Chapter 32

"All right … this does feel familiar," I admitted. "Just a little."

Emrys chuckled as he surveyed the frosted land that lay before us. "Consider it a do-over, then."

My gaze slid sideways toward him, but he only looked ahead, pointing at a dark shape diminished by the miles between us. "That's the castle, isn't it?"

I shielded my eyes against the glare of the strange, milky sunlight. "Looks like it."

The storm had raged all through the night into the morning, and had only died down moments ago. The clouds gathering behind us, and the sharp quality to the air, made it feel like it had only temporarily retreated.

"That's where Rosydd was supposed to open the portal for us," I said, trying to rub some warmth into my arms. "Hopefully the others are headed that way too."

If something had happened to them in the night while I was safely tucked away with him beside a cozy fire … I drew in a deep breath, letting cold air clear the lingering fog of sleep.

Emrys swept an arm out toward it. "Shall we?"

I'd managed a few hours of sleep last night, in between watching his relaxed face and searching for signs that he regretted what we had done. My body felt relaxed but heavy, as if I were collecting little bits of exhaustion and carrying them around like stones in my pockets .

"Tamsin," Emrys said, his voice low. I almost laughed at the sight of the ridiculous fur coat he held out to me in offering. He smiled—one of his old smiles, too charming by half. "What? It's a look. "

"You wear it, then," I told him, gazing out over the snow.

He grabbed my hand and pulled me back, tucking me into the soft depths of the coat, against the warmth radiating from him. The smell of him, pine and earth, lived on my skin now too. My senses were overwhelmed by a new awareness of him. The memory of his weight over me, the scratch of his stubble against my skin—my eyes drifted up to his lips again, my own still swollen. My hands curled against the warmth of his chest, against the feel of his heart beating fiercely beneath the layers of his clothes and skin.

Yet, little by little, as the night drifted further away from us and the world intruded, a knot of ice began to form at my center. I knew what it was immediately.

Dread.

I stared up at his face again, searching for those signs—the ones I had missed in Avalon, that would have told me what he'd planned to do. My pulse began to climb as the need for flight, for the safety of distance, kicked in.

I'm safe, I told myself, my hands sliding down to his waist. Holding on to him. On to us.

Emrys leaned down, brushing his lips against my cheek before whispering in my ear, echoing my own words back to me. "Stop thinking. It's just us here."

"What happens when it isn't?" I heard myself ask. My body responded to the proximity of him—how could it not, when those eyes were gazing so deeply into mine?

"Where do you want it to go?" he said, pulling back to study my face. "I'm not going to pretend like I don't want this to be something, to take it as far as you'll let it go."

I chewed on my bottom lip and he watched, captivated. I felt that warm power rise in me again .

The truth was, I'd never been a daydreamer. The way I'd lived until now, haunted by the past, living day to day on what small bits of money we could scrape together, I hadn't let myself.

But that wasn't Emrys. He was someone who lived for the future, who tried to shape it in whatever way he could. He wanted it as much as his next breath.

"I can only focus on right now," I told him. "That's all I know how to do."

He stole a quick kiss. "Then I'll meet you there, between today and tomorrow."

And that was enough for me.

A roar bellowed across the snow-laden hills, and we both dropped into a crouch. The wind was playing games with us, carrying the sound from every direction at once.

After that, we said nothing—we only quickened our pace, and kept our eyes wide open.

It was an hour, maybe more, before we encountered a strange, wavy imprint and the first splatter of blood staining the snow.

My hands curled into fists in my jacket pockets. Within my chest, my heartbeat began a traitorous refrain. They're dead. They're dead. They're dead.

"Tell me that's not the trail we're going to follow," Emrys began.

I only looked at him and continued on.

There was no way to avoid the bloody tracks; they were heading in the same direction we were, to the abandoned village at the foot of the castle walls. The fact that we could see the path the creature had taken at all meant it had been left this morning, after last night's snowfall.

If the others had come this way—

I shut the thought down and looked up toward the towering structure ahead. More than a mere home to kings, it was a citadel built into the side of a small peak. Four levels of outer buildings rose one after the next, to the pale stone castle at the peak. I counted four towers, and even through a dusting of snow, their turrets gleamed gold.

The village had been built out around the main road leading up to the castle gates. Aside from the blacksmith forge and a handful of structures with dilapidated signs announcing their trade or wares, the buildings seemed to be cozy stone cottages. Some with pens for animals that no longer needed them, others with snow-buried gardens. Our only welcome was the sound of a well's pail squeaking in the wind.

Like the fairy mounds, most of the stone cottages looked as though their occupants had risen from the breakfast table and never returned. Shutters clattered and snapped like twigs at the lightest of touches. Glimpses through fallen doors and uncovered windows revealed scenes that were almost heartbreaking in their domesticity. A straw doll left on a bed. Candles and hides left hanging to dry, forever unused. Frayed thread on a spinning wheel.

We slowed our steps, keeping close to one another as the tracks continued and pools of blood appeared. My pulse beat harder with each step. As we came around the corner of a collapsed stable, I reached back for Dyrnwyn's hilt, and held my breath.

Not Neve, I begged inwardly. Not Cait.

But there were no gods left in this world to hear me. There were only us, and the monsters.

Emrys sidled up beside me, giving me an encouraging nod. I released the air in my aching lungs and forced myself to lean around the crumbling stone wall.

My knees turned hollow. I braced a hand against the remains of the cottage, closing my eyes, trying to steady the wild beat of my heart.

"What … do you think could have done that ?" Emrys asked.

A black serpent, the length of three of me, lay in pieces on the road. Chunks of its lustrous scales were riddled with holes. An unidentifiable, half-eaten mass of bloodied fur had been left near its gaping maw; tufts of white clung to the sticky blood on its swordlike fangs. My mind composed the story in an instant: the creature had gone hunting, found the day's meal, and was bringing it back to its den when another, deadlier predator had taken it by surprise.

I ran toward the castle gate, leaving Emrys huffing to keep up.

The main road served as an artery that climbed up past more homes, guild workshops, and armories. Covered markets protected from the snow revealed the last evidence of the carnage of the past. The stone road turned crimson there, still stained by blood that had never completely washed away.

"I thought … the rivers of blood … were only a story," Emrys got out between hard breaths. My lungs were working like bellows too, sending tremors through my body.

"There's always a seed of truth in every story's garden," I said. Another favorite refrain of Nash's.

God's teeth. I hadn't spared the man a single thought since crossing into Lyonesse, but he had to be somewhere in the kingdom too. Given his head start, there was a good chance he'd already beaten us to the citadel, and maybe to Excalibur.

"Come on," I said, steeling myself for the possibility. "We're almost there."

Emrys had turned back to survey the road behind us. The sight of his profile, achingly handsome, sent a bolt of warmth through my body. He would have been right at home here, I thought ruefully. A prince of a legendary kingdom.

The wind ruffled his snow-dusted hair, and as he turned back, his bright eyes met mine—and darkened in a way that sent heat washing up my throat to my cheeks.

"Don't look at me like that," he almost groaned. "Not when I don't have time to do anything about it."

My breath caught, and somehow—somehow—I forced myself to only reach for his hand .

"Later," he whispered.

A promise.

But by the time we reached the steps into the castle, there was nothing left in me but the desire to stretch out over the icy stones and cool my burning muscles. Miles of upward climbing through the streets had left both of us quietly gasping for breath as we made our way toward the waiting entrance.

The outer doors were nearly as tall as the building itself, decorated with iron flourishes and the symbol of Lyonesse, a roaring lion's head. And, mercifully, by wind or someone's hand, they were already ajar—just wide enough for the two of us to slip inside. Beyond it was a corridor that ran between two stairwells on either side of us, and beyond that, another set of doors that led into the great hall.

Exchanging one last wary look with Emrys, I released his hand and stepped carefully through the doors to the hall.

The smell of must and rot was overwhelming. The air itself seemed dead: unnaturally heavy and still, hanging over derelict feasting tables like a mourning shroud.

"Hello?" I called out. "Cait! Neve! Are you here?"

My voice echoed back to me, small and fearful. Are you here? Are you here?

"Do you want to wait here or go looking for them?" Emrys asked.

My gaze drifted over to the two thrones at the head of the hall. Carved from wood, embellished with gold; the velveteen fabric of the seats had been devoured by moths and damp. And any crowns had left the kingdom when its ruler did, dead or alive.

A section of the vaulted ceiling had caved in, and at some point, water had rushed in through the splintered stones like a cascade, creating a solid wall of ice along the grand room's eastern face. Tapestries.

My feet moved toward them of their own accord, even as my mind tried to pull me back toward the corridor connecting this room to the next. A breeze slipped through the open door and pushed at my back, encouraging me forward. The air hummed in my ears, low and soft, like a mother's hushed soothing.

Emrys pulled a flashlight out of his bag. I took out my own, moving to the first panel at the far end of the hall. Rubbing a hand over the frost, I shined the beam of light through it.

The scenes were distorted and magnified by the glasslike ice, but not even that could diminish their beauty. I walked slowly along, clearing the cloudy layer of rime as I went. After I reached the end of the panel, I stepped back to view it in full. Emrys stood behind me, his body warming my back, his chest rumbling as he made a thoughtful noise.

"The creation of the world by the Goddess?" he suggested.

"Looks like it," I murmured.

At the center of the panel was a pale-haired woman, her figure wrapped in silky white robes. Something about her face, the serenity of her smile, stirred a thought at the back of my mind, but I didn't know the right memory to reach for.

Around her outstretched arms, a garden was forming, and creatures of every kind gathered.

"And here we have men," Emrys said, pointing to the figures below the garden. "Struggling to spark fire, to harvest—"

"Not men," I said. "The Firstborn."

Emrys looked over, surprised.

"The Gentry. The Tuatha dé Danann. The Aes Sídhe. Tylwyth Teg," I said. "According to the Bonecutter, they're all names for the same beings. Born with magic and immortality, but not invulnerable to death."

He scratched at the stubble growing along his jaw as he moved to the second panel, revealing it with a few careful swipes of his arm.

There were the mortal men, with the Firstborn lording over them with magic and crowns. Swords appeared, and the scenes of duels became battles. In the third, a man with a silver hand reached out toward a group that looked to be his children. Three sons, with wheat-colored hair and gray eyes. To my disappointment, the next panels were too torn and darkened by decay to see what they depicted.

A thunderous clatter sounded above us, like a wall collapsing. We froze in place as dust shook loose from the ceiling.

"Please tell me we're not going to investigate whatever unthinkable dark horror that was," Emrys said.

But I was already running for the door.