Teryn took a step away from the parapet.
The wraith blinked, then averted its gaze. After a few moments of stillness, it proceeded to cross the field and disappeared at the end of it.
Teryn’s heart slammed against his ribs. Most spirits avoided him, or at the very least ignored him. But that one…
What was the yearning he’d felt?
“What’s happened to me?” he said under his breath. “Why can I see spirits? Why has death chosen to cling to me?”
And if it hadn’t chosen to cling to him…then had he chosen to cling to it?
“I don’t know.” Emylia nibbled her lip. Her wary expression reminded him of when they were locked in the crystal together and she’d hidden information from him.
He fully faced her and took a step closer. She launched a step back, her expression wild with sudden fear.
That wasn’t the first time she’d reacted like that.
It reminded him of the ghost in the council room the other day. The one who’d fled after she’d gotten close to him.
He narrowed his eyes. “What aren’t you telling me? Why have you been afraid of me?”
She wrung her semi-transparent hands. “It’s just…when I get close to you, I feel…I don’t know what I feel. It’s just this sense that…that I’ll cease to exist.”
“What does that mean—” His words cut off as approaching footsteps interrupted their unsettling conversation.
“I don’t know,” Emylia whispered and disappeared before him.
He turned to find Captain Alden striding across the battlement. A small ember of hope ignited in his chest. He’d tasked her with questioning the spy again to see if they could get any more information. If they could just get a little more insight into Darius’ plans…
Alden stopped before him with a bow, but when she straightened, her face was pale.
“Report,” Teryn said.
“It’s…the spy, Majesty.”
“Have you gotten more intel from?—”
“He’s dead. The spy is dead, and it wasn’t an accident.”
Teryn’s mind went blank and he nearly huffed a laugh. He’d been foolish to hope. The last of it drained from his body as Alden finished her report, detailing how they’d found the spy’s body in his cell, how his face had been beaten nearly to a pulp.
Teryn replied with a calm he didn’t feel, agreed with her conclusion that the spy had been purposefully silenced after revealing information about the naval fleet. When she left, he faced the parapet once more and pounded a fist upon the stone crenel.
He was supposed to solve problems. He was supposed to protect Ridine while Cora was away. Instead, he’d lost their only asset to help them gain intel on the enemy. And worst of all, if the spy had been silenced in the dungeon, that meant something far worse.
There was a traitor somewhere in the castle.
32
For three days, Cora and her companions searched for the tear, traveling mostly at night. This, of course, was to limit the possibility of dragon sightings. There was no way to know if Darius didn’t already have eyes in Khero, seeking signs of the tear. He already had spies in her kingdom, or at least his Norunian allies did. And now that a third dragon had joined Ferrah and Uziel—proof that the creatures would continue to pour out of El’Ara in search of Ailan and Mareleau—it was even more imperative that they return them to the Veil.
The road was cloaked in predawn shadows and a faint wash of moonlight as Cora rode beside Ailan’s wagon. The wagon was pulled by a pair of the Forest People’s horses while Valorre served as Cora’s mount—his idea, for he seemed to have taken a liking to his fashionable saddle. Or perhaps he was jealous of the new horses.
When they’d set out for tonight’s journey, Ailan had insisted they’d find the tear before sunrise. Cora was surprised that the Veil had torn so close to Ailan and not closer to Ridine where Noah had been born. When Cora had asked her about this, Ailan had explained that even though Noah’s birth had caused the surge ofmorathat split the Veil, Ailan was still regent over El’Ara’s magic and would be until he came of age. Themorawas just as desperate to reach her as it was to find its Morkara.
Wings beat the starlit sky overhead, and a dark silhouette rose above the tree line. Cora’s hands flinched, one toward the bow at her back, the other toward the quiver of arrows attached to the saddle. She smothered her defensive instincts to draw her weapons and settled for grasping the hilt of her dagger—the beautiful gift Teryn had given her—as she watched the dragon carry off some unfortunate creature in its talons. From the dragon’s massive size, it was Uziel. He flew over the road to the other side, where the landscape ended in a steep cliffside. His silhouette dipped beyond the cliff, likely to devour his prey upon the beach far below. Ailan had promised the dragons would cease burning crops and stealing livestock, upon her order, but they still needed to feed. Thankfully, they did so out of sight.
I still don’t like them much, Valorre conveyed.Now that I have my memories, I recall my kind has never gotten along with theirs. Too unrefined.
