20

Eamon is a golden cat lounging on the foot of my bed.

He watches me without an ounce of desire as I shimmy into a brassiere, then tug on a plain sweater. Since he was the one to help me into that ghastly now-cut-up yellow gown, then sew me into it, all shame of nudity around Eamon is vanished.

Head propped up on his fist, he fishes out a valerian stalk from his trouser pocket and brings it to his mouth.

“Can you not smoke in my bedchamber?” I grumble and tug my belt through the loops of my breeches. “It’ll stink out the room.”

“Oh now you care about the smell in here?” He grins around the valerian. “Aren’t you fresh out of a week-long marination in your own sweat?”

My eyes roll back as I stomp for the window and wrench it open.

The Warmth floods the bedchamber like a fiery punch to the face, and I fleetingly think of what it feels like to lift the lid of a teapot before being struck with the steam.

“Will you come watch me train?” I ask. “I’m getting better with the throwing knives.”

He rolls onto his back. “I’m meeting Ridge for a wander around town. What is this?”

I look over my shoulder at him. He reaches out his boot, gestures it the way of the tomes stacked on the bedstand.

“A bit of night reading?” he teases.

“I’m reading about Mother,” I say and push aside the heavy velveteen curtains, one by one.

“What about Mother?” His tone takes a serious turn, slated now.

“It’s just… something I’ve been thinking about.”

The strike of a match snares my attention.

Eamon hits it down the wooden post of the bed. A risk that pays off, because my bedchamber isn’t suddenly engulfed in flames. He brings the match to his valerian stalk.

Clouds of smoke are quick to gather at his face. “Something like what?”

My smile is small and tight. Defence kicks in, an instinct under the stare of his gaze. I fold my arms over my chest. “Daxeel can talk to Mother because of his ancestry, right?” I lean against the windowpane, my boot kicking over the floorboards. “We call it the bloodline but Mother doesn’t recognise blood—she recognises souls.”

Eamon’s mouth pinches as he considers this.

“So Daxeel’s soul is what Mother will listen to.” I flurry my hand in the air, as though to speed him along, to catch him up to my flimsy theories. “Not his blood.”

He hums, then slowly nods. “That… That makes sense, yes.”

“And Daxeel’s soul must be somehow bonded to his lineage, like there are… marks or prints on our souls that Mother can read and then know who we are and our ancestry.”

I feel the hot hues forming on my cheekbones, the little itch of shame, of embarrassment, because my theory is a thread, not a rope. It isn’t one I thought I would share with anyone, even Eamon.

He arches his brow, and I know I’ve lost him.

“Ok,” I start and push from the window. “Daxeel doesn’t come from an ancient line of blood in Mother’s eyes. He comes from an ancient line of souls .” I drop onto the bench at the foot of the bed and reach for the stalk. “Souls that came from the true darkness, the Cursed Shadows.”

“Because Mother doesn’t recognize blood,” Eamon decides with a nod of his head, and he hands over the stalk. But the doubtful frown still creases his face—doubt at where I’m taking this.

I pause to take a long puff.

I have another training session with Dare this phase, so I can’t indulge too much, since what he’s teaching me is valuable enough that, hey, it might just save my life. I want to be sharp.

Still, I have a little, then hand it back.

“Listen,” I sigh. “If I’m Daxeel’s evate, that means we are soul bound. We are not merely mates, we are two halves of a whole.”

Eamon chews on my words as if to make sense of them, his jaw flexing, his mouth pursed.

He relents with, “I suppose.”

“If I am half of him and he is half of me… wouldn’t Mother then recognise my soul?”

The cloud of smoke ribbons from the rolled stalk and shields his face. “What are you saying, Nari?”

“Wouldn’t I be able to whisper to Mother, too?” Small as a mouse, my voice is softer than the vapours that loosen from Eamon.

He runs his tongue over his bottom lip. Behind his honey eyes, his mind churns like cogs to a machine, and I watch—I wait.

Then, he brings the stalk to his lips.

Silent, he draws in an inhale, long and deep. His chest rises the more he takes in.

He holds his breath.

“Do it,” he says, then releases the smoke in a heavy sigh. His grin turns wicked. “To hell with them—with everyone. If you can speak to Mother, then do it… at least try.”

Tension unravels through me. It’s not until my shoulders slump and a small, curt breath escapes me, that I even knew I was as rigid as a statue.

But I have little more to speak on the matter, because I haven’t gotten any further than this.

What exactly would I say to Mother? What could I offer? What could I sacrifice in all my pleading?

And what in the worlds would I even wish for?

It’s as fanciful an idea as my survival. Yet I fight for the latter, so I’m not quite ready to push aside my hopes.

I lean over the foot of the bed. Resting my head on his torso I gaze up at him. “So what is it you and Ridge will be doing this phase all alone?”

The look he gives me is a mild one, as though afraid of my reaction. “He’s coming with me to look at a place.”

My head would tilt if it wasn’t rested on his chest. “A place?”

“It’s nonsense.” He shakes his head. “Nothing more than a dream.”

“I tell you my dreams,” I say with a glance at the tomes. “So you must tell me yours.”

His smile is wry, like he sees right through me, like he’s amused by my obvious attempt to take his mind off the honour duel and my impending doom in the Sacrament.

In the phases since Ronan delivered the summons, we have still gotten nowhere close to a cease—or a decent second, what with all the obvious candidates tied to the Sacrament.

“Nari’s,” Eamon says with a grin.

I scrunch my face. “Huh?”

Then I cast a look at the tall, blackwood clock ticking away in the corner of the bedchamber. The time shown is enough to grumble my chest with a sigh.

I push up with a grunt, then start on my boot laces.

Dare expects me on the roof in fifteen minutes and I don’t want to know what he’ll do if I’m late and he has to come looking for me.

I plan on being punctual so I don’t learn the answer to that.

“Remember the flat above the tavern?” he says delicately, carefully.

My teeth bite down, hard.

Jaw clenched, I cut my gaze down to the rug.

I’d forgotten.

In all my selfish woes, I had forgotten all about Eamon’s desire to abandon me for Kithe.

Now I deflate with a heavy breath and just look at him from beneath my lashes.

I wait for the more that is to come.

Eamon stretches out onto his side, the stalk loose in his kiss, his eyes burning like embers behind a cloud of silvery vapours. He looks ever wicked. “There’s an old tavern in the middle of Kithe—and they are selling. Both the flat and the tavern.”

My throat tenses. I swallow back the swell and nod, slow.

More than just a flat, just a dwelling, this is establishment in a place that is not home. This is Eamon making a new home.

He adds, “Ridge and I were going to have a look.”

“You’re buying a tavern?” I drop my done laces and twist around to glare dully at him. “With Ridge?”

If anyone should be in on this with him, it’s me.

Outrage sears through me and burns my eyes, but a lethargy blankets me, like I’ve spent all my emotions, all my cries and shouts, and now all that I have left are mere scraps, some glowers or rolled eyes, not much more.

“I’m considering the purchase,” he corrects. “And no, not with Ridge. He’s only coming along. This will be an independent move for me. Besides an investor,” he draws the stalk from his lips, “or you,” he winks, “I want to do this on my own.”

The frown is stuck to my face, and I’m sure I must look stupid. “What investor? You have one?”

The smile he gives is as bitter as the valerian smoke clouding my bedchamber. “None at all. That is why it will stay a dream.”

“But if you were to do this,” I start and take a step closer to him, “then you would live here. In the Midlands. In Kithe.”

“Yes,” he says gently, a simmer in his eyes, a gleam of pity.

Anything goes in the Midlands. The laws are fractured, weak, and blended here. I suppose Eamon has decided it wouldn’t be so bad to live here. I suppose now that the order of the honour duel has been served, Eamon’s realized a danger in returning to Licht. A danger that is just too great.

From the realization, once-ideas have strengthened to bones.

And I’m late to catch up to that glaring reality. That Eamon might not be too safe in his return home.

But…

“What about me?” I ask, soft.

Selfish Nari.

He reaches out his hand for me.

I take another step closer and, hesitantly, slip my fingers into his gentle hold.

His murmur soothes me, “Where else would I have you but with me, my sister?”

My heart plummets and hits my gut, hard.

How can I stay with him here in Kithe?

It’s a dream, a fantasy, a lie he feeds me to soften the blow of our looming separation.

If I survive this Sacrament, then father will take me home; and I might still be sold to Taroh or another. Maybe the Grott will become my new prison for a while. Daxeel has made it clear that he and I will never be. And so I turn my back on those hopes I grappled onto not so long ago.

My future is not in Kithe.

And I realize now, it is not with Eamon.

So there is only sadness on my face when a flash of blue flares from the bedside table; the flame in the lantern.

I scramble out of reach.

Without a word farewell, I’m out the door, headed for the roof, swallowing back thick tears all the way.

For the first while of this lesson, I have thoughts of Eamon in Kithe while I return to the light lands. Those thoughts morph into daydreams of us both living here together, running our own little tavern.

I let my mind get away from me.

And it distracts me.

I miss the target for the fourth time this round, the knife thudding to the mat, when Dare scoffs at my side.

He leans his head back as though praying to the gods for patience, eyes shut on his frustration.

“Enough of this,” he says with a sigh. “Come with me.”

He turns his back on me and stalks to the edge of the roof.

He stops at the black fence and grips a pale hand around the metal arrowhead. He yanks, hard, and the fence shudders to the side, creating a gap in the railing.

Setting down the knives, reluctance slows me down as I approach. My narrowed gaze runs him over with each step closer.

Dare just watches me in silence, a mask of tedium pulled over the angles of his face.

He jerks his chin to the side, a gesture over the edge. “Look.”

I take another step, close enough to the railing that I can peer over the side.

“See the lattice?”

I nod.

“Daxeel says you climbed lattices at home.”

Constantly.

Every time I wanted to sneak out, I had to climb the lattice at my bedroom window. And that was a weekly occurrence ever since I turned sixteen.

“So,” he says as though it’s obvious. “ Climb .”

I don’t get a moment to so much as blink before the ground is pulled out from under me, and I’m falling.

Dare snatched me by the arm—and threw me off the fucking roof.

Air rushes up at my back.

Tendrils of hair whip my face, lash at my eyes, blind me.

I don’t manage more than a whispered gasp as I tumble.

Then my body jerks against a sudden pull, and I feel like warm taffy being stretched and tugged and yanked.

A cry hisses out of me.

Eyes wild, I glare up at the edge of the roof.

Dare’s unapologetic face is aimed down at me. His grip is firm on my wrist, the force of his snatching enough to have my bones humming and my muscles weeping.

“Grab onto the lattice,” he says, then peels a finger away from my wrist, then another, and I slip. “Or don’t.”

My breath shudders.

I scramble my gaze around—and right in front of me, vines thread through the lattice.

The moment I consider it, his hand abandons me entirely.

I throw my arms in front of me—and I snatch onto the leafy vines.

I cling on for life.

Above, Dare’s voice comes, “You have no skill in battle, but you do have a talent. Speed and agility create evasion.”

I crane my neck to aim my silent snarl at him.

From this angle, his jaw is a fistful of knives and his eyes are melted pots of gold beneath shadowy lashes. “Climb trees,” he tells me, “and stay out of the way until I find you. That is your strategy.”

I readjust my grip, tighten it, and slot my boot into a gap in the lattice. I pull myself closer, hugging my safety, and the vines tickle my nose.

I huff a breath, at him, at the vines, I don’t know. Maybe both.

But Dare is unfazed by the outrage glaring in my eyes. “Fires no longer than fifteen minutes—and only ever in the day. Each phase, you’ll have two hours of sunlight on the mountain.”

I tug my nose from the reach of the tickling vines. “Sunlight?” I echo, hardly aware of the word beyond a niggle in my brain.

“It’s cloudy, but strong enough that the dark males will take shelter. That’s your best time to move, to cook, to find a safe spot to hide out—and do not rest in the same spot more than once. Always be on the move.” Dare crouches at the edge of the roof. He braces his forearms on his thighs, his boots dangling not far above me. “The sunlight won’t keep you safe from the litalves who will be after you.”

That strikes me silent.

‘The litalves who will be after you.’

Both sides will target me.

The litalves who have a vendetta will hunt me, for Taroh or for honour, whatever reason they pull out of their asses. But really, we all know—take me out, Daxeel goes down with me. Even if he doesn’t fall right away, the blow of it, a dead evate, a shattered bond, it’s enough to diminish him.

Ultimately, he will follow me into the beyond. The evate dies, the male dies with her.

Dare snaps his order at me, “Climb. I need to see your agility for myself.”

I groan and shut my eyes, as though to darken my sight for a moment will allow me some scraps of patience. Patience not to reach up for his boot and yank him over the side.

I focus on what he’s told me. I hold onto it like an echo of warmth in the dark. “So that’s when I cook,” I murmur the words like I’m not quite hearing them, not quite thinking them, but just regurgitating what he’s told me. And I start to climb the lattice. “When all your kind are… hibernating .”

“Oh, not me,” he smirks the words down at me.

I’m closer now, and so he reaches down and tugs a stray strand of my hair, a little too hard.

I wince, then turn a hiss up at him.

His smile is unfazed. “I do just fine in the sun.”

Right.

Hybrid.

“How long will it take?” I ask.

He arches a brow in question.

“Before you find me?” I add. “What if by the time you do reach me, I’m dead?”

He shakes his head. “Keep hidden. Smear dirt all over yourself for camouflage and to mask your scent. Keep close to the riverbanks and streams. Hide. And I’ll get to you in time.”

I don’t need to ask why Dare is the one meant to hunt me down. It’s his career. He’s a tracker, a hunter, a spy, a killer. And he’s faster than the others.

Dare has a better chance of getting to me quick if he’s moving alone.

A heavy sigh whooshes out of me.

I deflate and lean my head back.

The darkness above is a thick blanket that weighs down on me.

Soon, it will shudder through time and space, through the bridges or create some of its own with sheer, brute force.

It will eat at the human realm like it eats at the light in a lantern. It will devour and destroy and blind.

And I feel that in its weight crushing me.

I grunt and climb the rest of the way up.

I roll onto the roof and flop down on my back.

Dare turns slightly, angles himself to consider me.

“What will happen out there?” I whisper the question, eyes fixed up at the dark. “To them?”

It must take Dare a moment to follow my thoughts to the humans, because there’s a pause before he says, “First, darkness. Predictably, they will let their panic lead them into war, bloodshed over resources. They will get sick, die off in the masses.”

I turn my chin; my cheek presses against the cool floor of the roof. “Sick?”

Dare hikes his knee and rests his forearm on it. “The iilra will send plagues through the darkness,” he says with a one-shoulder shrug. “Those who survive it will later face us.”

I swat at a strand of hair stuck to my brow. “Do you support that? An entire species, not terribly unlike us, wiped out?”

No matter what any fae thinks of a human, to allow this, to allow the dark ones to saunter into their realm and slaughter them all, is a harrowing thing.

I’ve never had much pity for anyone outside of me. But gods, I pray for them all.

Dare’s brow knits together. Waves of dark hair fall into his face.

He considers me, not the question, before he says, “Yes.”

A scoff catches in my throat. Still, I lie flat on my back, unmoved from the weight of darkness, the dawning weight of defeat.

“What about your kinta?” I ask, softly.

His smile is small. But the anger burns like molten gold in place of eyes. “Time is different to her. I will surprise that devious creature with a visit at the end of the Sacrament. Three months will have passed for her—”

“So she will have forgotten all about you,” I finish for him, a slight nod tucking my chin. “And she’ll be in the middle of it, the darkness invading the human lands.”

“Unlikely. I expect she’ll take refuge in Licht. Eamon was kind enough to tell me that her family home is in his village.” His smile spreads into something toothy.

A shudder hums my spine at the sight of it.

“Perhaps I want to scare her,” he confesses, a throaty sound to his usually polished tone. “A little punishment for her slight.”

“You have a flair for the dramatic.” I push up to sit with crossed legs. I pick at the laces of my boots. “Do you enjoy theatre by any chance?”

“I always thought it dull.”

I go rigid all over.

The answer didn’t come from Dare. It came from across the roof, behind me.

I turn a scowl over my shoulder.

Daxeel leans his shoulder against the doorframe, his ankles crossed, and those gleaming cobalt eyes aimed on me like arrows ready to spear.

Dare pushes from the roof’s edge and leaves in silence, but not before he shoots me a glance that says nothing less than ‘good luck’ .

I stagger to my feet, fingers curling into fists.

Daxeel stuffs his hands into his pockets and slumps against the doorframe. “Will you be out of your cocoon for long, or do you plan on returning to that filthy bed now?”

The look I give him is dead-eyed. Nothing but loss weighs on me at the sight of him. “What does it matter to you?”

The glint in his stare burns just that bit brighter. “It decides the rest of our phase.”

“Are you commanding me to anything in particular?” I ask, snarky, and let my lip curl.

“Perhaps a wash.” He pushes from the doorframe. “A private dinner.”

I take a step closer, determined, and lift my chin. “The only way you’ll get me into your bed this Quiet, is to take away my will with a command. Otherwise, fuck yourself.”

His face shutters.

Then it’s stone again, entirely unemotive, a mask pulled tight. “I have been considerate, Nari. I have given you time—”

“Time to what?” The shout rips through me. “To come to terms with you killing me?”

His lashes flutter.

Surprise hooks him.

Because Daxeel never said anything about killing me on the mountain.

Guess he didn’t expect me to figure it out.

From the fae promise to the sacrifice, I suspect how he will offer the bond to Mother.

He will offer me.

“I warned you, Daxeel.” I let a look of hatred twist my face, a glimmer of disgust in the way I drink him in from top to bottom. “You might just break me. But you pushed and pushed—and now there is so much pain between us. I will never fall to the boots of the male who wants me dead.”

“I promised you—” He starts with a growl.

But I cut down anything he has to say.

“I don’t care!” My shout is spurred on with urgent steps closer. “I don’t care what you promised, or that you are punishing me for an old slight I have redeemed myself for. You have hurt me deeply ,” and my throat thickens. “You have hurt me in the way so many others have done before you. And now it is you who must be redeemed.”

His mask shatters like glass, as though I smacked it clean off him. His throat bobs and he falls his weight back onto one boot; a retreat.

I move for him, an advance and nothing less. “Now it’s my turn. A fae promise from me to you.” My nails cut into the meat of my palms. I glare up at him. “We are to enter the second passage within the week. And I will starve you of my touch with every ounce of willpower I have. How it must burn inside of you, that need to hold me, scent me, love me—but you can’t.”

His eyes gleam, but not like swords he must draw and skewer me with. They gleam like oceans; like abysses and voids.

The urge to fall into them, to be lost in the worlds they contain…

My heart loves him still. But it’s broken, too.

By him.

So I leave—and he doesn’t chase.

I take the halls and the stairs straight to Aleana’s bedchamber.

But the sight of her startles me in the doorway.

A sweaty, pale skeleton, she keeps to the bed, limp on the mattress.

Melantha croons over her, using her long, spidery fingers to brush away strands of hair from Aleana’s clammy cheeks. Her faint murmurs don’t quite reach me, and so I don’t know the exact words she soothes her daughter with.

I should turn my back on their private moment and leave. But for a moment, a long beat of hesitation and horror and curiosity, I invade. I watch, study the purple bruises that smear Aleana’s legs, as though painted carelessly over her ashen complexion; and I listen to the murmurs Melantha speaks, and the wheeze that threads through Aleana’s breaths.

Silently, I draw away from the door and dip back into the shadows of the corridor. I decide it’s best to not intrude.

Aleana needs her rest.

And so I return to my hideout.

My own fatigue weighs me down with each dragging step I take through the halls of Hemlock back to my bedchamber.

But I don’t climb into the sheets.

For a beat, I stand at the foot of the bed. The dullness of my eyes is fixed on the bedstand, the piles of tomes flattening the scrolls I borrowed from the scripture room.

I move for them.

One by one, I yank and wrestle out the scrolls from the crushing pressure of the useless tomes, then I take them to the plush armchair by the window.

The Quiet’s chill is soothing as it wisps into the bedchamber from the window that Tris, I assume, left ajar. It’s a welcome caress as I curl up and unravel the first scroll.

This is how I spend the bulk of my Quiet.

While I find little that can help me, these records are interesting all the same. I read the failures of those two dokkalves on record who made it to Mother’s ear.

Both share the bloodline with Daxeel, the line of Sgail, so they must be distant relatives with centuries between them.

But they failed.

The Cursed Shadows didn’t come to be. The spiral faded and the darkness thinned.

I hope to see it fail again.

But with my place in the second passage, and my loose theories about evate souls, I clutch onto the faintest scheme, the wonder in my mind—

Can I offer anything to Mother? Will she listen if I speak?

Will Mother grant me a wish?

Mother isn’t just a god. She’s the god.

It might be that the easy part is getting her attention on the mountain.

It’s what I would wish for that has me stumped.