Chapter 26
Twenty-Six
Thorne
Kaelan carried Hanna back. His sense of guilt was written in his cold responses. Her head rested against his shoulder, but only because he held her there, his hand cupping her cheek.
He deposited her into the bed in the tent where we had all slept so happily the night before.
Grimly, I moved to join Alys at her makeshift workshop in front of her tent. Coril slept with her head in my mother’s lap; she napped during the day because she was struggling with nightmares at night. My mother toyed with her dark curls absently, watching Alys work.
The rebels were dumping sacks of unenchanted, raw bonesteel near the workshop.
“Be careful,” I warned Alys. “It’s dangerous.”
She nodded, and I knew she would’ve bitten my head off for the unnecessary warning if she didn’t understand how worried I was for Hanna.
We never should’ve taken her with us. We could have fought our way out eventually—with more losses but with her mind intact. I hated myself for being so cavalier after she shook off the goddess earlier.
She could wield the Shadow Weaver’s powers, but only with us already in her mind, holding onto her, and we had let her down.
Movement at the corner of my eye alerted me.
Hanna, climbing out of the tent.
Joy sparked through my chest, and it must have shown on my face because Alys threw me a worried look.
I intercepted Hanna, but when I tried to speak to her, she seemed curt. Confused. I gave her a bowl of soup, and she sat down on the log and spooned it into her mouth, but there didn’t seem to be anything behind her eyes.
I went back to the workshop more worried than before. Alys and Ekardo tried to talk to her too. Dare insisted on trying to go into her mind, but it was as if there had never been any door between them at all.
Hours later, she was still sitting there, unseeing, and guilt was consuming me.
Ekardo was focused on Hanna as Alys grimly worked on the bonesteel crown. Ekardo helped her, but nothing distracted him from talking. “The goddess isn’t possessing her in the traditional sense. She’s woven through Hanna’s consciousness like—”
“We know,” Dare interrupted. “You explained already.”
“I’m explaining again.” Ekardo’s voice went sharp. “If you want to bring her back, you need to understand what we’re fighting.”
When Kaelan strode toward us, his face could have been carved from the glaciers beyond.
“Mercant is dead,” he said.
The room went still.
“Lord Mercant?” Dare demanded. “The northern lord who pledged to us?”
“Him. His wife. Two sons. His household guard.” Kaelan’s voice was level in a way that meant he was holding himself together by force. “Executed publicly in his own courtyard. Edric sent me the banner.”
He dropped something on the table. Fabric, once red and gold. Now blackened and stained with what could only be blood.
My mother looked up from where Coril slept in her lap. “When?”
“Yesterday. The other two northern lords are terrified. If I don’t secure their loyalty now, they’ll withdraw. We lose the north entirely.”
“You can’t go anywhere until this crown is forged,” Alys told him.
He shook his head. “You finish the crown. You bring Hanna back. I need to unite these lords at the Dragons’ Teeth, or we lose this war.”
“You can’t leave Hanna.”
“We don’t have Hanna.” The words came out harder than Kaelan meant them. He sounded exhausted when he admitted, “And we can’t wait for her to come back.”
“She will come back,” I said.
Everyone turned to look at me.
“She will,” I repeated. I needed to believe it. “Hanna doesn’t give up.”
Alys’s hands paused over the mold she’d been forming for the crown. “Thorne, we can force open a door to her mind. But she has to choose it. She has to want to fight her way out.”
“She will.”
“What if she doesn’t?” Alys’s voice was gentle in a way that made it worse. It was so unlike my sister that her kindness gave me a sense of despair. “What if Hanna lets the goddess fight, because she knows the goddess can actually win this war? Can protect you all in a way she can’t?”
“She’ll fight,” I said. “She always has.”
“I hope you’re right.” Alys turned back to her work. “Because the longer she stays under, the harder it becomes to separate them.”
Kaelan’s fist hit the table. “Then work faster, because I’m leaving at dawn. With or without her.”
“Kaelan—” Dare started.
“No.” Kaelan’s voice was absolute. “Edric knows who our allies are. He’s picking them off one by one while we sit here hoping Hanna wakes up. If I don’t move now, we lose everything. The war doesn’t wait for us to be ready.”
He was right. I hated that he was right.
“I’ll go with you,” Dare said. “You need someone who can rally the peasants while you rally the lords.”
Kaelan nodded. Looked at me. “You stay here. With Hanna. Help Alys and Ekardo however they need.”
“I will.”
“And Thorne.” Kaelan’s expression was raw in a way I’d rarely seen. “If she comes back while I’m gone…”
“She will.”
“But if she doesn’t—” He stopped. Breathed. “Tell her I’m sorry. That I had to choose the kingdom over waiting.”
There was no reason for him to even say those words unless he thought either he or Hanna would be lost.
“Tell her yourself,” I said. “When she wakes up.”
Hanna didn’t move.
I sat near her. Not touching, but close enough to be there if she came back.
When. When she came back.
Alys and Ekardo worked through the night. I watched them draw symbols in chalk and blood, speak words in languages older than the kingdom, weave shadow and thought and will into a crown to shield Kaelan from his father.
Dawn came gray and cold.
“Well?” Kaelan prompted my sister with his usual grace.
She rubbed her good eye—which was bloodshot and shadowed now—and nodded. “We might have a crown that works.”
“Words that fill me with confidence.”
Ekardo held out the thin band. “We’ve warded it as best we can. It should block Edric’s access to the mental link while still allowing Thorne through.”
Should. The word hung there like a threat.
The crown was simple. Unadorned. Just a band of pale metal that looked almost like bone in the torchlight. Alys had etched symbols into the inner surface, protection runes I didn’t recognize.
Kaelan turned it over in his hands. “How do we test it?”
“I try to reach you through the link and so does Ekardo,” I said. “If the crown works, I should be able to get through. Ekardo shouldn’t.”
Kaelan placed the crown on his head. Ekardo held out his hand for Kaelan’s arm, taking some of his blood for his enchantment, to try to thrall Kaelan.
I tried to bring up a pleasant memory for us to test the bond.
Gods knew he needed one now. Instead, my mind went to the first time I’d seen Hanna for myself while he watched through my eyes.
The way she had kissed me, wondering if I was him in disguise.
He’d been furious and I’d been thrilled by her touch, by the way she acted as if she already knew me.
It should’ve been a memory that helped me link to him, because we’d been wide open to each other then.
But there was nothing between us. I couldn’t reach him.
Ekardo was trying too, but he finally sat back on his heels, his face pale and drawn.
“Well,” I said. “At least Edric can’t get through.”
Hopefully. Edric had a far stronger bond with Kaelan than I imagined Ekardo could manage even with an enchantment.
Kaelan took the crown from his head with a muttered curse. “It’s better than nothing, but it’s not good enough.”
I knew part of what bothered him was that this cut him off from Hanna completely, making it so that he couldn’t anchor her if she had to use her shadows again.
“We’ll keep her from needing her shadows,” I said, and Kae raised an eyebrow at me.
Alys took the crown back, frustration written across her bruised face. She turned the crown over, examining the runes with the intensity of someone who’d already failed once and refused to fail again.
“There has to be a way,” she muttered.
“Can you do it?” Kaelan asked.
“I’ll work on it.” Alys turned to Ekardo. “We need different rune configurations. Layered wards. Something that creates a distinction between forced intrusion and willing connection.”
Alys grabbed the crown and her tools, already sketching new patterns on parchment. She was muttering under her breath—half calculations, half curses.
“How long?” Kaelan asked.
“I don’t know,” Alys said without looking up. “Hours. Maybe days. Maybe it can’t be done at all and we’re wasting time trying.”
“Try anyway. But I have to leave.” He turned to study Hanna, who had slept in the bed with us last night, in that too-quiet tent.
I hadn’t been able to bear it and had left to help Alys—not that she had found my presence helpful.
“Join us at the Dragon’s Teeth. I’ll rally our northern allies and meet you there. ”
I nodded. Hanna would walk where we asked. She would ride. But she wasn’t her. It was the goddess who answered when we spoke to her. Our allies couldn’t see her like this, not when the stories about her power were spreading, full of hope.
Dare beside Kaelan, checking his weapons one last time.
Kaelan’s jaw tightened as he moved to say goodbye.
“I’m going to secure the north,” he said. “When you come back, we’ll need you. The kingdom will need you. But right now I have to go.”
Hanna’s eyes tracked past him. Through him.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Then he turned and left.
Dare clasped my shoulder. “Bring her back.”
“I will.”
He followed Kaelan out of our camp and into the war.
I turned to Alys. “Hanna used an enchantment once to open our minds to each other so she could see what I was seeing.”
Alys turned the crown mold in her hands absently. “I know an enchantment like that. But she’d have to walk through the door.” She gave me a look that was full of sympathy, painfully so. “She might not.”