41. Chapter Thirty-Nine #3
“How do you even know where we’re going? If no one knows where the Heart is, how do we find it?”
His answer came, certain. “We don’t. You do.”
I sighed, he continued.
“The Heart of Cindraloch is called the Iron Vein. Buried deep in the marrow of this realm, older than even I, it can’t be tracked, not by gods or half-born. But the Sight…” He paused. “The Sight was made for this.”
“Surprise, surprise." I said sardonically. I forced another question out. “And when all of them are together? The Obsidian Heart. The Iron Vein. The rest. What then?”
“Together, they bind the Weave. Imagine them as anchors between realms. They are not supposed to be moved. When certain stones are combined, they create things that shouldn’t exist. The Iron Vein and the Obsidian Heart combine to create something…
significant. Something that could either help you, or destroy you. "
So there were stones in every realm…and combining them created tools that could help me? Destroy me? What was he not telling me? And why did the Ash King want something only I could claim?
“And the King of Ash?” I managed to bite out through clenched teeth. “Why bind them? Why risk everything?”
“Because chaos feeds him,” Tairngire said simply. “When the Weave frays, realms bleed into one another. Shadows spread. Mortals fall into ruin. And in ruin, he thrives.”
I sat back in the saddle exasperated. “So if I fail, everything collapses.”
He only hummed, infuriating. “So many questions, Little Seer.”
“Yet no one gives me answers,” I snapped.
“That’s the fun of it.” His laugh was low, easy.
I could hear the edge in it, the one he tried to hide under humor. I gnawed on my lip, shoving my anxiety down and replacing it with curiosity. “If I’m the only one who can find them, then how could the King of Ash get there first?”
The look he gave me froze my blood, pity curling his mouth. “Because he doesn’t need to find them.”
My stomach sank. “What do you mean?”
“The stones aren’t hidden to his kind, Little Seer.
” His tone was unflinching. “They were spun from the Weave itself, and the Shadow knows its own threads. He can feel them, like a wolf scenting blood. He only needs hunger. That, he has in spades. He cannot touch them, though, nor can he leave his realm. But he’s resourceful.
It would be immensely unwise to underestimate him. ”
The horse beneath me tossed its head, restless as if it felt my nerves hanging in the balance. I swallowed. “So he always has the advantage.”
“Yes.” Tairngire didn’t even flinch, but I did.
I wanted to scream. “Yet you parade me across realms like bait, hoping I’ll point the way first—”
He interrupted me mid-sentence. “No. Unlike him, you don’t just find the stones, Aurenya. You bind them. Without you they’re nothing but raw power that cannot be broken or tapped into. He may reach them, but he cannot claim them, nor destroy them. That’s why you’re a weapon in the wrong hands.”
My throat went dry. He said it so calmly, as if this were a regular stroll through the forest.
I hated it. Hated that it meant I was a target too.
“And what if he finds me first? Forces me to find the others?” My voice cracked. “Wouldn’t it be safer to let him stumble into them useless?”
Tairngire’s gaze snapped to me, molten. “So, what then?” He let out a low scoff.
“He simply forgets about you? What you’re capable of?
He won’t. He’ll hunt you, endlessly, until he drags you from whatever corner you think you can hide.
And when he does…” His jaw ticked. “The chains you curse now will feel like air compared to the ones he’ll bind you with. ”
His stallion tossed its head, exemplifying the enormity of the situation. I swallowed hard.
Forever running. Hiding. Shackled.
Tairngire’s eyes—those godsdamned green depths—never wavered. “I will never let that fucking happen,” he ground out between grit teeth. His eyes burned with an unhinged fury that I felt down to the bone. “He will not have you.”
I bit my cheek and forced my gaze forward, refusing to let him see me crack. I almost preferred when he’d been cryptic, at least then I didn’t feel the weight of this burden.
“And what about when we find them?” My voice cracked on a whisper. “If one lies in the Underworld—what happens when we reach that stone?” My pulse stumbled. “That’s his trap. And I’m the only one who can find it.”
I was met with silence. Tairngire ran a hand through his thick locks and let out a long breath. “We’ll deal with it when it comes.”
But I heard it, then. The shift. Not in his words, but in the weight he carried. Worry.
For me?
For the cost of the realms?
For both?
The forest seemed to stretch on forever.
I watched Tairngire out of the corner of my eye, he was too tense.
He hid it well, but I could feel it as if it were my own: a thrum of worry beneath his stillness, clear as pine and smoke.
It made no sense. Tairngire, who laughed at gods, who kissed me like I was fire and ruin, was anxious.
To make matters even worse, the bond carried it into me, more than the ache in my body, more than the threat of stones or the King of Ash. If he was unsettled, what did that mean for the rest of us?
Everyone else rode ahead like they were born for it. Meanwhile, my thighs were burning. My hands cramped and my thoughts spiraled as the path narrowed, drawing us beneath another canopy.
Cindraloch’s forests closed in around us—towering oaks and willows, their trunks silvered with age, their crowns stitched together like a cathedral roof.
Different from than the wilds of the First Forest, beautiful in its controlled way.
Light slanted through in shards, scattering across moss and fern, catching on rivulets that threaded between the roots like veins in broken glass.
Beautiful, yes. But heavy, too. Every branch and stone hummed with an ancient power that I didn't belong to.
It was for gods and goddesses, warriors, half-born who never once doubted their strength. But I rode alongside them, bound to a purpose I never asked for, a king with nefarious intent at my back and divines at my side.
“Tell me, Little Seer,” Tairngire’s voice slid through the quiet, too relaxed, smooth. “How are you faring?”
I didn’t need to look to see the rapt expression on his face. Of course, he’d ask now, when my legs burned and every jolt reminded me I was the only human here.
“Yes, why don’t you keep poking fun at my mortality?” I snapped.
His chuckle crept along my skin. “You forget what the soul bond gives you. You cannot perish until I do, unless the blade takes you first.”
They were not comforting, but a reminder of another chain. I would stay twenty-five forever, tethered to him. I huffed an annoyed breath. “And what, that’s supposed to put me at ease?”
He leaned closer, breath brushing my ear. “It should, because while you burn, I feel it too. Every ache. Every wave of exhaustion,” his hand shifted steadily on his reins. “Just a little longer. Then we stop for the night.”
The weight of the bond throbbed heavier now that his words had sunk in. He felt it too. Every blistering ache in my legs, every ragged breath.
I wanted to curse at the unfairness of it. He carried my pain, while I only caught flashes of his. Which was like a storm pressed against glass, never the whole weight.
He rode beside me with that infuriating calm and the godsdamned curve of his mouth, as if my burden were a jest. As if it didn’t matter.
But it did.
Because even in my anger, he knew the truth. He was steady where I was raw. He anchored me even when I didn’t want it. And worst of all, he felt everything.
I closed my eyes, teeth grit against the sting of exhaustion. Just a little longer. His words haunted me. A promise. A curse.
And though I despised it with every part of me, I clung to it.