I opened the door and stepped into the hall quietly before I could lose my nerve.
The corridor was long. The air held a stale cold that had me rubbing my hands together to warm them. A wolf lazily curled up by the stairs with his head on his paws. He lifted it when he saw me. His ears tipped forward. His nose tested the air around me.
“Sleep,” I said softly. “I’m just getting a snack from the kitchen.”
He blinked once, then tucked his muzzle back under his tail. I passed him and moved down the steps with care, avoiding any loud noises.
The main hall was a mess of victory. Someone had dragged benches together to make a bed for a man with his arm in a sling. Mugs of tipped-over mead littered the floor, and two people slept back-to-back under a single cloak. It was dinnertime, and it seemed the entire city was asleep with exhaustion after Harrow had kept them up all night to look for me, and then having joined in the revelry of welcoming Kaelric.
I did not take the front door, but a side one that I knew would spit me out in the direction I intended to go.
I slipped outside, and the grass sank when I stepped onto it. The bonfires from the morning had gone to ash that still glowed at the center when the wind breathed on it. A few men still stood watch on the wall, though it felt like a formality.
I went out through the servants’ gate and made my way to the center most point of the city, where the market was, and the secret tunnel that led out. I was able to heave open the trap door and make my way through the dark tunnel alone. I slid Valkaryn across my back and strapped it tightly. When I popped out on the other side of the tunnel, I shifted into my wolf form, knowing I could cover more ground faster this way. Then I set off east for the Steel Mountains to find the Creation Stone and end magic forever.
Creator willing.
Chapter Nineteen
Iran all day and into the evening, hopping on a freight train when I could, and taking the rest on foot. By the time the sun was setting, I was close. The trees closed around me as I ran in my wolf form, and the air took on the smell of coal. I peered up and saw the base of the mountain. I was on the backside of it, away from the arena where I’d fought for my life with Kaelric at my side. That felt like a lifetime ago. I didn’t even recognize that person anymore. That Brynn was gone.
I shifted into my human form and unstrapped Valkaryn long enough to move the leather sheath so she would ride higher across my shoulders without knocking my ribs each time I ran. I tightened the buckle and stood.
‘Are we close?’I asked her. It was getting dark.
A potent sadness hit my chest hard. I wasn’t ready for it.
‘Yes. Once you get to the ridge, go left at the fallen cedar,’Val said.‘Then the ground dips, and there is a path to a cave. It is there.’
‘You remember the way?’I said.
‘I do,’she said, again with sadness in her voice.
‘Why are you sad?’I asked. This was something she’d been waiting to complete for over a decade. Something she believed in. A promise she too had made to the Creator.
‘I wish I could have a body to see you and Kaelric grow in your marriage, to hold my grandchildren, to watch you become the great queen I know you will be. I could not have hand-picked a better wife for my son. I just wish I could hug you, Brynn. My daughter.’
Her praise knocked the breath from my lungs. Tears burned the edges of my eyes. Why was she saying this now?
‘You’re saying goodbye,’I breathed, as my legs strained with the incline of the mountainside.
‘Who knows how long any of us have?’she told me, and dropped the subject, but I wasn’t buying it. She knew something.
When the trees thinned, I stripped out of my coat and tied it tight across my waist. I loosened the strap that held Valkaryn. The air bit the bare parts of me, but it felt good.
Valkaryn rested between my shoulder blades, cradled by the leather.
I ran.
I slipped through willow thickets where the branches tapped my flanks and the land lifted. The trees grew thinner and knotted. The air changed. The higher I ran up Steel Mountain, the more I thought of Kaelric sleeping in bed alone.
As if that very thought roused him, the mate bond tugged at my chest. Was he waking? Looking for me? I ran before I could change my mind and turn back to beg him for mercy.
When the first shoulder of the mountain rose in front of me, I slowed. The cold bit harder at human skin. The mountain was steel both in name and in fact. Veins of iron flashed where the rock had cracked, and winter had polished it clean.
The fallen tree was right where she said it would be. I climbed a low slope of broken stone. It traced along the side of the ridge like a scar. Ice had worn it smooth in places.
The hidden path narrowed and then dissolved into a cave. Right as I paused at the threshold, that was when the bond tugged sharp, like a thread catching on a nail.
