23. Nooses
Otto’s prophecy had unease gripping Wilder. He didn’t like knowing his future—ever. But a small part of him wanted to know. Especially since it had to do with her.
“Would you like to know?” Otto asked.
A smirk tightened the lines around his face.
“Knowing I won’t like it is enough. I will not borrow my future problems this night.”
Maelys chuckled and leaned into Ridge’s side. The lines between them had blurred over the last few decades, and Wilder wondered where it would lead them.
“Tell me my future instead,” Ridge suggested.
Otto smiled brighter. This was a favorite pastime of theirs. Learning things that would happen minutes or days away.
“Watch out for the lightning bug,” Otto replied.
Ridge lurched up straighter, and Maelys leaned away, laughing loudly now. For as massive and powerful as he was, Ridge detested any kind of bug. Had once shrieked like a small child at a spider that crawled across his boot.
A lightning bug lit up the night beside Ridge, and he swung his arms wildly, trying to knock the thing away.
Even Wilder chuckled at that. They had never failed to ease the tension that thrummed through him. This was his one small piece of self, this friendship with them.
Once Ridge had settled down, he pulled Maelys back against him. Wilder’s chest ached seeing that companionship, the freedom they had in expressing themselves openly.
“How do things look for tomorrow?” Maelys asked, peeling her eyes from Ridge’s face to look at Otto.
The gray in his eyes swirled like smoke.
“We’ll need some more yarrow.”
The moon slipped beyond the trees as the sun took its place in the sky. Wilder had watched Lyra thrash about in her sleep for the last hour. He couldn’t imagine what she must have dreamt about to fight like that. A small part of him hoped it had not been ruffians.
“It’s the current,” Otto murmured. “She moves as if she’s still one with the tug of the sea.”
Apparently, he had been about to ask aloud what it meant. It annoyed him that Otto’s magic could still unnerve him.
“Have the clans caught up?” Wilder asked instead.
“Not yet.”
But close, is what was thought but not said.
Wilder stood and walked over to Lyra and tapped her shoulder with his boot.
“Wake up, Legs.”
Her eyes opened, and for a moment, her gaze was not filled with hatred or loathing, but with warmth and happiness.
Then she blinked, and it was gone. Like a wave breaking upon the shore, washing it all away.
She turned her head to glare at his booted foot and then rolled away and onto her side.
“Five more minutes,” she grumbled, closing her eyes again.
Wilder looked back at Otto, who shook his head.
“We don’t have five minutes to spare. Unless you want to be devoured by wulvers. I suggest you get up.”
Her eyes flashed open, and she sat up on her elbows. Staring past him at Otto for confirmation.
“We gave you as long as we could,” he replied.
She sighed and clambered to her feet. It aggravated him that she sought Otto out for confirmation and didn’t believe him. But he hadn’t given her a reason to turn to him.
Maelys and Ridge emerged from a giant oak nearby, a bushel of yarrow swinging in Maelys’ hand. A small smile spread across her face as her eyes met Lyra’s, and they nodded to each other in greeting.
No—he didn’t like that either.
Lyra approached their horse and ran a hand down its neck.
She whispered something in its ear, and it flicked them.
Wilder felt eyes on him as he watched her and struggled to look away.
Otto was staring at him from atop his mount.
Maelys was analyzing him as she shoved the yarrow into her saddlebags.
And Ridge had a tight-lipped grin on his face as his head volleyed between Wilder and Lyra.
Good gods, they were busybodies.
Wilder approached Lyra, ready to help her astride. She turned and held out a hand in warning.
He paused. She was too self-sufficient.
Wilder watched as she shoved a foot in the stirrup and gripped the saddle horn. At the same time, Wilder could hear Otto slide off his horse.
That should have clued him in.
Lyra swung herself up over the horse right as a howl rent the still air. It was far enough away that it wasn’t a threat. But the horse didn’t know that. Wilder watched in slow motion as the beast took off like a shot, with a terrified Lyra holding on for dear life.
He turned in time to catch the reins that Otto had chucked at him and took off after her. A pit of dread had opened in his chest and swallowed him whole. She could be seriously injured or dead.
The thought had him pressing his heels into the horse's flank to hasten its speed. Wilder needed to set eyes on her and to know she was okay.
He hadn’t made it very far when he found her sprawled on the ground, face up. The horse was not anywhere in sight. Her face was red, either from fear or anger. He couldn’t tell. But as he got closer, he saw the silver lining her emerald eyes, and her bottom lip was quivering.
Wilder slid off the horse mid-stride and crouched beside her, moving a strand of auburn hair from her face.
“Are you alright?”
He breathed a quiet sigh of relief that she seemed physically unharmed, but he could see how she struggled to hold it all together.
“My ass hurts,” she whined.
Tears spilled over the rims of her eyes and wet the hair at her temples.
“May I—may I touch you?”
Lyra nodded, but that wasn’t quite good enough for him, especially since she had tried to kick him in the face the last time he had touched her.
“I need to hear the words, Legs.”
Lyra screwed her eyes shut and heaved a sigh. “You may touch me, Wilder.”
With a gentleness he didn’t think possible, he scooped her up off the damp earth.
Small, slender twigs and thin, brown leaves clung to her as he clutched her to his chest. She was so fragile.
It was disturbing that something so meager wielded so much power.
When she rested her head against his chest, he felt something within him stir, but he shoved it away.
Shoved everything away.
If he cared to notice, his end had already begun. She was his ruin, but he was also hers.
It was like a noose, tightening around his soul with each moment they spent together.