Chapter Forty
FORTY
The explosions and groaning of rock come quicker now.
They’re so close, I feel every vibration in my teeth. Even Wolf flinches, his jaw flexing and the branching scar tugging taut.
There’s no room to turn around, and just leaning up against Wolf slows me down as we squeeze through the narrow passage. It feels like crawling standing up. The rock presses in from all sides, dust and pebbles clattering loose with every blast rattling through the mountain.
“Fucking Fang,” he mutters after a particularly gut-wrenching crash and the answering rumble of what feels like the entire mountain above us. “We stopped fighting for three days, not a week.”
It’s only been three days since I was captured?
I jerk up to look at Wolf, and his jaw clenches. “She’s… making up for lost time. Let’s just say she wasn’t pleased at the order to stop the fighting while I was in the castle, looking for you.”
“Order from… who?” I gasp at a fresh wave of pain, and it’s all I can do to swallow it down.
The incline beneath us shifts, but Wolf doesn’t answer. Slowly, the tunnel begins to climb, and light slivers up ahead.
Relief is so sweet, I can almost taste it. It’s not enough to drown out the pain or the soul-racking grief and the rage, but it’s there.
Cash lets out a breath. Almost like he can’t quite believe we made it either.
Up ahead, light brightens in a blinding flash.
A crack splits the air, and I smell rain—lashing and fierce and cold as ice, smacking the rocks and the dirt.
The tunnel opens up into a hole we have to duck under, and Cash pushes back the thick shield of rowan boughs growing just outside the hole, concealing this place from prying eyes.
The mountain of Castle Mount slopes down into a craggy hill, wrapped with the thick tangles of stubborn mist that have haunted this place for years, but I’ve never seen it this bad.
My skin tingles. Looking out over the sea, I notice strange chunks hewn from the rock face dozens of feet above us that might be the windows in the baths Aoife showed me once.
Below, the sea crashes against the rocks, and a narrow, winding path wraps around the base of the castle’s foundations, perched on the edge of the cliff.
The path is barely wide enough for one, but Wolf doesn’t let go of me.
We make it down the slope, backs pressed against the rough mountainside as thunder splits the clouds above.
Lightning forks a vicious trail across the skies, and in the distance the faint glow of Quayside glimmers along the shore.
A longing so intense it pulls my ribs apart fills my chest. I don’t get the time to wonder if I’ll ever set foot in those streets again or see Keeva’s wry grin while we grind herbs in her stall.
Old Ones, how will I tell her about Finn?
“Keeva?”
Her name on my lips splinters. The rough stubble along Wolf’s chin scrapes at my cheek as he leans down, running a thumb along the edge of my lips—and I wince.
“We got her out of the city,” he promises.
A fresh slice of pain opens deep in my chest. Why couldn’t they have gotten Finn out too?
Wolf gazes into my eyes, like he can feel the pain seizing me tighter and tighter.
This time, I’m the one who tears my gaze from his.
The winding path opens up, and we’re on level ground again. Fang waits on the edge of the cliff side on a caoranach, a second one at its side that narrows its yellow eyes at Wolf as we near, and the figure atop that one gleams in polished black-and-green armor.
Is this all that’s left of them?
There were dozens of them in the attack.
Fang’s long navy cloak whips back from her head in the furious wind. Her lips pull tight, and Wolf grimaces as the caoranach beneath her stretches out its tattered black wings as if about to take flight.
“About time,” she snarls at him. His muscles shake against me, like he’s fighting to stay standing.
A ragged grimace catches in his throat. A heartbeat later, he lets out a breath, and the shaking slows.
“The High Queen fortified the entire northern half of the castle in the three days it took you to find her. The Treasury and the Crown are hers, thanks to you letting slip our plans.” Her black eyes narrow savagely on me, then jerk to Cash.
“That one’s head is now worth enough gold to buy an entire navy.
” Fang sweeps a pointed finger out behind us, toward the sea.
“And Martyr knows we’re going to need one. ”
I can’t manage turning more than an inch before pain screams in my muscles, across my swollen, too-tight skin.
But Old Ones help us—it’s enough.
The skies flash, revealing an armada of ships docked below the cliffs.
Longships, their prows carved in brutal icons of the Cymrean goddesses of war. A single mast rises up from each one, the sails snapping in stripes of white and the same pale blue as the High Queen’s eyes.
Sorrow and dread and fury riot inside me.
A vortex of pure rage, and grief. We did everything—I gave everything.
And with Cymrea here, the High Queen will drain what’s left in the Wells all the same.
With a furious roar, Fang raises both hands, and the caoranachs tear back on their hind legs, shrieking. Tendrils of magic swirl around the mage’s fingers, weaving and climbing up her wrists as she snarls a series of words I can’t understand, her eyes flaring black.
I taste static. I feel the surge of the storm-black clouds parting. Every hair down the length of my spine rises, reaching out for the energy charging the air and aching to answer the strange, wild keen singing through my bones.
A vicious, thick bolt of lightning strikes the southern cliff side of the castle and sends half of it crashing into the sea, tumbling down over the rocky, winding path we just crossed.
Talon whistles appreciatively.
But there’s no energy left in me to react, and my legs give out.
Wolf catches me before I hit the ground, and everything slams into me at once. Ringing fills my ears, and I can’t hold back the ragged sob.
I want Finn back. I need my sister here with me. Need to explain everything, understand all the things we never got to share. I need to know her truth.
Now I’ll never get that chance, and the grief is a wild beast devouring me.
Callused hands find my face. Rain pelts off the leather on his shoulders, and Wolf kneels down on the soaking earth so his face is level with mine. He slips a hand around the back of my neck, and his voice is steel.
“I know what you’re feeling. Trust me, I do. You know I do.” His voice drops, cracking on the last word, and I do. I know. That doesn’t make this any easier.
It doesn’t change a single damn thing.
“I can’t breathe,” I choke out, and press the bloodied backs of my hands against my swollen eyes. “I can’t even think about—”
“Don’t think.” Wolf catches my hands, closing both of his own impossibly gently over the mangled ruins of mine.
He doesn’t risk twining his fingers through my shattered knuckles.
His touch is as light as a feather. But the warmth of him, the heat of his skin—it anchors me in a way I can’t begin to understand, and my racing heart slows enough for me to meet his tortured eyes.
“You need something to hold on to? You need something to believe in?” He sweeps his gaze over the ruins of the castle above.
“Believe in us. Believe in me, and trust me when I promise you—this is not the end.” His green gaze scorches mine.
“We will save what’s left of our magic. We’ll rip the High Queen from this throne.
We can make sure there’s justice. You and me.
We’ll make every last one of them pay for what they’ve done to our isle. To us.”
Wolf cups my face in his hands. He leans in and brushes his mouth to mine, hard and quick and burning.
My blood catches, and lights—just enough to do battle against the darkness roiling inside me.
He pulls back after only a heartbeat, his gaze searing into me like he can see the inferno raging in my soul.
“And you know I keep my promises, faolán.”
“Still not…” I grit the words out. “My last name.”
His hands find my elbows and gently raise me up.
He guides me over to the second caoranach, ignoring its strange, almost-knowing stare. Two tall-edged baskets wait, fastened at its sides by a leather harness around the creature’s shoulders.
“I know,” Wolf tells me. “It’s a word from the old tongue—from the days of the goddesses, and magic. Some interpret it as little wolf.” The back of his hand brushes down the length of my cheek. “But wolves were also protectors to the Old Ones. Guardians. Warriors.”
Blood rushes in my ears, and my chest tightens.
Warrior.
“Where to?” I whisper, and let him come to stand behind me in the basket attached to the caoranach’s leather harness.
“The Málmar Islands,” he says, stepping over the basket’s deep, sheltering sides and helping me down to sit within its cover. His lips brush the back of my head. “I’m taking you to the Martyr.”
A ragged breath slips from me.
Lightning forks the sky, followed by thunder exploding in a deafening boom. The caoranachs shriek.
Wolf’s hand curls around the front of me, holding me against him as the caoranach rises to all fours. Talon walks to the basket on the other side of its wings with a heavy bundle of something draped in black slung over their shoulders, Cash following close.
“Talon has her,” Wolf murmurs, and my heart clenches. “We have your sister.”
A shuddering breath escapes me, and salt stings a hot trail down my face.
If magic can tear down a castle, it can tear down a crown, too. And as the caoranach rears back, pumping enormous wings and lurching us up into the wild, storm-streaked night, I swear a silent oath to my sister as we leave behind the only home we’ve ever known.
This is not how our story ends.
The High Queen can try to rule over rubble.
She can think herself a queen of ash and bone.
But we have the mages and the Martyr on our side, and I don’t care how much blood I have to spill now—I will make this right.
I’ll lay the snares for our vengeance. I will feast on the ruins once we tear apart her world and her dreams.
For me.
For our isle.
For Finn.
Even if it’s the last thing I ever do.