Chapter 16
X andros' hands closed around my arms before I could recover from the landing.
His grip bit through my leathers as he hauled me upright and steadied me against him, taking my weight before my injured leg could buckle.
Fury had hardened every line of his face, but he was pale beneath it, enough that something uneasy twisted low in my stomach.
His breathing came hard as his gaze swept over me, checking my face, my shoulders, then my injured thigh before finally meeting my eyes. The constellations along his skin burned brighter with every breath.
“Verena.” My name came out low and rough.
I straightened, but he didn’t let go.
His hands stayed firm around my arms, strong enough to hold me there without effort, yet his thumbs rested carefully against my skin. There was none of the anger in his touch that I could see written across his face.
He had held me the same way when fever left me too weak to stand on my own.
He looked like he wanted to break something, but he was still holding me like I might break first.
Silver blades remained raised behind Xandros, every point angled toward me.
My body tensed before I could stop it.
Bramble pressed hard against my boot and let out a sharp hiss, his fur lifting as he stared at the soldiers.
Xandros’s head turned. “Lower them.”
No one moved.
A male with midnight hair shifted his grip on his weapon and glanced toward the place where the road had vanished. “Your Highness, the king’s order was clear.”
The title landed almost as sharply as the blades still aimed at me.
Xandros finally released one of my arms and faced him.
“So was mine.”
The soldiers hesitated, but only for a breath before their blades lowered. None of them sheathed their weapons.
Apparently, Xandros’s order was enough to stop them from pointing steel at me. It wasn’t enough to convince them I wasn’t a threat.
Then his attention returned to me, his hand still firm around my arm.
“What were you thinking?”
My lungs still burned from the jump. I opened my mouth, but the look on his face stopped me.
His jaw was locked tight, breath coming too fast despite the rigid set of his shoulders. One hand had shifted higher on my arm without me noticing, fingers spread as though he needed more of a grip on me.
“Mostly that the road was closing…”
A muscle flexed in his jaw.“You threw yourself through it.”
The censure in his voice scraped over my already frayed nerves. “I’m aware.”
“You could have been cut in half.” His grip tightened. “You could have been trapped inside the Veil, dropped somewhere in Asterra, anywhere, and I would have had no way to find you.”
For a second, I just stared at him.
His body was perfectly still, but nothing else about him was. His chest rose too quickly. The constellations along his skin burned brighter with every furious breath, and his eyes kept moving over my face like he was still checking that I was really standing there.
“You were six feet away.”
“That does not make what you did less insane.”
Heat rushed up my neck, but before I could snap back, his thumb moved once against my arm.
Small and careful. Completely at odds with the fury in his face.
I looked past him. The road was gone completely.
There was no shimmer marking the air. Pale stone stretched behind us beneath the silver trees, solid and silent, as though the Deepwood had never existed on the other side.
Xandros followed my gaze.
Some of the anger left his face, but the tension stayed in his hands.
“I don’t think you understand what you just chose.”
I looked back at him, giving myself one heartbeat before responding. “I chose to come here–”
“And you have no idea what that choice could cost you.” He gave a small shake of his head. “The Moon King ordered me to bring you here for a reason.”
His grip shifted around my arm. “I refused because I know what happens when my brother decides something belongs to Asterra.”
The words settled heavily between us. I searched his gaze for several long breaths. He was truly afraid—that much was clear—a feeling he hadn’t shown in the Grove, or against the Marred, or when a Thornwarden’s blade was pressed to his throat. But he was afraid of this. Of his brother.
Bramble circled my ankle, trembling hard enough that I felt it through my boot.
I reached for the familiar certainty of him through our bond and found only a faint pressure beneath my ribs, so distant that I had to look down at the trembling line of his body to understand what I would normally have known before he ever touched me.
I bent down and ran my hand along his back. The touch startled him, and his body began shaking more violently.
A whimper escaped him as I scooped him into my arms. The loss of our Kindred bond hollowed something inside me.
The ground beneath my feet felt equally wrong.
Nothing but hard stone and pale dust that gave nothing back when I reached instinctively for the Wild.
The vines along my arms brightened, their leaves shifting beneath my skin, but the answer came from impossibly far away, stretched thin across a distance I could feel without understanding.
For the first time since Bramble had chosen me, I had to look at him to know whether he was afraid. And for the first time since I had taken my vows, the earth beneath my feet did not feel like mine.
The realization pressed in against my lungs until breathing hurt.
“Wildflower.” Xandros’ voice was softer and his eyes almost sad.
He held out his hand between us like an offering.
I stared at it for a single heartbeat before taking it in mine and his fingers closed around me immediately.
Warmth spread across my palm and into my wrist, deep enough to loosen some of the pressure around my chest. Gold flared to life between our hands, and the light beneath his skin answered.
I wasn’t sure why I held on or why he had even reached out to begin with, but I couldn’t bring myself to let go now.
Not when his touch was the first familiar thing Asterra had given me.
His thumb moved once over my knuckles as if he understood exactly what I wasn’t saying.
One of the soldiers cleared his throat. “Your Highness, we need to move.”
Xandros' entire bearing changed as he turned toward him. His shoulders squared, and the softness that had almost reached his face disappeared behind the controlled authority I had seen only in glimpses within the Deepwood.
The soldier closest to the trees adjusted his grip on his sword. “The Marred have been hunting this stretch for weeks. They come nearer to the capital every night.”
I held Bramble a little tighter.
Xandros looked down at my injured leg. “Can you walk?”
“Yes.”
His gaze remained there. “Are you sure? You’re favoring it quite a bit.”
“I am a Thornwarden, Xandros. I am perfectly capable of deciding when my own leg gives out.”
He scoffed. “Of course, because you have already demonstrated such remarkable judgment today.”
“I made it through the road, didn’t I?”
His eyes lifted to mine. “That is not the defense you think it is.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. Despite everything pressing around us, irritation cut through my fear sharply enough that I almost welcomed it.
Xandros started toward the city without releasing my hand.
The soldiers fell into formation around us, two moving ahead while the others watched the dying forest behind.
Silver trees crowded both sides of the path ahead, their bark gleaming faintly beneath a sky darker and wider than any I had known.
A sound like thunder cracked through the air as one trunk near the road split from crown to base.
Gray powder gathered around it in drifts, and when a branch broke overhead, the limb shattered against the ground into pale ash.
My steps slowed.
Another tree farther ahead had lost half its branches. Beyond it, bare limbs reached toward a sky so empty that I caught myself searching for stars that weren’t there.
I had seen pieces of Asterra through the rupture: fleeing families, silver trees bending beneath an unfamiliar wind, a collapsing tower, a sky already stripped nearly bare.
But those glimpses had never given me the weight of it.
Standing beneath that vast darkness made me feel as though someone had taken everything familiar about the world and pulled it just beyond my reach.
There was no canopy overhead to contain the sky, no system of roots beneath my feet to connect me to the Mother, and the few surviving stars hung so far apart that each one seemed stranded in its own patch of darkness.
Cold and alone.
My fingers tightened around Xandros'.
He looked toward me, but I kept my attention fixed ahead.
“The capital is just ahead.” His voice was pitched low enough for only me to hear.
I had seen pieces of it before—broken glimpses through the rupture and whatever had passed between us when our palms touched. None of them had shown me how much of the horizon it consumed.
Imposing white towers climbed against the dark sky, their pale walls sharp beneath the thorn-crowned moon.
Several leaned badly enough that my body braced for the sound of falling stone, while whole sections had already collapsed, black rooms and broken floors exposed to the night through the rubble.
A scattering of windows still glowed gold, but entire towers stood dark from their foundations to their shattered roofs.
Then my gaze caught on an empty place in the skyline.
A memory struck so quickly that my grip tightened around Xandros' hand.
Silver stone collapsing into ash.
I had seen it when our hands first touched through the rupture, one fractured image among everything that had flooded my mind before the Veil snapped shut.
Now I could see what the vision had left behind.
The missing tower opened a wound through the skyline large enough that the buildings around it seemed to lean toward the absence.
Xandros followed my stare, and his face tightened.
He kept walking.
The brittle ground beneath us became a broad stone road as we reached the outer city, and the first shelters appeared along its edges.