Chapter 14
Ryder lowered his arms, looked warily at me. “Kiss you?” He sounded absolutely baffled.
I started backing away, humiliated. “Unless you don’t want to.”
“No. I mean, yes.” He let out a breathless little laugh. “Farrin.” He reached for me, then put his hands at his sides, just as I had done. He looked at the floor between us. “Farrin, I think about kissing you literally every day. I dream of you. I…” His gaze flicked up to meet mine. “ Wanting you is not the issue. I want you. I want everything about you.”
I felt dizzy with him looking at me like that—a hulking mountain of a man with eyes as blue as a summer sky and raven-dark hair that I knew from experience was much softer than it looked. The expression on his face was one of unmistakable yearning, as if he were seeing the sun rise after a long, cold darkness. It softened him, made him look younger.
I found my courage and stepped toward him. “Then kiss me like you did that day,” I whispered. “Please, Ryder.”
He came to me then, so close I could feel his breath against my lips and just far enough away that my knees went liquid with desperate need. I ached for him to lower his head and touch his mouth to mine.
But instead he said, very low, “Farrin, you’re upset. And you told me…” His mouth thinned. He touched his brow to mine, cradled my face so gently in his hands that I let out a soft cry of wanting, a noise I didn’t know I could make.
He exhaled shakily. “You told me that you’ve kissed only two other people, that you’ve gone to bed with someone only once. And I know you’re upset. I know seeing Yvaine was hard for you. I don’t want you to…” He looked away, his jaw working. The heat of him was incredible; I found myself leaning into him like a cat into sunshine.
“Gods,” he rasped. “Farrin, I don’t want you to ask me for this just because you’re upset. I don’t want to dismiss your desires. You’re a grown woman, and you know what you want. But…” He looked back at me, a plea in those fierce blue eyes. “Whatever you ask of me, I’ll do it. But I can’t bear you realizing later that you regret asking in the first place. Tell me honestly: Is this truly what you want?”
The rush of tenderness I felt upon witnessing his conflict, his earnest intensity, left me near tears. I reached for him, my hands trembling as I touched the rough expanse of his beard, the soft skin above it. “I want you to kiss me, Ryder Bask,” I whispered. “Kiss me, please. Like you did that day.” My heart pounded so hard I could feel it in every part of my body. “That, and…more, please.”
I flushed, the sound of my request echoing childishly in my ears, but Ryder only smiled at me and traced my bottom lip with his thumb. I shivered at the sensation and grabbed his jacket with both hands. He kissed my hair, nuzzling it gently.
“What does more mean to you?” he murmured, his mouth against my ear.
I closed my eyes, shook my head a little. He kissed my jaw, my neck, my gown’s plain stitched collar. I slid my hands up his arms, held him to me.
He paused in his kisses, then pulled back just enough that his lips hovered over my skin. “Farrin,” he said roughly. “You have to tell me what you want. More to me means…” He laughed again, a soft, gruff sound that sent chills down my whole front and tightened my nipples under my dress, a novel sensation that made my breath catch in my throat.
“ More means perhaps more than you’re ready for,” he went on. “And that’s perfectly fine, but I need to know. Tell me, or I can’t in good conscience kiss you any further.”
“I…” I made myself look up at him, meet his hot blue gaze. Gods, his eyes were like twin jewels, brilliant and gorgeous. “I want you to kiss me.” I glanced past him, my cheeks burning. “There, on the bed. And…” I bit my lip.
He groaned and touched his brow to mine once more. “And?” he whispered.
“And then I…I don’t know. I think I want you to touch me.” As I said the words, the heat at the core of me, between my legs, bloomed down my thighs. “I want you to touch me…” I shook my head against him. I laughed, breathless, aching all over. “You know where. Don’t make me say it.”
And he didn’t. Instead, he dropped soft kisses in my hair and gently, slowly, slid one of his hands down my back, around the curve of my waist, and down, down, over the flat plane of my belly, and down even farther, to press his fingers against me, just the slightest sweet pressure through the fabric of my gown.
The pleasure of even that small touch was glorious, sending a rush of blazing heat through my entire body. I cried out and clutched his arm, my head spinning.
“Here?” he whispered, voice and breath and lips against the hollow of my throat. “Is this where you want me to touch you?”
I nodded frantically, found my words. “Yes, there,” I gasped out, and the next moment he had swept me up into his arms. Four long strides, to lock the door and take me to the bed, and then he was lowering me down onto it—the pillows below me and Ryder above, his body hovering over mine for a moment before he carefully settled beside me. I turned into him, seeking him with clumsy ardor, and his arms came around me, strong and warm, and he was kissing me just as he had that day in the stable before I’d stopped him—hot, hungry kisses, deep and devouring, as if he were a starving man and I were a feast laid out before him. I was inexpert at kissing, nervous and inelegant, perhaps a little too eager, but as soon as those worries entered my mind, Ryder’s kisses drove them out.
He left no inch of me untouched: the soft skin just behind my ears, the line of my jaw, even the turns of my wrists. Just as soon as I thought nothing could feel better than this—his mouth on mine, his kisses on my nape, under my hair—he would move, try something different, something tender and wild and wholly new. He began undoing the buttons at my collar.
“Is this all right?” he whispered.
I could only nod, pressing up against his body, my own an inferno of instinct and need. He worked slowly, lavishing kisses upon each new bit of skin he unveiled before moving on to the next. His teeth lightly grazed my collarbones, and when he reached the button that revealed the first slight swell of my breasts, he let out a low groan, his breath hot on my skin, his hands shaking a little as they cupped my waist. I reached down and placed my hands over his before he could unbutton anything further.
He stilled at once and came back up to find me, breathing as hard as I was. Soft kisses on my chin, across my cheeks, so tender that I had to hold him there against me for a moment and smile into his hair.
“Should I stop?” he asked. “Is this too much?”
“No, please don’t. I just…” I glanced down at my opened bodice, the stretch of bare pale skin, and felt a thrill that wasn’t entirely terror, nor was it entirely desire. It was something confused and in between, and I tried not to feel embarrassed as I explained. “No more of that, please. I…I don’t want to be naked. Not right now.”
He nodded, swallowed hard. “Of course.” He kissed me, sweet and slow, then found a long tress of golden-brown hair that had come loose from my braid and buried his face in it, breathing in deep. “Is it still all right if I touch you?” he asked, after a moment.
“If you don’t, I’ll change my mind about not wanting to punch you,” I said at once, and he laughed into my hair and said, “All right, love. We’ll start slowly. Tell me the moment you want me to stop.”
He held himself over me, drawing me up toward his body with languorous kisses, lazy, unhurried, each of which left me feeling drunk and buzzing all the way down to my toes. And then he gently pushed his thigh between my legs, and I latched on to him with a gasp, something ancient and primal within me telling me to move against him. I circled my hips slowly, a little nervously, and each press of his muscled thigh against my core brought a deep thrum of pleasure that left me swooning, panting beneath him on the bed.
“That’s it,” he said, bending down to kiss my throat. I keened quietly at the touch of his lips, arched up against him. He found my hands clutching desperately at his shoulders, gently unfolded my fingers, and pressed my arms into the pillows, pinning me tenderly beneath him.
The sensation of being trapped by him—the sweet care with which he held his body over mine—made me gasp into his hair as he sucked gently on my neck with lips and tongue. At each point of contact—his hands holding mine, his mouth on my skin, his thigh between my legs—I blazed hotter than any fire.
When he shifted, releasing my hands to drag his fingers down my body, I cried out in protest without meaning to. He paused; he lifted his hands off of me.
“Should I stop?” he asked, his brow furrowing with concern even as I felt the heat of his desire pressing urgently against my thigh.
I could have kissed him; I did kiss him, turning up my face to his in silent invitation. “No, don’t stop,” I murmured against his cheek. “Just…I like it when you’re on top of me, when you’re all around me, holding me in place,” I whispered. “When all I can feel is you. The strength of you next to the smallness of me. I feel…trapped, but in a good way. A safe way.”
It was the most embarrassing thing I’d ever said, and yet perhaps the truest, for in its wake came a sense of peace—a sort of clarity, a rightness, as if I’d finally found the words I’d been searching for all my life. Ryder smiled down at me, not in judgment or in jest but with a fondness that made me long even more fiercely for his touch.
He shifted beside me, then said, “Look at me while I do this, Farrin.”
His voice was a firm caress, a guiding light in the haze of my desire, and the relief I felt when I heard him tell me what to do, where to look, was overwhelming. Dizzy, smiling with unfettered happiness, I obeyed him, lifting my gaze to meet his. He kissed my arms, from my wrists all the way up to my shoulders, each kiss making me shift and sigh in his embrace. And then he gathered both my hands in one of his and pulled them gently over my head to pin them softly against the pillows.
He kept his gaze upon me the entire time, and though I could hardly bear meeting his eyes, I made myself do it, made myself look right at him even while his other hand—the one not trapping my hands over my head—slid down my body. He took his time, his fingers wandering across my half-clothed torso as I panted beneath him, my hips still circling against his thigh. And then he began lifting my skirts, swirling little circles up my legs—on my knees, my thighs, every trembling bit of skin—until he found the top of my tights and, with a glance up at me first, began slowly tugging them down my legs. I stopped him when they reached my knees.
“I feel safer with them at least partway on,” I explained, feeling even in my absolute joy a stab of shame upon making such a request. But Ryder only nodded and kissed me again, long and slow, while his hand slid once again under my rucked-up skirts. My underwear wasn’t pretty or elaborate—just plain linen with a simple bow at the top to keep them in place—but when Ryder touched it, gently pushing apart my thighs to draw circles on the sodden fabric, he shuddered beside me and swore quietly into my hair.
“ Fuck ,” he said roughly, and the sound of his voice—so masculine, deep and hungry, completely undone to be touching me—made me cry out a little, a soft, whimpering sob, and arch up against his body. One hand continued to trap mine over my head, while his other hand slipped beneath my underwear, finding me wet and hot and aching. He pressed his hips against mine with a sharp groan and kissed me—hard, desperate—until we both had to pull away to breathe.
“Is that good, Farrin?” he rasped, his thumb circling around me.
I nodded helplessly, shaking under his touch.
“No, no, gods, please, Farrin, tell me,” he said, looking at me with those blazing blue eyes. “I need to hear you say it.”
“It feels good,” I gasped out, clinging to him. “Ryder, you feel so good, I…” I shook my head against his cheek, turned my face into the soft black fall of his hair. I was moving shamelessly against him, angling my hips toward him so he would, I hoped, understand what I wanted without me having to ask—and of course he did. With another harsh curse whispered into my hair, he slid a finger inside me.
“Like this?” he asked, his voice strained as he moved against me, in me, his thumb still circling, his hand still pinning me to the bed.
“Yes,” I breathed, sobbing a little; the glorious, golden pleasure building inside me was rising fast. “Yes—”
And then I could no longer speak, helpless in the throes of it, of Ryder, of my own shaking, humming body. I clung to him for a long time, my heart a jubilant drum, and then began to laugh and cry at once, hiding my face against his chest. It took him a moment to realize that my laughter hid tears; he tensed a little and started to pull away.
“No, please don’t go,” I whispered. I moved closer, silently rejoicing when he draped a leg over mine, drawing me sweetly against him. There was a question in his eyes; in response I simply smiled, bashful heat crawling up my cheeks.
“Thank you,” I told him. “I don’t know what else to say right now, don’t know how to explain. I’m…soon I think I’ll rather lose my nerve.”
I could feel it happening already: the awareness of how much of my body was unclothed, the knowledge of that making me tense when only seconds before I’d felt limp and happy, even sultry. Me, Farrin Ashbourne, lying blissfully in the arms of a man—and not just any man, but Ryder Bask .
I wiped my face, shut my eyes tight, willed my body to relax, begged my mind to stop its worried nattering.
“You’re safe, Farrin” came Ryder’s gentle voice. He drew long, lazy lines up and down my back, and then, after a moment, found the quilt at the foot of the bed and drew it up over our bodies. The feeling of being cocooned against him was a delicious one, and soothing, but not even that was enough to quiet my mind. It occurred to me all of a sudden that this didn’t seem fair. I’d been selfish. Lovers reciprocated their loving, did they not?
I started to speak, hesitated, tried again. “Ryder. Do you…do you need…or want…”
“Want, certainly. But need? No, Farrin. You owe me nothing. If you want to do more, that’s one thing, but I don’t think you do. Not tonight.”
I couldn’t bring myself to look up at him. “Not tonight,” I agreed quietly. “This was a huge thing for me. I need to…” I couldn’t finish, couldn’t find the words.
Luckily, I didn’t need to. Ryder seemed to understand. He kissed my forehead, my cheeks, my hair. I closed my eyes and reveled in each one. I couldn’t imagine ever tiring of his kisses.
Then a thought occurred to me. I plucked nervously at the nearest button on Ryder’s jacket.
“I could sing for you,” I said quietly. “If you want. I can’t give you…” I bit my lip, horribly embarrassed. Suddenly my suggestion seemed silly. “But I can give you a song. A new one, written just for you.”
Ryder ducked his head down to look at me. The expression on his face was one of stunned delight.
“You’d do that for me?” he said. “Farrin…” He kissed my fingers, his eyes never leaving mine. “It would be an honor,” he said, gravely, “but it isn’t necessary.”
So he said, but I saw that soft light in his eyes, how overcome he was at the very idea, and felt at once that it was necessary—not for him, but for me. To bring him such joy was a kind of victory; if my nerves kept me from lying with him as any other woman would, then I would give him what no other woman could.
Shyly, I opened my arms to him, and once he’d settled against me—carefully, reverently, as if afraid to crush me—I began drawing my fingers through his hair, one long stroke after another, and took a breath, and sang.
It was a simple melody, wordless but sweet, and the notes came to me easily, dropping into my mind like a soft spring rain. Shelter, simple gladness, careful tenderness—these were the feelings I held in my heart as I sang to him, and when I felt the skin on the back of his neck break into goose bumps, I smiled around the notes, sweetening them further. He shuddered in my arms, and I pressed my cheek to the crown of his head, closed my eyes, crooned an aching arpeggio into his hair.
Then a knock came at the door, jarring us from our reverie.
“Occupied!” Ryder barked, sharp and angry, and whoever it was didn’t bother us again. I found a vicious delight in imagining it was Gemma, come to say good night and now shocked to realize what had happened in this room to her eldest sister, whom she had always believed to be incapable of such things.
The thought was amusing enough to distract me from the doubt creeping in at the edges of my mind. Ryder just pities you, that’s all. That wasn’t actually sex; it doesn’t count. It was a fluke; you won’t manage this again. You’re as cold and strange as everyone thinks you are. Keep singing. Maybe that will help ease his disappointment.
I fought the wicked thoughts hard, sent a silent apology to Mara for taking over our room for the night, and turned into Ryder’s body, hiding my face against his chest. He understood the silent request and held me just as I’d hoped he would, kissed my brow, rearranged the quilt to ensure I was properly covered. My unfinished song hung in the air, but Ryder didn’t seem to mind. He hummed a little, a deep, satisfied sound. Primal, contented. I smiled into his jacket and let his caresses lull me to sleep.
***
The next morning, we left Vallenvoren after purchasing horses from a trader who owned several stables along the oft-traveled road north to the Altivar Cloisters. Ryder spoke to each of them before we got underway—four tired geldings and two soft-eyed mares, all of them shaggy and stocky, good mountain horses far more used to this lonesome part of the world than even Ryder was.
I tried not to pay too close attention to him as he went to each of the horses in turn, his deep voice murmuring in some bestial language I was too distracted to remember the name of. I kept thinking about the night before, images and sensations returning to me in waves—Ryder’s hands on me, in me, his lips blazing a hot path across my skin, my body twisting in his careful, firm grip.
I turned away from the group, stroked the thick brown mane of the gelding nearest me, whom Ryder had already visited and who now stood with his old ears perked up and his eyes alight with new excitement as he watched Ryder walk through the clearing. I knew the feeling. I touched my lips, smiling to myself. If I closed my eyes, I could feel it all over again: the bed, Ryder’s arms, the unthinkable pleasure of coming apart under his touch…
Suddenly Gareth appeared beside me, under the guise of loading the gelding’s saddlebags with supplies. But I saw the look on his face and felt all the goodness of the previous night flood out of me on a tide of embarrassment.
“So,” he said, grinning, his glamoured eyes sparkling behind his glasses, “I heard there was some excitement last night.”
I shot him a withering glare. “I’m surprised you’ve managed to pay attention to anything besides your dreadful fixation on my sister.”
His smile faded. He looked sheepishly at the dirt. “I’m sorry about that. Truly I am. I apologized to Mara too, and to the others. I don’t know what came over me.” He ran a hand through his hair and glanced over his shoulder, perhaps searching for Mara, then looked back at me with an expression of genuine regret. “Really, Farrin. I’m a scoundrel in many ways, I know, but I’m not a fool, and I have the utmost respect for Mara and for the Order. But I can’t help but be fascinated by their existence. They’re an impossibility, a marvel in an otherwise mundane world. And the way Mara transformed that day at the priory—fearless, unflinching. The sheer power of her as she called to her sisters and went tearing off into the Mist to face gods knew what…”
“You’re not doing much to convince me of your remorse,” I remarked drily.
He shook himself a little. “No, you’re right. It doesn’t matter that they fascinate me. They’re people, real people who deserve respect, no matter their extraordinary abilities.”
He’d stopped packing the supplies, too distracted by his own nonsense to continue working, I supposed. I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at him. He was being sincere enough, but he’d interrupted my daydreaming, and I felt strangely guilty being this close to him with the memory of Ryder’s kisses so near. I picked up where he’d left off, shoving wrapped food into the saddlebag.
“The day you actually start showing women respect,” I said irritably, “not individual women you actually care about, mind you, like Heldine and me, but all women, no matter who they are—that’ll be a day to remember. Or else a sign that I’ve died and stumbled into a fever dream on the way to Ryndar.”
Gareth looked at me curiously, apparently unperturbed by my harsh words. “I haven’t heard you speak of Ryndar in quite some time.”
Ryndar: the land beyond life and death, where the gods were born. A realm made of pure aelum, the basis of all magical life, and sinaelum , the basis of all life without magic. Otherwise known as the Great Dominion, where many people of Edyn believed they would go after death—to either join the gods in whatever new forms they’d taken, or to return to the worlds of the living as new beings, reborn and remade.
Now I rolled my eyes at myself. “You know, one of the most annoying things about being your friend,” I said, “is the fact that every time I even think of something about the arcana, my mind can’t help but recite all the relevant facts. It’s like you’ve trained me over the years as you would one of your students.”
“You’re welcome,” he said cheerfully, then watched me work for a moment longer before stopping me with a gentle hand on my arm.
“Did you really go to bed with Ryder?” he asked. His voice was softer now, tender in a way I hadn’t heard him speak in a long time.
I made myself look at him, my chin jutting out in defiance even as my cheeks burned. “I don’t think that’s any of your business.”
“It’s not,” he conceded, “except that you’re my friend, and I want you to be careful. I know you’re not…” He paused, glanced around, lowered his voice. “I know you’re not experienced in such things. Do you have medicine with you to protect yourself from pregnancy? Does he?”
The questions made images flash through my mind—Ryder and me, naked bodies, legs and arms entwined. I shoved the images away hard. They were half formed, anyway; it had been a long time since I’d looked at my naked body, and when I tried to recreate it in my mind, the shape was blurry, formless. What a child I was, unable to stomach even looking at myself in the mirror. The doubts from the previous night crept back into my thoughts. Ryder just pities you, that’s all.
You’re as cold and strange as everyone thinks you are.
“Don’t trouble yourself about me,” I snapped. “We didn’t actually have sex. We did other things, and I sang for him, and it was wonderful. I felt lovely for once, and wanted, and afterward, I fell asleep in his arms, and when I woke up, he was gone, and all of you were still down in the tavern, I suppose, and there was a little plate on the bedside table with a sandwich wrapped in a napkin. It was the sweetest, most wonderful night of my life, but now I’m doubting every moment of it. How stupid he must have thought I was, to not want actual sex and instead just want…”
I waved dismissively at the saddlebag, then resumed fumbling with one of the straps. I couldn’t figure out how to buckle the horrible thing and tried three times before giving up and realizing, with quiet horror, that I was crying.
“Hey, hey,” Gareth said quietly, coming around to shield me from the others’ view. “First of all, sex encompasses many acts of love, not just the one you’re thinking of. And secondly, you’re not stupid, and I know for a fact that Ryder didn’t think that of you.”
“For a fact?” I glared at him through my tears. “Have you spoken to him about it? Did you ask Talan to probe him for information?”
“All right, not for a fact, then. But as a man, and as someone who knows you—and who in fact made love with you once upon a time, albeit disastrously—I can assert with great confidence that Ryder Bask does not think you stupid, or undesirable, or disappointing in any way.”
Gareth pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and gave it to me. I wiped my face, desperately hoping no one else had noticed my distress. From behind me came the sounds of the others mounting their horses, the clatter of coins as Gemma—glamoured, as we all were—paid the trader.
I couldn’t help my next question, though the setting was the furthest thing from appropriate. “When we…” I trailed off, tried again. “When we had sex all those years ago, it wasn’t bad because of me, was it?”
“Of course not,” Gareth said. He crouched a little and gently lifted my chin to look me in the eyes. “Darling, we’ve talked about this many times.”
“I know, and I need to hear it again. Please?”
“All right, well, no, our sex wasn’t bad because of you, or because of me, even. It wasn’t even bad , really, it just wasn’t…it wasn’t right, because we don’t love each other in that way, though we needed to go that far to realize it. And besides all that, we were terribly young, basically children. But even so, I don’t regret it. I only call it disastrous because afterward I was afraid I’d lose you, that we’d ruined the whole thing with two bottles of wine and some truly clumsy, tooth-clacking kisses.”
That made me laugh. I wiped my face again, and absently petted the gelding’s shaggy head. He turned to whuff at my sleeve, no doubt wondering what all the fuss was about.
“I’m so sorry, Farrin,” Gareth said gently. “I started this by asking about Ryder. I didn’t mean to upset you. I was only worried. Even so, I should’ve waited, or at least brought you breakfast or something and asked you about it over hotcakes like a civilized person.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked away. “I’m really not doing anything right, am I?”
I blew my nose, wadded up the handkerchief, and thrust it back at him. “Not doing anything right on this particular journey, or in life in general?”
He smiled at me, his typical mischievous grin, but I saw the sadness flicker in his glamoured brown eyes before he could hide it, and I sighed and caught his hand.
“Now I’m the one who’s sorry,” I told him. “I was trying to tease you, and it came out all wrong.”
He kissed my hand, chaste and quick. “Well, we’re even, then, or at least closer to it. I’ve still got a ways to go before I can make up for being such an ass last night.”
I raised an eyebrow and smiled at him, relieved to resume the old rhythm of our back-and-forth. “I was going to say as much but am feeling strangely merciful.”
Gareth looked wistfully at our joined hands. “Remember when being friends was easier?”
That surprised me. The truth was, I’d had the same thought in recent years, but I’d never said it aloud, and I certainly didn’t expect Gareth to, especially not hundreds and hundreds of miles away from anything familiar, with the whole cold north spread out before us.
A pang twisted my chest. Suddenly I wanted nothing more than to return to the Torch and Thorn, grab a table, and order hotcakes—just as he’d suggested—and sit with him for hours, and tell him everything, confide in him utterly, as we’d always used to do. Before the return of the Basks, before Talan, before Kilraith. Before these last strange, frightening few months, when Yvaine was well, and Father was his old self—still bitter and paranoid, still wracked with grief, but without the constant thrill of violence simmering just beneath the surface, without the anger boiling ceaselessly in his eyes. When I still felt like I knew how the world worked.
But this was far too much to express on such a morning. Instead I squeezed Gareth’s hand and gave him a grim smile. “I remember when a lot of things were easier,” I said quietly. “But I still love you all the same.”
Gareth’s distracted, doleful expression softened. He drew me into his typical oafish hug, and I held on to him and closed my eyes. For a precious moment, the strange world I’d found myself in felt comfortingly familiar.
“Come on, let’s go,” Mara called from a few paces away. She had chosen one of the mares and was mounted and ready, watching us curiously. “We’ve a long way to go before nightfall.”
Without further delay, we mounted our horses and followed her down the winding gravel road that would take us away from Vallenvoren into the unknown north.
***
We traveled for two days. Almost immediately after leaving Vallenvoren, we veered off the well-trodden road used by the faithful to reach the Altivar Cloisters and set out into the true wilderness, retracing Talan’s previous route through these lands. He led us through pine forests so tall and ancient that it felt irreverent to speak, as if we were treading upon the bones of godly creatures long-dead. The hard earth was black and cold underfoot, the air chilly enough to make our breath puff in the air.
We camped in a large but simple tent sewn of animal hides that Mara had brought from the priory. I slept wrapped in furs and blankets between my sisters, with Talan on Gemma’s other side, Ryder’s on Mara’s, and Gareth beyond him.
But my sleep was restless, and I spent much of each night lying awake, listening to the sound of Ryder’s deep breathing—so close to me, but not close enough. And yet I was glad for the distance between us, which made very little sense to me. The contradictions of my own desires left me on edge. We’d spoken hardly since the night at the Torch and Thorn, though not for lack of trying. We stayed close to each other as we wove through the forests, and every few minutes, one of us—mostly Ryder—would try to make conversation, usually about the landscape, or the amusing behavior of the horses, or his interpretation of what a bird was trying to say with its song.
Once, on the second day, during a quiet stretch of travel after we’d stopped to eat lunch, Ryder guided his horse closer to mine, cleared his throat, and said, “The northern light suits you, Farrin.”
Immediately a flush of embarrassed delight crept up my body. Gareth, who was just behind me, started whistling cheerily to himself and pushed his horse into a trot, leaving me alone with Ryder. I glared after him, both annoyed by the gesture and glad for the privacy: yet more contradictions, all piling on top of one another. I was beginning to feel as though something was truly wrong with me, that some kernel of madness had burst open the night Ryder had touched me and now nothing would ever make sense again.
“Thank you,” I said quietly, not looking at him, staring instead at my horse’s mane. I wished suddenly for the illusory mask of Gemma’s glamours.“You’re very kind.”
He grunted a little, a small, frustrated sound. “It’s the truth. There’s a quickness to you, a sharpness in your eyes and the lines of your body. The way you move. Always thinking deeply about something, about many things. Too many things, perhaps,” he added, his voice softening a little—with worry, I thought, and something like bashfulness. “Forests are the same way. They teem with life, with secrets. They’re lovely and quick and wild, changing from season to season, from day to day. They’re adaptive. They’re steady. They’re full of fascinating incongruities, yet they are completely themselves. ”
I laughed a little, overcome. “And I’m all these things to you?”
“That and more.” He took a deep breath in, then blew it out. “I’ve never felt as content as I do when I’m with you.”
I glanced at him at the same moment he looked carefully over at me. Our eyes locked for one blazing instant, and my whole body flushed hot. To be looked at in such a way, with such tender fondness, and to see his fierce Bask brow furrowed with concern, as if the most important thing in the world to him was determining whether or not I was happy…I was ill-equipped to handle such a look. Particularly when, with his eyes upon me, the memories of our night together took over my every thought.
I shook myself and returned my attention to my horse.
“You’re unhappy,” he said after a moment. In his gruff voice rang a note of resigned sadness. “I’m sorry. I’ve said too much.”
“I’m not,” I said at once, “and you haven’t. And don’t be sorry, I just…”
Freyda, Mara’s falcon, swooped down from the trees and over our heads to dive into the brush. I was glad for the distraction of her rustling with whatever she’d caught for lunch. It gave me a precious moment to think.
“I don’t know what things are between us now,” I said at last. “To have…done such things with you, and now to be out in the world as we were before—it feels wrong somehow. It feels like everything should be different, and it is , but it’s also strangely the same, and I don’t know how to reconcile that. I don’t know how to talk to you, really, and part of me—the nervous part—doesn’t want to, but at the same time, all I want to do is talk to you, and…and other things.”
I hadn’t meant to say so much. My heart pounded with relief, and with fear of how he might respond, both at once. How foolish I must have sounded to him, how inexperienced. But when I dared to look over at him, he was smiling. He was watching the trees ahead of us, riding his horse with the sort of natural ease only an Anointed wilder possessed, and he was smiling—a small thing, half hidden by his dark beard. A spot of sunlight pushed through the trees to illuminate the warm crinkles around his eyes.
“Other things?” he repeated softly, with a sly sideways glance.
I smiled down at my hands, my heart fluttering. “Other things,” I said, even softer.
“There will be time for that, and for everything else,” he replied. Then he reached out for my hand, and I grabbed on, grateful for the warm anchor of his fingers wrapping around mine. “Right now,” he added, “I’m just glad to be with you. Brave Farrin, in the forest light.”
Then he raised my hand to his mouth and kissed my fingers, brushed his lips across my knuckles.
After that, we rode in silence once more, but it was simple and sweet, like the quiet right after waking, before the day begins. My worries had, for the moment, been smoothed out by the touch of Ryder’s hand, by the warmth of his voice and his gaze, and I found myself wondering if this was what it meant to feel at ease in the world, to feel at ease in one’s own body. It was a feeling I was unused to. I closed my eyes and let the forest air wash over me. I breathed carefully, thinly; I didn’t want the feeling to fade.
***
That night, as the late hours crept toward the wee morning ones, I awoke to find Talan crawling out of the tent.
“We’re close,” he whispered, for we were all awake now. His dark eyes glinted with a faint light, the source of which I couldn’t place, and as I sat up, I could feel at once that he was right: we were close to something new and strange. The forest beyond us was dead quiet—no night noises of animals, no mountain breeze through the pines. When I ducked out of the tent myself, I was shocked to see snow falling from a sky thick with storms. A low rumble sounded in the distance—thunder, rolling quietly—and every few seconds, a bolt of lightning flashed on the horizon, dimly illuminating the bulbous shapes of the clouds, the spindly treetops.
We swiftly packed up camp in silence. Watchful Freyda sat on a low branch nearby, her crown feathers ruffled and her yellow eyes glaring into the forest beyond, searching for enemies. When Mara whistled low to her, she glided over to perch on my sister’s shoulder and chirped quietly into her hair—a strange language of bird and Rose, born of the Mist.
Ryder was listening carefully.
“What’s she saying?” I whispered.
“Something about a great wall in the trees. A black place where nothing lives.” He glanced at Talan. “Sound familiar?”
“I suppose a bird might describe it that way, yes,” Talan replied, the worry in his eyes at odds with the calm silk of his voice. “Beyond the ward magic I can’t cross, I can sense only a sort of void. A massive nothingness, or else the ward magic is creating the illusion of size.”
“I don’t understand,” Gemma said nervously. She looked young and pale in the dim storm light, her dark hood drawn up tight over her head. “When we made camp, we didn’t feel any of this, and the sky was clear.”
“Storms come and go,” I pointed out.
“Whatever this place is could have ward magic that isn’t entirely stationary,” Gareth added, scribbling in a notebook he’d pulled from his coat pocket. Observations, I assumed—the weather, the wind, the sensation of something cold and forbidding in the air. A presence I felt as clearly as if I’d trespassed into a locked room. Turn around , it said. Go no farther.
Shivering, I wished I could obey and take everyone else with me.
“Ward magic that moves ?” Gemma said, incredulous.
“To further disguise the thing it’s meant to protect,” Gareth explained. “If you can’t reliably plot the ward magic, you can’t know the size or shape or nature of the thing it’s hiding.”
Mara nodded, listening. “I’ve certainly encountered such barriers while on patrol in the Mist. Remnants of Olden magic or traps laid by Olden creatures, hoping to catch curious humans.”
“That explains why I had such difficulty mapping what I found,” Talan said, but before he could say more, a wave of frigid air rippled past us, so icy cold that it was like tiny dagger points raking across my skin. The force of it was physical, a giant, frozen hand pushing me, pushing all of us, back where we came from.
The horses, already uneasy, tossed their heads and pawed at the earth, trying to run, but their leads held them fast to the trees. Ryder went to each of them, murmuring words of comfort, then unfastened their leads and turned them loose. They took off, all their saddlebags still on the ground, full of our supplies.
“I’ll find them easily enough when we come back,” Ryder said, “but there’s no sense in leaving them tied up and terrified. And they’ll be useless to ride through something like this.”
“Then let’s go find this thing, whatever it is,” I said tensely. The sight of the horses tearing off into the forest, away from whatever strange magic had crept close as we slept, left me even colder than the whistling air. I clutched a wooden staff Mara had brought from the priory; the familiar weight of it in my hands, so similar to the one I’d used when training with Ryder, was a comfort.
We walked for what felt like hours, Talan making quiet note of every landmark we passed, assuring us that we were on the right path. The cold grew increasingly worse, the snow falling in fast, teeming swirls, and the clouds were so thick that not even the midday sun managed to break through and warm us.
“We’ll have to turn back soon,” Ryder called out from the rear of our caravan. “We’re not equipped for weather much worse than this.”
But Mara, at the head of the line, didn’t hear him, or else she was ignoring him. She kept pressing on through the snow, her arm up to shield her face. She turned back to us, waved her other arm. It looked like she was saying something, but I couldn’t tell what.
“Mara!” Ryder shouted. “We can’t hear you!”
Gemma tried next, cupped her hands around her mouth. “ Mara , wait!”
My stomach sank as the realization set in: something was wrong. Freyda was flapping wildly around Mara’s head, pulling at her hair with beak and talons, but soon Mara was lost to the darkness between the swaying, creaking trees. In her absence, Freyda was suddenly beside herself, shrieking a desperate falcon’s cry, flying again and again into the shadows only to come shooting back toward us as if flung from a catapult.
Ryder held up his gloved hands and called out to Freyda in Ekkari, the same phrase over and over. He’d be hoarse after this, his voice torn to shreds by the wind. Finally she alighted in his arms, her feathers in complete disarray. He held her close to his chest and shielded her from the snow with his coat, and I felt a rush of relief; at least Freyda was safe, which had to mean something good. But a moment later, I heard Talan cry out, and I whirled in a panic to find Gemma running along the path Mara had cut through the snow. Talan tried to hurry after her, followed by Gareth, but they didn’t get far. Something—some invisible force—was pushing them back, making them stumble. It looked almost as if they were fighting to wade out into the sea, but roaring, unseen waves kept shoving them to their knees.
And as I watched Gemma’s blurred shape disappear into the trees just as Mara’s had, an idea came to me—the sort of horrible, sinking-feeling guess that I knew at once was correct. It was as though the idea were a living thing, with claws and muscles and a tenacious will. As soon as the thought formed in my mind, I felt compelled to move—forward, always forward, faster, and faster. The feeling of turn around , of go no farther , transformed at once into something warmer, sweeter: Come home. Come to me. Finally. At last, you’re here.
Whatever thing was here—whether a phenomenon of magic or Olden creature or strange moonlit palace where the sun never shone—I knew without a doubt that only my sisters and I could reach it. Fae blood , Gemma kept insisting in my mind. I laughed a little, frantic and frightened. The ridiculous idea of fae blood running in my veins seemed suddenly to be the least terrifying explanation.
The next moment, I found myself tromping fast through the snow, following the sloppy footprints my sisters had left behind. I ignored the frustrated shouts of Ryder behind me, Gareth’s frightened voice calling my name. There was no song in the air this time, pulling me through the Middlemist toward some unknown destination. I would not emerge on the other side of this and find the woods where we’d fought the Brethaeus, the yellow field, Talan’s old house by the sea. No, this was different. This felt… familiar . A voice I knew was calling me, and yet not a voice at all, really; it was more a feeling, so distinct and eager that I could hear it welcoming me, even without words.
Squinting against the wind, I pushed forward through the darkness, the looming trees, the whirling snow. I tried to call out for Gemma and Mara, but the roaring storm stole my breath, and I gasped at the cold, gulping for air, groping for some kind of solid anchor in the frigid darkness, until all of a sudden I was…through. A wall of something I couldn’t see—some force or power, some shift in the air—gave way at my touch, and all at once the world around me changed: warmth instead of cold, a gentle breeze in place of a gale. When I breathed in, choking on the sudden easy bounty of air, I smelled a cooking fire, the perfume of roses. I heard the drone of honeybees, and my snow-crusted boots trampled tiny yellow wildflowers.
Dazed, I look around, my cheeks still burning from the cold, and was astonished to see the same forest I’d just been in—only these pines were a vivid green, and the forest floor was rife with moss and flowers. New spring growth bloomed everywhere, and above the canopy stretched a sky of cloudless blue.
“Farrin,” said a voice—somehow both a jubilant shout from a great distance away and a gentle whisper in my ear.
I blinked, struggling to clear the frost and tears from my eyes, and once I could focus on the figure calling my name, what I saw broke something inside me. I shattered; my heart burst open.
Impossible. It couldn’t be.
And yet there she was, standing in front of a pretty thatched-roof cottage, my sisters on either side of her, clinging to her, crying and laughing, both of them reduced to the little girls they had once been.
There was only one word to say, and the very shape of it felt wrong in my mouth:
“Mother.”