43. Greer
Greer
Cyan’s inky-black eyes are cold as they skim over us. He stands before the tents, fingertips dancing with shadows. His dark hair hangs limp at the sides of his face, and he barely reminds me of his son, who I’ve spent the past few months with.
There is no warmth in his gaze like there is with Callum. No heart. No care. There is nothing but darkness in Cyan’s eyes.
Shadows pool, moving like water at his feet as he steps forward. He could probably wake the minds of the guards Atlas is currently manipulating, but he doesn’t bother. He’s powerful enough not to need their help.
“Are you not aware of the price on your head?” Cyan says, sweeping me with his gaze.
His shadows creep closer, and the air heats as Atlas sends a lick of flame to meet them.
“Where is Malachi?” I ignore Cyan’s question.
He tilts his head. “Your king does not wish to see you, although this little display might interest him.”
“He is not my king.”
That draws a vicious smile to his lips. On anyone else, I would read it as amusement, drawing color to his pale face. On him, it is a promise of death.
“He trusted you too much,” Cyan says, watching me. “I warned him you would be a problem like your parents, but he didn’t listen.”
“Maybe if he hadn’t murdered them, I wouldn’t have been a problem.” My chest tightens, and Atlas slides closer.
His arm brushes mine; the unnatural heat of his skin is a comfort.
His fingers dance, and I sense him preparing for what Cyan might throw at us.
Not that either of us will be able to take him down.
There’s a reason Malachi chose Cyan as an adviser.
He’s powerful and ruthless beyond anything I’ve fought before.
“There are things more important than blood.” Cyan’s tone is flat—cold.
“Is that what you tell yourself when you’re forced to live with the fact that your son left you here?”
Cyan’s eyes narrow at the mention of Callum. Callum never speaks of his father, but it’s clear he has no regrets about turning his back on him.
“He’s alive then?” A flicker of something strange hangs in Cyan’s tone.
Interest.
Worry.
I steel my spine. “That’s not your concern anymore.”
Shadows swarm upward. A swell like a wave, darkening like the black sheen that covers Cyan’s eyes. Heat surges beside me, but it’s not enough. At least, not alone.
Glancing at Atlas, his fiery gaze meets mine, and I see the flame dancing at the core of his being. An inferno he molds and manipulates. The core of unrelenting heat. Flames that threaten to burn straight through my resolve when it comes to this male.
It’s a risk to reach out, to place myself against that fire.
Yet I stare into Atlas’s eyes and take his hand, letting the fire swell around us.
The moment our hands lock, the flames are scalding, and we’re engulfed in his magic.
We’re a living flame, reaching to the lightning-kissed sky, daring the gods to douse this.
Atlas doesn’t take his eyes off me as Cyan’s shadows barrel forward. He holds out a hand, and I twine my magic around the swell of flame he harnesses. I amplify that fire until it is not fire at all. It is a being that devours.
Flame surges out, meeting shadow, a burst that nearly takes me out at the knees. Cyan is pushed back a step, and it’s just enough to give us an escape.
“We need to leave,” Atlas says.
I don’t argue as he tugs me toward the forest, holding a wall of fire behind us as we dart between the trees. At the edge, I feel the sharp bite of shadow trying to break through. But the flames are just hot enough to hold them back. To mask our path as they creep along the ground, and we run.
Magic like Cyan’s is ancient, and he’s had well over a thousand years to hone it into the weapon it is now. Or is it the shadows that molded him? When I looked into his eyes, it wasn’t Callum’s father who stared back. It was something dark and endless, as if his magic claimed his mind years ago.
Flame and shadow fight at our backs while we run.
Deeper and deeper.
Into the darkest, most tangled parts of Echme’s forests, we run. Not stopping for fear those shadows will swallow us whole.
Atlas stops at a fork ahead of us. One path is cleared of brush and probably safer, but that will also make it easier for Cyan to find us if he catches up.
“This way.” I nudge my chin toward the path that leads through the thick of the forest.
We can’t risk shortcuts when there’s no more hiding in plain sight.
While Atlas’s magic works easily around weaker Fae minds, he won’t be able to sear us from Cyan’s memories.
If his party catches up, we won’t win a second time.
And now that the throb of the orb is stronger the deeper we move north, we can’t risk it.
We’re heading in the right direction. I feel it. The orb is a beacon that calls to us even when it might be far away.
I clutch my side, which has begun aching again. My boots rub my toes raw. Even with the thickness of magic around us, the closer we draw to the orb, the less our immortality seems to be doing us any favors.
We’ve been moving faster since our run-in with Cyan, chasing the pulse through the depths of the Echme forests. Days melt into night. Sunsets and sunrises become one and the same. We barely stop to rest. I stopped counting the nightfalls. The cuts. The aching muscles.
The deeper we go, the thicker the trees. The wilder the caw of angry beasts lurking in the darkness. Even with Cyan at a distance now, we aren’t safe from him or the monsters haunting the woods around us.
The only benefit to my exhaustion is that it’s dulled my anger.
“How long were you with the Crown Guard?” Atlas asks, slicing his blade through a wall of vines that blocks our path.
We’ve been too tired to hold much of a conversation the past few days. When we aren’t moving, one of us sleeps while the other keeps watch. There’s nothing but an endless journey that’s slowly wearing us down.
I’m hungry. Tired. It’s the only explanation for why I’ve started entertaining Atlas’s attempts at conversation.
“I was with them a little over a century.” I duck when he holds the vines up for me to pass through. “I joined after my parents were murdered.”
It’s ironic, joining the king’s fight thinking I was getting justice for the murder of my family. Only to hand my services over to the male who was responsible for their deaths.
“That’s not your fault,” Atlas says.
“I don’t need you to make me feel better about it.”
He shrugs. “Doubt anything will. Just stating a fact.”
When I glance up, he’s not looking at me. His sights are on something ahead. My ears perk at the sound of slow-moving water.
“A stream.” He glances down at his canister on his hip. “We could use some water.”
“And you could use a bath.” I knock past him, and he chuckles.
We both could use a bath after days of travel. My skin and clothes are caked in mud, and scabs litter my arms from the thorny branches we ran through trying to escape Cyan.
Atlas leads the way through the brush, scowling at me when a branch smacks him in the face, and I laugh.
I truly laugh.
Big and bold for the first time in…
I don’t remember how long it’s been since I’ve laughed like that.
“Keep your eyes to yourself,” I warn him as I toss my bag on the ground and start shedding clothes.
Not that anything he sees would shock him, given the reputation he has in the Quietus Court.
I have no doubt he’s seen and done it all, which isn’t uncommon for warriors.
We’re constantly moving from one place to another, faced with the knowledge that any day could be our last. I know I’ve had my fun.
Bedded plenty of beautiful males amid the rush of an oncoming battle.
I’ve spent centuries doing as I wish and making no apologies for it, so I don’t expect Atlas to either.
But as I turn my back on Atlas and strip out of my leathers, there’s something intimate about being out here alone with him. I’m acutely aware of his every breath, every movement. Every lap of water as he steps into the stream.
This isn’t baring flesh for pleasure, and after all we’ve been through since first stepping through the Gate in Solace, I can’t shake that it feels like more.
I keep myself turned away from him as I enter the widest part of the stream. Water trickles over my skin, moving at a steady pace. I sink into the deepest part, not facing him, even when it reaches my shoulders.
The chill of the icy breeze, mixed with the cool water surrounding me, makes me shiver until heat moves through the water.
A gentle warmth wraps me like a cocoon. It’s soothing after days of walking.
It caresses my body, and I close my eyes, sinking into the warmth of Atlas’s magic heating the water around me.
“Better?” he asks.
I simply hum in response, getting to work scrubbing myself. We brought a single bar of jasmine soap that I use first, handing it to him next without looking. Our backs are to each other, but when our fingers brush, I swear I feel that touch all over.
I swim away, putting more distance between us while he washes. When the water stills, I glance back to see him tossing the soap to the shore. It lands perfectly atop his bag. The corner of his gaze catches me staring.
“Thought we were keeping our eyes to ourselves.” He smirks.
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
He chuckles, his gaze tracing my face from afar, pausing on my scar. Instinctively, I lift my wet fingers to the groove in my skin.
“Does it hurt?” he asks, and my eyebrows pinch. “Wilder mentioned his scar hurts sometimes, even though it’s healed.”
I’m surprised Wilder shared that kind of information with Atlas. It’s a hint of the trust that exists between them when a future king so rarely shares any weakness at all.
“Not usually,” I admit, turning away from him again and feeling the waves lap when he does the same. “At least, not physically. But I suppose I still feel it.”
The pain of the memories.
The wounds that never heal.
“Did you get it the same night your parents were killed?”
I freeze at his question—the audacity to ask it. I glance over my shoulder and am met with the sight of water glistening over his bare skin. He glances back at me, and there’s no malice in his eyes. Simply curiosity.
Atlas turns in the water, facing me now, but staying low enough that only the top of the runes at his throat peeks out of the water. His red hair is darker wet, slicked back on his head. Sinking a bit lower into the water myself, I turn and face him, maintaining a safe distance.
“I got it after I found them,” I admit.
It’s not something I talk about. Even when I told Elorie about my parents’ deaths, I was careful in what I shared.
Reliving that night isn’t something I like to do.
Maybe it’s the magic in the Echme forests.
Maybe it’s the vulnerability in Atlas’s eyes or the ease of the heat wrapping around me.
Maybe it’s that we’ll likely die before ever leaving this place.
Something inside urges me to continue.
“They were already dead when I found them, but they weren’t alone.
” My gaze moves to the trees, focusing on the leaves when Atlas’s violet stare is too much.
“The males who were there… they saw me and decided they hadn’t had enough.
Not even after what they’d done to my mother, who was barely whole. ”
That last word chokes out, and I remember it.
All that blood.
“They overpowered me easily. Their magic was strong, and I was training to be a priestess of all things, so I didn’t fight back like I should have.
As if being a priestess does any good in war.
” I chuckle, but it lacks amusement. “All the training my father instilled into me was pointless in that moment. Not with what they did.”
Finally, I glance at Altas and find him watching me. Not pushing me with questions or judging what I say. Just listening.
My fingers find my eyebrows again. “They placed obsidian hooks in my eyebrows because they were worried what type of sight I might wield. I couldn’t see or think or barely breathe, but I felt it. I felt everything they did to me.”
My arms wrap my stomach, the water warming around me, even as Atlas doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t ask what they did, and I’m grateful because I can’t put words to it. I refuse to.
I did my best to leave my mind and body that night.
“Sometimes I wonder if I died that night alongside my parents,” I admit. “The female who walked into that house wasn’t the one who walked out.”
I clear my throat, moving back slightly and wishing I’d kept my mouth shut. I don’t need Atlas trying to understand me.
“What about you?” I push, feeling too vulnerable in every way right now, so I turn the focus on him. “How did you get your runes?”
That question snaps Atlas out of whatever he was thinking.
He blinks, placing his palm over the line of dark markings on his chest. There aren’t many Fae who have rune marks, and none have as many as Wilder, but Atlas’s are extensive, starting at his throat and ending… somewhere lower than I dare to look.
He rubs his hand over his wet skin. “I was born with them.”
My face pinches.
“I know, I’ve never heard of that either, but my father swears they were there when I was born. Perame was first, but I…” He swallows hard. “My mother didn’t survive me. I was born with the mark of her death.”
I have no words of comfort. Nothing that might set him at ease. I simply follow his fingers as they trace down, listening as he did with me.
Atlas exhales, and I realize how close we are. We’ve drifted. Orbited closer, drawn by something beyond free will.
The desire of the fates.
I don’t pull back as he inches closer. As the water moves in lapping waves against my skin. It’s freezing out here, but beside Atlas, everything is warmer. His hand reaches out until his fingertips brush mine.
A lick of flame in water. A kiss of heat to my chilly bones.
Our fingers touch just as something rustles in the forest. The snap of teeth has my shoulders tightening, and I pull back.
“We need to go.”
Without caring what he sees or thinks, I swim to the shore and climb out of the water, leaving whatever just stirred between us to be swept away by the stream.