22. Twenty-Two
Twenty-Two
The city still slumbered when Nova and Callan left the inn, slipping into the deserted street while stars twinkled faintly in the sky.
Nova followed Callan’s brisk stride to the stables behind The Wilted Bloom, volunteering to climb the rickety ladder to the hayloft in case Bryn was entertaining a guest.
“Bryn,” Nova whispered, teetering on the top rung and craning her neck to see beyond the hay bales stacked against the stable’s slanted roof.
Nothing.
“Bryn,” she hissed, a bit more insistent. At that, a single figure sat up amid the piles of straw.
“What hour is it?” Bryn asked, running a hand through her hair and plucking out bits of hay.
“It’s early yet,” Nova replied. “Is Riven with you?”
“No.” Bryn stood, then bent down, fetching her bow and quiver and slinging both over her shoulder. “She returned to the Estate to sleep. But we managed to come up with a plan before she left.”
Minutes later, they joined Callan, who had gathered their mounts and prepared them for a hasty departure. Callan wore his hood low and had donned his gloves, ensuring that, should they encounter anyone on the road, his markings wouldn’t arouse interest or suspicion.
“You’re certain she means to help us?” Callan asked for the second time, throwing a quick glance over his shoulder at the yowl of two cats arguing in the alleyway.
Bryn nodded as she swatted loose bits of straw from her cloak and breeches. “I believe so. She’s no fool. If she means to betray us, she’ll likely wait until after we’ve escorted her safely back out of the Wylds.”
“Somehow I don’t find that comforting,” Callan grumbled, slipping the reins over Frost’s head.
Nova settled her foot in the stirrup and swung her leg over Shade’s back. “She seemed genuinely intrigued at the prospect of coming along. She’ll help us get the map—I’m sure of it. We’ll keep an eye on her as our adventure reaches its end.”
The sky brightened, revealing a swath of gray clouds overhead.
Though it wasn’t raining, darker clouds gathering in the west didn’t bode well for a dry journey.
Nova wondered aloud whether Riven opening a window would work, as the day wouldn’t be warm.
Bryn explained that Lord Arthur often smoked wyldleaf while he worked in his study.
Riven would open the window under the guise of airing out the room.
A short time later, Nova and Callan rode out of town along the main road with Strawberry trailing on a lead behind them. Bryn would remain to await the hour she and Riven had planned for their heist.
Hours passed while Nova and Callan occupied themselves in the woods, first sharing a breakfast of hard cheese and cold ham stuffed between slices of day-old bread, then checking over the horses’ hooves and tightening every saddle strap at least twice.
A rawness hung in the air, reddening the tip of Nova’s nose and making the joints in her hands sluggish.
Her toes had begun to go numb inside her boots when, finally, a raven swooped low overhead, dropping a rolled scroll of parchment as it passed by.
Callan headed into the scrub grass, hunting for the map, as Bryn shifted into her Fae form and landed beside the road, startling her horse.
“How did it go?” Nova asked, joining Bryn where she stood stretching her arms and rolling her neck.
“Without a hitch,” Bryn assured her, waving over Callan who had located the map.
Callan unrolled the parchment and spread it out as best he could atop the wide trunk of a fallen tree.
It was exactly as Riven had described, with the Maedwen Estate shown in the lower left corner and the sprawling wilderness known as the Wyldmoors covering most of the right-hand side of the map.
A cluster of icons resembling mounds of heaped earth lay at the very heart of the expanse of moorland.
Callan said it was roughly two days’ ride to the edge of the Wylds, plus an additional day to reach the mounds.
He rolled the scroll once more to pack it in his saddlebag for safekeeping.
As he lifted the flap, Nova caught sight of the Kinslayer shard stowed there.
For nearly a week, she’d been fighting her own mind, striving to ignore the alluring call of the weapon, though it was ever present at the edge of her thoughts.
That which you seek, seeks you.
Nova shook her head against the voice. Against the words that felt like both the darkest threat and the sweetest promise.
Against the overwhelming urge to touch her father’s sword once more.
Though she knew she may need to wield it one day, she resolved to touch it as little as possible until that time.
Nova tore her gaze away as Callan secured the buckled flap of the saddlebag.
Hoofbeats heralded Riven’s arrival, and she came to a halt atop a great honey-colored mare with wildflowers woven into its mane.
Bryn mounted her own horse, quickly bringing Strawberry alongside Riven’s mount.
They all readied themselves as the Noble rattled off an account of how she’d paid Artie a visit, chiding him for his indulgence in wyldleaf before opening the window to “get rid of the wicked smell.” Riven and Bryn made a pretty pair, Nova thought, seated atop their horses with their bows slung across their chests.
“It will be two days’ ride to the Wylds.” Callan’s low voice came from behind Nova as she mounted Shade and situated herself in the saddle. “Should we expect anyone will come looking for you?”
Riven chuckled. “I’m responsible for myself, Your Grace,” she said, the title used in a teasing manner. “I answer to no one.”
“Very well.” Callan nodded, nudging Frost into a canter and leading the way into the vast unknown stretching out before them.
“How inconvenient to be traveling with folk who can’t shift, am I right Bryn?” Riven asked, pitching her voice loud enough for Nova and Callan to hear ahead of them.
Nova shuddered as the first raindrops fell upon her face.
“If it were only us, we could simply fly.”
The journey through Maedwen was miserable.
When they passed a statue of Elowen, carved from a slab of gray granite and covered in crawling vines, Nova couldn’t help but feel as though the goddess of birth and growth was testing her resolve.
Judging Nova’s ability to see her task through to whatever end.
She found a sense of pride in knowing Elowen vastly underestimated her stubbornness.
They kept up a steady pace through the rain, stopping once at midday to take shelter beneath a copse of trees.
Huddled close together, they silently ate a meal of bread and apples.
Nova had tried to make conversation, lamenting that they could not start a fire, when Riven hushed her with one hand held up in the air.
Nova scanned the surrounding wilderness, wide-eyed, expecting a beast to come rushing out of the grass.
She relaxed when a group of deer emerged instead, a doe and two spotted fawns trailed by a large stag with a reddish-brown coat.
The creatures halted a stone’s throw away, scenting the air with their snouts turned toward the sky.
A moment later, the animals resumed walking, giving Nova and her companions a wide berth as they continued along their route.
“Gods,” Nova sighed once the creatures were out of sight. “Did you see the antlers on that stag? They’d make quite a display on some hunter’s wall.”
Riven made a chiding hiss through her teeth. “What an ugly thing to say.”
Rising to her feet, the Noble dusted the breadcrumbs from her breeches and left to ready her horse.
Mouth open in stunned silence, Nova stared after Riven.
“Deer are revered in Maedwen,” Bryn explained. “Never hunted.”
“I didn’t know,” Nova said, embarrassment heating her face.
Bryn gave her a half smile before following after Riven to ready Strawberry for the next leg of their journey.
Pressing her chilled fingers against her cheeks, Nova willed the evidence of her foolishness to fade. Callan’s hand appeared before her, and she allowed him to help her to her feet.
“Many Nobles’ shifted form is that of a deer,” he told her.
She tucked the new information away, the explanation doing little to ease her shame at Riven’s scolding remark.
As they resumed their slog through the sodden grasslands, Nova wondered if all the creatures she saw—the birds soaring in the sky, the leash of foxes trailing them at a distance—weren’t creatures at all, but Wyldling Fae in shifted form.
That night, the four of them slept sitting up, backs pressed against the trunks of squat, bushy trees, their scraggly boughs barely blocking the rain.
Upon waking the next day, Nova discovered sprites had untied her braid and tangled her hair in the night. Bryn and Riven left to water their horses and fill their flasks, following the noisy rush of a nearby stream. Nova sat for a moment, tugging her fingers through her snarled strands.
“Godsdamn it!”
Nova rushed to meet Callan by the horses, her mate’s frustration crashing against her consciousness like a wave when she reached his side.
“We’ve been robbed,” he growled.
Nova crouched beside him, lifting the corner of the small tarpaulin they’d bundled around their belongings the night before to shield them from the rain.
Both of their saddlebags were, indeed, gone.
Unease roiled in her stomach at the realization that the Kinslayer shard was stowed among Callan’s things.
Nova snapped her head toward her mate, her mouth open in surprise. “Sprites?” she asked.
Callan shook his head slowly, his dark eyes scanning the wet ground.
“Not sprites.” He pointed a finger at the mud.
Nova leaned down for a closer look. Amid the imprints of their horses’ hooves, she spied animal tracks: narrow pads and four toes with faint indentations crowning each one.
“Red foxes,” Callan said. “The creatures have fur on their feet, so the claw marks aren’t defined. But these were no ordinary foxes.” He clenched his jaw, looking back in the direction they had traveled the previous day.