Page 29 of This Midsummer Heart (Seasons of Legend #4)
Chapter twenty-eight
The Crossing
Auberon
I
send
another
silent
plea
to Titaine to stay with me, even though I know it will be hours before we reach the fae.
The female ranger is speaking. I tear my eyes away from the path ahead, slow to process her words.
“You know why humans called it the Bridge of Miracles back in the olden days, before the seas calmed and magic could make horses and carts go faster?” she prompts, but I only half hear her. My eyes are fixed on the narrowing isthmus before us.
“Because even then, wondrous things could happen there.” She pats Giselda’s rump. “May the gods speed your journey, Elf King, and the healing of your queen. I’ll tell my children and my children’s children of this day.”
My eyes widen just as Giselda takes off in an easy canter. I never told her who I was. I don’t think Titaine would have, either.
Rangers.
Between recognizing ancient, cursed blades and predicting the tides, there’s clearly more to these mortals than meets the eye.
Just as there is more to Giselda. The faster she runs, the smoother her gait grows. Titaine is barely jostled as the white mare takes off at a gallop.
We overtake the caravan, slowing only to safely pass them, in a quarter of the time it should’ve taken. Still, sea foam sprays up, darkening Giselda’s flanks and my trousers. It’s a warning.
The tide is coming in.
Soon, we are out of reach of the beacon that’s meant to warn us.
I should have paid more attention—to a lot of things, but right now, it’s Giselda that concerns me. How long can she sustain this pace? If I keep pushing her like this, will she need to rest before we reach the safety of the southern continent?
As we race across the tether connecting Tethered Malu to the northern wolding, I watch her for signs of fatigue and strain.
Titaine was right to bet our futures on Giselda’s ability to cross here.
We leave the other horses, carts and caravans behind us before we finally have to slow at a bottleneck.
I keep Giselda turning and dancing so she will not have to stop short. She responds as easily to me as she would to Titaine—but she senses the coming tide as much as I do.
The land is too narrow for us to get around a small caravan. This one does not hold a merchant’s wealth, or even that of a town, but an extended family. Children look out the back of the covered wagons, giggling as they watch Giselda dance, their faces bright in the lantern they gather around.
It is almost too dark to see now. Only the lamps hanging at the front of the caravans allow me to see clearly.
Fear makes my limbs prickle and the hairs rise on the back of my neck.
The sea crashes against the western bank of the land bridge, then the eastern, the waves rising into sheer walls of water before splashing us all.
The shaggy oxen pulling the carts are big and slow, their gaits faltering as they, too, grow afraid.
Farther ahead, the land flares out, wide enough to pass this caravan.
Giselda stamps, her nostrils flaring. The movement elicits a groan from Titaine. Her eyes do not open, her lashes never even fluttering. I press my elbows tighter around her ribs, hoping to keep her still.
The waves hit the rocks, then leap onto the edges of the land bridge, where only dirt and stones remain after too much exposure to seawater.
And I know exactly where these stones came from; the sea chucks one into the side of the second wagon, denting the canvas cover before dropping onto the ground.
“The tide is coming,” I yell, wishing I could get to the front of one of these wagons to speak to an adult. All I can see are the gawking—now shrieking—children.
I raise my voice to a bellow. “Abandon your carts! Unhitch the oxen and let them run if they can.”
Voices in a language I don’t understand rise in response. They don’t sound nearly as panicked as they should.
Either way, it’s hopeless. To get around the other wagons, they’d have to tip each of them into the sea to clear the path. The only way to go is back.
I cannot go back. Elves are great healers, but there’s very little magic in the salves and balms we know to prepare. Titaine needs magic. She needs her people’s ability to heal.
I do not think these wagons are made to go backwards, either.
It seems too much to ask that the Blade of Hedril will have an answer for this. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to feel the magic driving the waves towards us so erratically.
I can’t sense the chaos here like in Nerania Wood. I am not experienced enough with my own dark magic to know what to do.
“Titaine,” I whisper, gently shaking her. “Titaine, please wake up.”
Hope surges within me as her wings twitch against my chest. But her eyes do not open.
“Titaine, can you hear me?”
Her wings do not twitch again. But a muscle flares in her cheek, like a wince from her pain.
I draw my arms around her, wishing that was sea water I felt on the shirt-turned-sling the rangers created for her. She’s still bleeding. I am careful to avoid her wounds as I press the flat of one hand against her belly, feeling the rhythm of her shallow breaths.
“We’re halfway across the Bridge of Miracles,” I tell her. “The tide is coming in. If I turn around now, I don’t know if I can get you the help you need in time. And the family in the caravan ahead of us will drown. I don’t know how to fix this—how to stop any of this. Tell me what to do.”
Her voice is so faint beneath the clash of waves against rock, I think I imagined it.
“What did you say?”
“The moon,” she repeats, her voice creaky.
Moon magic.
But that is not my specialty, either. Even if it is
part of dark magic.
All I know how to do is wield blade and bow, or fight with my fists. I do not think the sea will respond to that.
My heart sinking, I turn Giselda back the way we came.
We make it twenty feet before I feel a pull—as if someone grabbed the back of my shirt between my shoulder blades and yanked me.
Titaine’s lashes twitch, then rise as her eyes open at last.
“...cannot wield your magic for you,” she croaks, “but you can lend yours to mine.”
Giselda turns south without my guidance, her feet stamping impatiently.
“I don’t know how,” I admit—perhaps the first time I’ve ever said such a thing to Titaine.
“...show you.”
“If you use your magic now, how will you heal?” I hold her tighter, the reins loose in my other hand. “It could kill you.”
“The sea…first.”
I eye the encroaching sea. “Fair point.”
Her eyes fall shut again, a furrow forming between her brows as she weaves an enchantment of water magic. I can barely see it, a ripple of water reaching out toward the actual sea.
“With me,” she says, laying one hand over mine.
“With you,” I echo, and close my eyes, savoring the touch of her hand, even if it is colder than it should be.
Titaine’s magic coils around me, warmer than her body—then bursts through my chest. Dark energy bubbles up in response, whipped into a frenzy by the addition of her magic.
I have no idea what I’m doing. I visualize that I’m lining up a shot with a bow, directing the point of an imaginary arrow towards the loose net of Titaine’s magic. I feel only the same darkness as the Blade of Hedril’s magic, and nothing of the moon.
I pray to whatever gods are left to hear me that this works.
Slowly, with a feeling as though my entire body is pushing back against the waves, I wind my magic into hers. Fae enchantment and dark elf shadows split around the land bridge, pushing back against the waves.
Sweat beads my forehead, neck, chest and back as I fight against it, the guiding presence of Titaine’s magic weakening. I need its structure—it’s now or never. I grit my teeth, a low growl building in my chest that becomes a war cry as I force my magic through the violent waves.
The magic cuts through like a hot knife. The waves fall back, unnaturally still for the span of a dozen panting breaths. Then, like a snake slinking off into a forest’s understory, the waves begin to recede.
The land bridge grows wider again, exposing a pebbled shore on either side of the caravan.
“We did it,” I exclaim, narrowly resisting my instinct to squeeze Titaine in my excitement.
It’s short-lived.
Seconds later, Titaine goes limp in my arms.