After the Great Migration, the old fae kings had encircled the Gate with a massive wall that stood imposing and stalwart on the horizon to this day—dwarfing even the nearby fortress. It rose several hundred spans into the sky and was dozens of spans thick, with only a single gap to allow people through. I could only imagine what they had intended to keep from coming through from the Boundlands, because the fae’s written history was hard to come by from that time period and even my own people had little to say on the matter. Legends spoke of troops on dragon back, but that would have been long ago indeed.
I checked on Celeste one more time and considered my approach. I could show the guards my unconscious wife, hope they accepted our binding marks as proof that we were wed, and hope that they allowed me to take her through. That didn’t seem likely. Not that they could physically stop me, but the amount of drama it would cause would be a nightmare. It was one thing to shirk my supposed duty to a social obligation people felt they were owed—such as attending my own wedding reception. It was quite another to be seen as kidnapping a woman from Faery against her will. Not to mention a member of a royal family.
I quickly settled on smuggling and removed the majority of my shadow cloak, stripping away enough that my mount and I could be seen, but that it still hung down my back to mark me as a reaper. I used a portion of it to cover Celeste so that she was hidden from view. It would already be seen as suspicious that a reaper would make use of the Gate, rather than our own portals, since I was “alone.” Allowing them to see me coming from a distance would hopefully give them one less oddity to set them on edge since they would be able to hear the steps of my mount so near to them.
I kept a steady pace as I approached. The Fist was one of the few constructions I’d ever seen in Faery that favored function over form. It presided over its domain like an enormous gray toad, squat and wide, though it did have plenty of towers to be able to see both winged and mounted intruders from a distance. I noticed it didn’t appear to have a single conventional window. Every opening within view was either an arrow slit or a murder hole.
Mortals had such a perplexing penchant for ending each other’s lives early.
By the time I passed the fort, I could feel the eyes of the entire garrison upon me from all the watchers within. I trained my gaze straight ahead on the wall as I drew closer, its gap guarded by a dozen winged fae in full plate armor. These fae had no qualms with showing their true form to outsiders, being more inclined toward security than diplomacy, and wouldn’t hesitate to make use of all their extremities if the need arose. Their helmets had been specially forged to fit around their antlers, with plates that dropped between them and interlocked with plates on the sides to cover their faces.
The leader raised a hand for me to halt, and I drew to a stop in front of him. His skin was a deep golden color that matched the tips of his feathers, and he was the only one of them that appeared to have much muscle on him. I waited for him to make his assessment.
“What is your name?” he asked.
“Veardur,” I responded. He didn’t need to know my name. He already knew that it was sheer courtesy keeping me standing before him. That if I wanted to I could have walked right through him, his men, the wall itself, and then the Gate. And I might have, if not for the delicate mortal woman I held in my arms.
The fae commander’s eyebrows drew together behind the eye holes in his helmet and his companions stood silently, taut and ready as he looked me over. Ready for what, I had no idea. Perhaps they had no experience with a reaper. It wasn’t unheard of for entire groups of people to have never met one of us before, though any border guard should have been aware that border laws didn’t apply to reapers. How could they?
His eyes scanned my body and my wraith one last time, sliding right past the bundle that I held. “Go ahead,” he told me, stepping back. The rest of his men followed his lead, clearing a path to the gap in the wall.
I spurred my wraith onward, wrapping myself in shadows and disappearing into the darkness between the walls the instant we stepped foot between them. Inside there was very little light from the sky above, the only real illumination coming from the Gate itself. I marveled at how fanciful it appeared with its archway of carved stone that was much larger than the utilitarian stacked-stone Gates within the Void or the quaint looking stone-arch Gates of the Boundlands. I took a deep breath to prepare myself, staring into the overcast skies of the town on the other side of the shimmering haze. I would beincrediblygrumpy if my family were standing there waiting to erupt at me, knowing it would be a bottleneck in my travels. I was tired, and I wanted to give my new wife some peaceful rest, and I wasn’t ready to deal with anyone else yet. I gritted my teeth and directed my mount forward.
The pins and needles feeling in my extremities as I passed through a fae-made Gate was something I would never grow accustomed to, but when I stepped through into the Boundlands there was nothing but relief as I found no one waiting for me but the dwarvish guards on the other side of the gate.
I stripped away most of my cloak and addressed the nearest one. “What year is it?”
Chapter 8
Grim
“It’sthe6258thYearo’ the Axe, Master Reaper,” the dwarvish guard responded in the thickest mountain accent I’d ever heard. He had long brown hair that he wore in a loose braid and deeply freckled, ruddy colored skin that matched his russet eyes. All six of his companions were similarly colored and matched his stout and sturdy build, nearly to the inch. All of them wore leather armor and held wicked looking halberds that seemed at odds with their placid expressions. “T’day is the 23rd o’ Frostdays,” he continued with his rolling lilt, graciously answering the next question he knew I would ask.
I did the mental math to translate their calendar into our own and was relieved to find that I’d only lost three weeks of Boundlands’ time. Between that and the fact that my mother wasn’t standing here waiting to tell me exactly what she thought of me leaving early, I could practically taste the triumph. There would be a reckoning, but not today.
“My thanks,” I told the guard. “Is Master Blunthorn on duty today?” I asked him.
He perked up at the name. “Yasgrot Blunthorn?” he clarified. “I do believe he would be. Do you have need of him?” Mountain dwarves clipped their words in a way that occasionally took me a little more effort to decipher.Do y’ave need o’ ‘im?
“I do. If you could, please inform him that I’ll be staying at Sorrow’s Keep,” I told him.
“I’ll send a runner straight away,” he said, motioning to another of the guardsmen who set off running for the messengers.
I nodded my thanks to him and the rest of the group and rode on through the tiny mining community called Granite Cross. It was nearly entirely populated by dwarves and gnomes and occasionally giants, nestled high in the jagged peaks of the Dragon’s Teeth Mountains. The winds howled loudly and the overcast skies began to drizzle, but none of the townsfolk on the market boardwalks we passed seemed to care, having lived at this altitude for generations upon generations. I held Celeste closer and tugged her cloak and blanket tighter around her as I set off on the final leg of our trek toward my family’s closest holding. My unease with her state of consciousness was like a slow burning coal buried in my chest, making it hard for me to breathe. Her pale face had taken on a bluish hue due to the cold and I turned her head toward my chest, hoping to lend her more warmth.
It took another hour of traveling through winding mountain pathways along the cliffs overlooking the Strait of Sorrows to reach the town of Bhalden’s Post. The Dragon’s Teeth didn’t have much to physically sustain the populations that lived here, but the dwarves in this area and the giants that made a home in the enclave to the north made good business from the metals and stone they mined from deep in the mountains. Bhalden’s Post was a relatively small outpost, but it did brisk business with traders who braved the dangerous passes year-round to bring in supplies for the miners. Even the eponymous Strait of Sorrows that sat below Sorrow’s Keep provided little more than sea salt in the way of useful resources, with locals eschewing the cartilaginous, venomous fish that lived beneath the churning sea ice. Food from the lowlands was an easy trade for those seeking precious metals if you could haul it up.
The keep itself had been here before the outpost and was a product of the mountain it sat on. It was a collection of towers constructed of granite that had been carved straight from the peak, like most of my family’s holdings. It had been managed by generations of Blunthorns—a local dwarvish family—whenever we stayed here, and their family was rewarded with a permanent spot on the Molchanov payrolls. The relief I felt as I rounded the final bend and saw the glow flickering in the great hall windows was a heady thing. Yasgrot, the current head of the Blunthorn family, had received the runner’s message and sent servants ahead to open the keep and ready it for my stay.Thank all that is holy for spectral messengers and for the Blunthorns too.
I guided my mount along the narrow ridge that led to the stone bridge that spanned a deep ravine below and stopped in front of the iron castle gates. Carefully cradling Celeste’s body in one arm, I reached behind me with the other to take hold of her belongings, then released my mount back into the shadows. I nearly staggered as we dropped into the snow, weary and aching from the long, cold ride. Several pairs of footprints had been left in tracks through the snowy courtyard and up the gray stone steps to the door of the main hall. I pushed the door open and was surprised to find Yasgrot himself adding wood to a roaring fire in the hearth. The smell of something warm and earthy hit me as I closed the door against the wind.
“Master Molchanov, welcome back, sir.” He stood to greet me with a harried smile, revealing a clay pot hanging over the flames. He continued talking while he peeked under the lid and stirred the contents, his thick, green robes swirling around his feet from the movement. “I’ve brought along Brishta and Torindal to help open up the keep. It’s sat vacant for several months this time so they’re airing the linens and warming your bedchamber. Oh, and my wife insisted I bring you some of her root stew she was preparing for tonight. She always makes enough to feed an army, you know.”Sh’ always makes enou’ t’ feed ‘n army, y’ know.
I blinked at the barrage of words. Yasgrot’s accent wasn’t quite as heavy as the guardsman’s was, and I’d known him for much longer as well, but even so, I had to focus on his speech more than my brain felt capable of at the moment. He shared the same brown, coarse hair and ruddy skin that the rest of the population here tended toward, though his beard was the longest of any other dwarves I’d seen—always worn in three thick braids. While standing, he came to my mid-chest, a common height for his people, but he didn’t have the heavy, brawny build of the miners and soldiers. He was efficient, and organized, and according to my grandmother, ran a very orderly household just like his father had before him. He liked to stop in and check on things himself, but as an older man, usually delegated the work to those in his employ. I was touched that he’d come himself and brought food from his own family’s table as well.
“Brishta brewed some tea and left it over there for you.” He gestured over his shoulder toward the heavy wooden table that was dark and glossy from age and wear. “There’s some mulled wine, and some bread—it’s not warm but I can warm it up if you’d like, and your stew is nearly finished heating through. Shall I send for a cook? I could—” His steady stream of words broke off as he glanced over his shoulder again to look at me. “Oh my! I wasn’t aware you were bringing a companion.” He replaced the lid on the pot and turned from the fire to get a better look at the woman bundled in my arms. I fought the bizarre urge I had to block his view of her or wrap her in my shadows again to protect her from his bewildered gaze.
“My wife,” I explained to him.My wife.Her slight body was still lax against my chest, and I set down the sack of her belongings so that I could pull her hood back to get her some more air now that we were out of the frigid winds. I brushed my fingers across her cheek and my heart stuttered at how chilled she was. I cupped her cheek to try to warm her skin.
