He wiggled his fingers in a silent let’s-go motion. “You don’t.”
I muttered a prayer to the elements to put me anywhere else but here, then grabbed his shoulders and swung onto his back. My legs locked around his waist; his free hand slid beneath my thigh; my chest flared with awareness as I wrapped my arms around his neck. Then he started through the sewer, ankle-deep in water, carrying me on his back.
“I don’t need to see your face to know how much you hate me,” his voice rumbled through his shoulders. “I can feel your heartbeat slamming against my back.”
My skin flared hot. I scrambled for something—anything—snarky to throwat him.
All I managed was, “Shut up.”
The smell threatened to make me gag, so I buried my nose in the collar of his cloak. Instantly, the calming scent of citrus and bergamot soothed me. I chose to ignore the fact that I had my face pressed into the warmth of Shayde Wylder.
We walked in silence for about a mile—me on his back, his boots sloshing loud enough to echo off the tunnel walls—until we reached another sewer grate above us. We paused, listening for Tyrians. Only eerie, breathless silence answered. Snow drifted through the grate, melting in our hair.
I raised my arm and channeled a slick, flexible vine to coil around the bars. With a tug, I cracked it open just enough for us to squeeze through.
“Stand on my shoulders and lift yourself up,” Shayde instructed.
Normally, I would’ve protested being told what to do—especially by him. But I was more than ready to be anywhere else. I set my hands on the grate, let him steady me until I balanced on his shoulders, caught the iron edge, and he boosted my calves so I could swing a leg over into the slush above.
I rolled away from the opening and lay there, breath clouding in the frigid air as I took in enemy territory for the first time. We’d emerged into the middle of a four-way path, hoofprints marking recent travel. A wooden post nearby pointed in all directions. Only one sconce burned, casting a soft flicker over the crossroads.
A whistle from below snapped me out of it.
I peered over the grate. Shayde stood with his hands on his hips, sword strapped across his back. His expression was flat, unimpressed. “Any day now, Fitzroy.”
I pressed a finger to my lips and pouted. “You know, I could leave you down there. A sewer’s the perfect place for a pet snake to thrive.”
No smirk. No opening for banter. Just that flat, steady look.
I rolled my eyes and summoned a thick vine, dropping it through the grate. He climbed quickly while I braced the anchor. Moments later, we stood together in the snowy wilds of Tyria.
Back-to-back, we surveyed the crossroads. Neither of us spoke. Each path vanished into dense forest; no lights or sounds hinted at civilization. My ears and nose stung from the cold.
“Our best bet for shelter is a cavern in the mountains,” I said, nodding toward the jagged peaks behind him.
Shayde’s jaw tensed as he studied the terrain. “Agreed.”
Without another word, we began our trek—wading through four inches of snow and straight into enemy territory.
Chapter 40
Note to self—teach my friends how to actually whisper.
I’d been pacing the open field of the Glade for hours since we landed, driving myself mad with every worst-case scenario I could conjure. Fallon might’ve sworn they were fine, but I knew that lie like the back of my hand.
I lived that lie.
But my pacing now had nothing on the frenzy from earlier. The Glade’s grass still lay flattened in restless trails where my boots carved their path after we returned from our mission to question Ailis.
Ailis. Who had somehow vanished into thin air.
We knocked on the door of the building she’d once led me into—the same place where she’d given me Kiye’s journal. No one answered. The others waited in uneasy silence—everyone except Tatum, who tried the knob and found it unlocked.
When the hinges groaned and the door opened, my stomach dropped like a stone. The space was stripped bare. Dust clung to the air, stirring with the faintest movement, and cobwebs ruled thecorners as if no one had walked inside for years. The sheet Ailis once pulled back to reveal her quarters below now hung crooked, half torn from its mount, sagging onto the floor.
I bolted down the stairs, desperate to find proof that what I’d seen upstairs wasn’t real. But the room below—the one I’d once thought of as her living quarters—was also bare. No shelves. No desk. No bed. Nothing.
In that moment, I couldn’t breathe. The room didn’t just feel abandoned—it felt erased.
