The ash had settled into the needles, most scattered by the wind. Fragments of her handwriting, charred, dissolving into the forest floor.
One piece survived. A corner, singed brown, still warm. Two words in her handwriting, ink smudged but legible.
‘I miss’
The rest was gone.
I folded the fragment. Placed it in the interior pocket of my jacket, against the left side, over the ribs. Where the bond sat beneath muscle and bone.
It will stay there until I could face her again.
43
— • —
Lucian
Five days since we arrived back here in the human realm.
We memorized patrol routes and guard rotations, mapping blind spots while Mira moved through that compound and we forced ourselves to hold back.
At dawn right now, we move to infiltrate.
But as we planned the west entry through the motor pool’s blind spot, the tree line opened into the clearing at the compound’s northern perimeter.
And they were waiting.
Twelve hunters in tactical formation, rifles raised, positioned in a semicircle that covered every angle of approach. Behind them, three more with equipment I didn’t recognize: long-barreledweapons with cylindrical attachments that hummed with a low frequency my wolf registered as pain.
And at the center, a man I’d seen only through enhanced vision from the ridge.
Thiago Maxwell.
He was standing in front of the line. Hands clasped behind his back, chin raised, the posture of a man who commanded rather than followed. The hunters deferred to him with the automatic precision of soldiers responding to a general.
So he was the leader.
My wolf snarled.
“Lucian Valdris.” Thiago’s voice carried across the clearing. “King of Veyndral. With your second and your warrior through a barely stable portal.”
He knew a lot of things.
“I’ve been watching you for months,” Thiago continued. “Since you arrived in Ashvale pretending to be firefighters. When you bonded with my daughter, rejected her and sent her running to the only family she had left.” His smile was pleasant, rehearsed. “Which was me. I guess I have to thank you for our close reconnection.”
Solomon shifted at my left. Giselle’s hand moved to her blade. Percival’s body went rigid with controlled stillness.
“I’m not here to fight,” Thiago said. “Not yet. I’m here to offer you a choice.” He stepped aside, and the line of hunters parted behind him.
Mira walked through the gap.
My chest caved.
She was thinner. The copper hair I’d buried my face in during the heat now hung past her shoulders, duller than I remembered. Her mismatched eyes were flat, empty of the fire that had drawn me across a portal and through two centuries of numbness to find her. She wore tactical gear, black, fitted, hunter-issue. A blade strapped to her thigh.
My blade.
The Valdris crest caught the light. The dagger I’d given her.
