Chapter 34
Allie
“Did you do this?” Dax yelled, pointing his finger at Ryker.
“If I could control who came in and out of my crater, you wouldn’t be here,” Ryker bit out.
“Stop it!” I screamed, twisting my fingers as if I could weave an explanation out of thin air, through sheer will alone. “We need to think fast, the warriors are waiting.”
Ryker ran a hand down the shimmering entrance. His hand slipped right through.
“It isn’t saying anything,” he hissed. “What incantation did you use?”
“Just to keep the city safe and to warn us if something’s wrong.” My eyes widened, heart thudding. “Is–is this a warning?”
Ryker’s jaw tightened.
“Or maybe this godsdamned crater just has it out for all Veghearas.” Dax spit on the ground. “It failed to drown me, now it’s taking revenge on you.”
“If it wanted me dead, it could have caved the passage,” I said.
No, this didn’t feel like a death threat. It felt like the crater sinking its claws in me and not letting go.
A shiver raced through Ryker. “Don’t even say that. You’ll bring misfortune upon yourself.”
“Misfortune’s already here.” I kicked the passage again. It remained stubbornly solid, and sent a jolt of pain straight through my frozen toes. “Why won’t it let me leave?”
“The crater tried to stop you from leaving before,” Ryker said slowly. Dangerously. “Before Orion attacked.”
My mouth fell open. “You’re right.”
Those purple lights and the passage had tried their damndest to stop me from escaping right into a trap.
“If–” I licked my lips, a growing horror sprouting in my chest. “If it’s trying to protect me again…what’s waiting on that battlefield?”
Something that even this strange, dangerous land thought I couldn’t survive.
A chilling silence descended upon us all. My power blazed and sizzled deep inside of me, as if it wanted to coil around Ryker and prevent him from leaving as well.
“It might have sensed a kidnapping plot like Evie’s.” Ryker’s eyes sparked harder. “It let the rest of us pass.”
That was true.
The fear shaking my breaths quieted. If the passage let him, Dax, and Geryll pass, as all the other warriors, they were safe.
If Solkar’s Reach was truly trying to protect me and not enacting vengeance for the way my power had challenged it.
I rubbed my frozen cheeks. “We need a plan. Fast. Before anyone notices something’s wrong.”
“We do.” Ryker’s gaze travelled from me to the lip of the entrance.
I saw the hesitation.
Felt it in his fractured breaths.
His entire being vibrated with indecision and responsibilities he couldn’t shake.
“Don’t even think about it,” I said, unflinching. “You’re going to war. You’re not risking everyone’s lives to babysit me.”
He still looked torn, eyes sparking as his own personal war raged inside of him. The world was pulling us apart again.
I gulped down a centering breath and stepped closer to him, uncaring that Dax’s eyebrows flew up.
Ryker watched me approach with the astonishment of a man who’d been deprived of good surprises for too long.
“You asked me, from one leader to another, what I would’ve done,” I whispered, only for his ears. “I am telling you now, GO. To protect is to endure. The crater’s magic is bigger than all of us. If it thinks I’m safest here, we have to listen.”
Literally.
Because there was no way out, not for me. At least not now.
Even if I had trusted Dax’s winged contraption, the thing mostly glided downwards.
Ryker exhaled through flared nostrils. His hands rose toward me, but he fisted them at the last moment.
“You’ll be safer here,” he muttered to himself.
“I will be,” I pressed. The warriors might not bother with me, but their gazes clung to their Commander constantly. “You need to leave.”
Even as I said it, my entire being rebelled. If I was safer here, then so would he, instead of risking his life–
“Please,” I begged myself to stop this insane urge and him to fulfill both of our duties.
His shoulders slumped, defeated.
He nodded.
Once.
Curt.
Enough to make me relax.
This war was too important to endanger it.
“The journey back will be hard,” he said. “I can send some of the warriors back with you–”
“No!” My hand grabbed his before I realized what I was doing. The moment our fingers touched, even through my gloves, energy sizzled, like something had come alive once more. “No. Nobody–absolutely nobody–needs to know I’m trapped.”
If I’d been a free target on Sanctua Sirena, I shuddered to think what kind of attacks being trapped would bring.
“The warriors are marching for war, they have better things to worry about than not seeing me. The only one who’ll notice is Geryll, and he won’t tell,” I said with absolute certainty.
Ryker’s fingers held on tightly to mine.
“We can pitch your tent next to ours every night,” he said, however reluctantly.
But we needed a solution and we were creating one on the spot together.
“Don’t forget to make some snide remarks about Dax and I needing peace and quiet to write our little journals, they won’t suspect a thing,” I went on.
“Sylvester’s been flying above you for most of the journey,” he said. “He can fly with us until nighttime, change positions every other hour, to mimic your spot.”
A nervous laugh escaped my tight throat. “He will probably hate that.”
“What about the people in the city?” Dax asked. “Or do you want to go full recluse in the frozen tundra until the war’s done?”
With the few provisions I had on me, I wouldn’t have been able to survive in this cold even if I wanted to.
I looked back at the vast expanse of snow and ice waiting for me. Ryker’s fingers tightened around mine, centering.
“We’ll tell Solkar’s Reach we had a change of strategy,” I said suddenly. “We decided The Huntress would stay back and defend the city. Nobody apart from Ryker can come in or leave until the war has ended, they won’t be able to tell anyone.”
Ryker’s hand tensed. “And if word does get out before the troops realize…”
“Then we’ll know the traitor is still here,” I finished.
“Let’s hope the traitor–if one does exist–left with you,” Dax said. “And dies in the war.”
“No,” Ryker said. “They need to survive. A corpse can’t reveal how they stole from me.”
His other hand engulfed mine, as if not wanting to let me go.
Ever.
“Are you sure?” he muttered.
No.
“There’s no other way.” I forced a shaky smile. “The crater won’t let me leave and you have to go.”
We locked eyes, once again pulled apart by circumstances larger than us.
He would leave.
I would stay.
And some ugly part of me whispered that this was how it always would be.
“I’ll be safe,” I said once more. “Defend us. Come back alive.”
Please come back alive.
Ryker pressed his forehead against mine. We stood like that for what felt like eternity, breathing each other in. The only thought keeping me upright was the fact that the crater had let him pass.
Solkar’s Reach wouldn’t have sent its son to be slaughtered…would it?
“Sylvester can reach me,” Ryker muttered, his breath a ghost across my lips. “If you feel anything is wrong–”
“I’ll send him. I promise.”
A shudder passed through us both before we disentangled.
“Don’t doubt yourself. Be cautious,” he said. “I don’t trust the crater fully. Not anymore.”
Then he turned to Dax, a raised brow his only question.
“I’m staying.” Dax jutted out his chin at me. “I go where you go. I thought I made that clear.”
“Very well,” Ryker said and looked at me–really looked at me, eyes jumping all over my face, as if trying to memorize each crease and eyelash. “Stay safe.”
We held onto each other’s hands for as long as we could as he stepped toward the passage.
“Come back,” I mouthed as he vanished in the darkness.