Chapter Thirty-Seven
Connor
The night didn’t fall normally. It dropped fast enough to steal the breath from Connor’s lungs.
One moment, Castle Brannigan lay under a typical Highland dusk, grey clouds, a fading sun, the cold promise of rain.
The next, it went dark.
Connor felt it. A prickling at the back of his neck. A pressure in his chest. A sense that something had shifted in the valley’s bones.
Across the room, Adrian flinched, pressing a hand to his sternum. “Fuck, not again. Not so soon.”
Connor’s blood iced. “No. Not again.”
But apparently, Adrian wasn’t seeing him anymore. His pupils dilated. His breath hitched. His body shuddered as if caught between two worlds.
And then the world broke. The floor shuddered beneath them like a heartbeat.
Connor swore, grabbing Adrian around the waist, pinning him against his chest. “Hold on.”
His mark flared a blinding gold, bringing with it a sting, as if a swarm of jellyfish had wrapped sly tentacles around him. The lights in the castle flickered.
The Whispering Wood answered with a low, mournful hum that made the air vibrate. Connor knew the valley had awakened fully, and that the Council wanted Adrian.
“No,” Connor growled, tightening his grip. “You can’t have him.”
Then the floor split. A hairline crack, thin as a thread, opened beneath Adrian’s feet. Not a rend. Not yet. But it pulsed with the same impossible light.
Adrian stiffened. “Connor.”
Connor lifted him off the ground instinctively, holding him in both arms as if the earth itself might swallow him.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Connor snarled, his direction: the valley. “I don’t give a damn what you think you need.”
The crack widened. Adrian cried out, a ragged, broken sound, arching backward, the mark blazing with violent, agonising brightness. His shadow swirled on the wall, seemingly out of sync with his body.
Connor grabbed him tighter. Adrian’s eyes snapped open, glowing, impossibly bright.
“Connor,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”
Connor froze. “What? No. No. Don’t you dare.”
The light erupted fast, wild, alive, encircling Adrian in a loop of searing brilliance. Connor roared and tried to pull him away.
Adrian reached for him, fingers inches from Connor’s face. “Connor.”
And then he vanished.
The light collapsed, the crack sealed shut, the air snapped back into silence, and Adrian was gone.
As if the world had inhaled him.
Connor hit the floor on his knees, arms still outstretched around empty air. For the first time in his life, he had no idea what to do next.
He didn’t remember standing, or roaring Adrian’s name until his throat was hoarse. He didn’t remember kicking the door off its hinges, or sprinting down the corridor, or the exact moment he fell to his hands in the courtyard, claws breaking through his fingertips.
He only remembered one thing.
Adrian was gone.
Xiathen arrived first, pale and shaking. “Connor, what happened?”
Connor’s voice was dead. Hollow. He felt impossibly empty. “The valley took him.”
Xiathen gasped, covering their mouth. “No.”
“He’s gone,” Connor snarled. “And I’m getting him back.”
Fraser arrived next. Breathless, his eyes wide. “Connor, we felt the surge, what the hell?” He stopped and stared at Connor. “Con, your eyes. They’re glowing gold.”
The rest of the clan trickled out of their rooms, faces white with concern and fear.
“The shadow took him,” Connor said, shaking with rage. “Somewhere under the valley. Somewhere I can’t reach.”
Fraser paled. “Connor.”
“No chain, no wall, no magic, no law of the Veil will stop me,” Connor growled. “I’ll tear the bloody world apart, stone by stone, until I find him.”
Xiathen swallowed hard. “Connor, the valley’s resonance is unstable. You can’t enter the fault lines alone. They’ll shred you.”
“I don’t care.”
“But, Connor—”
“I. Don’t. Care.” His voice echoed across the entire castle.
Xiathen trembled. “Connor. Where will you even begin?”
Connor closed his eyes and felt it. A single pulse. Faint. Distant. Adrian’s bond. Still reaching.
Connor opened his eyes. “There.”
He pointed toward the lowest point of Heatherfell, to the darkened mouth of an old, abandoned cavern no one had entered in decades.
“He’s under the valley,” Connor whispered. “Somewhere beneath the anchors. Somewhere where the shadow dragged him.”
Xiathen’s face drained of colour. “Connor. That is the Labyrinth Underspan. The Triarc managed to find a map of the valleys and rifts when they were looking through the Knowledge.”
Fraser swore softly. “That sounds like a place you go in, and you don’t come out.”
Connor bared his teeth. “Then I’ll be the first.”
“But, Connor, the Council—”
“I will not leave him there.”
Silence. Then Xiathen bowed their head. “Then we go tonight.”
Connor blinked. “We?”
Xiathen nodded. “You are Valour. So is he. So am I, in my own way. You can’t face the Underspan alone.”
Fraser cracked his knuckles. “Aye. Bloody right you can’t.”
By this time, nearly all the clans’ people had arrived, standing in shared anger and fear. Irial stepped forward, her face determined.
“I will come with you.”
Connor shook his head. “Thank you, but no. I’ll not put anyone else in danger. This is my fight, and you’ll be more useful helping me from afar. I’ll need someone on the ground here.”
Xiathen nodded. “He speaks the truth. We will all be far more useful, gathered with our combined power and abilities and the Triarc, should we be needed. Aboveground, we are far stronger.”
Connor’s throat tightened. He didn’t thank them. He couldn’t. He simply stood and wiped the blood from his knuckles, steeled his shaking breath, and spoke the truth aloud.
“I’m bringing Adrian home.”
As the others gathered weapons, lanterns, charms, and maps for his journey, Connor stood alone for a moment in the ruined study.
The faint outline of Adrian’s last shadow-twist lay burned into the wall. He touched it with trembling fingers.
“Hold on, Adrian,” he whispered. “I’m coming.”
Connor felt the valley tremble, not in anger. In warning. In empathy. And somewhere deep beneath the earth, he heard something: Adrian opened his eyes in absolute darkness and whispered Connor’s name.