Chapter Six
WILDER
W ilder was fixated on her mouth, wondering if she was about to kiss him, when the click of the chains sounded.
The noise hauled him back to reality, the one in which Thea wasn’t his, and he was only hers in the sense that he was her enemy.
Startled, Wilder stared down at the iron cuffs around his wrists, everything about them feeling wrong , feeling unnatural .
Still dazed, he tested the chain linking his hands and found that it wouldn’t yield to his Furies-given strength. Normal irons he could break, but these…
He nearly laughed. Of course Thea would have asked Wren to create some sort of power-suppressing substance to capture him.
Perhaps it was even the same that had suppressed Thea’s magic for all those years before.
Clever . He wondered if removing the manacles was a matter of simply locating the key, or if there was more complex alchemy at play.
He’d put nothing past the Zoltaire sisters.
Wilder couldn’t help but peer into Thea’s beautiful face, drinking in her features like someone parched and desperate.
What he hadn’t anticipated was how much it would hurt to look at her, to have her look at him.
She stared at him like she didn’t know him, like he wore the face of someone else, someone she no longer recognised.
Those eyes that had once gazed upon him with love, with admiration, were cold and hard.
It was his own doing, he knew, but that didn’t make it hurt any less.
In the year they had been apart, he’d tried to convince himself that she’d understand, that she would learn that the important parts had always been true.
But he’d been lying to himself.
‘It’s been a long time, Apprentice,’ he said at last, managing to keep the crack from his voice.
Her eyes narrowed, her hand gripping the chained link between his manacles hard, as though she could somehow stop him if he chose to run, or fight.
‘I’m not your apprentice,’ she replied, devoid of any emotion. ‘I’m not your anything,’
Wilder sucked in a breath. He had yearned to hear her voice for so long, but these words… They were primed to cut. Where was she? The lightning-wielding warrior he’d fought alongside? The woman he’d held in his arms?
Thea’s rage was palpable, raw and unbroken, more so than he’d ever experienced before. And yet… he felt not a flicker of magic from her. That, more than anything, made him worry. It made things all the more precarious.
Stupidly, he hadn’t decided what role he would play, what mask he would wear when he saw her again. But the way she gripped his manacles snapped something inside him, and curiosity got the better of him. He needed to test her, to push her, to see what still simmered beneath the surface.
He rattled his irons and raised a brow. ‘If you wanted me in chains, Princess…’ His voice was low and sultry. ‘All you had to do was ask.’
Fury flashed in her eyes, but she veered back as though burned. ‘Don’t presume to know what I want, traitor.’
The anger was there, but there was no sign of her storm powers, no spark of lightning calling out to him to dance with her. Where are you, Princess?
Wilder looked from his chains back to Thea, flakes of snow caught in her bronze-and-gold hair. ‘And just how do you plan to get me back to Thezmarr? My hands may be bound, but not even the Shadow of Death can force me to walk… Not even with your friends could you overpower me.’
In a blur of movement, Thea had something sharp pressed to his throat. Not the tip of a dagger like he expected; something far finer.
He baulked.
Thea had a pin pressed to his neck. The faint aroma of Naarvian nightshade tickled his nostrils.
‘One move and I’ll send you into oblivion,’ she hissed.
‘You’re going to drug me?’
‘I’ll do whatever I have to. I’d actually prefer you unconscious, just to shut that big mouth of yours.’
‘Here I was thinking you liked my mouth just fine.’
Wilder heard her sharp intake of breath, felt the needle’s point pierce the first few layers of skin.
‘You have a death wish? Keep talking,’ she warned.
Nearby, Kipp coughed pointedly. ‘Seriously, I wouldn’t…’ he said, eyeing Wilder warily.
Thea eased the poison-tipped pin away from his skin ever so slightly as her friends at last dared to approach. Both young men were shivering, and grimacing at the sight of master and apprentice.
‘So we’re taking him back to Thezmarr, then?’ Cal asked, teeth chattering.
‘Over my dead body,’ Thea replied. ‘We’ll take him to Vios. All the rulers will be there for the eclipse. He can face their justice there, before all the people of the midrealms.’
‘But we always said —’
Kipp waved Cal into silence. ‘Can we have this argument from the comfort of the local tavern? I was promised a pint by sundown, and I intend to collect.’
The adrenaline had started to wear off, and the icy bite of Aveum air had its fangs in them all. Wilder didn’t take his eyes off Thea, nor did she take hers off him, the pin still at his neck, her hand still gripping the chain of his manacles.
‘Take his swords,’ she ordered her friends.
‘Uh…’ Cal started.
‘Just do it.’
Wilder allowed a smirk to tug at the corner of his mouth, still gazing upon his apprentice as Cal fumbled with his weapons. When he was relieved of his belt, scabbards and blades, their weight instantly missed, Wilder raised a brow at Thea in challenge.
She glared at him before addressing her friends. ‘Let’s get the fuck out of this cold.’
Wilder managed to hide his surprise. He could have sworn Thea would charge ahead with the ride to Vios, wanting him to face his sentence as soon as possible.
But judging by the bedraggled state of the trio, they hadn’t stopped in weeks.
Thea had been relentless in her pursuit of him, and now the smart move was certainly to get warm and dry before continuing —
‘Move,’ Thea snapped, her dagger – Malik’s dagger – pressed to the small of his back. His brother would probably find that amusing. But she wasn’t done. She took Wilder’s swords from Cal as well. ‘These are mine now,’ she told him, her words laced with menace.
All that anger and no magic to light the fire, he thought, allowing her to guide him towards the edge of the town.
A year ago, he’d known he’d be able to disarm her in a heartbeat; now he wasn’t so sure.
Even without her magic, she had grown stronger than he could have imagined.
Even without the Furies-given gifts of the Great Rite, she was a would-be Warsword through and through.
Thea had taken everything he had thrown in her path and triumphed, learning from each and every error, forging herself sharper and better than ever before.
But despite her gains, something deeper was broken inside.
Which was why Wilder let her lead him to the local inn with his brother’s dagger at his back, his swords in her possession.
He needed to find out more about her missing magic.
He needed to know if she still had a role to play in the war ahead.
And maybe, just maybe, he could get her to listen.
After the violence on the shores, the inn of the fishing village was nearly empty, and Wilder guessed that many of the locals had fled.
The handful of people who remained stared at him and the trio behind him, eyeing the thick irons around his wrists and the blade at his spine, utterly perturbed.
He couldn’t blame them for their confusion.
Even if they knew him as the fallen Warsword of Thezmarr, he hadn’t acted the part when he’d carved through the cursed men on their shores, or when he’d charged into the frigid lake to slay the cursed mother reef dweller. His lungs still burned from the effort.
As Thea directed them all to a booth in the far corner, the locals averted their gazes. No doubt they’d seen enough bloodshed and death for one day. And if Thea’s glare was anything to go by, they knew they were best leaving the Thezmarrians well enough alone.
Kipp paused at the head of the table, clapping his hands together suddenly. ‘Drinks,’ he declared. ‘We’ll need drinks. Lots of drinks.’
‘We’re not here to get drunk,’ Thea muttered.
‘Speak for yourself, Highness.’ Kipp was already striding towards the counter, signalling to the barkeep.
Wilder met Thea’s gaze across the table. ‘Now you have me, Apprentice, what exactly do you plan to do with me?’
‘I thought I made myself clear enough before,’ she said, her tone as cold as the lake’s ice. ‘You’re being taken to Vios for trial. After that, the rulers can do with you what they will.’
Wilder stared at her. She had looked at him as though she didn’t recognise him, but now he felt the same way about her… Who was this cruel woman? Where was Thea?
Beside Wilder, Cal shifted in his seat, awkwardly peering over them towards Kipp.
Toying with the chain between his irons, Wilder considered the woman before him. ‘If those are your intentions, surely you understand why I’ll have to decline.’
‘You’re not in a position to decline,’ she told him. ‘I’ll drug you and strap you to a damn horse if I have to.’
A tray of foaming tankards slid onto the table. ‘Who’s going to deal with his hulking mass lumped over their saddle?’ Kipp argued, already halfway through a pint.
To Wilder’s surprise, Thea reached for a tankard. ‘His horse is around here somewhere. He only needs to whistle, remember?’
‘Right.’ Kipp nodded. ‘Perks of being a Warsword.’
‘He’s no Warsword,’ Thea said coldly.
‘Semantics,’ Kipp replied.
Cal cleared his throat. ‘So, we drug him and take him to Vios. That’s settled, then.’