Chapter 57
FIFTY-SEVEN
ARYELLA
“I leave for two hours, and you end up with his mouth on you?”
I’d fallen asleep before Shera returned from her hunt, but when I told her what had transpired after she left, her response was a bit cruel. The next morning, so was the bright rising sun.
The latter was my fault. Last night, Elias went back to his own room, and I drank an entire bottle of wine. My mouth had been open through the night and was shrouded with uncomfortable, sticky dryness.
And I had never, in all my life, been so thirsty.
This was why Gavin had forced bread and water upon me that night before bed in Damond’s cabin. To save me from this .
I flinched and groaned at the loud knock on my door.
“Shit,” I mumbled, massaging my temples as the knock on the door grew more insistent. I shrugged a silk robe over my nightgown and dragged myself across the cool marble floor. “I’m coming, I’m coming.”
Please don’t be Elias.
“Are you… hungover?” asked Gemma after a few seconds of staring. She looked past me into the room, her eyes widening on the empty bottle of wine. “You are. Did you drink all of that?”
“Elias proposed to me.”
“Oh.” Gemma blew out with a low whistle and stepped inside. “And what did you say?”
“I told him I needed time.”
She nodded in understanding. “Ary, I can’t imagine the brutal and unfair range of emotions you’ve endured over the last eight months. And I know your heart is broken. But this ”—she pointed to the empty wine bottle on the table—“cannot be how you cope.”
“I know,” I whispered dejectedly.
“It’s not what he would have wanted.”
My fingers rubbing my eyes made it feel like the room was spinning. I wished I could erase that sentence from existence. It’s not what he would have wanted. As if I didn’t spend an unhealthy amount of time thinking about how the one thing he did want he never got to keep.
“We were invited to dinner again tonight, but?—”
“I want the book, and I want to go,” I objected, glancing out the open window. “Until then… It’s still early, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” She yawned. “I’ve already thrown up twice.”
I winced on her behalf. “Do you want to lie back down with me?”
“According to Finn, this baby makes me snore, so that’s really up to you.”
Without a word, I returned to bed, downed a full glass of water, and lifted the covers.
Gemma closed the door and climbed in beside me fully dressed.
Having a warm body in my bed, with Shera at my feet, helped ensure a short, peaceful rest for us both.
At least I didn’t have to worry about speaking secrets in my sleep in front of one of my best friends.
Three hours later, after taking the last bath I’d take for a few days, I stood in the courtyard of the duke’s manor, preparing to leave. It was decided that those who pleaded to come join us in the Caves, including Ben Wynterton, would follow in a couple of days.
Melonius had his servants bring us a gilded chest secured in a cart to be pulled behind one of our horses.
Inside the chest was a black, untitled ancient tome bound shut by leather straps and a rusty lock on each.
Between two of the straps, I made out an embroidered emblem of a bird.
A hawk, maybe. White, but darkened with age.
I could feel the magic emanating from the book, whispering things to me.
“I trust you will travel safely, Your Highness.” Melonius pressed a gentle kiss to the back of my hand and bowed reverently. “And I hope to see you back here soon. Perhaps… for pleasure next time.” He smiled mischievously when he saw Elias’s hand on my lower back. Like he knew something I didn’t.
“You all right?” Elias muttered as the duke strode casually away.
“Fine.” I faked a smile. Just because I felt fragile didn’t mean I was. Or so I continued to tell myself.
When he started to lean in, I lifted my foot into my horse’s stirrup and mounted, pretending not to see him. “We should get going if we want to cover enough distance before nightfall.”
I set my horse into a trot and was too much of a coward to witness the rejection I left behind in him.
We rode mostly in silence—at least, I did—until an unexpected “Hey” caught my attention after we breached the line of trees at the edge of the city.
Ezra and his horse, who’d been riding near the back of the caravan, had caught up to my horse.
“Hey,” I answered, my voice high-pitched and hopeful. But his blue eyes weren’t cold today. “How are you?”
“You were impressive last night,” he said, laughing warmly at the last word. “If I’m being honest, I wasn’t sure you had it in you.” He shook his head in disbelief. “That cat of yours has some claws, as do you.”
“Thank you,” I muttered, otherwise speechless and hopeful with so many words stuck on the tip of my tongue.
While his coarse words and his attitude back at the Caves had hurt me, I was more than willing to bridge the gap.
I would apologize, because I knew I’d hurt him, too, and I couldn’t stand the distance between us.
“Ezra?” I called after him, relieved when he glanced back. “Can we talk some more later? Maybe when we get back?”
Another small smile. “Sure,” he said before nudging his horse forward to join Elias at the front.
That simple exchange made the rest of the journey more bearable.
I looked forward to resolution with Ezra, and we had the enchanted tome, which Cartwell’s horse pulled behind him.
This book would keep me busy whenever I wasn’t working on warding with Simeon.
Where he and I had left off, I could ward a small circle only five feet across.
Learning to ward entire cities, and the Caves, was still a long way away.
Maybe this book would even help me figure out why Simeon was weakening.
The weather became slightly cooler as we moved inland and slightly north.
A relief for us all, especially Gemma, who still got sick every few hours no matter what she ate.
I happily shared her tent, despite Elias’s pleas for me to share his, and I rode mainly next to Mavic, who kept me thoroughly entertained.
As we neared dark on our final night of travel before arriving back at the Caves, he briefed me on how much he’d taken advantage of his one night in Peradine.
“There were three of them,” he muttered out of the side of his mouth. “And my gods, they were angels.”
“Three?” I gasped, hand slapped to my mouth. “How is Yara going to feel about that?”
“She’ll just ask if I learned anything new.” Mavic shrugged, then laughed at the horror on my face. “Yara and I have a very open relationship, you know. Communication is key.”
I blushed and giggled, more than a little uncomfortable at the prospect. “What is that called then? A foursome?”
My voice must have been louder than I thought, because Elias spun around in his saddle and glared back at me. As if it wasn’t his fault that I could make that guess in the first place.
“No,” Mavic answered. “It’s called paradise.”
My laugh was cut off by Cartwell on the front right side of the path shouting, “Commander! On our right.”
Our caravan stopped at the rise as Elias lifted a hand. He dismounted and followed Cartwell to the side of the pathway. I jumped down and went after them.
“What—”
Elias whipped around and stopped me. “You don’t need to see this.”
I scowled and pushed past him. “Yes, I do.”
“Ary…”
His voice dissolved into unbearable ringing, along with every other word and sound in the surrounding forest. I stared down at a young blond woman with her chest carved open, heart ripped out and discarded beside her.
Her eyes were closed, but there was nothing peaceful about the condition she’d been left in.
I stared at the woman’s heart in the dirt, and all I could hear was the sound of his agonized roar. Begging for me to breathe. To live. To come back to him.
My Ella, my Ella, my Ella, my love, my Ella ? —
“Ary!”
The urgent jostling of my body dragged me back to the present. My breaths sputtered out in trembling clouds, and it took me a few moments to realize that tears streamed down my cheeks. Elias’s hands squeezed my shoulders.
“Hey.” He searched my face. “Are you all right?”
“Sorry.” I shook my head to get rid of the sounds and memory. “I’m fine,” I lied.
Elias’s apprehensive gaze lingered on me, brow furrowed, for a few uncomfortable moments before he mercifully returned his attention to the bloody corpse.
“This wasn’t the work of any beast,” Elias uttered grimly. “Someone murdered that girl.”
An eerie wind blew through the clearing, lifting the hairs on the back of my neck down to the base of my spine.
“Why is her heart ripped out, Ary?” Shera asked me nervously. “That’s… that’s like…”
Like me in Brinnea, eight months ago.
My limbs grew weak, my stomach nauseous with dread.
I had an overwhelming feeling that this killing had been staged for me .
“It’s a trap,” I muttered to Eli, though I wasn’t sure if he heard me. I turned and sprinted toward Finn and Gemma’s horse. “Get her out of here!” I commanded Finn, waving them away. “Run! As far and as fast as you can!”
Gemma rolled her eyes. “We aren’t going to just run off, Ary?—”
“Where?” Finn cut her off, eyes locked with mine. Unlike Gemma, he saw my fear, and he didn’t doubt it. “Go where?”
“Anywhere,” I told him. “Anywhere but here, just go!”
He tightened his arms around Gemma to keep her locked safely in her seat and turned their horse straight north.
“Finn? No!” Gemma snapped, turning to stop him, but he had full control of the reins. “What are you doing? We can’t just…”
Her angry voice trailed off and was stifled by pounding hooves as their horse galloped off into the night.
“Mavic, Ezra!” I called back, chest heaving with frantic, panting breaths. They were both off their horses. “Follow them!”
Mavic shook his head. “I promised Marin I wouldn’t leave your side. No offense, Your Highness, but my older sister is scarier than you.”
Ezra joined us and nodded. “We’re here to defend you.”
“Ary.” Elias grabbed my shoulders and turned me to face him. “How do you know it’s a trap? Corpses are unfortunately a common enough?—”
“Because that’s exactly how I died in Brinnea!” My fingers dug into his forearms. “Ripped-out heart, gutted from chest to waist.” I pleaded with my eyes in case my words weren’t enough to convince him.
Our orders from Molochai were to break you, not kill you, Alec Gerard had said to me in the showers.
Molochai was taunting me. I could sense the cold nearby. The absence of all things good. It was drawing nearer, and I could feel that evil magic like a part of it had broken off inside me and never left. It began to vibrate, a painful warning in my chest.
“I just know it’s him,” I insisted to Elias. “I need to draw them away from the Caves.”
“My soldiers can handle fighting Insidions, Ary.” His reassuring grip tightened on my shoulders. “We have for ages.”
“I don’t think it’s just Insidions.”
His face tightened. “You think Molochai’s here?”
I nodded. “I can feel him.”
Light from the torches our fighters carried flickered across his paling face. “The Caves are warded. They’re safe.”
“Maybe. For now,” I answered grimly. Was he putting pieces together? That Simeon and his wards were weakening? I’d learned firsthand just how manipulative Simeon was. It was no surprise that the Wintertons and the other Elders blindly followed him. But I knew Elias had begun to question.
“We all run,” Elias announced, nudging me back toward my horse.
“No.” I held my ground. You couldn’t run from Molochai’s shadows. “I’m the one he’s trying to trap. I’ll stay and fight him. He can’t kill me, anyway.” Even if I wanted to stay dead, my body would inevitably bring me back.
He paled. “Ary?—”
A shrill scream split the humid nighttime air.
Behind Eli, three of our soldiers were impaled by ropes of shadows emerging from the trees like arms. Their bodies were yanked and thrown violently from the backs of their horses, slammed into tree trunks or the ground, killing them instantly.
It happened so fast that I was sure most of them never knew what struck them. For those few, it was one small mercy.
Elias moved to shield me just as a gust of chilling wind tore through the pathway and extinguished our group’s torches.
“You have to run, all of you!” I screamed, reaching for Helios’s fire. “Please?—”
A rope fastened around my ankles, snapped them together, and jerked me off my feet. Pain ricocheted up my spine when I was slammed into the earth.
And then I was being dragged faster than any horse or human could run.
“Aryella!” Elias’s roar faded into an echo within seconds. I thought I heard Mavic and Ezra shout, but they were quickly silenced.
I was with them, and then I wasn’t.
My body urged me to scream for help, but I focused my energy on curling forward and attempting to free my legs from the shadowy ropes that bound me.
The friction between my body and the ground as I flew across the forest floor, branches and debris whipping and cutting at my skin, sent burning pain through my muscles.
Each time I touched the ropes, the shadows pricked at my skin as if alive and vehemently objecting to my touch.
After a minute, I skidded to an abrupt halt in the middle of a clearing. I scrambled dizzily to my feet and lit the air with Aesta’s light, only for it to be snuffed out less than a second later.
And again. And again.
Grunting in frustration, I spun in circles while my eyes tried to adjust to the moonlight through the clouds above. When I was tossed to the ground and flipped from my back to my stomach, the pain in my abdomen was so brutal that it caused my vision to blur.
I groaned and rose again. I would fight him, no matter how many times he knocked me down. His shadows ripped my feet out from under me and slammed me back onto the ground. This time, the force of it left me wheezing.
“Fuck… you !” I screeched, refusing to stay down.
Footsteps drew closer, and I heard Molochai’s voice.
“Hello again, little mutt.”
I reached for Aesta’s light once more, but I wasn’t fast enough. Shadows wrapped around my throat, and I was thrust into corrupted darkness.