Page 43

Forty-Three

Myron

Deal.

I can’t unhear Ephegos’s voice. That one single word that sealed all our fates.

The cold of the soil beneath me seeps into my bones, and part of me remembers to get to my feet and run after Ayna. Ayna, who Ephegos hauled up by her braid and dragged along as she screamed while I flailed in the mud, battling the force of the Flames holding me down until all I could do was watch her disappear. Then someone knocked me out with a blow to the back of my head. The rest is a haze of pain and a blur of motion as the Flames disappeared from the clearing like they never existed.

I’m too weak to straighten and bolt after them. If I’m honest, I wouldn’t even know what direction to start looking. Ephegos marched west, but he might have done that to confuse us, and I don’t dare follow my sense of smell for fear I might actually find Ayna and set off a chain of events that will lead to the magic of bargains punishing her in the worst possible ways.

“Myron,” Kaira hisses from a few feet away, and something sparks inside my chest. A flicker of hope that the part-Flame might still be able to reach into my mate’s mind, even from a little distance. “You all right?”

I straighten to my knees with a groan, cursing all the gods as I wipe the blood from my forehead where it is seeping through my hair from the injury at the back of my head. Whoever knocked me out must have used the pommel of their sword or a thick rock.

“No.” Bracing my hands on my knees, I glance over at where she’s rolling into a sitting position. “You?”

“No.”

The wind racing through the evergreens surrounding the clearing is the only sound for a long moment as we both catch our breaths. With each inhale, my heart fractures a bit more as I realize this is real. The words Ayna spoke, Ephegos accepting them—all of it is real.

I’ll be yours if you let him live. I swear not to try to return to his Crow Court if you let Kaira go as well. Alive. The bargain is valid as long as you promise to never lay a finger on either of them again.

I should be grateful to be alive, to get a chance to return to Aceleau and help Recienne win this war, but all I feel is a bleakness weighing down every last one of my heartbeats.

“She’s gone.” I don’t know if it’s Kaira or me speaking the words, but the pain lashing through my veins is mine.

“We’ll get her back.” That’s definitely Kaira’s voice because I know better than to hope a fae bargain can be broken. Herinor has been fighting his deal with Ephegos for months without much success. But when it comes to the core of his promises, he hasn’t made any progress. “As soon as our magic returns.”

“If we survive that long.” Ephegos and his Flame army aren’t the only ones to fear out here. “Without our powers, we might as well fall victim to wolves or bears.”

The look Kaira gives me might have made me laugh had I still had an ounce of humor in me. “We’re both bleeding and worn down from battle and that damned drug. If it’s not predators, it will be the weather. The storm brewing in the graying sky will hit soon. Nightfall is perhaps an hour away. We need to find shelter before we think about getting anyone back.”

I know I can’t go looking for Ayna. She promised not to try to return to my court. Exposing her to the possibility might kill her. Shoving aside the new wave of pain, I stagger to my feet, holding out a hand for Kaira. “Can you hear her?”

She understands without explanation, shaking her head with a grave expression as she takes it. “The serum made sure I’m as magically gifted as a human.” A ghost of a smile crosses her face. “Ayna isn’t the only one missing.” Pointing at the trees to the southeast, she takes a step closer to my side, her form shivering as another gust of wind assaults us. I have no cloak to offer and no magic to warm her, but I place a comforting arm around her shoulders.

“Herinor and Silas,” I think out loud.

A long silence passes between us, the thin stream of warmth seeping through our leathers the only affirmation we’re both still here.

Then—“Do you think that was Ephegos shooting them from the sky?”

The image of the tumbling birds flashes through my memory, graciously blocking out pictures of Ayna’s gaze as she bargained away her freedom to save us. “Possibly. I wouldn’t put it past him to have brought backup Crows, though. The other rebels are still missing, too.”

Like a shell, my rationality isolates the throb in my chest, subduing it the way I learned over ninety-nine years of losing one bride after another before the curse broke. My mind is so adept at it, I barely blink before Ayna’s encapsulated in the depths of myself, the bond between us the only thing that won’t be restrained no matter how hard I try. So I close my eyes for a beat, allowing the pain of loss and the despair to fill every last fiber of my being before I think of the love I hold for her and send that emotion down the bond like a silver lining. If she feels it, she’ll know I haven’t allowed myself to break, the same as I don’t want her to break.

“Do you think they’re still alive?” Another shiver shakes Kaira, and this time, the icy wind pushes through my layers as well. We need to find shelter before we make any decisions.

“If they are, they aren’t in a position to save us, or they’d have long come to our aid.” The words hurt, but even as I speak them, I know them to be the truth. With a shake of my head, I gesture behind us, north, the way we came into this clearing. “Let’s get back to the rebels’ safe house. If we’re lucky, Herinor and Silas are already waiting for us with the leftover rebels.” I don’t expect us to be that lucky, though the tension in Kaira’s shoulder seems to ease a tad at that small hope.

Together, we turn around, limping between the slain Flames toward the trees where we slip into the shadows.

Twilight cloaks the rebels’ house when we arrive what feels like hours later. The door still hangs open, the footsteps leading from and to the threshold multiplied by our own boots from when we ran out to find Andraya and Pouly. One of those pairs is Ayna’s.

The throb in my chest becomes strong enough to make it hard to ignore.

Kaira detaches from my arm, hobbling toward the stove where she bends over the pot sitting there. “The stew’s still warm.” Stirring with the ladle, she adds, “Not that I feel like eating.”

Neither do I, but we’ll need our strength before the end, so I square my shoulders and pick up a bowl from the counter, reaching for the ladle.

She hands it over without objection.

“If you want to go searching for Herinor and Silas anytime soon, you should eat, too. We’ll both need our strength.” With my chin, I gesture at the stack of bowls where I picked mine from, filling up the one in my hands and holding it out for her before picking the empty one she sets on the edge of the stove.

“Thanks.”

The soothing smell of herbs circulates in the kitchen, mingling with the odor of blood and sweat. At least, the temperature is rising quickly now that we’ve closed the door.

Kaira watches me ladle stew into my own bowl while she picks up a piece of bread from the cutting board at the center of the dining table and takes a hearty bite.

“How long do you think it will take for the drug to wear off?” She places a hand on her stomach as if expecting she’ll purge her system the way she’s experienced before by puking into a corner.

“I don’t believe we’ll go through the same painful detoxing process as before.” It’s a small hope, but I’m happy to grasp at straws right now. Filled bowl in hand, I walk over to the table and sit down across from her, following her lead with the bread and taking a bite. “We need to recover our strength and make a plan. If Herinor and Silas are still out there, they’ll do the same. They might even be searching for us.”

The last bit I add for Kaira’s sake, to give her something to cling to while I wonder if I’d sense if they died. We aren’t bonded in any way, but apart from my cousin, those two are the only Crows left in my court, and maybe that makes our connection special.

“Clio will come back for us,” Kaira huffs into her stew, bending low enough to warm her freezing face as she clutches the spoon tightly in her fingers—her bruised fingers, I notice. Black and purple blooms all over her hands like someone smashed them with a boulder.

“What’s that?” I reach for her hand, stopping a few inches away as I try to find a spot that isn’t playing all shades of night.

With a shrug, she lifts the spoon to her mouth. “Apparently, this is what happens when I siphon too much power.”

“A sign of burnout?” Not that I’ve ever seen anything similar.

“More like too much magic pushing at my skin from inside and outside my body at the same time.” Her gaze lifts from her hands to my face. “You don’t look any better by the way.”

On instinct, my fingers trace the scabbed wound along my cheek.

“I can clean this for you.” Gaze roaming the clay jars along the kitchen counter, she takes another bite of bread. “With my comparatively tiny gift, I needed to learn how to handle wounds without magic.”

“Your gift is the opposite of tiny,” I object, but we both know this was a past where she had been taught about her insignificance, where she’d learned to believe she was nothing more than a nuisance, not good enough to hunt or to fight for her own people. This new Kaira can siphon magic, turn it against its wielders.

Shaking her head once more, Kaira gets to her feet, obviously having found what she was looking for. “I still can’t heal myself much with magic.”

“I’d heal you if I could access my powers.”

“I know.”

Kaira picks the lid off one of the jars, pulling out a few dried leaves and throwing them into an empty bowl.

“Boil some water.” She doesn’t wait to see if I get to work but heads for the basin in the corner and rinses her hands until no trace of dirt or blood remains. Then she picks up a mortar and grinds the leaves before adding another few from a different jar while I set a pot of water on the stove and put another log of wood into the fire to keep it going.

For a moment, we both stare at the flames. My thoughts scream to return to Ayna, to pursue ways of getting her back from Ephegos’s claws, but that’s a dead end, so I force myself to make different plans instead, no matter the insistent throb in my chest that comes with having my heart ripped out.

“We should rest after we eat, wait to see how much of our powers will be restored. Then healing wounds is the next priority. If Clio returns, she’ll know to search here if she doesn’t find us or our corpses in the clearing.” I attempt a grin, but all that happens is a grimace matching the turmoil inside my mind.

“What if Tata got to Rogue and Sanja first and hurt them?” Kaira’s hands are shaking as she reaches for the pot of now-boiling water and pours a few drops into the bowl she set down on the counter.

“Then let’s hope Rogue’s wrath ended her.” I rarely wish for anyone’s death, but this betrayal—even though she isn’t part of my court, I feel it bone-deep. “And if she was too late, then there is nothing we can do from here right now—nothing but to find Silas and Herinor and the rebels so we bring back as many reinforcements as possible. Every blade counts, not only fairy ones.”

Kaira nods, picking a clean cloth from a cupboard and dipping it into the bucket of cold water next to the stove before she lifts it to my face. “Hold still.” She dabs at my cheek, cleaning away the crusted blood while I bite down on the grunts of discomfort the pressure causes. “We failed pretty miserably, didn’t we?” Before I can respond, she continues. “I’d hoped that this would solve everything, you know? That Andraya would help us with Cezux, that we’d get reinforcements, that we’d have enough forces to not just fight off Erina’s armies when they invade Askarea but to stop them before they get close. I’d hoped that it would be a fast and clean war and we’d all walk away from it to start new lives.” She pauses, dropping the now-bloodied cloth to the floor and dipping her fingers into the paste she’s created instead. “This might hurt for a moment, but at least, the wound won’t get infected if you don’t have your magic available right away to seal it.”

I can’t stop myself from sucking in a sharp breath at the stinging from the first contact, but Kaira halts, waiting for me to breathe normally again before she smears the edges of the wound.

“I’d hoped that maybe Herinor could break the oath to Ephegos.” Her voice is so soft I need to focus to hear her past the pain. “I’d hoped that this court would be more than a temporary thing forged by alliances of convenience.”

“Is that what you think it is?”

The moisture in Kaira’s eyes makes me wonder if I’ve ever taken the time to truly understand the female who’s so relentlessly worked for my own happiness. All those times she offered her ability to link my mind to Ayna’s when she was still stuck in her Crow form, but even before that—how she returned to Erina’s palace to make sure Ayna got out alive…

“I don’t know if I’ve ever thanked you for all you’ve done for her.”

Kaira’s gaze locks on mine, fingers stopping on the edge of my wound. “She’s my sister.” It’s all the explanation I need to understand that she did all of it for Ayna and none of it for me, even when I’ve benefited so greatly from her kindness.

“But she’s my mate, and what you’ve done for her, you’ve done for me. My gratitude is yours, Kaira. You’ll have a place in my court, always.”

A smile ghosts across her lips as she lowers her hands and washes them in the basin once more. “Try not to wipe the paste off.” She gestures to my cheek, heading back to the table to finish her meal.

“We’ll search for Herinor and Silas first thing tomorrow morning, Kaira.” The wound tingles where the ground herbs are drying into a thin layer covering and protecting it. Too exhausted to remain on my feet much longer, I slide back into my seat and pick up my spoon. “We’ll leave a message for Clio in case she comes looking for us, and then we’ll set out in the direction where we saw them fall.”

“They might be dead,” Kaira whispers without lifting her gaze from her stew, hands trembling around her spoon.

“Or they might be sitting in a cave, waiting for the night to pass.” It’s not the most probable option, but I’m ready to cling to hope if it means I can give something back to the female who’s so faithfully supported my mate all these months.

When Kaira finally meets my gaze, the fierce determination I’m so used to has returned. “They better not freeze.”

I force a smile. “They better not.”