23. Henry
HENRY
T he night is a fierce, breath-stealing cold. The wind tears at my coat as I pass through the gates from level two to level one of the fort. A chill zips up my spine.
I’ve tried to banish the dread by returning here over and over—conditioning myself to the rush of memory of the moment I first knew the fort might fall.
But all my efforts have been in vain. The fear of that night never quite leaves me.
It has grown roots inside my chest. Vengeance on the Carrenwells is the only thing that has a chance of ripping it out.
Kyrin trots along beside me, closer than usual. I think he senses my apprehension. Maybe that’s why he’s finally left Harlow’s side, or maybe he stayed there in the first place because he knew she was in pain. Ky has wandered progressively closer the lower I descend through the fort.
The eleven bells ring out from back atop the level six wall. I should be in bed, resting ahead of tomorrow’s wedding, but instead I’m trudging through the dark fort with just the sliver of the moon in the sky.
The colorblindness that came with my first death used to bother me in this kind of darkness. But where my vision was diminished by my journey across the veil, my other senses returned sharper. I could probably navigate these streets and alleyways blindfolded at this point .
I’m energized from this new knowledge of my wife-to-be. Harlow has pain that can’t be cured by the well in Lunameade. While I’ve only been working on her for a short time, this chance at revenge has been such a long time coming. Finally, I know something valuable.
I know there’s so much more to learn about Harlow.
At first, I thought her way of talking around things was just a deflection—the result of being around magical people who could probably tell how she was feeling and what she wasn’t saying—the practiced dance of someone who must always be cautious.
But there was real pain in her eyes when I told her about Holly.
If she were the idiotic, spoiled city girl I was expecting her to be before I met her, I might feel bad about sharing what she told me.
But Harlow is a worthy adversary. She’s probably off spouting everything I told her to her bodyguard now.
I’m suddenly glad I burned the note from her family and instructed the dove keepers to confiscate any correspondence she or Gaven try to send.
Music spills out of a pub to my right, the sound of laughter and glasses clinking punctuating the frantic fiddle music. The familiar sounds of a normal evening should be relaxing, but they set my nerves on edge.
I always feel that way when I’m on the first fort level at night, but it’s worse with Harlow here. The stakes are higher.
The bright white scar of the mending against the darker, weathered cream of the rest of the wall is impossible to ignore, even in such low light.
I turn down the straightaway that leads to the front wall, trying to settle the restlessness that hasn’t left my body since I walked Harlow back to her room and made sure she actually read the ceremony sequence for tomorrow.
Pre-wedding jitters would make sense if I were actually worried about the success of my marriage.
This is more of a growing apprehension that I’m in over my head.
The more I learn about Harlow, the less I understand her.
It’s not as if I expected it would be easy to overthrow the family that’s ruled Lunameade for generations, but this is a type of warfare I am unprepared for.
Kyrin trots ahead of me, claws clacking on the stone. I climb the stairs behind him and turn right, nodding at the guard stationed at the bell tower by the front gates as I walk toward the mended part of the wall.
My father is standing exactly where I expected him to be. He does this often—walks through the fort in the evenings, checking on our people as he makes his way down to the wall. He stays for a while, sometimes just watching the forest or others walking the wall.
He smiles as I approach. “Surprised to see you down here. Tomorrow’s a big day. I take it you have news.”
I slide up beside him and lean my elbows on the stone railing, looking out at the towering trees. “Harlow is ailing. She has episodes of severe pain in her head that come with nausea and shifts in vision.”
My father tilts his face toward me. I can’t read his expression when he’s backlit by torchlight. “Is that why we haven’t seen her in a few days?”
“Yes, she locked herself in her room under the guise of being in prayer and meditation before our wedding. Apparently the well in Lunameade hasn’t been able to heal her.”
“Not everything is meant to be mended by the Divine,” my father says. “Some ailments are teachers.”
“I doubt she would agree with that assessment.”
He hums. “Yes. I’m sure you’re right. Does her family well give her any relief at all?”
“It doesn’t seem like it.”
We fall into a silence, and he traces his fingers over the white stone mending the wall.
Standing on top of the breach, the wall looks stronger than ever.
It is stronger than ever. The stone was mended by one of the most powerful fort families, the Rathens.
It took them months of intricate work, and I spent those months guarding them as they used their protection magic from Divine Vardek to fuse the stone back together.
When I asked one of the Rathens how they did it, they said you have to remind the stone—like it’s a living thing—that your will must be stronger than what seems possible.
Every time I look at this mark on the wall, I think of those words.
“Anything else?” my father asks.
The etched lines of the burns on Harlow’s back rise in my mind unbidden. They aren’t random. They’re art. Someone made art out of her pain .
“She has a large and very unusual scar on her lower back that looks like a brand.”
My father rubs a hand over his beard. “How did it make you feel?”
The question is so unexpected that I can’t think of a lie or deflection. “Uneasy. Like I’ve underestimated my opponent.”
“But you’re already in the fight.”
I nod. “And I didn’t wait almost ten years not to finish it.”
“Well, by all accounts and reports we’ve received, no one in Lunameade lays a hand on a Carrenwell without paying for it,” he says. “Which means it was either done by a dead man, or?—”
“A relative,” I finish for him.
The thought fills me with irrational anger. The skin was healed—the scar old and white, as if someone had hand-painted shooting stars there, when really they were branded into her flesh.
“It’s not a bad idea to work that angle and see what you can find.” My father cocks his head and smirks. “Curious how you saw her naked.”
I slowly turn to face him head-on. “She was too buttoned up. I had to give her something if I wanted to get something out of her. I suspected that she’d been ill when she was locked in her room for days.”
My father’s face is a mask of calm. “So you showed her the well?”
I nod.
“And she saw your scars?”
I nod again.
He sighs. “Well, we knew you would probably have to give that up at some point. No way she would see all of those scars and not start asking questions. Better that answer come from you and not someone with loose lips. She can’t know the full story until you’re married.”
I know he’s right. Very few people know the truth, but they know that those of us who were revived are different. Whatever blessing Asher granted us made us baser, more animal. This possessiveness I feel about Harlow is just part of that baser instinct I came back with.
I try not to think about the soft curve of her hips, her full breasts, or the way she groaned when she slipped into the hot water.
This would all be easier if I weren’t attracted to her.
The inconvenient animal instinct in me wants to drag her into a dark room and make her scream and come for hours, until I’m so deep inside of her that I know there’s nothing she can hide from me .
Rolling out my shoulders, I try to shake the lewd thoughts away.
Unfortunately, chasing them off leaves me with only the disquieting feeling that perhaps not all of my desire to protect her is born out of some base animal possessiveness.
Some small part of me likes the way she challenges me.
It’s both comforting and unnerving that she looks at me with no fear—like she has seen much worse.
I shove the thought from my mind.
My father pats my back. “Don’t worry about the well. We’ve long suspected Harrick knew about the Mountain Well. I imagine it’s why he was willing to sacrifice our people. If the fort fell, he would have yet another secret well.”
I clench my teeth. Harrick Carrenwell’s greed and desire for power knows no bounds.
“And given that we showed up after ten years away with no fear of what he would do, he must assume we have a strong magical community to have survived. We couldn’t do that if we weren’t doing our own well ceremonies and continuing to have new generations blessed with Divine gifts.
” My father tugs at the sleeves of his wool coat.
“Is Harlow ready for the wedding tomorrow?”
I nod. “She claims she’s read everything I gave her, and by all accounts she’s committed to being respectful and following through on this. I haven’t figured out what she’s getting out of it yet, but it must be something good for her to travel so far from home and risk her life to ruin mine.”
My father laughs—a deep, rumbling laugh that’s so rare to me I can’t help but smile. “Divine deliver us! No concern you’ll be seeing color any time soon.”