“And me,” Zaria said from her hammock.
“Oh, great, so everyone.” I threw my hands up.
“Not me!” Nova cried in frustration. “What about Faolan?”
“I’m his ryder,”I admitted out loud to another person for the first time. I had hardly admitted it to myself.
“You’re what?” she all but screeched, then clapped her hand over her mouth to silence herself.
“You heard me.”
“But th—that’s… How?”
I shrugged.
She blinked, still processing. “I just—wow. What are you going to do?”
“What can I do? One cannot control these things.”
“One cannot avoid them either,” Kol said knowingly.
“I would never avoid a calling from the Gods,” I told him pointedly
“By all the Gods of Light, Caly, you’re really a ryder? I can’t believe it.” Nova said, still processing the news and completely missing the subtext of the conversation.
If that blew her mind, what would she think if I told her that I suspected our bond was actually more than just ryder and flyer?
TWENTY-TWO
FAOLAN
It had been a long couple of weeks, especially as it was spent traveling away from the First Kingdom. It made sense as the surest way to go undetected, but it felt so wrong. I just wanted to get back there and deliver our wards, so then I could finally get away. At last, the time to disembark was nearly here. Land would be on the horizon when the sun rose, and everyone was more than ready. We were all a little stir crazy.
The thought of being among other fae again, where we could not control our environment or C—theirsafety, had me on edge. I mentally kicked myself for the near slip. I was here to guard the entire party, not just one. And then I was leaving. I’d made my peace with it. It would hurt her, I knew. Especially now that she knew she was my ryder, but our bond hadn’t fully revealed itself to her, and that was for the best.
Without physical touch and face-to-face proximity, hopefully what was there already would never fully develop, and we would never get the chance to meld. Then life apart should be tolerable. When I’d voiced that aloud to Nyx, he’d looked at me like I had the innocence of a hatchling. But I meant it. I would do whatever it took to stop it from happening.
Kol emerge from below. “I came to take over for you.”
“I’m good. I’m too awake to go down,” I told him. “Stretch your wings if you like. I’ll keep watch.”
We’d gained the trust of the captain early, and we’d been volunteering to take night watch at the helm for them for most of the trip. Which allowed us all to fly when we needed to and had provided Nyx with opportunities to check for other vessels in the dark of night, using whatever Night Dragon cloaking the Goddess blessed them with to hide in the sky. There was no one on our trail, which was reassuring, but making landfall tomorrow would bring new risks of being recognized and word spreading.
“No flying for me tonight. Just air.” Kol drew in a breath appreciatively.
“I will not miss the smell down there,” I scoffed.
“No one will. I don’t think I’ll ever fully be rid of it. I might need to get the healers to work on extracting it from my nose along with the poison in my veins when I get back.”
I looked at his chest, the faint tattoo visible in the open neck of his tunic.
“Don’t do that,” he warned.
“Do what?”
“Pity me.”
“I do not pity you.”
