Chapter 3
The Remnant
Eloise
As Damien leads our rabble beasts toward the ruins, my heart pounds in my throat and my stomach sinks.
Bolvet looks like a wasteland. Even from a distance, the moon reveals a place I would never recognize as the village where the most masterful dressmaker on the planet once fitted me for a wardrobe.
Only a few months ago, I danced the night away among laughing townspeople at a thatch-roofed tavern at the heart of Bolvet.
Now, I can’t even make out the rubble that once was that circular building.
No one is dancing now. This place is war-torn. This place is a graveyard.
We reach the main street and pass by what remains of Ariadne’s dress shop. It’s mostly ash, although her door remains, painted with a large red X. “What do you think that means?” I ask Damien.
“It’s a decree. The red X means she was marked as a traitor. She was executed.”
I gasp, and my eyes instantly fill with tears. “Should we—” I gesture toward what used to be her building, but if her body is in there, it has long since burned and is buried under a ton of rubble and ash.
“Nothing can be done except to grieve.” He glances back at me, and I see tears in his eyes.
All the blue has drained from the illusion I’ve disguised him in under the swell of his emotions, leaving his pupils pale and diamond-hard.
I feel it along our bond—a deep, heart-wrenching loss.
Ariadne was a friend. I’d met her once, but he’d known her for a lifetime.
He places a hand on the shoulder of the dead man we came here for. It’s hard to believe any of his family lived through this, especially his children, but we trudge on, toward where the general store once was.
“I can still smell the smoke,” I say.
He sniffs. “This happened recently. Days ago.”
I stop Romulus and dismount, needing to be by his side if I am to face this.
Damien waits for me to catch up and takes my hand in his.
We walk together toward the remains of the general store and then past the ruins of the tavern at the town’s center.
“Does Bolvet have a cemetery?” I finally ask.
We still need to bury the man slung across Borus, and the stench of his body tells me we shouldn’t wait.
Damien nods once, understanding immediately, and starts for the back of the village.
Unlike the cemetery behind Stygarde Castle, which is meticulously landscaped, this one is simple, mostly prairie with a few trees.
But as we move closer, I see similar sculptures nestled in the overgrown grasses, sculptures that depict the person buried beneath them.
In Bolvet’s case, the sculptures aren’t life-sized.
The effigies stand about eighteen inches tall and look like they were handmade by loved ones rather than professional artists.
Although I can feel the sacredness of this space, these are modest graves.
Silently, we navigate to the back of the cemetery, passing a few mounds of freshly turned earth. New graves. No sculptures to mark them. I wonder who dug them? I wonder how long ago they were made. I wonder who was brave enough to stay behind to bury the dead.
We reach an unused area peppered with tiny purple flowers at the very back. I’m about to offer to use magic to dig the grave when we both spot a shovel abandoned against a nearby tree, as if left by the last gravedigger who worked here. Without a word, Damien picks it up and begins to dig.
The magical disguise I’ve wrapped around Damien makes him look soft, but under it all, he is anything but.
He has a suitable hole dug in no time. Together, we pull the unknown man off Borus’s back and carefully lower him into the grave.
We fall into an uneasy vigil in our grief.
The only sounds that break the heavy silence are the skittering animals in the forest beyond and the occasional rustle of leaves on the wind.
“Should we say something?” I finally ask.
Damien frowns. “The time for words is past, little bird. Now is the time for action.” He digs the shovel into the dirt and tosses it on the grave. “I will avenge you, unknown friend.”
“Who are you, and where did you find his body?” a raspy voice asks from behind us.
We both whirl to find the owner and barman of Bolvet’s tavern, Warbill, watching us from the shelter of the neighboring trees. He looks even older than the day I met him, all bones and torn garments. His face sags, and his eyes are red-rimmed.
“Warbill,” Damien says softly. “Is that you, old friend?”
“Thank the goddess,” I add.
He looks confused. Warbill’s rheumy gaze shifts from me to Damien and back again. “Do I know you?”
Of course, we’re still in disguise. I reach for my bond with Phantom and follow my ancestors’ advice to drop the illusion. Flipping my hand over, I whisper, “Revelverte.” Damien’s blond hair turns dark again, and his body bulks into its natural form. I hold up my hand and see my fingers are my own.
Warbill drops to one knee, head bowed. “My king.”
“Please, stand,” Damien says. “Be at ease.”
Warbill stands but a slight tremble blights his hands, and his skin hangs off his bones. Shades are hard to kill and don’t age like humans. Warbill’s appearance is symptomatic of long-term starvation.
“Is there a safe place we can talk?” I ask in a whisper.
Warbill nods. “Safer than here. Although, I’m afraid no place on Tenebris is truly safe for any of us anymore, most especially you, my lady.”
Damien clears his throat. “Not your lady, your queen,” he corrects. Warbill does a double take, and my cheeks grow hot under his scrutiny. “A witch priestess in Dimhollow wed us before New Stygarde descended on the village.”
“My fealty is yours, my queen.” Placing a hand over his heart, Warbill starts to kneel again, and I am quick to stop him with a hand on his shoulder.
“Please. You said there was a place to talk.”
He nods and gestures for us to follow him into the woods.
Without a trail to guide us, we have to stay close as the tightly spaced trees drown out the moon, and the thick undergrowth makes me wish I could easily shift into shadow form to navigate them.
But then, even if I could, Borus and Romulus, who follow single file behind Damien and me, could not.
Warbill appears to be too weak to shift anyway.
Which leaves us picking our way through the forest in familiar, human fashion.
The minutes tick by in silence until we reach a break in the trees and a small log cabin comes into view. A curl of smoke rises from the chimney, cutting a path through the glow of the moon. Inside, firelight penetrates the darkness. Hearth and home. A cozy cabin to starve in.
Warbill opens the door. “You’ll never guess who I found lurking in the cemetery,” he says to someone inside. A graying head pokes out the door.
“Ariadne!” I gasp. The dressmaker rushes out to me, and we embrace, before Damien pulls her into his arms, his eyes full of tears. “We thought you were dead! Your shop—”
“After years of oppression at the hands of New Stygarde, building a secret passageway out of Ariadne’s seemed worth the investment. Warbill and I tried to help the others, but most were too weak to shift. The two of us barely made it here.”
Damien recovers from the shock of finding her alive and turns to me, his expression grave. “A protective ward?”
I nod. “And a stag,” I suggest back to him at the sight of Ariadne, whose bones I can count through her pale skin.
“You’ll find no stags near here,” Warbill says. “New Stygarde drove off the herd in their efforts to starve us. Nothing but vespers—and only if you’re lucky enough to find one of the few that remain.”
I shake my head at Brahm and Nevina’s cruelty and then call Phantom.
I don’t have to open my mouth, just reach for the bond, and they arrive.
The colossal white dragon forms in the clearing and lowers their head to look at me.
A noise comes from deep within Ariadne’s throat, and she lurches back into the cabin, eyes ever wider.
From inside, Warbill looks just as shaken.
“It’s all right,” I say, trying my best to comfort them. “This is Phantom. They’re my familiar. They won’t hurt you.”
Eyes bulging, Warbill clears his throat before asking, “They?”
“Um, the body of this dragon contains more than one soul, both male and female.”
Warbill mumbles, “Oh.” But his expression remains confused.
I rest my hands on either side of Phantom’s snout. “We need a stag. The largest one you can find. These people are hungry.”
The dragon smiles a mouthful of razor-sharp teeth, each as long as I am tall. “You can count on us,” the beast says in my grandmother’s voice. “Grandpa Henry was one hell of a huntsman, if he does say so himself. We won’t let you down.”
I kiss the scales of their snout. “Thank you. Careful no one sees you.”
“Of course, my dear.” They spread their wings and shoot into the sky, disappearing the moment they break the tree line.
“Goddess bless us all,” Ariadne says breathlessly. “You’ve tamed the dragon! I always thought she was a myth.”
“They,” I correct. “They are an extension of my spirit magic.”
Damien adds, “My queen is the dragon.” The love and admiration in his eyes are almost too much to bear.
“Well, come in,” Warbill says. “It sounds like you have a story to tell, and I’m afraid we do too, one I wish we didn’t have to.”
With a nod, Damien moves toward the door, his hand settling on my cheek as the others pad deeper into the cabin. “Do you need to wait until Phantom returns to lay the wards?”
I blink up at him and offer the type of self-assured smile I know drives him crazy with desire. “Nope.” I pop the p at the end. “I’ve been practicing. This should be child’s play.”
He lowers his chin, bringing his face close to mine, and cocks a brow. Through a crooked smile, he says, “Then I’ll let you play.” His gaze turns heated. “I love to watch you play. Especially when we’re alone.”
I chuckle. “Judging by the size of that cabin, I don’t believe we’ll be alone anytime soon.”
A deep sigh rumbles from his chest as he turns and slips inside the door, closing it behind him.
I draw a deep breath into my lungs and reach for a strand of my power, weaving it with another I pluck from the ether.
I cast my protective net over the small cabin in silence, to the sound of night creatures and the rustle of leaves in the breeze.
My smile falters as my thoughts return, time and again, to the man we buried and to our starving friends inside.
My anger swells like the magma in Mount Damocles, thick and hot and yearning for destruction.
Nevina and Brahm don’t know what kind of wasps’ nest they’ve stirred up by messing with our friends.
I will not stop until they’ve paid for what they did to Bolvet Village.
Until they’ve paid for every life they’ve taken from us.