38. Chapter 38
CHAPTER 38
Zev
E verything seemed to glow in a soft, silvery light. Perhaps he died and his soul was mourning the end of a life he had barely begun to live. But Zev ached too much to be dead. He winced against the light stinging his eyes and shut them again.
He searched through his memories and all he remembered was telling Rawn to run before he let the Other take over. He wasn’t sure if it could come out that way without the full moon, but he had done it before.
Zev simply … let go.
The Other’s memories surfaced as if they were his own.
He had fought Bloodhounds. Many had fallen to his claws and jaws. But then Red Highland soldiers came, and their arrows took him down. Zev had shifted back, bleeding on the ground with his back full of arrows. An elf stood over him and drew his sword. His vision darkened as he waited for the end.
The last thing he saw was a yellow butterfly flying in the rain.
“You’re awake,” a voice like tingling bells said.
Zev smirked faintly to himself and rubbed his face. Dyna had been right. “You decided to join us, after all.”
“It was a good thing I did.” A faint tap landed by his head, and he peeked at the tiny fairy with golden yellow wings who beamed at him. “Does this make it twice I have come to your aid?” Princess Keena asked, crossing her arms.
He sat up in a plush bedding of soft pale moss and looked around at the strange forest of white trees. “What happened? Where are we?”
“Well, I stopped them time before you were struck down dead,” Keena said proudly. She held up her hand when he opened his mouth to respond. “And there is no need to offer me a life-debt. I have repaid the one I owe Dyna. Besides, I am sure you would do the same for me.”
Zev smiled wryly. “I was going to say how did you defeat a group of elvish soldiers.”
“I am stronger than I look, remember?” Keena winked. “And I am also accompanied by my guards.”
He saw a few of them flying within the trees.
“Where are we?”
“The White Woods. You must not remember. You were bleeding out and delirious. But you asked to be brought here before you fell unconscious.” Keena sat on the moss next to him. “You’ve been unconscious for a day.”
Wincing, Zev rose from the bed and staggered to a small pool of water. He had new scars now. His Lycan blood had worked had to heal him. He looked out at a view of weeping cheery trees of white bark and white blossoms, the ground covered in a pale green layer of moss.
“Rawn said this was a safe haven of sorts.” Zev stilled, suddenly realizing he was alone. “Where is Rawn? The others?”
“Come with me.” Golden dust spiraled around Keena, and she rose to life size height, reaching barely his elbows. The fairy princess strolled through the forest and brought him to a circular stone platform built into the mossy ground. A stone podium rested in the center.
There, Lucenna and Klyde waited, sitting on the mounds of moss.
Lucenna leaped up to her feet and hugged him. “Thank the Gods.”
“Glad to see you alive, mate,” Klyde said.
He nodded back and looked down at Lucenna. “Are you all right? When did you arrive? Is Dyna here?”
Lucenna shook her head, and her eyes welled up. “We arrived today. The mages came after me when we tried to take the train. So we decided to risk joining you in Argent instead … but when we got to the pier…” Zev waited for her to continue, but she couldn’t.
Klyde sighed heavily and said, “Tarn’s ship blew.”
An ice-cold feeling sank through Zev’s body. “Don’t tell me she…”
“I don’t know.” Lucenna said faintly.
“What do you mean?” he demanded. “You can’t sense her?”
“I think it’s that damn barrier. Something changed. It’s grown stronger somehow, and it has completely hidden all traces of Dyna’s Essence now. Not even I can track her.”
Then that must mean she was alive. But why was the barrier stronger? Zev glanced up at the sky. Was Cassiel near?
“It’s worse…” Klyde said and the despondency in his expression made him stiffen.
Someone has died…
Zev’s stomach sank. “Who?”
“Rawn.”
The air knocked out of him. “What…?” he whispered.
“Red Highland soldiers captured him,” Lucenna said as Keena came to sit on her shoulder. “There were too many of them. He couldn’t fight them…not…not after…”
“Not after what?” Zev demanded.
“Rawn could not fight after the death of his horse,” Keena said sadly. “The death of a bonded elvish horse is a great blow indeed.”
Fair? They had killed Rawn’s horse? Why?
“I need to find Dyna.”
“Here…”
They all whipped around to see her standing at the edge of the platform behind them. She was dirty, clothes torn, her face covered in soot, and marked with scratches.
But alive.
“Dyna!” Zev rushed forward and yanked her into his arms, hugging her tight. “What happened? Why did you leave us?”
Dyna clutched him with shaking hands. She was murmuring something he couldn’t hear clearly with her mouth pressed against his chest. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry…”
Zev exhaled heavily, wrangling with his relief and the need to chastise her for running off, but he knew that wasn’t what she needed right now. So he just held her.
Her eyes welled. “Fair…”
“I know,” he murmured.
The sounds of her quiet weeping in the dark forest make his eyes sting.
“Rawn is still alive,” Lucenna said, her voice cracking. “I’m tracking his Essence now. They are taking him west.”
“To Red Highland.” Dyna stepped back and wiped her eyes. Straightening her shoulders, she said, “I am going after him.”
Silence filled the glade with only the rush of water to accompany it.
“Red Highland?” Zev repeated. It was a warring country, as guarded as the Magos Empire.
Dyna faced him and all her Guardians. Klyde and Keena drew closer to their circle. I did this,” she told them. “Because I was reckless and selfish, and I didn’t stop to think about what I was doing when I left on my own. Now Fair is dead, and Rawn will be if I don’t save him. I’m sorry for what I put you through…” Tears gathered on her lashes, and she blinked them away. “I know it’s asking a lot to expect you to join me. But I must fix this. I have to because I cannot allow another member of our family to die.”
Lucenna took her hand and squeezed it. “And we won’t.”
Zev nodded because he couldn’t imagine turning his back on Rawn either. “We’re not leaving him behind.”
“Aye,” Klyde exhaled a long exhale. “I’ve grown fond of the elf. Of course you can count on me, lass. But I do hate to be the one to say it…”
“Then I will.” Keena pipped up, fluttering around Zev’s shoulders. “It will be near impossible to infiltrate Red Highland on our own. This will require aid.”
Lucenna reached into her coat pocket and held out her palm for all of them to see. In the center laid Rawn’s gold signet ring. “He left this behind. I supposed to let his family know what happened to him.”
Gods, Zev could only imagine how they would take this.
“Then there is one thing we must do first,” Dyna said, meeting each of their gazes. “We must go Greenwood.”
Zev crossed his arms. “To inform King Leif and the Norrlen family that Rawn was taken.”
“We are going to need their help to get him back,” Lucenna added.
“Good.” Keena smiled as she flew up the stone steps of the circular platform. “Then we must call on House Norrlen.”
“Call?” Dyna followed her.
Keena landed on the podium and nodded to the small golden plate in the middle, affixed with a perfect circular grove. “The White Woods is a haven to all elves, and here they call for aid.”
“How?” Zev asked.
Lucenna brought out Rawn’s signet ring. The top was flat and circular, embossed with the sigil of House Norrlen.
“Put it in, lass,” Klyde suggested.
Zev held his breath as they watched Lucenna press the ring into the groove. It pulsed green with magic and lit up the runes caved into the stone circle. The light pulsed three times then faded out.
All fell silent but the trickle of water and the distant chirp of birds.
“What now?” he asked.
Keena nodded. “Now we wait.”
Zev had been thinking a lot about fate lately. He questioned the future and how much of it was determined by what steps they took versus divine intervention. As they sat around the fire listening to Dyna share what she had been up to since she jumped through the Druid’s Door, Zev didn’t feel as though he was any closer to an answer.
He traced the faded illustration of an ancient key on the scroll she had shown him. The Druid knew this would happen. He knew Rawn would be captured and that they would go after him. But was it because he gave this task to Dyna, or had he merely taken advantage of this outcome?
Thinking about it only made Zev’s head spin.
The others had not known how to react to it either. Klyde and Lucenna had long fallen asleep after their meal as the sun began to descend. Keena had flown off somewhere to sleep in the trees.
Zev was too restless to sleep, but he could see the exhaustion weighing on his cousin. It hovered over her slumped shoulders and in the line of her features. Rest,” he told her softly. We will need it for the journey to come.”
Whoever they were waiting on was going to arrive by sunrise.
Dyna laid down on her side in the plush bedding of moss and stared at the fire. “Tarn is dead,” she whispered.
Zev had wondered. Von had succeeded with his plan then.
Good riddance.
“I… tried to kill him,” Dyna continued. “I wanted it to be me. After everything he had done, I wanted to watch the life bleed out of his eyes. I thought if I took his life, I could become something different. Someone stronger. Someone who wasn’t afraid of ever being hurt again. It took holding a dagger at his neck to realize Tarn’s path was not my own. Yet I still left him to burn alive … because a quick death would have been too easy.”
Well, he couldn’t fault her for that. Zev wouldn’t have done any differently.
“I’m a monster now, aren’t I?” She stared at the fire blankly. I have claws and fangs, and it’s made me bloodthirsty.”
It wasn’t that it made her bloodthirsty, but that she had to fall back on the part of her that was pure preservation.
As Zev had to do when he brought out the Other. A prickling sensation crawled over his skin at the reminder. He had yet to really process that he had been able to do that.
To call out the beast from within.
And it answered.
“You’re not a monster, Dyna,” Zev said, draping a blanket around her. He sighed and she read the guilt on his face. He should have known she was suffering. “You want to kill something inside if you. That perhaps will be your greatest enemy … and your friend. With time, you will come to realize it’s the one thing that is keeping you going.”
That’s what his Madness had been in a sense.
It kept him alive.
“I shouldn’t have let myself fall in love with him.” She shut her eyes. “When I learned of the bond I should have accepted it as merely an accident.”
“Dyna.”
“You tried to tell me Zev. Now I understand. We never belonged together.”
He sighed. “You cannot let this break you.”
“I am already broken. What is it you said to me before?”
You cannot fix what is already broken.
Dyna laid down onto her back to look at him. “My whole life I studied to heal nearly any wound but this one.” Her small fist pressed into her heart. “It hurts. This pain, I cannot see it, but I feel it. I feel the chasm he left behind and there is nothing I can do to fill it. And I despise it.” Her lashes fluttered closed. “I try to imagine myself as the person I once was, and not what remains of her. But all I have left are shards of who I used to be.” Her next confession made him fall still. “I had been taking Witch’s Brew to cope. Because if I sleep, I see him and when I don’t, I hear him. Every time I hear the flutter of wings, I think he has returned.”
It broke him to hear that. How did he not see her suffering so much? Enough that she felt the need to drug herself.
Silent tears rolled down her temples, glinting in the firelight. “He took a part of me with him. How do I get her back?”
Zev didn’t have an answer.
He wasn’t who he used to be, either. Maybe it wasn’t possible. With enough bruises and scars, life left its mark.
Dyna’s breath evened out as she fell asleep. His brow furrowed as he watched her. Seeing her suffer like this enraged him. He didn’t know how to fix it.
With a sigh, he slipped her arm under the blanket, but he noticed something clutched in her palm. It was a small leather pouch. He carefully slipped it out of her fingers and opened it.
His stomach clenched at the sight of the red feather inside.
Wind blew gently against the trees, making the leaves rattle. It carried the scents of the earthy scent of the forest and the sweetness of spring. Beneath it hovered a distinct scent he had come to loathe.
Zev silently stood and walked away from the campfire into the shadowy trees. He heard fluttering wings kept chased it down until the woods receded and he came out onto a high craig. It was cast in a soft orange hue with the sunset.
He spun around, searching the dark branches of the woods where the light did not reach. “I know you heard me that night when I warned you to stay away from her,” he snarled.
“I do not take orders from you, wolf,” a voice replied.
Zev growled. “You serve no purpose here. Leave!”
His shouted echoed over the rocky hill.
“Her life is bound to the life of the High King. My purpose is to make sure she stays alive.”
“That is not your place anymore.”
The branches creaked, and Zev’s eyes snapped to a dark figure standing in the trees.
“You have been lurking around her, haven’t you? You kept out of sight all these months, but you’ve been daring to come closer. Working up the nerve to show yourself,” he realized. “Why now? What do you want?”
Silence filled the brush of the wind. The longer he stood there waiting, he eventually realized she would not say.
The answer wasn’t meant for him.
Zev turned to leave. “I meant what I said, Lieutenant. I will not warn you again.”
But he halted in place, when he noticed Dyna standing there.