Chapter 20
Itoss and turn the rest of the night, Taliesin’s words echoing in my ears. I try to find the silver lining. At least it’s not the screams of the dead.
The Order never tried to erase what I am—not directly.
But they’ve always known the cost of my power.
They’ve also known my mind frays a little more every time I work for them.
Yes, they offer soothing words, comforting smiles, and endless gifts, but is that enough?
Once, they left a basket of the finest cheese in my room.
I dragged myself inside, mind coming apart at the edges, and devoured the whole thing in under an hour.
It didn’t fix anything. It just moved the damage from my mind to my stomach.
I don’t think Taliesin meant it for the Order, though, despite their plans. Or even the rebels. I think he was talking about Osian.
My heart twists painfully. Sometimes when I think about how much I love him, I feel like I’m drowning.
Like I’m lost in the poisonous sea, lungs spasming, reaching toward him with trembling hands, and he can’t see me.
And that’s the problem. It hurts. He hates what I am and what I can do.
When I resurrect on our assignments, he refuses to watch.
He gets that pained look on his face and walks away, like it hurts him just to stay.
I’ve always accepted his reaction. My magic disturbs most people, and while it disturbs him too, that’s the only part of me he doesn’t like. He loves me otherwise.
Otherwise.
I twist in the sheets, my hands clenching the material. It doesn’t matter how Osian feels about me. He’s still the most important person in my world, and I have to get him out.
“We’ve got cold porridge and warm porridge.
Which would you like?” A tall woman with braided brown hair holds out two near identical bowls of slop.
The only difference is that one steams in the cool morning air, while the other looks like it’s been sitting in a frigid bath all night, congealed at the edges.
I take a brief look over the gathered crowd nearby.
Some are still moving through the serving line, others already stand aside with bowls in hand, shifting from foot to foot in the cold, eyes half-lidded with exhaustion.
The air carries a damp mix of wet wool, unwashed bodies, and smoke that has worked its way into the keep’s stones.
It feels less like a stronghold and more like something left to rot.
I turn back toward her. “I’ll take warm, please. Got any honey?”
She barks a loud laugh. “No honey in these parts, love. Be blessed you got the keep on a deathless night.”
I take the bowl from her, warmth seeping into my fingers, and shuffle a little further down the line, hoping she’ll keep pace with me for a moment longer. “These screams. Have you heard them?”
“’Course, we all have.”
“Are they trying to say anything or…?”
She folds her arms over her chest. “Not that I know of, but I’ll offer you a deal. Today’s plan works out all right, and you do what you agreed to do, then we’ll talk. I’ll tell you all about the dead souls that haunt this kingdom.”
I arch a brow. “Is that an oath?”
She chuckles again. “Words are fickle these days, but sure. It’s an oath. Ask for me when you get back. Name’s Arianell.”
“I’ll hold you to that.” I nod and back away from the table. “Thanks for the porridge.”
She smiles, and I turn, wandering closer to the fire still blazing in the center of the clearing.
Heat licks at the chill in my bones. In the morning light, the huts have lost some of their menace.
Thatched roofs sag unevenly, and the wooden sides are flecked with age and soot.
The ruins look tired rather than threatening, like even stone can grow weary of holding itself together.
Evidence of fire scars the ground in a ring of blackened earth.
Not even a single sprig of grass has dared to grow.
Rhian strides over, peering at my bowl. “Warm, huh? Figures.”
Hers, of course, shows no sign of steaming. I’m sure it’s an insult of some kind, but instead of rising to the bait, I point at the ground. “What happened here?”
“Firebirds,” she says with a small smile. “They attacked this place several hundred years ago, and the evidence still stands. It was them against the Order. The firebirds won.”
I twist toward her. “I’ve never heard this story. How do you know this?”
“There are a few tombs and underground stores hidden along the coast, from back when the Order didn’t avoid it like they believe the land is steeped in plague.
” She shrugs, glancing out toward the ruined walls.
“We track them down, dig up what we can. One had a stack of scrolls that recorded a time no one knows much about. Two hundred years after the original Culling Day. Three hundred years back from now. Everyone knows there was a period of unrest, but not much about the details.”
I nod. It’s one of those things everyone accepts is gone. There are a few of those—scraps of time where the records just…stop.
“So the Order hid the records, since it made them look bad,” I say. “Why not just burn them?”
“I’m not sure. The records didn’t tell us everything. We don’t know why they fought, for example. Or for how long. Or what happened after the firebirds drove them from this fortress.” Her voice hardens. “Or even why the Order took command of it in the first place.”
The tone of her voice prickles something along the back of my neck. “But you have a theory.”
A ghost of a smile crosses her face. “I wouldn’t be the Penderyn if I didn’t.”
“The stars?” I ask.
She nods. “I think they were doing what they are now—trying to funnel their power again. And the firebirds stopped them.”
“That’s why you’ve set up here. You think there’s something special in the bones of the earth.”
“A little of that, a little of this.” She gestures with her spoon toward the towering keep. “Mostly, it’s because if they attack us here, we have a retreat.”
She doesn’t say it outright, but I read between the lines. The tombs she mentioned. The underground stores. There must be a tunnel leading from the keep. If they were ever outnumbered, they’d have a way out.
“Mind telling me where it is?” I ask.
A wide smile curls her lips. “And give you the information the Order needs to ambush us?”
“If you want my help, you’re going to have to trust me eventually.”
“You’re right.” She pats my back, hard enough to jolt me forward half a step. “So don’t let us down today, Swynwraig.”
After we’ve finished with our porridge, we head into the same hut as the night before.
A large circular table has replaced the chairs, covered with a colorful map depicting the entire continent, even the human islands beyond these northern shores.
The air is warmer, damp with old timber and the musty smell of ink and parchment.
Outside, wind presses against the walls, and the beams give a low shudder in response.
The blond man from last night is already here. Both hands braced on the table, he frowns down at the map with furious focus, like he believes staring hard enough will force it to give up an answer.
He doesn’t look up as we enter. Taliesin stands across from him with his stony expression firmly in place. The iron catches the morning light spilling through the windows, and every so often his eyes flick toward it, like he’s constantly aware of its weight.
My chest tightens. No matter who he is or what he can do, no matter the chains…he has helped me. Seeing him like this makes my stomach turn. It’s not a manacle, and it’s not a chain, but it feels the same…no, it’s worse.
“Well, what are you thinking, Gethin?” Rhian asks, striding over to the table. She casts a furrowed glance at the map but stays well back, like she’s letting him take this lead on this.
“There’s no way around it. They’ll have to go from here,” he says, placing his finger on the map and tracing it along a curved line, “to here.” He looks up. “Should be fine on the way. Can’t guarantee a pleasant journey on the return.”
“Why not?” I ask.
“The dead,” they say in unison.
An involuntary shudder runs through me. “You keep talking about the dead and how the keep is haunted by them, but I heard no screams last night. Taliesin didn’t either.”
“No, it was a deathless night,” Rhian says.
Again with the deathless night. “I don’t know what that means.”
She waves her hand, dismissive. “It means they were sleeping. They do that sometimes.” She leans down, dragging her finger along the route her second just marked. “Never two nights in a row, though,” she muses.
I glance at Taliesin. “So you want me to go to…”
“A tomb,” Gethin supplies.
“You want me to go to a tomb?”
“The tomb of Arawn the Mighty, specifically.” Rhian smiles, then taps the back of her neck. “Use your Order magic to see if others of your kind were there recently. You can do that, right? Sense their talismans? And if you can figure out why they were there, even better.”
The god’s name sends a shiver of unease down my spine. It’s the same one the High Swynwragedd told me they want to bring back. It must be tied to their plan to harness the stars’ magic for themselves…which means they involved me in this without my knowledge.
A flare of anger burns hot in my chest. I’ve accepted they’ve been using me. I’ve accepted they’ve been lying. But this—this feels like a betrayal I can’t make sense of. They told Osian what he was getting involved in. Why not me?
They must have known I’d never agree. And so they twisted things.
They used my love for Osian against me.
And that…that is the thought that cuts through whatever hesitation is left.
My love is not a weapon for someone else to wield. It is mine.
“I’m not afraid of the dead,” I say in a firm, unyielding voice that sounds far less like me—controlled and beaten down—and more like a woman who’s had enough. “I will go.”
Surprise flickers in Rhian’s eyes, and dare I say it, respect. “Good. Can you be ready within an hour?”
“Remove the iron from Taliesin’s head.”
Her eyes flick toward him. Her throat bobs. “No.”
“All right, then I’ll do it myself.”
“It will only release to the person who attached it,” she says.
“That doesn’t apply to me.” I narrow my eyes at her, my voice full of command. “You will let me do it.”
I move before she can stop me, placing my hand on Taliesin’s left shoulder. Our eyes lock, and he kneels, so easily, so automatically it feels like habit.
Like we’ve done this before.
From behind me, I hear a sword whisper from its sheath, but I don’t turn.
“Stand down, Gethin,” Rhian murmurs.
I slide my fingers around the iron bands. They throb against my skin, the metal clinging to him like it doesn’t want to let go. I close my eyes and let the word come to me. It’s there, at the edge of thought and on the tip of my tongue, unknown to my mind until this moment. But it’s there now.
“Rhyddhau,” I whisper.
The band falls free. I lift it from Taliesin’s head and press it into his hands, so he can decide what to do with it.
He doesn’t take it at first. For a heartbeat, his fingers close around mine instead of the iron. Accidentally? I can’t tell.
My grip tightens before I mean it to, and at the same time his hold shifts just slightly, like he’s registering it the same moment I do. But neither of us moves to correct it.
Then the moment breaks. He takes the iron. And crushes it. The metal shatters like bone in his hands, and when he lets it fall, it clatters to the ground in ruined shards.
When I turn back to the rebels, I know my eyes are full of fire, daring them to challenge me—challenge us. But Gethin’s sword is sheathed, and Rhian has already turned back to the map. It’s like nothing happened at all. Strange.
“So, this is us.” She points at a circle on the far north, where the land slices into the sea like a forked tongue.
“Here’s the tomb. You can’t go through this spot in the middle.
It’s a bog this time of year. Go around.
” She traces the path with her finger. “Like Gethin said, you two should have no issues on the way there. Just get in, figure out what they were doing, and leave. Got it?”
“I assumed you’d send others with us,” I say, frowning. “And that you wanted us to retrieve the harp.”
“Don’t trust you well enough for that yet.
And if you give yourselves up to the Order, I don’t want my people caught up in it.
” She presses her finger harder against the map, turning her skin pale at the tip.
“We think they were doing something here, relating to their plan. We need to know what it was.”
“You think any are still at the tomb?” Taliesin asks.
“Could be.” She flashes her teeth. “Though I expect you won’t be the one doing the giving-up if they are.” Her brow rises. “You sure you trust her not to turn you in? Why not just go back to your tower?”
His eyes darken. “I’m making my own oath. Where she goes, I go.”
A tremor goes through me at the conviction in his words, but I shove it down quickly.
He only means it because he believes our fate is entwined, like something beyond us has pulled us together, forcing our souls to walk the same dangerous road.
And that we’re bound to see this through, even if it ends in the undoing of the both of us.