Chapter 24
Taliesin strikes a torch to light, and the sudden flames rumble like distant thunder.
Shadows writhe through the trees, and the heavy silence that follows thickens the dread in my stomach.
Before, the crack of twigs and the rustle of leaves marked the woodland creatures fleeing, hiding from intruders, from us.
Now the forest is still. The animals have already run.
Bryn is silent on Taliesin’s shoulder, huddled against him, face pressed into his neck. He strides forward with the flames dancing across his face, his eyes narrowed on the path ahead, like if he glares at the dead hard enough, they’ll leave us be.
I fall into step beside him, my pack thumping against my shoulder blades.
“You’ve come across them before, right?” I ask. “Tell me what to expect. What, exactly, are we walking into here?”
“They scream at you until you forget your own mind,” he mutters.
“But they can’t hurt us?”
“Physically? No.” His eyes darken. “But it’s been many months since I got surrounded by them. They haunt my dreams, even now.”
“Lucky for me I don’t dream.”
“What?” He frowns. “Of course you dream.”
“Maybe I do, but I don’t remember them.” Just like so much else I forget.
“Hmm. We need to do something about that.” He glances my way, the firelight illuminating the strong angles of his face—and that ancient power in his eyes I’ve only seen him reveal a handful of times.
“There’s nothing to be done,” I say softly. “There’s no controlling it.”
Before he can respond, a whispered scream winds through the trees, prickling the back of my neck.
I slow my steps. Beside me, Taliesin does the same.
A moment later, another cry rises from deeper in the forest. Its high pitch scrapes across my eardrums, sending a sharp flare of pain through my skull.
I hiss between my teeth, overcome by the urge to double over. I shove it down, forcing myself to stand tall. Another scream rents the night.
That voice. I know it. I often hear it when I raise the dead, echoing in my mind until I collapse.
And as terrible and mournful as it is, something in me stills when it fills the air again, ringing through the forest like a warning bell.
But somehow I know it’s not warning me. I do not need to be afraid. Not of this.
“What is it?” Taliesin asks.
“We keep moving,” I say.
He frowns but doesn’t argue, handing me the torch when I reach for it.
I take the lead now, driving us deeper into the forest, toward the sound.
Every few steps, it rises again, but it never grows louder.
If anything, it softens. As the hour stretches on, more voices join the first, but they are no longer screams. Just sobs of sadness and pain.
We reach a section in the path I don’t remember passing on the way here, where a ring of sticks stands a few feet off the trail. Something calls me toward it. I step off the path and move inside the ring, tipping back my head to gaze up at the starless sky.
“What are you doing?” Taliesin asks. For the first time since I met him, he sounds afraid.
The wails build, echoing through the forest like a song. I close my eyes and let them wash over me, let the cries fill the hollow spaces deep inside my mind.
And then—shockingly, violently—an ancient memory sparks to life.
In my mind’s eye, a face hovers above mine.
Silver hair falls across his brow. It’s shorter than it is now, only brushing the edges of his tipped ears.
He looks younger. No, older. No…just different.
A silver crown rests on his head, and his high-collared tunic smells like…
“Rowan blossom,” I breathe.
He smiles. “Angha—”
“Swynwraig?” A worried voice sounds in my ear.
A hand closes around my arm and pulls me from the ring of sticks, and the memory vanishes like mist. Taliesin’s face hovers in front of mine. Long hair to his shoulders. No crown on his brow. Different. No, the same. But now he smells of leather and blood instead of rowan.
As soon as I think it, the thought flutters away. I try to grasp it in my mind, but it slips past me, like water through my fingers. For reasons I don’t understand, I start to cry, the grief too great to contain.
It’s then I notice how silent the forest is. All the screams are gone.
Taliesin cups my face, concern etched deep into his features. “Please tell me what’s going on. Are you hurt? Do I need to do something? Tell me what you need to be okay.”
“I don’t understand what’s happening,” I whisper. “But something hurts.”
He nods grimly. “It’s the fucking dead. We need to get you out of here.”
I nod and let him guide me away, even though he’s wrong. The dead may have led me here, to this ring of sticks—or whatever they are. But they’re not the source of all this anguish. I remembered something. Something that came and vanished just as quickly, but left a gaping wound behind.
It has something to do with Taliesin. Something important. Something that makes my chest ache with loss.
He's right about one thing, though. I have visited him in his dreams. How? I don’t know. When is even a better question. But I do know one thing with absolute certainty. The Order made sure I never remembered.
Hours pass without incident. I’ve never been so grateful for silence. Taliesin keeps his hand on the small of my back the entire way, like touch alone will hold me together. Eventually we stop at a stream to rest and wash the day from our skin.
Even with the night turning the air cold, I welcome the shock of the water. One splash, and it feels like it might scour the horror from me entirely.
Taliesin offers me the last of the salted beef.
I push it away. “I’m not hungry.”
“You should eat,” he says. “We have another hour or two of travel.”
“I can’t stomach it. Not right now.” I hug my arms to my chest.
“Do you want to talk about what that was back there?” he asks lightly, like it means nothing in the world to him. But there’s a tension in his jaw that betrays him. He cares. I just don’t understand why.
“No.” I sigh, my hands dropping to my sides. “I don’t want to talk about it because I don’t understand it. I don’t even really remember what it was. Something came to me and then left. A memory, I think.” Or a dream?
His brow furrows. “So you remembered something. And now you don’t?”
“It left me when you pulled me away from the sticks.”
He frowns and glances over his shoulder, like he’s considering turning us around. “You should have said something. We could have stayed, tried again.”
“I was rattled,” I say quietly. “Still am.”
“We can go back.”
The very idea makes my bones ache with exhaustion. “It’s been hours.”
“These are your memories, Swynwraig,” he says in a serious voice. “And where you go, I go.”
I heave a long, tired sigh. He’s right. And if he’d asked me an hour ago, I would have said yes.
The farther we’ve walked, the less certain I am about what I felt back there.
It could have been a memory or a dream. Or maybe it was nothing more than illusion, cast upon me by the dead.
And after the long trek here—after fighting the rogues, after everything we’ve seen and heard today—all I want is somewhere dry, safe, and warm.
Tomorrow is another day to face the horrors of the world. I don’t want any more of them tonight.
“We can always come back later,” I say.
He scowls. “Why does it feel like you’re running from something?”
“Because I’m tired Taliesin.” I throw up my hands, letting my irritation bleed into my words.
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe we should go back.
But whatever that was, it shook me. I just…
I need a minute. Better yet, a few hours of sleep.
A break before something else comes running at me. There’s only so much I can take.”
He blinks, then holds up the beef. “You should eat this.”
A laugh bursts out of me, and tears of frustration burn my eyes. “Are you serious right now? I say all that, and you tell me to eat?”
“Trust me,” he says, pressing the food into my trembling hands. “This will help. It won’t fix everything, but it’ll help.”
He walks away, heading to the path to wait while I finish at the stream. I frown after him and wonder why it seems like his hair is longer than it was earlier today. No, that can’t be right. Something tickles the back of my mind…There’s something there. But what is it?
Bryn scampers over, breaking my train of thought.
She circles once before flicking her tail, her eyes locked on the beef.
With a slight smile, I tear it in half, passing her a piece before grudgingly eating the other.
She prances in place, devouring the meat in two quick bites, chattering all the while.
The food settles into my stomach like a grounding weight. And suddenly, I realize I’m famished. A rumble tears through me, loud enough to wake the dead. I dig into my pack, retrieve the bread, and finish what’s left. Crumbs scatter across the forest floor.
Distant voices drift through the trees. Wait, voices? I stiffen, motioning for Bryn to be silent.
There should be no one else out here. Could the rogues have followed us?
No. The rogues were too far gone to have cared where we were headed, if they even made it out of the tomb at all. My stomach turns at the thought, the remains of the meal curdling with it.
Hooking my pack over my shoulder, I stay low and move through the trees, Bryn right on my heels. I meet Taliesin on the path. He’s already alert, eyes scanning the trees, one hand resting on the hilt of his sword. Traitorously, I feel relieved that he’s here.
“See anyone?” he asks in a quiet voice.
I shake my head. “Only heard them. There’s at least three. Maybe more.”
He inhales, nostrils flaring. “Smoke.”
I catch it a second later. Woodsmoke curls through the trees, and beneath it, the richer scent of roasting meat, thick with fat. The crackle of flames and murmur of distant voices fill the air as we listen. It’s a camp. A close one.
It could be nothing. A few travellers passing through or merchants ferrying their goods from one port to the other. But wouldn’t that be an unlikely coincidence?
“Your choice,” Taliesin says. “What do you want to do?
He’s defaulting to me? It’s the first time he’s done that. Stars, it might be the first time anyone has done that.
“There’s a chance it’s the Order,” I say. “And that they have Arawn.”
His brow rises. “And so you want to steal a dead god from the Order.”
“I’m not so sure he’s dead.”
He huffs a breath, then shakes his head. “All right, but I ask that you let me go in front. If they spot us, my magic is the easiest way to end them.”
He says it so casually, like murdering three men in the middle of the woods is as natural as breathing. I brace myself for the flicker of unease, or the rise of nausea in my throat. But neither comes. If anything, I feel a thrum of excitement, my earlier exhaustion banished now.
It should trouble me, how eager I am to fight the Order. But fuck it. They used me. They deceived me. They took what I am and twisted it into control.
If love was the blade they forged for me, then I will learn to wield it myself.
I’m no one’s pawn anymore.