As the fog in my mind cleared, I blinked, taking in my surroundings and trying to make sense of what had happened. The last thoughts I had were of Calix falling to the ground.
Calix.
Panic searing in my chest, I lashed at the bindings, but they held me firm. Beside me, a faint mumble drew my attention, and panting, I turned my head. A quarter way around the tree, the boy sat upright, restrained in the same position as I. Relief flushed over me.
“Calix,” I said beneath my breath, aiming to rouse the boy without drawing the attention of our captors, whose voices carried from a short distance off.
He only mumbled again, his eyes heavy and lips pouted. Deep in sleep, but alive. Whatever Nox had laced my drink with was potent, then. Calix had consumed little, but still, he was unconscious. His slighter size, too, could account for his prolonged sleep.
The twin moons shone down, waxing crescents that gave off only the faintest amount of light. Still, it spilled, catching on the blades of grass in the clearing before us. I craned my neck to seek out the direction of the voices. Down a short slope, the three huntsmen sat around a fire, its lapping flames vibrant, casting pools of yellow warmth upon their faces.
The two I did not recognize laughed, drank, and shared stories, but I was too far off to make out their words. Nox sat off to the side, his face pinched, eyes cast to the shadows of the woods beyond, to the Edthiel mountain pass.
“Calix,” I rasped again, tugging at the ropes, knowing they would not break but hoping the rough action might wake him.
When he mumbled a second time, there was a faint wakefulness to the sound. I called for him again. At the fire, the three men remained oblivious to our waking, as we sat some distance off beneath the patchy shadows of the oak’s canopy.
“Neirin?”
“There are three men by the fire. Can you strike them with your magic?”
Foggy, Calix mumbled. “No, I”—he heaved a breath—“my magic feels … weak.”
The drug was still wearing off, then. Closing my eyes, I did as Evera had instructed me at the inn and released power to my fox, desperate to get free of the binds, but he did not answer the call.
“What happened?”
“Nox drugged us,” I hissed, bitterness in the back of my throat.
For a moment, Calix remained quiet; then he sighed. “Eaumond is dead.”
“Yes.” I did not have a better response. The smell of the campfire carried on the breeze sending a chill down my spine. I drew in my lips, biting back the emotion that tugged at me. How long had I been unaware of the cold, uncaring of it? Yet now, restrained and helpless, it was all I felt. Cold desperation and a choking panic. Hopelessness.
Amid the distant chatter of the huntsmen, my thoughts turned inward. Of all things, they went to Evera’s dull dagger, the one she no longer wore. Why did she no longer wear it? I’d told her she could tell me when she was ready to talk about it. The missed knowledge of something that weighed on her, that was important to her, drew me to clench my fists.
Will she think I abandoned her when I did not meet her at the stables as we planned? When she could not find me?
The hoot of an owl somewhere out in the woods beyond the clearing rang through the night. When the wind shifted, sending the scents of the forest past us, I closed my eyes.
“When our magic returns,” I told Calix, “we must use it to free ourselves.”
“It was as you said before, Neirin. My life—Eaumond’s life—we are not worth the cost of our existence.”
Craning my neck, I stared at him with drawn brows. “I did not say that.”
“You said that to let us feed only prolonged the inevitable, that it would be more compassionate to kill us.”
“Before I thought only with my mind,” I said. “What I said was true, logical, yet now my heart speaks against it.”
“You do not grieve for Eaumond,” Calix retorted, bitterness lacing his words.
“No,” I acknowledged, “but for a moment, back in the bar, I thought you had died. And … I care for you, Calix. What I said is not incorrect. You and I … we are monsters, and I have no intention of bringing another into the world, but you are—”
“I am not your son.”
The coldness in his tone caused me to draw my lips in.
“No,” I admitted.
