Chapter 13 #2
He had tended to her? The thought of lying unconscious under his hands sent a shiver of revulsion through her. If this was meant to earn her trust, it had failed spectacularly.
Without another word, Eamon turned and slipped into the trees, his dark cloak dissolving into shadow as he angled toward the distant glow of Cruithneach.
Elara leaned forward over the mare’s neck, fingers buried in pale mane, as the forest tore past them in streaks of dark and silver.
Ahead, the Sídhe ran. They flowed through the trees with a speed that made distance feel negotiable, their footfalls light and ruthless, barely stirring the ground.
Reynnar vaulted roots and fallen stone with ease.
Aoife slipped between trunks like smoke.
The mare worked hard to match their pace. Her breath came fast and wet, sides heaving beneath Elara’s knees. She murmured nonsense into her mane. Apologies. Promises. Gratitude. Anything that might keep the animal going.
The path skimmed the edge of Cruithneach’s outer reaches. Rope bridges sighed overhead as they thundered beneath them. Leaves whispered past her ears. Shadows slid and reformed, never quite settling.
Ahead, Caelion never faltered. Reynnar and Aoife did not look back.
They trusted her to keep up. The group broke through a narrow gap in the outer palisade where the river pressed close, dark and swollen from winter melt.
Without hesitation, Caelion drove straight into the shallows, and Elara barely had time to gasp before cold detonated up her legs.
Mist gathered ahead.
The path dipped and vanished into fog so thick it erased the world beyond a few strides. Trees blurred into pale ghosts. Shadows dissolved into gray motion.
Elara risked a glance back.
Cruithneach was already fading, its lights smothered by distance and mist, reduced to a weak, dying glow.
Beyond it lay Talamh na Sí, where the Aelfhenge slept.
And farther still, past the warped geometry of this world, waited a path that led to a human city and a man whose name she did not dare speak, for fear her hands would begin to shake.
Ivan lived on the far side of that door.
Or he did not.
She fingered the bloodstone at her throat.
The knowing and the not knowing had taken up equal space inside her.
She could go back. The thought came neatly paired, as her thoughts so often did—door and doorway, love and loyalty, what had been and what might still be.
She could reach for Reynnar’s sleeve and say, I have to, and it would be true enough to stand on.
Or she could finish what she had already begun by walking away from the Glade alive.
Reynnar drew back, and only then did she realize she’d stopped. Simply…halted. As if her body—and the mare beneath her—had decided, without consulting her, that they could go no farther. He glanced at the stone in her hand. Followed the line of her stare into the dark behind them.
“I meant what I said, Eilíara,” he murmured. “This is your choice. If you want to go back, say so, and I will see you through.”
She searched his face—out of habit more than doubt—and found nothing false there. Just truth, laid bare in the way he always did, without ornament or apology. She believed him. He had never once asked her to trust what he had not proven with action.
But to go back…
No.
She drew a slow breath. Let it scrape her lungs raw.
Let the grief rise, acute and cold and merciless.
Then she bent it. Folded it. Pressed it into something harder.
Purpose. Fury. Forward motion. Her throat burned as she swallowed the ache, as she forced her fingers to loosen and let the bloodstone settle back against her collarbone with a soft, familiar knock.
There was still so much she didn’t understand.
About Osin. About the power threaded beneath her skin.
She would find the answers. Uncover them. Drag them into the light.
But she would not do it clinging to fear or looking backward. She would not waste what had been given to her by faltering now. Move, she told herself, tightening her grip on the reins. There’s still much to be done.
And gods help them all—she would do it.
She looked to Reynnar, resolve settling within. “I do want to go back. I want—it’s hard for me, not knowing what happened to the ones I left behind. And yet…this is the path that ends with more people alive.”
He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Then we go forward.”
Aoife glanced back, read them, did not comment—only lifted her chin at Elara in a gesture that was half salute, half dare.
Elara faced forward and followed Reynnar into the new day, the pain in her shoulder and the blade in her hand agreeing on at least one truth: that what they were about to do would change the shape of the map, and possibly of her.
She did not know if it would make her more whole. She doubted anything could.
But it might make her useful.
She allowed herself one last look into the trees, where the air held a memory of light that had once been a door.
Then she turned her face to the path Caelion had taken and pressed her knees to her horse’s sides, asking for a little more speed.
By the time the sun cleared the black lace of the branches, they were a column no longer fleeing but heading somewhere—a handful of fugitives with a dangerous idea.
Elara did not look back again. There would be time to hurt later.