental. Only that her powers connected to blood are unrivalled. I have seen her…open wounds on a man that he carried his whole life. But I have also seen her reverse the same wounds.”
“She’s not a healer then.”
“Not in a traditional sense. She is a last hope.” Laz rumbled.
A last hope.
A vial of gorgon’s blood.
They had to be enough to deny whatever prophecy Veyyr believed himself to be trapped within.
They had to be.