What’s one more journey?he thought, removing his boots and coat and climbing in beside her. Amma had already proven herself quite useful in surviving one of E’nloc’s pits of nothingness: he would likely need her to complete this task the Grand Order of Dread had thrust upon him, and if Xander was right, then taking advantage of her skills was exactly what Damien was meant to do.
Amma stirred, turning. Her eyes did not open, her hands only snaking around him, and she nuzzled her head against his chest. Damien’s heart thumped beneath her cheek so loudly he was sure it would wake her, but she only mumbled sleepy words against his skin that he refused to decipher, too similar to ones that had been playing in his own mind for the last moon. Instead he focused on that tone she used, so delicate and sweet, and let it lull him to sleep.
How he would live without her voice and touch once he had to let her go, he didn’t know, but for at least a little while longer, he didn’t have to find out.
CHAPTER 8
MORATORIUM LIFTED
Afinger tracing down the nape of Amma’s neck roused her. “You’re back,” she said, blinking bleariness from her eyes. “I wasn’t asleep.”
Damien made a small, disbelieving sound. “Oh, no? If only I’d known—I’ve been lying here for hours.”
She pouted after him as he slipped out of the bed, leaving her cold. “Why didn’t you wake me?”
“Couldn’t bring myself to.” He grinned and began to pull on his tunic.
“Now that’s just cruel,” she muttered, sitting up and taking the blankets with her to cover her bare chest. She had waited for him to return, urgency in every thrash of her heart, but when he didn’t come immediately back, she had climbed under the fluffy linens to keep warm. She could only assume Damien would be disappointed if she took care of her pressing need on her own, so she shut her eyes and tried to think of anything else, and eventually fell asleep.
Damien placed the pile of clothes and cloaks they’d purchased from the merchants on the bed. Atop the stack sat her old pouch and the new dagger. “It’s a shame, but you’ll need to wear these now instead of those concubine trappings.”
“I don’t think that top is salvageable anyway,” said Amma, finding her cleaned chemise in the pile and pulling it over her head.
Damien grinned as he jerked his dagger from where it pierced the wall the night before. Sliding it into the sheath on his bracer, he turned for her and expressions passed quickly overhis features, hunger, thoughtfulness, longing, and finally defeat. “An actual tunic will be most useful anyway. It should be just before dawn back in the realm.”
She held his gaze, letting the linens fall away and leaving her just in her lacy underthings, a thickness in the air between them. Would he pounce on her again? Should she just run at him instead? But then Damien turned away, and the tension in Amma’s shoulders moved on to frustrate other places.
She scratched the vaxin behind his tiny ears, and he yawned, revealing massive incisors. Just before she’d fallen asleep, he popped back into existence on her pillow, and she was happy to see he had remained there all night. When she stood from the bed, she hesitated before slipping off the chain and crimson fabric from her hips even though her chemise was long enough to cover her. Damien was still turned away though, slowly strapping on armor, both a shame and a relief. “So, is there some early morning, unholy ritual we’re going to?”
“Oh, no, we’releavingleaving.” He held up a small scroll over his shoulder. “The rest of them can have their last day of Yvlcon without us. We’re going…well, I suppose we’re going on a quest.”
Amma’s eyes widened—now, that sounded exciting. She was quick to pull on her pink-ish tunic and untorn breeches in a dark leather. The new vest cinched in around her waist with black straps, protective and, well, uplifting was a word for what it did for both her breasts and her mood. Holstering the new knife on her thigh was the final piece, and though it wasn’t her silver dagger from Faebarrow, this one was intended for protection. It felt good to have the slight pressure against her leg again, a constant reminder she had a means of defense. She flexed her fingers, feeling as though something was missing, but the rest of the pile were simply her old, torn and stained clothes from their previous trek across the realm.
“Do you have everything you don’t intend to leave behind?” Damien had finished dressing on the room’s other side.
Amma checked herself then gasped, running to the pillow and scooping up the vaxin. “Can’t forget Vanders.”
“Oh, good, you’ve named it.” Damien smirked at the rodent as he strode over. “Listen, you need to stay alive, all right? This one will get very upset otherwise.” He nudged Amma, and she giggled, but then he had his dagger out and was slicing into his hand.
He wrapped bloody fingers around the scroll, whispered in Chthonic, and there was a flash of black arcana before them. Watery, silver strands formed in a doorway-like frame, the center a shadow. It was just like the portal that had been their escape from the bleakness of the courtyard of Krepmar Keep only this time the wind was not whipping, there was no pit of darkness flailing tendrils of arcana a few yards away, and Damien wasn’t nearly dead.
Damien was, in fact, looking quite alive at Amma’s side even as he bled, the circles gone from under his eyes and a grin on his lips that seemed to have settled there rather than just passing by. With black hair brushed away from his face, his eyes held a new lightness when they looked on her. It was frankly unfair of him to look so handsome after he had made so many threats and had yet to follow through, but the parchment sizzled in his hand, and he was guiding her away from the bed and into the portal.
A pull behind Amma’s navel drew a gasp out of her, the world wobbly beneath her feet, and then the shadows about her cleared. They were surrounded no longer by the candlelit, windowless gloom of a bedchamber in some imaginary, dark plane but the dusty glow of a sky pink with coming dawn. Bands of mountaintops, each lighter than the one before as they were swallowed up by fog, trailed down from the rosy sky, and at their feet, a lush patch of greenery sprawled up between crevices inthe rock.
Amma breathed in the piney air, no longer feeling the collar about her neck, and she sighed, eyelids floating down with her gaze, and then her stomach completely dropped out. She squealed, jumping back from the cliff’s edge, Damien’s boots scuffing at her side as he too staggered backward.
The tops of pines and maples swayed far off in both directions, a gust slamming into their backs, and they dug into the rocky earth. Vanders poofed right out of existence yet again, and Amma’s heart shot into her throat at the sight of the mountain ridge they stood upon running to either side.
“Didn’t realize Ashrein Rise meant up this high,” Damien said breathlessly, eyes wide.
Buffeted at their front by another gust, they turned toward each other and held on until it passed, and then found a narrow break downward to slide off the ridge and land in a flatter spot where they could press their backs into the rock.
The mountain ridges spread out before them, many much higher, and below, a valley thick with rolling forest. The wind had been cut off where they stood, and Amma took a deep gulp of air. “Not that I want to complain, but what are we doing here?”
Testing the ground and finally taking his arms off the cliffside, Damien dug into his satchel and pulled out a folded parchment. “This is not exactly where we need to be, but it was the closest translocation spot I could find.”
He unfolded the parchment, and Amma took half of it, huddling close to survey what was drawn out there. New and clean with crisp edges, the map depicted what looked like the northwesternmost corner of Eiren, Ashrein Ridge cutting up through it, separating the western peninsula that jutted out into the Maroon Sea from the rest of the realm. A single city was marked, and though Amma could not read Chthonic, she knewit would be Buckhead, the capital of the northernmost barony of Eiren. Farther south where the ridge ended would be Brineberth and Faebarrow, and near the map’s top lay the border of the realm, Aszath Koth beyond. Places were marked in Chthonic, but there was a little, bright red dot just on the ridge that pulled her eye in. “Is that us?”
