“I can’t rest. My mind won’t let me.” I sit the tea aside on the sand and watch the sun rise over the ocean as waves break a few yards away. Scrubbing both hands down my face, I rest my arms on my knees. “I’ve thought about finding Rooke and Vexx all night. What I’d do. It’s taken everything in me not to head back into the city. Is still taking it.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.” Callan nudges me with their elbow. “We need you. And you were too drained to fight the entire Northland Watch alone last night, no matter how much rage you contain.”
Leagues. I contain leagues of rage.
I squint at the glimmering water, and refocus my thoughts on the most important question, heavy on my mind. “How is she?”
“Recovering well. She finished mending her side last night and the burn too, quite cleanly. The thermal pool helped, as you said it would. It took a little persuasion to get her to the lighthouse, and she was agitated while there, from memories, I’m sure. But she soaked for over an hour anyway.”
How things have changed in the span of a night.
“And Finn?” My chest tightens, and not because I’m sorry for him. He led her to the Bitter Barrel. They could’ve all three been killed.
“He’s still with us,” Callan says, “by the miracle that is Raina Bloodgood. He hasn’t awoken yet, though. I’m not sure when he will. Her magick closed the wound, but he’d already lost so much blood. Time will tell.”
“I should be happy that he lived,” I say, my voice empty of feeling. “But I’m not that good of a man. I know what it means for Raina now that the runic bond is damaged. She’ll want what she wanted before she met me. And that’s him.”
“Don’t be so sure.” Callan pushes their braided hair over their shoulder and presses a soothing hand to my back. “She still remembers you, Alexus.”
“I know. But the man she sees now is the Witch Collector. A man she loathes.”
Pity twists Callan’s expression. “She’s just struggling with shock and confusion. She’s having a difficult time reconciling her old bitterness and hatred with the images of you two that now exist in her mind. Your time in the wood. The conversations over these last weeks. The intimacy.”
“I know what she’s feeling.” I hold out my wrist, showing them the old scar there, Fleurie’s face flashing across my mind. “I’ve been through this before, only that bond was severed entirely, from both sides. We became strangers, but strangers would be better than being considered an enemy. It’s like these last two months have been completely undone.”
Callan sighs. “I’m truly so sorry. But perhaps the memories will help and not hinder. A reminder of how far you two had come.”
“They haven’t so far.” I clasp my hands and swallow the constriction in my throat. “I can still feel her. What little of her rune remains is enough that I sense a trickle of her emotions. She wants me, but not as much as she hates me.” A swell of sickness washes over me, my chest aching like it’s been hollowed out with a spoon. “I don’t know how to deal with that. I want to tear down the world for this. It feels like she’s gone. Like she died. Only her ghost is still here to haunt me.”
Callan swirls the tea in their cup, staring at the leaves settled in the bottom. “You know, when my partner passed a handful of years ago, I thought that was the end of everything. We’d been together for so long that I was sure there was no other for me. But there was, and now he’s at Winterhold with our son, and I’m here, trying to make this world a better place for them. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for those three.”
“I understand.”
I don’t tell Callan that I lost my wife and child a very long time ago. Or that my heart has been an empty landscape ever since. Until recently, anyway.
They nudge me again, and I look up, meeting their hazel eyes. “That kind of love, the kind that makes you want to tear down mountains with your bare hands, is the most powerful force in the universe. So though it may feel like all is lost right now, remember that Raina isn’t gone, and she’s no ghost. She’s still very much here. It’s all right to fight for her. To tell her how you feel. To remind her how much you care. I would expect no less. And I’d bet that if you’d asked her before last night’s events, she would’ve told you that she expected no less as well.”
“I never said I was going to give her up.” I turn a glance at my friend. “Again, I’m not that good of a man. I tried to be, at Winterhold, when she learned Finn was alive. I was ready to let her go if that was what she wanted. But I don’t know that I could’ve stayed away.” I narrow my eyes. “You speak like you know I’m going to have time to fight for her.”
I hadn’t thought I would until this was over. Hadn’t imagined Raina deciding to continue this journey, not with me in the midst.
“She’s still undecided about the Summerlands, for several reasons,” Callan replies honestly. “She’s had many conflicting thoughts to sort through in a short period of time. But a woman like Raina doesn’t walk away from a fight that needs her hands. She’ll be on Terrowin’s ship. If we can still get to it.”
I raise a brow. “That is the worry.”
Over the next hour, I clean up and change clothes, trying and failing to ignore Raina’s absence at the lighthouse. Some of her things are still here. Her robe lies cast aside on the bed. Her pack still sits on the floor. The book she was reading is on the desk, closed, my letters used to mark her place. And her necklace—the gold chain and single pearl—left behind.
I gather her robe in my hands and crush it to my face, inhaling the scent of lavender and jasmine. Fight for her. As if my heart will give me any other choice.
When I return to the main house, Callan has gathered everyone for a meeting in the dining hall. Zahira and Yaz prepare a simple breakfast of warm breads and fruit, and though others make their plates, I can’t stomach the thought of food.
Rhonin and Helena are here, eyes shadowed with exhaustion, and Keth and Jaega soon enter the room. Joran sits to my left as Nephele takes the seat to my right. I haven’t seen her since last night when she came to check on me for a few minutes before returning to Raina. She looks tired too. Worried. The skin beneath her eyes looks bruised, the strain of maintaining the shield, thinking of Colden, of me, and now all of this is visibly taking its toll.
Joran fills a small plate with food and pours a glass of juice, then slides it across the table to Nephele, his silver eyes trained on her. “Eat. You need your strength.”
Surprisingly, for the first time since this trip began, she doesn’t argue with him. Instead, she accepts the offering with a tilted nod, one that feels like a truce, before she turns to me.
“Mari is with Raina and Finn.” She squeezes my hand and leans over to kiss my cheek, her eyes bloodshot. When she speaks, her voice tremors. “I want Rooke’s head for this, that traitor.”
