Chapter 33
Thirty-Three
Relief
When I woke up, I was nearly wriggled out of my clothes. My leggings were pushed off my hips, only barely hiding all the parts your pants are meant to keep hidden. My shirt was bunched up to my armpits, one breast hanging out of my breast band.
My eyes snapped wide, and I yanked down my shirt, reaching inside to adjust the breast band again.
I was beyond thankful for the darkness that blanketed us.
I gently removed the cool arm that was still draped across my stomach, likely the reason I’d wrestled out of my clothes to get to the relief of her touch in my sleep, then I yanked my leggings up where they belonged.
Schula groaned, rolling over and rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “Is it morning?”
“Shh.” Eberon lit his palm, flickering light through the room. He motioned to the door, and that was when we all heard the shuffling on the other side of it.
Thain was on his feet in an instant, and Schula and I scrambled to follow suit. Schula mouthed in the dim light, Flesh hounds? and looked to Eberon for an answer. He nodded.
Thain seemed to grow, his fingers sharpening into claws, his fangs growing larger, and his eyes almost glowed. His glamour was starting to fade.
“Eb, open the door,” he commanded.
Eberon let his fire go out and pushed the door open. In a blur of midnight fury, Thain was outside and tearing into something. I saw blood splatter right before Schula covered my eyes.
“Come on, Wren.” She grabbed my arm and led me out. “We’re running on ahead.”
“I’m staying with Thain in case he has trouble coming back to us,” Eberon said. “Go on, we’ll catch up.”
Schula practically dragged me through the door. Thain had pushed the fight into the trees, the one place they’d told me not to go in the Winter Lands. The thing he was fighting was huge.
Through the jagged branches and thick trunks, I caught glimpses of a horrid creature.
The stench of it stung my nose with rot and decay.
It was shaped like an enormous wolf without fur; its gray skin sagged, but underneath the skin, ropes of muscle gave the creature bulk.
It was a surreal combination of decrepit and ferocious.
Its eyes were small and dull; it must have relied on its other senses to hunt.
On its back hung strips of bloody skin, laid across its spine like grotesque adornments.
I swallowed a scream, and Schula lifted me off my feet, pulling me onto her back and running in the opposite direction.
“Was that one of the flesh hounds?”
“Shh, it’s okay.” She held me tight as she ran. “They aren’t usually that big, but Thain can take care of it.”
The sounds of ripping and tearing and snarling finally faded behind us. Tears stung my eyes, and as much as I would have liked to say it was the cold wind in my face, it was partially because I was so upset with myself.
I was the reason everyone was here. I was the reason the flesh hounds had chased us. I was the reason they were so worried. I couldn’t even keep up with them on foot, and Thain or Schula had to carry me.
I decided in that moment to never be weak again.
I vowed to myself to master my magic. I would conquer this thing eating at me inside, and I would tame it.
I didn’t care that I was half this or half that; I had enough of the Wyldes in me that I could run as fast as the rest of the fae, be as strong as them, be as smart as them.
I would learn it all, if I could just make it through this one obstacle.
I looked up at Schula through my wild hair. I could feel her heart pounding against her rib cage. Probably the strain of dealing with me and the knowledge of the creature we’d left behind us.
“Are there any of those flesh hounds around us now?” I asked.
She tilted her head a bit, listening. “No, none.”
“I know I’ll slow us down, but do you think I could run?” I looked ahead to the cold gray mountains that had drawn steadily closer since yesterday.
“Are you sure you want to? I’m fine carrying you,” she insisted.
“I’m sure.” She set me on my feet, and I began running beside her instead.
We had to go slower than before, but I was much happier using my own feet, as long as I wasn’t putting us in danger.
The terrain wasn’t too bad, mostly flat, you just had to watch out for the rocks.
My back still burned, but the cold air was helping immensely, and running distracted me from the discomfort.
I started to tire, but I kept pushing forward.
Sweat beaded my forehead, and my legs ached, but we kept going.
We ran for probably an hour before I just couldn’t go on any longer.
I was exhausted, and no amount of fear was going to keep me running anymore.
It was too hard to fight my seal and spend so much energy running at the same time.
Schula scooped me up and kept going, speeding up. “We’re very close, just hold on.”
The fight to keep myself contained was growing more difficult. Whatever magical patch job they had done on me back at Eberon’s house wasn’t going to last much longer.
The sun was finally high enough for us to feel some warmth as Schula carried me up a gentle slope.
The mountains had crept up on us, and from the look of them our gentle slope wouldn’t be so gentle soon.
Luckily, we turned north. It looked like Schula meant to skim the edge of the dark range.
Their jagged edges and towering peaks reminded me of teeth biting though the world.
I remembered something Prince Alban had said at the Spring Court: the Winter’s Teeth. I shivered; this must be them.
“Wren, we’re not alone,” Schula murmured in my ear. “Don’t be alarmed, but I don’t think it’s Eb or Thain.”
I stiffened in her arms. “What do we do?”
“We keep going,” she insisted. “We just go through a small patch of trees and we’re almost there.”
“Why is this place so special?” I asked, straining to hear the other presences that Schula had noticed.
“In the past, many powerful fire fae have come here to burn themselves out, so to speak.” She broke through a line of trees and dodged a fallen trunk.
“There is a place here for you to burn safely. There is absolutely nothing there to burn. Not one blade of grass. Thanks to that, none of the animals bother with it either. You are safe to cause as much of an explosion as you’d like.
I’m also told the deep snow is refreshing, but I wouldn’t know. ”
“I see,” I breathed. We pushed out of the trees to the edge of what looked like a giant crater. It was probably half a mile wide, and the edges were steep. Schula didn’t hesitate to jump off the flat edge and slide down toward the middle.
It was deep, and near the bottom it was filled with snow, an unbroken surface of flat white flakes that we tore through.
“I thought the Sangolins were plains?” I asked.
“They are, this is just a crater at the edge of them. There isn’t really anything of note in the plains except this crater, so any time someone mentions the Sangolins, they’re probably talking about this place.”
We neared the middle of the crater, and Schula slowed.
“I’m leaving you here. Let it out, and I’ll be right back.” Schula smiled and stroked my hair. “You’ll be so much better, just let it out. I’m going to undo the seal now, then all you have to do is let go, okay?”
“Okay,” I breathed.
She ran her hands up my back, tracing it with her icy fingers and muttering a long string of words under her breath.
I could feel it, like a thread unraveling.
The seal that had always been there was falling away, and it was disorienting.
Suddenly, I felt so much less stable than I had before, and that was saying something.
The burden of holding everything in was now squarely on my shoulders.
Schula’s eyes popped wide open as she looked at me as if for the first time. “Wren.”
She placed her hands on either side of my face and pressed a gentle kiss to my forehead. I could feel her. Finally, really feel her presence as a fae.
“I’ll be right back,” she breathed. “I just need to take care of whoever is behind us, and I’ll be back the second you’re done.”
Schula squeezed my arm and ran. She left me in snow up to my knees. She ran back through the tracks we had made, back up to the edge of the crater and out of sight.
But all I could feel at that moment was power.
My back burned where the seal had been, but it felt so good to be rid of it.
I stripped off my top, not giving a damn about where I was, and I laid my marked skin directly on the snow.
Snow melted all around me, soaking through my remaining clothes and soothing the burn that hadn’t really stopped since I’d taken my first step into the Wyldes.
Tears streaked down my face at the relief, and I let go.
Fire. Burning flames engulfed me but didn’t burn me. The bright red flames licked my body and decimated the snowy landscape around me. I was quickly turning the crater into a small, shallow lake.
The feeling of release was euphoric. It flowed through me, the power to burn.
The well of it was almost endless; I felt like I could burn forever.
I burned harder, trying to reach it. Flames were licking up the entire crater, eating up the snow and quickly turning it to water.
I took a deep breath. Finally, finally everything was clearer.
The veil was lifted, and I was breathing for the first time.
Rolling over, I sat up. My boots, my leggings, and my breast band had not burned off. I had thought they would. I had no idea where my tunic was, though.
I pushed the power out a little harder, engulfing more of the crater. It felt so good to let it out. I smiled as I sank deeper and deeper into the bottom of the crater as it filled up with water, and I lay back in it.
I closed my eyes and focused on burning it all out of my system. I would recover it over time and work with it in smaller amounts, Eberon had told me.
My butt hit the bottom. Something solid, not snow. I got onto my knees and inspected it. I ran my fingers along it, feeling the rough, cold surface. Ice, it was ice.
I pushed slush and debris away from my hands, opening a window into the ice below me.
It looked like the ice over Silver Lake in winter, dark and still under the surface.
Undisturbed for who knew how long. My fire was quickly melting it, though, and I took several steps back.
I didn’t know how thick the layer of ice was, but I didn’t want to find out.
A bath was one thing, but to be suspended in a large body of water again only terrorized me with memories of almost drowning.
I tried to rein it in, slow down the burn, but I couldn’t. I started to panic as I couldn’t stop the fire. I felt like a little girl again, standing in Mila’s yard and burning everything around me. My panic rose higher as I realized more heat was pouring out of me, melting the ice underfoot.
I ran through the water as well as I could. I ran in the opposite direction of Schula, not wanting to hurt her. I left a trail of melting ice in my wake.
A rumble rippled through the ground. I felt a horrid presence under my feet and ran faster. Somewhere behind me, Schula screamed. I wanted to go to her, but I was afraid.
Burning harder and running faster, I raced for the far edge of the crater. My heart skipped a beat as I felt the bottom of my well of fire. I wasn’t close to it, but I could feel where it was now.
I reached the far slope of the crater and began to climb. A rumble of annoyance under the ice terrified me, but I climbed up and out of the crater, gaining distance from the thing below the ice.
I sank to my knees once I was on the ground again. My heart banged in my chest as I struggled to control the fire. My breathing grew labored, and my muscles strained.
It was the worst fight of my life, the fight to gain control of the fire. I was scared and alone and burning. Everything was burning.
Time passed, and my fire had finally slowed down. It was still out of my control, but it had slowed enough for my magic to reach other places. Searing pain hit my ears at the same time, and I screamed.
I reached up to clamp my hands over them to counter the pressure, but I was horrified to pull my hands back and see blood.
I reached up again to stop it, but that was when I felt the tips.
Long, pointy tips were rapidly sprouting where they would have been had they not been cut off when I was a baby. They felt foreign, bizarre.
Next, my very bones threatened to crack with the strain my magic was putting on them.
And my eyes, I could see everything. Not that I couldn’t see well before, but now I saw everything.
Every speck of sand on the ground, every tiny piece of ash that I was burning from the plains around me in the air.
I didn’t know how long I lay there screaming in pain and burning up, but I did feel it when I finally stopped.
It wasn’t gradual, either. It was sudden, like running into a wall.
I choked out a gasp, tears staining my ashy cheeks as I looked around. In the distance, I saw several forms. More than my three fae friends, but close to the same size and shape.
Then the howls started. Nasty, growling howls. Hundreds of them. My heart sputtered as I realized I had probably drawn every flesh hound for miles to us.
The ground shook, a tremor from below. The thing under the ice was angry, I could feel it. It rammed its body into the ice above it. It terrified me, and I just wanted to find my friends and get away.
I tried to sit up, to pull myself toward where Schula was, but it was useless. I had spent more than just my magic, and I was barely hanging on to my consciousness.
Footsteps from behind me caused me to push myself to roll over. My eyes met a huge fae with an unsettling grin on his face.
Three more were behind him, and beyond the crater were yet more.
“That was quite the show,” he snarled. “I think my king will want to see this for himself.”
“Wait,” I choked.
“Wren!” I could hear Schula’s screams across the crater. My ears twitched painfully, and I could hear sounds like fighting.
“Schula,” I breathed.
“Oh?” The fae in front of me leaned down, his face twisted into a dark smile. “Did you just say Schula is on our lands?”
I swallowed, squeezing my eyes shut as a tear escaped.
“How interesting.” He stood straight and turned slightly toward the fae behind him. “Bring her too. Follow behind at a distance, keep her away from this one.”
“Yes, Asher.” They saluted and ran, skirting the edge of the crater and sprinting toward Schula.
“Now, you’re coming with me, little one.” He leaned down until I could see the cruel glint in his black eyes. “DuVarick will want to see you for himself.”