Chapter 26
Elsedora
Our Griffiths landed in a snow-streaked meadow south of Lamoreaux. Small patches of dead grass stuck up through the frost.
Wildflowers overtook this area in spring. But now, in the heart of winter, the only color the meadow afforded us came from the pines towering around it and the red berries clinging to bramble bushes beneath the trees.
Each week Cassidee forced me out here to train with her, even after I’d mastered most of my Wind-wielding abilities. I’d never been terrible with blades.
Ryn had made sure of that—after I’d tried and failed to kill him a few times. Krait’s faith in him was the only reason I’d stopped trying. That and my weakening to his charm.
“Let me help you with that,” Ryn had once said, and then corrected my offensive position against him with an infuriating smirk. It’d taken over a year for me to warm up to the Moon-wielding Prince of a land that had destroyed mine.
Mayra bobbed her head impatiently for me to dismount. Cass’ Griffith, Paren, ruffled his neck feathers before snapping his beak at Mayra in a warning to keep her troublesome antics to herself.
I needed to hit something today.
Cass and I handled things much the same way—it’s why we got along. If I kept moving, training, doing, traveling, then I wouldn’t have time to think about my injured friend. Or her cursed son...
Angeline wasn’t doing well. Like a coward, I’d stopped visiting last week—unable to see her so frail, and hurting.
“You look distracted,” Cass said as I dismounted.
I shrugged.
Each passing moon reminded me that the calm would end.
I’d run all my leads for relics dry. The moonstone would not show Asterie how Caym might rise despite her best efforts. He may not have a body to return to, but Caym had faced us before through envoys.
A new war would come to my doorstep after I’d finally found my way back home. The hollow halls of Lamoreux still lacked something.
A home filled with laughter.
Family around a table.
The way it once had been.
Cass cleared her throat, expecting an answer.
“No more distracted than usual. Where is Wyeth today?” I asked. Cass’ spritely partner sometimes joined us to harvest from the woodlands surrounding the meadow for her potions.
“She has enough juniper and winterberry. She’s helping Amara prepare for the Sheffield wedding. The King needed some wrangling. Something about cold feet.”
The South Corridor had long been ruled by the Sheffields. In the first few years of our friendship, Emmerick had admitted to me what had happened to the boy’s uncle.
Under Caym’s influence, Em had knocked King Sheffield from his horse while he was out for a morning ride along the coast. Em had looked haunted the whole time he’d recounted the way Sheffield begged for mercy before Caym wielded Death against him. He had been able to do nothing to stop it.
“Is it going to cause problems?” I asked. We had enough at stake. We didn’t need worries of rulers in Henosis muddying relationships in the Corridors.
“No, no. You know Lyl. He’s much like his uncle. Kind and reasonable. Just young and indecisive. He’s no Bringham.”
I grated my teeth at the mention of the West Corridor King—a nuisance at best and a liability at worst. He’d held steadfast in his ruling that the West Corridor would still be a magic-free land, and he still made unruly demands of us.
“Bringham’s a weasel,” I muttered.
Cass unsheathed her long sword with a chuckle. “A weasel that desperately wants in your breeches.”
Scoffing, I pulled my swords from my back and spun the leather hilts in my palms. I preferred the lighter weight of two shorter blades. “I mean, who wouldn’t?”
She huffed a laugh. “If I entertain that statement, Wyeth might vine from the bushes and strangle me.”
I cracked a smile and shook my head. “Things are alright—between you?”
Cass sighed. “She’s upset that I don’t want to go back to the cabin...”
This was what we did. We shared, and then we beat the living shit out of each other to forget the sharing.
Centuries ago, Cass and Wyeth ran away from courtly life to raise a daughter together.
Wyeth had been married to a Prince of Phynx, an older brother of Ryn’s—there had been so many Toth heirs.
Their father, the King of Phynx, made a hobby of quelling any threat against him through execution.
Including when the threat came from his own kin.
“Why won’t you?” I pressed.
“Because it’s a shit place to revisit, even in honor of Rena. It holds both wonderful memories and horrid ones. The bad sticks with me more, whereas for Wyeth she only sees the good. Would you want to visit the wreckage of the amphitheater every year?”
I shook my head. “No…”
Their daughter had been killed during the Great Wars.
When Firose had offered them positions in the high towers to enforce the new Order, to dismantle the kingdoms, their grief had clouded all reason to refuse her.
Yet their relationship had grown strained from strict rules against the High Enchantresses holding any bonds of the heart.
I swallowed and fought the burn at the back of my eyes. Everyone I loved had endured so much suffering.
Paren’s wings beat the air, and he shrieked before taking flight, off to fish in the lake. Mayra nudged my elbow as though asking for permission.
“Off you go.” I shooed her. “Listen for the whistle,” I said, reminding my easily distracted beast. She had a penchant for wandering too far. With a happy swing of her neck, she spread her wings, and her golden feathers ruffled before she sprang after Paren and trailed close behind him.
Cass took her place across from me. “Do you think that should King Mattock ever wake, he would continue his alliance with Bringham?”
A good old topic reversion. Cass was excellent at those.
I snorted. “Not a chance,” I said too surely, and her brows rose.
“You seem convinced,” she teased.
Shrugging, I added, “I suspect that alliance only thrived because of Caym’s influence. That is not how King Mattock would rule.” My tone was too defensive, and Cass raised a hand.
“I meant no ill will toward him.”
“I know,” I ground out. “Are you ready? Or would you like to continue to chitchat about a bunch of men who aren’t here?”
She smirked. “I was born ready to fight, Red.”
With a sweep of her free arm, a gust of wind clawed at the thickets and pulled branches free. They knocked me from my feet. My stomach met the ground, and the air burst from my lungs and wouldn’t return.
The damned woman never missed an opportunity to get the first strike. She launched at me. We shared Source magic, so we could not lethally wound one another with Wind alone. The sword she swung at my head would deliver that blow, though.
I raised both blades, blocking her swing, and then kicked her away, flipping backward to rise. “Sources, Cass. Care to tell me when we are beginning?”
“A changing wind gives no warning. You’re forgetting it is your tool. Use it or lose... again,” she taunted. Cass’ mousy-brown hair caught a gale of wind that she spun around herself to wield. She would try to knock me down—most times, she succeeded.
As the gust barreled toward me, I parried it with a barrier of my own, and our winds twisted together, kicking up dead leaves and icy slush in a twirl between us.
“There you go!” she shouted before launching in for her next strike.
For the rest of the afternoon, I narrowly avoided getting my ass beaten.
“I’d like to explore the eastern coastline tomorrow,” I panted out. “There’s a ruin of an old village south of Laome.”
Cass nodded, though her slackened posture told me she was growing tired of the fruitless searches. No evidence pointed to where the third relic lay. No signs led to a way to break the Sethe curse either. The wind guided me nowhere.
Angeline was growing more ill.
What if Emmerick lost her without ever getting to say goodbye? Leo’s hope waned each day that the fever refused to break.
“You don’t need to come along. I can ask Fen,” I said with a wave of my hand.
“No, no, I’ll be there. Someone’s got to make sure you don’t get yourself killed.”
I huffed a laugh, and we fought on.
My limbs were fatigued by the time I pulled the whistle out from beneath my sweaty tunic. The same chain used to hold a key that I tried my hardest not to think about.