Chapter 10 #2
Her face was pale and angular, with a delicate nose and yellow almond-shaped eyes. Her temples and forehead were marked with a complicated green design, which seemed to pulse with a rhythmic glow.
“Where is she, the Maker of the Melody?” The female’s voice was soft and honeyed, yet it made the hairs along the back of my neck stand on end.
“Sorsha,” Adriel called, getting to his feet.
A moment later, I heard footsteps crashing through the undergrowth. The fae blinked at us, her expression cool, until the princess reappeared with weapons drawn.
Sorsha’s gaze flickered from me and Adriel to the female standing beneath the tree.
“You are the one,” said the strange fae, appraising her. “The one who sings.”
“Yes.” Sorsha’s voice was breathless as she returned the female’s stare, and I could tell she was trying to discern whether the fae posed a threat.
“Come,” said the female, turning back toward the billowing mist from which she’d appeared. “You may entertain us with your song.”
I looked to Sorsha, whose face had drained of all color. It hadn’t sounded like a request.
Shoving down my nerves, I followed the fae beneath a thick bow and onto a narrow trail where the mist seemed to hang even thicker. Her shadow loomed a few paces ahead, winding gracefully through the moss-covered trees.
After we’d been walking for a several minutes, I realized I’d lost my bearings. I’d thought it would be a simple thing to follow the path back in the direction we’d come, but the labyrinth trail had taken so many turns that I had no idea where we were.
Then the trees seemed to part, and a clearing edged by boulders the size of horses appeared. It was cool and damp, the leaves on the surrounding trees dripping with dew. An enormous spiderweb cloaked the farthest boulder, and I shuddered to think what sort of spider had made it.
A sputter of a noise drew my attention to a boulder on the far side of the clearing, and I glanced up just in time to meet a pair of curious golden eyes framed by thick lashes. A youngling.
I blinked. I’d never seen a young faerie before, but this one appeared to be many years from maturity. Though his hair was as yellow as his eyes, he bore the same glowing green markings as the female.
“Sit,” she said, casting the youngling a sharp look as she gestured to a smooth white rock. The ground was carpeted in thick green moss, which formed a springy surface that I could tell would not be ideal for fighting.
Adriel gave a loud harrumph but sat, sword resting across his knees. I sank down nervously beside him, but when Sorsha moved to take her place, the female stopped her with a low hiss.
“Not you, Melody Maker. You shall sing for us.”
“Sing?” Sorsha blanched.
“Sing, sing, sing!” cried the youngling.
The female turned toward him, hair billowing, and he ducked out of view once more.
A muffled grumbling drew my attention, and I nearly yelped when the great spiderweb moved.
Peering closer, I saw that it concealed another figure — a gnarled male with hair the color of mist. His back was so bent and his skin so weathered that he appeared to be growing into the tree behind him.
Adriel must have seen the other fae at the same moment I did, because his hand tightened on his blade.
The female didn’t acknowledge the male wasting away beneath the web. She merely inclined her head, and Sorsha nervously cleared her throat. She stammered over the first few notes of the melody, her voice coming out sweet and shaky.
I hail from the dark mountains
I am a child of snow
But when I wandered the Ravenous Wood
I went to the yew below
Asleep I fell ’neath its heavy bows
And dreamt of fields of gold
My mountain was gone t’when I awoke
I found that I’d grown old
As Sorsha finished her song, a placid smile spread across the female’s face. She looked like a cat that had gotten the cream, and when she finally turned in my direction, her eyes seemed to burn right through me.
“Why have you come here?” she asked.
Though she’d posed the question to the group at large, I had a feeling it was directed at me.
I swallowed.
“Your blade thirsts for blood,” the female said, nodding at the dagger sheathed at my thigh. “Though you are not the warrior.” Her gaze drifted to Adriel, and her yellow eyes narrowed. “You have killed many, and you will keep killing to protect the one you hold dear.”
Adriel’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t say a word.
The fae’s attention slid back to me. “Though your blade is stained with the blood of innumerable monsters, there is only one death for which it thirsts.”
Fresh unease coiled in my stomach. She spoke as if my blade were sentient. As if it were my witchwood dagger that hungered for Semphrys’s death.
Maybe her fae senses could detect an intelligence in the blade that I could not, though I struggled to know what to say.
Kaden had told me once not to lie to the fae — that many older faeries could smell deception. I had no idea how old the female might be, so I settled on the truth. “My blade thirsts for the blood of the demon king.”
“Only a fool would hunt the Dark One, and a fool would not have felled so many.” Her expression turned cold. “Tell me the true reason you have come here.”
My mouth went dry. Whether she could smell deception or not, she’d somehow known that I hadn’t shared the whole truth.
“I am the last witch of the Coranthe line,” I managed. “My dagger is a witchwood blade. I alone may kill the demon king, but to do so, I must venture to the Great Oak and restore the Death Bringer’s hands.”
I reached over my shoulder, fumbling with the makeshift sack attached to my bandolier. I didn’t unwrap the hands, but something in the way the fae recoiled told me she could sense them.
“Once they are returned, I will beseech her to cut the ties of the souls bound to Semphrys. Only then can he be killed.”
“You have come for my people’s blood so that you may enter the Great Oak,” said the fae.
“Yes.”
Satisfaction blazed behind the female’s eyes. “I see. You’ve told me how you propose to slay the Dark One, though you still have not said why.”
“He —” I broke off, glancing at Adriel. The royal guard’s expression was impassive. Sorsha looked terrified. “Semphrys has my mate.”
“Ah.” The faerie clucked her tongue, and a coy smile spread across her face — the most human expression she’d worn yet. “So you wish to vanquish the Dark One for love.”
“Something like that.”
“How . . . trite.” She let out a cruel huff of laughter, but I didn’t hear what she said next.
White-hot pain sliced through my chest, and I threw myself off the rock. My knees hit the boggy ground, and suddenly, I was ripped away from the forest and the fae and the old male in the cobwebs.
Dark stone walls rose up around me, and I blinked to try to place where I was. It smelled like death and dust and blood.
I was in Dorthus, but I couldn’t see Kaden.
A demon with long black hair stood across from me, her onyx eyes gleaming with delight. A fresh burst of pain sliced through my chest, and the female smiled at the sound of my scream.
No, not my scream. Kaden’s.
Suddenly, I realized why I couldn’t see him. I was Kaden. At least, I was seeing through his eyes. Feeling what he was feeling.
Back in the clearing, I was vaguely aware of Adriel kneeling beside me, but then I was snatched back to that awful cell.
I was being torn apart. What felt like claws ripped through my chest, tearing out my very heart.
My own panicked screams mixed with Kaden’s as I dug my fingers into the moss-covered earth. I looked down at my chest, expecting to find the source of the agony, but no blood marred my baggy linen shirt.
“What is it?” Adriel growled.
I shook my head, unable to speak through the pain. Tears tracked down my cheeks, but I wasn’t wounded, which meant —
The pain didn’t belong to me.
It belonged to him.
“They’re killing him,” I choked.
“Killing whom?”
“Kaden,” I managed.
“He can’t be killed,” Adriel replied, his voice wavering despite his words. “At least, not easily.”
“I don’t know, but part of him is dying.” The words came out wet and muffled, and I realized I was crying. “We have to go to him.”
“You know we can’t.”
“We have to,” I ground out, whipping my head around to glare at him.
“We can’t,” Adriel insisted. “Even with that dagger, you are no match for Semphrys.”
“Then we won’t face him,” I cried.
Adriel made a confused noise in his throat, but Sorsha was on her feet, staring at me with a stricken expression.
I knew what I had to do.
Closing my eyes, I retreated into my mind, searching the thorny brambles that formed my mental barrier for that shimmering golden thread. I reached out with my senses, feeling for Kaden, but I couldn’t find the bond that linked us.
With each passing second, I grew more frantic. Searching. Sensing.
If the bond was gone, that meant —
No.
My heart beat faster, my breaths growing ragged. He couldn’t be dead. I would have felt it. Or maybe I had. Maybe that had been the source of the agony I felt.
But then, tangled in the vines that formed my mental hedge, I found a dull golden thread. It was a ghostly fragment of what it had been, but it was there, which meant he had to be alive.
Tears trailed down my cheeks as I imagined the echo of that devious voice in my mind. The voice that had goaded me. Incensed me. Aroused me. Gods, what I wouldn’t give to hear it now.
Then I felt it. The faintest pulse down the bond — so subtle it might have been nothing if it weren’t for the deep sense of knowing that settled in my bones.
Kaden?
No answer.
Please, I begged him, growing my hedge of thorns thicker and tighter, leaving only enough room for that shimmering golden thread.
It’s you.
Kaden’s answer was faint — barely more than a rasp –– but I choked out a sob of relief.
It’s me.
Lyra? A flicker of confusion ghosted down the bond, followed swiftly by fear. You shouldn’t be —
They’re hurting you. My voice shook as it traveled down our mental pathway.
Kaden didn’t respond.
I’m coming for you.
No.
You cannot stop me, I shot back.
Lyra, it isn’t safe. My mind isn’t . . .
He trailed off, but I heard the words he did not say. Kaden’s mind was no longer safe from his father.
Raw, unadulterated fury coursed through me as I imagined what they must have done to him to breach his mental defenses. I pressed a hand to my chest, my muscles still clenched protectively from the agony they’d put him through.
My bottom lip shook as I imagined the crack of bone just before I sank my witchwood blade through his father’s black heart.
I was coming for my mate. And then I would come for Semphrys.
Lyra, we can’t speak like this. My father —
Show him where I am.
Another ripple of confusion streaked down the bond, and I squeezed my eyes shut in concentration.
I pictured the far reaches of the Barrens — the scrap of rocky coastline along the Drathen Sea. I imagined the whip of the cool salty breeze, a light mist peppering my face. I allowed those thoughts to fill my mind, crowding out everything else.
If Semphrys was hunting me, then I would send him on a fruitless mission, clearing the path to Kaden.
Opening my eyes, I tugged gently on our bond, willing him to understand. But the pathway between us was silent.
Worried, I checked again, sending a bit of my essence trailing down —
Something like an electric shock shot back toward me, hitting me straight in the chest. I gasped in pain and released the connection, but not before I felt it shudder.
My heart fractured as I stared through the gap in my hedge at the brittle, lifeless thread looped between the vines.
The bond had gone dark.
Yanking myself back to the present, I realized I was sobbing. I was still hunched on the moss-covered ground, my hair hanging limp around my face. My eyes felt puffy and swollen, and something within me ached at Kaden’s absence.
Sorsha sat perched on a rock, cheeks shimmering with tears. Adriel’s expression could have cut glass, and the faerie was staring down at me with an accusatory look.
“You did not tell me he was your mate.”
I shuddered at the reminder of what I’d just lost, my whole body trembling as I sensed the deadened space where that shimmering golden thread had once pulsed with our connection.
Either Semphrys or Kaden had severed the bond. I could no longer feel the pathway between us, which meant . . .
I didn’t want to think about it.
“You are mated to the Dark Prince,” said the fae, her golden eyes suddenly hawkish.
“Yes,” I rasped.
“He is the one you wish to free?”
“Yes.”
“You came here, into my forest, to ask for my blood so that you may rescue the Traitor Prince — the Taker of Souls –– who has brought nothing but darkness and despair to these lands?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out.
“The prince has been biding his time,” said Adriel. “Pacifying the Dark King with the souls of those bound for Dorthus until he could find the one with the power to kill Semphrys.” He nodded toward me. “Until he found her.”
“So that he may usurp his father and steal the demon king’s throne?” sneered the fae.
“So he may take his rightful place as king of Anvalyn,” Adriel said coldly. “And restore balance to the realm.”
“Why should I believe you?” the faerie hissed. “Why should I place my trust in the Traitor Prince when he has brought nothing but suffering? Why should I trust her? The half-huntress mongrel.”
The fae’s nose wrinkled as she regarded me, but I didn’t feel angry or defensive. I only felt numb.
“My brother is the son of Elowynn, uniter of the faerie peoples and protector of the realm,” Sorsha growled. “He is the true heir to the throne of Anvalyn.”
“And yet he has not protected the realm,” the faerie retorted. “The Ravaging spreads across our lands like a plague. Even if the prince’s intentions are as honorable as you claim, he cannot stop what has already begun.”
Sorsha glared at the female, fists balled at her sides, but the fae directed her words at me.
“I sympathize with your plight, Blade of Death. I know what it is to have loved and lost. But I will not help you as long as you align yourself with the Dark Prince. Nor will I endanger my people by drawing the demon king’s ire. ”