13. Chapter Thirteen #2
I glowered at him, thinking about how much better he would look with my dagger against his throat.
He stepped forward again, slow as a stalking wolf. “Stop talking, stop trying to feel with your Sight,” he said softly, that odd sense of familiarity lingering between us.
What was that?
It had to be another side effect of this horrendous bond.
“Touch the earth beneath you. Feel it,” he finished.
My jaw ached with the effort of holding back another retort. Frustration sparked hot in my veins, but I dropped to my knees anyway. Moss pressed cool and damp under my palms.
For a heartbeat, I felt nothing. The dirt beneath my palms was rough and unimpressive. I was about to snap at him again with some smug retort.
Then, it came.
A pulse. A hum. As though the ground itself had been patiently waiting for me to feel it.
The sensation slid up my arms in tendrils, delicate at first, then insistent—threads weaving themselves around me.
My Sight had never touched this before. This wasn’t like seeing the Weave, watching lives twist and tangle.
This was the pulse of Anamcroí itself, ancient and alive, pressing into my skin and crawling into my lungs until I couldn’t breathe anything else.
I gasped, the sounds of the forest filled my ears—rivers rolling, branches groaning, the heartbeat of animals in the thickets. All of it layered, harmonized. The sensations were all so familiar in a way that I couldn’t place.
I closed my eyes. For once, I didn’t see. I simply… felt.
When I finally opened them again, everything was clearer. The leaves gleamed like shards of jade, the ground hummed under me. Every thread of the realm was thrumming against my skin.
It was the most overwhelming sensation I’d ever felt. And when I looked up, Tairngire was standing over me. His stillness carved from something ancient. The Stagborn god was now regarding me as if I’d startled him.
The earth pulsed through my veins, moss loamy beneath my palms, but I couldn’t look away. His gaze held mine like a snare, unyielding. Suffocating me.
The forest quieted with him, every rustle swallowed by his silence. The hum of the thread inside me clashed with the new pulse rising from the roots. Warring or weaving, I couldn’t tell.
My chest rose and fell quickly. He didn’t move, just watched me as if I’d done something to upset his stone cold exterior.
The air tightened until the ache in my lungs drowned out the ache in my arms. I swallowed hard, forcing words past the tightness in my throat. “What?” The word scraped out, breathless. “Did I do it wrong?’
His eyes flicked to my hands still buried in the moss, then back to my face with an inscrutable look that made me want to scream.
I opened my mouth to break the silence.
“There are…echoes in you,” he spoke before I could, his voice soft, almost like the words weren’t meant for me.
My pulse quickened. “Echoes of what, exactly?”
His expression flickered once before indifference slid back into place. “Of things that do not die, though men forget them.”
I huffed. “Surprise, surprise. Another riddle.”
His lips twitched. “Riddles are the only way certain truths can survive, Little Seer.”
" Riddles are the only way certain truths can survive," I repeated back to him in a mocking tone before letting out an exasperated sigh. “Honestly, what the fuck does that even mean, Tairngire? Would it kill you to speak plainly for once?”
These little games of his were getting old. Fast.
He seemed to ponder that for a moment before answering, choosing his words carefully. “Threads spun before you were born. Choices made before the Thread Wars. Names that echo for longer than mortals draw breath.”
Each word felt heavier than the last, and frustration brushed through me. Nothing he said ever made any godsdamned sense!
“If you mean to teach me, then teach. If you mean to torment me, say it outright.”
He tilted his head, laughter in his eyes. “Torment? No. Your own questions will do that well enough.”
The familiar heat of rage started to rise, but his words sank deeper than a foot lodged in quicksand. My Sight itched, begging to pull threads, to unravel meaning.
Nothing answered.
“More cryptic nonsense,” I muttered. “You sound like the Oracle.”
“The Oracle speaks of futures. I speak of things that have already come to pass. It would benefit you to learn the difference.”
The air changed again, his smug energy coming off in waves. I swallowed hard. He was testing me, he wanted me to react. I knew it, and yet I couldn’t stop. I had more questions than answers. and I intended to ask them.
But he had already turned away, dismissing me with a flick of his hand. “Come,” he said. “You’ll understand in time.”
He continued walking again, a flock of birds followed in his wake. I followed also, my attitude burning hotter with every step until it inevitably snapped.
“When do you plan to take me across realms?” My voice was laced with irritation. “Or are you content to keep circling this forest until my bones rot?”
He didn’t break stride. “Anxious, are you?”
“I’m not anxious,” I barked, though the knot in my chest betrayed me. “I’m trying to be prepared for whatever nonsense you’ll inevitably drag me into.”
He glanced over his shoulder, green eyes gleaming with amusement. “Prepared? You’ve barely learned to hear the forest, Little Seer. And you think you’re ready to step beyond it?”
“I’ve studied more than you think. Histories. Wars. Their—”
“Books,” he cut in smoothly. “Mortals and half-born monks scribbling from stone halls. You think bark and blood live in ink?” He stopped so fast I nearly stumbled into him.
His voice was dripping with authority. “You want to cross realms? Learn this one first. The First Forest, where roots run deeper than the Weave and important lessons wait in the shadows.”
I hated that his nearness quickened my pulse, hated the certainty in his tone—like he’d found every doubt I carried and was ready to exploit every single one.
I’d already confronted some of the shadows here.
I knew what he thought of me. He made that clear.
That I’d never tasted blood, that I didn’t understand the burden of taking a life.
But I had, I just couldn’t tell him.
I forced my chin up. “And how long until you decide I’ve ‘learned’ enough?”
He shrugged lazily. “When you stop asking.”
I clenched my fists, biting curses off my tongue. Gods, he was impossible. And yet, part of me knew he was right.
Silence pressed between us, with only the rustle of leaves and cicadas filling the gap.
I shifted, ready to throw another barb but he was already moving again.
HIs back turned as though the conversation was over.
I cursed under my breath and crossed my arms, refusing to move with him until I got my answers.
“So now that you know Branwyn’s glamour trick,” I called after him, “are you going to tell on me?”
He froze, sunlight catching in his curls as he turned slowly. That feral smirk returned, slow and deliberate.
“Tell on you?” he let the words hang, savoring them. “And to whom would I run tattling? The High Priestess? Elder Brannach? Perhaps the Old Gods themselves, since you seem to think I’m their loyal hound.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Aren’t you?”
His laugh was soft, humorless, almost a growl.
He stepped closer, I could feel the heat radiating off of him even from paces away.
“If I were their hound, Little Seer, I would have dragged you back to the temple the moment I saw dice in your hand and Branwyn’s lies on your tongue.
” His gaze caught mine, shining with unchecked ferocity. “But I didn't. Did I?”
A chill slid down my spine. “Not yet.”
He barked a humorless laugh. “Not ever. I don’t answer to your Priestess.
Or Brannach. And the Old Gods?” His mouth twisted, amusement curdled into the same disdain I saw last night.
“They like to pretend I serve them. So I let them. Believe me when I tell you that everything I do has its purpose.” A heavy dose of lethality laced his tone, leaving no room for argument.
I forced my chin high, though unease coiled tight. “Then who do you answer to?”
He used his silence as a weapon, slicing through my resolve with every second of it. My heart hammered for an answer. But he gave none. He only stood there, jaw flexing like he was biting something back.
Then he turned forward once more, shoulders creaking, gesturing for me to continue following with two careless fingers.
“I asked you a question, forest lord.” I snapped.
“And I chose to ignore it,” he tossed over his shoulder, walking ahead confident and unbothered. “Get used to that, Little Seer.”
I muttered something vicious and followed anyway, branches scratching at my cloak as the forest got darker. The air was thick with something unknown stirring just beneath the surface. It thrummed in my bones, vibrating like a thousand threads slipping just out of reach.
Tairngire eventually slowed, coming to a halt in a patch of dappled sunlight.
He didn’t face me at first. Instead, he crouched, pressing one hand flat to the earth.
The movement was fluid, reverent almost, and for once he wasn’t bleeding arrogance.
He had done something similar, just last night, when the Fates damned me.
My heart pounded relentlessly in my chest.
The ground answered him—a faint pulse climbing through the moss into my soles. I let out a gasp as a ripple passed the clearing. Then…there was movement.
From the underbrush came a rustle. Eyes blinked in the shadows—amber, gold, silver.
A fox stepped out, flame-bright against the green foliage.
A pair of stags followed, antlers etched with lichen.
Birds swept to the lower branches of trees that had became sentient, their branches reaching out and intertwining with one another.
I had never seen them do such a thing. I stared, wonderstruck.