26. Master of Shadows #2
I held her against my chest, her head tucked beneath my chin, one arm locked across her so that not even the hardest gallop could jar her loose. I felt the faint, failing flutter of her breath against my throat and let panic drive me forward.
Theron rode at the head of us, and he did not falter once, did not so much as glance at a map or a marker.
He led us off the King’s Road and into the wild lands past the eastern marches.
To where The?kós thinned into territory no banner claimed, and the further we went, the stranger the country grew.
The trees leaned wrong, and even the light soured.
Birds stopped singing until finally, there were no birds at all.
Only a great waiting hush, and a cold that had nothing to do with the season that crept into the marrow of every man who rode with us.
My soldiers were hard creatures, blooded a hundred times over, and I watched them go quiet and gray-faced one by one as the land turned against them.
Lazaros drew his mount up alongside mine for a stretch, his jaw tight, his eyes flicking again and again to the woman in my arms. Yet he said nothing.
But then, there was nothing to say, was there?
He stayed there, riding at my flank the way he had since we were boys.
And I was more grateful for it than I had words to tell him.
We rode through the failing afternoon and into a dusk that came too early. At last, Theron lifted a hand, and we drew to a halt at the edge of a thing I will not soon forget.
It rose out of a hollow in the dead land. Trees…if they could be named as such…vast and black and twisted beyond all nature. Their trunks fused and knotted together, their branches and roots woven into a single towering arch that framed a circle of fog. The mist within looked as if it were waiting.
And all through the gnarled wood of that gateway ran channels and grooves worn smooth as old bone. Each channel dark-stained, leading down and inward like the veins of some enormous sleeping monster.
Even the horses wouldn’t go near it. Acelin, who had carried me through three pitched battles without flinching, planted his hooves and refused the last twenty paces, and honestly, I didn’t blame him.
“The way in,” Theron said, swinging down from his saddle with practiced ease.
“The horses will go no further than this. Nor will your army.” He turned to face the men ranged behind us, and for once, there was no mockery in him at all.
“Beyond this point, only blood passes. The realm takes its toll at the threshold and admits those it deems worthy. The rest it turns away, gently, if they are wise enough to stay back.”
“And the toll is…?” I asked, wanting to be clear, despite already knowing the answer.
“Blood, freely given.” Theron replied and stepped to the twisted gateway. Then he laid his palm flat against it, and only as he dragged it slowly downward did I see them.
Thorns.
Hundreds upon hundreds of them, so fine they were all but invisible until the eye was pressed close enough to touch, each one curved and hooked like a fisherman’s barb. They bit as his hand passed over them, and dark blood welled in a dozen thin lines.
The hooks didn’t let a single drop of it fall, serving their purpose well enough.
As I watched the wood drink him down. There was no other word for it.
The blood didn’t run, didn’t drip, it was simply caught and gathered along those barbs before being drawn inward.
Sinking into the grain as though the tree had thirsted years for it.
Where the blood vanished, a faint, sickly green light glimmered for a moment deep within the wood before it went dark.
Something vast and unseen seemed to shift and settle, and the fog in the archway stirred for the first time, parting at its center by a hand’s breadth, like an eye half-opening.
“Aster.” Theron stepped back, flexing his unmarked hand as though the wood had handed it back to him clean. “You’re next. The herd’s blood is old and royal enough.”
Aster grumbled something about being volunteered, but he laid his great palm to the thorns and dragged it down the way Theron had.
The wood bit into him and drank him down, and again the fog widened.
Lazaros followed, jaw tight, giving the gateway his blood without a word.
Then he turned and crossed back to where I was still sitting upon my horse, still holding her in my arms.
“Pass her to me,” he said quietly. “I’ll hold her.”
For a moment, I couldn’t make my arms obey.
Then I leaned down and gave my brother the sleeping weight of her, watched him gather Alexandra against his chest with a care that loosened something tight behind my ribs.
Only then did I swing down from Acelin’s back.
I tossed the reins to the captain, and the man caught them without a word.
His face was carefully blank in the way of a soldier who would rather be anywhere else.
I walked to the gateway, and without a word, I laid my own palm to the thorns, drew it down, and let the wood take its payment.
The hooks bit in, and my blood welled before it was gathered and drawn inward, and the fog parted another hand’s breadth.
The dark behind it seemed to lean closer, as though it had been waiting for me in particular.
And there I stopped, because here was the fear I had been carrying since Theron had suggested coming here.
“She is no king,” I said quietly, turning back to where Lazaros held her. “No royal of any line. The realm will turn her away.” And turning her away, I had been given to understand, was the kindest thing it did.
“The realm will know exactly what she is,” Theron said, as he met my eyes, and there was no cruelty in them now, only a terrible certainty.
“She carries its own shadow inside her, Atlas. Stolen or no, that darkness is of this place, and the realm will recognize its own blood in her veins long before it troubles itself over a crown. Of all of us, she is the one it will let through without a second thought. Give it her hand.”
I didn’t want to…. Even now, even to save her, the thought of laying her skin open turned my stomach.
But I crossed to my brother regardless, and I took her small, cold hand from where it hung limp at her side.
Then I opened her slack fingers and pressed her palm flat to the thorns.
I drew it down myself, as gently as I could, and felt the tiny hooks catch and bite.
A dozen fine red lines welled up dark against her gray skin, and the barbs took them, gathering her blood the way they had gathered ours.
The realm took her blood faster than it had taken any of ours.
It did not sip.
It gorged itself on it.
It pulled, eager and immediate, the light blooming bright and deep within the wood, and the fog tore wholly open with a sound like a long indrawn breath.
A black throat of a passage now yawning where the held mist had been.
A fog now sinking down and away into a dark that no beam of light would ever touch.
“There,” Theron said softly. “You see? She belongs here more than any of us. That ought to frighten you a great deal more than it seems to.” I gritted my teeth at that but said nothing of my fear.
Because the truth was that it didn’t just frighten me…
It terrified me more than words could ever say.
I turned once to my captain and gave the order for the men to hold the threshold and wait for us to return, however long it took. Then I reclaimed my queen and gathered Alexandra closer against my chest.
With the Gorgon King on one side and my brother and my oldest friend at my back, I carried the woman I loved through the breathing dark and into the realm…
Of the Shadow King.