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CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

W E TRAVELED TO ARALINTH . It was quicker to get to, and Rheih and Feron were already there. Syrra had not left Riven and Nikolai’s side from the moment we stepped back into the Dead Wood. Tears streamed down her face as she caressed Nikolai’s hair, ignoring the way the shorn sides of his head had started to grow out in thick, pressed chunks.

I didn’t use my healing gift. I wouldn’t do anything without instruction. My gifts were powerful, but solely relying on them had cost Nikolai his mother. I wouldn’t let desperation take him too.

Vrail waited at the edge of the city. The golden leaves of Sil’abar cast warm streaks of light on her face as she ran for us. For Nikolai.

“Is he alive?” she croaked, tripping on her long robe as her black braid trailed behind her.

I nodded but Vrail didn’t see it.

“Someone tell me he’s alive!” she screamed, falling to her knees.

“He is,” Riven answered, stooping down so Vrail could see Nikolai’s bruised face and the faint rise of his chest.

“He’s home.” Riven’s voice gave way to a sob just as Feron and Rheih walked out of Sil’abar.

I put my hand on Riven’s shoulder, feeling the weight of his rasps under my skin. “Let’s bring him to Feron and Rheih. They will be able to tell us what Damien did to him.”

Riven nodded and carried Nikolai’s limp body to the healer’s quarters inside. No one spoke as Rheih completed her inspection. She poked and prodded. She used instruments I didn’t even know the names of to check inside his ears and up his nose. “Was he conscious when you got him?” She pulled open his lips and checked his gums.

I nodded. “I used my healing gift to put him to sleep.” I turned to Feron. “Just like you taught me. And then I numbed his pain, and he hasn’t woken since.”

“That’s all?” Rheih’s yellow eyes stared up at me over Nikolai’s matted coils.

I swallowed. “Yes.” Fear slipped into the word; it came out breathy and unsettled.

Rheih stepped back from the white stone slab Riven had placed Nikolai on and started rifling through her shelves. Vrail grabbed his hand and refused to move even while Rheih muttered under her breath and walked around the seat Feron had made for the Halfling.

Rheih pricked Nikolai’s arm with a tiny rod. She studied the red drop of blood, sniffing it twice before bringing it to her lips.

She lashed her tongue and spat on the ground.

“What’s wrong with it?” Riven tensed.

Rheih pushed a gray curl back into her braid and started examining Nikolai’s body. Vrail flinched when she ripped through his shirt with a blade and revealed the bruises that covered his brown skin. “He’s ingested some kind of magical additive …”

I froze. “Damien gave him an elixir too?” The one Damien had given me had allowed him to peer into my dreams. What if his experiments on Nikolai had been worse than that?

“Perhaps.” Rheih tilted her head to the side, clucking her tongue. “Magic can affect the taste of blood. Sweet for blessings and sour—” Rheih’s face fell. Nikolai had not been blessed.

Gerarda crossed her arms. “A trap Damien set? Maybe he planned for Keera to heal Nikolai only for it to trigger something that would kill him.”

The blood drained from my face. I had never been so happy to have not used my powers since they’d awakened. “Is that possible?”

“Theoretically …” Rheih muttered to herself. “But I’ve tasted something similar before. I just need to find”—she lifted up Nikolai’s left wrist—“the marking.”

Gwyn stepped backward into Syrra, her eyes bulging at the sight of Nikolai’s now exposed wrist. The skin was swollen and red around the pattern, but it would settle to a pale silver. Just like hers.

Similar markings were now branded into his skin.

“I will kill him,” I seethed before my thoughts caught up with me. “But how was Nikolai able to leave the palace if Damien tethered him there?”

Feron’s hold on his cane tightened as he leaned in closer, examining the tether marking for himself. “A tether can have many uses. Gwyn was tied to the palace but that does not mean that is what Nikolai is tied to.” He muttered something to Rheih in Elvish.

Her yellow eyes were wide. “I did not know a Mortal could set such powerful magic.”

“He’s using Halfling blood to do it.” Bile crawled up my throat.

Rheih tilted her head. “Blood is a powerful catalyst, but it’s never been used to bind a life to—”

“There’s never been blood like the Halflings’ before.” I turned to Feron. “That day in the Rift, my mother said she didn’t know why Halfling blood had turned amber. I never cared to ask then, but before their sacrifice, Halflings bled red, didn’t they?”

Feron paused. “I cannot be sure. Halflings were not unheard of before the Blood Purges, but they were very rare—and all were born to our eastern kin where the Mortals had landed and settled. There was not much time between those years and the start of Aemon’s Purges. And by then, almost all the Halflings who had been born were slain or died protecting their people. I do not think I learned of amber blood until after the Treaty was signed.”

“What if the reason I can turn Halflings into Amber Fae isn’t because I have the power to give them gifts, but the power to awaken them?”

Feron blinked. “Their blood is already—”

“Imbued with magic. A living capsule of the Light Fae’s magic in the only people who had the hope of surviving Aemon’s plot to kill the Elves and Fae entirely.”

“That doesn’t answer the question though,” Vrail interrupted, not showing any interest in the discovery we had just made. She only had eyes for the Elf in front of her. “What did Damien tie Nikolai to?”

Rheih lifted Nikolai’s wrist to Feron, pointing at something in the markings. She nodded at Gwyn. “Show me your ankle.”

Gwyn stilled but pulled off her boot and sock. She lifted her foot to the edge of the slab for Rheih to inspect.

“Ancient runes,” she mumbled, running to the wall to grab a large piece of glass. Its edges were rounded and it bulged out on one side so it looked like a giant raindrop when she pressed it to Gwyn’s scar.

Gwyn winced from the cool glass. Rheih studied the markings around her ankle and then Nikolai’s wrist, the pattern magnified under her tool. She nodded at Feron. “Can you read them?”

Feron crouched down, putting all his weight on his cane. When he looked up, his eyes were wide. “ Ziiba ,” he whispered. “And the other?” Rheih lifted Gwyn’s ankle only an inch but it was enough to throw her off balance. Fyrel caught her.

“ Asiina ,” Feron said with a sorrowful look on his face.

“Water and stone?” Riven started to pace along the slab. “That’s all we have to go on?”

Syrra’s inhale was sharp as she put the meaning together. I turned and saw the worry in her eyes. “Stone is one of two symbols our ancestors used to represent a city or a home. The other is that of a tree.”

Like the burls of Myrelinth and the stone dwellings of Aralinth. The two ways the Elverin had always built their homes.

“So Gwyn was tethered to a place, and Nikolai is tethered to … the sea?”

A thick tear dropped from Vrail’s cheek and landed on Nikolai’s forehead. “These runes are rudimentary, translating them properly without the full context is much more likely to be wrong than it is to be right.” Vrail pointed at the rune. “This could mean water, yes. But it could be any body of water. It could be a vial that Damien could smash at any time.” Vrail’s chest broke into a small sob, but she forced herself to push through. “But it could also be less literal. Water is used to represent things that flow or have a cycle. Magic or spring, for example.”

My stomach plummeted through the floor. “Look again, there must be more information than just that!” Panic struck my heart; it hammered in my chest like a caged beast vying to get out.

But Vrail’s expression was pure defeat. “I can’t translate a spell from a single rune, Keera.”

I turned to Feron and Rheih, but they both shook their heads.

Gwyn pulled on her boot. “We might not know how to decode the spell that set the tether, but we know the man who did it. Damien wouldn’t create it in the first place if he couldn’t use it somehow.” She lifted her chin. “It gives him an edge.”

Riven scoffed. “Or it is nothing but a puzzle with no answer to waste our time.”

Elaran tugged on one of her curls. “What would have happened if Keera had blown up the palace of Koratha instead of the dam at Silstra?” She nodded at Gwyn’s ankle.

Feron’s mouth went flat. “A tether is made of two parts. If the bond is not severed and one of the parts is destroyed, so is the other.”

Gwyn’s bottom lip protruded, more fascinated than worried. “So I would have died.”

I fought the urge to vomit as Feron nodded.

“That’s the threat.” Gerarda stopped toying with her blade. “Damien wants us to know that at any moment—”

“He can take Nikolai from us.” Riven finished for her. “Permanently.”

My shoulders wilted. “So he would have tethered it to something small enough to move and break.” I swallowed. “It could be anything.”

Syrra caressed her nephew’s face. “I will storm Koratha and gut the pretender myself.”

“He would destroy it the moment you walked through the door out of spite.” Riven punched the stony wall hard enough that his knuckles bled.

Gerarda scowled. “We do anything that displeases Damien and we risk killing our friend?”

Riven wiped the blood on his cloak. “Or wait for Damien to destroy the tether—and Nik with it—just before the battle starts. He has used chaos and grief as weapons already.” Riven looked down at his friend. I didn’t know what was eating at him more, the guilt or the grief.

I held back my own tears. That had always been Damien’s tactic. Careful chess moves that ensured he had a way of bringing our rebellion to its knees at his whim. We could transform every Halfling in our ranks to fight him, but Damien knew we would be distracted with such a threat hanging over our heads.

Nikolai’s life was in Damien’s hands, and it was only a matter of time before Damien would claim it.