Chapter 28
The trek to the caves is dangerous, taking us down a steep hill and into a dry gorge northeast of Hampstead Loch.
We ride together on Mannus’s reliable back once again, pulling Tuck behind.
Both animals are so tired that the short journey is even more of a battle.
As for me, my side hurts from where I snagged it on the rocks, and I think I might be bleeding a little, but performing a healing on such treacherous terrain is impossible.
The ground flattens once we reach the ravine, making the ride more manageable, though the barren riverbed is rocky and littered with boulders. Overhead, the sky looks like it’s painted with blood and speckled with snow.
A wind whips and whistles through the bluffs and nearly rips away the gambeson I cling to for dear life. I tug it tight and tuck my chin to my chest against the gust, causing me to miss the veins of electricity that arc above. I still feel the power and see the flicker of light.
I’ve never witnessed lightning amidst snowfall, much less silent lightning, but every so often, a white flash bolts across the red sky.
It’s enough to make me cringe with every streak, but eventually it fades, the wind stills, and I drift.
True sleep has eluded me for too many days, and my body finally gives in.
When I wake, I’m slow at coming back to life. The first thing I grasp is that I think I hear a wolf howling. Secondly, I’m in a cavern, lying on the gambeson. A dying fire and my mother’s dish—filled with melted snow for scrying—wait a few feet away.
Alexus’s arms are around me, one slung over my waist, holding me tight against him while the other rests beneath my head for comfort, our fingers entwined.
The old blanket covers us, and his warm, steady breath stirs my hair.
His beard has grown quite a bit since Collecting Day, and it tickles my ear.
So little has given me reason to smile in the last several days, but this closeness is so calming that I let a satisfied grin unfurl.
The fire Alexus must’ve built after bringing me inside the cave has burned to embers, so I think we’ve slept for a long while now. I’m not completely rested, but I no longer feel like I might die from the lack of sleep either.
The cave isn’t what I imagined. There’s light—and not only from our fire.
The faint glow from the crimson sky shines through a small space between two fingerlike formations protruding from the ceiling.
The cavern’s innards are deep and tall enough that Alexus was able to bring the horses inside.
They rest at the rear of the cave, lying down, exhausted.
Lastly, it strikes me that the Prince of the East didn’t come to me while I slept. Perhaps he really is gone, though I’m not sure he would’ve left without the God Knife. He thought he had it, but Alexus was right. I destroyed his moment of gloating.
He won’t let that stand if he can help it.
I sigh. I can’t think about the prince right now. Don’t want to think about him. I just want to lie here, absorbing Alexus’s body heat while he rests, thinking about the way his heart beats against my back, the rhythm in time with my own.
“You should be sleeping.” His voice sends a delicious shiver through me.
I squeeze his hand, not wanting to let go to sign.
He leans down and presses a tender kiss to my neck, making every inch of my skin come alive.
“I need to add kindling to the fire,” he says against my ear. “Or it will get very cold very quickly.” Yet he relaxes and then doesn’t move. I suppose neither of us wants to lose this peaceful moment.
My father made a snow globe once, for my mother.
He used stardrop petals and water from the stream, poured inside a blown glass orb he fired in the kiln.
I remember shaking it and watching the stardrops fall like snowflakes, wishing that all the snow in the world could be captured inside that little vessel.
Eventually, the petals turned brown, and dark film coated the inside of the glass.
This sliver of solitude is like one of those stardrop petals, trapped inside a snow globe with a million other moments that have been overshadowed by death, fear, loss, and even interrupted desire.
I don’t want interruptions right now, so we stay like that, curled against one another.
“Your father was a Keeper,” Alexus eventually whispers. I turn over, facing him. “What?”
He keeps his voice low. “There’s magick layered on the God Knife. It’s old and weak but still at work doing what it was meant to do, which was bind the blade to your father so he could keep it safe and out of the hands of the wrong people.”
I have no words. I can only stare and blink, stunned. I don’t even know what a Keeper is, not really, but this is still an unexpected revelation.
“When he told you that he kept the knife because he must,” Alexus continues, “he wasn’t lying. I don’t know if he asked for it or was unaware, but someone bound the blade to your father, and now that spell clings even to you.”
I press a hand to my chest. That doesn’t sound good at all. I don’t want to be bound to anything that has to do with the gods.
“It’s Summerlander magick,” he continues, “though an ancient form. Maybe someone was visiting the port when your father found it? A mage?”
I wave my hand and shrug. I don’t have this knowledge.
“Well, regardless, I’ve racked my brain about everything that’s happened. It shouldn’t have been possible for the prince to read the Summerlander enchantment on the blade. The magick of the magi is some of the most archaic conjuring in the world, dating back to Loria herself.”
“The Eastlanders used it in the vale, though,” I sign. “With their arrows.”
“Yes, and I still can’t sort out how. It’s one thing to harness fire threads.
It’s an entirely different magick to cause fire to incinerate from the inside out.
Only those with an intimate knowledge of ancient magick systems can read such archaic Summerland workings.
They teach it in the City of Ruin, but only to the very magickly gifted.
But, I think, somehow, the prince saw the spell when he attacked you on the green and knew he couldn’t take the knife as long as it was in your possession.
Otherwise, he would’ve tried harder than he did.
Of course, later, the blade wasn’t in your possession because Hel somehow found it, so he used her to bring it to him.
And even later, you hid the blade in the moss, severing any protection, and he sent his crow on a hunting expedition. ”
If the binding magick should’ve been impossible for the prince to see, how could Alexus see it? And when did Hel come across the knife? She didn’t mention that in her explanation of what happened. More importantly…
I jerk up. “I should have the knife then. So he cannot take it.”
“Easy.” Alexus rises on an elbow, rubbing my arm to calm me. “It’s strapped to my thigh, and I’m better protection than any Keeper.” He winks. “Even you.”
I’m not sure he’s right.
“Finn took the knife from me,” I tell him. It had been strapped to my thigh the night of the harvest supper, and yet Finn slipped it from the dagger belt like the best of thieves.
Alexus narrows his eyes. “Who’s Finn?”
Heat blooms across my chest and chases up my neck, followed by another cresting wave that I fight with all that I have. I’ve tried so hard not to think of him, but here he is, rising up like a ghost while I lie beside another man.
“Is Finn the special someone you lost?” Alexus asks. I don’t even have to nod for him to know that he was. “I’m so sorry, Raina. How did he take the knife? Why?”
I glance away from his inquiring stare. “We were dancing at the harvest supper. Calling down the moon. He was only pestering me.”
“So you’d lost your connection to the here and now. I’m not sure how Finn knew to go for the knife when you weren’t linked to reality, but…smart man.”
Finn didn’t know. Of that, I’m sure. He only knew he could still make me weak enough to trick me.
I examine my hands and think about what Alexus said about the prince. “Why would the magick cling to me if it was my father who was bound?” I sign.
He shrugs. “It depends on how the spell was crafted. Magick of that sort has many nuances, and every witch has different methods, especially Summerlanders. It could’ve been a duty cast on your father and his children and his children’s children, and when he passed, you were the child who claimed it.
Having not been there when the knife was enchanted, that’s my best guess. ”
With distance between us, the air winding through the cavern’s entrance grows too chill.
“A little help with the fire?” Alexus says, and I nod. “Most of the wood I found was damp, some of it very wet, as were the pine needles and leaves. All you need to do is summon the threads from the embers. Your magick will remember what to do. Just use your words. You can do it.”
He leaves me and tosses the last of the gathered brush into the fire, save for the twig he uses as a fire poker.
I sit up and rub my eyes, still wrapping my mind around the notion of my father being a Keeper.
Then, before I know it, I’m drawing fire threads from ash—badly—but it’s something I never thought I’d be able to do.
With Fulmanesh, iyuma repeating on my fingertips, however, I manage to raise a tiny flame from wet brush and smoldering cinders.
Wearing a proud expression, Alexus comes to sit with me, pack in hand.
Ever chivalrous, he folds the blanket around me and moves to his knees to slip off my boots, down to my hosen.
Gently, he places my feet on a flat rock near the fire to warm.
The heat and his touch feel so luxurious that I close my eyes, just for a moment, and sigh.