She stared out across the landscape below. It was still desert, but there was a creeping chill in the air, more trees beginning to spot the earth.
“Callamus?”
A curious sigh. “Yes, Mariah?”
Resolve filled all her shattered, broken pieces. “Can you fly us over Onita? North of Xara’s Road, and south of the Everheim Mountains?”
She left her true request out, but she knew he understood, regardless.
Fly us to Khento.
Mariah felt the way he tensed beneath her. Signe noticed, too, and slowly lowered herself back to his scales. Her head cocked curiously, violet eyes scrunched against the wind, black hair whipping furiously around her face.
Matheo just groaned and leaned against a spine, skin a little green.
“I…I do not think that is a good idea.” Callamus’s words were slow and hesitant.
“I know,” Mariah said. “But we must.”
“Kol will feel our presence. He may decide you’ve outlived any usefulness to him—and he’s waited millennia to take revenge on me.”
Mariah fell silent, stare still fixed on the horizon. As if she could feel that silent bond stretching across the continent, that sliver of slumbering magic tying her to the man she loved.
“If it were Rulene,” she finally said, her thoughts hardly more than a whisper, “would you let that stop you?”
Callamus was quiet for a long moment. His steady wingbeats cleaved through the sky, carving through clouds and mist. Finally, he turned his massive head back, locking his gentle galaxy eyes on her.
“We will go to the Onitan side of the border, near Antoris. It is a two-day ride north of Khento. And we will wait there for three days. No more.”
It wasn’t close enough—not nearly close enough. But a feeling drifted through her. She didn’t know what it was; perhaps resolve or heartache or longing.
Or faith, maybe? Faith that even though this was the closest Callamus would take her, it would be close enough.
Faith that Andrian would feel this pull, too. That even with their silent bond, he would find her.
That he would always find her.
“Okay,” she said to Callamus.
With a low growl of acknowledgment, he tipped his wings, banking across the sky and into Onita.
“So,what are we doing here, again?”
“Waiting,” Mariah responded. She heard Matheo’s frustrated grumble, followed by a soft clatter as he tossed his bow and quiver full of arrows on the grass.
“Waiting for what, exactly?”
“Is that even a question you have to ask, Armature?” Signe sauntered across the clearing, silver robes rustling around her legs. She halted a few paces away, placing a hand on her hips. “Do you know where we are?”
Matheo glanced around, scanning the horizon. The Everheim Mountains loomed to the north, and the forest where they’d taken refuge extended in all other directions.
“Northern Onita, but…” Matheo whirled to Mariah with wide eyes. “Seriously? You can’t actually be planning another rescue attempt?—”
“I’m not.” Mariah faced him fully, squaring her shoulders. “I told you. We’re waiting.”
Matheo’s brow twisted inquisitively.
Signe chuckled. “Don’t try to understand the tie shared between a queen and herRhoi, young one,” she said. “I’m afraid not even the gods can understand such things.”
