Chapter 45 Neirin
NEIRIN
I awoke with a start, my heart pounding and the weight of a nightmare lingering.
With my eyes shut tight, I tried to still my breath.
My head throbbed, and when I removed a makeshift wrap of cloth to investigate, I found a welt just above my left ear, raised and tender.
Surrounding it, my hair was matted, clumped with what was probably blood and charcoal.
Rope bound my chest, holding me upright against the trunk of a solid oak tree. My wrists, at least, remained unbound, though red markings indicated they had been, not long before, tightly tied.
As the fog in my mind cleared, I blinked, taking in my surroundings and trying to make sense of what had happened. The last thoughts I had were of Calix falling to the ground.
Calix.
Panic searing in my chest, I lashed at the bindings, but they held me firm. Beside me, a faint mumble drew my attention, and panting, I turned my head. A quarter way around the tree, the boy sat upright, restrained in the same position as I. Relief flushed over me.
“Calix,” I said beneath my breath, aiming to rouse the boy without drawing the attention of our captors, whose voices carried from a short distance off.
He only mumbled again, his eyes heavy and lips pouted. Deep in sleep, but alive. Whatever Nox had laced my drink with was potent, then. Calix had consumed little, but still, he was unconscious. His slighter size, too, could account for his prolonged sleep.
The twin moons shone down, waxing crescents that gave off only the faintest amount of light.
Still, it spilled, catching on the blades of grass in the clearing before us.
I craned my neck to seek out the direction of the voices.
Down a short slope, the three huntsmen sat around a fire, its lapping flames vibrant, casting pools of yellow warmth upon their faces.
The two I did not recognize laughed, drank, and shared stories, but I was too far off to make out their words. Nox sat off to the side, his face pinched, eyes cast to the shadows of the woods beyond, to the Edthiel mountain pass.
“Calix,” I rasped again, tugging at the ropes, knowing they would not break but hoping the rough action might wake him.
When he mumbled a second time, there was a faint wakefulness to the sound. I called for him again. At the fire, the three men remained oblivious to our waking, as we sat some distance off beneath the patchy shadows of the oak’s canopy.
“Neirin?”
“There are three men by the fire. Can you strike them with your magic?”
Foggy, Calix mumbled. “No, I”—he heaved a breath—“my magic feels … weak.”
The drug was still wearing off, then. Closing my eyes, I did as Evera had instructed me at the inn and released power to my fox, desperate to get free of the binds, but he did not answer the call.
“What happened?”
“Nox drugged us,” I hissed, bitterness in the back of my throat.
For a moment, Calix remained quiet; then he sighed. “Eaumond is dead.”
“Yes.” I did not have a better response.
The smell of the campfire carried on the breeze sending a chill down my spine.
I drew in my lips, biting back the emotion that tugged at me.
How long had I been unaware of the cold, uncaring of it?
Yet now, restrained and helpless, it was all I felt.
Cold desperation and a choking panic. Hopelessness.
Amid the distant chatter of the huntsmen, my thoughts turned inward.
Of all things, they went to Evera’s dull dagger, the one she no longer wore.
Why did she no longer wear it? I’d told her she could tell me when she was ready to talk about it.
The missed knowledge of something that weighed on her, that was important to her, drew me to clench my fists.
Will she think I abandoned her when I did not meet her at the stables as we planned? When she could not find me?
The hoot of an owl somewhere out in the woods beyond the clearing rang through the night. When the wind shifted, sending the scents of the forest past us, I closed my eyes.
“When our magic returns,” I told Calix, “we must use it to free ourselves.”
“It was as you said before, Neirin. My life—Eaumond’s life—we are not worth the cost of our existence.”
Craning my neck, I stared at him with drawn brows. “I did not say that.”
“You said that to let us feed only prolonged the inevitable, that it would be more compassionate to kill us.”
“Before I thought only with my mind,” I said. “What I said was true, logical, yet now my heart speaks against it.”
“You do not grieve for Eaumond,” Calix retorted, bitterness lacing his words.
“No,” I acknowledged, “but for a moment, back in the bar, I thought you had died. And … I care for you, Calix. What I said is not incorrect. You and I … we are monsters, and I have no intention of bringing another into the world, but you are—”
“I am not your son.”
The coldness in his tone caused me to draw my lips in.
“No,” I admitted.
Stillness hung between us.
“My father was a good man,” Calix said. “I killed him, along with my mother and my baby sister. I did not mean to.”
“Unforgivable truths,” I stated. A breeze ruffled my hair.
“Unforgivable truths?”
Letting my head fall back and rest against the trunk, I watched the leaves rustling in the canopy overhead. “I killed my brother, Thatcher.” The admission stung my throat. Yet as I spoke, a freedom accompanied the pain, like a weight lifted.
“The first time I shifted we were sparring, just boys playing with toy swords. The middle shift took me, and I did not know what it was, did not expect it. The creature within me, it was horrid, and Thatch, he—” I shut my eyes, and the nightmare returned to me.
Not a nightmare, a reminder of what happened all those years ago. I swallowed. “He called me a monster.”
“Your fox killed him?”
Wetting my lips, I let the images come to me.
“The full shift took me, and Thatcher, he was a fighter. As young as we were, he bore his wooden sword and advanced upon the creature, spitting out the worst words he knew, tears welling in his eyes as he believed it somehow possessed, perhaps. ‘Monster, monster, monster,’ he kept saying.” I swallowed.
“He cornered the fox. There was no escape and … and I watched it all, unable to restrain the monster as he lunged at Thatch’s leg.
” Thatch’s screams flooded my ears. “Thatcher struck him again and again with the wooden sword, and the fox, he … he went for his neck, and then it was over. To watch a life leave someone—”
“The absence of a soul.”
“Yes.”
How long had I kept the story of Thatch’s death to myself? Only Astraea knew, for she had witnessed it, sitting overlooking the gardens. The gardens Thatcher and I were not even meant to be in. We were so foolish. Had we been in the castle, somewhere else, perhaps things would have been different.
“There are some truths, some events, that are unforgivable. Yet we must live with them. Living with them is our punishment.”
“The deaths I have caused—”
“You must live with,” I said, my tone stern. “Do you remember what you told me about Evera? You said she was good, do you recall that?”
Calix sighed. “I do.”
“We live on for those who are good. To protect them, to cherish them. It is why I must save my brother. And once I have rid the castle of the bastard that killed Kaius and I know that Harlan is safe, I can make a life for Evera and I. And for you, Calix. I am not your father; I will not try to take that role. But I care for you. Evera and I both do.”
The boy sniffled, and when I turned my head, resting my cheek against the bark, he looked away and drew his knees to his chest. My heart ached, but again I did not know the correct words to say or how to comfort him. Calix muffled his cries. On my inhale, I detected the coming of rain.
For now, all we could do was wait for our magic to return. More waiting. More helplessness. It was one thing to speak to another, especially a child, and offer words of comfort. But the future I spoke of felt so unreachable, every possible outcome bleak.
If our magic did return, we stood a chance. But without it, Calix could not fight, and I was one man against three. Huntsmen, at that. Known for their tricks, they do not fight fairly.
What did Nox poison us with? Will our magic return at all?
Evera would know. But she was back in Elrune, likely believing I’d abandoned her.
Was she held up in her room? Was she hurting?
Or would she seek me out for leaving her behind?
That seemed more likely. That realization brought with it a new fear.
If she were to come after me, thinking I’d merely left her and not knowing of my capture, she would put herself in danger.
Capable as she was, she could not fight these men off, and it was not in her disposition to do so even if she could. She was a healer. Not a killer.
Beside me, Calix’s sobs softened until they ebbed to the occasional shudder or gasp for breath.
It was easy sometimes to forget that he was only a boy.
I had to protect him. Had to ensure he was safe, as was Evera.
I would not give up. I would fight the three men if I had to, my fists against their swords.
It would be futile, yet what else could I do?
My exhale fogged in the night air. What had I done putting Calix and Evera in such a situation?
Would I lose them, too? Was I cursed to watch those I loved die because of me?