Chapter 13
"There are just some revelations you never hope to have in your lifetime, no matter how short or long that life is." ~ Gerick
The draheim realm did not sleep at night.
Instead it seemed to watch. From his place on the terrace, Gerick could feel the mountains breathing around him, sentries guarding something sacred.
Massive beings rested in the dark beyond the tree line, capable of unmaking every realm they chose to step into, including the human one.
Luckily for everyone, the Great Luna had given them the steadiest tempers of any of her creations.
Even now, with the realm at rest, he could feel them turning the situation over from every angle.
Rushing in killed innocents, and they were not willing to risk that.
Moonlight spilled silver across jagged peaks and old-growth forest, turning drifting mist into pale ribbons that wound between evergreens and stone cliffs older than most civilizations.
Somewhere deeper in the realm, a draheim called, and the resonance of it traveled up through the soles of Gerick’s boots like the slow heartbeat of the land itself, a pulse that had existed long before his and would continue long after he was dust.
He stood near the edge of one of the massive stone terraces carved into the mountainside, hands braced on the weathered railing, eyes fixed on the valley below.
At least, he appeared to be looking at it.
In truth, the dark sweep of trees had blurred at the edges several minutes ago, smeared into shapes that no longer registered, replaced by something far louder happening beneath his skin.
The Nushtonia rested against his back beneath the leather straps crossing his chest, its weight pressing steadily between his shoulder blades. Even closed, even silent, the book carried a presence unlike any magical object he had ever encountered. Ancient. Aware. Wrong.
But the book itself was not what kept him here while the rest of the realm settled.
It was what the book was doing to the bond tied to his soul.
Muted. Fractured. Alive. And changing.
Gerick set his teeth together hard enough to feel the pressure climb into his temples and root behind his eyes.
“You’re grinding your teeth hard enough to crack them.”
Lucian’s voice came from behind him, calm and roughened slightly by exhaustion.
Gerick did not turn. He heard the wolf approach anyway, boots scuffing softly against the stone as Lucian crossed the terrace and came to a stop at the railing beside him.
The dominant male did not speak again right away.
He simply leaned his forearms against the carved stone the same way Gerick had, gaze drifting out over the valley as though giving the silence a chance to be the thing that answered first.
“Either the book is getting heavier,” Lucian said after a moment, “or you are growing more tired.”
Gerick exhaled slowly. His breath fogged in the cold mountain air and vanished. “The book is as it has always been. A burden. But one I must bear.”
“Hm.” Lucian tilted his head, studying him from the corner of his eye. “But you do not have to bear that burden alone. Maybe you should let someone else carry it for a while.”
Gerick’s gaze slid sideways to him.
Lucian shrugged one shoulder without lifting his arms from the rail. “I’m serious. Ever since we got here, you’ve looked like someone waiting for a blade to drop out of the sky.”
“That’s because my mate is trapped inside a sentient prison.” He kept his tone level. He tried to. The idea of letting the book leave his hands was unacceptable. She was in there. He had to protect her, and the only way he knew how to do that was to protect the book.
“True,” Lucian acknowledged easily. “But this feels different.”
Gerick looked away first, and that irritated him more than it should have.
The wind shifted around them, carrying pine and wet stone and the faint mineral cold of high altitude.
Somewhere across the valley, the deep beat of wings cut through the night, rolled across the ridges, and faded into silence.
One of the draheim, moving through the mountains beneath the cover of dark, was entirely uninterested in the small mortal griefs of the ones who had taken shelter inside his realm.
Lucian’s voice lowered. “What’s happening?”
For several seconds, Gerick said nothing. The silence stretched long enough that he thought perhaps the wolf would let it go. He should have known better. Lucian had the patience of a creature who understood that some truths only crawled out when a male stopped chasing them.
Gerick swallowed once before he answered.
“At first I thought it was the book pressing against the mate bond. Our bond is not like the wolf bond, but it’s something more than what humans have.
I’ve always felt things from her. We can’t speak to one another, but we can feel stress, fear, desire.
” His jaw tightened, the muscle jumping beneath the line of his beard.
“Right now, I think I can feel emotional residue bleeding through whatever magic connects the Nushtonia to the people trapped inside it.” He paused. “But it’s becoming more than that.”
Lucian’s gaze sharpened, the wolf in him surfacing. “What kind of more?”
Gerick stared down into the dark below the terrace, where mist drifted through the trees in slow, pale rivers.
“The book reacts.” The words came slowly, pulled out of him one at a time like splinters he had been avoiding.
“Every time something shifts between them, I feel it through the magic tied to the Nushtonia.”
Lucian went still beside him. Not the stillness of surprise. The stillness of a predator who had just heard something move in the underbrush.
Gerick rubbed a hand across his mouth before continuing.
The scrape of his beard against his palm grounded him.
“Not emotions. Not the way wolves feel their mates. This is different.” His brow furrowed.
Even trying to explain it felt like work, because naming a thing out loud gave it a shape, and he did not want this thing to have a shape.
“Pressure. Changes in the resonance of the magic. Like the book recognizes them together in some way and responds to it.”
The confession tasted bitter on his tongue.
“At first it only happened when she was afraid,” he admitted, quieter now. “Then when she was angry. But now.”
He stopped.
Lucian waited him out, gaze still on the valley, giving him the dignity of not watching him while he bled.
A short, humorless laugh escaped Gerick, more breath than sound. “Now I can tell when something between them changes, even if I don't know exactly what.”
The silence beside him sharpened.
Lucian did not ask who. He did not need to.
Gerick closed his eyes briefly, letting the cold air wash over his face.
“And the worst part is, I don’t think she realizes it’s happening.
” Or maybe that was just hope dressed as observation.
“She’s fighting something,” he added, opening his eyes to a view he still wasn’t seeing.
“Whatever is happening in there, she’s fighting it. ”
“Shade.”
It was not a question.
Gerick nodded once, a single tight motion, and the name settled between them like something poisonous seeping into stone. The breeze picked up again, curling mist across the terrace in pale strands that wrapped around their boots before drifting onward past the railing.
Lucian scrubbed a hand slowly across his beard. “You think this is because of whatever existed between them before?”
“No,” Gerick said quietly. “I think the Nushtonia is forcing truths to the surface. Things they buried. Things they never resolved.”
Even saying it twisted something sharp in his chest, deep and vicious, the kind of wound a male only noticed when he stopped moving long enough to feel it.
Before Lucian could answer, footsteps approached from behind them, accompanied by the faint scent of something herbal and vaguely unsettling drifting ahead of the woman carrying it.
“Ah,” Perizada drawled, her voice cutting across the terrace with the dry ease of someone who had spent centuries refusing to be subtle. “Nothing says emotional devastation like two males brooding under moonlight while pretending they’re discussing battle strategy.”
Gerick closed his eyes briefly. Of course, she would walk in right now.
Peri stopped on his other side, a steaming mug cradled in one hand, the smell rising from it vaguely herbal and deeply suspicious. Her silver-white hair shifted in the mountain breeze as she glanced between the two males.
Then her expression changed.
The humor drained from it.
“Oh,” she murmured, and the word came out gentler than he had expected from her. “This is worse than I thought.”
Behind her, Lilly emerged from the cavern entrance carved into the mountainside, boots whispering against the stone as she crossed the terrace.
The warlock queen wore dark, fitted clothing that moved easily with her, and her yellow eyes glowed faintly in the moonlight as magic hummed quietly beneath her skin.
She carried another mug, though unlike Peri's, the steam rising from hers curled upward in glittering ribbons of actual magic that unraveled into the cold air like tiny ghosts.
Lucian eyed it suspiciously without lifting his arms from the rail. “What’s in that?”
“Depends,” Lilly replied easily, stopping on Lucian’s far side so the four of them formed a loose line along the railing, the valley spread out before them and the watching mountain at their backs. “Are you trying to sleep, heal emotional trauma, or hallucinate pleasantly?”
The wolf blinked. “That answer somehow makes me trust you less.”
She grinned, the cheeky one Gerick had come to know well. “Good.”
Lilly lifted the mug for a slow sip, her eyes on Gerick over the rim, and when she lowered it the teasing had drained out of her expression entirely.
“Well, hell,” she said. “You look terrible.”
“Thank you, Warlock Queen,” Gerick said dryly.