47. Sealed
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Sealed
Iblinked my bleary eyes. We set out once dawnlight came.
After claiming each other against the cave wall, again and again, I was spent.
Yet Cassiel seemed rejuvenated, carrying me out and whistling sharply for Abrax.
Then we began another harsh journey. I was glad to leave because what we’d left behind was madness.
My only hope was that Liadan and Jude had managed to stop the invasion.
As we rode, all I had were memories and grief to sit in. So much had been lost to men’s gluttony and forceful control. Even so, much had been gained by all that refused to cower. Even when matters were not in favor of resisting.
Cassiel pulled the reins sharply to the left, weaving off the current trail we traveled.
“What is it?”
Cassiel never acted without reason. “I hear riders approaching,” he murmured. He navigated Abrax higher through the compact woods, clomping up onto a side embankment, over untrodden paths that jostled me hard against Cassiel.
He pulled the reins, and Abrax stopped.
“The terrain is too rough to go higher. Let us wait for them to pass.” Cassiel jutted his chin down toward the trail we had come from. Branches thick with leaves jutted out, providing cover.
I rolled my ankle and flexed my calf. If we were staying here, I might as well stretch my aching legs. It always made it easier on my hip when riding long distances. I dismounted with ease, holding onto Abrax to gather strength in my legs.
“What is it?” Cassiel demanded, dismounting as well. “What ails you?” He crouched, hand sliding under my frock and taking hold of my calf. My hands slapped his shoulders to brace myself.
“Saints, Cassiel,” I groused, yanking at my leg until he released.
One moment he crouched, the next he was upright. Dusklight filtered through the tops of the trees and fell across the consternation twisting his features.
“Can a man not worry for his bondmate?”
How humorous—he sounded chastising. It was a shift to see him without weakness seeping through his every move. The man standing before me was so like the one I had met the first day. Strong, alert, with violence dancing in his eerie eyes.
“May I?” I asked quietly, hand hovering over his chest.
“You do not need to ask to touch me.” An impertinent smile tugged at his lips. With the sunlight shining across his face, the curve of his mouth, and even wearing the dirtied, ripped up clothes, he enraptured me. As sure as death—he stole my breath.
I wrenched myself back to the present and lifted on my tiptoes to reach his collar. The split material fell open at my tug. Creamy, strong, and smooth. I ran my fingertips lightly over the skin. He shivered, and his eyes softened. No sign of withering.
I let out another exhale. Despite seeing his skin clear of it, the reminder was needed. I had been terribly close to losing him.
“The small roof space over the watermill, surrounded by wheat, you found after you were run off from your home.” He had grown terribly still, refusing to look at me. “Is that where you lived?”
In his memory, I found myself sitting on a hard surface, surrounded by straw, cobwebs, and the musty smell of a damp chamber.
“Yes.” His throat bobbed. “For many annums. Until I was discovered.” His lips twisted. I could see how difficult it was for him to speak. His tongue darted across his lips. “I fled to the East before I was hanged.”
Laughter reached us from afar, echoing through the trees and sending birds into flight. I pulled my hand back. Cassiel raised a brow at me. I wrinkled my nose, sheepish. I had grown so used to hiding my affection.
Instead of festering over the realization, I turned toward the noise, hiding behind a tree.
A group walked down the path we had been on.
If they were also not traveling along the main road, they must be keeping hidden.
A wagon creaked with each pace the horse pulled it.
Rope crossed the bulging bed of the wagon.
Three children clung to the sides, legs straddling the edge.
Four men and seven women completed the company.
Even from a distance, bright blue splotches of blood and wounds stained many of them.
“What happened?” I whispered.
“Traveling to find new homes. They argue over whether to stop now or continue into dusklight. Their village was attacked by Hollows.”
I let out a tight breath. “While I was in The Barren, it trembled and it seemed as if . . . they were coming from the ground.”
“It is a symptom of the faltering threshold.”
“I knew it.” It had not been far off to assume what it had been, but I preferred the confirmation. “You know the truth about the realms and the Barren?” I looked over my shoulder. He was currently beside Abrax, checking all of his hooves.
“About The Barren not being a place to cross, instead that they had thresholds to reach the other realms? Yes.”
“I had assumed . . .”
“That since they kept so much from me, they would not have disclosed that?” He hummed, nodding.
“A way to avoid suspicion is to mask falsehoods with truths. Seems that was their truth.” He met my eyes.
“Killing Hollows is all I have ever excelled at, and even Vaner had seen that.” He grimaced and dropped Abrax’s hooves.
“The threshold nearest Lifton Village has been closed for a long while, but only recently have they begun spilling out Hollows as they do now. The matter has only worsened.”
The excursion to Lifton Village seemed so long ago.
“The grimoire stated that each of the thresholds leads to different realms.”
A sharp scream brought my attention to the little boy running from the other that had jumped off the wagon. A woman hissed at them to quiet down. Such hope shone in them. After Hollows had chased them away from their only home, they persisted.
“Hm.” Cassiel confirmed. “The entrance point determines which realm the threshold opens to. Though I did not know they could not be crossed without a Sanguine Stone.”
I released the tree. “They are gone,” I said and stepped back.
A branch stabbed my ankle. I was toppling when he seized my arm, then pulled me upright and toward the flat surface. Astonishment widened his eyes.
“I felt it.”
My eyebrows furrowed. He motioned to the fall behind me.
“You felt that I was about to fall?”
“Not exactly . . .” he murmured. “I felt you near danger.”
“Ah, that is what the grimoire meant about sensing ‘peril’,” I scoffed. “It is an effect of the bond.”
“Hm, well, this perk comes a close second to when I could speak in your mind.”
He mounted Abrax and slowed beside me. Cassiel moved his foot from the hold so I could use it.
With a hop, he pulled me up the rest of the way and positioned me in front of him.
Abrax picked his way down the rocky terrain, and we returned to our original path.
He had been able to invade my mind whenever he pleased, but he’d also felt what I did.
“Can you still feel my emotions?”
“No.” He sounded a mix of disgruntled and frustrated. “I do not like the lack.”
I huffed. I was sure he did not. Now he would have to ask me if I were upset.
“I have a question for you.” I waited for him to ask, moving my frock about me to get more comfortable. “You said you killed Egan.”
The reminder stilled my shuffling.
“Yes, when I used Hester’s gift, it left him vulnerable to Vaner, and h-he took his body.” I tucked my hair behind an ear. “Egan did not deserve any of this. And Lucinda . . . tried to stop Vaner—for me.”
So much loss had happened. Too much.
Cassiel cleared his throat. “The girl had a mind of her own. She must have chosen to do what she did for a reason. As for the officer, his fate was sealed when Vaner was unsuccessful in stealing your body. It is not your fault.” He patted my head.
His attempt at comforting me was stilted at best, but sweet. All it did was make nerves urge me to fan my face.
Peaceful silence lasted a long while. Then the realm shuddered in a way it had not before. Whatever had turned in its sleep had now awakened. A scream caught in my throat as Abrax reared. Cassiel pulled us forward, bracing me when otherwise I would have fallen and likely been trampled on.
“The final threshold has sealed.” The way he intoned it sounded as if we were doomed.
“I have never felt such a thing when the other thresholds closed.”
“We are traveling near The Barren, likely why you did not feel it.”
The land had not yet settled from how hard it moved. Stones continued to roll as an aftereffect of the quake. Trees had toppled into others, and animals cried out.
“What will happen now, Cassiel?” Everything felt too different. Existence as we knew it had changed.
“First we rest, bondmate. Then more bloodshed.” His palm pressed on my belly, thumb rubbing into me comfortingly. I did not have to guess what he meant. The rest of the council still remained, and that could not be.