Chapter 13
LYRAE
Ryland Storme was many things.
A liar, a selfish bastard, cleverer with his fucking tongue than any male should be, but most of all, the stubbornest ass I’d ever met in my entire life.
“We’ve been walking for hours and not a word. This has to be some kind of record,” I muttered to Varian, who hadn’t stopped talking the entire day.
I’d learned more about the Shadowlands than I ever cared to know, and thanks to Varian’s keen eye for detail, I now knew which berries would kill me and which leaves would rot my skin from my bones.
There were two major cities—Ebonhollow was the biggest, but Bleakheart was the richest, given that’s where they mined heartstone—this realm’s only export.
As promised, now that we’d reached the sand, the terrain was treacherous.
Uneven ground strewn with rocks, pockmarked with sinkholes and thorny vines sharp enough to pierce my thick leather boots, Ryland guiding us mile after mile without a single incident.
I sighed.
Or a single word.
When his wide shoulders disappeared over the next ridge, I sighed. “He’s pissed I lied to him about the island, isn’t he?” I sucked in an aching breath as we climbed, my thighs burning with every step.
“More likely because he lost fifty gilder,” Varian wheezed, feet sinking deep into the sand as he powered up the hill beside me.
“No, he’s pissed off I lied to him, even though he expected me to, because he’s got the biggest fucking ego of anyone I’ve ever met. Just so you know, he fucked me over first. So I’m just getting even, really.”
“If you say so,” Varian said, gasping as he stopped, bracing his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. “I still think he’s sore because he lost our bet, but you can make this all about you, if that makes you feel better.”
“Gods, you are such an asshole,” I rolled my eyes. “Even after all these years.”
Varian knocked his shoulder into mine. “I’ll take that as a compliment, coming from someone who knows.”
I punched his shoulder. “You…”
Then I stopped, feet catching in the tangled grass. What the fuck was I doing?
Falling right back into this easy friendship, like Blackcastle was only yesterday? Like a hundred years hadn’t passed, filled with a million different miseries? I was here to kill the prince, to find three dangerous artifacts, to get revenge on the bastard who killed my men.
Not swoon over two males who left me behind to die.
I needed to stay detached, not to get sucked into the past. But I couldn’t help the way hurt and yearning tangled into a knife that seemed to carve my common sense away.
“You both left me,” I blurted, “abandoned me to the Shadow King’s soldiers. They took me to the dungeons and fucking broke me, Var, while you lived out your lives.” Those words even tasted bitter.
“You never came back for me, you never…” I pinched my lips together.
What the fuck was I doing, begging him to understand?
“I’m sorry.” Varian’s voice turned heavy as he hiked back toward me.
“We didn’t leave you, Lyrae, not willingly.
We have our reasons for not being there for you, but…
that’s not my story to tell. Ryland has to be the one to explain what happened.
When we get to Frostveil, we’ll tell you everything.
Everything, and then you’ll understand.”
He reached a hand toward my face, then dropped it. “I’m just so…so goddamned sorry you’ve had to live with this all these years.”
“Sorry doesn’t fix the past, Varian.”
Varian sighed. “If it makes you feel any better, he and I have led shit lives ever since. All this time, you’ve hated him for leaving you after the Maldrake job?”
“I’ve hated both of you,” I corrected. “Why shouldn’t I? He talked me and Ariel into joining his merry band of thieves, then betrayed me. I ended up in the Shadow King’s dungeon, then his army. Then after I became cannon fodder on the front lines, you betrayed me…”
“Lyrae. We already settled this,” he muttered, starting up the next hill. I followed, feet sinking into the soft sand, my thighs screaming for mercy with every step.
“Ariel was sent to the gallows and then…”
“Your sister never went to the gallows. And then?” Varian prodded as we crested the hill.
I paused at the top of the ridge, lungs burning. Nothing but a sea of black sand spread out before us, no sign of a frozen lake or an island. Not a single living thing. Just desolation, with a few pathetic clumps of thorny trees and withered grass.
“And then I sold my soul,” I whispered, the scar on my arm throbbing at the memory.
“The Oracle offered me a choice. She’d free my sister if I agreed to pass information to her.
My job was to inform her what the Shadow King’s next moves were in the war, so she and the Fae King could counter his attacks.
Not that my information helped their cause. ”
Varian’s head whipped to me, eyes wide. “You were a spy for Caladrius?” His hands began to tremble, the pack slipping from his shoulder, hitting the ground with a thump. “You were in Caladrius? In Tempeste?”
“Off and on. I used the tunnels between the realms to pass information from Blackcastle to Tempeste, none of which changed the course of the war in any meaningful way, so I never saw the point. But my bargain bought Ariel a temporary reprieve, which was all that mattered.”
Or so I was told.
“Everything could have been a lie,” I admitted bitterly, crouching down to retie my boot. “The Oracle…she was good at manipulating people. She had the Fae King in the palm of her hand, why not me?”
“I can’t believe you were in Caladrius. Fuck.
We could have…” Varian turned his searching gaze to the desolate flatlands.
“I wish I would have known,” he said angrily.
“You’ve come a long way since our days in the streets, Lyrae.
Spy. Assassin. Leader of the Dreadwatch.
Working with the fucking Oracle of Tempeste. ”
“How do you know Ariel never went to the gallows?” I demanded. “How can you be so sure Ariel is still alive?”
“Because she was captured by the king’s guard, and then…nothing. She was never executed, that I am sure of. Remember I told you I had eyes on the southern road? One of my crew claimed he’d seen her near the Havens, in an all-black carriage, heading south.”
I rolled my eyes. “Sounds like he had too much to drink and was seeing things.”
“Max had no reason to lie,” Varian said evenly. “He was sure he saw Ariel. And the carriage she was in…fortified, protected by a powerful ward, so it belonged to someone rich or well-connected.”
My heart jumped, like it had been struck by a bolt of lightning. This was…okay, not exactly solid intel, but it was something for me to grasp onto, giving me more hope than I’d had in half a century.
“How long ago was this? Did he see anything else?” I asked eagerly. “Like markings, or anything you might remember?”
“Nothing I can...remember…”
He frowned, scanning the empty landscape. “Where the fuck did Ryland go?”
“He was right there a minute ago.” I squinted, picking out a familiar brown shape in front of a tangle of brush. I yanked Varian down beside me, so we were half hidden by a clump of equally sparse brambles.
“That’s my pack,” I whispered. “But no Ryland. He’s probably taking a piss.” But the unease curdling my stomach told me otherwise. I lifted my head long enough to scan the entire desert. Nothing moved.
“Fuck.”
“Yes, exactly. Where did he go?” I pulled the knives from my boots and kept my voice low. “You’ve been a font of knowledge about berries and leaves, tell me what could have taken Ryland Storme down without a sound or sign of a struggle?”
“Grimbeasts. And they hunt in packs.” Varian gingerly set his pack down beside us. “Big, nasty-tempered and starving, most likely. But they don’t see well in daylight, and we’re downwind, thank the gods.”
I gripped my knives and scanned the clumps of brush for any sign of movement.
Or Grimbeasts—whatever the fuck those were.
“What are the chances Ryland’s still alive?” Gods, I despised that gut-wrenching twist of fear.
Despised how much I cared, hated that my self-control was nonexistent right now, as I breathlessly searched for a glimmer of red-brown hair in the middle of all this nothingness. My heart seized at the utter emptiness, looking for something, anything, just a flicker of movement…
“He’s alive. They’ll drag him to their den to feed and they like fresh meat so…well, chances are, he’s still alive.” Varian was hardly breathing as his head swiveled back and forth, then pointed to our left.
“Thank fuck. There. See those furrows cut through the sand? That’s the direction they’re taking him. Hmmm, that’s not good. He must be hurt.”
Even from here I saw the blood trail, the dark blotches in the sand, and a fresh wave of fear rose up out of nowhere and choked me, before I shoved it back down.
Gods, I hated Ryland so fucking much.
But if he was dead…
“Stay here,” I warned, muscles loose as I rose to a crouch, readying for the burst of energy that would take me down the hill and to the first clump of brush.
Then I paused, dragging the glass globe off my neck and pressing it into Varian’s hand.
“If I’m not back with Ryland in half an hour, speak into this.
Zephryn’s on the other end, he’ll tell you what to do next. ”
“I’m not letting you go down there alone, you idiot.
” Varian snapped, even as he dropped the chain over his head.
“And you haven’t seen how fast these things move.
They’ll be on you before you reach the bottom.
Besides, I’ve been waiting for two days to do this.
” Delight lit up his face as he closed his hand around my upper arm and warned—
“Hang on tight and don’t you dare stab me.”
Then the entire world smeared into a blur of nauseating gray before my feet slammed into black sand, hard enough my bones rattled.
What in the holy…