Chapter 5 Threads in the Mist
Threads in the Mist
Flora
I
can’t move the Ever until he’s lucid enough to walk.
He’s drifted in and out of consciousness for more than two hours while I cleaned and packed the wound with moss and fir pitch, treated his fever, and wrapped him in fresh bandages that I retrieved from our former steward’s house.
Now all I can do is tend to the mare while I wait.
I manage to coax her across the ridge and down the other side to the stream that runs behind the Sacred Wood. Leaving her and Ari tied to a solitary willow tree growing along the bank, I go in search of something she can eat to regain a bit of strength.
Forage has been slow to return after the lean Highland winter, but spring grass, horsetail, and nettles all grow nearby. I collect two armloads and bring them back.
Ari has missed his breakfast, so he shows no restraint.
The mare only sniffs at the offering, and I’ve yet to see her drink.
Mud squelches beneath my boots as I step closer and scoop my cupped hands into the stream to try to tempt her.
Her lips twitch against my palms. Her breath is warm, but the water is icy cold.
She takes a small drink from my hands, then lowers her head to the stream and finally takes a gulp.
I rub my cold palms, then slip them into my pockets.
My knuckles brush the three rings I’ve taken from the Evers.
The jolt of magic feels stronger as I touch them, and I wonder if that’s because the stones are all together.
Pulling them from my pocket, I can feel the heat they give off and hear a faint hum that comes from them.
The gold threads dance and swirl amid the mist-blue crystals, reminding me of the Ever’s eyes, the way the colours shift through the layers.
The noose that’s been tightening around my neck since this war began feels as if it’s getting even tighter.
Too many things are making me aware of my inadequacies: the deaths of my father and brothers, the Clan Council, and now the Ever.
Things I haven’t wanted to face. Even the empty steward’s house is proof of that.
I never meant to avoid the place these past few months.
Even so, when I went to get supplies to tend the Ever this morning, it was the first time I had crossed the threshold since Padraig and his sons marched off to battle with my father.
The dust-covered stillness inside was thick with the ghosts of the hours I’ve spent there.
It was Padraig who taught me to manage the farm accounts, helped me identify the best markets for our horses, and kept the old stories alive for me after the last of our oldest generation died.
Beside me, the mare lifts her head from the stream with her muzzle dripping.
Both she and Ari prick their ears and turn to look down the long gully that leads past Padraig’s house.
Then I hear it, too—the sound of wagon wheels and horses’ hooves moving along the military road that cuts between Padraig’s and the keep.
The mare whickers softly. I place a hand low over her muzzle, pushing out some calming magic to keep her from calling out any louder. Another soft neigh vibrates beneath my fingers.
Soothing the mare requires only a small amount of magic, but after conjuring the sword earlier, I’m surprised I have any left. Warm streams of it spill out from the three rings in my hand, though, and the gold threads in the crystals dance faster as my body soaks in the power.
The way the threads move reminds me of a story that Padraig once told me.
“Do you wish you could know the future?” he asked, his greying hair gleaming in the firelight.
I nodded eagerly. “Of course.”
This was the year I turned fourteen, not long after I’d started to hear the whisper of magic in my mind. Padraig was one of the few people my father trusted enough to know that.
“Magic has never died,” Padraig said, “even if most of the Domhnall women have lost the ability to use it. But the laws aside, our people know better than anyone that power of any kind has a price.”
Then he began the story.
There was once a child named Lannraig who lived between loch and forest and between glen and brae, where the Veil between worlds was thin.
One Samhain Eve, when Lannraig wasn’t much younger than you are now, a strange, keening wail woke her from sleep and pulled her outside. And there, not far from her mother’s cottage, was a shimmering curtain of mist woven through with gold threads of magic as fine as hair.
The threads called to Lannraig: “Come closer, child. Come to us.”
The child knew better than to trust the magic, and she stopped halfway between the cottage and the veil of mist. But even that wasn’t enough to save her. The magic spun out to meet her, and the threads twined themselves through flesh and bone and Lannraig’s young, mortal heart.
Lannraig’s breath turned to frost that night, and her blue eyes turned snow-white.
From then until the last of her days, she was blind to the sights of the world she had known, but she foresaw deaths and births and loves and heartaches yet to come.
And for the price of being held for an hour in a warm human embrace, she would tell anyone whatever they wished to know.
I think it must be a lonely, frightening thing to see the future. But not knowing is lonely, too.
The sound of wagons from the road has quieted. The mare is calm, and her head hangs low as I untie Ari and step away.
“You stay here, pretty girl,” I say. “Eat and keep drinking, and I’ll be back to get you as quickly as I can.”
I put the Veilstones away, thinking of Lannraig and General Mora’s letter to the rebel king. The letter weighs as heavy as a millstone in my other pocket as I mount Ari and turn him up the slope into the Sacred Wood.
The letter might save Dunhaelic if I turn it over to the Raven Queen in exchange for her promise to leave the clan alone. Maybe I could even press her to change the Sun King’s law requiring clan chiefs to be male.
That’s what my father wanted. He chose to support the queen because he believed she would bring us closer to the way things used to be. He was blinded by her lies and easy promises, but it’s easy to believe someone when they tell you what you want to hear.
Giving the letter to the queen would require me to betray the Ever.
And even if doing so lets me save the Dunhaelic branch of the Domhnall clan—the few of us who remain—I would also betray the lesser Domhnall chiefs who broke with my father to side with the rebel king.
They fought against the queen, and they’ll be punished if she wins.
Those are still my people—among those I would lead as High Chief.
It would be an empty title if I built it on betrayal.
Do I even want the Raven Queen to win? That’s another question I need to answer.
Since the start of this war, the Raven Queen has shown us exactly who she is. She’s brutal, and she cares nothing for the people she wants to rule, and I will always believe actions over words.
I set Ari into a trot as we approach the ridge.
The terrain on this side of the Sacred Wood is less steep than that closer to the road. Narrow deer paths wind through heather, bracken, and tumbled outcrops of ancient stone.
Ari snorts and sidesteps as I guide him around the pile of brush and branches that marks the place where I left the two dead Evers.
Shadowed patches of skin and clothing show through gaps in the hasty camouflage, but at least the bodies are out of sight—and scent—from the road until I can come back to bury them more thoroughly.
As though the gods themselves want to laugh at my confidence, an eagle gives a shrill cry as it arcs a slow, majestic circle overhead, its feathers spread wide to test the sky.
I wonder if the smell will lure it down.
Then it gives another shriek, extends its talons, and plunges towards some prey farther up Glen Colm.
A portent, my grandmother would have called that. Or a warning.
Shivering, I rein Ari in at the top of the ridge, peering through the trees to ensure there’s no one on the road below. Torn moss and broken undergrowth mark the trail where I dragged the bodies uphill. But the Ever isn’t where I left him.
My stomach twists, and panic burns in my throat. The Ever was unconscious when I left. Even if he had woken, he’d be in no condition to be safe anywhere on his own.
I push Ari forward. The woods are quiet again, and Ari’s iron-shod hooves ringing against stone make the only sound. Then he blows nervously and throws his head.
A blur steps from the shadows beside me, and someone seizes my knee and pulls.
I fall. Pain explodes through my skull. Breath is ripped from me, and my lungs won’t draw more in.
Something—someone—heavy lands across my hips. The Ever. His weight is a weapon, keeping me from moving. Then he shoves my hands down and pins them beneath his knees.
I kick and buck my hips. Try to summon enough momentum to push him off.
He’s weak, I know he is, yet I can’t dislodge him.
The wounded chest I treated and wrapped so carefully rises and falls in short, ragged breaths.
His jaw clenches as he stares down at me, honey-gold eyes burning feverishly.
He braces his hand beside my head. The scent of him cuts through pine and damp earth—sweat and sweet, ironless blood, and that odd spent-lightning smell.
“Where. Are. They?” he growls. The words are torn from somewhere deeper than fury, and he leans down, his mouth inches from my face.
The fear doesn’t hit all at once. It trickles in.
My head swims from the fall, pain pulsing in time with my heart. But it’s the weight of him, the feel of him, close enough to press into the hollow of my pelvis…That’s what breaks me open.
Because I’m more than afraid, I’m aware—and that has nothing to do with what I want. It’s my body betraying me in the most brutal way it can.