Chapter 20
“Love is not proven by how tightly you hold on, but by what you are willing to release when holding on becomes harmful.” ~Gerick
Gerick had spent centuries learning the discipline required to stand still while everything inside him wanted war. It had served him well. Until now.
He stood alone at the edge of the draheim clearing, boots planted in the soft moss, the Nushtonia resting on the flat stone before him like an ordinary book pretending it had not swallowed the female he loved.
Moonlight slid across its cover in pale, uneven streaks, catching nothing, reflecting nothing, as though even the light could not decide whether the thing was solid.
The forested mountains of the Draheim Realm rose around him in dark, jagged silhouettes beneath a sky crowded with stars. Mist threaded between the trees, silver beneath the moonlight, curling over roots and moss and ancient stone as though the realm itself exhaled slowly in its sleep.
Except the realm was not sleeping. It watched.
Gerick felt it in the ground beneath his boots, in the stillness of the draheim scattered through the surrounding forest, in the careful distance Serapha had demanded they all keep from the book.
Even Perizada, who treated danger like a mildly inconvenient party guest, had given the Nushtonia space.
That alone should have terrified him.
Instead, all he could feel was Myanin.
Not clearly. Not through the bond as wolves felt their mates, not with thought or words or the warm, living pulse of shared emotion.
Their connection had never been like that.
His bond with her was different, blessed by the Great Luna, yes, but not the same magic that tied Canis lupus mates together, soul to soul.
He could not speak to her. He could not calm her.
He could not reach across the distance and tell her to hold on.
But something had begun leaking through the book.
Not enough. Never enough. Just fragments.
Heat. Fear. Defiance. The sharp silver edge of her sarcasm, so familiar it made his chest ache in a way no battlefield wound ever had. And beneath it, something else now.
A pull. Not toward him.
Gerick’s jaw flexed. His hands tightened at his sides until the leather of his gloves creaked. He hated himself for naming it, even silently.
The forest behind him shifted. A branch cracked under a careful boot, and the soft press of pine needles announced exactly who was coming before her voice did.
“You’re brooding loud enough to scare the trees,” Perizada said.
Gerick did not turn. “I’m not brooding.”
“No, of course not. You’re standing in the dark staring at a murder book with the energy of a male trying to intimidate furniture.”
Despite himself, his mouth twitched. Barely.
Peri stepped up beside him, silver hair loose over one shoulder, arms folded across her chest as she stared down at the Nushtonia. The mist curled around her bare ankles and then drew back, as though even the realm understood that high fae did not appreciate uninvited touching.
For once, she did not look amused. Not really. The sharpness was there, because Peri without sharpness would be like a sword made of yarn, but beneath it sat something quieter.
Concern. He disliked seeing that on her face. It meant the situation was worse than he wanted to believe.
“Lucian wanted to come,” she said after a moment, tilting her head toward the book without quite looking at it. “Lilly told him if he hovered over you one more time, she was going to turn his boots into live chickens.”
Gerick blinked.
Peri shrugged one shoulder. “I’m paraphrasing.”
“That sounds like something she would do.”
“It does.” Her gaze remained fixed on the book. “She’s worried about you.”
“I know.”
“So is Lucian.”
“I know that as well.”
“So am I,” Peri said, her voice softer.
Gerick finally turned his head to look at her.
The high fae’s expression gave nothing away. That was one of Peri’s more irritating talents. She could announce emotional devastation with the face of someone deciding between pastries. He held her gaze a heartbeat longer than was comfortable, then looked away first.
Coward, he thought.
“What do you feel?” she asked.
He stared at the book. Its surface had gone still, the dark cover reflecting moonlight in uneven streaks. He could see his own silhouette in it, blurred and stretched, like a man drowning in glass.
“Her.”
Peri did not speak. He appreciated that.
After several breaths, he continued. “Not the way Nick feels Kara. Not the way Fane feels Jacque. It has never been that. But I know she lives. I know when the book presses against her. I know when she fights it.”
His hands curled slowly into fists at his sides. The leather strained.
“And I know when she is not fighting something.”
Peri inhaled quietly. The breath made a small, soft sound in the still air, and somehow that tiny noise felt louder than anything else in the clearing.
There it was. The truth walking into the clearing and standing between them like a blade.
Gerick expected anger to rise. He wanted anger. Anger was clean. Useful. He understood what to do with it. Anger could be shaped into battle plans and sharpened into purpose.
This was not anger. This was grief wearing armor.
Peri’s voice came carefully. “Gerick.”
“Don’t.”
“I wasn't going to lie.”
“No.” His eyes closed briefly, lashes dark against the high cut of his cheekbones. “That would require you to have developed tact in the last ten minutes.”
“Fair.”
A longer silence settled. The forest shifted around them, branches murmuring overhead in a wind Gerick could not feel against his skin. Somewhere in the dark above, leaves spoke to leaves in a language older than he was.
Peri turned slightly toward the book, her arms still folded, but her shoulder angled now in a way that was almost protective. “I told you what Myanin told me. What Shade was to her. What she ran from. What she buried.”
“Yes.”
“But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you.”
The words landed exactly where they were meant to. And still missed the wound.
Gerick swallowed against the pressure in his throat. “I know.”
Peri’s eyes flicked to him. He kept his gaze forward, fixed on the Nushtonia as though force of will alone could keep him upright.
“That’s the problem.”
The words came out too quiet. Too honest. He hated them for it.
Gerick had known violence. Betrayal. Loyalty.
War. He had stood in rooms heavy with the scent of blood and watched enemies decide whether death or surrender offended them less.
He had obeyed orders that cost him sleep.
He had led warriors into battles where victory tasted too much like ash to celebrate.
But none of that had prepared him for loving someone who loved him back and still might not be his.
The book pulsed once. A low, dull throb beneath the stone, felt rather than heard, like a heartbeat several rooms away.
Peri stiffened.
Gerick’s breath caught.
Myanin.
The sensation moved through him like a thread pulled tight inside his chest. Not pain exactly. Recognition. A moment of warmth, of ache, of longing so fierce it nearly drove him to his knees. His left hand lifted halfway to his sternum before he caught the motion and forced it back down.
Then another presence moved through that same thread.
Shade.
Gerick stepped back as if struck. His boot scraped against stone, and the small, sharp sound of it was the only warning before his control snapped.
Magic flared around his hands before he could stop it, dark and gold and furious, crackling through the clearing hard enough to make the nearby mist recoil.
The air thickened. The temperature dropped, then climbed, then dropped again.
In the trees beyond them, draheim rumbled, the sound rolling through the mountains like distant thunder shifting in its bed.
Peri moved instantly, faster than he’d seen her move in a long while, one hand catching his forearm and gripping hard. Her fingers were warmer than he expected.
“Gerick.”
His magic snapped violently against the ground, scorching a black line through moss and stone. The smell of burnt earth and ozone bit at the back of his throat.
“He touched her.”
The words were not loud. They did not need to be.
The entire clearing seemed to hear them. The mist itself paused.
Peri’s grip tightened. “Did he hurt her?”
Gerick’s head turned toward her sharply enough that his hair slid across his brow.
“No.”
She held his gaze, her own steady, refusing to let him look away. “Then breathe.”
“I can feel him.”
“Through the book,” Peri said firmly, giving his arm a small, almost violent shake. “Not through her bond.”
He knew that. He knew it.
But knowledge did nothing to stop the instinct inside him, the part of every male who loved beyond reason, from wanting to tear through the realms and rip Shade away from her with his bare hands.
Gerick’s magic surged again, rising up his forearms in slow, dark coils.
Then the moonlight changed. It did not brighten. It deepened.
The silver light settling over the clearing became softer, fuller, and impossibly present, the way air thickens before a storm without ever moving.
The mist at the edge of the trees stilled, freezing mid-curl.
Every draheim in the forest went quiet at once, a hush so complete that Gerick could suddenly hear his own heartbeat slowing in his ears.
Peri released his arm and stepped back, head already lowering.
Gerick knew before he turned.
The Great Luna stood between the trees, her white hair falling around her shoulders like moonlight given form. Her bare feet rested on a bed of moss that bent toward her without breaking. She wore no crown. She needed none. The power radiating from her did not demand that the clearing bow.
It simply reminded everything that it already belonged to her.
Gerick lowered his head, the motion as natural as breath.
“My lady.”
“General,” she said gently.
The gentleness nearly broke him.