Chapter 20
Nyxiana
Valen makes it off the ridge and out onto the plateau before he stops.
He goes down on one knee and spreads a square of oiled cloth on the rock.
The stone’s been in his hand since he lifted it out.
He sets it down in the middle of the cloth: dark, four-sided, small enough that I can close both my hands over and heavier than it looks, going by the way it sits in his palm.
He folds the first corner over, hand shaking.
, presses his palm on the cloth until the shaking quits, then creases it with his thumb.
The next one goes the same way before he runs cord around the bundle twice and pulls the knot tight with his teeth.
I’m at his shoulder. Nobody down the path is close enough to see his hands. He’s still throwing heat, it hasn’t dropped since the rock twenty minutes ago.
“Let me take it as far as the edge,” I say.
“No, I’ve got it.” He puts the bundle into his pack and pulls the flap down over it.
I don’t argue. Enough people up here have told him what he can’t do.
He comes up off his knee more slowly than I’ve ever seen him move.
The pack goes on his back before he looks up the path toward the settlement.
His eyes are all gray, steadier than his hands were a minute ago.
“Whenever you’re ready,” he says.
We walk. There’s no wind down here. The only sound is our boots on rock and his breathing, like a man carrying something up a hill..
He sets a pace well under what he’d normally walk.
I match it saying nothing. If I push him, he’ll hold a pace he can’t, and do it in front of them.
The pack rides high on his back. He doesn’t shift it once.
The Alpha is waiting where the path comes into the settlement.
He came down ahead of us so he’d be here first.
“The terms are concluded,” he says. “The way back is closed behind you.”
He doesn’t use Valen’s name or say goodbye.
His eyes go to the pack on Valen’s back while he says it.
I read him. He wants us gone before whatever happened up on that rock happens again.
I keep that to myself. He steps out of the path, Valen nods once and walks past him.
The path runs straight through the middle of where these people live.
Low stone houses set into the slope, roofs gone green with moss, woodsmoke and cold rock over all of it.
Wolves in the doorways, along both sides of the path, three deep in places.
A man leans out to look then shuts his door.
A woman lifts a water can out of the path, holds it against her hip.
Someone pulls a child off a wall. Nobody speaks.
All I hear are boots on gravel and people breathing.
They give way before he reaches them. The ones nearest the path back up while he’s still coming.
One female pulls two young wolves in behind her legs, keeping her hands on them until he’s passed.
Heads go down as he comes level. Not one of them holds his eyes.
Valen’s pace doesn’t change. His eyes stay forward, not looking at a single one of them.
I try to think about the walk out, the route, how much light we have left, the phase at the end and what it’s going to take out of me.
I keep coming back to him. We pass the last house and the path runs out onto open rock.
Nobody follows us, for the first time since we came up here no one’s behind or ahead.
Valen takes the pack off, sets it down, sits back against a boulder and closes his eyes.
He keeps them closed for one breath and opens them again.
That’s all he takes. I look at him. He’s still pale, face wet at the temple, breathing hasn’t come all the way back down but he doesn’t turn away from me.
Then the heat rises up in him again. He goes rigid where he’s sitting, one hand closing hard on his knee.
White comes up in his eyes and goes out again.
There’s no stone under his palm out here, no crossing left to walk.
Nothing is doing this to him. Then it stops and e relaxes against the boulder.
“Nyxiana.” He takes a moment with the rest. “When I had my hand on that stone. What did you see in me?”
I could tell him, he’s never asked me before. He’s also empty, on the range that raised him and Faelan gets closer every day we spend up here.
“The map answers to you,” I say. “That’s why the reading ran through you.”
He waits.
“Whatever was under that stone was cut out and sealed over. Drakoria is missing the same layer. Same depth, same clean edge where it was taken.”
“You’re sure?” He asks.
“Two realms, cut the same way. Somebody did it on purpose, and they didn’t stop at one realm.”
“And?”
“And” I say, “that’s proof. It’s the first thing we’ve had that closes us on Faelan.”
None of that is what he asked me, he knows it, I know it and he doesn’t answer when I stop, he looks north along the ridge at nothing I can see, gets up and puts the pack back on.
“Let’s go home,” he says.
I step up and put a hand on his chest, the other around his arm above the elbow.
He breathes out, the first easy breath I’ve heard out of him since we came up here.
One of his hands comes up and settles on my waist. It covers most of that side of me.
He leaves it there; I feel how warm he is through my shirt.
All that heat I’ve been reading off him is under my palm now and under I can feel how fast his heart is beating - we’ve been standing still for a while.
I look up at him. He’s nine inches taller than I am, so up is the only direction I have from here.
Out in the last of the light his eyes aren’t the hard gray they are indoors.
They’re paler and they warm up when he looks at me.
I watch him swallow. Then his eyes go to my mouth and stay there.
My breathing changes. I hear it happen and I can’t do anything about it.
My fangs come down, he sees them, doesn’t move back.
The hand on my waist tightens. The other comes up off his side and closes on my arm above the elbow.
He comes down toward me. I come up on my toes to meet him.
I don’t remember choosing to do it. We stop with nothing left between us.
His breath is on my mouth. He smells like sweat, rock dust, and the cold he’s been standing in since morning. Under all of it there’s blood.
It’s his lower lip. He split it back on the plateau, pulling the cord tight with his teeth.
It’s opened again sometime in the last few minutes.
There’s almost nothing there, s bead sitting in the crack, not even enough to run.
An inch. Either of us. One inch and it’s done.
My mouth is ready - not for him. For that.
His heart is still beating fast under my palm.
Now it’s the loudest thing on this rock.
I haven’t fed since before Drakoria. Two crossings and two realms ago.
My fangs are all the way down, palm sitting on a man’s heartbeat.
There’s blood an inch from my mouth and he’s the one holding on to me.
I know how this goes if I close the inch.
I take his mouth. Then I take his throat.
In that order, and fast enough that the second one is finished before he understands the first one ended.
He wouldn’t stop me. He would stand right here on this rock and let me. I take my hand off his chest come down off my toes and put a step of rock between us. His hand comes off my waist last. He doesn’t come after it just puts it down at his side. I keep my mouth shut.
“Is it me,” he says. He’s asking for a yes. He has a place ready to put it, next to every other one he’s collected up here.
“It isn’t you.”
He waits to see if anything else comes. There’s what I am tonight and how close he came to it.
Under that there’s the other thing, the one I’ve been carrying since the first time I saw him - neither of them gets said on this rock.
He takes it, doesn’t ask twice. Whatever he decides that step meant, he folds it away without a word, turns for the open rock to wait for me there.
He got it wrong. I let him and take us into the dark.
He’s heavy as always, this time it pulls more out of me than the trip up here did.
It keeps pulling after I have nothing left to give it.
We come out at the Ash Hollow treeline. It’s dusk here and the air smells like pine and woodsmoke after a whole day of cold rock.
My knees hit the pine needles. Both of them this time. He gets a hand on my waist, the same side he had it on out on the rock, takes my weight and brings me back up against him.
“This is my fault,” he says. “You’ve been carrying me across realms and I’ve been letting you.”
“I’m fine.”
“You haven’t fed since before Drakoria.” His arm stays where it is. “I know what that does to you. You told me all of it on the road into Briarstone, and I’ve thought about it every day since.”
I don’t argue. There’s nothing in it that’s wrong.
“I wasn’t sure I’d get us both back tonight,” I say.
“You feed before we go to the next one.” He stops there for a second. “There’s going to be a next one.”
“Valen.”
“That’s the condition.”
Only Kaspian has ever talked to me that way. I let it stand. “All right.”
We walk through the trees toward the lights, the stone rides on his back the whole way. He knows now how little I have left but still doesn’t know what he is.