“Swear it to me, Calix,” he quietly demanded. “Swear to me you’ll leave. Find Sera. Find Reyla.” He wet his lips, feeling out the broken skin on his bottom one. “If my wife asks, tell her I’m dead.” Better his kirei grieve a ghost than waste any of her time thinking about what had become of him.
“Dead?” Calix echoed, venom in the word. “Why?”
Aldric’s eye slid toward the campfire, toward one shape in particular that finally moved. That shifted. That seemed to grow larger as it rose to its feet. A figure wearing red now instead of the drab gown she had been wearing when he first spotted her.
The witch.
“Because this has to be a trap for Sera,” he whispered, muscles coiling, preparing for what he had to do next. “And I refuse to be bait.”
Calix stared at him for a moment before he finally agreed, “I swear.”
Aldric didn’t wait to hear more. He didn’t need to hear more. Bracing himself, he rolled to his feet in one swift movement. His shoulder protested. His hand burned. His legs wobbled. The world reeled for a single, dizzying heartbeat.
Then he ran.
Branches clawed at his face as he plunged into the dark forest. His boots crunched against dead leaves. Every uneven stretch of ground tried to trip him.
Behind him came a shout. The witch. “Don’t let him get away!”
Faster. He ran faster, dodging around tree trunks. His foot caught on a root. He stumbled, caught himself, and kept going. The campfire glow vanished far behind him. The sounds of the camp faded away until only his own ragged breathing filled his ears.
Then the air changed. It thickened. The tang of magic assaulted his nose.
Flame roared into being just in front of him, carving through the trees, devouring the underbrush, forming a wall, and blocking his way forward.
Aldric slid to a stop, chest heaving, and turned in a slow circle, hunting for the witch in the darkness.
She stepped from behind a tree as though she had been part of the bark. Red robes whispered across dead leaves. Golden eyes glowed, fixed on him with something like delight.
“I do hope you enjoyed your spot of exercise, Crow,” she murmured, her voice sweet. “Because I fear you will not be escaping again.”
The very sight of her made his skin crawl. The sound of her voice in his ears made his stomach churn. Aldric twisted his lips and spat. “Your little plan won’t work, witch. You might as well kill me now.”
The Arathian arched a single eyebrow, her head tilting to the side. “Now why would I do a thing like that?”
It was almost funny that his wife’s enemies truly thought she cared enough about him to come and save his life at the cost of her own. If they were smarter, they would have tried to capture her attack rat, not him. Or her godparents.
He almost relished being able to say, “Because she will not come for me—”
The witch laughed, cutting him off mid-sentence. “Now that is where you are wrong,” she hissed, the words slithering through the darkness toward him, chilling his blood despite the raging fire lapping at his back. “The Lightbearerwillcome for you, Crow—”
Lightbearer?
“—because she must. And when she does…” She lifted her chin, her gaze seeming to glow all the brighter in the light of her unnatural flames. “I will give you the death you so clearly desire. But perhaps…”
She smiled, then—a sharp smile. The sort of smile that died long before it reached her eyes. “Perhaps I will let you live long enough to watch me cut off her head.”
Chapter fifty-six
Edith
Branches clawed at Edith’s sleeves as she crept through the underbrush, one hand gathering her skirts, the other holding back a low-hanging limb so Percy could slip past.
“Careful,” she murmured, her voice sharper than she intended. All the things left unsaid hovered between them, festering like an open wound. But there was no time. No time to waste. No time to fall apart.
No time to grab her husband by the shoulders and shake him, demanding to knowwhyhe had tried to abandon her right when she needed him most.
Percy’s cane clacked against roots and stones as he picked his way after her, each uneven patch of ground earning a quiet hiss ofbreath from him. Rogue padded at his heels, the varhound’s pale coat a ghostly smudge in the dark, ears pricked, tail low.
