Chapter 50

CHAPTER 50

It only takes four months before the first attempt on his life is made.

We are alone, walking through the grove as we have done many afternoons, savoring comfortable silence and the hymn of the trees and birds around us. Sometimes, those dark halls of Den become too much for me, oppressive. I can still feel her ghost restlessly pacing in there. Hear the sound of Evander's chains echoing through the empty halls. Smell Conri in the bed no matter how hard it is scrubbed and the furs and blankets changed.

Sometimes, the council meetings are too much for me to bear. Their questioning stares. Unspoken expectations.

These little escapes are all that keeps me together. When I'm lucky, Evander joins me. We take in the company of trees, rather than other lykin.

The assassins come like shadows, darting through the silver trees of Den, striking for Evander—not for me. I am the one they need alive, and he is the one they need dead.

Evander reacts with breathtaking speed. They are a tumble of teeth and claws, growls and snarls. There are three of them—hulking and frothing for blood—and only one of Evander.

I am frozen with shock. My hand goes to my thigh, sliding up the long shirt I wear that hides the hunting knife that's strapped there. It is a different knife than the one I used on Aurora's heart. That one is tucked away, safe and preserved. Using it now feels like it would dishonor her.

But that day taught me the need to fight—to have my own teeth among the company I now keep.

The lykin aren't expecting me to join the fray. I leap onto the back of one before it can lunge into Evander. My dagger sinks into his flesh between his shoulder blades. It slips through and the wolf lets out a horrible yelp in tandem with a crack.

I'm thrown a fair distance as the lykin whirls, trying to see the source of its attacker. His eyes meet mine. Wide with what looks like betrayal.

My own wide eyes meet it, holding its gaze for a long second as a question rips through my mind: What have I done?

The distraction is enough that Evander has been able to fell the other two. The third is so consumed by the betrayal of the woman he saw as the new moon spirit and all that came with the title—silent protector, uninvolved in mortal squabbles—literally stabbing him in the back that he doesn't see Evander lunge for his throat.

Evander's muzzle is stained with red, the corpses of his enemies around him. He slowly stalks toward me, the rise and fall of those massive, fur-covered shoulders reminding me of the ripples of a wave. But when he is nearly close enough to drip blood on my boots off his nose, he changes back. He still crawls, on hand and knee, to me. Blessedly bloodless.

"Faelyn…"

The sound of my name brings me back to my body. I realize every muscle is trembling.

"What… Why?" He knew the very question I had asked myself, because he is the one to truly know my heart.

"I—I knew it would come." The words quiver like my hands, dagger clattering to the ground. "I saw you be attacked once when there was nothing I could do and I vowed it would never happen again."

"But a knife?" He kneels as I draw my legs to me. I don't know if it's intentional that he positions himself to block the carnage behind us.

"I knew I wouldn't be able to bring myself to summon a spirit for it. I won't seek their help for such grim tasks." Even though I already had once, and we both know it. This feels different. This would be choosing to use them as a weapon, not merely defending myself.

But Evander doesn't bring that up. Instead, he takes me into his arms, enveloping me in warmth. I am half pulled into his lap as though I am a child to be comforted. Yet I can't stop myself from leaning into him.

"Neither should you take on such grim tasks," he whispers.

"I won't be useless to you."

"Faelyn." Evander leans back, shocked I would even say such a thing. "I do not see you as a tool to use any more than you see spirits in that way. You are not measured in your ‘usefulness.' Your value is inherent because you are my mate—the other half of my very soul. A half that I fear might be crushed under the weight of this place and its scarred history."

His thumb gently caresses my cheek as he looks deep into my eyes. This close, and I realize that it has been weeks now since we were last physically intimate. I reach up to touch his face as well and realize that…perhaps he's right.

"I see you and your restless pacing. That when you have tried to summon spirits to help the lykin, you are met with confusion and apprehension about your gifts." Evander shakes his head. "I won't allow these lands to destroy the heart that mine beats for. Your strength is your kindness, Faelyn. The good you see in this world. Do not trade that for the brutality that's watered this earth for far, far too long."

"What then?" I whisper.

"We leave." Two words, said so simply. Evander shifts his grip, helping me up, leading me away from the bodies of the dead. The way he says it makes me think that it's been something he's been considering for some time. "We leave these lands where power is earned with death."

"But you are their king."

"Faelyn, that is not the title that is important to me." His thumb brushes over mine as our fingers intertwine. "The title that I wish to honor and uphold is that of your mate. I would give up a thousand thrones for you."

"I couldn't ask you to."

"Good thing you're not asking and I am offering." He smiles slightly. The sun seems to shine brighter on his face than it has in weeks. The shadows under his eyes lift some, as if this realization is somehow easing the burden on him also.

"But these are your people."

Evander slows to a stop. He looks back in the direction of Den. No, past it. If his gaze were to take wing and fly straight, it would soar over the misty plains of the lykin, across a narrow sea, through a dark Fade, and straight to a home that is no longer there for either of us.

"No," he says softly, the wind tangling with his hair. "I thought the humans were my people, and spent my childhood among them. But I never really belonged. Never fit right." I know that feeling all too well. "My blood comes from these lands, but my true kin are long dead. The lykin that roam these plains are the ones who helped kill them. I can howl their hymns, but they are not my people, either." He turns back to me and the world narrows with his attention. The trees blur as my focus rests solely on him. The wind pauses, as if even it is holding its breath for his next words. " You are the only one I have ever felt like I belonged with."

The words resonate as truth, not just for him, but for me as well—for all the years I spent not quite human, not quite magic. Something between. I still exist in that space of both. Of not knowing quite where I should be. Perhaps I only ever thought it could be here because this was where he was.

My home is not a place, it is a person. When I look into his eyes, I am home. We are not kept by lands, or bloodlines, or any vow but the one we made to each other.

"When?" It's the only thing I can think to ask.

"Tomorrow."

"So soon?"

"Unless you have a reason to stay?" He smirks slightly, already knowing the answer. We both walk a little faster and readily leave the burdens we had assumed by default behind.

When I had fantasized about the mark we could leave on the lykin, I had thought of Evander ruling. Of me helping with the aid of the spirits to forest the plains once more and usher in a new age for a new people. I had thought of a king and a queen, united and equal.

But change is not made with commands. With new leadership that simply filled the same shoes as the old, walking the same paths. That was the cycle that had chained the lykin for centuries. It had disrupted the natural order of their packs and transformed them into something they were not. A never-ending struggle in which there could only be one victor, rather than the many that had roamed the plains as free as the wind that now pulls back my hair.

Evander is under me, running as fast as he can. Faster than we have ever run before. There is nothing holding us back now. No thread that binds us to the past. We leave it all behind, racing toward the breathtaking promise of the horizon, as a new dawn rises over the land of the lykin.

Those same rays will strike a shattered crown, fangs scattered among the silvery leaves of Den.