Grym did…perhaps because it lay so close to the Hartan border. To the wide, rushing river that acted as a natural perimeter. Our land and their land.
The Arsadia was one of the most beautiful landscapes I’d ever set my gaze upon. Yet I’d take the blustery East Lands, the gray days, and the sheer rawness of my own territory at any moment’s notice. Being in the Arsadia was aKarath’s duty during the rider season, though I was more lax with my time spent here than others might’ve been.
Especially now. Especially since I’d felt the familiar curse rising within Samryn these last months. I worried that even my own heartstone magic wouldn’t be able to banish it this time. My magic had been a bandage on a forever-seeping wound, keeping it clean but never healing it.
The curse had been courtesy of aHartan witch—or, rather, a group of them—placed upon Samryn but with the intent to hurtme. And now I could feel its winding, nauseating tug, like creeping vines along a forest floor, sucking the life from the earth.
Samryn would feel it all the worse.
I could feel him, annoyed at the direction of my emotions. It wounded his pride when I thought him ill, the hard-skulled Elthika he was. Not only an Elthika, but a Vyrin. One of the ancients, from an even older bloodline. They deserved reverence, respect, and yet Samryn was brooding, his temper prickly with my worry.
He let out a low, huffing groan as if in answer.
I tethered my fear for him tight, not letting it escape its imprisonment because I knew what he would do in retaliation.
When he landed at the outpost field, I saw that Myzalla was already waiting for me. As I jumped off Samryn’s back, he wouldn’t quite meet my eyes.
“Sen endrassa,” I murmured to him. My thanks, my respect. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him to stay, for me to get Tarkosh, to see if she could do anything for him.
I could feel the wane of his strength, the budding rot building inside him. My hand shook as I placed it upon his jaw. But when he felt my heartstone magic, warm and pressing, he shook me off, the earth vibrating with his intake of energy before he leaped into the sky.
“Fuck,” I ground out lowly. My chest ached. The sickness was spreading fast. It only seemed to get worse every single day. “Stubborn creature.”
“Welcome home,Karath,” came Myzalla’s voice, the crunch of her footsteps behind me making me turn.
I hid the lines of my worry. I was onlyKarathbecause Samryn had chosen me.
I wondered the unthinkable: What would happen when death finally took him away?
I’d always been too afraid to even give weight to the thought.Samryn was my bonded Elthika. And our bond stretched beyond others, deeper into the realm of heartstone magic. The loss of Samryn would be like the loss of half my own heart. A half-life. I would lose not only my Elthika, my friend, but would I lose Grym as well?
“You were meant to be here two days ago,” Myzalla said with pursed lips.
“I got held up,” I told her. “I’m here now, aren’t I?”
She sighed. “You crossed the border again, didn’t you?”
“The Hartans want to renegotiate the terms of their surrender.”
“Did you tell them that’s not how it works?” Myzalla grumbled. “Especially since it was nearly a decade ago?”
“The discovery of the heartstones in Dakkar changed their minds,” I said, though I didn’t have to. Myzalla knew something was bothering me. She’d asked me directly a few times, but I’d always used the rumblings in Harta as an excuse.
In reality, the life of my Elthika was coming to an end, and I…was lost. For the first time since I’d been a boy—before anger and bloodied determination and sheer spite had given me purpose.
I was in uncharted territory and struggling to come to terms with the inevitable. But all I could do was try to ensure Grym’s safety, to keep the Hartans accountable, to remind them of what happened when they crossed the Karag.
“I’m not worried about it,” I told Myzalla. “I just want them to feel my presence. To remember. I’ve upped flyover patrols in my absence. I have a meeting with their council at the end of the riding season.”
“Does Elysom know?” Myzalla asked quietly. Elysom wasourgoverning council. They lived apart from Karak, on a vast island west of the Arsadia. Their city was a jewel of our nation—a glittering, obscenely wealthy jewel that sucked the marrow from the outer territories’ resources.
“About the meeting? Not yet.”
“Alaryk,” she chided softly, meeting my eyes, worrying her bottom lip. “You know they can?—”
“I deal with the Hartans,” I told her. “That was my deal with Elysom when I took over Grym. They already proved themselves incompetent in that matter.”
Myzalla grabbed my arm when I turned away, and I swung my gaze back to one of my oldest friends.
