Page 16 of Heart Cradle (The Melrathen Saga #1)

There was a muted blue moon that hung low and brooding, brushing the trees as though too heavy to rise.

Beyond, distant planets gleamed, some blood-red, some faint and greenish, others flickering in strange, nameless colours.

The whole sky felt wrong. Alien, wild but it was beautiful.

Maeve stared upward, heart lurching. Exhaustion and pain forgotten for a moment, but there was no time to get lost in it.

Aeilanna stumbled forwards first, staring at a tall, weathered stone, lips parted in wonder.

“I haven’t seen one of these in so long,” she whispered. “I never thought I’d…”

There, half-buried in a snarl of roots and ferns, stood a transport stone, crooked with age. Its surface was cracked and pitted, as if it had survived a thousand battles. Carved deep into its flanks, runes shimmered faintly under the waning moonlight, pale and flickering like breathing embers.

“This is a transport stone, it will take us where we need to go with intention magic.” Aeilanna said, voice thick.

Nolenne followed more cautiously, eyes scanning the treeline. Maeve dragged herself free of the sky’s spell, inhaled one more breath of freezing, spice-laden air, and limped after them. “We made it?” she breathed, hardly believing it .

“Not quite,” Nolenne said, pulling off her bloodied glove. “This stone will get us out of the prison ring, but we’re still in Avelan. About three days’ run to the border, on foot, through rough terrain.”

Maeve nodded, already bracing herself.

Aeilanna shook her head, forcing composure. “How far will the transportation border take us?”

“Just beyond the Shadowwood,” Nolenne said, wiping her hand quickly against her cloak. “We’ll land on the outer rise near the valley. It’s hard going, but we’ll be clear of patrols if we move smart.”

Without another word, Nolenne pressed her palm to the carved centre of the stone.

Runes flared to life, pale white and violet.

She extended her other hand to Maeve and Aeilanna, skin bare and waiting.

Maeve hesitated, just for a second, then she reached out and took Nolenne’s hand and Aeilanna followed.

The moment their skin touched, a pulse of magic surged up Maeve’s arm, cold, strange and bone-deep.

The world around them folded, light streaking through the air like falling stars and there was nothing, a breathless, crushing second of nothingness.

The stone dropped them hard on a steep slope, the world lurching sideways.

Maeve hit the mossy ground with a grunt, her palms skidding across damp leaves and cold stone.

The impact rattled her teeth and sent a bolt of pain up her arm.

She rolled instinctively, breath rasping, heart thundering like a war drum.

“First time is always the worst.” Aeilanna comforted.

The forest around them was ancient and smothering.

Gnarled trees twisted up towards the moon, their branches curling like clawed fingers.

Thick veils of mist clung low to the ground, swirling around roots and rocks like living things.

The air smelled of pine, iron-rich earth, and the distant threat of rain.

Above them, the sky was a patchwork of chaos and wonder, it was brutal in its beauty.

For a breathless second, Maeve could only stare.

Then the pain hit her like a punch to the gut.

The separation agony roared through her chest, sharp enough to make her double over.

She barely stifled a whimper as blood dripped from one nostril, the pressure behind her eyes building until her vision swam.

Grim expressions flickered between Nolenne and Aeilanna.

Neither spoke, but Maeve caught the tightening of Nolenne’s mouth, and the twitch of Aeilanna’s fingers like she ached to reach out, but didn’t.

They moved, and didn’t stop, running, climbing and crawling when they had to. They slept in broken snatches, huddled in bramble-choked hollows, beneath the twisted arms of blackened trees and in the carcass of a fallen log. The ground was never dry and the cold seeped into their bones.

Nolenne led them from cache to cache, hidden supplies buried beneath cairns of stacked stone, or tucked beneath thickets of spiny gorse.

They ate strips of salted meat so tough Maeve could barely chew it and hard bread that cracked her already bleeding lips.

They slept under blankets rank with mildew and magic was forbidden.

Even the tiniest flare, Nolenne had warned with a voice like iron, would light up Avelan’s magicer circles like a beacon.

Maeve had felt the Chain’s pull weaken after the transport, dulled by exhaustion and distance, but now it tore back to life.

It thudded beneath her ribs like a second heartbeat, frantic and relentless.

By the second night, Maeve was struggling to breathe properly.

Her chest felt as if it had been scraped out.

Her muscles raw, the ache deepened into something worse, a pulling, tearing sensation in her spine and the pit of her stomach, like her soul was being slowly unravelled.

Nosebleeds that started without warning, staining her sleeves, splitting headaches that blurred her vision and shudders that wracked her body when she tried to rest. She said nothing, just held her teeth together until her jaw ached and dug her fingers into her own palms until her nails broke the skin.

The three escapees had to keep moving, step after brutal step.

The landscape shifted around them, strange and alive.

Some trees pulsed faintly with amber veins beneath their bark, some flowers whispered in dry, rattling sighs when they brushed pas, undergrowth shifted without wind and roots curled from the earth in grasping shapes, trying to ensnare any straying too close.

The realm itself felt aware, like it was watching and waiting.

Maeve stayed close to Aeilanna and Nolenne, matching their pace.

The former beginning to recover, the suppression bands now gone, her magic began trickling back into her like water to a cracked vessel.

Aeilanna had changed, becoming radiant in the moonlight.

She moved differently now, shoulders no longer hunched, voice fuller, braver.

She still carried the cautious nature of someone used to fear and pain, but when she laughed, it was a rich, delighted sound that warmed Maeve’s chest. She smiled more, but some of those smiles were still protected.

Nolenne was still pure vigilance as she scouted ahead and circled back.

Her twin blades never far from reach. When her eyes drifted to Aeilanna, her expression warmed and the grim line of her mouth softened when they brushed hands in passing.

There was something there, unspoken, protective and loving.

They were not the same people who had slipped out of that prison cell, they were something else now, something harder, hungrier, but still breathing .

When Maeve had pretended to nap, she caught Nolenne and Aeilanna whispering, sharing quiet kisses and longing gazes.

Maeve felt envy, paired with something between guilt and yearning.

She didn’t ask, not yet. They were all tired, worn down, but every hour, they made ground, they drew closer to the Melrathen border.

She didn’t tell them about the pain, or the dreams, or the way she could almost hear his voice when she finally closed her eyes.

She didn’t tell them about the tears, the pleading, the whispered prayers, to her god or to their gods, for her mate.

“I haven’t felt the wind on my face in over two hundred years,” Aeilanna said once, softly, as they paused to drink. “I forgot what it smelled like.”

Maeve hadn’t known what to say. The land they crossed was unlike anything Maeve had ever known, alive in ways the human world never was.

The air was thick with spice, cool metal and something sharp like citrus or frost, but the wind itself was somehow becoming warmer.

Maeve moved in a strange mix of awe and dread, every crunch of soil could betray them.