Chapter 15
For the life of me, I can’t figure out what it is about Raina Bloodgood that makes her so impossible to ignore. She’s beautiful, yes. But she’s also a hellion who almost let me die and might be trying to drive me mad.
And I want to ignore her, godsdamn it. I want to pretend I haven’t studied the dark, feathery line of her eyelashes while she sleeps, or memorized the curve of her plush lips, or marveled at how delicate her skin seems under the firelight, remembering how soft it felt beneath every brief touch.
Yet here I am, still staring at her in the pre-dawn light, feeling as if I’ve been inside this moment before, lying next to her in a forest, all while admiring her body curled beside mine. It’s a feeling I can’t shake.
One that’s beginning to unnerve me.
I get up and make our morning meal of apple slices, black walnuts, and bread, spreading the food on a piece of linen I found in the leather satchel from Littledenn. I tend to the horses and forage for berries, too, then refill our water skins with stream water I boiled and cooled.
Much as I’d like to let her sleep, we don’t have the luxury of time, so I nudge Raina’s knee with the toe of my boot. Regardless of my efforts not to scare her, she instantly bolts upright and reaches for the dagger lying on the ground at her side, her hand closing tightly around the hilt.
“Easy now.” I raise my hands. “It’s just me. Time to eat and get moving.”
I watch as it takes a few moments for Raina to grasp the reality around her. She blinks up at me, like I’m a figment of her imagination. She soon exhales a long breath and scrubs a hand through her long, dark hair, nodding her understanding.
As I take my place by the dying fire, she rakes her fingers through her locks and weaves them into a neat plait. Then she cleans up in the water I collected from the stream. I warmed a bowlful by the flames earlier so she wouldn’t be forced to wash her face and hands in ice-cold water.
When she joins me to eat, sitting cross-legged, she signs a simple, “Thanks.”
It isn’t much, but at least she’s growing more cordial, and she opened up far more than I expected last night.
I run my tongue over the sore split in my bottom lip. Less feral is good.
“You are most welcome,” I sign in reply, noticing that, for once, her sapphire eyes aren’t glazed with unshed tears.
When wolves howl in the distance, sounding their morning wake-up call, Raina jerks around, searching the forest at our backs. My cloak slips over her shoulder, revealing her blue bodice and heaving chest—and far too many distracting curves.
“Aren’t you glad I found you?” I ask, averting my eyes as I try to focus on my meal. “This is the land of the white wolf.”
I know I’m being a bastard, and I know I need to let it go, but even after our conversation last night and a decent rest, I still bristle when I think about how determined she was to be rid of me, and how careless she was with her own life, all for a vendetta against Colden.
She just glares at me and flicks a vulgar gesture, telling me to fuck off.
I bite back a grin, trying to keep my mouth in its usual stern line, though I can’t tame the corners.
It wasn’t necessarily Raina’s defiance that angered me yesterday.
I fear I like her fire too damn much. Enough that she’ll burn me if I’m not careful.
She isn’t scared to put up a fight, and for some reason, the thought of the two of us battling it out again, like what happened by the stream, only stirs my blood, making me feel things I have no right to feel for this woman.
Like she could possibly be the most exciting challenge I’ve faced in my whole life.
And that’s impressive.
What really angered me was my reaction to her defiance.
It bothered me that I could sense her hatred, not only for Colden, but for me as well.
It was powerful enough that she gave me little choice but to abandon her to her fate, one I knew would end poorly.
I could ride away or force her to come with me, and I chose to give her what she wanted.
But gods’ death, as my anger cooled, I realized leaving her behind was something I simply could not do, even knowing how badly I needed to get to Winterhold.
With every mile traveled, the thought of deserting her in this forest haunted me more and more, and once nightfall came, I was done for.
There was no way I could ride another minute without Raina Bloodgood.
I’d throw her over my godsdamn shoulder and tie her to the back of my horse if I had to.
I dared her to defy me again. One way or another, she was coming with me.
As I turned back east to search for her, I told myself it was for no other reason than Nephele. Seeing her sister safely to Winterhold was important. But protecting my friend’s sister wasn’t the only thing pushing me as I rode.
Something inside me sparked to life as Mannus stormed across Frostwater Wood, a certainty that Raina was near, mingled with a strange nostalgia.
Like I was headed…home.
It’s just a result of being in these parts of Frostwater Wood again. I know that.
Raina and I get up and smother our fire, gather our things, and head out for the day’s ride.
“If we can get to Winter Road, I have a hunting shelter where we can gather more food and better weapons,” I tell her.
She looks intrigued by that idea, while all my mind can seem to do is imagine her fighting with that scythe again. It had been a sight to behold, one I could not look away from, and one I don’t think I’ll ever forget.
The hours wear on, the wind growing colder the farther north we travel, the forest becoming denser and laden with thickets, making it harder to traverse. It slows us down when we don’t have time to lose.
By the time night falls again, and we’ve bedded down, I turn my back to Raina, not wanting her to see what I’m certain is written all over my face. Because I can do nothing but lie awake with worry. I’ve yet to sense even a trickle of Witch Walker magick in the wood.
The next afternoon, however, that changes. We finally turn west at the end of the ridge and head toward Winter Road. Within the next hour, a thrum of magick tickles the air. I can feel it guiding us, as if calling to me, a sense of certainty that only settles deeper with every trot.
And then, in the distance, I see it. A black veil sparkling with faint, glimmering light, as if night and all its stars were trapped here. Raina and I bring our horses to a halt. I glance at her, watching her pretty eyes shimmer as she stares wide-eyed at what awaits us through the trees.
“What is that?” she signs.
I’m conflicted by both a sense of comfort and imminent danger as I reply.
“That would be Nephele’s magick.”
Ahead lies a tunnel of trees and thorny brambles, surrounded by the menacing, glimmering darkness. Inside that darkness are hundreds of interwoven branches, arcing across a leaf-covered path that leads to utter obscurity. Or so it seems.
The magick radiating from the tunnel is so strong that the power prickles against my skin. The entrance all but writhes, like a portal of sorts, as if the branches only remain open so they might draw in the enemy.
“This is unreal,” Raina says, marveling at the construct.
“Nephele’s construct. The darkness you saw in the waters, I imagine.”
I scrub my hand over my beard. I should’ve known Nephele would go for the surest method to keep the Eastlanders at bay; I just wasn’t certain what that method would be. All I can do is hope she really can sense me once we’re inside, like I’ve claimed.
Raina glances to the right and left of the tunnel, where the wood appears ordinary and calm.
Shafts of soft afternoon sunlight stream between the leaves and bare branches of the deciduous trees, glistening in the frost clinging to the evergreens.
The cold day is marked by birdsong and skittering animals, but I have a feeling that it won’t remain this innocent once we cross into the construct.
“I suppose you plan to tell me we cannot go another way,” Raina signs.
“Unfortunately, there’s only one way, and that’s through,” I reply. “Even if we’d gone our separate ways, chances are we still would’ve ended up here. We just wouldn’t be together.”
“So much for going to your hunting shelter for better weapons, then,” she signs.
“True enough. This is the part of vast magick that can’t be changed if it’s meant to hold.
In this case, it appears the construct might be an alternate version of the forest. It’s the smaller things within that construct the witches at Winterhold can manipulate as we pass, but the structure itself is not to be tampered with. It either exists or it doesn’t.”
I know my witches. They’re cunning and strategic. I only hope they can hold this construct long enough to snuff out the Eastlanders. Vast magick of this magnitude is challenging to sustain for long periods.
That is the true flaw in the plan.
Raina’s brow tightens. I see the doubt on her face and in her eyes, but I’m right, and I know I’m right, so I turn Mannus to the left and guide him toward the peaceful woodland—an act of compromise and education.
The tunnel shifts, heading me off, a gaping, lightless cavern waiting to swallow me whole.
I redirect and head in the opposite direction, but again…
“You see? The tunnel is everywhere,” I tell her. “That’s the magick’s design. To give the Eastlanders no other choice than to find themselves within the enchanted darkness of a hopeful tomb.”
Raina’s face hardens, and her hands—lovely as they are—move in an almost threatening manner when she signs. “You said the wood would let us pass. That the magick knows you. Why does it not allow safe passage now?”