Stark is there, pulling with me. Venna sags. Her legs are limp. She’s mumbling.
Anassa bows before Skaia. She stares at the direwolf’s body as Stark helps me put Venna on Anassa’s back.
I take a step back to sign my next words. “You will never be alone, Venna,” I tell her, fumbling over the words in sign language, but doing my best. “I swear it.”
I jump up behind my friend, myfamily, and close my arms around her. She slumps—asleep, or passed out. It’s a blessing, I think; she doesn’t have to see us ride away from her wolf. She won’t have to carry that vision with her for the rest of eternity.
“Move.Fast!” Stark bellows, taking off on Cratos, Elias seated behind him.
Lucien’s head whips around as he rides past us on Noemi’s wolf. He only looks forward again once we catch up. We ride, and we ride fast under cover of magic.
Venna’s wolf is left to the crows.
55
MERYN
The wolves keep moving despite our despair and exhaustion. Despite their aching loss at one of their own.
Away from Linsfall. Away from whatever Phylax traitors have survived, and away from the ragged wound I opened in the earth, scarring the landscape.
Away, with the Goddess Tear of destruction in my pack radiating warmth against my chest and the space where Venna’s bond once was trying and failing andtryingandfailingto flow.
And my heart is breaking, and breaking, and breaking. The ache of the punishing ride is the only thing that keeps me grounded at all.
After a solid hour with my thighs burning and my lungs on fire, I shout to Lucien, “How long do we have until she turns?”
Venna has remained asleep, but I remember all too well how it went with Saela. She was perfectly fine. She seemed like herself when I met her in Stark’s office at Sturmfrost.
Then all at once, she was tearing out a throat and writhing like an animal caught in a trap.
Oh goddess.Venna.
“Lucien,” I demand.
Newly turned Siphons are at their most dangerous, I remember. The craving is uncontrollable. For a while, Venna won’t even know me. She’ll look at me and only see the map of my veins beneath my skin.
I know it will feel like she’s dead, too, or irrevocably changed, even if only for a little while. And Idon’tknow whether I can endure it.
“Hours,” Lucien calls back to me. “About six, give or take.”
I nod and turn inward. Thoughts pummel the inside of my skull. Six hours. How much ground could we cover? How will we manage the initial transformation?
The realization ripples through my mind and Anassa’s simultaneously.
“We will need to split up,” Anassa says.
Wecan’tmanage Venna’s transformation while moving, but we can’t all halt everything to help her through it.
That would take days. Days we don’t have with Killian’s forces closing in.
I don’t announce my decision yet. I keep us riding hard. The wolves must sense the urgency, because they run until their heads hang low, alternating between powerful bursts of speed and a steadier, more sustainable pace. And then they keep running. Without complaint. Without a single snarl or snap of sharp teeth.
They’re mourning, too. The burn in their muscles might be just as welcome a distraction for them as it is for me.
Eventually, we can’t keep going. I’m not entirely certain where we are, but I know Stark and Cratos, who have traveled most of our nation, will piece it together.
Right now, I have other concerns.
