“You don’tlookfine.” Therin grips my arm and helps me to my feet.
I don’t answer him. Part of my mind is still anchored to her, holding the thorned barrier in place. I glance down, and Sylveren forms beneath me. I grip his mane, steadying myself.
“We need to move.” My voice comes out rough. “We’re going to be seen if we stay here. Mount up.”
All of them look like they want to argue with me, but their steeds materialize and they take up positions around me. We get no more than three paces before pain explodes through the bond again.
Not a magical assault this time, but physical. A fist across her face.
They’ve realized the mage can’t break her, so they’re going to break her body instead.
“Fuck.” I slide off Selveryn before I fall, as every impact ricochets through me.
They’re hurting what is mine…again.
The thought burns through me, followed by fury so hot and dark it fills every space inside me until there’s nothing else.
“Cairn?” Therin’s voice. “Talk to me.”
But I can’t. The rage is a living thing now, clawing at the inside of my chest.
Another blow connects with her face. Blood fills her mouth.
And the Nightwild magic surges in response, rising to meet my fury, swelling beyond anything I’ve felt since before the collar went around my throat?—
And the demand rips out of me.
It tears through me like a beast that’s been caged too long and has finally broken free. Three hundred years of rage and grief and helpless fury, compressed into a single command that races along the threads connecting me to the Guard surrounding.
But it doesn’t stop there. It reaches further … deeper. Seeking out threads I haven’t felt in centuries …
My call hits the iron.
And the iron breaks.
The first collar shatters somewhere to the east. I feel it go—the snap of metal, and I send a rush of power flooding into a body that’s been starved for so long it has forgotten what power feels like. A scream rushes down the thread back to me. Not of pain, but ofrelease.
Another collar breaks. South, this time. Then west. Then north.
I feel each one.
With each broken collar, a thread snaps back into place.
Therin’s blazes bright beside me. Vel’s pulses steadily. Kaelith, Caelum, Vessara, Serath, and Sorel behind them. Alleria’s is weak, new. And beyond hers, four more. The last of the Nightwild Guard, collared and scattered. The iron falls from their throats, and I send a surge of magic into each of them. There’s no time to wait for them to heal. I need them now.
There are twelve threads burning bright through me for the first time in three hundred years.
But it doesn’t stop there.
The summons keeps racing outward, and it no longer cares that the fae it reaches don’t belong to the Nightwild Guard. Allit cares about is that every collared, caged and broken creature wearing iron across this kingdom should be freed.
I feel them. Hundreds of them. Fae in preserves waiting to be hunted. Fae in private collections, kept as curiosities. Fae in noble houses, used for entertainment and sport.
The summons hits their collars, and the iron shatters.
Not all of them can answer the call. But enough do.
Enough feel the iron fall away and remember.
