70. Chapter Seventy

Caen Vistarii was a sadist.

He should have been the firstborn. Heshould have been the one the Crones chose. He was everything that my people had expected me to become: vicious, cruel, and ruthless. A flawless reflection of our sire, the Shadow King of Scáth Saoirái.

Caen was only ten years old when I left the Shadow Plane, and he had already been corrupted by the legacy of our bloodline—all too happy to blindly follow in Dagon’s footsteps and every other sick fuck who had Ascended the throne of Hel over the aeons. Caen had been a child, yes—my younger brother had been born not a year after me. And yet, by the time I came to Aemos, he had already cut his teeth on torture, killing and brutality. For his ninth birthday, Dagon gave him the Ravenhounds—and carte blanche to play judge, jury and executioner over what little remained of our homeland. I don’t believe that Caen ever even had the chance to be a child. He was born a weapon.

I don’t know why I was born any different, and yet I was.

Everything I had heard from the emissaries over the years suggested that the Prince of Shadows had only gotten worse with time. They said that he had grown into a man who delighted in psychological warfare, with a taste for the blood of the innocent. And in truth? I had paid that very little mind. I had no intention of ever coming home. The day that Dagon and the Crones decided to cast me out—abandoning me alone in the woods, as a child, left to fend for myself in another realm entirely—was the same day I turned my back on the fate of Scáth Saoirái.

I had taken naive comfort in the fact that I was supposedly protected by the very same prophecy that I had chosen to defy. That Dagon would not—could not—act against Aemos on his own accord. If they wanted their vengeance, it would have to be through me. And after the Blight began all those centuries ago, the laws of the Shadow Plane were also very clear: Crossing between worlds was forbidden. A crime punishable not only by execution, but a slow, brutalized death in the Pits of the Undying.

So why the fuck was Caen in Aemos? Even princelings weren’t above the laws of that land.

Because he was most assuredly here. Somewhere.

After dragging Berith Apollyon’s corpse over to rot in the depths of the Pyrhhan Strait, I slowly regained clarity and control over myself. I had calmed the beast, buried the dark power I had reclaimed in the Wyldwoods, tightened every damper, lock and seal on it.

And then, once my heart rate had slowed and I had washed the blood from my face and hands in that cold river water, I allowed myself to think.

In order for Caen’s hounds to have successfully gotten past the wards of Sophrosyne, they would have needed his blood magick. Spellwork could not survive the traversal between planes, because the void space in between each plane of existence was the very absence of aether—it stripped you of any arcane effects. So the only way that Berith could have successfully spied on me for however long was if his liege was in Aemos, too. The Hounds couldn’t cast it themselves.

And since I had drawn that conclusion, I hadn’t eaten.

I hadn’t slept.

I would not know peace until I knew that my home was safe from the errant impulses of this dark intruder.

Until I knew shewas safe.

It had been nearly five days since I last saw Arken, and I felt the ache of her absence with every godsdamned breath. The further away I got from Sophrosyne as I chased every stray trail of foreign arcana, the more it felt like there was legitimately some sort of tangible bond—a tether between the two of us. A resistance in her magnetic field.

Too far, that unspoken force seemed to say. You’re straying too far from her.

But I had no other choice.

If there was even the slightest possibility that the prince and heir presumptive of the Shadow Plane had eyes on me right now, I couldn’t dare go to her. I couldn’t dare expose her as my most obvious weakness. Especially if he was already aware of her existence.

But if I had to guess, the Scáthic forces had only just recently arrived. It was probably their rift that allowed the Leshy to appear in the Wyldwoods in the first place, which meant that Caen and his hounds had been here for about two weeks, give or take. I had scoured through the forest and most of Southern Pyrhhas at this point—every trail leading to a dead end. It seemed highly likely to me that Caen was keeping his distance, and for good reason. The coward was probably sending his personal spies out, one by one, for the sake of whatever sick game he was playing from afar.

On one hand, that was a relief, because whatever details Berith may have managed to glean, they were surface level at best. The Ravenhound would have had to have kept a significant distance from me and mine in order to successfully stalk me. And to be frank, Arken and I had spent a majority of the last two weeks behind closed doors.

From such a distance, Arken’s features were fairly nondescript—average height, dark brown hair, female. There were thousands of humans in Sophrosyne that met that profile. Unless Berith had somehow determined that she was a Light Conduit, which seemed unlikely. And if the Ravenhound had discovered such a damning detail, he would have delighted in tormenting me with that before he died. The bastard would have wanted me to know that he had sealed her fate.

So statistically speaking, so long as I kept my distance for now, Arken would be relatively safe. It was only a minor relief, but I would take whatever the fuck I could get as crippling terror and protective fury went to war in my bloodstream with every moment I still drew breath.

Terror and fury and guilt.

Because ultimately, this was my fault. My friendship with Arken had already been a risk. Now? I might as well offer her up to all of my enemies on a silver platter. Here she is, you heartless bastards! My weakness. My heart. My whole fucking heart.

I should have known better. I had known better.

Whether I’d acknowledged it or not, I knew I was in love with her. From the moment her life hung in the balance. When the Leshy attacked her, and I carried her broken body to safety like my own life depended on it. I had known, even then, that I couldn’t live without her. And now, I would have to—at least for a little while.

There was a bitter irony here that I could hardly stomach.

Whether taking her to bed had been a mistake or not, last week had easily been the best thing that had ever happened to me. After a lifetime of self-imposed isolation, I finally had a taste of true intimacy—and it was sweeter than I could have possibly imagined.

Blinded by both lust and adoration, I had let my guard down, lowering the mask and letting her sink beneath my skin like a salve. Like salvation. And in granting myself this one selfish exception to the rules I had made for myself so long ago, I had inadvertently risked it all.

In allowing myself to fall in love with Arken Asher, I had damned her to a life of danger. I was painting a target on her back every time I had the audacity to touch what I had never deserved.

And the Fates were fickle, cruel bastards. As if this new threat was not enough to contend with alone, I also had to watch as, day by day, Arken’s faith in me collapsed. Every scrap of parchment she sent over the last few days was a dagger in my gut, knowing that I had all but abandoned her on the precipice of a very, very important conversation. The cusp of a confession that might have changed everything for us.

When I left her bed that morning, I knew that I was leaving her vulnerable. I had every godsdamned intention of coming back that night and assuaging any fear that might have remained. I wanted to kiss every bruise and bite, and remind her that for each and every mark I had left on her flawless skin, she had left her own permanent mark on my entire fucking existence.

What made this all so viscerally terrifying was the distinct possibility that everything I felt for her was mutual. Because my Little Conduit was a stubborn, reckless, willful creature, and if she felt this, too? Fucking Hel, we were screwed.

So was it worth it, you dumb bastard? Was one week of perfect sex worth the risk of losing her forever?

If it had been anyone else, maybe. Maybe such glorious pleasure after all of the pain would have made the memory worth savoring, regardless of the cost. Not her, though. No.

She would never be collateral damage against my sins.

I knew what I had to do.