Emerie confirmed that she’d been attacked and chased by the males Nesta had spied at the river. She’d leaped in as a final shot at survival, hit her head on a rock, and remembered nothing until the cave.
Nesta gave her a swift, brutal rundown of her own encounters as they picked their way southward, mostly keeping silent to listen for any passing Illyrians. A few solo warriors ignored them as they trudged past, covered in blood, all heading east; a few packs battled each other; and many more bodies lay on the cold earth.
They scanned for any gleam of copper hair. But they saw and heard no sign of Gwyn. They did not speak of whether their charms might be leading them toward a body.
The day passed, and they found another cave as night fell, huddling together for warmth. Emerie insisted on taking the first watch, and Nesta slept at last. When her friend woke her, Nesta had the feeling that Emerie had let her doze for longer than she should have.
In the morning, they emerged to find blood mixed with the snow on the ground. The animal tracks around the mouth of the cave were large enough to roil Nesta’s stomach.
Soon, snow began falling in earnest. Enough to veil the world ahead and behind, and any enemies with it. They shivered with each step southward, though they’d piled on extra jackets from fallen warriors, and as the morning crept toward midday, Nesta flexed her fingers to keep her hands from freezing through.
If she survived, she’d never again complain about the summer heat; never again take for granted her coat and hat and gloves and that stupid scarf Cassian had made her wear out of her apartment all those months earlier.
“I smell fire,” Emerie murmured. They’d last spoken hours ago, concentrating instead on staving off the cold that was so deep it made their teeth ache.
They halted behind two pines, surveying the terrain, the snow-heavy sky. Nesta consulted her charm. “That way,” she said, inclining her head to the left. “The fire is also in that direction—the wind’s carrying the smoke down from that ridge.”
“It could be Gwyn’s fire,” Emerie suggested hopefully.
Nesta nodded, calming her pounding heart. They inched along, darting from tree to tree, listening for any danger around them, any hint of Gwyn ahead. They’d been moving for several minutes when the laughter reached them. Male laughter.
Emerie’s face paled as she held her bracelet toward the source of the laughter. Its charm glowed, glinting even in the sun’s weak winter light.
“Keep downwind,” Nesta said grimly. “We’ll take the ridge from the southern side.”
A nightgown hung on a branch near the camp’s edge.
Nesta’s stomach rose, her meager breakfast burning her throat. A soft inhale of breath from Emerie was her friend’s only sign of dread and pain as they climbed the last of the ridge toward the warriors camped atop it. They were boasting about the males they’d killed, the remaining trek toward Ramiel. Nesta strained to hear any hint of a female amongst them. If Gwyn’s nightgown was hanging from a tree, then Gwyn—
To hell with reaching Ramiel. She’d spend the rest of the week here, killing them all slowly.
The crest of the ridge lay ten feet above.
Nesta controlled her breathing, keeping it silent and shallow, as the Valkyries had done. A glance at Emerie told her the female was doing the same, even as rage kindled in her dark eyes.
They’d decided before they ascended the slope that, as Emerie’s wings arced too high above her head, Nesta would assess what lay beyond the ridge. Emerie held two knives; Nesta had one dagger and the Illyrian bow and two arrows. Nesta would have to use her peek to gather information about what weapons the males had, too.
They swapped one final look, just as the males burst into laughter, and Nesta rose. Only high enough for her vision to clear the ridge’s edge.
Ten males sat around a fire, eating. Some had axes, some had swords, some had knives. Nesta picked out the male in the middle, laughing and talking the loudest, as the leader. His face—she’d seen his face before. Somewhere.
No sign of Gwyn. Nesta ducked back down, pivoting toward Emerie.
But Emerie was gone. Dragged halfway down the slope, and held between two grinning males.
No one went in or out of the towering, gray-stoned castle. Azriel and Cassian took turns circling it from high above, waiting for any sign of a departing group, but the gates did not open. Nobody even came or departed from the walled city surrounding it. As if the gates had been locked, its people kept within. No villages dotted the hills around it, either.
The castle seemed to have risen out of the earth and settled there, squatting like some enormous beast over the land.
“Briallyn has to know we’re here,” Cassian said as he alit, his latest aerial survey completed. “You think she’s waiting for us to make a move?”
“I think the better question is if Eris is still alive,” Azriel murmured, shadows whispering in his ear. “I can’t get a read on it.”
“Waiting is pointless. We should break in. Keep out of sight, so she won’t even know we’re there and be tempted to use the Crown on us.”
“I told you: the place is guarded with as many wards as the House of Wind. If Briallyn is moving Eris, we’ll be better off catching him then.”
“Maybe the merchant was wrong.”
“Maybe. We’ll continue surveillance through tomorrow.” Azriel crossed his arms. “I know you want to help Nesta. Maybe Amren can find some loophole in the laws …”
Cassian swallowed hard. “There’s no loophole. If I interfere, we’re both dead. And even if I did, Nesta would kill me if I jumped in to save her. She’d never forgive me for it.”
He’d had nothing else to do except contemplate it these past days. Nesta’s fate was her own. She was strong enough to forge her own path, even through the horrors of the Blood Rite. He’d taught her the skills to do so himself.
And even if the laws had allowed it, he would never take that away from her: the chance to save herself.
“I didn’t think you’d be stupid enough to fall for the nightgown, but I suppose that’s the difference between a female thinking she’s a warrior and the real thing,” the cold-faced leader said as Nesta and Emerie were hurled at his booted feet. He chuckled, eyes glassy enough that Nesta wondered if someone had smuggled in a case of wine along with the weapons. “Hello Emerie.”
Nesta recognized the male then. Bellius, Emerie’s hateful cousin.
Emerie only spat, “Where the fuck is she?”
Bellius shrugged. “Found the nightgown a few miles ago. Perhaps some other warrior fucked and killed her.” His smile held nothing but evil. “You shouldn’t have come here, cousin.”
Emerie retorted, “I was brought here against my will, cousin. But now I’ll enjoy proving you and your father wrong.
His teeth shone in the dim, snowy light through the forest canopy. “You’ve disgraced your father. Disgraced our family.”
Nesta eyed her weapons at the male’s feet, all ceded upon Emerie’s capture.
“Was it you who sabotaged the Rite with these weapons?” Nesta seethed.
Bellius chuckled again, though his eyes remained hazy. Flakes of snow gathered in his dark hair. “I wouldn’t call it sabotage. And neither did she.”
Nesta froze. She’d seen that glassy-eyed look before—on the faces of Eris’s soldiers.
And that word—she. Had Briallyn somehow ensnared Bellius with the Crown? He’d looked glassy-eyed when she’d seen him in Emerie’s shop months ago. When he’d recently come back from a scouting trip to the continent. Briallyn must have intercepted him then. Perhaps used the Crown to influence the Illyrians to break their sacred rules of the Rite, to plant the weapons here. But why?
Bellius said to Emerie as the female shook with rage, “You know I can’t let you leave here alive. Our family would never recover from the shame.”
“Fuck you,” Emerie snarled. “Fuck your family.”
Bellius just eyed Nesta, smiling faintly. He brushed the snow from the shoulders of his jacket. “I get first crack at the High Fae bitch,” he said to his warriors.
Nesta’s gut churned, acid burning through her. She had to find some way out of this, even outnumbered, unarmed, with no magic—
The pure panic and rage in Emerie’s face told her that her friend, too, was coming up short on any solution.
Bellius stepped toward them.
And then blood splattered across the side of his face as the guts of one of his cronies spilled onto the snow before him.
The thing that crawled over the ridge had been crafted of nightmares. Part cat, part serpent, all black fur and sharp claws and hooked teeth. It halted at the edge of the camp. Didn’t look down at the gutted corpse of the warrior whose abdomen it had sliced open with a single swipe. Blood stained the snow around him in a wide circle.
The warriors, Bellius with them, readied themselves. Bellius drew his sword.
The creature leaped. Warriors screamed, weapons flashing in the bloodied, shrieking fray.
“Run,” Nesta ordered Emerie, surging to her feet. She snatched her weapons, and Emerie lunged to grab a sword as it flew from a warrior’s hand and into the snow.
A female voice rang out from the other side of the ridge. “Here!”
Nesta nearly sobbed at the voice, at the coppery head of hair that popped up, the hand beckoning as Bellius and his males squared off against the thing tearing into them. Nesta and Emerie reached the hilltop’s edge and slid down, snow spraying. Gwyn waited on its other side, bloodied and in a warrior’s clothes, face filthy and torn, but eyes clear.
“Follow me,” Gwyn breathed, and they wasted no effort arguing as they half-fell down the hillside and sprinted through the trees, aiming to the southeast.
They ran until the warriors’ screams, the beast’s roars, were distant. Until they faded away entirely.
They stopped near a trickle of a stream through the snow, panting so hard Nesta had to lean against a tree.
“How?” Emerie gasped out.
“I woke up before the others,” Gwyn said between breaths, a hand on her chest.
“So did I,” Nesta said. “I thought it was because I’m Made, but maybe it’s because you and I aren’t Illyrian.”
Gwyn nodded. “I started running, and found a cache of weapons almost immediately.” She gestured to the blood on her Illyrian leathers. “I changed from the nightgown into someone else’s clothes. From a body, I mean.” She held up her wrist. “Did you know this thing glows? I remembered your wish for us: that we’d always be able to find our way back to each other. No matter what. I figured it would lead me to you. It must be somehow immune to the magic ban in the Rite.”
She smiled crookedly at Nesta. “I kept to the trees the first two nights, watching the beasts, and I spotted that horrible male and his companions this morning. Saw they’d found my nightgown and displayed it, and I knew they were hunting for you. I thought I’d take them out before they could find you.”
“You led the beast right to them.”
“I learned where the beasts sleep during the day,” Gwyn said. “And that they get very angry when awoken.” She pointed to the cuts on her face, her hands. “I barely outran that one as I led it toward the camp. My timing was just good luck, though.”
Emerie shuddered. “The Mother watched over us.”
Nesta could have sworn the charms on their bracelets let out a soft, singing hum at that.
But Gwyn winced. “He’s really your cousin?”
“I hope I can refer to that sad fact in the past tense after this,” Emerie said coolly.
Nesta offered her a savage smile. “We need to keep moving. If Bellius or any of his friends survive, they’ll want to kill us even more now.”
Four more days. They had to last four more days.
Gwyn said hoarsely as they moved into the wilderness, the snow mercifully lightening, “You two came looking for me.”
“Of course we did,” Emerie said, interlacing her hand with Gwyn’s, then Nesta’s, and squeezing tightly. “It’s what sisters do.”
