It cannot be this easy.
“But if you go, know that I will find you, and I will kill you.You are no longer my brother, you are one ofthem, and I will exterminate you alongside the mortals you loved so deeply once.”
I froze, one foot enveloped by the spinning obsidian vortex of my portal. Slowly, I raised my eyes, soft with memories and hurt, to hers, hardened by years of grief and hate.
“You loved them once, too,” I said softly, which only fueled Solace’s ire.
Her voice shook with barely restrained rage. “They tookeverythingfrom me. Ihatethem, and Ihateyou.”
“So be it, sister,” I whispered as I moved backward further, the blackness nearly encasing me completely.
Solace’s shriek of rage and despair echoed through time and space as I drifted to Meru, the midpoint for my realm walking. Her unhealed hurt cut like a knife through the marrow of my bones, deep into my very soul.
But it was no longer my job to fix her. I’d tried, and failed, many times over the last centuries.
If she couldn’t see reason in my pleas, then it was time for me to move onward and do what I should have done when my boot touched Elyria’s surface for the first time in centuries.
It was time to find the artifacts and destroy them.
Or find someone who could.
Chapter Fifty-One
Lex
Papers littered my desk, stacking nearly an inch thick in some areas. Maps, numbers, firsthand accounts were all strewn haphazardly about, resting wherever I tossed them once it became clear that they didn’t hold the answers I desperately needed. For weeks now, I’d sat in this office, poring over whatever tomes and scrolls Fay found that mentioned the Far North and its inhabitants.
It was as Fay warned, however. Our knowledge of the northernmost part of Elyria was woefully inept and incomplete. A spattering of accounts spoke of nations with rudimentary language and a penchant for violence, but after one ancient scholar tried a bittoohard to bring them into this century, he was promptly chased away by men hoisting serrated spears imbued with runes and blood.
While the account was interesting, it gave us fuck all of what we needed to try and launch a rescue or, gods forbid, a recovery mission.
I’d just about given up any hope of bringing Itanya home, hardening my heart to the fact that, even if we did find her, she would be irrevocably changed.
I tried desperately not to think of my own time in the dungeons beneath the Academy in Vespera, but unwanted memories haunted my thoughts like shadows in the night the longer I dwelled on the horrors that awaited Itanya in captivity.
I groaned loud and long, trying to grind away the thoughts by pressing the heels of my hands into my eye sockets. Unfortunately, the memories and images were still there, blended together with Itanya’s too-serious face. Lights popped behind my eyes and my head pounded in time to the thud of my heart.
Folami is going to be devastated.
And that killed me.
She’d just begun letting Ilyas and I past her well-built defenses but, as soon as Itanya was stolen, Folami retreated immediately. Her light and open expression fell, revealing the stony underlayer that served her well in the decades since her enslavement.
Despite the fact that Folami was a True Bond and not a Life Bond, I swore I could still feel the disappointment and utter sadness radiating from the spot in my chest where her Bond lived.
Or perhaps that was just my own heart breaking.
A knock on the door had me pulling my head from my hands with a slight groan.
What now?
“Come in,” I rasped, tugging at the ends of my hair in an effort to get them to lie flat. I figured it would be Talamh or even Torin, but I was surprised by a disheveled and exhausted Vessel.
“Oh,” I said, my voice flat. “It’s just you.”
Peytor raised one chestnut eyebrow in my direction, no doubt at my tone, but I didn’t have it in me to care or antagonize him today. When it was clear I wasn’t going to bite, Peytor closed the small office door behind him, encasing the two of us in private silence.
“To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?” I asked. Peytor fiddled with his hands, eyes trained firmly on his worn leather boots. I didn’t want to find Peytor attractive, but it was something that simply couldn’t be helped.
