I ease up on Anassa, leaning back with Venna slumped unconscious in my arms. Anassa slows to a lope and then to a heavy-footed, panting trudge. She hangs her head, sides heaving.
My eyes move over the landscape. The trees have thinned out slightly, but the canopy is still thick enough for cover and the sun hasn’t yet risen. And though I’mexhausted, I still manage to keep a veil of magic draped around us.
I’m under no illusion that it could ever be enough to shield us fully from harm, however. Anything could happen at any moment. My sense of safety has been shattered—again—on the tip of an arrow.
But I need to do this, and I need to do it now. I need to gather whatever intelligence I can in case it could give us some kind of edge, some solution to all this.
The others stop alongside Anassa. Noemi leans all the way forward on Ephyse and wraps her arms around her wide neck, shutting her eyes, shaking from exertion. Cratos approaches Anassa and touches his nose to hers. They stay there like that, both still panting.
I look down at Venna. It seems like she’s sleeping, but it isn’t peaceful. She’s in the grip of dark dreams, and there’s nothing I can do to protect her from them.
“Ven,” I whisper, fighting back the tears.
I cup her head where it’s resting against my shoulder and turn to kiss her hair.
Then I guide a couple of strays locks from her brow, giving my heart a few rapid beats to grieve, to revel in the molten anger that this has happened.
When I lay her down over Anassa’s shoulders, my direwolf sends me a promise. She’ll take care of Venna while I do what I need to do.
I stroke her side as I dismount, legs shaking slightly from the long ride. Then I move to Stark, gripping his ankle where it rests against Cratos’s side. He looks down at me, sweat on his brow, hand sunk in Cratos’s fur.
Elias rides behind him; even his nearly perfect Siphon face looks creased with weariness.
“Maybe four more hours, before…” he tells me, and he glances toward Venna.
“I’m not going to wait. I need all the information I can get,” I reply.
“Wait?” Elias asks. He slips down from Cratos’s back.
“She means the Tear,” Lucien says from behind Noemi. He lifts himself up and soars down from wolfback in a flutter of robes. “I agree it is wise to learn as much as we can about these objects before facing Alistair, as he’s armed with one of them. You need me for this, I assume?”
My answer is to retrieve the Tear.
It’s still stained with the Mother Priestess’s blood.
I lift it to examine it in what dappled moonlight makes it through the shivering leaves above. As my sweat cools, cold sets in. Or maybe it’s lingering shock. Yet my hand is warm around the stone.
The opal is so painfully beautiful. I wish it didn’t exist. The power it holds is terrible. And I hate that I’ve already used it for my own purposes.
My eyes dart to Stark. “Watch over me?” I whisper over our bond.
“Always.”
I cradle the Tear in my palms and hold it out toward Lucien so that he can press his hands over mine.
Being washed away to another time is familiar at this point. Anticipation mounts in me. A hunger toknow.
I’m sinking, into the earth, below the ground, falling through darkness. And then…
I’m in a barren, cold forest. The scene is remarkably clear. There’s packed dirt beneath my shoes. I can make out the sharp scent of grass and the contrastingly sweet smells of cedar and sap. The air is brisk, but the light before me is warm.
Lumina’s light. She’s ahead of me, walking slowly. Her feet are bare, peeking out from beneath the hem of a flowing gown made of simple pale linen and adorned only with a single line of pearl-like studs.
She glows from within, as before, but her expression is unreadable.
Lumina stops walking and turns toward me. Nearly no light reaches us, yet she defies the shadows. She may as well be standing in a green field on a summer’s day, grass waving around her to match the fluttering of her hair.
I watch as she holds out her hands with her palms together, closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath.
