Page 43

CHAPTER 43

POV: Briar

I'm waiting when Cadeyrn returns to our underground shelter, my mind made up.

"I want to go back to the burial grounds," I announce without preamble. "The Vale of Culling. I need to see all of it this time."

He freezes mid-step, water sloshing in the crude wooden bowl he carries. "You want to what?"

"You heard me." I shift uncomfortably on the stone ledge where I've been resting. My belly protrudes noticeably now, looking like I'm three months pregnant though it's been only days since we discovered the quadruplets. Four babies where most omegas struggle to carry even one fae child. "You only showed me a small part before. I need to see everything."

"Briar." My name comes out half-sigh, half-warning. "The courts are hunting us. That place will be crawling with guards now."

I struggle to my feet, one hand bracing my lower back. Though not enormous yet, the weight is already redistributing itself strangely, making balance a constant negotiation. The babies shift inside me, tiny flutters that still surprise me every time.

"You showed me only a fraction of it before—just enough for me to understand what had been happening." I meet his gaze squarely. "I need to see the full extent. I need to know exactly what you were part of."

Something flashes across his face—pain, guilt, perhaps even fear. Not of the courts that now hunt us, but of what I might find. What I might never forgive.

"It's not safe," he says, setting down the water. "For you or the children."

I place both hands on my swollen abdomen, feeling the quadruplets respond with tiny pulses of frost beneath my palms. "These children exist because of what happened there. Because their father authorized atrocities without ever bothering to witness them." My voice remains steady, though the words cut like ice shards. "They deserve better than hidden truths."

The Hound appears silently at the tunnel entrance, his mismatched eyes watching our exchange with ancient understanding. "The omega is right," he says quietly. "Some wounds cannot heal without being fully exposed."

Cadeyrn's shoulders tense. "And what would this exposure accomplish? Besides putting Briar and the children at risk?"

"Perhaps nothing," I answer before The Hound can speak. "Or perhaps everything. But I need to see it. All of it. Not just the sanitized version you finally forced yourself to witness."

"She doesn't ask for idle reasons," The Hound adds, his voice carrying the weight of someone who has straddled both worlds for generations. "There is an old ritual—older than the courts, from the time of the first Hunt. A blood offering to poisoned ground."

Cadeyrn's eyes narrow. "Blood magic is forbidden by all four courts."

A bitter laugh escapes me. "Are you really going to invoke court laws after killing their physician and guards? After breaking every Hunt protocol? After creating four lives that shouldn't be possible?"

He flinches slightly, but doesn't argue. The transformation that began during our first claiming has progressed in him as surely as the pregnancy has in me. His once-perfect court appearance has given way to something wilder—hair longer, muscles more defined, cillae spreading across his skin in elaborate whorls that match my own.

"What does this ritual involve?" he asks, directing the question to The Hound.

"Willing blood freely given by one who caused harm, spilled on the ground that was poisoned." The Hound's expression remains carefully neutral. "Not as punishment, but as acknowledgment. As offering."

"And what would this accomplish?" Cadeyrn presses.

The Hound shrugs. "Perhaps nothing. Perhaps everything. Magic—real magic, Wild Magic—responds to intention more than formula. The courts forgot this when they divided power into rigid systems."

I watch Cadeyrn's face as he considers this, seeing the struggle between centuries of court indoctrination and the new awareness growing within him. Finally, he meets my gaze.

"If we do this, we go prepared. Armed. And at dusk, when the court patrols change shifts." His tone makes it clear these aren't suggestions but conditions. "And you stay hidden while I scout the area first."

I nod, accepting the terms. Not because I've forgiven him, but because survival demands practicality. "When do we leave?"

The journey back to the surface requires caution. Court scouts patrol the forest with increasing frequency, their magical signatures easy for Cadeyrn to detect and avoid. By the time we reach the edge of the Vale of Culling, the crimson sun hangs low in the sky, casting everything in bloody light.

I've never seen anything so desolate. The earth itself seems to recoil from what was done here, refusing to support even the most resilient weeds. In the center of the vale stands a barren tree, its trunk twisted into a shape reminiscent of a screaming woman, branches reaching skyward like pleading arms.

The stench hits me first—not the expected rot of decomposition, but something worse. Magic turned putrid, poisoned by fear and pain and desperation. The quadruplets squirm inside me, responding to the wrongness that permeates this place.

"The main burial site is there," Cadeyrn says quietly, pointing to a depression in the ground near the twisted tree. "What you saw before was only the most recent section. This..." He gestures to the vast barren expanse. "This represents centuries."

Centuries. Hundreds of years of omegas and their unborn children, disposed of like waste. How many lives? How much suffering concentrated in this single location?

"The courts maintained this deliberately," he continues, his voice flat with self-recrimination. "The contaminated runoff was directed toward human settlements because there were more benefits than one. The wasting sickness kept the villagers dependent on fae magic.”

The calculated cruelty of it steals my breath. Not just disposal, but weaponization of the suffering. My mother's face flashes in my memory—once vibrant, gradually hollowed by the same poison that nearly claimed Willow.

"You signed off on this," I say, not a question but a statement of fact.

"I did." Cadeyrn doesn't attempt to soften the admission. "Not just once. Hundreds of times over centuries. I never visited, never questioned the necessity." His breath catches slightly. "Never considered the individual lives affected."

The honesty doesn't ease the pain, but it's better than excuses. Better than the clinical detachment he once embodied.

The Hound appears beside us, moving with the silent grace that gives him his name. "The court patrols have just changed. We have perhaps twenty minutes before the next sweep."

Cadeyrn nods, then turns to me. "What do you need to see?"

"Everything," I reply, my voice stronger than I expected. "Show me where it happened. Where the…assessments occurred."

He flinches at the words but leads me forward, pointing out structures I hadn't noticed at first glance—stone buildings partially reclaimed by barren earth, windowless and oppressive.

"The assessments happened there," he explains, indicating the largest structure. "Omegas deemed unsuitable for continued breeding were assessed for magic worth harvesting. Those with certain auras were taken inside."

The smooth language doesn't disguise the horror. I understand now why he struggled to tell me the full truth before. Some atrocities defy description.

"And after the...harvesting?" I force myself to ask.

"The remains were disposed of there." He points to the depression near the twisted tree. "No ceremony. No funeral. Just unmarked mass graves.”

The babies tumble inside me, one of them delivering a solid kick under my ribs that makes me wince.

"So we do the ritual right there," I say, rubbing the spot where the kick landed. "At the burial site."

The Hound nods. "Yeah. That's where the poison is strongest."

Cadeyrn's face darkens. "Look, I said I'd show you everything. But this ritual—we have no idea what might happen."

"Oh please," I roll my eyes. "Like anything has been predictable since you knotted me in the forest. Or since I stole Willow's identity. We've been making it up as we go from day one."

"This is different," he argues. "Blood magic in a place full of death?—"

"A place full of death that has your signature all over it," I snap, the words harsh but honest. "A place that killed my mother just as surely as if you'd stuck a knife in her yourself."

He doesn't argue, doesn't defend himself. Instead, his shoulders drop slightly, the fight leaving him. "What do I need to do?"

The Hound pulls a small obsidian blade from inside his leather vest. "The blood has to be given freely," he explains, turning the knife in his hands. "With the intent to acknowledge and heal, not punish. That's the key difference."

Cadeyrn takes the blade, running his thumb along its edge. "Any special words I need to say?"

"Nah," The Hound shrugs. "Wild Magic doesn't care about fancy speeches. Just say what you actually mean."

We make our way to the disposal site together, me taking my time over the rough ground. My balance isn't what it used to be, even with my belly only showing three months' growth. The pit turns out to be wider than I expected, the soil in the center darker and more ominous.

Cadeyrn kneels at the edge, gripping the obsidian blade. He stares at the barren earth for what feels like forever, his chest rising and falling in controlled breaths.

"You know, I should hate your guts," I say, standing behind him. "For all this. For my mother, for Willow, for all those omegas."

He doesn't look up. "Yeah. You should."

"I do, mostly," I admit, surprising myself with how easily the words come. "But hate takes too much energy now. Especially with four little parasites stealing all my reserves." I place a hand on my growing bump. "Plus whatever weird thing we're becoming."

Now he turns, looking up at me with those ice-blue eyes that once regarded omegas with clinical detachment. They hold something different now—grief, yes, and guilt, but also determination.

"I can't undo what was done," he says. "Can't bring back those who were sacrificed. But I can ensure it never happens again."

"Start with this," I tell him, gesturing to the blade in his hand. "Not for forgiveness. For acknowledgment."

He nods once, then turns back to the barren earth. Without hesitation, he draws the obsidian blade across his palm, opening a clean line that wells immediately with blood. It looks almost black in the crimson twilight, thicker than human blood and faintly luminescent with magic.

As the first drops fall to the poisoned soil, Cadeyrn speaks.

"I acknowledge the harm done by my hand and authority. The lives taken without witness or respect. The suffering caused through action and inaction." His voice remains steady, though cillae pulse rapidly across his skin. "I offer my blood not as payment—for there can be no adequate payment—but as recognition. As promise that what was broken will be acknowledged."

More blood flows from his palm, dripping steadily onto the dark earth. For several heartbeats, nothing happens. Then, so subtly I might have missed it if not watching carefully, the soil where his blood falls shifts slightly.

"Look," The Hound whispers, pointing to the spot.

A tiny green shoot pushes through the barren ground, unfurling delicate leaves that glow faintly in the fading light. Another appears beside it, then another, spreading outward from where Cadeyrn's blood continues to drip.

The plants are unlike anything I've seen before—not quite flowers, not quite fungi, but something between. Their stems gleam with the same phosphorescence as Cadeyrn's blood, and their roots visibly dig into the poisoned soil, seemingly drawing the contamination into themselves.

"What are they?" I ask, unable to keep the wonder from my voice.

"Purification growth," The Hound replies. "I've heard of them but never seen them like this. They filter out dark magic and create new life.”

Cadeyrn watches the spreading plants with something like hope in his expression. "Will they heal the contamination?"

"Not immediately," The Hound says. "But they've begun the process. The poison fed into human waterways can be cleansed, in time."

In time. Perhaps too late for my mother, for the other victims of the wasting sickness. But not too late for future generations. Not too late for Willow, whose illness might yet be reversed.

The spreading growth accelerates as more blood flows from Cadeyrn's palm. He makes no move to heal the wound, instead letting it bleed freely until the plants have spread across nearly half the disposal pit.

I kneel beside him, awkwardly shifting to accommodate my growing belly. One of the babies does a full somersault inside me, making me catch my breath.

"Whoa," I murmur. "They're really moving in there."

Cadeyrn glances at me, hesitation written all over his face. He keeps his distance, respecting the invisible barrier I've maintained since finding out about his role in the cullings.

But something feels different in this moment. Not forgiveness—definitely not that. But maybe... a door cracking open where before there was only a wall.

I grab his bloody hand and press it against the side of my belly where the movement is strongest. "Here," I say gruffly. "Feel what we made. Feel what's growing in spite of everything."

His touch is careful at first, like he's afraid I'll change my mind. Then a baby kicks right against his palm, and his whole body goes still with wonder. His cillae brighten, matching mine, and for the first time since I learned the truth about this place, our bond feels like something other than a raw wound.

"I can feel them," he says, voice barely above a whisper. "All four. They're strong."

The moment hangs between us, as delicate as the first ice of autumn—beautiful and dangerous and impossibly fragile. I feel our claiming bond pulse beneath my skin, no longer just the raw scrape of betrayal but something more complex. Hatred and need and possibility all tangled together with the lives growing inside me. This is the terrible truth of what we've become—two broken creatures creating something new from the ruins of what we destroyed. Not forgiveness, but perhaps understanding. Not trust, but recognition.

The purification plants continue to spread, glowing brighter as twilight deepens around us. They won't erase what happened here—nothing could. But they offer possibility where there was only desolation before.

Much like the tiny lives growing within me. Much like whatever remains between Cadeyrn and myself. Damaged, transforming, but not destroyed.

"We need to move," The Hound warns, scanning the treeline. "Court patrols will return soon."

Cadeyrn helps me to my feet, his touch careful but not hesitant. The wound on his palm has already begun to heal, frost sealing the edges of the cut.

As we turn to leave, I cast one last look at the spreading growth, at the barren ground being reclaimed by something new and unexpected. Not erased, but transformed. The knowledge settles into my bones alongside the ache of betrayal and the fierce protectiveness for the lives I carry.

Some wounds never fully heal. But perhaps they can be acknowledged. Perhaps they can even, in time, nurture something new.