Sadie

All the resolve I thought I’d regained over the last two days vanished when I heard Calla croak, “?”

“Calla.”

The name lodged in my throat, and it was all I could say for a moment. Not even the soft hum of Navin beside me could soothe me now.

We’d made it to a half caved-in well in the middle of nowhere, far from the road south. The Stoneater River was a thin line on the horizon.

I crumpled beside the whispering well, Navin’s hands shooting out and catching me as my knees buckled. I clung to the well as he held me, resting my cheek on the rough stone. Brief flashes of shade covered us from the scalding sun as the red-and-gold dragon flew overhead like a circling vulture.

I pushed down on my tears enough to let the stream of words echo down the sonorous hollow: Luo was dead along with many others. Tadei was still alive having fled the carnage. I told Calla about the Songkeepers and the vase and the dragon and then . . .

Harried tears dripped off my nose and lips as I told Calla that Maez had taken hold of the dark magic, slaughtered most of the Onyx Wolf pack, and disappeared. We’d lost her. She was gone.

A long resounding silence followed before Calla asked, “You said her magic trailed off toward the Stoneater? Do you think she’s going after Briar?”

The words were both desperate and hopeful, as if Calla secretly wanted for Maez to be using her magic to get their twin back.

I wasn’t sure, but I think I secretly hoped that, too.

“I don’t know,”

I said. “It’s unprecedented. A mated sorceress? I don’t know if mating bonds can survive through such darkness.” Navin shook his head beside me. “There’s not a single book on it that either of us knows of.”

“I have to believe that it could,”

Calla said, though their words were strained. “I have to believe Maez is on her way to rescue Briar. Just thinking about what she must be going through—” Calla’s words died on a sob, and I heard the comforting whispers of Grae echo up through the well. I knew he was holding Calla together as much as Navin was for me in that moment.

“There’s something else, ,”

Grae said, taking over for his mate. His words came out so slowly that dread trickled down my spine.

“What is it?”

“It’s Hector.”

My whole body seized, weightless, my mind spinning like being tumbled in a giant wave. I couldn’t lose Hector. He couldn’t be gone, too. Somewhere deep within me, I thought I’d always know if something ever happened to my older brother. Like some sudden strike of pain and knowing, even if we were separated. We’d always been so connected even as we fought and bickered that I thought I’d instinctively feel his loss somehow. “Is he—”

“He’s alive,”

Grae said quickly, and my shoulders sagged. I clenched my fist to my gut at the relief. “For all we know.”

“For all you know?”

I searched around me, my thoughts spinning so fast I thought I might vomit. “What do you mean, for all you know? He’s not with you? Did Nero take him, too? Is he hurt? Where is he?”

“He . . .”

Grae battled to get the words out, which only stoked my fears further. “, he betrayed us.”

“No.”

The sound barely escaped my lips. “He—he couldn’t have done that. You must’ve gotten it wrong. He is loyal. He’s loyal to us. He’s loyal to me.”

“I think he did it for you. To save you from Tadei, maybe. Who knows what Nero and your father promised him.”

“My father?”

“He and your uncles were there. They must’ve gotten to Hector. He attacked us, . Sold us out. I’m not mistaken.”

Grae spoke clearly and plainly as if debriefing a soldier after an attack. “He pointed his sword at us and blocked our exits. He gave us up to Nero. He worked with Ingrid to lure us into a trap.”

“No.”

“I’m sorry, . He fled before they took Briar and his paw prints lead toward Nesra’s Pass.”

A broken sob escaped my lips. First Maez, now Hector. Navin’s arms banded tighter around me and crushed me into his chest as if protecting me from the blow of those words. Still, they landed like a poisoned arrow straight to my sternum.

My true family. Betrayed. Gone.

Hector had been spying on the Golden Court for King Nero? How had my father and uncles wormed their way back into his life? Had they given him an ultimatum like they’d tried to do with me? Was he their first port of call to getting their lives and reputations back after I evaded them?

I shook my head, shoving out of Navin’s grip, trying to battle the very notion that Hector had it in him. I stormed toward the wagon and let out a sharp scream that ricocheted across the bare desert. Balling my hands into fists, I shrieked my vengeance and cursed the Goddess in the sky. I unsheathed a knife from my thigh belt and stabbed it into the metal spoke in front of me, again and again, not even denting the magical wagon wheel. I attacked unseeing, my eyes welling with tears faster than I could blink them away. What had happened to us? To all of the people I called family?

My hand slipped down the blade, cutting my palm open, and I dropped it to the sand, punching the wheel with my bare knuckles instead. Every ounce of pain exploded though me as my knuckles crunched on the hard wood. Maez. Briar. Hector. All those Onyx Wolf bodies. All the citizens suffering in Damrienn. All the people, human and Wolf alike, who would die still. The carnage would be so vast it would never end. This war would raze the entire continent.

Navin’s arms banded around me, hauling me off my feet and fusing me against him. I screamed and thrashed in his grip, blind with rage, but he didn’t let go as he began humming a tune to me. Each deep note vibrated into my back, making my movements slow until my limbs and eyelids were heavy.

“You bastard!”

I screamed as Navin continued his deep, slow song. Blood from my sliced hand splattered across the tiles and smeared down his arms as I struggled. “Don’t you dare use your magic on me! Let me go!”

He stopped singing, and I wondered if his songs were a gut instinct rather than intentional. I knew he would never use magic on me without my permission ever again. But when he loosened his grip on me, I felt like a kite with its strings cut. Floating, lost, rudderless. The grief instantly became unbearable again.

“Make it stop,”

I cried, wrapping his arms back around me. “Please!”

Navin’s grip tightened again, and he resumed his song. I thrashed one more time, my whole body feeling weighed down with lead. I opened my mouth to scream my anguish again, but the will to do so slowly ebbed, my anger morphing into exhaustion and exhaustion into sleep. Anger was foreign to me now, rage unable to be summoned. My body went limp as Navin scooped me up into his arms.

“Save your rage, my love, my goddess,”

he sang, carrying on the tune that was pulling me under. “Save your wrath for the enemies growing like the flames. Save your wrath for the monsters, and traitors, and war games. This broken world I promise you . . .”

His words faded away into nothingness as I slipped into a deep dreamless sleep.

The following day was a blur of sleep and song, and it was evening before I finally roused enough to open my eyes. I took in the canvas ceiling of Galen den’ Mora first as the remnants of sleep dissipated from my mind. The tight grip of sleep loosened, and my mind started to pull into the present moment. My body felt calm, my hands running across the smooth sheets below me, no twinges of cuts or pain radiating from them. My bloody palms and knuckles were healed. I must’ve shifted in my sleep, but I had no recollection of it.

From my periphery, I saw Navin perched at the edge of my bunk humming a familiar little song—the same song he’d sung as we’d rode through the Sevelde Forest what felt like a lifetime ago. His singing halted as I rolled to my side.

“Is it a magical song?”

I mused, wiping the grit of sleep from my eyes. The sky through the window was awash with soft pinks and burnt oranges. I didn’t know if it was dawn or dusk, my body still boneless and disoriented from the power of Navin’s song.

“All songs are magic, whether they’re spells or not.”

Calloused fingers slid over the dip of my waist and up to rest on my thigh. “But yes, it’s a protection song,” he said, his voice scratchy, and I wondered how many hours he’d been singing. “I hadn’t realized I was singing it, must’ve been instinct.” His eyes shined like molten copper as they lifted to mine. “I hum when I’m worried.”

I imagined him and his father singing the same song as they traversed the shadowed caverns of the Sevelde mines—of his lone song carrying on after his father had died. A sorrowful pain bloomed in my chest, thinking of him nervously singing it still as we rolled through the golden trees. I was glad now that I’d chosen to sit there and hold his hand, letting him know this time he didn’t have to be brave alone.

“I can’t believe you have a song powerful enough to make me sleep when I was in such a state.”

I’d intended the statement to sound accusatory, but it lacked my intended bite.

“You were about to shatter every bone in your hands,”

he said, his thumb sweeping across my now-healed knuckles and lifting my hand to kiss them. “Even if you could heal yourself, I couldn’t bear to watch you destroy yourself. I hate watching you suffer.”

“Maybe I needed to suffer,”

I said as all the horror of the past few days washed through me again. It had always been my coping strategy—to excise the pain within my heart by inflicting it upon others or even within my own physical body. I didn’t know any other way to release it and now it festered there still even after shifting and rest.

“No one needs to suffer. Not even your enemies,”

Navin said, letting out a disapproving grunt. I wanted to argue with him, to tell him exactly who I thought needed to suffer, but I knew he was right. Kill, yes—there were people who needed to die by my teeth and claws. But suffer? No—that wasn’t the warrior way. I was still trying to figure out exactly what being a warrior in this brand-new world meant, but I knew, deep down, that had to be part of it if I was going to retain any bit of my true self.

He tugged my hand, pulling me onto his lap. He brushed the disheveled hair from my eyes, holding my gaze for a moment, before rising to stand and lifting me along with him.

“Come,”

he said. “I made something while you were sleeping.”

I stretched and followed him, combing my fingers through my hair as we moved through the galley and out onto the back steps of Galen den’ Mora. The evening air was cool and fragrant as Navin led me toward a rock formation of pale stone. The dip of a rock created a little alcove of striated rock, and upon the ledge . . . was an altar. A sage silk stole was held in place by a bowl of silver coins, along with a smattering of ivory candles—one already lit. A string of auspicious silver moons hung between the two rock walls, the metal gleaming in the flicker of candlelight. I knew what this was, had seen it in the castle of Damrienn during the full moon ceremonies when we were called by the moon priests to pray. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d lined up to light a candle. When was the last time I’d begged the Goddess to hear my prayers?

My brows knitted as I stared at the moon altar. “Wh—”

“I thought you might like to light a candle,”

Navin whispered, kissing my temple. “It’s how the Wolves pray, is it not?”

My traitorous eyes welled at the sight, my emotions still adrift after all that had transpired. “You built me an altar so that I can pray?”

“It’s the full moon tonight,”

he offered, looking up at the swollen moon hanging low in the sky. “I thought you might want to commune with your Goddess.” When I didn’t reply, he shuffled his weight uncomfortably, clearly thinking he’d made a misstep.

I cleared my throat, so overcome with emotions I’d forgotten to speak. I’d never felt more deeply seen or embraced nor did I realize how desperately I needed a funnel through which to grieve—one that wouldn’t shatter bones and leave the walls bloody. But Navin knew.

“I love it.”

I threaded my fingers with his, and his shoulders eased in relief as he pulled me into his side. “Definitely beats breaking my hands.”

He knowingly laughed, rustling my loose hair as he dusted another kiss to my temple. “Do you want me to go or stay?”

“Stay.”

The word instantly left my lips as quickly as I could think it. I wanted him here, holding this space for me, my heart finally willing to admit how much I needed him.

I selected the single glowing candle and lifted my chin to the sky, letting the sight of the full moon wash through me as I murmured my prayers.

“Moon Goddess, hear me this night,” I said.

My voice wobbled and I couldn’t get the words out, my prayer morphing into one of raw emotions instead of words. Navin shuffled closer until I could feel the heat of his chest at my back. I wanted to ask the Goddess to forgive me for all who’d died by my hands, to usher all the fallen souls into the afterlife. I wanted to ask her to guide my next steps and to watch over me for another moon. More hot tears streamed down my face and dripped off my chin. I wanted to ask her to find a way to reckon with my brother and to bring Maez back to me.

But instead, I just cried and trusted that she knew everything unfurling from my heart. These tears felt different than all the ones I’d shed before, neither panicked nor breaking but rather healing like the gentleness of falling asleep, like the whole world sighing. The tears cleansed me of all the fear and rage. The pain was still there but lessened, pulling from me like the smoke from the flame. The moonlight mended me back together along with the hand clenching my own.

I set the candle back down and turned into Navin, his arms ready to envelop me. “Thank you,”

I whispered into his tear-stained tunic.

When I released him, I grabbed a candle and passed it to him. “Let’s pray for your family, too.”

His throat bobbed as he took the candle from me, and I saw all the emotions in his expression that he would never be able to put words to, not even a song. Lighting the candle felt like a vow between the two of us, standing at the altar of moonlight.

I watched the flickering candles through watery eyes as we reckoned with all we’d lost together. I knew it would take many moons, maybe a lifetime, to fully heal, but the moon was still in the sky and Navin was still by my side and right then I knew I had to make that count for more than the fear of what comes next.