Chapter 38
E arly incursions began a few days ago. Half of Torin’s fleet anchored in the sea earlier this week, only a day’s worth of sailing between them and our coastline. Scouts reported the other half is only a couple of days behind them, Torin trying to dent our forces before sending in his reinforcements, and surely gauging the extent of our weaponry before showing his full hand.
Sin and I couldn’t have waited a single day longer to Bond. It was as if fate waited for us, because the very next morning after the Hunt, Alistair returned from his reconnaissance mission to report the first wave of Torin’s fleet began heading straight for the western coast between Blackreach and Suncove.
It’s a solid vantage point for them. That coast is the isle’s main distribution port, allowing Baelliarah to effectively choke out our trade routes. But at least one god must be on our side, because the weather has been unforgiving for several days, the current too rough for them to deploy rowboats to breach the shore. It bought us time to send a pigeon to the Vale with orders to ready the elven fleet to flank from the southwest.
The weather will not favor us forever. Our tidal calendars predict the current to shift in just a few days’ time, and when it does, it will allow Torin’s men to reach our soil. Which they will , because we are ghastly outnumbered, a small isle nation warring a much larger and well-resourced country. We are not ignorant enough to believe we will stop them before they reach our coast, and it’s not what we prepared for.
We didn’t train to stop them in the sea. We trained to kill as many of those fuckers as we can before they row themselves ashore.
Fear has gripped my heart with an unforgiving hand. Bonding with Sin brought me a sense of… completeness I didn’t know I yearned for, and for possibly the first time in my life, I don’t feel as if there is a piece of me missing. I have never felt this whole, and because of that, my heart has never been encased with such trepidation. Dread lodged itself inside my chest right alongside that Bond, and now I can’t shake this feeling that permanence is upon us. I’ve been praying to Elysande every dusk and dawn—a plea that if she takes Singard from me, she better fucking take me too.
Losing Sin would be the one anguish I’d never recover from. It would sever the final threads suturing my heart together, the meaty contents spilling from my chest for an unkindness to devour, flying towards the heavens, towards my lover lost to a war as black as his heart.
The camp is a conflagration on the horizon. Hundreds of fires crackle and spit, clouds of smoke drifting up like dyed spools of cotton. Thousands of tents are pitched in orderly rows across the rural planes of Suncove, the cresting waves of the sea a turbulent menace in the distance. The current will calm soon, and when it does, we will be ready for them.
Sin places his hand over my own, our fingers splayed on the craggy rock we rest on, overlooking the camp we helped establish this week. We haven’t spoken much since coming up to this vantage point, the same one we’ve come to every night for the past few days. There is nothing to say. No words of comfort to exchange, not when we both know they would be forced and void of any real truth. Because the reality is our future teeters on a precipice, one with a steep fucking drop. If we fall, we both know there is no surviving a descent like that.
Much of our army has been moved to this sprawling camp, while the elves that remained in the Vale prepare to flank from the southwest, and those that remained in Blackreach prepare to do the same from the northeast. We have the advantage of being on home territory, allowing us to come at Torin’s men from both sides, but when those men outnumber you hundreds—possibly thousands —to one, I’m not sure how much that matters.
No. It has to matter.
I turn to Sin, and he reads my expression at once, climbing to his feet and pulling me to mine. He’s been eerily good at that lately—knowing exactly what I’m thinking with nothing more than a glance. It’s as if the Bond has allowed him to read my mind, but he claims it’s only made him more attuned to my emotions, feeling the shifts in my energy as my mood fades from one to the next. I’m still not sure if I believe him.
We walk back to our tent in silence, and as he bends to pull the flap back for us, movement stirs in my periphery. I glance up to find Sera, her eyes holding mine for several moments before they shift to Sin. He stands upright, folding both arms across his chest, and he leans against the support pole, saying nothing. When I look to him, there is reservation in his expression, disdain even, but not the outright anger I’ve grown accustomed to seeing on him anytime his mother draws near.
Something has shifted between them, I’m certain of it, but whatever it is, he hasn’t told me yet. Sera dips her head in greeting towards Sin, but her attention flits back to me. “May I have a word with you in private, Your Grace?” she asks, and it takes me a moment to realize she’s speaking to me. It’s not the first time I’ve been addressed by this new title, but I’ve not grown any more used to it. It will take time, as all things do.
I look at Sin again—not for permission, but to gauge his reaction. Because it does matter to me how he feels about it. He is my Bonded, and it is important we present as a united front always.
Sin’s lips thin, and his stare is cold, but he says nothing. Just as he seems to be able to read my mind these days, I’ve been more attuned to him, too.
“Very well,” I respond, turning back to Sera.
She motions for me to follow her. “Walk with me, please.”
I turn and head back the way Sin and I came, filing through the rows of tents. I lead the way, wanting to maintain the show of strength as she follows behind, and when the tents begin to grow farther apart, I slow my pace and allow her to walk beside me.
“I suppose I am your eldmother now.”
I shoot her a sideways glance. “A cursory assumption, is it not?”
“You are Mated to my son; you are my daughter by marriage and Bond.”
“That is only true if Sin beholds you as his mother.”
Sera halts, but she does not look at me. Her eyes are hazy as she stares off into the distance, either seeing something very far away, or buried deep in her past. She blows out a breath, then continues walking, her steps slower now. “Wren, I cannot expect you to understand the decisions I made, nor am I defending them. I did what no mother ever should—I left my son to that wicked man, and that decision haunts me, and will continue to do so, until my dying breath. As it should.
“I am riddled with guilt for all the years I lost with Singard, but it is exactly that— guilt , not regret. If I could do it all over again, I would. I would still leave that night. I would kiss that sweet, beautiful babe in his cradle, tuck the blankets in around his little body, and I’d leave without a word, because if I didn’t, Dusaro would have come for us. He would have burned every last transcendent—man, woman, and babe—in the name of vengeance, and if he had ever learned of my deceit, knew that I fled with our son of my own free will, he would have stopped at nothing to kill me, and he’d have killed Singard too. I’m sure of it.
“My entire kind, your chosen family, Wren, would have been killed. And if you don’t accept that as truth, forgive me, Your Grace, but you would be incredibly short-sighted. It was never my intention to abandon him; I only wanted to protect him. I did what no mother ever should, but it was because I also did what every mother must . I protected my baby, no matter the personal cost.
“I will live with those consequences for the rest of my life, but that is a burden for me to bear, and one I will do so happily, but I have not come here to talk about my own indiscretions.” She stops walking again and turns towards me, her rounded, green eyes softer than usual.
I mirror her stance so we stand face-to-face—the shifter that broke him, and the witch that saved him. “Then what is it you wish to speak of?”
Her chest swells with a deep breath, and without an air of hesitation, she says, “We need to release Dusaro.”
Her forwardness stuns me. “The man you were just painting as the most trustworthy husband and father with only the best of intentions?” I ask incredulously.
“Dusaro is a bastard,” she spits, shaking her head, “but he is a bastard with a lot of fucking destruction in his veins. And he is angry , Wren. No one out there”—she extends a long finger in the direction of camp—“holds any disbelief about our odds. Even with every war-ready soldier at our command, we are still outnumbered. Pathetically so. We most certainly will not win this war with numbers, but if the gods are on our side, we might be able to win it with power.”
“We have two bloodwitches,” I argue, crossing my arms.
“And if something happens to one of you, that power is effectively halved. If something happens to both of you, the power of our entire army is halved. Possibly more. We are not in any kind of position to be turning down help, and especially not from a mage like Dusaro Kilbreth.”
I bare my teeth. “Dusaro is not on our side.”
“He is on his own side. He always has been, and right now, dying in a cell under the collapse of rubble is surely looking like the worst possibility. He will help us, Wren. I am sure of it. What becomes of him after the war, should we survive, can be at Singard’s discretion. But we must not, we cannot , allow past hurts to condemn our future.
“I did what I did so that Singard could have a life. I realize now, that in my doing so, I left him to live a life riddled in anger and hate. I cannot undo any of it, but I can at least give him everything I am now so that he may one day experience a sliver of peace. You… Wren, you are so special to him. And I know I do not deserve to have you as a daughter, but that does not stop me from being so damn grateful that fate brought you to my son. Call it mother’s intuition, but I know Singard’s anger would have caught up with him eventually, that it would have eclipsed the last of the good in him, and he would have left behind a rule and legacy far worse than his father ever could have hoped to.
“I loved Dusaro. I loved him so much, and I know he loved me too, but not more so than the power he desired. I do not want to see Singard make those same mistakes.”
“Sin is nothing like his father,” I growl, my words sharper than steel and thicker than blood.
“Perhaps not, but if he does not release his father, then he is valuing his own revenge over the safety of his Mate.”
I square my shoulders, my eyes narrowing. “You dare suggest such a thing to me? If that is how you view it, then why are you here talking to me about it and not Sin?”
“Because he already told me no.”
Oh .
I don’t allow my face to betray any emotion, willing my features to granite, as I turn and begin walking back towards camp. “Then you already have your answer, and you are merely wasting my time.”
She catches up to me immediately. “He is not thinking clearly, and it will not be me that makes him see reason. It needs to be someone he trusts. It needs to be you. Please , Wren. I just want to see him live his life, even if only as a spirit trapped in his shadow. I will not hesitate to give up my life for him; I just ask that it not be done in vain. Have him order Dusaro’s release. Aeverie can lift the iron from his bloodstream, but it will take him a couple of days to recover, just as it did for you and Singard. Our days are numbered, and our time is dwindling.”
I hasten my steps as we enter the camp, heading for Sin and my tent. Sera calls my name, but that’s not what gives me pause; it’s the ring of desperation in her voice.
“From one woman who loves him to another… I beg you.”
I regard her for a long moment. Sera’s mask, always a beacon of strength, has slipped to reveal the face of a tortured mother. Her eyes are glassy, deep red-purple veins spiderwebbing across the tops of her cheeks, her lips trembling ever so slightly as if it is taking everything she has not to drop to her knees before me.
Seraphine pleads for me to save her son. The one she loved deeply enough to carve him from her breast and leave swaddled for the wolves, far enough away her own claws could never hurt him.
If only she knew how badly Sin would one day need her claws to protect him from the den she abandoned him to. The one where he would be tortured for inheriting the blood of his mother, the blood of her beast.
I give her my back and head for our tent.