I’d never known anyone to wield them.
“What can you do with them?” I asked.
He closed his fist, and the dark webbing vanished. “If a ley line flows near me, I can draw from it. Borrow strength. Lend stability. But it’s not free. It takes something back.”
“What?” I asked.
He met my gaze. “Whatever it can get.”
That sent a chill skating down my spine that had nothing to do with the mountain air.
“Sounds miserable,” I said.
He shrugged one shoulder. “We don’t get to choose our gods-gifts. Any more than you chose yours.”
I bristled. “Mine’s not a gift.”
“No,” he agreed softly. “It’s a weapon. And a warning. Most gods-gifts are both.”
We sat there for a moment in the thick quiet, the fire throwing slow shadows around us.
My fingers drifted toward the book again. “And this?” I asked. “More stories about fae gifts?”
“It’s a compendium,”he said. “Old accounts of the creation of Menryth. The way the ley lines were mapped and anchored.” His mouth twisted. “The sort of thing that’s useful if the realm becomes imbalanced.”
“Is it imbalanced now?” I asked before I could stop myself.
He didn’t answer right away. His gaze slid past me, toward the far wall, as if he could see straight through to the world beyond. For a heartbeat, the air hummed again, that faint vibration in my bones.
“It’s… shifting,” he said at last. “That’s why I brought the books here. Closer to where the lines converge.”
“Here.” I glanced around the cabin. “Frithhold.”
“Frithhold sits on a knot in the network,” he said. “If something goes wrong, I’ll feel it from here sooner than I would anywhere else.”
“And the books—you want to protect them?” I asked.
“I want to preserve our history. So that we don’t repeat it.”
“Are there any books here about the Verdant?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Before I left Sunspire, we had reason to believe the Verdant healers might know of magic strong enough to break Heliconia’s curse on my kingdom.”
His expression softened to one that looked infuriatingly like pity. “The Verdant don’t break curses.”
“How do you know?” I asked, my voice rougher than I’d intended.
“Because my mate was one.”
“Well, can I talk to her?—”
“She died eight years ago.”
Guilt and grief panged in my chest. True mates were rare these days in Menryth. Celeste and Tyrion had loved each other more deeply than anyone I’d ever known, and even they hadn’t been true mates. The fae believed it was likely from fae magic waning to nothing more than a weak trickle of what ithad once been. But there was nothing weak about Thorne. His iron-clad stoicism as he said the words was proof enough.
“I’m sorry.”
