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I wanted to lie, wanted to insist she was wholly wrong. I couldn’t.

“Is that true?”

I spun around. Adira stood in the doorway, the fur I’d used wrapped around her shoulders.

Her brow furrowed as her eyes tracked the hideous veins curving over my hips. “The Well made you fade more than others?”

Gwyn had the decency to offer a sympathetic glance my way, but only for a moment. In the next, she went to Adira and nodded. “The degeneration latched onto Kage when he gave his blood to see how to restore the king and queen. Now . . . he will not last through the Nóttbrull lunar alignment if it continues.”

Adira blinked back to me. “When you say you won’t last . . .”

“It is corrupting my magic. I will feel nothing, care for nothing, only the cruelest ambitions of the heart. I will be as the dark mages of the last great war.”

“Cruel ones.” Adira’s face pinched. “No!” The word came out more forceful than anticipated. She closed the distance between us, tears lining her lashes. “No.”

“There is no stopping it without the throne restored and the power of our land,” I said, voice rough. “Trust me, I have tried.”

“No,” she shouted again. “You say I am a curse breaker, then we will break it. I am . . . at home, at long last, and you . . . you all are part of it. I won’t let this happen.”

I shook my head. “I will battle this until I have no fight left, Wildling. But you must be prepared for an outcome you do not want. We all have had to face that. Even if Destin does gain thepower, even if we pull the degeneration back, it might still take too long for me.”

“Forgive me, but that answer isn’t good enough,” Adira snapped.

“Cricket.” Cy scratched the side of his face, then arched, so his head poked out from beneath the table. “We’re all desperate in this fight for our darling prince.”

“Yes. We are, but it seems he is not.” A tear fell onto her cheek. “You woke something inside me, and it is like I’m finally living. I’m not ready to be finished with you, Thief.”

I could not keep away. My palms trapped her face. “How do I put those tears back in your eyes, Wildling?”

“Fight,” she whispered. “Do not resign yourself to a wretched end. Not yet.”

By the skies, I wanted to vow it. This moment was as though no one else stood near us. I wanted to swear it would be well, that this would end happily. But I could never promise such a thing, not when she would see through the frayed ends of such a lie.

“If the Well asks me to take on the degeneration,” Adira began softly, “you were planning to take more on my behalf, weren’t you?”

“I don’t believe it will. So far, it seems by taking it myself, no one else’s blood has been impacted,” I admitted. Once I was spent, there was no telling who would go next. “But if so, yes, I won’t allow this to happen to you.”

Her eyes flashed. “Not your choice to make. Take me to this magic water well, and I guess we’ll see if the curse breaker blood is as epic as you all think. No matter what it asks of me, I will keep fighting. Not for you, of course. I’m doing this to protect Cyland, obviously.”

“As it should be, Cricket,” Cy muttered, once more tucked beneath the table.

I grinned and brushed my lips along her ear. “You know, I am the royal in this room, but you’re rather demanding.”

“Only when I’m right.”

The back door of the cottage slammed open. Asger, carrying a stack of kindling, huffed and kicked a glop of mud offhis boots. “Gaina abandoned us for her grove. Strange woman, that one.” Asger came to a halt, his eyes drifting on the possessive hold I kept on Adira’s face, to the somber expressions. “What the hell did I miss?”

“Nothing.” I looked to Adira again. “Prepare to leave. We’re going to the Sanctuary of Seers.”

CHAPTER 29

Adira

Asger,Cy, and Gwyn left before us to barter with the farmers living in the Greenwood for a few mares. They planned to meet us at the gates of the Sanctuary meadows.

“Midnight blooms as far as the eye can see,” Gwyn told me as we’d strapped supplies onto the haunches of Sleipnir. “The pollen emits a scent that soothes the muscles and mind, so those who enter the first doors of the Sanctuary will be open to communing with the goddess.”

“As for me,” Cy interjected, tossing his hood over his head. “I think they smell like piss.”