CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
We flew away from the mountain, leaving the manticores behind.
Our smooth downward descent was much more pleasant than the grueling upward climb.
The forest below was my path home, and so eventually I requested to be set down amongst its towering evergreens.
“You traveled here through the Autumn Court?” Corvin repeated, clearly hesitant to leave me in the forest without an obvious path home, clutching me to his side even after we landed.
“At least share a meal with us before you depart. It’s been a while since we’ve seen each other. ”
“Food sounds nice,” I agreed, my voice strained. It had been a while. And I didn’t understand why…
Last we’d spoken, he promised to contact me in the mirror. But its surface had remained clouded ever since he left the island. Even after I broke down and tried contacting him myself, my calls went unanswered.
The rest of the group touched down, and Corvin took a small, reluctant step away from me.
Soon, I found myself sitting cross-legged in front of a campfire, luxuriating in the warmth of its cackling blaze and the fresh smell of pine needles as Nix slept curled up by my side.
Corvin tended the fire with patient hands, feeding it another log.
Across from me, Zorana slathered a thick herbal paste onto Tercel’s injured shoulder, ignoring his half-hearted attempts to shoo her hand away.
Farryn busied herself with the food, unpacking a small cookpot and the ingredients for soup.
“So—” Tercel’s gaze landed on Corvin, then drifted to me. “How exactly do you two know each other?”
I hesitated, thinking back to the first time I met Corvin, when he appeared in my study at midnight.
Of course, I’d actually met him earlier that same day when he helped me escape the Spring Court in his raven form.
My mind turned from our first meeting toward our last meeting.
That brief, intimate moment in front of my cottage, when we shared a passionate kiss.
I stalled, waiting to see if Corvin would answer Tercel’s question first. When it became clear he wasn’t going to respond, suddenly taking his responsibility to tend the campfire very seriously, I went with the less complicated answer and said, “He claims to owe me a debt.”
“Your father’s debts?” Tercel asked, his gaze snapping back to Corvin.
“Yeah,” Corvin responded, rising from a crouch, his eyes briefly searching mine. “That’s how we met.”
Tercel squinted at me. “You’re the woman he keeps disappearing to help?”
“Why?” I asked. “I’m not what you were expecting?”
“Just seems odd you never mentioned she’s our age,” Tercel said casually, facing Corvin. “You’ve been…assisting her a lot.”
“Hey now!” I protested, feeling self-conscious. “I never demanded any assistance. Not once. Corvin’s been quite persistent about wanting to help me, if anything. So—so there—”
Tercel raised an eyebrow, the ghost of a smirk upon his face. “Is that so? I can’t imagine why—”
“The debt!” Corvin suddenly exclaimed like he had solved a puzzle, interrupting our conversation.
“Huh?” Tercel and I muttered in unison.
“That must be what led me to you,” Corvin clarified, running a hand through his hair. “The debt, drawing us together. The reason I got confused about the way home, and led us into that cavern.”
“That would explain a lot! We’ve never disagreed about the way home before,” Farryn mused.
I replied, “The debt led you to me? I was trying to figure out how we both ended up in that cavern.”
Tercel’s eyes lit up. “Hey! Did we help you fulfill it then? By defeating those creatures?”
“To be fair, we also awakened them,” Zorana interjected, plastering a clean bandage onto Tercel’s wound over the herbal salve. “I’m guessing it doesn’t count if we’re the reason she was in danger in the first place.”
“The debt’s still there,” Corvin confirmed.
“A subtle but ever-present pressure in my head. But…but that’s not all even, because it’s also…
it’s also an invisible tether in my chest, telling me I’m not in the right spot, not where I’m supposed to be, that I should follow where it leads, to be closer to Elvira…
” He cleared his throat. “I’m not sure what exactly needs to happen for its fulfillment. ”
Farryn snorted, sprinkling some spices into the soup. “Have you tried asking Elvira what she wants?”
At that suggestion, a smile spread slowly across Corvin’s face.
He moved away from the campfire, taking a seat next to me on the ground.
With his arms extended behind his body, and his legs stretched out in front, he made himself comfortable.
Then he slid his eyes over to me. “What do you desire most, Elvira?” he asked, voice dropping to a throaty growl, his gaze locked onto mine.
A small, pleasant shiver ran down my spine at his words.
The air between us grew heavy as our shoulders lightly brushed.
I resisted the impulse to lean into him more fully.
Did his body strain to touch mine too? I swallowed thickly as my cheeks turned pink, acutely aware that I hadn’t responded to his question, that everyone was staring at us.
I caught a look somewhere between intrigue and surprise cross Tercel’s face.
“I’m not sure I even know the answer to that,” I finally responded, taking a steadying breath.
“What about today? What were you doing in that manticore-infested cavern anyway?” Corvin prodded.
“I was searching for moonstones,” I replied, reaching for my satchel to show him before remembering it was no longer at my side.
My heart sank, realizing that when the manticore wrenched it off my body, I must have lost the moonstones inside.
“But it looks like I lost them along with my satchel,” I said, with a deep sigh.
Farryn reached behind herself, grabbing something. “This satchel?” she asked, tossing it to me.
“Yes! I thought I’d lost it! You spotted it in the cavern?”
“I picked it up on the way out, just in case it belonged to you.”
“That’s amazing—thank you so much!” I beamed, extremely grateful to have reclaimed the moonstones.
Tercel smiled. “Typical Farryn—always taking care of everybody.”
“You were going to fight all those manticores on your own?” Zorana asked, her mouth agape.
I hugged the satchel to my body. “I didn’t know it would be full of manticores. I was following this map Corvin and I stole from Rogam’s prison cell—” Corvin was suddenly blinking very fast, and doing something weird with his eyebrows.
Perhaps he didn’t want the others to know about our recent adventure…
“Prison cell?!” Tercel spluttered, making a wild gesture with his hands.
“Stay still,” Zorana chided from behind as she finished dressing his wound. “Sorry,” Tercel apologized, relaxing his posture, though he wasn’t finished interrogating Corvin. “At what point did ‘helping her reorganize her library’ involve a prison cell?” he asked, in an increasingly indignant tone.
“It’s a long story,” he answered.
“You need to be cautious, Corvin,” Farryn reproached. “This year especially.”
“You getting imprisoned would delay everything!” Zorana added.
“I’m aware,” Corvin bit out, his mouth pressed into a flat line.
I studied him, wishing I understood the significance behind his friend’s rebuke.
I sat silently for a moment, uncertain whether saying more would be helpful or get him into more trouble.
“How about you all?” I finally worked up the courage to ask, trying to break some of the tension that hung unpleasantly between everyone.
“What were you doing in Uvrakar to begin with?”
“Feather collecting,” Tercel responded.
I leaned forward, eager to know more. “You’re the feather collectors?!”
“The South Sky Ternion at your service,” Tercel said with a small bow.
He waved his hand expectantly at Farryn and Zorana, not ceasing until they each gave in, dropping their own playful version of a curtsy, albeit with a heavy dose of eye-rolling pointed in Tercel’s direction.
“Thank you,” he said with a grin, turning back toward me.
A half-frown appeared on his lips. “If we can even call ourselves that after today,” he gloomily continued, “we failed to grab a single manticore feather.”
“Speak for yourself,” Zorana said proudly, revealing a feather previously tucked within her tunic. She swished it playfully under Tercel’s nose before holding it up for everyone to see. Tercel laughed, a look of chagrined surprise lighting up his eyes. “When did you manage to grab that?”
“Probably while you were busy petting one of them.”
“Now that’s just—”
Farryn talked over their bickering. “Zorana’s the head collector of our ternion,” she affectionately told me.
“You plucked that from a sleeping manticore?” I asked Zorana, pointing at the golden-brown feather.
She vehemently shook her head. “No, we live by a strict code. Discarded feathers only. No intentional harm to a living creature. I found this left behind on the cavern floor.” She handed the feather over to Corvin. “What do you think? Will that be enough to win us the competition this year?”
Corvin’s mouth finally relaxed back into its typical, easygoing grin.
“It is powerful,” he said, running his fingers along its length.
“It feels like the air before a storm. Don’t you agree?
” he asked, passing the feather over to Tercel, who gladly accepted it, running his fingers through its plumage in the same manner.
“Definitely. Should we see who can call forth the strongest magic from it?” he asked Corvin, lifting his eyebrows in a lighthearted challenge.
Farryn plucked the feather out of Tercel’s hand, sticking her tongue out at him. “As you are both well aware, these feathers aren’t for your personal use. They’re for the good of the entire—”
“You sound like Kygraw,” Tercel jested. He pitched his voice lower, clearly imitating someone. “These feathers are a precious, finite commodity. The ternion’s most sacred duty is to—”