49. Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Forty-Nine

Tovi

S now flurries fell in thick sheets, silence blanketing the forest of pine trees. The white powdery dust collected on Tovi’s cloak and horse. She tried to inhale the last remnants of home, unsure when she’d experience Drystan’s winter magic again.

But she couldn’t breathe through the tension gripping the entire group.

The snow, beautiful as it was, made it difficult to see far ahead, and the horses trudged through the inches growing taller with each passing hour, putting the Gray Fenris on edge. Eldrick had barely acknowledged Tovi’s presence since he’d learned his mother was alive—even after she’d admitted her last secret. Ahead, though Evelyn sat snug with Kade atop Bleu, a static of unsaid words surrounded them, and had since their fight at Lou’s cottage.

The baker followed behind. Despite Tovi’s shattering secret, Eldrick had offered Lou safe refuge in his village after helping them. Everyone feared for her friend’s life. It wouldn’t be long before Riven discovered the tunnels leading to her bakery, and no one wanted her to suffer all the crimes alone. It had taken some convincing, but when Todd rattled off about his Aunt Lucy’s tavern and a possible job for her, she relented .

Guilt ate away at Tovi. Something had been forming between her and the alpha, and yet Eldrick was giving her the silent treatment. Evelyn couldn’t even look at her without shuddering. Kade had been short with her, too. The rest of the team still talked with her, but there was a hesitancy in their words and gazes she didn’t miss.

She’d thought coming clean would’ve made things different.

Tovi had been wrong. Since secrets came so naturally to her, she never once thought about the consequences. Even when she tried to reason she was honoring her friend’s wishes, she saw the excuse. And what kind of friend was she really when she had lied to Evelyn, her best friend, for years? Besides, if she were in their shoes, would she have trusted her timing or motives?

Yet, Tovi hadn’t been concerned with the alliance when she’d told them of the Blood Goddess and bargain. Not once.

Instead, so many what-ifs played in her mind. She couldn’t have told Eldrick about his mother weeks ago—it would’ve jeopardized the entire mission to get Evelyn back. Though, she could’ve told him the moment they got to Drystan. Telling him wouldn’t have hurt the plan then. But he might have lost trust with her when they were forming a truce. Tovi bristled. Her mind was going in circles, and like their snow-covered journey, there was no end in sight. No reprieve of the trudge they’d put themselves in.

A branch snapped in the distance, bringing Tovi out of her miserable, spiraling thoughts. Eldrick must’ve heard the movement, too, because he stopped his horse and held up a hand for everyone to stop.

They waited in stillness and silence. Tovi tilted her head to the wind, but aside from Eldrick’s scent and the freshness of snow clinging to ferns and pines, she didn’t detect a vampyr or demon.

“Let’s keep moving,” Kade said, kicking Bleu into action.

The rest followed. Tovi’s and Eldrick’s horses met up, and she sighed away her pent-up energy and mustered some courage. “Eldrick, eventually we’re going to need to discuss what happened. ”

He reared his horse around so suddenly, Tovi’s own veered left to avoid colliding with the huffing beast. His eyes were focused on her.

Hatred. Malice. Disappointment.

All emotions Tovi had been on the receiving end of before, but they were somehow so much worse coming from his sharp green eyes.

“Discuss what exactly? That you’re the liar I said you were?”

Tovi winced, tightening her grip on her horse’s reins. Everyone else had heard the commotion, halting their travel. Kade called from ahead, and Lou’s horse whined from behind.

“Eldrick, calm yourself,” Bétar muttered a few paces away.

Tovi wished she’d kept her mouth shut. She veered her horse to go around him, but Eldrick charged his forward, cutting her horse off the path.

“What—” Tovi glared at him as she tried to calm her horse down. She barely made it out of the way, attempting to reverse the horse back, but Eldrick urged his horse forward, jarring her off course. “Eldrick, stop it!”

He didn’t, matching her retreat step for step.

“Now you’re being a child!” she said.

“What are you two arguing about now?” Kade roared.

Eldrick ignored his brother. “I stopped being a child the day my mother died.”

“ I didn’t kill your mother! ”

“You’re right. Your people did, the ones you’re so hell-bent on saving from the Blood Goddess. Perhaps they deserve her darkness.”

Ancient anger, putrefying deep in Tovi’s soul, rose its hideous, thorny head.

“Let me remind you that your mother is a vampyr, and the curse most certainly applies to her, too.”

Eldrick blanched, the tan of his cheeks fading to a sickly white. By his wide eyes and sheer shock, he hadn’t considered this. Bloody hel —she’d gone and made everything worse .

Something whistled behind Tovi, and thank the goddess for Tovi’s vampyr sight. A thin, wooden arrow flew through the air, its tip pointed in Eldrick’s direction. With no time to warn him, she charged her horse towards his. It sidestepped. An arrow whizzed past them and thudded straight into the trunk of a pine tree.

Frozen in her saddle, her heart skipped. She hadn’t heard anything, smelled anyone. No one had. Time slowed, minutes suspended in time as she blinked and met Eldrick’s shocked stare.

The whiz of more arrows brought her back to reality, and the team erupted into commands and battle cries.

The arrows descended towards them, flying from various directions. Through the pines from the left. Between the evergreens to the right. Above, falling from the canopy like deadly fallen stars, their tips glinted in the low light.

Eldrick grabbed the reins of Tovi’s frantic horse, but it was no use. The beast was spooked. As it stood on its hind legs, Tovi lost her balance. She fell with a bone-rattling thud.

“Tovi!” Eldrick dismounted and swung from his horse.

“Stick together!” Kade said.

But the attack continued, separating Tovi and Eldrick from the rest. He dragged them under the canopy of clustered trees. Arrows got lost in the chunks of snow clinging to the pines. He lifted her onto his horse and followed her atop the saddle. His arm snaked around her middle, keeping her close as he kicked the horse into a gallop.

“Eldrick!” Kade said.

The rest had ridden yards ahead, snow kicking up under their retreating hooves.

“Protect Evelyn,” Eldrick called. “Go!”

Tovi peered behind them, trying to see their attackers, but they were lost in the falling snow, hidden out of sight in the winter-covered brush. She felt eyes on her though, gazes creeping up her neck like some venomous spider waiting for the perfect patch of flesh to sink its teeth into.

An arrow whooshed past, Tovi’s hair flicking upward. Eldrick hunkered both of them into the saddle, their bodies growing so close they moved as one. The path snaked into an army of lone pines sprawling for a hundred yards. No ferns, underbrush, or thick evergreens.

No cover.

The team rode on, sprinting to the next thicket of forest. Two sickening thuds popped behind them. Their horse thrashed, arrows stuck from its left thigh. It collapsed as its back leg gave way. Eldrick growled as he held Tovi tighter around the waist and pulled them free of the horse’s saddle before they crashed to the ground with it.

They tumbled. Cold clung to Tovi’s bruised muscles as ice and snow crunched beneath her. Her ears rang as she righted her fall. Through the leaves of a fern, the eyes of an attacker connected with hers. Axe raised, murder in his eyes, he charged.

Towards Eldrick.

She cried his name and jumped to her feet. Her dagger was in her hand one moment, the next it was hilt deep in the chest of the attacker. Eyes wide with death, he collapsed onto the snow. Crimson blossomed into the white.

Voices resounded behind them. The team rushed back. Hurried and frantic. Arrows fell from the sky again. Tovi dove left, Eldrick right. He jumped over a fallen tree, the spineless branches like the spikes of a weapon.

Another attacker sprang from a hiding place, twin axes at the ready. Others emerged with him—blades, brawn, and beards in common. The Gray Fenris entered the fray. Water, fire, and steel fought back.

“Eldrick!” Tovi tried to warn him, but he was stuck flattened against the trunk, arrows raining down on him.

She ran, barreling into the one with two axes. They rolled. Her fist made contact with his nose. His chin next. He ripped her hair. Snow, ice, and dirt joined their fight. Tovi flopped to her back, panting. Metal sang as it impaled the frost, inches from her cheek. She scrambled. Hands grasped her ankles, dragging her back. She cried out, clawing at anything—a fern, a branch, a root.

A ball of flame descended on her assailant. He screamed and writhed, running into the forest, crying out to the gods. Kade countered his retreat in two strikes. One across the belly and the next down his spine. The attacker dropped dead.

Evelyn’s face came into view, dark hair wild in the wind. She grabbed Tovi’s hand, helping her stand.

“Are you hurt?” Sincere concern pinched her brow.

“No.” Tovi shook away the pain of her recent fight, knowing she’d heal in minutes.

Evelyn nodded, and the two friends regarded the other, chests heaving.

“Moons, come out and fight us, you cowards!”

They both whirled in Eldrick’s direction. Dozens of arrows stuck from the tree, a few by his legs. They didn’t stop.

And they didn’t land anywhere near the rest of them.

Evelyn gasped. “It’s like…”

“He’s their target,” Tovi breathed.

Her mind reeled. Who would want the alpha dead?

Goddess, the arrows finally stopped. But two-dozen attackers popped free of their hiding places and advanced. Tovi ran, Evelyn in pace behind her. A distant growl suggested Kade followed, too.

With the ease of wind, Tovi grabbed a bow and arrow off a dead man. She skidded to a halt, boots sliding through the snow as she reached the tree.

“You need to take cover,” Eldrick said through gritted teeth.

“Shut up.”

Nocked and ready, the bow groaned with tension. Tovi let go. It sang. And popped, embedding straight into an opponent’s eye. She readied another. Released and hit her next target. One, two, three. Her victims dropped like the fallen tree she shot behind.

The descending snow kissed her cheek. The wind blew past, carrying her arrows farther. Tovi’s homeland reached out, threads of cold and strength reaching the tendons of her heart. She almost wept. Centuries-old memories blurred with the present. She was mortal again, nocking her arrow to bring down an elk. Drystan seemed to sing, reminding her she was a fighter. What she used to be hadn’t been all bad.

Resilient. Strong. Fierce.

Only her breath existed. Her beating heart. And the tickle of snow.

Tovi released the last arrow. She’d gotten rid of half the numbers, and their team charged.

But Eldrick stayed, breathless. Haggard. A pinch between his brow so sharp, it narrowed his eyes. Those gems cut through her.

“Come on, wolf,” she said.

Fighting rang in the forest. No Riven. No Visha. No witch, either. Not a single vampyr, in fact. Belle and Linx worked in tandem. Splashes of water to the face left their opponent blinded, an opening for Linx to swipe and end with her blade. Todd danced with his two daggers, slicing left, right, and up. Bétar was brutal, his axe crunching into bone with one deliberate blow. Kade and Evelyn fought back-to-back, the moon and sun in perfect balance. Yennifer wielded her sword with the same ease and calm she possessed when she held her bow.

Promise bled through Tovi. She dared to hope.

Behind her, Eldrick snarled. A fierce protectiveness overcame her as her sights tunneled. Feral. Animalistic. Down to her core. But nothing to do with the darkness of the Blood Curse.

An arrow pierced Eldrick’s shoulder—his body was angled closer to Tovi, as if he'd stepped in the way to take a hit meant for her. He stumbled back, clutching the wound. Tovi caught him as he sank to his knees.

“Fuck,” he said through clenched teeth .

Kade called out commands. He and Bétar rushed into the trees. But Tovi’s world spun. Blood seeped from Eldrick’s wound, his breath ragged.

“Tovi, look at me.”

That fierce overprotectiveness was eclipsing her. A darkness encroached. Like the vines of a thorny plant it climbed, a twine wrapping around her heart. Tovi’s baser instinct called to the curse, inviting it in. And Eldrick’s blood. She wanted to taste it. For two very warring reasons.

“ Tovi, look at me. ”

Eldrick’s repeated command sucked her back to the present.

“I’m alright,” he whispered.