“I hope so,” Galin responds, and for the first time since we’ve met him, his tone darkens with genuine concern. He turns to face me fully, his expression grave. “But understand this, wolf, the trials are hers to face. Not yours. Not his.” He tilts his chintoward Locke, whose jaw has tightened at the words. “If you interfere too much, if you try to shield her from every blow and cushion every fall, you will only delay her growth and weaken her resolve. Or worse, you’ll cause her to fail entirely.”
My jaw clenches so hard I can hear my teeth grinding together. “I’m not going to stand by and let her die.”
“She won’t die in these trials unless she chooses to give up,” Galin says, his words cutting deep into the fear I’ve been carrying. “But you might. You know your death would destroy her more completely than any trial ever could.” He pauses, studying me with those unsettling eyes. “Sacrifice can be noble, wolf, or it can be foolish. You are tethered to her by more than your mate bond. You’re tethered by guilt, by the weight of perceived failures. That makes you dangerous, not just to yourself but to her chances of success.”
I take a step back as if he’s physically struck me, my chest burning with the accuracy of his words. He doesn’t know a damn thing about me or what I’ve been through, about the guilt that gnaws at me every waking moment.
“I know what happened in Willow Woods,” Galin says softly, his words hitting me like a physical blow. “I know the price she paid for your pack’s vicious hunt. I know what you lost when you chose to protect her, and what you think you owe her for the suffering she endured.” His voice is gentle but implacable. “She’s not asking for a martyr, Sam. She’s not looking for someone to die for her. She’s asking for someone who believes she can stand on her own, who trusts in her strength rather than trying to replace it with his own.”
My throat tightens until I can barely breathe. I look down at Esme again, taking in the peaceful expression on her face despite whatever battles she’s still fighting in her dreams. She looks so damn small on that bedroll, fragile as spun glass, but she walkedinto that cave alone. She faced horrors I can’t even begin to imagine, and she walked back out on her own two feet.
“I do believe in her,” I whisper, the words scraping against my throat.
“Then act like it,” he replies, and there’s reproach in his tone but also something like compassion. “Trust her to be what she was born to be, instead of trying to make her into something you can protect.”
Locke breaks the heavy silence that follows, his deep voice cutting through the tension in the room. “Will you travel with us to Mavria? Your guidance could?—”
Galin shakes his head firmly before Locke can finish the question. “No. From here on out, it’s just you three. I’ve guided her to the first trial, given her the information she needed to understand what was happening to her. The trials are already shifting, evolving around her unique nature and magic. What you’ll find at Lake Mavria, what challenges await her there, I can’t predict those things. The trials will craft themselves specifically for her.”
He reaches beneath the cluttered table and pulls out three worn leather satchels, each one bulging with supplies. “Food that won’t spoil on the road. Elixirs for restoration and healing. Bandages. Basic necessities for survival. One pack for each of you.” His expression grows serious. “I suggest you use the healing draughts sparingly. You won’t be able to acquire more until you return to a proper settlement.”
Locke strides back to the door, his movements economical and purposeful. “I’ll ready the horses and check our gear,” he says, already reaching for the iron handle. “We can eat on the road, every hour we delay puts us further behind schedule.”
I crouch down again, gathering Esme’s limp form back into my arms with infinite care. She murmurs something unintelligible, a fragment of words that might be a name ora plea, but her eyes remain closed. Her head finds its natural resting place against my chest, and I can feel the steady rhythm of her heartbeat through the thin fabric of her shirt.
By the time I carry her outside and reach the edge of the forest path, Locke is already holding Esme’s mare’s reins while my own horse stands ready, saddled and loaded with our supplies. The fae warrior looks at me with an expression I can’t quite read, something between determination and barely concealed longing.
“Here,” I say, holding out my arms. “Take her while I mount up.”
Locke steps forward and carefully takes Esme from me, and I don’t miss the way his breath catches as he draws her closer to his chest. He cradles her like she’s made of the most precious crystal, like she’s his most treasured possession, holding her with the desperate tenderness of a man clinging to life itself. The sight says more than a million words could express, want, possession, need, and something deeper that makes my wolf pace restlessly beneath my skin. Every instinct I have screams at me to take her back, to keep her close and safe, but I force myself to climb into the saddle instead.
Once I’m settled and have taken the reins in hand, Locke lifts Esme carefully toward me, supporting her weight until she’s secure in my arms again. She folds naturally into my chest, her arms tucked between us, head finding that perfect spot beneath my chin where she fits like she was made to be there. Her closeness calms my wolf, settles the restless energy that’s been building since we left the trial cave, but even my animal instincts know the truth I’m trying not to acknowledge, her heart is opening for another, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
Locke hands me the leather reins of Esme’s horse, the mare nickers softly and tosses her pale mane. Then he moves to his own mount, a massive black stallion that seems to matchits rider’s temperament, and swings into the saddle with fluid grace.
“You sure she’s ready for another one of these trials?” I ask quietly, adjusting Esme’s weight in my arms and trying to ignore the way her fingers have unconsciously curled into the fabric of my shirt. “She’s been through hell already, and we don’t even know what Lake Mavria will demand of her.”
“No,” Locke says, his expression unreadable as carved stone, eyes focused on the path ahead. “She doesn’t have a choice in the timing. The trials have their own schedule, their own logic.” He pauses, his hands tightening around his reins until his knuckles go white. “We will be her pillars, her anchors in whatever storm comes next. We’ll get her there safely, and we won’t let her fail.”
From the edge of the trees, Galin watches our small procession with knowing eyes. As we begin to turn our horses toward the forest path, he lifts one hand and calls out directly to Locke, his voice carrying clearly through the midday air.
“Your loyalties are with her now, warrior,” he says, and there’s weight to the words, like a pronouncement or a benediction. “You’ve already chosen your path, whether you admit it or not. Don’t forget that when the time comes to prove it.”
Locke doesn’t answer with words, just makes a low, noncommittal sound in his throat, but I see the way his fingers flex around the reins, the way his jaw sets with renewed determination.
I guide my horse forward, Esme’s body a warm, precious weight against mine, and we ride deeper into the forest that will lead us to Lake Mavria. Toward whatever reflection awaits her in those dark waters. Toward whatever truths she’ll be forced to confront about herself and her magic.
Maybe, just maybe, we’re also riding toward the people we all have to become to see her through this. To help her reclaim notjust her power, but her sense of who she truly is beneath all the pain and loss.
The forest closes around us like a living tunnel, and somewhere ahead, Lake Mavria waits.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
LOCKE
Ihaven’t been able to breathe since she walked out of the parted trees, her legs barely holding her upright, ice-white hair catching fragments of dying sunlight like broken glass. Okay, so maybe I’m exaggerating my symptoms of an overly anxious man. God knows I’ve faced down armies without a tremor in my hands, but for the first time in my long life, I felt the fear of the unknown. The kind of fear that reaches into your chest and squeezes until your ribs feel like they might crack. Unfortunately for me, the weight pressing down on my chest hasn’t lifted. Not even a fraction.
I thought there would be relief when she staggered out of the forest and into Sam’s arms, when I could finally see her breathing, could count the rise and fall of her shoulders and know she was still here. Nope. The weight hasn’t lifted. It’s only shifted, transformed from the fear she wouldn’t return to the knowledge that she did, and somehow, that’s infinitely worse. Because now I’ve seen what she can survive, witnessed the way she emerged from that trial hollow-eyed and trembling, like something vital had been carved out of her, I don’t know how many more times I can watch her nearly break without breakingmyself. I’m a resilient fae—trained from boyhood to endure pain, to compartmentalize fear, to stand unmoved while the world burns around me. My father’s lessons were thorough: emotion is weakness, attachment is liability, and a true warrior bends but never breaks. I’ve carried those principles through decades of battle, through losses that would have shattered lesser men, through the kind of violence that leaves scars on both flesh and soul. Esme. . .Gods, she might be my breaking point, my complete and utter undoing.
