Chapter Forty-Nine #2
Because I’ve seen this look on a dozen different faces, but never on one of my wolves.
“No…” Gripping her shoulder, I pull. Shove. “Nessa? Nessa—come on, stop playing.”
She doesn’t respond.
“Nessa!” I shake her harder—scream her name—as she lies back staring at nothing.
Until I push too hard and her mouth falls open, a glint of starlight resting on her tongue.
It’s like being thrown into a lake of ice, seeing Nessa’s soulstone.
“No. No.”
I snarl as I shut her jaw like I did with Kiara’s, scrabbling for the vial before tipping it over Nessa’s mouth. Not even a drop is left.
“You can’t do this to me—not now. Come on!”
I shake the vial again, until the final drop slides out, clinging to Nessa’s bottom lip.
We’re wolves. We’re fecking legends.
And legends don’t die.
Except she is.
Dead.
I don’t recognize the sound coming from my lungs then. Tearing past my throat. When I had the rings made for us to wear—the wolves that gave us all a howl—I meant for it to be frightening and triumphant. Not mournful. Not this.
“Faolan?”
My name comes from somewhere—I don’t know.
Don’t feckin’ care.
“Faolan, we have to go.”
“No!” I snarl, reaching for Nessa’s jaw. Closing her mouth again. “No, she’s not—”
“She is.” Kiara kneels, throwing a glance over her shoulder, soot and sweat cutting through the blood sticking to her cheek. “I’m so sorry, but she is. And you will be too if we don’t go.”
My hand trembles as I release Nessa’s jaw, coughs mingling with the wet cries tearing from my throat. “I can’t—can’t leave her. I won’t leave her.”
Kiara grips the back of my head—hard at first, then gentle, even as her eyes are terrified as she looks up at the trees. “You can try to carry her, but—Faolan, it’s getting worse. We have to go—as fast as possible.”
“No.” The cry is pitiful, even to my ears, thinned by a rattling cough.
Kiara smooths my hair back like she’s soothing a wounded pup. “For Saoirse. For the others. You have to come on.”
My hands drop to the dirt.
Awareness slips in then, of the heat, the smoke. The way those flames have caught up to us, bathing the tree trunks in red and their branches a fiery bronze. When I glance skyward, not even a hint of blue remains now.
“Faolan.”
Kiara takes my hand. Tugs.
And somehow, even with the earth dragging me downward, I stand up.
The blaze is enormous around us, sparks dancing across the floor—catching in Nessa’s already fiery hair.
I stare at it for a heartbeat. Two.
You’re no hero.
I run.
—
Kiara and I stumble out of the burning woods together, coughing hard enough that I taste blood.
She doubles over in the fresh air, hacking up dark black globs while I reach for my waterskin.
But I can hardly drink. My throat convulses around the urge, with the pain of breathing all that heat and the urge to lose myself in a cry.
I get a mouthful down. Two.
Then retch them back up again.
And even after, spit dribbling from my lips, I can’t help a foolish glance back.
Maybe it’ll be different. Maybe I was wrong.
But all I see is a wall of fire, and the dark shapes of tree trunks already whittling down to stumps.
“Again.” Kiara taps my waterskin, her voice a hollow husk. “You have to—” She retches, then lifts her own waterskin, gulping most of the contents down. I force myself to match her pace, drinking until the embers dull. Drinking until I feel human again. Except the moment I do, I see Nessa’s face.
The soulstone.
I spit the water out. “Godsdammit!”
“What?”
“Her—” I can’t get the word out. Have to, somehow. “Nessa’s soulstone.”
It flies out of my mouth like a curse. Wiping my lips with the back of my hand, I look at Kiara and shake my head. “I didn’t get it. Didn’t even think to.”
Her face crumples, and then Kiara drags her knees to her chest as she drops her forehead there. “We’ll go back for it. After…we’ll go back.”
As she murmurs the words, her voice already a rasp getting tighter, I remember nights in taverns or at the keep of Ashen Flame. At council meetings and the Damhsa Babhdoir. The wolves are my family, but they’re also Kiara’s friends.
My knees threaten to buckle. After a while, I stop fighting it and collapse to the ground beside her, jerking the shield free from my back by its straps.
There are no words we could say. No hopeful spin.
After a minute, I reach for my cousin’s hand.
Kiara flinches, curling it into a fist at first, but then slowly she unfolds her fingers.
It’s like the breaking of a dam.
My whole body shakes as a fresh sob overtakes me, and I break into a fit of coughs as Kiara slings her other arm around my back. Our skin’s hot from the race through the forest, but her cheek’s wet when it touches mine.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, holding me tighter.
For the first time in years, I don’t fight. “I am too.”
She holds me until a nicker sounds behind us: the horses nervously stamping the dunes. Kiara sets me back then, rubbing at her face. “We have to get out of here. They’ll bolt if the flames make it past the tree line.”
I stare numbly at the forest for just a second longer, then push to my feet. “All right. I—”
The horses’ ears prick up, all five of their heads turning slightly as a sixth comes racing across the dunes. There’s a guard on it, wearing Kiara’s colors, a tense look on his face. Instantly, Kiara stands and walks forward, until she can catch her mare’s reins just as he pulls up.
“Ríona Kiara! Sails were spotted on the horizon. Rí Maccus’s colors, bearing the sigil of Unbound Earth!”
Like before, the world stops moving.
But this time, I do not.
I sling myself into the gelding’s saddle before I’ve even made the decision to move, heels digging into the horse’s flanks—knees gripping tight as it whinnies and bolts up the path cut into the dunes.
Kiara grabs Maira’s shield and thunders just behind me, screaming commands at the mare, who hears them and dips her head forward as she plunges into a gallop, pulling ahead.
As we race to the castle, Nessa’s face swirls in the smoke around us, growing thinner and then vanishing where the wind pushes in.