“Evelayn!” Ceren cried in alarm, veering to the right when the bear came up alongside her, but Evelayn quickly called out to her.
“It’s fine—it’s Lothar! I’m fine!”
Ceren corrected her course, but still looked shaken as she continued running east, toward the Undead Forest.
A bloodcurdling caw sounded from above, and Evelayn glanced up to see a hawk speeding through the air toward them and then circling back around.
Lorcan.
Which meant the shield was gone.
She lifted one arm slightly to look back and saw all six creatures, even the one he’d blinded, racing after them.
HOW MUCH … FARTHER?” LETHA WHEEZED, HER lungs and legs on fire. Once she’d been as strong as her brother, able to challenge any Draíolon on the battlefield. But she’d grown weak, and her senses dulled from lack of use. The trees whipped by them so quickly, sometimes she barely had time to avoid them.
“Not far now.” Tanvir was the closest to her and barely sounded winded. Although he did have rivulets of sweat running down the sides of his face, so maybe he was just better at hiding it than she.
The huge bear—Lothar—loped along beside them, Evelayn holding on to him for dear life. Letha was rather shocked that he had stooped to helping her, rather than merely leaving the Light Queen behind to be devoured.
Tanvir believed Lorcan and Lothar intended the queen harm, but if they did, why go to such effort to protect her now? Why command Lothar to guard her? And when Lothar had gone with Letha the night before to collect wood, he’d been nothing but considerate to her. She’d expected far worse from the son of the male who’d held her hostage and the brother of the male who’d used her to manipulate Tanvir.
“Are we even sure … this will work?” Up ahead, if she squinted, Letha caught a glimpse of the crumbling stone wall that had existed for all of recorded time, separating Éadrolan from the Undead Forest.
“No,” Tanvir said as they pushed harder, trying to reach that wall and the supposed safety beyond it before the daughters reached them. “But I sure hope Lorcan knows something we don’t.”
Letha couldn’t do anything else besides nod, too winded to speak, as she lengthened her stride to try to keep up with Tanvir.
Lothar let out a sudden roar and Letha glanced over her shoulder to see one of the creatures coming up alongside him. His flank was bleeding—it looked like she’d wounded him with one of her pincers.
“Lothar!” Evelayn screamed, hanging on for dear life when he twisted suddenly and slashed one massive paw through the air, his claws slicing into the arachnoid’s torso. She screeched in agony and scuttled away before he could attack her again.
A shriek from above was the only warning before Lorcan, as the hawk, plummeted toward them, wings tucked in a dive so swift, even Letha’s acute eyesight could barely track him. The split second before he would have crashed into the creature’s head, he opened his wings and attacked her face in a flurry of razor-sharp talons and beak. She tilted her head back to snap at him with her deadly pincers, but he’d blinded her and she missed. Lorcan easily swooped out of reach, speeding to Lothar’s side, where he shifted back into Draíolon form mid-flight and landed lightly on his feet, only to immediately spin and impale the arachnoid with a massive shard of ice.
The trees had begun to thin out and the wall was now within plain sight, the gray stone so ancient it had cracked and crumbled in places. They only had the length of the castle grounds left before they reached it. But when Letha glanced back again, the creatures hadn’t slowed or given up their pursuit. This isn’t going to work, she realized with a sinking sense of dread. She was on the verge of collapse. There was no chance she could continue to run, let alone maintain such a grueling pace, much longer.
“Go! You’re almost there!” Lorcan’s shout galvanized her to keep her legs moving, though her muscles shook uncontrollably and it took every ounce of strength she had to keep moving forward.
Then the other female—Ceren—stumbled and fell to the snowy ground with a terrified cry.
“Ceren!” Evelayn screamed. “Go get her! Turn back! Ceren!” But Lothar raced right on past Letha and Tanvir, headed for the wall.
Letha’s first instinct after the horrors she’d experienced at King Bain’s hands was to leave Ceren there also, to save herself.
But once she’d been a commander in the queen’s army—once she never would have left someone else to die so she could live.
With a hiss of frustration, she turned and rushed back to the other female’s side, as Ceren tried to climb to her feet. But she’d obviously pushed herself past her limits because her legs gave out, sending her to the ground again.
Letha crashed to a halt beside Ceren and, grabbing her arm, yanked her back up onto her feet. “Come on—we’re almost there! You can do this. You have to!”
Tears filled Ceren’s cornflower blue eyes, but she nodded and tried to move forward. Letha knew the signs of total muscular fatigue; she had nearly reached that point herself. Still, she pulled Ceren forward, both of them half limping, half jogging toward the wall and the hope of safety and rest in the Undead Forest, even as the daughters gained on them.
Lorcan was suddenly there on Ceren’s other side, helping Letha drag her forward with one arm, and using the other to throw blasts of shadowflame and bolts of ice at the arachnoids, barely keeping them at bay.
“Go! I will hold them off,” Lorcan yelled, shoving Ceren toward Letha. His silver eyes were so bright—too bright. And the stone in his forehead flashed like a beacon from the sheer amount of power he continued to draw upon.
“You have to stop,” Letha warned, even as she and Ceren clutched each other’s arms and stumbled toward the wall, neither one able to run. “It’s too much! You’ll be consumed by it!”
But Lorcan turned away from her and lifted both hands. Rather than the shield made of impenetrable shadows, he summoned a wall of living shadowflame between them and the arachnoids.
“Letha!” Tanvir shouted from where he sat perched on the wall, gesturing for her. “Give me your hand!”
They limped across the last few lengths of Éadrolan, and then she shoved Ceren toward her brother. “Help her first.” She turned back to see Lorcan standing like a Dark specter in front of the writhing green-and-black flames, his white hair blowing in the wind, his arms outstretched and his entire body shaking from the sheer amount of power he’d called upon. “Someone has to stop him!”
“I’ll go.”
Letha turned to see Evelayn climbing back over the wall to Éadrolan, Lothar right behind her.
“Let me—he’s my brother, and you can barely walk, let alone run.”
She’d reached the frozen ground and stood tall, despite the blood on her neck and the wince of pain when she put weight on her left leg. “I am Bound to him. And I know what it is to nearly lose yourself to the power.” Evelayn’s tone brooked no argument, and when she turned and began to limp back to Lorcan, no one argued with her.
There were times when Letha couldn’t imagine her as queen, this wraith of a female who had been trapped as a swan for so long. But in that moment, Evelayn was every bit the ruler Letha had heard stories about when she’d returned to Éadrolan. The queen who had defeated Bain and brought peace to their kingdom—albeit briefly.
“Lorcan!” Evelayn’s voice carried back to them on the wind, along with the screams and shrieks of the creatures on the other side of the shadowflames. “Lorcan, you have to let go!”
Letha watched breathlessly as Evelayn reached him and gently touched his arm. Lorcan jerked as if he’d been scalded, but the flames continued to burn. Evelayn’s mouth moved, but Letha could no longer hear what she said. However, the look on the queen’s face …
Lorcan finally turned to the queen, staring down at Evelayn, his expression too difficult to read from this distance. But slowly, with a shudder that rippled through his body, he lowered his arms and the flames came down with them. Evelayn took h
is hand and together they ran back to the wall—Evelayn trying to mask her pain with each step—as the creatures shrieked and took up their pursuit again.
“Letha! Now!” Tanvir shouted, and she spun and grabbed his hand, letting him drag her up the stones as she scrambled for a foothold to boost herself over the top.
Lorcan and Evelayn reached the wall just as she swung her legs over the stones and found herself staring at Lothar, Ceren, and Tanvir—and, rising behind them, the shadowy depths of the Undead Forest.
Evelayn could practically feel the hot breath of the arachnoids on the back of her neck as she and Lorcan hit the wall and scrambled to climb over the top. He easily reached it first and leaned down to grab her arms and pull her the rest of the way, just as one of the creatures lunged at her, pincers snapping in the air where her legs had been half a second earlier. Together, they swung over the rocks and jumped down to the other side. Pain shot up her left leg at the impact, and she had to smother a cry. Lorcan’s head immediately jerked in her direction.
“You’re injured.” Ice-cold fury laced his voice. “I told you to protect her,” he snarled, turning to Lothar.
“It was my own fault. He saved me.” Evelayn reached out and touched his arm. “Lorcan, he saved me,” she repeated quietly as he glared at his brother, teeth bared.
He took a few more seething breaths, but slowly the fight went out of him.
“I can’t believe it worked,” Letha commented softly, still staring at the wall with wide eyes.
“They’re gone?” Ceren’s voice wobbled, and Evelayn looked over to see tears in her friend’s eyes. Her body trembled, and she seemed barely able to remain upright.
“They won’t enter the Undead Forest.” Lorcan knelt down and reached for Evelayn’s left foot. She reluctantly let him lift it up and carefully pull off her boot. There was quite a bit of swelling, making it much more difficult and painful than it should have been. She sucked in a breath when he gently prodded her ankle with his long fingers, rotating it slightly left, then right. “It’s not broken, thankfully. Sit down and I’ll help you heal this.”
“No,” Evelayn said.
His eyes lifted to hers, exasperation flashing across his face. “You intend to try to run the rest of the way suffering from blood loss, with stitches in your neck, and a sprained ankle?”
“You can’t keep doing this—especially now. You’re in no condition to use any power after what you just did, let alone try to siphon it to me.” She pulled her foot away. “Perhaps in a few hours after we’ve all rested.” Evelayn shot a meaningful glance toward Ceren and Letha, who had both sat down on the ground, pale and visibly exhausted, now that the immediate danger was gone.
Lorcan sighed but didn’t argue. “I suppose we can rest for a little while. There’s a faster route to the White Peak, now that we’re going this way.”
“If it’s faster, why didn’t we come this way to begin with, especially if it means avoiding those creatures?” Tanvir groused.
“And why do you suppose they refuse to go past the wall?”
Evelayn looked around them, really looked, for the first time, and had to suppress a shudder. There was no snow on this side of the wall, but it wasn’t warm, either. The forest grew close and heavy, trees and bushes crowding in on one another, their leaves not quite green but not quite brown, either. A creeping gray mist snaked across the forest floor, undulating up the trunks to dissipate into the steely sky. On the other side of the wall, it had been brilliantly sunny. Evelayn glanced up to see that even though there were no clouds, the sun was no longer visible. An involuntary shiver raked down her spine.
“I have been here only once and never wished to repeat the experience. But here we are, so we might as well take advantage of it.” Lorcan pulled a piece of the meat they’d cooked that morning out of his pack.
“Can we start a fire if we’re going to rest for a while? I could use the heat to warm up,” Ceren said.
“Me too,” Letha agreed.
“There will be no fires here.” Lorcan’s response was curt. “You may have noticed the light is different in this forest. A fire would attract notice—and if there’s one thing you want to avoid here, it’s being noticed.”
Letha glanced at Tanvir in alarm, and Ceren pulled her cloak more tightly around her body, her face drawn and pale. Evelayn wished there was some way she could send her friend back to Quinlen and her younglings, but there was no way except forward now. Especially with Máthair Damhán’s daughters hunting them on the other side of the wall. Why had Ceren been so foolish as to follow Tanvir and Letha?
They were a silent, somber group, sitting on the mossy earth after Lorcan’s warning. Even he was subdued, his conduit stone dulled somehow in the peculiar lighting.
“Are you weaker here?” Evelayn’s question was so quiet, she hoped only he could hear her.
“Why would you ask that?”
Her gaze flickered up to his conduit stone and then back to his eyes again. “It’s not as bright. And you seem … different.”
He didn’t respond for a moment, looking off toward the shadowed thicket of trees they would soon be entering. “Nothing is quite the same here,” he finally answered. “It is not a place for the living.”
Evelayn shuddered, feeling suddenly as though they were being watched.
“We would be wise to continue on as quickly as possible,” Lorcan added.
But both Letha and Ceren had curled up on the ground, using their cloaks as pillows, and fallen asleep. Tanvir sat with his back against the wall, his head listing to one side as though he’d also dozed off. Even Lothar seemed to be having trouble keeping his eyes open. And now that the danger was past, a pressing drowsiness weighed on Evelayn as well.
“You’re going to have to let me help you with your ankle.”
She flinched when he reached out and lifted her still-bare left foot into his lap. “You need to rest and regain your own strength.”
“I’m stronger than you think” was all he said in return, and then a surge of his power entered her body, turning her ankle warm with his strong healing abilities. Despite herself, Evelayn sighed in relief as the deep, throbbing pain ebbed beneath his touch. And when he stroked the soft skin along her ankle, sending a delicious shiver up her leg, she didn’t protest, though she knew she probably should have … shouldn’t she?
“At least your stitches didn’t tear open.”
“My stitches?” It took her an extra beat to remember the wound in her neck, with his distracting hands on her bare leg.
“It bled some more, but the stitches look to have held,” he confirmed, his voice as steady as ever. She would have believed him utterly unaffected by her, if it weren’t for the telling desire she could scent mingling with his fragrance of ice and night. A scent that all the others would also recognize, she realized, her body growing hot.
Evelayn pulled her foot away and grabbed her boot. “Thank you, I believe it’s better now,” she said rather unsteadily.
“You’re welcome.” He watched her intently, his silver eyes like iron in the gloomy light of the Undead Forest.
“I’ve never been told about the ability to do that before. Where did you learn it?” Evelayn asked, partly out of true curiosity and partly to distract herself from the unsettling way he kept making her feel.
A shadow crossed his face, a fleeting expression that bespoke darkness, and she immediately regretted asking. “My parents knew of it, I don’t know how. As a youngling, I saw my mother use it to help heal my father.”
“Your father needed help healing?” Evelayn couldn’t disguise her surprise.
Lorcan nodded, his gaze flickering to Lothar, who had also dozed off now, and then back to her again. “He was extremely powerful, but not infallible. He brought me to watch him train many times when I was a youngling. My mother always came as well, to make sure I didn’t get in the way, as I apparently had a habit of getting into trouble.”
Evelayn stared at Lorcan as
he spoke, finding it difficult to imagine him ever being a mischievous youngling.
“That day, she got distracted talking to a few of the High Lords and Ladies who had also come to the training rooms. Somehow, I entered the training ring and headed for my father just as his opponent attacked. Though you may not believe it, my father dove for me, most likely saving my life. But in his haste, he didn’t protect himself and took the entire hit. I don’t remember much of that day, other than my mother’s scream and watching her run to his side. She told him, ‘I can help you. Give me your hand and I will help you.’ ” Lorcan shook his head, his eyes on Evelayn, but his gaze far off in the distant past. “She helped him heal. I watched her save his life by gripping his hand and giving him her power when he was too weak to rely on his own.”
Evelayn couldn’t reconcile his story with the icy, bitter queen she knew. Abarrane was many things, but she’d never thought of her as a loving Mate to Bain. That made her wonder what kind of a mother she had been to Lorcan and Lothar.
“I thought it was something all Draíolon could do—or at least all royals—until the day I tried to help Lothar heal and it didn’t work. I asked my mother and she told me it was something you could only do if you were Bound to each other.” Lorcan refocused on her face, his gaze searing into hers. “The vow we made did more than just join our lives together.”
Before she could say anything, he continued, “Shortly after that day, he made the decision to force the High Priest to remove the block on our magic as soon as he felt we were old enough to train, rather than waiting until eighteen. That is also when he began to make plans to go to war—to try and claim the power of both kingdoms for himself … and for us.”
Evelayn’s eyes widened. “You can’t possibly … You think this was all your fault?”
“My father was faced with his own weakness that day, for the first time. He’d had to save me, and then to rely on my mother to help save him. He was determined to never worry about being too weak again—and he thought that was how he could accomplish it.”