Page 44 of Hexes & Heartstrings (Shifters of Bastion Keep #2)

"No worries, Green witch," Auguste said to him, hefting his tonfa. "I'll keep you safe so you and your boyfriends can have the biggest threesome when you return, yeah? And in return, you can keep us healed up from any nasty injuries, since that's why you're here!"

"Healing is what I do best," Bruin said carefully.

It wasn't a lie, but canine shifters especially were sensitive to evasion and deception. Fortunately for Bruin, Auguste was too busy listening to his pack leader to pay him much mind.

Bruin lifted the watchman's lantern, lighting its wick with normal oil, saving the special shadow stuff for later.

Now decorated in paint and with a few added pearlescent crystals, the lantern was his tie to the other three witches.

At least one of them would always be watching over them while they journeyed, rotating shifts until it was time for the big magick.

"Lux is watching," he said to Roland, seeing one of the crystals shimmering.

"Aye. We're up, warlord! Good to move out."

The initial leg of travel didn't take even an hour, and as Bruin walked beside the others, Roland maintained a steady conversation, explaining Sergiy's habits and choices.

"Aye, we could throw you and Finnegan on our backs and make like fire for where we saw the demesne," he said, "but right now our lord's getting a feel for the current state of the Umbral."

Bruin did a little hop, hoping to see Sergiy over the heads of the other shifters, but he was somewhere at the front and out of sight. "Does it have something to do with his drake shifter senses?"

Roland shook his head, absently tapping a hand on his hip pouch where he kept his priest's tools, much like Bruin had his own witchy ones.

"No, lad. Your mate is reading the Umbral in the same way that a fisherman looks to the horizon, checking for storms. The veil's thinner today, so common signs like wavering shadows or whispers on the wind are more difficult to distinguish safe from unsafe. "

Bruin resisted the urge to kick at a rock, having lost his balance the last time one had turned out to be a refracted illusion. Captain Sergiy, navigator of the Umbral. It was a nice thought.

The warband's spiraling patrols encountered at least two wandering shadows as they made their way to the original demesne sighting, and one time Sergiy had them take a different route, but either there weren't any hostiles, or else the shadows had been dealt with too swiftly to be of any note.

Once they arrived, Sergiy called the warband to a halt. They had a couple of minutes before the outer patrols returned, and Bruin's curiosity over the deep pit fought with his desire to stay far away from any kind of long drop.

After a fierce mental battle, Bruin decided that a hole was technically negative height, so his fear shouldn't come into play, right? Grabbing hold of Auguste's arm, he dragged him with him until they were outside the wall of shifters that blocked the view.

Bruin dropped Auguste's arm, sighing.

"Yeah, there's not anything left except for a flat expanse," his silver-furred friend said. "The Umbral closed the pit up weeks ago, and we've been patrolling it since."

"There will be gaps, though," Sergiy said, striding forward in his weredrake form, spear held in one hand. He frowned at Bruin, then put his paw on his back, guiding him back to the middle of the warband. "And please don't stray, my mate."

"I was in good hands!" Bruin insisted, but decided to let himself be nudged along to please Sergiy.

"Guardians, heed," Sergiy said once the patrols had returned. "The deep pit itself might be gone, but left behind should be shallower fissures that will let us dive deeper into the Umbral, making shorter hops than one great fall. Fan out, call out if you find one."

"A hundred bucks and hosting the next party says the Dawnbringers find it first!" Cadmus called out.

"I'll take that!" Marka shouted. "Steel Fang, get moving, awoo!"

There were barks and laughter as other bets were placed, and Bruin saw Auguste shaking his head.

"Fool's bet," he murmured to Bruin. "Steel Fang has four felines, and they're good at hunting secrets."

True enough, within minutes the warband was surrounding a preening Chelsea, who demanded a down payment from Cadmus. With a discontented grumble, the werepanther bent his head down, allowing the black cat to lick him several times on his forehead.

"I'm in first," Sergiy said, and Bruin took an involuntary step towards him. His mate, perhaps sensing his alarm, stopped by long enough to give him a pat on his head, then leaned down to whisper. "I'll be fine, my mate. This is my job, and you can trust me."

Bruin realized he had his free hand gripping a bracelet of protective jade stones on his left arm, and consciously pulled his hand back as he breathed out.

"Fine. Just… be safe, okay? Like, really safe."

Sergiy nodded, ran a thumb across his chin, then turned back to the "fissure" that would take them deeper, and Bruin took a peek.

Within the shade of a bent tree was a barely perceptible reflective surface that Bruin had a hard time seeing, even after he'd been told it was there. Turning his gaze to where Sergiy was about to leap into it, Bruin again found himself with a tight grip on one of his bracelets.

He felt Auguste sniffing around his neck.

"Nervous about the descent, witch?"

"Yes," he said.

And it was even true. But it wasn't the fear of an unknown land that had him on edge, and as he stared into the reflective chasm, he wished again that he were back in the safety of the keep.

But he needed to be here, because of Rosemary.

Two weeks ago, his best friend had woken him up in the middle of the night, banging on his door until he'd answered, and then dragged him into her room where she'd served them both tea with shaking hands.

She'd had a vision, she'd told him. The ill omens she'd been seeing had finally culminated, and the message was simple:

If Bruin didn't join the Umbral expedition, someone would die.

After the shock had worn off, there had been follow-up questions and divinations, but while answers had been forthcoming, they weren't hopeful.

Bruin going didn't guarantee that whoever it was would live. His going didn't guarantee that others wouldn't be harmed or killed on this dangerous mission. Telling anyone else about the portent, like Sergiy, would only make things worse , somehow.

Her message to him only meant that if he did go, then there was a chance that one person's fate could be changed.

When Rosemary had told him of her portent, he had been thinking of Sergiy, and knew that she'd been thinking of Marka.

So they'd told Lux what needed to be done without telling him why—though he might have guessed, from the shrewd look he'd given Rosemary—and they'd come up with the right arguments to swap Arthur with Bruin.

Convincing the war council hadn't even been difficult, because the guardians better understood how to incorporate a healer into an army than a spirit witch, and Sergiy had been the lone dissenting voice that had needed real persuading, with Galina making the final call.

So now Bruin was traveling with the warband, doing his best to nip the omen in the bud while also trying not to think about who among his new family it might have been warning him about.

"It's scary, yeah," he said aloud, "but fear doesn't change what we have to do, does it? Best just to get on with it."

"That's the spirit!" Auguste said, then sheathed his weapons before shifting into his large wolf form. "But to be safe, we'll have you mount me before we go in. Ready?"

"No. But let's not keep anyone else waiting."

And they went.

◆◆◆

" and then i accidentally pushed him down ," the spirit said in its breathy tone that carried across the entire camp, its fern-like appendages fluttering. " and that made me sad. anyone would be sad. do you not agree? "

Bruin looked over, and saw Bridget nodding her head.

"Yes, that's very deplorable," she said with utmost sympathy.

Bruin carefully eyed the tree-sized spirit, looking for any sudden change, but there was none. Its feelings assuaged, the spirit continued speaking.

" thank you. and then i offered the person some apology pie which i had made with my own ten fronds, but it did not turn out well… "

While Bruin continued his slow circuit around the camp, walking with a measured pace and dropping a glass bead every ninth step, he saw groups of guardians getting ready to hunker down for some sleep.

For those that didn't have first watch, it was apparently as easy as shifting into one's animal form and gathering into twos and threes for the shared warmth.

"So very fucking sad," he heard Marka say, taking her turn to agree with the spirit.

To be more precise, a tree-sized, easily angered, very deadly and toxic spirit, but its nature was apparently well-known, and as long as at least one person conversed with it and never repeated the exact phrase twice, it was supposedly safe.

It seemed that the tree was useful because of its ability to firm up the local Umbral with its roots, making not only the ground more solid, but the entire region.

So what was originally a grainy movie-reel of a desert became more of a realistic tundra with flat ground, sparse vegetation, and constantly falling snow that wasn't cold and never piled up.

"The trick is to not stare directly at the shifting terrain," Roland was telling him as they walked together, sharing some of his Umbral wisdom as he used a large, constantly dripping candle to make a second ward alongside Bruin's.

"Keep your sight fixed on the horizon, or if you're ever really dizzy, just shut your eyes, ha!

Your eyes can't play tricks on you if they're not open. "

"I'll try that the next time this place makes me feel seasick," he said.

"Good lad. So what do you think of your mate so far?" Roland asked him.