3. Gwyneira

3

GWYNEIRA

T here were several roads to Lumilia, but this had always been the fastest.

Until now.

“Fuck.” Clay glared at the shattered bridge ahead of us. Posts of splintered wood stuck up like broken bones from the riverbank, all that remained of the bridge’s anchors, and beneath the pink-gold light of dawn, the raging river that the bridge once spanned glinted and flashed, almost as if it wished to taunt us with how fast and dangerous its waters would be to cross.

Raking a hand through his blond hair as if to pull the gold strands out by the roots, Clay threw us all a frustrated look. “They knew we were going to follow, didn’t they?”

Gods, I prayed he was wrong. We’d all been soaked by the heavy rain last night, as if even the weather had conspired to slow us down in our pursuit of Niko. Maybe the fact the bridge had collapsed into the river was mere coincidence brought about by time and nature.

Though that didn’t explain why Clay, whose power over water was incredible, couldn’t help us continue past it.

“What’s the problem?” Dex asked as if thinking the same thing. Tightening his legs on his horse, he sent the creature forward to where Clay stood holding the reins of his own mount. The former soldier was the de facto leader of the giants around me, owing to the fact he was always thinking three steps ahead, if not more. To hear the others talk, he was a significant part of why they’d survived the war between their nation of Erenelle and my own country, years ago.

Clay flung his free hand at the river in irritation. “Damn water doesn’t want to listen to me.”

“Could it be more of those bracelet things?” asked his twin brother, Lars.

“How?” Clay gave him an incredulous look. “What’d they do, lace the river with those?—”

“They anchored bodies to the riverbed,” Casimir interrupted, certainty in his voice. “Possibly ones with those ‘bracelets,’ as you call them, attached.”

“What?” I turned to the vampire in alarm, and my sudden motion made my horse dance beneath me, sending a dull throb through my middle. My body was healing faster thanks to Clay and Lars both letting me bite their wrists while we rode through the night. But I still ached where a soldier’s crossbow bolt had torn through my shadowy vampire form.

The king of Zenirya’s expression turned slightly apologetic for his words, but it was Roan who spoke, his voice quiet and reserved. “There’s blood in the water.”

Dread sank over me, though my chest still did a hot little twist when Roan’s coal-black eyes found me, the concern in them still taking me aback. Up until his demon broke free during the Voidborn attack on the city of Duteliera, he’d done everything in his power to treat me like he couldn’t care less about me, if not outright hated me.

But to my shock, that hadn’t been the truth. In reality, he’d been trying to protect me. He’d spent years living in fear that everyone around him would die if the demon emerged. After all, that’s what happened to his family. So he was convinced if he didn’t push me away, I’d die too. Even after he shifted back that first time and discovered his demon had kidnapped me away from the other men, he’d been sure every last one of his friends was dead, murdered by the monster he hid inside.

Finding out the demon hadn’t done anything of the sort had nearly sent him to his knees.

But it didn’t mean everything was better now. He’d still been hiding the truth from his friends for years. He still didn’t trust the creature inside himself. And the demon itself was so strange, so alien, in its ways that I still wasn’t sure what to make of it.

It was demanding. Unhinged with an almost black-and-white simplicity to its thinking. And willing to unleash a level of violence to get what it wanted that even my vampire side found surprising. The soldiers who’d thought to capture us—all but one of whom were now lying dead in a forest missing their limbs or, in one shocking example, a heart—were clear testament to that.

Roan hadn’t said much when he shifted back after that. He’d barely met anyone’s eyes, and to their credit, the other men hadn’t pressed for more. The secrets between us all had torn everything apart, but figuring that out would have to wait. Right now, we needed to save Niko.

And to get across this damn river.

Bracing myself, I urged my horse closer to the rushing water. The scent of blood began to tinge the air, so faint that if I’d still been a human, there’d be no way I could have detected it.

But my vampire side stirred with hunger.

“He’s right,” I said tightly.

“Holy shit…” Clay backed away from the water. “What the fuck did they kill?”

Casimir gave a considering look to Roan, as if waiting for the man to speak, and when he didn’t, the vampire shook his head. “That, I cannot tell you. The blood is human, though. It’s barely detectible, but…” His brow rose and fell. “It seems unlikely they would destroy their fellow soldiers. Perhaps our unwilling friend would know more.” He tilted his head back toward the Aneiran soldier we’d captured.

Pinned by Ozias’s grip on the ropes binding him, the man blanched. “I-I don’t—” A growl from Ozias cut off his sputtering. “These don’t come off without the key. We didn’t have a key holder with us.”

“So they did kill their allies after all,” Casimir amended.

Sickened looks passed among the others, while Ozias glanced at me. Like Roan, he hid another side to himself. He could shift into a horned wolf creature that made him look like a forest god, and he’d bonded with me as his mate. We shared a magical connection now, one that let us know each other’s emotions.

Which meant he could feel the dread inside me, and it mirrored his own.

A strained sense of reassurance followed soon after, though, and I was grateful. Especially since I could feel how he was trying to offer that for my sake.

In truth, he was worried. Deeply. Even if Niko never spoke to him again, he still didn’t want anything to happen to the younger man.

I sent him back as much reassurance as I could before returning my eyes to the water.

My stomach churned. My people had committed so many crimes. But killing our own just to block a road?

For the thousandth time since I returned to Aneira, I found myself wondering what in the names of all the gods had become of my home country.

“In that case,” Byron began, his meticulously careful manner of speaking clearly struggling to cover the scholar’s alarm. “How do we go about crossing this?”

I bit my lip. I could think of one way to deal with the bodies down there and clear them from our path, but I didn’t like it.

I’d never been comfortable around the dead.

“I can clear them away,” I made myself say anyway, because it was that or let my stepmother’s forces get farther ahead of us with Niko. “I’ll just shift and go down there to move them. It’s not like I need to breathe, so it shouldn’t take?—”

Ruhl made an irritated noise, and then the shadow wolf surged forward, turning into smoke and diving into the river.

“What the…” Clay started.

“I rather think our canine companion is no more enamored of letting the princess handle the bodies than we are.” Casimir regarded the water with an annoyance that seemed reserved for the obstacle in our path rather than the wolf currently clearing it away.

But then, I suspected he’d be helping Ruhl if he could.

Which was the problem. Somehow, Casimir could no longer shift like a vampire, changing to a smoky, ephemeral form that could have followed Ruhl beneath the water. I gathered it’d happened as a result of the wounds Roan’s demon inflicted when he took me. But it wasn’t going away.

“It’s working,” Ozias said in a low rumble, jerking his chin at the water.

I pulled my attention back to the river, watching Clay as he extended his hands toward the tumbling water again.

The flow started to churn against itself.

“Oz?” Clay called.

My mate tossed the rope holding the soldier to Dex and then awkwardly urged his horse closer to the river. Like most of my giants, he clearly wasn’t comfortable on horseback, and he held the reins with a tight grip as he glared at the water.

Or, more likely, the riverbed beneath it.

A shiver went through the ground beneath me, making my mount skitter to the side before I calmed the dark brown gelding as best I could. The horse didn’t like me any more than most of my men liked their rides. But in my case, I suspected it was because I was a vampire.

The horse stilled, but I could feel how it trembled a bit even now.

Ahead, the quivering in the ground grew stronger, and then suddenly, the earth began to crest above the water. Before my eyes, a bridge of land rose, arching across the river while leaving an empty space beneath it for the water to pass through.

With a small grunt, Clay lowered his hands carefully. The tumbling, churning water flowed forward again. But Clay was still in command of it, even now. Instead of surging forward like a dam breaking, the water released a little at a time, keeping it from moving at a speed that would be fast enough to do any damage to the bridge.

Air rushed from Clay as he finally let his hands drop completely. “Anyone see the wolf?”

As if summoned—though that was definitely not the case—Ruhl flowed up from the river like a sentient cloud of smoke. Taking wolf form, he shook himself hard, just like a dog trying to remove water from his fur. The look he gave us all seemed to ask why we weren’t moving already.

In spite of everything, a smile tugged at my lips. I had no idea what Ruhl really was, where he came from, or anything about his goals at all. He was definitely more than a wolf, that much I knew. Back at Lord Thomas’s castle, he’d somehow shown me his memories, though they were made more of emotion than sight or sound. Someone had sent him here— ordered him and his fellow wolves to come here, more specifically—and the shadow wolves were looking for something.

But what that was, I couldn’t be sure. In the meantime, however, Ruhl had decided to join us, while the rest of his pack were back at Casimir’s home in Zenirya, somehow keeping the deranged magic of the Wild Lands from swallowing the castle whole. Given how many times Ruhl had saved our lives, I had no reason to distrust him.

Even if there were always more questions than answers around the wolf.

“Okay, then,” Dex said, eyeing Ruhl with a touch of respect and amusement too. “Let’s get?—”

The sound of pounding hoofbeats made me whirl, and he cut off.

“What is it?” he asked cautiously.

“Horses,” Ozias said. Like me and Casimir, his hearing exceeded that of any Erenlian or human.

“Great.” Clay drew his sword. “Anyone expecting guests?”

No one answered as half a dozen people crested the rise behind us and continued on at high speed.

Surprise shot through me when I spotted the one in the lead.

Lars seemed equally shocked. “Is that?—”

“Lord Thomas’s bodyguard, yes,” Casimir filled in, suspicion thick in his voice. “But how they followed us here…”

My horse turned skittish beneath me as my vampire side suddenly fought the urge to let my fangs out. My men had chased Roan’s demon across the prairie in an entirely different direction than we now traveled. There was no way Valeria and her people should have known to follow us here.

Moreover, during all our hard riding to chase down the ones who’d taken Niko, I’d heard bits and pieces of what’d passed between my men and the Lord of Sinaria. After the Voidborn attacked the city and Roan’s demon kidnapped me, my men had had no choice but to reveal to Lord Thomas that they were Erenlian—my people’s sworn enemies, owing to the supposed assassination of my mother, the queen, by agents of Erenelle.

Never mind that it’d all been a lie. My stepmother was the one who’d killed Queen Eira. But Aneira still started a war to avenge her.

Yet, instead of imprisoning them as enemies of the crown, Lord Thomas supported them.

It was amazing. A relief too, given that the man was an Aneiran war hero, praised for his actions during the war with Erenelle. He’d given my men horses and supplies, sending them on their way.

But he hadn’t indicated any plan of diverting his people from their efforts to secure his city. So what were they doing here now?

Dex never took his eyes from the approaching riders. “Circle up,” he ordered the others. “Princess, stay behind us.”

I frowned, but the other men were already moving between me and the humans coming our way.

“Hold,” Valeria called to her companions, lifting a fist.

The humans’ horses slowed and came to a stop. Just like in the city of Duteliera, the people with her were obviously not soldiers, for all that they obeyed her commands. From their clothes and appearance, they seemed like farmers. A few were old enough for gray hair to stick out around their rusted helmets, while several others were so young, I doubted they’d ever been a dozen miles from their homes before this.

But every real soldier Lord Thomas possessed, save Valeria, had been sent north to defend the border against the army of monsters that had inexplicably been approaching.

Not a single soldier had returned.

Valeria rode closer on a large chestnut stallion that I suspected had spent part of its life as a warhorse, if the way it moved was any indication. She wore armor that had obviously seen plenty of use in the past, and her brown hair was lashed back in a tight braid, same as the first time we met her. A sword was tucked into her horse’s tack and another was sheathed in a scabbard on her back. When she slowed, she gave us no greeting, saying only, “I see you found the princess.”

“Why are you here?” Dex called back rather than respond to the obvious.

She skimmed her dark eyes over all of us quickly, pausing only briefly at the bound soldier and then slightly longer at the sight of Roan. Her brow twitched up, but she buried the hint of surprise quickly. “Lord Thomas sent us in case you needed assistance.”

Silence followed the words for a heartbeat.

“Well, uh—” Clay chuckled. “We’re good, thanks.”

Dex’s face was carefully blank. “How did you know which direction we would go? What road we’d be on?”

Curiosity flashed over her face, but she merely replied, “We didn’t. Not for certain. But if the creature who took the princess worked for the same ones that attacked our city, then it made sense it’d pursue a course to join its brethren. Last we heard, those brethren were in the north, possibly heading for Lumilia.” Her brow rose and fell like the conclusion was obvious.

Wary looks passed between my men.

“Yet Lord Thomas no longer required your assistance in dealing with the destruction suffered by Duteliera?” Casimir asked her.

“He does,” she allowed. “But he also wanted to make sure the princess didn’t die.” Her mouth tightened as if our distrust irritated her. “But obviously you’ve already found her, so the need for our help has passed. Princess, if you’re okay, then we’ll get back to?—”

“What exactly were his orders?” Dex interrupted.

Valeria paused, her eyes narrowing. “To give you any help you may require.”

From Dex’s expression, I could tell a plan was forming in his mind. I just wasn’t sure what it could be.

“Even if that means helping us against other Aneirans?” he persisted.

Oh. Now I could see what he was planning, but it was… risky. Potentially a necessity if we were going to save Niko, yes. But still. After all, my men were Erenlians and Casimir was a vampire from a dead nation. Meanwhile, as far as my people were concerned, I was an assassin fleeing prosecution for the death of my father.

But Valeria and her people were simply citizens of Aneira, and she was a former soldier of it as well. They could go where we could not.

Assuming we could trust them.

Wariness lived in Valeria’s gaze. “What are you asking?”

“One of our allies has been taken,” I said. “Niko. The one who used vines and roots to hold up walls in your city and keep them from crushing people.”

I hoped bringing up what he’d done to help save the innocent in Duteliera would help sway them. From the conflicted expressions that flashed over several faces, I suspected I was right.

“The shorter giant,” Valeria said, as if placing him. “The one who didn’t want to keep any secrets or tell us lies about who you all were.”

Discomfort crossed a few of my men’s faces. I hadn’t been there for whatever conversation she was describing—chances were, it had happened after Roan’s demon took me—but I could guess. It was essentially the same thing as what Niko had said, and why he was so angry at Roan and Ozias.

And me.

“Niko, yes,” Dex said. “If Lord Thomas’s orders could give us any help we might need, then…”

Valeria’s eyes narrowed. “I say again, what exactly are you asking?”

“He’s been taken by Aneiran soldiers. Queen’s orders. Our guest here says they’re likely headed for the mines, and that they took this road toward Lumilia.” Dex nodded back at the soldier wrapped in ropes under Ozias’s watchful eye. “We’re trying to intercept them before they make it that far, for reasons that I’m sure need no explanation.”

The woman was silent for a moment. “Do they know the princess is with you? Will they be watching for her?”

Dex made a neutral sound. “Possibly.”

Valeria frowned for a moment. “Then the princess is still in danger, and so our mission isn’t done. What do you need us to do?”