Chapter 22

22

Arwen

The first person to recognize us in the pale dusk light was a young soldier with a mop of stringy hair and an impressive height for his young age. As we strolled through the barracks, hand in hand, he scrambled over a fresh campfire to alert his peers, sparked by the realization that his king had returned.

Kane stifled a grin, which produced a matching one across my own face.

By the time we strode into the great hall, the entire castle was abuzz with murmurs and hollers and the rare cheer.

I was touched—I loved the people of Onyx, of Shadowhold specifically—but there were only a few faces that mattered to me, and I scanned the bustling hall for them.

Shadowhold in the wintertime was the most magical I'd ever seen it, and the great hall was no exception. The dark wood floors were somehow warmer, friendlier in contrast to the sheets of white that filled the windowsills outside. Each pillar and arch was dotted in garlands of bright red poinsettia, aspen leaves, and wreaths of mistletoe. Cranberry and peppermint and roasted nut aromas wafted in from the kitchens, and the delightfully haunting chords of a lute and jingling bells played a winter carol somewhere by the roaring fireplace.

The castle was fuller, too, and busier, which I assumed was due to all the soldiers and families bundled inside to stay warm. Their chatter and laughter and the clinking of their glasses only made me feel more at home. Solaris had been so empty. So cold. Shadowhold bundled me up and placed me into direct sunlight. I already felt my petals unfurling.

A family erupted in exultant laughter and I blinked twice at them. Small blonde girl, older, gray-haired man…

My heart expanded, and Kane squeezed my hand tightly.

Sitting at that long, lovingly dented wooden table, replete with plates piled high and steaming mugs, was my family.

Leigh, pitching her head back as she laughed with unfiltered glee, and beside her, Beth—the little seer whom I'd not realized would be here—not quite smiling but eyes still bright. Ryder and Barney across from them. Dagan, with his nose in a thick book, at the head of the table ignoring them all.

My hurried stroll to them became an ungraceful sprint as I drew nearer and nearer and nearer to the table.

"Arwen?" Leigh's stunned surprise was cut off by my barreling embrace. I pulled her so close I could feel her heart beating against my own. Her small hands reaching for as much of me as she could grasp. Blonde curls filled my vision and my throat grew so tight I couldn't speak. But that was all right. I had nothing to say that she couldn't feel through my hug.

I'm alive. I love you. I'm sorry I was gone so long.

"How is this— How…" Ryder's awed voice cut through Leigh's tears.

When I finally released our sister and got a good look at him, his smile was soft, though unmistakable remorse swam in his eyes. "I never thought I'd see you again."

When I wrapped my arms around his neck and held tightly, he appeared more stunned than anything.

"I'm so sorry," he mumbled into my shoulder. "So sorry."

"It wasn't your fault."

He nodded against my shoulder wordlessly. If I'd learned anything from all the stupid mistakes I'd made—telling Halden things I shouldn't have, not listening to Mari about the amulet before it almost killed her, and about a hundred other awful errors in judgment—it was that life was far too short to be the last one to forgive yourself.

Ryder pulled back just enough to search my face, frowning as he beheld what I was sure were sunken eyes, pallid flesh, and weak limbs. I needed some sunshine, and to move my atrophied muscles. And to eat something. Nothing had done less for my appetite than captivity.

"I'm all right," I assured him. "I'm going to start training again as soon as I can."

A gruff voice behind me said, "I've heard that one before."

For whatever reason it was the soft, relieved smile on Dagan's wrinkly face—his uncharacteristically warm, crinkled eyes—that wrecked me.

My face crumpled and I launched myself at him, fully expecting the old man to back away and let me topple onto my face. I wouldn't even have minded. But he was surprisingly strong and sturdy, and his dry, knotted fingers gripped me tightly into his chest as I broke into soundless sobs.

Somewhere amid the tears I could just make out Griffin's out-of-breath voice beside Kane, as if he'd come hurtling into the great hall amid the commotion. "Holy Gods above. Is that—"

"She was alive," Kane murmured. "All along, she was alive."

The winter sun was near blinding when I awoke. Brighter, as it reflected off heaps of fresh, clean snow. It sliced through the curtains into Kane's room and directly onto my face, pulling my eyes open. I pointed my toes and let my knuckles brush against the smooth headboard.

Home. I was home.

I stretched again. All my muscles protested. Every single one.

From fighting, from healing, from Kane.

I grounded myself in the memories of last night. How, after Kane and I had eaten an entire pork roast and two full loaves of cloverbread with everyone and, over many glasses of birchwine, had shared our stories—both the gruesome and the hopeful—he had brought me upstairs. And when I'd complained I couldn't bathe because my limbs were too tired and my belly too full, he'd carried me into the bath. He'd washed my hair with the most delicious lilac and lemongrass soap, and then my entire body after that, kneading and rubbing every inch of me from my sore shoulders to the slick ache between my legs until I squirmed and sobbed with pleasure.

He'd brought me to bed and we'd made love again. Slower, more careful, less hurried. Less twined around the leftover thorns of suffering for so long without each other.

I'd still cried during. And after. And then blubbered to Kane that I was sorry for ruining everything and I didn't know what was wrong with me. And that I wasn't pregnant, or hormonal, or tired—although, in fairness, I was actually that last one.

He'd raised a single brow and asked me why in the world I'd felt the need to explain myself. Clearly he hadn't grown up as a teenage girl with an younger brother and one male friend—

But Kane had only laughed and pulled me close and assured me that it might take some time until we felt like ourselves again. And even though he was right and I knew it, I still wanted that time to speed by as quickly as possible. I was eager to get my old life back, even just for a little, before we went to war.

This firm mattress, Kane's simple dark sheets, and his warm sleeping body beside me were at least the first pillars of that old life I could grasp on to: a reminder that I was here and I was safe and this was real.

Even my toes, prodding into the slumbering body of Acorn at the foot of our bed, brought a smile to my cheeks. I sat up on my elbows to peer at his odd little goblin face and wiry, feathered owl wings. Some dream of his resulted in a snort that sent my heart racing, and I brought the covers up around me in reflex.

All right, so I was still getting used to the strix, but everything else—everything else was a relief.

Kane's muscular back rippled with his own snores, the lucky bastard hidden completely in shadow while I had taken the brunt of the harsh dawn light. I rolled over, hoping to chase the last thread of sleep before it evaporated from my grasp completely.

I'd need all the rest I could get—we likely had only another day here, two at the most, before we had to leave for Rose. Find a way to convince Ethera, somehow, and then…The thought that followed was like tripping down a flight of stairs.

We'd have to go back.

Back to Lumera. Back to Solaris.

Back to that Stones-forsaken, muggy, marble-filled, bloodred-and-ink-black palace. Like a dreadful bruise.

Nausea seized my stomach and I sat up with enough force to wake Acorn and produce a shriek from him. As soon as his half-opened beady little eyes realized it was only me, he yawned and returned to his sleep.

But I was suddenly far too awake to lie in bed another minute.

I found my leathers in Kane's closet, alongside my prized, well-worn copy of Evendell Flora ; the black silk gown I'd been wearing when we'd been trapped in a wine cellar together; and the blue dress he bought me in Crag's Hollow. Some part of my still-healing heart ripped back open at the realization that he'd not disposed of any of my things in all the weeks he'd thought I was dead.

He'd kept it all. Artifacts of his love.

I changed silently, careful not to disturb either of my sleeping, winged boys, and found my way through the drowsy morning halls of Shadowhold. Down the grand staircase—that, too, festooned with wreaths of holly and little linked pinecones—and out into the barracks. Past the colorful tents that filled the front walls of the keep, now doused in lovely new snow. Past the gates, which creaked open for me as if I were some kind of royalty—guards in their shining obsidian armor and helmets shaped like eerie skulls waving pleasantly at me and wishing me a nice day. After lifting my arches against the trunk of a tree to stretch, I set off into the Shadow Woods at a brisk, jolting pace.

And I was not afraid.

There was nothing in these woods I couldn't face. No creature, no beast, no animal. I had survived beatings, loss, torture, Fae mercenaries, harvesting, confinement, impalement, explosions—

I had survived.

It was no indication of a flawless future, of course. Beth herself, a seer who had yet to be wrong, had told me point-blank that I would die. I knew in my bones, even after I'd survived so much, that it was true.

But I didn't brave so many horrors, defeat so much evil, suffer so deeply, to give up whatever joy I was left with. I was grateful for my life. Not the potential of it, or the purpose it served. Not for what I hoped one day, if every single miracle came true, it could be. But for how it looked today.

I rounded a bare beech tree and the two mighty stags that grazed below it—soft brown fur speckled with white spots, nuzzling each other in the dappled wintry sunlight—breath funneling pleasantly in and out of my tired lungs, glittering white snow at my feet.

And I thought, if we only had a day or so before Mari and Briar received the raven we sent last night and arrived at the keep, a day or so before we continued on our journey, which would inevitably lead to the war that would ensure my death or the death of the man I loved, I was going to enjoy the ever-loving Stones out of this run, in case it was my last.

It was right in the middle of that solid, strengthening thought, about ten yards from the North Gate of Shadowhold—I'd run an impressive half circumference of the keep and was feeling a little too pleased with myself—that I heard the unmistakable sound of Leigh's high-pitched yell.