Nightwild Reckoning (The Unsealing #2)

Chapter 1

ONE

CAIRN

My armor hums against my skin. My blades vibrate against my palms. And the magic …

The magic is a wildfire tearing through everything I am.

The new threads are burning inside my chest. The Nightwild Guard—those close to me, and the ones I’ve just reconnected with—blaze bright and complete for the first time in centuries. But beyond them, there are now others.

So many others.

Fae across the kingdom, who had forgotten what power felt like, are now free with iron dust at their feet and magic flooding back into bodies. All of them are mine now, and they’re pulling at me, feeding the fire and stoking the flames higher.

The capital looms ahead, its walls dark against the sky, and somewhere behind them, she’s bleeding.

The bond sends me the copper taste in her mouth, the throbbing ache in her cheekbone where someone’s fist connected, and the way her ribs scream every time she breathes. Exhaustion keeps trying to drag her down, but they won’t let her go.

They’re still hurting her.

I can’t stop them from using their fists.

I can't stop them from beating her because they can’t break her in any other way.

But I can protect her mind. The barrier I wrapped around her is tight, holding the mage at bay.

He can’t get through the thorns I’ve placed facing outward, shielding her from his magic.

Every blow echoes down the thread between us. Every impact lands in my own bones. And the fury …

The fury is a living thing inside me now. It claws at my chest, sinking its teeth into my ribs, demanding release.

“Cairn.” Therin’s voice reaches me.

I ignore him. Whatever he wants to say, it isn’t important. Not while human scum are doing everything they can to break Alleria.

My magic surges, and Selveryn bursts into movement, eating the ground in great silent strides. My Guard follows, their steeds racing to keep pace.

The wind tears at my face. My blades sing in my grip. All I can think about is getting to her. I will tear down those walls stone by stone. I will kill everyone who hurts her. I will kill everyone who stood by and did nothing.

I want their blood on my hands. I want to watch the light leave their eyes while they beg for a mercy they will never receive. I want the last thing they see to be my face, so they know exactly who ended them and why.

“Cairn!”

Something slams into Selveryn’s side.

Kaethros.

Therin has driven his steed into mine, forcing Selveryn to misstep. I wheel on him, a snarl building in my throat, and the magic rises with me, eager and hungry for blood.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“Stopping you from getting yourself killed.” Therin doesn’t flinch from my anger. His eyes stay steady on mine. “Look at yourself.”

I scowl. But there’s something on his face I’ve never seen before.

Fear. For me.

“You’re burning up … literally.” His gaze drops to my hands.

I follow it down. Silver light pours from my skin, bright enough to cast shadows on the ground beneath Seleveryn’s hooves.

My hands are shaking where they grip the blades, tremors running up my arms and into my shoulders.

The magic presses against my skin from the inside, trying to force its way out.

I. Don’t. Care.

“She’s in there.”

“I know.”

“They’re hurting her.”

“I know.”

He moves Kaethros closer, blocking my path to the city. Selveryn snaps at the other steed, teeth bared, responding to my fury.

“If I let you ride through those gates, you’ll be dead before you reach her. Then the barrier you’re holding will fail.”

“Then I’ll die killing them all.”

“And she’ll die right after, when the mage cracks her open like an egg,” he snaps. “Is that what you want, Cairn? To take a few of them with you while she pays the price for your lack of control?”

What I want is to cut him down, ride over him, and keep going. The rage lunges for the opening. The magic screams at me to move, to fight, to tear apart anyone who stands between me and what’s mine.

But Therin doesn’t move.

“Get out of my way.”

“No.”

Vel brings Veylith up on my other side. The rest of the Guard spread out around them, forming a wall between me and the capital.

“There are seven of us.” Vel’s voice cuts through the roar of magic filling my ears. “Against the entire palace garrison, and the wards the mages are bound to have placed.” She meets my eyes. “We can’t stand against that, Cairn. Not tonight. Not like this.”

“Watch me.”

“I’d rather not watch you throw your life away after waiting so long to be free.” She doesn’t look away. Stubborn to the core, even now when I could kill her without remorse.

I bare my teeth. The magic writhes inside me, hungry and furious, straining against the thin leash of my control.

The threads the Nightwild magic gathered are still settling—hundreds of them, all trying to find their place, pulling me in different directions.

Every time one locks in, the pressure in my skull ratchets higher.

“I need to reach her.”

“You won’t be able to.” There’s a quiet certainty in Therin’s response. “You’ll fall before you get close to the palace. Then she’ll have no one.”

The other bond pulses—the one formed through blood magic and desperation—as though in agreement.

I don’t want to listen to it or him. Not while she’s alone, held together by a barrier I built, and I’m wasting time arguing with my own Guard.

“Eldráfn, listen to me.” Therin lowers his voice. “Let the magic settle. Wait for the fae you’ve freed to find their way to us. And when we have the numbers, we can come back and tear those walls down.”

“And if they kill her before then?” I challenge him.

“She’s the king’s daughter. He’ll want answers before he wants her dead.”

His cold logic angers me more. I study him, this fae warrior who has been at my side for centuries.

I could dissolve Kaethros with a thought. I could put my blade through Therin’s chest before he has time to draw breath. I could cut down Vel, and ride over every single one of them. The thought of doing it is dark and seductive.

My Guard. My family. The fae who followed me to hell and back, who knelt beside me in the cages, and never once lost faith that I would find a way to free us.

I could kill them all, and the magic binding me to Alleria wouldn’t care. It wants blood. It isn’t particular about whose.

The thought should horrify me, yet it doesn’t. Right now, with the fury burning through my veins and the bond dragging me toward her, the only thing that horrifies me is the distance between me and those walls.

But underneath the fury, buried so deep I can almost ignore it, there’s something else. A small voice that sounds like the part of me that survived three hundred years in a collar.

If you die, she dies.

If the barrier falls, she has nothing.

You didn’t survive this long to throw it all away now.

I close my eyes. The magic howls in protest. The new threads pull at me, demanding attention. My head is splitting. My hands won’t stop shaking. Magic pulses under my skin in waves so bright I can see it through my closed lids.

I have survived for centuries by being patient. By being smart, and banking the fury because letting it burn while caged would have killed me. I learned to wait because I had no other choice. I learned to endure because the alternative was death.

And death was never an option.

I need to be smart now. Fury alone won’t be enough to save Alleria. It won’t be enough to tear down the walls. All it will do is get me killed, and take her and the rest of my Guard with me.

The realization settles into my bones, and I hate it. I hate them for being right, and I hate myself for not being strong enough to do what needs to be done.

But hating it doesn’t change the truth.

“Cairn.” Therin’s voice is softer now. “Let us help you.”

I don’t want help. I want to burn the world down and drag her out of its ashes. I want to paint those palace walls red with the blood of everyone who touched her.

But I can’t. Therin and Vel are right. Not tonight. Not like this.

The admission breaks through the rage, leaving nothing but exhaustion and the hollow ache of defeat behind.

“The camp.” I force the words out. “We return to the camp near the Dell.”

Therin nods, but doesn’t move until I tug Selveryn’s head around. Only then, does he ease Kaethros out of my path and fall in beside me as I turn my back on the capital.

Away from her.

The magic howls. The bond pulls taut, stretching thinner with every stride Selveryn takes in the wrong direction. I keep moving. There’s no other choice. It’s the only way this has any possible chance of ending with both of us alive.

I don’t make it far.

I fight the pressure for as long as I can—all the new threads anchoring into magic never meant to hold this many—and bury it beneath the still-simmering fury and the bond and the desperate need to reach her.

The magic doesn’t care that I’m struggling, or have any concern for what I need.

It only cares about what it’s claimed, and finding a way to make me handle it.

Selveryn stumbles beneath me. My blades dissolve, and I grip his mane. My grip is weak. My hands aren’t working right. The tremors spread from my fingers to my arms. The light spills past my skin, washing the road, the Guard, everything in the glare.

“Cairn?” Vel says sharply.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not.” She moves closer, reaching out a hand to grasp my arm.

“I said—” The magic doesn’t wait for me to finish arguing.

It crests without warning. All the threads snap tight at once and lock into place, and the Nightwild magic rises to hold them—stretching, tearing, and remaking itself around everything it’s claimed.

I have no say in what the magic is doing to me.

It carves new channels for the threads to anchor to.

But my body isn’t built for this. No fae’s is.

The magic was made to hold twelve, and now it’s bound me to hundreds, so it tears through bone and sinew, rebuilding me from the inside to carry them all.

I’m on Selveryn’s back one second, then I’m on the ground with dirt in my mouth with magic bleeding from my skin. My steed is gone, dissolved the instant my concentration shattered. So is my armor and my blades.

Everything I was holding together by force of will has been ripped away in one single moment.

“Cairn!”

Hands grip my shoulders. Therin’s voice comes from somewhere above me. I lift my head, and his face swims into view, stripped of everything but fear.

I try to tell him I’m fine, but my lips won’t move. My jaw is locked, and my teeth are grinding together so hard, I’m surprised they don’t shatter. My body is twitching and jerking, my back is arching, and my heels digging into the dirt, while I fight against something I can no longer control.

Pressure builds beneath my skin, behind my eyes, in my skull, behind my ribs. The magic keeps remaking me, and I keep breaking. And there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

“Hold him down.” Serath snaps. “Tip his head back so he doesn’t swallow his tongue.”

More hands grab me. Someone calls my name.

Therin, I think.

But his voice is ragged, breaking at the edges. I’ve never heard him sound like that. Not in all the years I’ve known him.

Alleria.

I reach for her through the chaos. The bond is faint and distant, but it’s still there, and the barrier holds around her mind.

As long as I’m breathing, it will keep the mage out. It’s the only thing that matters.

Hold on, Aethryn. I’ll find a way back to you.

Then the darkness rises up and swallows me whole.