Chapter 13
Ryker
“He’s shifty.” Nadya paced in front of the fire, restless and casting a long, twitchy shadow on the plush carpet that extended all the way between my armchair and Geryll’s. “And his eyes. They’re like a Pathfinder’s.”
I hummed low in my throat, hand drifting over Geryll’s leg. I’d closed the skin wound back in the passage to prevent infections, but it would have taken months for the muscle and tissue to restitch. With my blood powers, we’d be done by the time the tea kettle hissed.
But the sliced bone…that would be harder to heal. At least by my hand.
Since the Calling, when I’d bled on the sacred Blood Brotherhood stones, my powers had been different than others’ in the Clan.
I could close wounds, take aches away, and freeze people where they stood, but it had always been easier for me to bend natural elements to my will.
Water, sap, blood, anything liquid, as long as it came from a living, breathing being.
Bones, however, were hard–and Geryll’s had been sliced too deep.
“Have you ever seen a Pathfinder?” I asked.
After living in Solkar’s Reach and feeling its Heart pulse underneath my fingers, I hesitated to call anything a legend. Yet Pathfinders sounded less like reality and more like beings whispered about by people who’d lost too much and those who wanted to profit off their desperation and grief.
“No.” Nadya stopped. “But I’ve read about them while Geryll dawdled in that library you insist on sending us to.”
“I do not dawdle.” Geryll gripped tighter onto the armchair’s leather. I slowed my powers down, simmering in his veins. “The greatest lieutenants spent as much time on the training grounds as they did studying tactics.”
“They do not,” Nadya argued.
“My father did,” he muttered.
“Knowledge will always be powerful,” I said.
Geryll’s father had truly been a great warrior, but any mention of Durym tightened his lower lip and shoulders.
I hadn’t been raised in the shadow of a great–or even decent–man, but I understood pressure and loss, and wanted to shield Geryll from them.
“I’m asking what you know about Pathfinders because I’ve never seen one.
Nor has anyone alive right now. It would have been quite a miracle. ”
Nadya crossed her hands in front of her chest, as she always did when something clashed with her own ideas. Always ready for a fight, this one. “I don’t need to see a dragon to know they’re real.”
“True. But could you recognize a lone dragon bone in a field? Or know what its scales look like?”
“No,” she grumbled.
“Then how can you tell how a Pathfinder’s eyes look if you’ve never seen them?”
“I–” She clicked her tongue and began pacing again. “I just know he’s shifty.”
I grimaced. “That he is.”
All of Allie’s cousins were strange and suspicious, but this one paid more attention than he needed to. His gaze had known how to look for my weapons and assess how I moved. Those weren’t ballroom skills.
I didn’t trust him–but I couldn’t prove he’d done anything wrong.
“And the fact that he just showed up after the attack,” Nadya went on. Nothing short of a cataclysm could deter her when she set her suspicions on someone. I couldn’t decide if I’d trained her well or done her a huge disservice. “That’s wrong. It smells wrong, it feels wrong. It’s just wrong.”
“It could be,” I said evenly.
It was no coincidence that Dax had come to Solkar’s Reach now. Then again, he’d almost lost his life trying to show us that his contraption actually worked. A guilty man would have lied and shirked real proof.
A conniving man could have orchestrated the entire ordeal.
But the ice hadn’t broken in hundreds of years. Nobody could have planned that, not even Dria Vegheara herself, let alone her annoying descendant.
I hadn’t wanted to alarm Allie even more, but the ordeal at the lake had shaken me. Even now, the muscles of my back tensed as I remembered the dark water pressing against me. The ice shattering under my trembling fingers.
I’d felt the lake trying to pull me under.
Fighting me.
For the first time in years, I wasn’t sure I would win.
Solkar’s Rays snapping Allie’s power.
The mere bleeding of the crater’s powers wouldn’t have done that.
This was vengeful–and I didn’t know how to combat it.
“What is he even doing here?” Nadya scowled.
I swallowed my sigh.
After almost dying, most of my energy sapped by Geryll’s wound, and the looming conversation with Allie raking through some of my worst fears, Nadya’s insistence was stomping a rare crack in my patience.
But easing her distress mattered more.
Of course she would be unnerved. We’d survived an attack, Geryll had been wounded, and this was the first time all three of us had time to talk.
So I listened, and I answered.
“Whether they want to admit it or not, the Veghearas are in danger,” I said, just as calmly, keeping the exhaustion at bay the best I could. “Solkar’s Reach is still safer than most other places in Malhaven.”
Not the safest.
Not anymore.
“So what?” Nadya stomped her feet. “We’re just supposed to harbour anyone who’s down on their luck or has a target on their backs?”
For the first time since he’d slumped in the chair, Geryll raised his head. “That’s not fair.”
“It’s totally fair,” Nadya said. “He’s not our problem–”
“You found safety here,” Geryll said, more softly than before. “It’s not fair for you to say others don’t deserve the same.”
“I was famished, bleeding, and barely coherent,” Nadya shot back.
“We shouldn’t wait until someone’s bleeding to help them.” Geryll’s voice turned into a mumble. Almost defeated.
Nadya tsked in irritation again.
“He’s right,” I said.
Geryll’s eyes jumped to mine. “I am?”
“Very much so.” And he made me proud of it. My suspicion might have bled into Nadya, but Geryll had borrowed the worthy parts. “If we turn our backs when people need us, we’re no better than the Northern Clans who let our sick younglings die.”
Succumbed to that same blasted plague which had also taken my mother and her kindness away from this world.
The one that led to me joining the Blood Brotherhood–and now forced me to participate in its impending war.
I didn’t regret it.
My people were safe and Zandyr had never once badgered or threatened me about accessing my crater’s magic, unlike my so-called relatives leading the Northern Clans.
The gods surely had a special punishment for Beren, Lioran, and Edrin once this world would finally rid itself of them.
“We don’t become what we hate,” I said. “Good will always prevail. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But it will in the end.”
“Alright. We should help,” Nadya said. “Does The Huntress’ cousin truly need it?”
Dax was in need of a good beating to take him down a peg. On the training grounds, to make it equal. I could pummel that smug smile–
“He came here, out of all places, didn’t he?” I said.
Nadya huffed. “I don’t trust him.”
“And you shouldn’t, not until he has proven himself.” I caught Geryll’s gaze and held it. Nadya was steel and anger, but he was made of a different spirit. “And even then, question until you find the right answers.”
Geryll nodded, however hesitantly.
“Good.” A corner of my mouth ticked up, before I turned my head to the side so they both could see my face. “Keep an eye on our guest for me, would you?”
Nadya raised her brows. “Why?”
Geryll’s eyes widened. “Are you going somewhere?”
“Most likely.” I straightened, powers still sifting through his veins. His skin was red and pulsing with the blood I’d summoned, but the tissue was closing up nicely. “The Serpents want war. The Blood Brotherhood will give it to them.”
Nadya and Geryll had sensed something was wrong, but judging from their sharp inhales and parted lips, they hadn’t realized how bad things actually were.
“When?” Geryll asked first.
“Soon.” Too soon. I inhaled deeply. “I need you two to pay attention to everything that goes on in my absence. You know the crater best. If anything feels amiss, even if the wind doesn’t blow like it should one day, you send Sylvester my way. Got it?”
“Wait…” Nadya stepped closer. “We’re not coming with you?”
“No,” I said sternly, that one word a whip that vibrated through the entire room. “Neither of you will step foot on that battlefield.”
“But–” Nadya whined.
“That’s final. You still have much more to learn.”
“But the glory of a historic war like this–”
I finally turned to her, eyes sparking. “There is no glory in needless death. You are not ready for war and I will not risk your lives.”
“They don’t write odes for the cowards who stayed home.”
“The odes are written for the ones who protect and help their people. There is nothing cowardly about protecting your home.”
She opened her mouth, looking into my eyes defiantly, on the verge of arguing.
I watched and waited.
Nothing came out.
She closed her lips with a grimace and looked down.
“Fine. We’ll just stay home,” she muttered.
“Good.” I took another deep inhale. “I will return, Nadya. I’m not leaving forever.”
If the gods were truly merciful.
She just nodded, hope and fear fighting with the fire dancing in her eyes.
“I promise,” I said.
She kept nodding until her shoulders finally fell. “It’s the worst time for a war.”
“It is. But you will be safe. And no matter what happens, you will be free.” I turned to Geryll, who’d begun to twist his fingers, the mean furrow on his face too similar to mine. “Does it still hurt?”
He startled, as if I’d caught him red-handed. With what? Breathing?
“No, it’s…” He stared down at his red shin, the skin still pulsating as his flesh mended. “It–it feels like you’re dragging the blood from my head. It’s making me dizzy.”
It made me dizzy, too. Even as visions of Allie’s wet, delectable body slipped into my thoughts, I knew I needed to rest to ready myself for tomorrow.
Would she curse me when I showed her the dagger or understand why I waited?
Shove me away and seal her life from mine forever? Would she believe or set her arrows on me?
“You alright?” Nadya asked.
“Sorry.” I shook my head, refocusing on Geryll. “Everything good in your blood is healing you right now. Make sure you eat well tomorrow. Meat, especially.”
Geryll tilted his head to the side. “You think I’ll ever have powers like you?”
My brows shot up. Geryll had never expressed any interest in my blood magic. The speed and fighting, yes. Almost reverently–because his father had also had them.
“If you get The Calling, yes,” I said.
“And if I don’t? I wasn’t born Blood Brotherhood.”
“Neither was I.”
“But you became the Clan’s Commander. You’re Blood Brotherhood Elite. You’re a true warrior.”
“Not everyone in the Blood Brotherhood Elite is a warrior. Elysia handles poisons. Soryn has his brain, Calyx has his weapons.”
“But they all have something special. Grand,” he said, almost wistful, just as the last of his bones and muscle relaxed back into position.
“Nothing is stopping you from being grand.” I shook my hand away, wrist as sore as the rest of me. “Except the belief that you are not. You’re lucky. You’ll be able to do whatever you want with your life. And you’re already special.”
He huffed a skeptical laugh that didn’t reach his eyes. “The Huntress said something similar.”
“Then maybe you’ll listen to her if you won’t believe me.” I leaned back in the armchair, the leather cradling my tight spine, and cleared my throat. “I wanted to ask you two something. You can say no.”
They both looked at me expectantly.
“I’d like to invite her to join us for tea,” I said slowly. Cautiously. Perhaps too carefully for something that should have been so simple. Because it mattered. “Not always, it will still be our tradition. Only…sometimes.”
Geryll shrugged. “Sure.”
I looked at Nadya, who was busy nibbling on her lips.
“She’s going to be here a long time,” she said, as if she was debating with herself. I let her. Nadya always trusted her decisions more than anyone else’s. “And she’s not that bad.”
Her eyes slashed to me, suddenly big and open, looking like the scared youngling who’d first stepped foot in Solkar’s Reach. “You said she won’t come all the time, right? It’s still going to be the three of us.”
I nodded gravely. “I promise.”
She gave me a small smile. “Alright then. Maybe she can teach us that arrow trick. I want to master it before I turn twenty.”
“I’m sure she’ll be more than happy to.” I relaxed further into the warm leather, the tightness in my back easing.
For a second, I simply sat there, listening to the crackle in the fireplace, watching Geryll bending his leg and wiggling his toes.
“Feels better,” he said, sounding as relieved as I felt.
Geryll already felt out of place on the training grounds, he didn’t need a wound reminding him just how much.
“I’m glad.” I smiled just as the kettle in the fireplace hissed.
“I’ll get it,” Geryll said excitedly and jumped out of his armchair.
As soon as he took one step, he lost his balance.
I stuck my hands out, catching him right before his nose hit the floor.
“Still dizzy?” I asked.
Geryll shook his head, mouth opening and closing, unsure what was happening. Finally, he righted himself and looked down at his leg in horror.
“It–” His breath hitched. “It hurts.”