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“What is all this?” Zaria finally asked when we’d left the densely populated streets of the city behind.

“We are going back to your village, like you wanted, Sol.”

“What?” Her brows pulled. “Really?”

“Really.”

A small smile spread, but then she studied the packs again. “Wait. Surely you don’t mean to make us ride horses to the Fourth Kingdom through the volcano wastelands.”

“I do.”

“We could fly and get there in a fraction of the time.” It amused me that she was now so accustomed to dragon flight, she couldn’t fathom a need for horses.

“I don’t want anyone to know where we are going, and when they realize we are gone, they will look for a dragon. I don’t know if you know this, Sol, but I’m quite easy to spot.”

She scoffed, then paused. “Wait, they’ll look for us? Are we going to be in trouble for leaving?

I shrugged, playing it off casually. “We aren’t prisoners.”

She studied me. “But we are supposed to be training, and we are under some intense scrutiny, aren’t we?”

“I don’t think the King will be pleased we are taking some unscheduled time away from the palace, but we aren’t forbidden from leaving. I see it as a gray area.”

“But you felt strongly enough about us leaving now to chance angering the King?” she asked.

I breathed in the cool, pre-dawn air, and felt free for the first time in weeks. “It was getting hard to function in the palace.”

“I noticed.”

“I was getting the feeling if we don’t meld soon, the King will start taking drastic action to try and force it to happen.”

“Drastic, how?”

“I don’t know exactly, since a meld can’t be forced by any method known to fae. But the King has the High Priest of the Temple of Avalon in his ear, and according to Kiera, the temple has a dark history when it comes to soul bonds.”

“Dark?”

“Back before the Hundred Years War, when old magic had a dark side, the priests used dark spells to force soul bonds. They guarded their rituals and knowledge fiercely among the elder high priests. They didn’t record it or share it, so it lived only in the minds of the elders. They believed that if a soul could live on with the Goddess, then one could live on in this world, too. If a high priest took ill or grew old and was dying, it’s thought that through a dark ritual, they could bond the soul and the knowledge of the elder into that of one of the under priests, therefore keeping the elder living on in this world, rather than him going to the Goddess, and keeping his knowledge alive.”

“What in all the kingdoms?” Zaria muttered.

“Look, it sounds like an old magic tale you’d hear over too much ale in the wrong side of the city to me, but Kiera seemed to think that the elder high priests of the temple still believe in the old ways. And they are probably crazy enough to believe that kind of magic actually existed.”

Even in the dark, I could see the horror on Zaria’s face.

“Sol, don’t look so worried. Magic like that doesn’t really exist. But with things how they are, is angering the King any worse than staying and getting nowhere with our meld while he gets radical ideas in his head about how he can help it along?”

“No. Definitely not.”

“Exactly, so I think it’s a good time for us to head back to your village. Besides, I can’t stand doing nothing to for Kol. I feel helpless. Time away will be good.”

THIRTY-NINE

ZARIA

Riding beside him gave me a lot of time in my own head. It took us hours to get outside of the capital and the surrounding towns. It went on for miles. Then we were surrounded by farmlands on a busy market road, but the earth was dry, and the horses steady. I enjoyed the scenery. I’d never left my village, and in the weeks I’d been at the palace, we kept to such a small vicinity I hadn’t seen any of what was beyond, except from Nyx’s back.

“How are you holding up?” he asked.