What else can I do?I close my eyes and rack my mind for spirits. I could try Brundil again, but she already expended so much energy.
But she’s all we have.
I suck in a breath and it is forced out as Aurora and I are thrown off Evander’s back. We tumble, cast apart. I dig my fingertips into the ground, trying to find purchase to slow my roll. Drawing my knees under me, I force myself to stand, ignoring the pain in my joints and the blood scattered across the ground from superficial wounds and scrapes.
Conri and Evander are a tumbleweed of fur and snarls. Just when one gets the upper hand, the other makes a snap. The flow changes. I notice other wolves—Conri’s loyal knights—beginning to scramble out of the hole Brundil made. Aurora’s hand closes around mine.
“Faelyn,” she whispers, my name taut with pain and fear. There’s a question in there, too. One I’ve been asking every second that’s ticked on and don’t have an answer for.
What are we going to do?
Evander is thrown. I almost let out a shout, grabbing for my chest, as if I could take my heart in my hands to protect it from what I’m seeing. From the images that flash before my mind at twice the speed of reality of Conri tearing out Evander’s throat.
Evander twists midair, landing as a man on his hands and feet.
“Faelyn, run.” He looks my way and I know what he’s really saying.Leave me; I’ll buy you time.
“No,” I whisper.
“Run!” He changes back into his wolf form just in time to lock claws with Conri again.
“Faelyn?” Aurora says.
I can’t. I can’t leave him. I finally found him after all this time. My heart was just put back together and it’s breaking again. There has to be a way for all three of us to make it out of here. Something I can do. A spirit?Something!
“Faelyn!” Aurora shouts, drawing close as the other wolves gather.
I let out a cry of pain, as if it’s my flesh Conri’s claws are sinking into. Squeezing Aurora’s fingers with all my might, I turn.
I love him more than every spirit that walks the earth. I love him with all I am and all I could be. And it’s because I love him that I will respect his wish, even if doing so inflicts a wound on my heart worse than any I have ever known before.
“Are you sure?” Aurora pants as we begin to sprint toward the center of town.
No. I’m not. I’ve never been less sure of anything in my life. I’m leaving my soulmate behind. How could I be sure about anything involving that?
“Stop.” Conri’s voice is chilling. He doesn’t shout after us. It’s not full of anger or rage. And that’s why I skid to a halt.
The world blurs as I swing my head around, looking back. Everything comes into focus on Evander. I thought the other wolves would come after Aurora and me. But they didn’t. They went for him. Two wolves have his arms. Conri has a fist of Evander’s hair. His perfect, dark, silken hair that I ran my fingers through countless times…
Conri gives words to the threat that is already painfully clear. “Run and he dies.”
Aurora’s grip slackens on mine. In my periphery, I can see her looking between us.
“It’s all right,” she whispers, even though she’s still slowly stepping backward, as if we might still run. “They were going to get us anyway.” The words are an absolution. They’re forgiveness for the pull of my heart despite my best efforts.
Conri chuckles, low and sinister. “I knew you’d stop. Just like I knew that if I let him go off on his own…he’d lead me right to you.”
“What?” I breathe.
“You really take me for a fool, don’t you?” Conri glares at me. “You think I didn’t know? That I couldn’t puzzle it out?” I open and close my mouth. He continues in the wake of my speechlessness. “A witch from that pathetic little corner of the Natural World I found him and his father rotting in. A place where witches have been for years. A woman that completely changed my knight’s actions from the moment he laid eyes on her. Oh, I saw it from the start. And then when you smelled like nothing after being around him? Sweet Faelyn, no one smells likenothing.”
My spell worked far, far too well. Here I thought I was clever, and all the while it was the proof Conri needed.
“Actions of a woman who had everything to hide.”
“Let them go,” Evander snarls.
Conri jerks his fist up, like Evander is nothing more than a puppet. He’s going to rip Evander’s hair out by the roots. “You are in no place to negotiate,” Conri growls into Evander’s face. “And you must think I’ve lost my mind if I would let my moon spirit go.”
