I slip my finger inside her, eliciting a gasp. When I spill from her body, it only makes me hard again. This time, she lets me bend her over, and after a long look at our pleasure, slick on her thighs, I plunge deep, and take her again.
Until she screams my name.
IV
A PROMISE FOR A PROMISE
27
NEPHELE
Late the next morning, I sit at the table across from Neri, watching him rotate the urn of memories belonging to Elias Gherahn in his hands. I’ve tried to sift us, but the aether doesn’t answer. Only when it’s me—alone and absent of Thamaos’s urn—does the quintessence arrive.
I sifted to a snowy Hampstead Loch shortly after dawn. Warek and Mena and the whole crew from the month before were still there. I had to tell them about Finn and where Helena and Rhonin are.
Warek broke down at the news of losing his son, but Mena listened to my tale and offered me scavenged clothes for Neri. In light of the looming war and threat of Thamaos, they will be making the journey through Frostwater Wood to meet me at Winterhold for safety.
But now that I’ve returned to the cabin, my thoughts center on a different concern.
“I’m not leaving you here.”
“You have to, Nephele. The aether will never carry anything belonging to Thamaos. And we cannot leave something as precious as Elias’s memories here in this hovel and pray that Thamaos doesn’t find a way to reach them.”
I don’t know how I didn’t think of it. When we left the barracks to return to Starworth Tor, we’d had a rough landing. I’d thought I was just weak from not properlyeating. But perhaps the aether needed time to decipher the owner of the magickal items we carried back from the secret room. And once it finally did, it dumped us on our asses.
“I’m not leaving you,” I tell him again.
Neri reaches for my hand and threads our fingers. “Do you trust me?”
“More than I ever thought I would.”
“And like you said to me in the clearing: Do you really believe that I would let something like a little distance stand between you and me? I won’t be far behind. I promise you that. And I will take care of this.” He gestures with the urn. “But you need to get to your people before Thamaos does. We wasted enough time last night. The people at Winterhold need a veil up now. Thamaos wants me out of the picture, clearly you as well, and I imagine he knows what this curse is doing to me. He will just keep coming until we find a way to send those wraiths back to the Nether Reaches. Until then, matters will only get worse.”
I shake my head. “You’re asking me to sift to Winterhold and leave you here with no way to travel. I know that journey. And in the winter? And what if Thamaos attacks again?”
He leans forward, sets the urn aside, and takes both my hands this time. “I will be right behind you. I promise you. Thamaos is clearly utilizing some of the prince’s abilities with wraiths. But he is bound to have a weakness too, just like me. I only need a few weeks to get back home. A month at the latest. Trust me on this.”
“Neri.”
I can’t say anything more than his name. I know he’s right. I know we have no other choice. But I don’t want to do this.
He stands and rounds the table, sitting on its edge in his borrowed black clothes, and takes my hand, guiding me to stand. He tugs me between his long legs and rests his clasped hands at the small of my back.
“I’ll tell you a secret,” he says, his brow crooked up at a slant.
I rest my hands behind his head, admiring the sweep of his cheekbones. “Tell me.”
“I have a cottage in Frostwater Wood. About five miles from Winterhold, actually.”
I jerk my head back. “You do not. I know that wood like I know my name.”
He smiles. “You very well might. But it’s there. It’s probably still hidden by the magick that protected me so long ago. I didn’t use the home so much as a shield as a place of retreat. To get away from the war and soldiers and—”
When he cuts off his words and his eyes flicker with uncertainty, I instantly know what he was going to say. It makes me grin that he didn’t want to or at least thought better of it.
“Asha?” I supply.
He lets out a breath. “Yes. Her.”
