Chapter 17
Kael
This boy would not give us anything. Blood trickled from his split lip where the guard had struck last. Blond hair, streaked red, clung to his face like a second skin. He wheezed with each breath as if it might be his last. Filthy. Wet. Stinking of horse shit.
I stepped outside for a pause, a moment to think. The rot within still clung to my throat. The stench that thickened the dungeon was one I knew all too well.
The gutters were no place for magisters. None of us came here. Our presence was rarely welcome. But around the outpost, where guards prowled the cobblestoneless streets in packs, the people kept their heads down. Fear was a better leash than law.
This place was the belly of the city, wedged between the market’s gold and the opera’s marble. The air here was no cleaner than below. The ground squelched beneath my boots, mud and waste swallowing each step as I turned back toward the outpost.
The guards moved aside when I passed. I descended the narrow, coiling stairs and crossed the iron-barred door into the dungeon.
Thalen and his chancellor, Alaric, stood in low-voiced discussion outside the prisoner’s cell.
The guard who had questioned the boy stood still as stone before the door, waiting for the next order.
General Alaric von Brecht had been called here after the patrols in the gutters caught sight of a suspected weapons smuggler.
They claimed to have found Eamon, a young Bretannian merchant, crossing into Befest with illicit cargo.
They had watched him for days, and when he vanished into the gutters and reappeared elsewhere, they took it as proof enough. Had arrested him this morning.
Alaric had come himself; he never could resist the scent of a possible siege. He’d sent for Thalen. Thalen, in turn, had sent for me.
The chain of command. Always the same. Always ending with me.
“We’ve been at this for hours,” I heard Thalen say. “I’ll go in. I can get it out of him.”
Thalen and his mastery of conjuring magical weapons and fireballs was not a torturer’s art, despite what he convinced himself.
“No,” I said firmly, interrupting them. “Let the guards take care of this. This is not our type of work.”
Thalen’s scar tightened across his cheek. “We might not have the luxury to let the guards handle him. The threat of siege is real. If this boy can give us a location where they stock their weapons, we can stop it before it explodes.”
Let it explode. Let them come. I was neither patient nor kind enough to stop it, to spare Dereck Thorne’s army from ash.
“What are you going to do? Boil his blood?” I asked, sharp.
“If I must…”
I considered it, then shrugged. I lacked patience to argue and suspected that boiling someone’s blood would yield more than blunt force.
“Just make sure it doesn’t stain my armor,” I snarled. I was fond of those black leathers, after all.
Alaric nodded at Thalen, granting him leave to enter the cell.
The guard moved aside and opened the door. It cracked and creaked until it closed behind us.
Eamon was bound to a chair, his head bowed, blood still sliding from his lips. He could not have been more than eighteen. He heard us and raised his head, then smiled with a wet, insolent scoff.
“You again…” he muttered. He coughed several times. “Tired of spreading lies, you come to torture a simple merchant like me yourselves?” He coughed again.
Thalen’s eyes darkened to red, and the boy’s spine stiffened as magic began to work the blood under his skin. Bruises flared across his face and chest. Veins pulsed like ropes beneath flesh, and the boy threw his head back and screamed.
“Where do you keep the weapons?” Thalen asked. I knew he would ask but once.
The boy stifled the wail, bit his lips, and writhed against his bonds. Ragged sounds bubbled from his throat, wet with blood.
“A… battle… is coming,” he stammered. “You… cannot stop it.”
Thalen’s glare brightened. Heat pooled in the cell.
The boy screamed again and, between shrieks, spat, “There is no… secret stash… of weapons.”
The air grew slick with sweat.
“We are everywhere. The entire city is our keep.”
A sizzle cracked.
“No king but the people. No king but the people. No king but the people.”
Dereck Thorne’s motto, again and again, a drumbeat in a broken throat.
At last, Thalen released his grasp. The scent of burned iron hung heavy. Eamon’s color drained, and his body collapsed with a dull thud.
We left the cell without a word. Thalen turned to report to Alaric. I took the coiled stairs alone.
Smuggled weapons there might be, but if they were scattered across the city, our time was better spent fortifying the castle.
Outside, I fetched my horse from the outpost stables. Grison, silver as frost, mane pale as winter sunlight, had not left the courtyard in days. He snorted when I neared, as if resenting that I would drag him to the gutters instead of the wilds.
We rode out through the filth, past the stinking lanes, past the markets where the air turned cleaner and the cobbles returned beneath his hooves.
That was when I saw Loren.
He moved through the crowd with that quick, birdlike urgency of his, eyes darting, breath shallow. I had dismissed him earlier. Why was he still here?
“Loren,” I called, reining Grison to a halt. He turned sharply and hurried toward me. “What is going on?”
He hesitated, frowning, words caught somewhere in his throat. Was he hiding something?
“It’s Evie, Magister,” he said at last.
Her name struck like a blade to the ribs. My heart stumbled, finding no rhythm. I had tried to bury her, her lips, her voice, her scent, but she always surfaced, creeping through ash and blood alike.
“She went to the mountain this morning and hasn’t come back,” he rushed out, too fast, too breathless. “I’m going after her.”
“It’s the middle of the afternoon,” I said evenly. “She’s probably still there. It’s a mountain, Loren.”
“No.” He shook his head. “She’s always back for afternoon tea.”
Afternoon tea? I arched a brow despite myself. The concern etched into his face left no space for amusement.
I exhaled slowly. “Why did she go?”
“She’s been investigating diseased crops near the village. She found strange vines creeping down from the woods. She said they came from the mountain.”
Vines. The mountain.
Why had I not heard of this?
Something twisted in my gut, an old, wordless instinct. Not logic. Not duty. Something worse. It told me only one thing.
Go.
It was concern, I told myself. Worry. Not fear. Not the tight ache rising behind my ribs.
I clicked my tongue, and Grison turned toward the northern road.
“Stay here,” I ordered. “Return to the castle. Rest for the evening. I’ll find her.”
Loren’s jaw worked as if he might argue, but at last his shoulders slackened.
“Make sure nothing’s happened to her,” he said, voice sharp with command. The only order he had ever given me.
I nodded once and pressed my heels into Grison’s flank. He surged forward, horseshoes striking sparks from the cobbles. We tore through the city gates, the wind whipping my shoulder cape behind me like a dark banner, the only thought echoing in my head…
Find Evie.
Finding Evie’s trail was simple. She had taken the goat path that wound along the hillside, climbing toward the mountain pass. Grison huffed beneath me, eager for the climb. We hadn’t gone hunting in days, and he’d missed the open air.
Black veins, thick as ropes, pulsed from beneath a great stone ahead. One glance told me they were wrong. Unnatural, alive. I followed them.
Her tracks reappeared between the trees. The deeper I went, the darker the forest grew. The air thickened, sour and wet. Then came the sound, oozing, sluggish, like rot drawing breath.
I reached a clearing veined in black. The earth there glistened as if slick with oil. Evie’s tracks ended in the center.
And there she was.
Sprawled upon the ground, vines coiled around her body. Tendrils had forced their way beneath her clothes, curling like hungry things. My heart clenched so hard I could scarcely breathe.
Instinct broke through reason. I swung down from Grison, lightning already coiling around my hands. I caught her up in my arms and sent a searing current through the vines. Bolts cracked from my fingers. The tendrils shrieked and recoiled, hissing like struck serpents.
She was breathing. Thank the gods, she was still breathing. Blood streaked her forehead where she’d struck a rock. The vines had torn through her tunic and breeches, but not her skin, yet faint burns marked where they’d begun to feed.
I gathered her closer, her weight light against my chest, and turned back toward the trees. The vines twitched, eager to follow. I sent another surge of power through the air, and the forest glowed white for a heartbeat.
Evie didn’t stir.
I laid her carefully across Grison’s back and mounted behind, one arm keeping her steady. With a click of my tongue and a squeeze of my heels, he leaped forward, and we tore through the woods.
We galloped across the mountain pass until the trail opened to a river, its surface catching the last light of dusk like molten silver. I dismounted Grison and carried Evie to the riverbank. Pebbles shifted beneath my boots as I kneeled and laid her down.
For the first time since finding her, I allowed myself to look. Truly look.
In all that rush, I had not stopped once to see her. And now, with the danger behind us, her beauty was all I could see.
Her lashes lay dark against her cheeks, her expression soft as sleep. Her hair was tangled, strewn with leaves and dirt, yet still managed to gleam in the fading light. And those lips, full, parted… Lips I had tasted, whose memory still burned on my tongue.
I exhaled sharply and shook my head, forcing the thought away. I could not let myself slip into the same hunger that had undone me at the Academy Ball.
I dipped my shoulder cape into the river’s cold current and pressed the damp fabric to her brow. She stirred at the touch, a faint sound slipping from her throat, a small, pained moan. Good. It meant she was conscious.
Gently, I lifted her tunic enough to inspect the burn marks where the vines had reached her skin.
The sight of her—the warm olive tone of her stomach, the rise and fall of her breathing—sent a heat through my own hands that taunted the storm I carried.
I forced my touch to remain clinical, steady, though it felt like restraint itself might break my bones.
I did not see her eyes open until she whispered, “You…”
Her voice was raw, rasped from exhaustion. Then she startled upright, scrambling away across the stones.
I raised my hands in an open gesture, palms bare. “Easy.”
“What…” she winced, pressing a hand to her temple. “What are you doing here?”
“You need to be careful with that,” I said, nodding toward the wound. “I found you among those black vines. What happened?”
She blinked, searching for the memory. Her gaze flicked to the river, then to me, and something flickered behind it. Sadness…
“I don’t know what they are,” she murmured, “but I saw—” She stopped herself, eyes narrowing. “I feel like it’s tied to something that happened not long ago… at a tower, on that mountain.” She pointed to the highest peak looming behind us.
A coldness crept through my bones. A tower…
The plague’s buried truth.
And Evie was a seerling.
What had she seen? What did she know?
I rose slowly and stepped toward her. “You need to let me finish cleaning that wound.”
She shook her head. “Don’t come near me.”
She wasn’t afraid. She was furious. Her eyes —wide, bright, wounded—met mine like drawn blades.
Then I saw it. Beneath the collar of her tunic, faint against her skin, the branching scar of lightning. The shape of my magic.
Not from the vines.
From me.
My breath caught.
It was my fault.
I frowned. “Please know that I didn’t intend for it to happen.” She had no idea how easily she could make me lose control.
“Excuse me? How do you not intend for that to happen?”
She didn’t understand. I had to make her.
I kneeled in front of her, hands open in surrender, showing no threat. She didn’t move away. The air between us tightened until it hummed, the faint crackle of lightning whispering through my thoughts. How was I this close again? Every muscle in my body twitched with restraint.
“Your presence,” I said quietly, “is enough to draw power from me I can barely contain.” The light in my eyes brightened, and the world glazed white.
Her eyelids lowered, lips parting. She looked at me as if I were the only thing she desired in this world, and that was precisely what would call forth the storm.
Then she frowned and shook her head rapidly, as if to drive out a thought. She pushed to her feet, and I followed.
She paced away from me, unsteady once, a hand pressed to her temple.
“Evie, you need to stay still,” I said.
“Don’t tell me what to do!” she shot back.
I moved after her in a heartbeat, catching her arm to stop her retreat. My strength slipped its leash. She stumbled, and I steadied her against my chest before she could fall.
Fool that I was to think distance would quiet the animalistic urge in me, that twelve days apart would dull the instinct to seize her and make her my prey.
Her eyes lifted, shining with tears and fury both. “Kael, please…” Her voice broke. “Just—leave me alone, all right?” I couldn’t. “Go back to Selena.”
Selena?
What did Selena have to do with this?
She must have seen the look on my face, because she went on, “Yeah, I saw you two together. And I want to claw those images out of my mind, but I can’t. Not for lack of trying. Why in all the gods’ names would you do that, Kael?”
The storm inside me froze. Everything stilled. Fuck.
That was what she was so angry about.
My thoughts fractured. The pinch in my gut tightened until it burned.
My features twisted in uncomfortable ways. “You weren’t meant to see that.”
The worst of me. The uncaged wolf. The monster within.
“She seemed to enjoy it!” she spat, her voice sharp with disgust.
I went still. My reply came low. “Trust me, she didn’t.”
“It doesn’t matter!” she threw back, spinning on her heel. “And where in the ninth hell is my satchel?”
She strode away into the woods. No path, no destination, just the need to be far away from me.
“Evie!” I called after her.
She lifted a hand and showed me her contempt with one middle finger.
I’d never imagined her angry. Now I knew what her anger looked like, and I never wanted to see it again.
My stomach churned, tight with something I couldn’t name. Shame, maybe. Or the ruin of it. I wanted to speak, to apologize, but the words wouldn’t come.
All I knew was that I didn’t want her to go.
So I ran after her.
I won't let her get away.