I am a shrew.
Or at least I will be if our paths truly entwine as planned.
With the weight of the wolf’s territorial gaze off me for once, I melt into Colden’s waiting embrace. I need the familiar comfort of his arms far more than I can express. “If Raina used her power,” I say against his chest, my attention still fixated on Neri, “she would’ve returned to the cliff’s edge after destroying General Vexx. Back to Alexus’s side. No matter what.”
The other options are unthinkable.
Unbearable.
“I agree,” Neri says from over his shoulder. “Which means we should leave this mountainside behind and find out if she’s in Quezira. Because if she isn’t—”
“She must be.” Alexus’s voice is as grave as the death around us. He stands in the falling ash, still as a statue. Black and gray soot covers his hulking form, making him look like some sort of creature of the night. He turns his glassy, green gaze on Neri, and a lone tear spills down his face, washing away a trail of ash. “The connection along the bond is faint, but I feel her.” He lifts his hand to his collarbone, where the rune he shares with Raina marks the skin beneath his tunic. His eyes shift to me, offering the only reassurance he can. “I would know if she met her end, Nephele.I. Would. Know.”
Helena and Rhonin, Keth and Jaega, and Callan and Zahira appear from the back side of the grove. Their faces are grim and gray and stained with tears.
“No luck,” Rhonin says, holding tightly to Hel’s hand.
The expression on her face is so coldly fierce and quiet it’s nerve-rattling. Her mother and sisters first, now her brother and best friend. I probably shouldn’t, but I fear for the person who will one day meet with Helena Owyn’s pent-up wrath and pain.
When Hel and Rhonin reach Alexus, Rhonin clasps his shoulder. The sorrowful tears in his eyes shimmer like broken glass under sunlight. “I’m so sorry, my friend.”
Alexus looks around the grove, meeting each of our gazes, our fearless leader so obviously broken and lost without the woman who stole his heart.
The woman who became his heart.
He shakes his head and swallows thickly as more tears race down his cheeks. “If she’s in Quezira, I have to go get her.”
I lift my head from Colden’s chest as the slightesthumvibrates the air.
Alexus walks backward toward a small clearing where the boughs are thin. Still shaking his head, a new kind of fury lights eyes that lock with mine.
“No!” My voice trembles as panic and understanding swallow me. “Don’t!”
I push free of Colden, my hand outstretched toward Alexus, but there isn’t anything I can do to stop him. He throws his hands out at his sides, and ancient power floods from his hands, blasting ash, snow, and dirt, the force enough to send him rocketing into the sky with an echoing roar that disintegrates the charred limbs within his trajectory.
Gasping and spluttering from debris, we all stand stunned in the suddenly quiet grove. The wailing has faded to silence, as though the dirge is finally, truly over, though a new sort of mourning has just begun.
“Can someone please explain to me when he learned how to dothat?” Colden peers upward. “And how in the bloody fuck are we going to help him now?”
In those next few moments, I find myself turning toward theonebeing I have no business beseeching for aid, certainly not pertaining to Alexus. But I close the distance between Neri and me anyway, a limp in my step. Again, he stares down at me with those molten eyes, a pointed ear peeking from the shiny strands of his long, white hair.
“You already owe me my life,” he says.
With that revelation, the Northlanders behind me make an array of noises—sighs, gasps, curses. Each one is filled with dreadful understanding.
“In exchange for your servitude until my dying day,” I remind him, wanting them to overhear.
Satisfaction lights the wolf’s lupine features as he casually broadens his stance and clasps his hands behind his back. “Exactly. Once you’ve resurrected me, I am yours to command. Not before then.”
“Please.” I step closer as I fight to keep the tears brimming on the edges of my eyelids from falling. “I will do whatever you wish. Just find Alexus and get him back here. Then go to Quezira, find Raina and Fleurie, and bring them home. You’re the only one who can.”
A tear falls, and he catches it with his finger so quickly that I never even see his hand move.
Though the gesture is kind and might offer a different woman a morsel of hope, I only feel anger and resentment as I wait for him to say no. He denied my plea to protect Raina from seeing what Vexx did to Finn. Had he granted my request, none of this would’ve happened. He gave her vengeance instead, and what end did it serve?
Neri leans down, still touching my face with a claw-tipped finger as if my skin is his to caress. He’s so close I feel the warmth of his breath on my lips. “Tempting as you are, witch, a deal is a deal. Raise me from the dead, and I will do all you ask before the sun reaches the middle of the noon-day sky.”
Tempting? The only temptationIfeel is the urge to smack his smug face, but I force my bitterness down. He will be beholden to me once I give him what he wants. Then I will make him pay for his role in this disaster. But first…
