CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR #2
“Tell me, brother—” Elysian fell into step with Ronan, the silver grass brushing their waists. “How long did you think it would take before I scented her rotten stench on you?”
They had made it as far as the glade before Willa’s trail faded into the stone. Ronan had told him they would wait until morning to track her. He hadn’t told him why. And Elysian hadn’t pushed, until now.
“Before you caught it, or spoke on it?”
The gleam of canines flashed as Elysian halted. “What business could you possibly have with the witch queen, Ronan?”
Exhaling once, Ronan slowed. “There is no business. Not anymore.”
Elysian’s voice frosted as he spat, “You are a fool.”
Ronan stilled then. He was a damn fool. “Forgive me, Ely. I have righted my mistakes. And by the end of this cursed venture, the witch queen will be burning in Hel with the rest of its spawn.”
Elysian’s head shook, silver hair catching the moonbeam.
“Your secrets are not mine to hold. I will not carry them. But rumors spread. You refused to sift so Aero would not know where you were. Yet you sifted to Isolde? And you were seen saving Verena. Recognized as the dragon heir soaring over the mountains to save the very curse that may end us all.” His lips curled.
“Do you even know where your loyalties lie? If you are lost, let me guide you.”
Ronan rolled his shoulders as he reached for his sword, drawing it from its sheath in one smooth motion. “Aero was going to know we were here in a day anyway.”
Elysian blinked. “Why?”
“Because once we save this Veyari,” Ronan’s wings expanded, stretching into the night with a snap that gagged the glade. “We’re bringing her to Sahfyre.”
Willa’s scent picked back up only a mile past the glade. Someone must have tried to glamour it, though their magic was far too weak to hold.
It had taken Ronan and Elysian only hours to find the Brights’ camp, tucked carelessly beneath a canopy of black pines, fires banked low, beaconing in the dark.
Their voices carried, unguarded, arguing over the girl. Some urged that sifting her was the right move, while others suggested it might shatter something too delicate inside her. She was too strange, too still. Too silent.
Ronan and Elysian had swept by their perimeter like smoke and mist. Gone before anyone had stirred. The barred wagon holding her sat at the camp’s edge, only one guard stationed there, who dropped before he felt his breath stolen.
Iron shackles bit into her small wrists and ankles, white hair spilling down her back and shoulders in loose rivulets, veiling most of her face. She barely moved, but when she lifted her head, those eyes, pale as moonstone and hidden under ivory lashes and brows, found him instantly.
Freckles dusted her cheeks and collarbones, each one glimmering silver, as if a star had been shattered and scattered across her cool skin.
She was prophecy in the shape of a girl.
Ronan crouched beside her. “Reve,” he demanded. “Was he here?”
She said nothing. Not a blink or even a breath to betray meaning.
There was no sign of Reve. Not a footprint, not even a trace of scent. Nothing for Elysian to follow. He was long gone, leaving the Veyari for soldiers to cage, to carry, a burden he was far too superior for now.
A vein ticked at his temple, his stare dropping to the floor before lifting again to find Elysian. He nodded once and the air shivered. Bones reshaped, sinew snapped, skin gave way to brilliance. Where a man had stood, a stallion emerged. White and regal as the first snow of winter.
Ronan let smoke thread through Willa’s chains, forcing the metal apart until it fell to ash. She flinched at the sound, but not at the strands of dark he carried. She only watched it move around her hands, curious.
Once the shackles around her ankles were free, Willa moved without hesitation, her hands fusing with his mane as she pulled herself atop. Ronan aired his wings, the sound booming through the trees as he vaulted into the air, night catching beneath him.
Below, Elysian galloped into the dark, hooves striking the ground in rhythm with Ronan’s beating form as they stole her back unnoticed.
Nearly a day had passed before they were confident they couldn’t be traced. The three lay tucked within a stone structure, night once more bearing down against its walls.
Willa curled close to the fire, Ronan’s dark flames painting her pale skin slate. Elysian sat nearby, polishing his blade in leisurely strokes, the two of them caught in the same glow. Mirrored strands of moonlight and frost. Yet they were not the same.
Willa’s presence radiated calm, in the same way still water did under starlight. Elysian burned colder, more a blade sheathed in ice.
Ronan leaned against the wall. “You two sure you don’t come from the same continent? You look like fate painted you from the same vision,” he muttered.
Elysian didn’t lift his gaze from the blade. “My realm wouldn’t tolerate Veyari. For her sake, let’s hope she remembers which side of fate she’s on.”
Willa still refused to speak, but her eyes glanced at Ronan, and he folded his arms across his chest. “Where did you come from? Maerin was Veyari too. Were you kin?”
Still nothing.
He pinched the bridge of his nose, breathing deep when a shimmer raked beneath his skin. Scales. They had gotten the taste of Ryuu’s air and now were restless for more. “Why did they kill her, Willa? Why did they take you?”
Her eyes were a vortex of a million different lives, yet she spoke on none of them.
He scraped a hand down his face in a tired sweep before he cast the gesture her way. “We’re trying to help you. We’re not here to hurt you.”
The fire snapped, movement lurching against her unblinking eyes. When she still gave nothing, Ronan shook his head, moving past her, already surrendering the question.
A cold grip latched around his wrist as her hand shot out, stopping him.
Stilling, he looked to her, catching the way her eyes shifted—no longer pale, but opaque and swirling.
With her lips parting, he waited for her to speak, and when her voice came, it wasn’t a child’s voice at all.
It was rendered, an echo pulled from some hidden void.
“Salvation’s hands tremble in scars. Beautiful, wary, but hidden in the stars. The shackles must break; a new bond will form. Death begs death. And time wakes, reborn.”
The words landed deep, a resonance he couldn’t explain, couldn’t shake.
Frost wavered across her fingers, latching onto his wrist where it melted instantly as he ripped his hand away. “What does that mean?”
Giving nothing more, she turned away, fingers slipping onto her lap. The silver faded from her eyes, leaving only colorless glass reflecting the firelight.
Elysian’s eyes narrowed in on her, as if he could peel sense from the riddle she’d spoken. “Don’t let it rattle you. Veyaris enjoy using their oddities to lean fate into their own liking.”
Frustrated, Ronan turned, ready to step away, then halted when a thought struck. Maybe prophecy was the only way she could speak. “Can you tell me the Viper’s prophecy? Verena’s?”
Willa’s eyes flickered, searching for some frayed thread. Then, slowly, she shook her head.
Breath hissed out between his lips, defeated. “Can you at least tell me if she can be saved?”
Since the moment he had severed his oath with Isolde, this was the question burning through him. Verena was worth saving. Worth the impossible. Even if it killed him, he would try.
For a long moment, only the fire answered. Spitting, crackling, throwing its restless light across her face. Then Willa’s mouth moved again, voice distant.
“Even nightmares, blind and few, have qualms that run deep, run true. For what fears love, and loves the fear, leaving its mark unseen, but clear. Two can be one, but one can’t be known. Only when they’ve met their match, will the divine become its own.”
With his heart hammering against his ribs, Ronan stepped closer. “So, she isn’t damned, she can be saved?”
There was a tug down the bond. His breath caught, chest seizing. Verena. He felt her searching for him, her presence heightening inside him, familiar, fierce, so achingly hers.
But there was something else, another, latched around her like chains. Dark and merciless, pulling hard against the tether until it was no longer her warmth he felt, but something vast and cold, trying to bend it. Control it.
He staggered, a curse rasping from his throat. He reached back down the bond, desperate for her, desperate for even a fragment that was hers again. But the corruption only tightened, swallowing until it smothered.
Willa’s voice came soft, almost pitying, though she didn’t look away from the fire. “One of them can be.”
Elysian sat rigid, knuckles white on his blade, sensing the shift.
Ronan clenched his fists, jaw locked, every instinct screaming to launch into the sky, to tear through whatever had its hold on her.
But the bond burned cold, and the more he fought it, the more it seared where it only should have numbed.
His eyes squeezed closed, smoke tight around him, and he thought he might choke on the reality. Because for the first time, he didn’t know if it was Verena he felt—or the Viper.
The questions drove him mercilessly mad. How much could prophecy forgive? And could fate, unyielding, unrelenting fate, ever truly be rewritten?