Chapter 5
About the Children
Eloise
Cozy as the fire beside me might be, nothing warms my heart more than witnessing the effect the stag’s blood and meat have on Ariadne and Warbill.
Almost instantly, their glazed and foggy eyes clear, and color returns to their cheeks and hair.
Although both are still far too thin, I notice Ariadne’s exposed bones become less pronounced.
It will take time for the two of them to recover completely, but the rejuvenative powers shades enjoy are incredible, and I know they will heal far faster than any human could.
It means everything to me to know I’ve helped.
Far from what I’d assumed, Damien, Warbill, and Ariadne had no problem moving the beast indoors.
The three shades drained its blood into a barrel like the finest wine and, in mere minutes, had butchered the creature.
Obviously starving, Ariadne and Warbill gulped down goblets of blood and feasted on the most tender pieces of meat, while Damien showed me how to preserve the rest by hanging it in strips to dry.
One leg he placed on a spit to roast over the fire.
Now, I sip from the warm goblet in my hands as the scent of roasting meat permeates the cabin and Damien fills me in on the conversation they had while I was laying the wards.
“So, we need to find the Rivertoad king and ask him to join our cause?” I clarify.
Damien snorts. “More like offer to buy his men. No Rivertoad has ever done the right thing for the sake of doing the right thing.”
I frown at the look Warbill casts in my mate’s direction. There’s something there. I sense Warbill doesn’t agree with my mate’s assessment of the Rivertoads. I make a mental note to ask Damien about it later.
“And what about the children of the man we found? Victus?” I ask. “Do we know where they are?”
Ariadne scowls. “Taken by New Stygarde, we assume. Or Willowgulch, although I hate to think about those two young ones in King Entrydal’s clutches.”
This has me on my feet. “Do you have anything of the children’s? Or a photograph of them?”
“Photograph?” Warbill asks.
“A painting? Illustration?”
They shake their heads.
“I saved the carving,” Damien says, handing the small stag to me, the one that fell out of Victus’s pocket.
I stare down at the item, not sure if it will work, and then head for the door.
“Where are you going, little bird?” Damien asks.
“To do a spell to find those children.”
Damien opens his mouth to say something more, but Ariadne cuts him off. “I can show you what they look like.”
I stop, praying she can do what she says she can do. Phantom has a spell, but it will work better if I can recognize them.
She spreads her hands, and shadows gather from the corners of the room. I’m in awe of the control she wields. I haven’t mastered pouring water from a pitcher, and she’s painting a lifelike, full-body portrait of a boy and a girl right in front of me. I study the image, committing it to memory.
“What are their names?”
“Zander and Zarissa. Their mother was Ulcuta. They will trust you if you mention their mother. So few remember her name.”
I nod.
“Little dragon, it would be foolish to draw attention to our location right now. As much as I would like those children back, we can’t do anything…rash.”
I open the door and look my mate right in the eye. “All I’m going to do is use magic to determine their location.”
His eyes become suspicious slits. “And then what?”
“And then, I’m going to weigh my chances of successfully stealing them back.” I leave the cabin, closing the door behind me.
He’s outside and in the clearing before I can even call Phantom. He doesn’t have to open the door, just funnels under it and is standing next to me. “This isn’t a good idea.”
“No,” I admit. “But I won’t allow King Entrydal to touch those children. Not after what he did to me. Not while I’m breathing.”
Our gazes connect for one beat and then two. His lip curls in displeasure with my plan, but he releases a breath of resolve. “How can I help?”
I reach out for Phantom, and my grandmother shows me how to do the spell. “Do you have a map of Tenebris?”
“I can create one for you from shadow,” he offers.
“Good. Then I just need the lace from your boot.”
Without hesitation, he unfastens one lace and passes the string to me.
“You’re being incredibly understanding about this for a man who wants to tackle me to the ground to protect me.”
“You can feel that?”
“The bond doesn’t lie.”
He snorts. “No, it doesn’t. But I’ve learned when you set your mind to something, little dragon, it’s in my best interest as your mate not to get in your way.”
“Wise man.”
He smirks. “Wise is not what I’m feeling at the moment.”
“Nevertheless, the map. Please.” I point at the moon-washed clearing.
In Tenebris, day and night are separated by the rise and fall of the moon, not the sun.
It’s late in the day, which means we’re running out of light.
Without light, there can be no shadows, and although Damien can still control the darkness, I won’t be able to see the map he creates clearly.
“Hurry, we don’t have much time before nightfall. ”
He spreads his hands as Ariadne did, and Stygarde Castle forms to the south, Blackspire Palace to the north in Willowgulch, Aendor and Dimhollow to the east, Mount Damocles and Zephrine to the west, the Borderlands and dark forest slicing across the middle.
I place myself outside of Bolvet inside the Zephrine region, our actual location, and dangle the carved stag.
Around and around it goes, the circle it carves growing wider and then oblong until it stops at an angle, the animal pointing southeast, toward a section of the Borderlands.
I move until it’s dangling straight down. “Where is this?”
“Looks like right outside of Carver Village on the edge of the Borderlands.”
“Then they haven’t reached New Stygarde yet. They’re in Lady Odette’s territory?”
“If the magic is accurate, yes.”
“The pendulum isn’t swinging. Maybe they’ve stopped for the night. We have a shot.” I call Phantom, reaching down my bond to ask them a question. Damien startles when the dragon appears.
“We are hours from that location, hours we’d have to travel through dangerous and well-guarded terrain on rabble beasts. The children will not be able to shadoweave, and neither can you.”
I stare into Phantom’s beautiful blue eye and run my hand along their flank. “I don’t need the rabble beasts.”
Damien looks between Phantom and me. “You can’t be serious, Eloise. You’ve never tried riding Phantom. You have no idea what will happen.”
“How much different can they be from Romulus?”
Damien pinches the bridge of his nose like I’ve given him an intense headache.
But when he speaks to me, he uses his hands.
Damien might be from Tenebris, but at the moment, he could pass for full-blooded Italian.
“Phantom is a dead dragon animated by your magic. Carrying your weight will be a drain on your magic. Even if you’re able to reach the children, you might not have enough power left to save them or carry them back.
And if Phantom falls, you fall with them. ”
“I—” I really want to tell him where to shove it, but damn if he doesn’t have a point. “Honestly, I hadn’t thought of that.”
“We can do it,” Phantom says in Grams’s voice. “We’re stronger now. We’ve eaten and rested. Let us help the children.” They lie down before me and offer their leg as a ramp to climb onto their back.
I glance back at Damien, and our eyes lock.
We are partners, equals. I don’t need to ask his permission, and I know if I go, he’ll forgive me.
But the trust we share is sacred. I trust his opinion.
I trust his advice. He knows this world far better than I do, and he knows my power and limitations almost as well as I do.
I hold his gaze and allow the unasked question to swirl between us, the unspoken conversation to play out in the tightness in his jaw and the roll of my shoulder, the lift of my chin.
“We go now,” he says.
“We?”
“Yes, little bird. I’m going with you.”
“We can’t both—” I gesture at Phantom.
“I won’t ride. I’ll shadoweave. Believe me, I can keep up.” He starts for the tree line, the shadows making up the map drawing in like spiderwebs caught in sticky fingers, following their master and blending into the edges of his form. He casts a wicked grin over his shoulder at me. “Can you?”
A laugh barks up my throat. “Game on, lover.” I run up Phantom’s leg, a feat that would have been impossible for my former human self, and straddle the dragon’s back, just in front of their wings.
Their scales are slippery, and I have to grab one of the bony projections that rise from their neck to keep myself from falling off.
“This isn’t going to work,” I say to them. “It’s too slippery.”
“A little magic should do the trick. Your great-great-uncle Alfred has just the thing. Do us a solid and remove yourself for one moment.”
With a simple shift of my weight, I slip off the beast and land on my feet.
“Now, picture a saddle and speak very clearly ‘Vehi Fugere’ then snap your fingers thrice.”
“Vehi Fugere!” I say quickly, adding in the three snaps as required.
A saddle appears on my dragon. With a glance in the direction Damien went, I leap on, rest my feet in the stirrups, and hook my fingers through one of three straps that runs across the saddle.
I’m relieved to see there’s space for the children, the straps made to go over their legs and hold them in place.
As always, Phantom has thought of everything.
I have no need of reins. My bond with Phantom means all I need to do is think something, and they’ll do it.
“Perfect. Let’s go, before Damien beats us there.”