Chapter 33
33
A SHUDDER WRACKS THE MASSIVE slab of stone where we’ve made camp, startling me awake. The low rumble of distant thunder follows.
It is dark. Zephyrus sleeps, unaware of the grit shaking free of the rocky overhang to blanket his clothes in pale dust. One tremor bleeds into the next, and the forest groans, straining to keep itself rooted to the mountainside.
Mile after mile, we traveled until reaching the mountain Zephyrus claimed would lead us to his brother’s realm. There, we stopped to rest. I promised to take first watch, but shortly after he fell asleep I must have followed, succumbing to the exhaustion of fleeing the Orchid King’s hounds. I’m not sure how much time has passed, but we must move.
“Zephyrus.” As I shake him awake, the ground lurches, tossing me sideways. Something cracks in the vast darkness beyond sight.
He stirs, props himself up with an elbow. “Brielle?” In the watery light cast by the waning moon, his skin appears sallow, his eyes deep pits.
Another shock rolls through Under. “What’s happening?” I whisper.
A gust snaps from Zephyrus’ palm to race across the valley, blasting through brush and felled trees. Less than two heartbeats later, the wind returns, dragging a fetid scent with it.
He peers out into the darkness, grim-faced. “Under demands blood,” he replies. “It must be given soon if it is to survive another cycle.”
I, too, scour the landscape. I do not recognize this part of the realm: rivers and mountains beneath the earth. “What happens if it doesn’t receive any?”
“If it fails to receive my blood, the realm will begin to collapse. It did not used to be this way, but once Pierus took control, Under grew dependent on my power. The tithe cannot be delayed for long.”
The next quake runs cracks through the stone. When the rumbling quiets, I hear it: the baying of hounds on a hunt.
Zephyrus’ breath spikes, and his pupils shrink, twin drops of blood squeezed to nothing. His smell—crisp sunlight—begins to turn, curdling like a bowl of milk that has spoiled.
“But you killed them…” My voice trails off. He’d torn those beasts apart with nothing but wind.
Zephyrus scrubs a hand down his face. “Pierus has countless hounds at his disposal. An army, if you will.”
Beneath the spreading numbness, I am afraid. I wonder when this journey will end. “How close?”
“The hounds move quickly. They will likely arrive within the hour.”
We cannot outrun them. And yet we must.
Zephyrus shudders then, though the ground itself lies still. One hand fists atop his thigh, long fingers contained by the clasp of his hand. “Pierus calls for me.”
“You’ve ignored the call before, right?” I remind him. “When you visited Boreas.”
I called for you three months ago, the Orchid King had said, his voice the only evidence of the insidious ritual awaiting Zephyrus in that chambered field of roses.
“Yes.” Zephyrus nods with a vague blankness. “Distance eases the strain. If we can reach Notus’ realm, I’ll be safe.”
I’m on my feet, gathering supplies and shoving them into my knapsack. Pivoting, the roselight held high, I take in the cave mouth a stone’s throw ahead, tall and narrow, chilled air wafting from the mountain’s depths.
“If we keep pace,” I say, turning to face Zephyrus, “we should reach your brother in a few hours.” That is, after all, what he told me yesterday.
“It won’t be a few hours, Brielle.”
I understand the journey’s difficulties, but I grow weary of his skepticism and negativity. “I know things haven’t gone smoothly—”
“I can’t move my legs.”
It is as though I hear these words from a great distance. They cannot touch me where I stand. “Are you sure?”
“I think I know when I can’t move my legs,” Zephyrus snaps.
My hands shake, but I shove them under my arms for additional warmth, smothering the panic before it overwhelms. It will do no good to fall apart. “We knew this was going to happen,” I say, my gaze steady on the West Wind. “We still have time.”
He continues to stare at his unresponsive legs. “Time?” One hand drags through his curls, yanking strands of hair free. “We are out of time. We cannot reach my brother if I cannot walk.”
“Then I will carry you.”
He shakes his head, and oh, what bitterness that smile has wrought. “You cannot carry me, Brielle.”
Normally, I would not take offense, but I am weary, hungry, and short on patience. My reply snaps out. “And why not?”
A momentary brightness revives his gaze. It is nearly as shrewd as I remember. “Perhaps on a sunny day, across flat ground, after we had rested and filled our bellies. But fleeing the Orchid King’s hounds in the dark? While Under shakes itself to pieces?” He attempts to push himself upright on quavering arms, then wilts, cursing beneath his breath when he fails to gather the required strength. “These obstacles would be trying for a god,” he adds, “much less a mortal woman.”
Zephyrus isn’t the heaviest thing I have carried, but he has walled himself into an early defeat. He sees how high the walls rise and will remain confined within them until the light is gone, his world naught but damp and cold.
“All I want is to try. We owe it to ourselves to do so.”
He shakes his head. “I will not ask you to carry me.”
“You do not have to ask.” Only now do I rest a hand on his. “I’m offering.”
“It’s too far,” he grinds out.
“Says who?”
A gust snaps through camp. “What will you do, drag me the remaining ten miles? Will you break your spine to ensure I reach Notus before my demise?” Breath by scalding breath, the air crackles around him. “I will not subject you to that burden.”
“You are not a burden,” I argue. “Not to me.”
He slumps lower to the ground. “Return to Carterhaugh and forget about me.”
I watch him calmly, hoping to draw his attention back to me, but Zephyrus, Bringer of Spring, is defeated. He is both a god and a boy, beloved and abandoned. His hurt reflects my own.
“Have my actions misguided you?” I whisper, curling my fingers around my trinity knot pendant.
“Your actions have only demonstrated your kindness and compassion, but this is not about me,” he growls, a sound more animal than man. “This is about you, the life you must live. There’s still time to make this right. You can return to Miles Cross and rejoin your people. You will live a long, happy, healthy life. A free life.”
“Zephyrus.” Reluctantly, his gaze meets mine. “Do you think I would come all this way, go through all this trouble, to turn back?” My mouth quirks. Brielle of then would never have taken such a risk.
He appears tentative, unsure of his place. “I would not blame you if that were so.”
“It’s my choice.” My tone will not yield, and neither will I. “I don’t care what you think you deserve. You have atoned for your actions, and now is the time to forgive yourself.” Then I add, as if speaking to a small child, “You can have good things, too, you know.”
“What is the point of having good things,” he whispers, “if I fail to care for them?”
He blinks, and I’m shocked by the tears slipping down his cheeks. Here, at the end of days, the West Wind falls to pieces. My heart aches at the sight. “Zephyrus.”
“I sabotage,” he goes on. “I do not know how to do otherwise. I take and I take until nothing remains. It is a sickness in me.”
“You are not your past.” And then, gently, “You are so much more than your mistakes.”
Shame colors his skin a dull pink. “You are perhaps the only good thing in my life, and I treated you no better than a dog called to heel.” A hitch in his breath. “I am sorry,” he says. “For everything.”
Cupping his face in my hands, I brush my mouth across his damp cheek. “Do not cry for me, Zephyrus,” I whisper. “Cry for the girl who had yet to meet you, who did not realize how small her world had become.”
No matter the ways Zephyrus wronged me, my heart is a cup filled to brimming. I let him purge these hurts. This, I understand.
“I forgive you,” I murmur into his cheek. “For all that you have done, I forgive you.”
He turns his head, studying the cave opening as the barking nears. Even with a head start, I question whether we will be able to outrun the hounds. “Are you sure you can carry me? I’m a grown man. It will not be easy.”
I pull away, give him a dismissive once-over: lean musculature, a distinct lack of fat. “Please,” I scoff. “Don’t insult me.”
Carrying the West Wind, as it turns out, isn’t nearly as bad as the long days spent carting barley from the fields. Guided by the roselight pulsing dimly in my hand, we venture through the carved network of tunnels below the mountain. The light grows more feeble with each passing hour, small clots of what looks like blood held suspended inside the glass.
We round a bend into yet more darkness. My back twinges as Zephyrus’ weight drags at me, but I heft him higher where he hangs against my side, tightening my arm around his waist. Another step, a slow shuffle against the hard-packed soil. Eventually, the dim begins to recede.
Gasping, I pick up the pace. First mauve, then gray, the pinprick of brightness ahead guiding me onward despite my body’s exhaustion. And then I am running, dragging Zephyrus forward, slipping through the narrow vein to emerge, unscathed, into the world above.
The light is a flood, and I recoil from its intensity, the cool darkness driven back by a swell of unbearable heat. In the distance, mounds of sand shimmer like great heaps of gold coins, their gleaming peaks slanting into strips of violet. At my feet, the earth is baked red, cracked like a turtle’s shell. After days belowground, the sun—the real sun—warms my weary soul.
“Zephyrus,” I breathe. “You were right.” The world is vast, and what a shame it would be to know only one piece of it.
East to west and beyond, there is the sky. It is sapphire, cerulean, cobalt, azure. At our backs, cliffs of smooth clay interrupted by pale striations act as a soaring wall enclosing the desert realm, their massive shadow stamped onto the fissured ground. Even my lungs prickle from the heat.
There is no sign of Under’s twisted roots. Only salt. Only sand.
“Will your brother meet us here?” I ask.
A scorching gust screams over the dunes, and in the ensuing silence, I realize I have not heard my companion speak in some time.
I look down. Zephyrus sags against my side. His face is slack, eyes closed. “Zephyrus.” I shake him hard. His head lolls.
I lower him onto the sizzling earth. My hands tremble as I check for a pulse. It is too faint.
A glance around the gold and ruby landscape. What of the South Wind, whom we have need of? Did he receive his brother’s message? And what will become of us if he has not?
As I brush the curls from Zephyrus’ clammy forehead, a shadow falls over me. Springing to my feet, I whirl, drawing my dagger in a seamless motion to meet a pair of dark, glittering eyes.