Letting go of River, Jasper stood in front of me. Looking back down at River, he mouthed an apology before sliding a wooden ring off his finger. There lay the marking of an oath. ‘I trusted Cain when he told me who you were, what you wanted todo for my people. I trusted in the person he said lay beneath the dark and twisted stories I had heard whispered in the wind. I swore an oath not to Cain but to you as my true queen. To free my people, I would bind myself to you and follow you. That is the oath I made,’ he said.
River let out a sob that racked through her body at the betrayal, but Jasper did not move from my gaze, showing me he meant every word. The flames remained calm within; I knew he spoke only truth.
‘Kneel,’ I said. Jasper acted without hesitation as River let out another sob, gripping her chest in a mixture of grief and heartbreak, but love still shone in her eyes as she looked at her younger brother.
‘Give me your palm,’ I said as I drew my blade. Slicing it across his palm, blood pooled in the middle. Drawing the blade across my own hand, I clasped his. Our blood combined in the heat of our hands as it dripped onto the floor.
I spoke the words. ‘You are mine, I am yours.’
‘You are mine, I am yours,’ he repeated.
The words that marked he would serve me as I would serve him. The same words I had exchanged with everyone in my circle.
‘Sienna, mask him. We are leaving.’
Turning to River, I said, ‘I will take it that we have clear passage through your lands?’
River stepped forward. ‘Yes.’ She did not thank me or reach for her brother, although I could see her fingers itching to hold him one last time.
‘Will they talk?’ I asked, gesturing to the guards that stood outside her room, who had likely heard everything.
‘Not for long,’ she said as she raised her hands, and vines slithered from the walls, wrapping around their necks. Pulling them tighter against the wooden wall as they struggled and gasped for air. Jasper looked away, knowing they had to die forhis freedom. He had dedicated himself to extending the lives of those around him, not ruining them as his sister had.
‘Go, mask yourselves and leave. Do not ever come back, because if you do, I will be forced to do what I was too scared to do. I love you, Jasper. I’m sorry, I’m truly sorry.’ She inhaled deeply. ‘I will tell my people to let you through; only once you have crossed out of our lands will I tell them that Jasper escaped. Now go,’ River pleaded, letting the reality of what she had just done—and agreed to—sink in.
Jasper gave his sister one last hug before Sienna pulled him aside and whispered an incantation until he faded from sight right before our eyes. We walked back down the stairs; I could feel Jasper silently following behind us. Once we stepped outside, our horses were standing there waiting for us, with the Forest Fae watching from a distance.
Sienna took a few extra minutes to mount her horse, giving Jasper time to mount Vixen after me. I flicked my reins, giving my girl the only hint she needed to get going. Vixen started galloping, with Sienna following shortly after. We did not ease up or slow down until the sun began to set.
Twenty-One
Once we were well enough away from Forest Fae territory, we faced expansive plains of grass, with the mountains where the Wiccans lived only a day’s ride in the distance. The horses were tired, and Sienna was drained from having to maintain the masking spell as we smuggled Jasper out, so I decided we wouldn’t push on. Jasper pointed us towards a hidden cave system that was another twenty minutes’ ride from the edge of the grassy plain.
It was a small cave that curved to the right, meaning the passageway did not leave us completely exposed to the outside world. Sienna went to work on a ward designed to ensure that the inevitable search parties River would send looking for Jasper would not be able to see a cave at all. Instead, they would feel solid rock beneath their touch. The light from our fire and the sounds of our voices would not be visible or audible; it would mask everything. It would further drain Sienna to cast it, but unlike the masking spell, the ward could be rooted in an object that would keep it active all through the night and allow her to recover. She took out an old bone and stabbed it into the ground at the entrance of the cave. It was a bone of a long passedWiccan that tapped into the powers of the fallen now floating in the ether.
We were all tired and hungry. I pulled out some cured meats and fruit and shared them with Jasper and Sienna as I started the fire. Although I had the eternal flame bestowed by the first dragons coursing through my veins, I could not actually conjure fire. Sienna could, but she had done enough, and this was something I had become quite proficient at during all my hunting trips with Cain over the years.
Sienna broke the silence first and asked Jasper, ‘Why on earth would you swear an oath with Cain and pledge loyalty to Skylar, choosing her as your queen against your own sister when you had never even met her? Do you know how utterly insane that sounds?’
Jasper laughed at the absurdity of hearing what he had done out loud before he levelled me with a stare. ‘Cain told me about you. I had never, in all my years, heard him speak about anyone the way he spoke about you. I was the only one he told when he found you in the forest that first time. Every hunting trip after that, he would tell me, or rather write to me, about you. He admired you, and very quickly, you won his loyalty and trust. Cain has never been someone to easily delve out his respect to anyone, but he respected you. I remember sitting there, hearing all those stories about you and thinking about how jealous I was. How I wanted to know you the way he did, because I had never met anyone like what he described. Once you chose him to be on your council, despite tradition and every person telling you not to, I knew he was always right about you.
‘It was a move I had never seen another leader take, a decision my sister never would. I had always been disillusioned by my people and their way of life; I couldn’t stand what they did to Cain and the others. When Cain came to me with a plan to help the outcasts, and that the idea had been yours of all people… I decided then that I would help him and, in turn, help you. Although Cain and I trusted each other and were brothers in every sense of the word except for blood, his loyalty and trust with you were paramount, so he would not let me be a part of anything unless I swore the oath,’ he said, holding his hand up and looking at the black ring mark around his little finger.
This oath was different to a blood binding.
‘What were the exact words of the oath you swore, Jasper?’ I asked.
‘I, Jasper Evergreen of the Forest Fae clan, do hereby swear this oath to Cain Ashenbrook. I swear that from this day onwards, Queen Skylar Azdaja of Maureia is whom I will serve. Every action I take will be in service to her and her goals. I will obey all commands and requests that come from her. Should I fail in this, I will forfeit my life to Cain Ashenbrook to carry out the Rite of No Return. My loyalty from this day onwards is to my true Queen and those that serve her, no one else.’ He repeated it as if in a trance, a slight smile on his lips.
‘What is “the Rite of No Return”?’ I asked.
‘The Rite of No Return is worse than death to the Forest Fae. Our gifts are contained within our blood. For me in particular, as I come from old blood, I have more gifts than most. I, like my sister, can control plant life, but I can also control the earth from which it grows. And the rocks it grows between. I can also control certain smaller creatures—nothing larger than a small wolf. The Rite of No Return would require Cain to hang me upside down from a tree and drain my blood until every last drop of the old blood, which contains my gifts, has left me, as he replaces it with that of an animal. I would survive, but I would be a hollowed-out husk, never truly living. Empty. Lost.Alone. It has only ever been done once before, three hundred years ago.’
I had never heard of something so disgusting yet poetic; it made my skin crawl, but a small, sinister part of me was pleased he had chosen this path for me and Cain and the loyalty it displayed. I couldn’t fathom putting myself at risk for anyone, let alone for someone I had never met. Maybe he had lost his sanity living in the woods all this time.
‘I’m not who you or Cain seem to think I am. You will be disappointed and come to regret that oath,’ I said bitterly.
‘It is mine alone to regret, should that day ever come,’ he said, grinning and biting through some of the cured meat. ‘Anyway, where are we going from here? When can I see Cain? He’s probably worried about me after I went dark.’
