Epilogue
YLVA
Let their opinions weigh less than your truth.
—Matri’sion proverb
Ten Pine Village, Stonemouth Mountain Range
The cold wind woke me. Through the fog and the aches, I registered a myriad of information.
Door opening with a squeak—that was the lefthand door, then.
Booze, mostly cheap. Matched the ache in my head and the state of my mouth.
Sweat, sex, magic…not necessarily in that order.
I had pussy juices of at least three women on my lips and if I hadn’t been so hung over, I could’ve named them, but right then, all I could recall was the way they’d tasted and the rhythm they’d liked.
Then the new scents. Leather, forest, silver.
Alarm went through me. I struggled to sit up, but my body just jerked and fell back down.
What the fuck? I sucked in air. Mushrooms. That explained the hazy memories of last night. Who’d shared them, I didn’t know. Why I’d partaken, no fucking clue. Did I regret it? Khazari’s mountain-shaking flatulence, I did.
The sweet smell of honey and the creamy, lightly salted notes of good butter reached my nose. Steps came closer. “Earthworker,” a familiar voice crooned.
I tried to move again, peeling open my eyes. “Dmytro?” I asked.
The word was massacred in my mouth—fitting, really—but Dmytro looked at me like he was shocked to find me at the site of all those unconscious, very happy women. “Ylva?” he asked, probably in case I’d forgotten my name.
Sweat. He hadn’t bathed in days. He’d been living on game. His heart rate was a little high. The air whistled strangely through his lungs. Sick? Injured?
“What happened?” I asked. Getting myself upright was a struggle. My legs worked. I still had my boots on, and my pants, too.
“Northern mages are attacking our Runs,” he said, holding up the butter. “I got word there was an Earthworker here.”
“They’re what?” I grabbed my shirt. “How?”
“Poison clouds,” he said. “Is this the sorceress?”
I looked at the pile of bodies. The sorceress was the one in front of Dmytro, a plump, short, delectable bite of sunshine. Everyone had sprawled around her like she was the fire and they were the dancers.
It had felt kind of like that, actually.
“That’s her,” I agreed, waving a hand at the woman in the center sleeping peacefully. “You might need to get in with a bit of enthusiasm to wake her, uncle.”
He grunted. “Where’s your silver, girl?”
I rolled my eyes. “As if I’m fucking a sorceress with silver on.” I still had the necklace. I wasn’t going feral.
But the Curse was right there, under my skin, writhing.
I licked my lips, mostly to alleviate the discomfort of their texture.
“You give her a shake,” he said. “Your little pack around?”
I ignored the mockery in the word pack. We were sharp as steel. They just gave shitty orders.
My legs worked as I stood and made my way to the pile of bodies. “What’re the sorcerers doing?” I asked, trying to get my head in order.
Outside, a flock of starlings passed overhead.
A cow was startled. Dmytro’s horse paused while chewing its cud.
The owner of the house, upstairs, turned in their bed.
Dmytro’s belly wasn’t happy. One of the women in the pile was close to menstruating, and the air flurried, bringing her scent to my nose.
It was vaguely coppery. Her lids fluttered lightly in her sleep.
“We need to block the Runs,” Dmytro said grimly.
That shocked me back into the present. “Then we’ll be sitting ducks.”
“D’you think we want to do it?” He gave a snort of disgust. “You’d know this if you attended the meetings, girl.”
“You don’t want me to attend the meetings,” I shot back.
“We don’t want you to charge off before anything’s decided.”
“It takes you six years to make a decision!” I threw up my hands. “Why not just get it done?”
He made a noise of disgust. I turned to the sorceress, righteous indignation making my head clear faster than a bucket of ice water.
She came awake at the gentle shake of her shoulder. “Hey, Snowdrop,” I said. “Got a grumpy old Worg here to butter you up.”
She blinked, then sat up, yawning. Fucking sorceresses. Her hair was perfect. Her tits were perfect. The way her lashes fluttered? Perfect. I reached for my shirt. I didn’t have time for perfection. Could never be me.
“Earthworker Jadira,” my uncle said, going down on one knee. From memory, she didn’t hate that angle. “I’ve several groups of missing Worgs, and some tunnels that we suspect are full of poison.”
I grabbed my vest and started lacing it. Missing Worgs? He hadn’t mentioned that.
“Oh, no,” the sorceress said, taking the wooden bowl. “Where? What happened?”
“Northern mages,” he said.
The sorceress stilled for a moment. “Here?”
Even that one word. Perfectly threatening.
“Somewhere in these hills,” Dmytro confirmed. “They got access to the Wolf Runs and released something in them. Something that we think took out three packs. Could be more.”
Furious, I willed my fumbling fingers to obey my brain’s commands. If the Runs weren’t safe, had they considered telling people? If we tried to flee, and they were full of death clouds—
“Why didn’t the Worgs smell it?” she asked.
I scowled. How the fuck hadn’t I thought of that?
“Unscented,” he said. “Invisible.”
“So it might not be poison?” she asked, her brow perfectly furrowed.
“We don’t know, Earthworker,” he replied. “All we know is that men go in and they don’t come out.”
“Men?” she pressed.
I pulled on my gambeson. I wanted to say yeah, uncle. Men? What are we, Northern?
“The three groups were male,” he said.
All male groups? Really? No wonder they were dead.
“When?” the sorceress asked. “And where?”
I glanced up and saw her licking the butter from the paddle, the picture of majesty, still partially surrounded by the sex pile.
Asked smart questions. Could be sweet and dangerous. Could move entire mountains. Fantastic tits.
Fucking perfect.
“We aren’t sure exactly which Runs are impacted,” he said. “We’ve no way of testing, save sending people in.”
“Canaries work in the mines,” I reminded him.
“Canaries don’t die to it,” he said. “A boy did, though.”
Fuck. I grabbed my cloak and started buckling it. Three packs. We couldn’t lose three packs. “Can you vent the Runs?” I asked the sorceress, ignoring my uncle.
“I’m sure I can.” She passed him back the now-empty butter bowl. “You want to search for survivors before I close them?”
“If there’s three packs, I do.” I pulled on the silver rings first. First on, first off, most often lost. I lifted my fingers to my lips and let out a whistle, knowing my friends would hear it and prepare.
My fingers tasted like cunt cocktail. “I know the Runs in these parts. Where were they last seen?” I asked my uncle.
“You can’t—” he began.
“Rah rah rah.” I flicked my delicious fingers at him in dismissal. His smelt like his own ass. “Where were they seen?”
His cheeks went red. “Your brother ordered everyone out of them.”
My belly twisted. Whaarghun had taken over, then. Well, that was him good as dead. Whether the Northerners got to him first or one of our own did, keen to seize the title…
Fuck.
“Never listened to him anyway,” I said lightly. “Tell him he’s got my bow, if he wants it.”
“He gave himself to the Butcher to buy the freedom of Elementalist Denisa,” my uncle said stiffly.
My head spun. I turned on him and he just lifted his chin. “He what?”
“He did a trade,” Dmytro said. The words held anger and the hard edge of an accusation he was too scared to utter.
The roar of my own blood in my veins could deafen me. I forced myself to suck in a breath. The air whooshed into my lungs. It should’ve been me.
We all knew what the Butcher would do to get his hands on me again.
My skin threatened to crawl off my body at the thought. I gritted my teeth.
“Denisa?” the sorceress asked, and her hand was small but not tentative on my arm. She stood beside me, her eyes clear. “Denisa the Fearless?”
“The same,” Dmytro said, bowing his head. “She’s safe, sorceress. I know she was of your line.”
“Was?” she demanded.
“Is,” he corrected hurriedly. “She’s unhurt. Whaarghun will allow nothing to happen to our land or our magi.”
The sorceress glanced up at me, her narrowed eyes indicating she didn’t need Worg senses to hear what went unsaid. If he can. “You’ve got a twin,” she said to me. “Where’s he?”
He was supposed to be with Whaarghun, giving the Northerners a taste of our winter hospitality. I turned to Dmytro who met my gaze, his shoulders tight, his tongue silent.
My belly rolled. I wished it was due to the vodaken I’d drunk last night. “He’s taken the throne until Whaarghun returns,” I said, sick. Not just one brother, but two doomed to die.
We couldn’t hold the throne.
We shouldn’t.
They wouldn’t listen to me. They never had, and it had only got worse since I’d got back. They said I was acting like a kicked dog. I thought they were fighting over the gnawed-on bones of another’s kill.
None of it mattered.
“The Butcher would give us Whaarghun for you,” Dmytro said, the words so soft I doubted they’d carry to the sorceress’s ears.
I knew he would.
I knew why.
Bold of Dmytro to mention it, since it’d been his son’s fault I’d been caught last time. The flare of fury was old, familiar and comfortable.
I’d never be at risk of giving any of Barloc’s blood-soaked generals access to any Worg heirs with access to the Curse or the Call. The Butcher didn’t know that, though. He would’ve made the trade.
“Shame my big brother was too stupid to think of that. Oh, wait. He’s not.” I shoved my uncle in the chest and he fell back, shocked. A thrill of power rushed through me, chasing away the lingering darkness.
No one made Whaarghun do anything he wasn’t willing to do.
He had a plan. Hope warmed the marrow of my bones for the first time in moons.
I didn’t know if it was the Curse or wishful thinking, but I opted to guard it rather than question Dmytro further.
Whaarghun wouldn’t have told anything sensitive to our flea-bitten coward of an uncle.
“Remind Wuden he’s got my bow, if you’re brave enough to return,” I said.
The gentle rush of blood through his cheeks sounded not unlike the whisper of wind through the trees on the nearby mountainside, and brought me an equal amount of peace and pleasure. That sound said everything is right in my world.
I finished lacing my vest. “Where are these Runs where the boys went missing, Dmytro?”
“Threepine,” he said, bristling. “Signs of a camp of some sort over near Greenrow Fields.”
Unease crept up my spine. There was emotion in his voice when he talked about that camp I didn’t like. Even his aggravation at me couldn’t conceal it. Fear. “Some sort of camp?” I pressed, looping rings through my ears. “Say more.”
“Don’t order me about, girl.”
“Tell us,” the sorceress said, irritated. “There’s no time for you to nip at each other like pups.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t see it. Those who did said it smelt of Northern magic and death.”
“Death?” She cocked her head, her expression thoughtful. “Shit, blood, rotten flesh?”
“No.”
The unease turned to a chill. That smell was a very specific thing.
I’d lived through the plague in La’Angi. I knew what death smelled like. Not the physical realities of it.
The soul death.
The door opened. My second stepped through, buckling on his quiver.
“Gather the crew,” I told him. “We’ve got a group of missing Worgs my brother doesn’t want to attempt to recover, Northern mage activity with a fucked-up twist, Runs that have been discovered and possibly trapped, a powerful Earthworker to protect and I, for one, have a fucker of a hangover. ” And a brother, sacrificing himself.
I couldn’t let him do it alone.
I couldn’t go back there.
“Huh.” Jakub rubbed the last of the sleep from his eyes. “Well, it’s my first time for one of those things. Gaelena guide you, Earthworker.” He knelt, offering up his bow. “Do I have permission to carry steel in your company?”
The sorceress blew out an impatient breath. “Yes.” I heard the layers of annoyance in the one word, none of them directed at Jakub. “And all your pack, too.”
Hot, powerful, and didn’t give a shit about traditions. The perfect addition to our merry little band.
“Let’s go fuck up at least one asshole’s plans,” I said, grabbing a bottle of spirits on the way out the door. The Curse hummed in my bones, promising pain and fury.
A blood moon was on the rise.