Chapter 22

22

kane

I had been staring at the sealed entrance of Reaper’s Cavern for what felt like hours. Though grief beckoned like a siren, I wouldn’t give in quite yet. Instead, I’d focus on bafflement. On how I could have been so supremely stupid. How I could have let Arwen and Mari both slip through my fingers.

Fedrik moaned as Griffin attempted something with his leg behind me. After a few long, tedious inhales and the stomp of boots behind me, Griffin arrived at my side. I was still confounded by my own horrible, inexcusable decision-making, when he appraised the solid rock alongside me. “How’s the staring going?”

“How’s the prince?”

“He needs help.”

“We have to wait for Arwen. We can’t risk an infirmary. The towns are swarming with Amber soldiers . . .”

A miserable groan pulled our eyes to the tree that Fedrik leaned against as he tried to adjust his position. Griffin hadn’t been wrong: the prince’s face was nearly gray, his leg tied off with a tourniquet below the knee.

“That leg will be septic soon,” Griffin said. “We should get him back to camp.”

“We can’t. Not yet.”

“You think I want to leave them?”

I knew we had to help Fedrik, but I couldn’t move. Couldn’t or wouldn’t, I wasn’t sure. But the solid, cratered stone mass before me was taunting me. And I couldn’t leave, wouldn’t fucking leave without—

Mari’s voice cut through my thoughts like an arrowhead. “Holy Stones, there you are!”

Thank the Gods—

Griffin moved like a man possessed as he bounded for her. He reached Mari just as she cleared the tree line, only to stall out a foot in front of her. A loaded pause followed as he scratched his arm before saying, in relieved greeting, “Witch.”

Mari only huffed and traipsed around him. “Fedrik, are you all right?”

Fedrik only grimaced in response, his eyes elsewhere. He and I were both staring at that same leafy green spot in the jungle Mari had just plowed through.

Waiting.

A beat—

And then another.

Before my eyes stung. Before my hands clenched into fists. Before acid burned my throat.

“Where is Arwen?” Mari asked it first, her voice smaller than I’d ever heard it.

Fedrik looked stricken. “She isn’t with you?”

My whole body went still, my pulse halting in my veins. “You were just with her.” My sight had gone red, like a fog of blood. “What do you mean, where is she?”

Griffin stepped in front of Mari smoothly, his face a mask of calm.

“Fuck, Griff, I’m not going to hurt her,” I bit out. “Mari, tell me what happened.”

The witch swallowed audibly. “We escaped the treasure room and made it through this terrifying stone maze and then there was an avalanche of rock that was barreling toward us and we were exhausted, I’ve never run that much in my entire life, but even Arwen was tired I could tell—” She paused to swallow again. “It was horrible and so much faster than us and we were just going deeper and deeper into the caves until we saw this corridor that opened up to the jungle, and she . . . she . . .”

Finish the thought before I rip it from your tongue—

“She saved me. She used her lighte.” Mari said the word quietly. “To protect us both and push me in even though there wasn’t enough time for her, too. She would have been squashed, so she just kept running. And I tried to go back, but the tunnel was impenetrable because of the landslide. I tried a disintegration spell, which is most commonly used on wood that’s been infested by termites, but it didn’t have any effect on the stone, and I don’t have my spell books, and—” Another swallow. “All I could do was hope she made it to you first, but now . . . I don’t know where she is.”

For a moment it was silent. Nothing but the caws of birds and the humid breeze rustling in the waxy leaves around us.

“I have to go back in.” I wasn’t even sure if I had spoken the words aloud.

“You heard the witch,” Griffin said. “There’s no way back in.”

“Arwen is probably trapped in there. Her greatest fucking fear. I have to—” I couldn’t think. What could I even do? I whirled to Mari. The look in her eyes said my expression was as horrifying as it felt on my face. I tried to school my features. “Mari, you have to do something.”

“Like what?” She clutched at Briar’s amulet again.

“A locator spell,” Fedrik groaned against the tree, his face very pale.

“I just told you.” Her voice was getting frantic. “I don’t have my grimoires. I don’t know these spells off the top of my head. I’m not an encyclopedia.”

This was not the time for Mari to start doubting herself. As if reading my thoughts, Griffin held her gaze and said firmly, “You know enough. What about—”

“Oh yes, you know all the spells! Rattle them off for me, will you?”

I nearly knocked myself unconscious. “Please, Mari. Skewer the commander with your wit later. Think now.”

Griffin, the brave bastard, only stepped closer to her. “Clear your mind and think of your grimoires. You’ve read them all cover to cover.”

Mari chewed her lip. “Maybe a binding spell? To tie one of us to her. It’d be a bit like running around blindfolded, but they’d know if they were getting closer. They’d be able to feel her.”

“Me. Send me. Do it now.”

“I need a memory of you and her. To bind you together.”

A dark cloud passed over the shining sun and a chill crawled up my spine. “What kind of memory?”

Mari shut her eyes. “Anything with a strong emotion.” She brought her hands up to the sky, fingers taut and spread wide toward the tree cover, and murmured words in a language I didn’t recognize.

“There was an evening.” I cleared my throat. “A few months ago, when she spoke during a forum I held. She had great insight. I remember feeling unbelievably proud of her . . . the way she had braved the room. I knew my people still scared her, and yet—”

One of Mari’s eyes peeked open. “I’m going to need more than that, Kane. You have to actually feel something.”

Rare heat flamed up my neck—I did not embarrass easily. “Fine,” I gritted out. The memory that she needed bobbed to the surface from wherever I had sought to suppress it the past few months.

“The night the wolfbeast attacked Arwen.” I prickled against Fedrik’s and Griffin’s curious eyes. “I had been flying back from Willowridge. The whole way home I was kicking myself for leaving her. I had this . . . feeling. That something would happen to her while I was gone. That I would be punished somehow. Perhaps because we had grown so close the night before. Or, because the people I cared about so often wound up dead.

“When I got back, I raced to her room. I was going to make up some flimsy excuse for visiting her, but she was gone.” My knuckles went tight against the memory of her empty bedroom. “It was like finding a limb missing. Running through the woods, I think I made a promise to every single God for her safe return. And when I found her in that clearing . . . saw her blood leaking onto the forest floor . . .

“I thought my very heart lived outside my body in that moment, and I was watching it wither and die. I would have given my own life ten times over to save her from that pain. From the fever, the nightmares, the agony. It was the longest night of my life. When she awoke the next morning—healing, laughing—it was like dawn breaking over a thousand years of darkness. She—”

“It’s done.”

I hadn’t even noticed the wind swirling around us—or that I had closed my eyes—but when I opened them, Mari’s hair was falling softly around her face and thin, reedy leaves were fluttering back down to the ground.

Like a bath of light and warmth, I felt Arwen’s spirit flitting about inside my chest.

Alive—

She was alive.

I clutched at my heart. “She’s all right.”

“Thank the Stones,” Mari breathed. “You should be able to sense where she is. The feeling of being tied to her will only intensify as you get closer. Once you touch, the spell will end.”

I made sure I still had my sword on me and gathered my pack.

“We’ll meet you back at camp,” Griffin said. “We won’t risk finding a healer in Frog Eye unless we have to.”

I nodded and took off toward the layers of greenery ahead of me.

The sensation of my hands being tied stopped me in my tracks. Monkey shouts and bird calls were swallowed by pure silence as I looked down, but my arms were hanging at my sides, despite the feeling telling me otherwise.

“What is it?” Griffin called.

Fear—true and genuine fear hammered through my heart.

“I think . . .” I could feel what Arwen felt. Could feel her being tethered to something, my back, mirroring hers, bound to some kind of pole. “I think someone has her.” My voice was hoarse.

Horror knotted both Mari’s and Fedrik’s faces.

I didn’t waste another moment before hurtling for the trees.