Page 14

We are nearly there.

This is evident for several reasons. Firstly, because our path through the peaks begins to slant downward, our elevation yielding more with each passing hour. Secondly, because Jac had said it was a two-day ride and, as we’ve twice made camp under the stars, I dare to hope. And finally, because our pace increases from a plodding clop to a steady canter as we descend into a valley peppered with pines. Amid them, trails of smoke from what must be at least three campfires ribbon into the sky.

My heart leaps at the sight.

The passage widens at the entrance to the valley, the slope flattening out as we round an icy bend and ride through the copse of trees. It is warmer here, shielded from the wind. Not that I am ever cold riding with Penn. His body radiates heat, an internal furnace blasting beneath his skin. If he were anyone else, I would’ve ordered him to lie down and shoved a brew of feverfew into his hands, thinking him ill.

“Not far now,” Jac calls, turning in his saddle to grin at us. “There’s a clearing up ahead where we set up camp last week. Let’s hope there’s something tasty in the cook pot.”

His spirits are high. He even shoots me a playful wink to prove he’s done punishing me for my outburst two nights ago. But Uther’s face holds no such playfulness as he slows his mount, falling back to ride alongside Onyx. His voice is grim as he meets Penn’s gaze.

“No scouts,” he says on a whisper.

Penn stiffens, his chest turning to a slab of stone. “None?”

“Not at the last two posts we passed.”

“Fuck.” Penn’s curse is a low rumble. He pauses for a beat, then mutters, “Eyes open, blades close. We go in slow.”

Uther nods and presses his heels to his horse’s flanks, urging it slightly ahead. He has one hand on his reins; the other is reaching for his sword. Beside him, Mabon already has his heavy crossbow at the ready.

“It’s just an oversight,” Jac insists, though his face is pale with sudden dread in the late-morning light. His hand fiddles with the carved wooden hilt of his battle-axe. “I’m sure all’s well…”

But all is not well.

This is abundantly clear the moment our horses nose out of the forest, into the clearing where the men made camp. The tents are still pitched, the fires still burning low beneath the cook pots where thick porridge bubbles. The soldiers had been in the middle of breakfast.

Now, every last one of them is dead.

Carnage.

That is the only word I can think of—the only word that encompasses what I am seeing. The horror of it. The barbarity. An entire unit of men, their blood staining the snow in a river of red. A pile of butchered corpses, reaching toward the sun.

Jac’s roar of agony rends the sky.

Vomit rushes into my mouth, bile burning at the back of my throat. I swallow it down, gasping for breath. There is no time to fall apart. No time to do anything at all. Because, in that moment, they come—running out of the trees on the other side of the clearing, their battle-axes swinging with lethal promise as they charge headlong in our direction, their faces streaked with black war paint as they fix us in their sights.

Reavers.

Penn dismounts before I can blink, grabbing the reins and jerking his horse back behind the shelter of the tree line. On instinct, I bend low over Onyx’s neck, my cheek pressed to his coat, my hands clutching his mane. I try to glance back—to keep track of Mabon and Uther and Jac as they spur their own steeds straight toward the crush of barbarians—but I never get the chance.

Penn’s face appears before mine. I flinch at the savageness darkening his expression. There is death in his eyes, a vow flaring in their fiery depths—for vengeance, for retribution. For the blood of his enemies. His hands are itching for his hilt.

“Take this,” he barks, voice rife with impatience as he shoves the hunting bow and a quiver of fresh arrows into my fumbling hands. I had not even seen him retrieve them from their strappings. “Ride back up the pass to where we made camp last night. You should be safe there. If anyone follows you, shoot them through the heart.”

“I’ll stay,” I say, slinging the quiver over my shoulder. “I’ll fight—”

He is beyond listening. “Wait for me there. I will come for you.”

“Penn—”

“ I need you to go. ” His voice cracks—a desperate sound that makes my heart stutter and my words fail. His eyes never leave mine, and I swear I see a promise of a different nature burning there as well. One that has nothing to do with bloodshed or battlefields. “I need you to stay safe. Stay alive. Even if you have to kill to do it. Even if it offends your damn morality.”

“Penn—”

His hand reaches up, and before I can react, his fingers thread behind my neck, fisting in the thick fall of hair at my nape. He hauls me closer, so our faces are a hairsbreadth apart. His eyes move to my lips and seem to get stuck there.

I stop breathing.

For a split second, I think he’s going to do something insane, something inconceivable—like crash his mouth down on mine and kiss me. I’m not sure if I’m more relieved or disappointed when he doesn’t. His gaze jerks back up to meet mine, and the look of exquisite torment simmering beneath his battle fury shakes the foundation of everything I’ve come to believe about our relationship.

“If you run out of arrows,” he whispers, his face so close each word tingles across my lips. “Don’t forget you have another weapon at your disposal.” His other hand rises, pressing through the fabric of my cloak, directly over my Remnant. “ Use it. ”

At that, his hands disappear, he steps away, and with the crack of his palm against Onyx’s rump, he sends us flying back the way we came. Over the thunder of hooves and the distant echo of pained male screams, I hear the sound of his sword sliding from its sheath. The crunch of his boots on snow, carrying him into the clearing.

By the time I get the reins under control, find a firm seat in the saddle, and whip around to look for him…

He is already gone.

I do as Penn bids, riding back through the woods to the passage that leads up toward the summit. I don’t want to, but I do. Because he asked. Because…he pleaded.

I need you to go.

I need you to stay safe.

And so I go. But I leave my heart behind in that blood-drenched camp. Back with Jac and Mabon and Uther, the soldiers who have forced themselves inside its chambers, becoming friends despite all odds. Back with Penn, the man who has saved me again and again, even when I’ve punished him for it.

With each of Onyx’s hoofbeats, my conscience screams out that I am a coward for running, for leaving them behind when they are so vastly outnumbered. There were so many Reavers. A never-ending wave pouring from those trees.

What can four men possibly do against forty?

The odds are too grim to dwell on. The outcomes too painful to contemplate.

I hear the screams of pain before Onyx carries me out of earshot and wonder from which side they come. There are other sounds as well. The clash of steel, the twang of crossbow bolts. Strangest of all, a dull, distant roar that carries on the wind, the origin of which I cannot pinpoint. Perhaps my ears are playing tricks, fear conjuring phantom sounds as I flee into the forest.

I do not make it to the ridge.

When Penn sent me barreling through the trees, he did not know a second contingent of Reavers had closed ranks from behind, blocking the pass to prevent us from backtracking up the mountain. I spot them only a moment before they spot me—a group of men clad in leather and fur, their skin decorated with a familiar dark metal. Iron. Bolts and rings of it, piercing through lobes and brows, puncturing nostrils and nipples and lips. Their bare chests and pale faces are streaked with black paint, which gives them an otherworldly look, despite the rounded human ears that jut from their skulls.

The Reavers’ outer appearance is a visceral representation of the inner hatred they harbor for halflings. For all maegical beings. Jac said they choose to carve out an existence in the wild reaches of the Cimmerians rather than pledge loyalty to a fae kingdom like Dyved. Their ancestors not only participated in the Cull but reveled in the bloodshed, hunting down halflings and high fae alike purely for the sport of it.

There is little doubt about what they will do if they catch me. Penn, they will perhaps keep alive to use for negotiation, for torture, for things too gruesome to imagine. But the rest of us are marked for a much swifter end.

When I see the blockaded pass, I do not even consider trying to fight. I do not reach for the bow slung across my back. For though this company is smaller than the one back at the camp, there are still far too many of them to take on. More men than I have arrows for in my quiver. More than I can ever hope to survive on my own.

I tug the reins sharply right. Onyx responds straightaway, changing directions without so much as a stumble, but no amount of haste can save us. I hear the guttural cries—“There! Get the point bitch!”—as they spot me in the trees, their words a clipped, distorted dialect of the common tongue. The alarm rises. Booted feet thunder in pursuit.

They aren’t on horseback, but they are fast and they know these woods in a way I do not. I ride blindly through the thick pines, picking directions at random, searching for a place to hide, if not escape. The wind begins to howl as I am brought up short again and again—by a sharp crevasse in the earth too wide to jump, by a sheer rock face too tall to scale, by a half-frozen river too deep to ford. My hair whips across my cheeks. At my chest the Remnant burns, the cold bite of fear tingeing every breath I haul in and out of my lungs.

Above the building gale, I hear the Reavers closing in, narrowing some of the distance between us each time I hit another dead end, their feet snapping twigs, their yells an urgent volley. My panic rises sharply and the wind with it, wailing like a wild beast caught in a snare. Onyx whinnies, eye whites rolling. I stroke his neck to soothe him, though my own nerves are fraying.

Is this my doing? Have I called this screaming gale down from the skies somehow, as Penn insisted I could?

Even if I have, there is no opportunity to wonder how. Not with the painted warriors closing in on me. Even now, I can hear them thrashing through the underbrush.

Not far.

Not far at all.

I press my heels inward, guiding Onyx away from the ice-jammed river. We gallop along the bank, looking for a place to cross, but it only widens as we follow it down the mountain, the surface half-solid with flows of pulpy water. Every hoofbeat carries us farther from the Widow’s Notch, where we were supposed to find solace. Farther from the clearing, where my companions battle for their lives.

If they are still alive to battle.

I banish the thought as soon as it occurs.

We ride on, following the water down the summit. A light snow begins to fall. Or so I think at first. I soon realize they are not snowflakes drifting down upon us but ashes, carried on the air currents I’ve stoked into a frenzy with my panic. Confusion flares briefly, but as I stare at the falling embers, awareness dawns with breath-snatching swiftness.

That roar I’d heard as I left the battle had been no trick of the senses. It was the all-consuming crackle of a great, blazing fire. Even now, half a league away, I can hear it if I strain my ears—a steady bass note beneath the wind’s caterwaul.

I chance a glance back over my shoulder and my eyes widen. When we first arrived in the valley less than an hour ago, it looked idyllic—a snowy stretch of pines and firs illuminated in weak sunshine. A rare cloudless day on the range.

How quickly the world has changed. The sky is now dark—not with storm clouds, but with smoke. Black billows up from between the trees at the center of the sloping woods that stretch above me, where the inferno burns brightest.

The campsite.

It has to be.

I shiver at the sight, praying no one I care about is caught on the wrong end of that unnatural blaze. For this is no normal fire. It is massive. A wall of flame that sweeps a path through the valley, moving with incalculable speed, devouring everything in its wake. Fueled by the whipping wind. Pulled by it, feeding on it, chasing it…

Straight toward me , I realize, thunderstruck.

If I were at the ridge, if I were where I was supposed to be, I’d be far from its reach. Safe and secure, high above its fiery clutches. Instead, I find myself standing directly in its path.

“Go!” I spur Onyx faster, turning my back on the blaze. “Come on, boy!”

The fire surges down the valley, razing through the copse of pines, pursuing us through the foliage with greedy, grasping hands. So swift, so bright, it seems the infernal fires of the underworld have been loosed upon the land.

I hear the cries of panic from the Reavers who’ve followed me down the slope as the smoke and flame overtake them. I hear them call out for aid, hear their agony ring into the skies. And then I hear nothing at all. Nothing but the bellowing roar of fire, the answering wail of wind.

No matter how fast I ride, the inferno is faster. The smell of fumes thickens the air until my eyes water and my throat is hoarse. The smoke is choking me, pressing inward in a noxious cloud I can barely see through. I cough and gasp for air, blinking away tears as I clutch the reins.

With a distressed whinny, Onyx slows, struggling to maintain his pace in the gathering darkness. I urge him forward, feeling death circle close, but we make it only a few more strides before his back legs lock and he rears up, front hooves punching the air. I’m nearly tossed from the saddle. My fingernails score the pommel in my effort to keep my seat.

“Whoa, boy,” I croak, voice an ashen rasp. My shaking hand strokes his neck. “I know you’re scared. I’m scared, too.”

He snorts his displeasure, head tossing. He will go no farther.

My body is tight as a bowstring. If we do not put distance between ourselves and the flame…if we do not find a way forward…

But how?

I am out of options. Out of time. Out of hope.

Unless…

Use it , Penn had said.

Could it be so simple?

The Remnant at my chest is silent. Deathly still. As if it is waiting to see what I will do. Waiting to see if, after all this time, I will finally reach deep inside and test what awaits me there.

Weaver of wind… Something stirs in my bones. A whisper. An answer. Summoner of skies…

To call upon the air itself—I must be mad. Utterly mad, even to consider it. The wind has always seemed a wild thing. Alive, intangible. A force that cannot be tamed or controlled. But as I choke on the deadly smoke, I do not have the luxury of weighing pros and cons. There is no opportunity to debate.

Only to act.

To trust that Penn is not mistaken about me or my abilities.

In desperation, I close my eyes and seek out that strange pulse of energy I felt when I pierced through Jac’s glamour for the first time. The surge I felt on that cliff side with Burrows’s men. On the bridge as I dangled, close to death. On the night I fled the scorched earth of Seahaven. And, if I’m honest with myself, a dozen other times before that day. Times I’d pushed away, brushed aside, clinging to the safety of being…

Nothing.

No one.

Nameless orphan.

Powerless halfling.

Worthless point.

Cold prickles at my chest, an icy kiss.

Wind weaver… A whisper within. No more hiding…

I grasp ahold of that voice like a loose thread, winding it round my finger and pulling, pulling, pulling until a spool unravels deep inside me. Somewhere out of sight. In my marrow. In the fabric of my being. In the stitching of my very soul. Somewhere so far down it will never be detected, even if they hack me apart with blades and peer into my bleeding chest cavity.

The prickle of power becomes a pulse; the pulse becomes a surge. It flows within me, a flood of cold that washes through my body in a great tide, then crests on a wave of recognition.

I am no stranger to this sensation.

I have felt it many times before.

On the sandy shores, whipping at my skirts, spraying salt and brine across my skin as I peer out to sea. On the mountain’s summit, the icy chill crystallizing each breath in my lungs, freezing each inch of exposed skin. In the dead of night, whistling through the trees, carrying an electrical storm on its wings. In the pink-stained dawn, stirring the fragile new blooms of spring flowers.

Wind.

Air.

Sky.

It thrums inside my skin, a live current. I cannot control it—I do not try. But as it surges through me, instead of trying to push it down, to keep it in, to contain it as I always have before…I reverse course. I push outward. I let it loose from the hold I’ve maintained for twenty years. And as I do, I cast out a desperate plea to whatever gods are listening.

Let me breathe.

Wind erupts from me in a shock wave, a violent vortex blasting out from beneath my skin. The sky itself screams with the force of it, loud enough to shatter my eardrums.

Or is that me screaming?

I can do nothing but cling to the saddle pommel as waves of wind move through me. Ripping me from the inside out. I think my skin will tear, my soul with it. The cold in my chest is so strong, I nearly lose consciousness.

Something drips down my face. Blood, I realize, tasting it on my lips. It leaks from my nose like I’ve taken a fist to it, spilling onto my pretty white cloak like ruby tears. With the tang of copper on my tongue, I hold on to the pommel, riding out the currents as they reverberate outward in an unchecked tempest.

I focus on my breath. In and out, out and in. Again and again and again, until the shock waves subside. Until I can breathe again.

I can breathe again.

The air is clear of smoke.

My eyes crack open. The sight that greets me is a shock to the senses. The fire blazes not twenty paces away, a wall of flame and death that pins me up against the icy riverbank…but it is no longer advancing. Something holds it at bay. An invisible boundary, one made of impenetrable air, pushes back against its relentless pursuit. The flames lick at it hungrily, sparks crackle at its base, fumes furl with malice…but the inferno comes no closer. I have blocked its path.

But for how long?

The Remnant at my chest aches like an open wound. I would not be surprised to find it bleeding through the fabric of my dress. My head spins from the nosebleed as much as the dizzying sight of my…I don’t know what to call it, exactly.

Fence?

Barricade?

Shield comes closest, I suppose. A shield of solidified air.

I tell myself to move, but I’m too terrified to do it. Terrified that, should my focus slip for even a moment, the wall that holds my death at bay will fall. Even as I hesitate, I can feel my strength waning, my energy draining. I have no idea how to properly wield my power. It was blind luck, more than anything else, that saved me.

I pray that luck holds as I press my heels to Onyx’s flanks and urge him to walk on. His head swings back and forth, his bridle jangling. He does not like this situation any better than I do. But he is nothing if not loyal. At my urging, he trots a few steps away from the fire, his back rigid with tension beneath me. As though he, too, is waiting to see if the wall will fall away or follow us.

My stomach flips when I first see the flames lurch, devouring the patch of untouched earth that appears the instant my air shield shifts forward. Hands shaking on the reins, I pull Onyx to a stop once more, testing a theory. The fire’s advance halts as soon as we do.

It’s holding.

Relief crashes through me. It seems safe enough to keep moving. If I were a bit less cowardly—or a bit more reckless—I might ride straight through the wildfire, back to the camp, back to the Widow’s Notch, trusting my power to keep death at bay. But it is terrifying enough to see the flames pressing at me from one direction. The thought of them on all sides…pushing in from every angle…

I shudder and look away.

For now, I will get to safety. I will find shelter. And when the fire has burned itself out, I will make my way back into the smoldering ashes. I will find my friends.

Find Penn.

I ride on, following the snaking stream down the valley. Every so often, I glance back to ensure the fire is still safely on the other side of my shield, that it does not encroach closer than twenty paces.

It never does.

After a stretch, I grow bold enough to pause for a moment by a bend in the river, where the shallows run calm and clear. Dismounting, I lead Onyx to the edge. He drinks deeply as I crouch to do the same, cupping my gloved hands in the frigid water and slurping desperate gulps. My throat is raw—from my screams, from the smoke. I wash away the taste of fire and blood, drinking until my thirst is sated. Splashing my face, I scrub away all traces of the nosebleed. My white cloak, I fear, will bear the stains forever.

It is an effort to push back to my feet. I sway, off-balance, blinking away stars from my vision. The air itself feels heavier than normal. Each step is like walking waist-deep in mud. I lean against Onyx, weary down to my bones. Too weary to even climb back up into the saddle.

My Remnant thrums, a constant low-level pulse tapping every shred of strength I still possess. I will not last much longer before it is wholly depleted…unlike the blaze, which shows no signs of petering out. It rages on in the distance, sweeping down the valley with insatiable hunger.

My eyes shift to the river. It is gentler here, the water far less rough than near the summit. No rapids froth its surface. And it is narrow—about a dozen paces across. A distance, under normal circumstances, I could swim in seconds.

These circumstances bear little resemblance to normal.

The cold will be breath stealing, no doubt. But if we can cross, it will not matter when my shield inevitably fails. We will be safe on the other side, protected by the natural barrier of the water.

“What do you think, boy?” I ask Onyx, stroking my fingers through his long, dark mane. “Should we risk it?”

His glossy eyes hold no answers.

“I don’t think we have a choice,” I confide, pressing my forehead to his neck. Breathing hard as my head swims with exhaustion.

He whinnies softly in response.

“Together,” I tell him. “We’ll make it together.”

At least, we’ll try.

In a stroke of good fortune, the crossing is not as bad as I’d imagined. While the river appeared rather deep from the shoreline, I never find myself submerged higher than my waist. My skirts drag, heavy and waterlogged, but I hold fast to Onyx’s bridle as we forge our way across.

It is shockingly cold. Nearly as cold as the Remnant at my chest. But the current is gentle, lapping lightly against my legs. At times, it almost seems to be propelling me forward. Helping me along with aqueous shoves. Even so, making it to the opposite shore saps the last bit of strength I possess. I’m gasping by the time my feet hit the bank.

I release the bridle and fall to my knees, scarcely able to keep from collapsing entirely. My leather gloves plant against the ice-crusted earth as ragged gulps of air move into and out of my lungs. I feel my power hanging by a thread, my hold on the shield growing perilously thin.

Without bothering to rise, I glance over my shoulder at the wall of flame. It’s five paces from the opposite bank and appears to be pushing at the invisible barrier. As if testing my resolve. As if waiting for the moment my strength will sputter out.

I pray, when it does, the river will be enough to keep it back.

Onyx’s tackle jangles as his hooves dance with nerves. His whinny is one of warning. My head swings toward him but freezes halfway when my gaze snags on something planted in the dirt before me. Close enough to touch.

A pair of boots.

How they got there, how I had not heard them approach—for I am tired, but not so tired my senses have failed completely—is an utter mystery to me. My head snaps back, my gaze shooting up a set of muscular male thighs encased in dark navy trousers, over the broad planes of a chest, and into the strangest set of eyes I’ve ever seen.

Fae eyes, unquestionably. The pupils are ever so slightly elongated, the irises a shade of blue so brilliant, the finest sapphires in Anwyvn would look dull by comparison. They are set in a face that makes my breath cease and my fingers curl into the dirt.

As I hold them, they flicker away for the briefest of instants, looking beyond to my wavering shield of air. By the time they come back to mine, they’ve taken on a predatory light. His lips twist as he examines me sprawled there at his feet. His head tilts in wry contemplation.

“Well, well,” the stranger murmurs in a deep, melodious voice that flows like water over river rocks. “Aren’t you interesting.”

That’s when everything goes black.