Beyond.
To an island cast in shades of blue and gray by the setting sun.
Veyka’s swallow was audible, even over the rushing wind and incoming waves of an evening tide crashing against the white walls, as pale as her hair. “So be it.”
Veyka brought them one after the other to the rocky beach of the island. Lyrena, Percival, Diana. Arran waited at Eilean Gayl for her return. Anxiously, Cyara was certain.
Cyara waited, unspeaking, eyes fixed on the rising white cliffs in the distance. It was only nominally warmer in the southern reaches of Annwyn than it had been north of the Spine. Cyara knew that the temperatures did not begin to rise until the other side of the Spit, in the elemental kingdom. Still, she found herself surprised. She rubbed up and down the arms of her thick gray tunic and wished she had brought her cloak.
It did not matter. Soon, they would be hiking up into the forested hills that made up this island on the edge of the world. She would be warm enough.
The crunch of gravel gave Veyka away.
“Are you ready?” the queen asked.
Veyka was not even winded. Four trips from Eilean Gayl, all the way south, to the entrance of Wolf Bay. Each carrying another person. Each in rapid succession. But her blue eyes glittered.
Her power was growing.
What would she be able to do in a month? A year? A hundred years?
Cyara swallowed down the thought. If they lived that long, she would worry then.
“Are you?” she countered, giving her queen a long look.
Veyka flashed that wicked grin—real, true. It eased something inside of Cyara to see it, finally. “Imbolc is the festival of females. I think I’ll manage.”
She lifted her hand and waved to the trio waiting further up the beach. Then, with a smile and wink, Veyka was gone.
The communication crystal weighed heavy in her pocket. She would use it to contact Veyka and Arran once they’d found Accolon’s fortress.
Cyara prayed to the Ancestors, the human gods, whoever might hear her pleas for her kingdom, her queen, and herself. She prayed that when she reached for the crystal, she would have answers to give her queen.
When none of those mighty beings answered her prayers, Cyara turned from the water and began to climb.
94
ARRAN
“What should I expect?” Veyka asked from the dressing table.
With Cyara and the others gone, she’d dressed herself and styled her own hair. She had managed a simple but elegant plait that started at the center of her forehead and continued straight down her spine. Instead of weaving jewels into the braid, she’d created a circlet that crossed over her forehead and then disappeared into the braid at the back. The tail of her plait swayed over the center of her back, teasing me. Begging me to press my mouth to the beauty mark that stood out sharply against her pale, bare skin.
Veyka turned in her seat, depriving me of the view I’d been enjoying, and catching her lower lip between her teeth at the same moment that she caught my eye.
She was torturing me.
Two could play that game.
I paused buttoning my tunic, lifting my arms high above my head to stretch. Exposing the sharp-cut planes of my chest and abdomen. “Imbolc is the festival of females.” Veyka’s eyes glassed over. “The regeneration. A promise of the coming spring.”
Promises. We’d made even more of them between each other. But instead of a weight, they were a comfort. Etched into my soul as permanently as the sprawling tree Talisman tattooed onto my skin.
Her hands flexed on the table.
“I am already used to being waited upon,” she purred.
I held her gaze as I buttoned the tunic sideways across my chest, up to the shoulder. Hiding myself from view. “That is indeed part of it,”
