I offer a weak smile. I’m not sure if I’m making the best choice or not, but it’s the only solution I can see.
When they disappear down the mountain, I turn to the northern god.
“Wolf,” I say, acknowledging him. For some reason, I can’t bring myself to speak his name aloud. “We can do this, just you and I, but youmusthelp Colden off the mount first if us being alone is so important. And Colden, you will shut your lovely mouth and cooperate.” I take his hand and turn away from Neri, lowering my voice. “Can you trust me? Please? The others don’t know me half as well as you, yet I have their blessing. I wouldn’t be doing this if I thought Neri would harm me.”
He tilts his head, pursing his lips, nostrils flaring. “Idotrust you. But harm comes in different forms, Nephele. As I said before, he’s viciously cunning. Look at what he’s already accomplished. In such a short time, he’s done the impossible. He’s fashioned a deal with the most intelligent woman I know. Even worse? He’s worked his way under her skin.” When I flinch, he says, “Don’t deny it. I can see it.”
“Like athorn, perhaps,” I bite back. “Sort of how it appears the handsome prince with no name got underyourskin.”
The intensity bleeding from him fades and, most unlike him, he says nothing to defend himself. I’d noticed how he watched the prince as the bastard prayed to Thamaos, but I thought little of it at the time. Because some people—even wolves and Soul Eaters—intrigue, I suppose. That doesn’t mean they’re anything more than a vexing curiosity to pique our interest.
“I can take you wherever you’d like to go, Moeshka,” Neri interrupts, and for once, I’m thankful for his big mouth. “I wonder where that might be?”
Colden slowly swivels his blond head, and in the rising morning light, the two share a cold look.
“He’ll go to Winterhold. Won’t you? To prepare the people?” I tug on Colden’s arm to make him face me. “Once the wolf has been resurrected, my first command will be that he finds Alexus and Raina, and Fleurie if her rescue is possible. But after that, he’s to bring me Thamaos’s bones and ensure that the prince pays for this. Dearly. If he succeeds—and I can’t see why he won’t once he’s whole again—we might be able to stop this disaster from growing any worse.”
Colden’s face goes stony. It’s as though a mask crystallizes from magick, meant to hide the glimpse of truth I saw only for a split second. An expression of tempered panic and fear.
“Hmmm, Winterhold.” Neri pushes off the ground to stand. “Ready for me to whisk you away to the cold North, king? Or perhaps you’d rather—”
“Do youeverstop talking?” Colden snaps.
Neri smiles, the tips of his fangs visible between his parted lips. “I’d say we were cut from the same cloth in that sense,” he replies. “Words are our weapons. They can inflict the most cutting damage, especially to the already wounded, can they not?”
The thick muscle in Colden’s square jaw ripples as he clenches his teeth. I feel as though I’m missing something. There’s a silent conversation happening between this former general and soldier, spoken through omitted words and knowing glares.
Neri motions with a flip of his hand. “Come on, Moeshka. Let me take you home so your lovely lady friend can bring me back to life.” His eyes sparkle with menace, and one corner of his lips hooks upward. “I have bones to collect and a prince to murder.”
Colden grips my hand and faces me. He’s breathing harder. Faster. “You’ll make a good leader if we do go to war. The bravest.” He slides his hand into my hair and curls his fingers around the nape of my neck. Sweetly, he presses a soft, tender kiss to my cheek. “Forgive me if I’m not at your side when it begins. I will do everything in my power to be. Because Idolove you, Nephele. Please don’t forget that.”
I’m so tired, so mentally spent, that I’m unsure what just happened, what he means. I’m not granted much time to think about it, though, because Colden walks over to Neri who fists his massive hand in the fabric at the back of Colden’s tunic, tightening the material across his broad chest.
Colden mumbles something under his breath to the wolf, and the wolf nods once. The air fills with a tinkling sound, like thousands of glass chimes hang from the trees.
Neri’s power, metallic and sweet, grows so thick that I taste the silver and sugar of it on my tongue. Driven by a feeling of unease, I almost stop them, but quick as wind, they vanish in a flurry of snow and frost.
It isn’t until I’m left standing at the edge of Mount Ulra’s cliff all alone, watching as the sun rises over the east, that the seed of worry Colden planted flourishes. The last several hours and days play across my mind like a picture book, pages flipping back to when Neri returned from Min-Thuret the first time, only to tell me that Colden, much to my dismay, wished to stay.
The pages flip again, to those heavy moments when I stood in the grove’s shadows and beheld my king at the prince’s side, staring at the raven-haired Eastlander with glistening, dark eyes. My thoughts even drift to years beyond, when Colden mentioned that he met the prince a few decades ago. He’d looked so lost in reverie, even wearing a small smile, but then he’d gone silent as death when I inquired what happened during that visit. Whatever the answer, he never offered it to me.
Remembering, I bring my mind back to the grove. Something other than simple familiarity had shone in Colden’s eyes as he listened to the prince pray to Thamaos last night, summoning him. His gaze held a certain severity I’d never seen before, one of sorrow and despair hidden behind a momentary smirk to mask his pain. And when Fleurie portaled the prince and Thamaos to safety, and I went to Colden’s side…
If I had looked closely then, past the shields he fervently keeps in place, I think I might’ve seen the faintest ember of hope dying and a heart breaking.
Fuck.Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
A ragged breath rushes out of me as I whisper Colden’s name into the smoke-laced wind. I know him so well, better than Neri does. I want to believe that. Yet he only fooled one of us, and it wasn’t the wolf. Because Colden Moeshka isn’t going to Winterhold, and Neri knew it, possibly before Colden had a chance to make up his mind.
Colden is going to Quezira. To Min-Thuret Palace.
To save the prince.
3
NERI
Min-Thuret temple sprawls across a hilltop, the ground brittle under dawn’s crystalline frost. The kingdom seat floats in a gray fog, easily mistaken by my eyes for a wreath of slinking spirits surrounding the hill. Like gloomy shadows, the mist rises from the lower quarters, weaving around the spires and domes of worship halls in serpentine streams, swallowing the pointed arches and tilted rooftops nestled together throughout the city.
