My birthmark warmed again, and I felt the sensation of eyes on me, even though no eyes were present. As if my blood itself had become another map she could read.
“She wants us chasing ghosts.” I glanced at Keegan and then at my mother, who looked like she was still trying to comprehend what the vampires had said about her mother. She appeared to be having as difficult a time as I was, but now wasn’t the time.
Nova lowered her staff. The shimmering routes remained, but the lines quivered, shadow bleed clinging to them all like rot at the edges.
“There is a short path,” she said, closing her eyes as her staff illuminated a route.
One path brightened faintly, cutting through the birch corridor toward the Luminary.
The shadow bleed along it pulsed darker.
“And there is a long path,” she continued, and another line appeared, looping wide into terrain that refused to fully resolve, the map blurring there as if the Luminary itself resisted being pinned down.
“Unknown,” Twobble said, peering at the blur. “That line is basically scribble.”
Skonk grunted. “That’s because it’s probably death.”
“Don’t be dramatic,” Twobble replied, then leaned closer.
I stared at the two routes, my thoughts racing. The short path would get us there faster. It would also give the Priestess certainty. She’d invested effort there. She expected us to take it, which meant it was designed.
The long path was unknown and meant risk—but it also meant she couldn’t predict it as easily.
Keegan’s hand found the small of my back again, steady and warm.
“You already know,” he murmured.
I swallowed. “The short path is a trap.”
“And the long one?” he asked softly.
I looked at the blurred line. “Is a question.”
“Sometimes questions are safer than answers,” he said.
Lady Limora watched me with calm interest, while Caleb and the pack stood ready.
Stella’s eyes glittered with defiant irritation, and Nova waited.
My birthmark pulsed again, slow and insistent.
“We’re taking the unknown,” I said.
The words felt like stepping off a ledge and finding solid ground beneath my feet.
Nova nodded once and swept her staff through the air. The blurred route brightened, and the air shifted as if the Luminary approved, the birches ahead thinning, the silence changing shape.
We moved, and behind us, the shadow bleed along the short path pulsed once, as if irritated at being ignored.
“Let her sulk,” Stella murmured. “I want her to know we’re not predictable.”
We traveled on, frost clinging to grass even where the light suggested noon, Shadowick tugging at the edges of awareness, offering easy answers.
But the iciness told us we were getting closer.
I kept my gaze forward anyway as we made headway and could feel the Northern Luminary close by.
The rumble started low, so low at first I thought it was my imagination filling the quiet with something it could justify. The Northern Luminary had a way of playing tricks with sound. It swallowed echoes. It stretched footsteps. It made distance feel shorter than it was, then longer than it had any right to be.
