“I didn’t just lose Riker that day,” Cassia said, voice breaking. “I lost my family. We splintered that day and never got put back together. I lost myself. I lostyou.” She paused, then forced herself to keep going. “I used to think I might hate Cade for leaving me here, but I’m beginning to see it was inevitable. That him leaving was actually some stupid call to destiny. That maybe even Riker’s death was just a push to get him to this point.”
Her voice broke again, quieter this time. “But if I’d just been braver… if I’d trusted you and let you figure out what I was sooner instead of hiding away, maybe things would’ve turned out differently. Maybe Vega wouldn’t have Nylah or the Bloodstone right now. Maybe we wouldn’t be standing here, practically letting my brother offer himself up to that damn Druid.”
“You don’t know that,” Castor said gently.
“I do,” she whispered, the words trembling out of her like a secret she’d buried too deep for too long. Her eyes burned, but she didn’t blink. Didn’t look away. Then, after a heartbeat, she added, “I loved you, you know.”
The words were selfish. So selfish. But she couldn’t take them back. Shewouldn’t. Not when they might be marching into death. Not when she might never get another chance to say the one thing that had haunted her every day since the moment she let him go. He had to know what he meant to her. That he wasn’t the reason it fell apart. Thatshewas. She’d been too broken, too angry, too lost in her own pain to reach for him when it counted. And now… now they were standing on the edge of war and she couldn’t help but think her weakness had been one of the first dominos.
Castor’s dark eyes met her eyes. The understanding there sucked the air from her lungs. “I know,” he said.
But Cassia wasn’theranymore. And no matter how many pieces of the past she tried to pick up, she couldn’t stitch them back into what they used to be. No matter how much she wished she could. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Castor’s outstretched hand, but she couldn’t take it. Not without unraveling. So she ignored it, swung herself up onto the horse in one practiced motion, and stared straight ahead. It hurt too much to look at him.
Her gaze cut to Cade and Bridget, now mounted on their own horses, the wind tugging at their cloaks. She knew, without a doubt, they would do whatever it took to save each other.
Cassia tightened her grip on the reins. If it came down to it, she just hoped she’d be brave enough to do the same.
Chapter thirty-one
Bridget
The Elder Woods hadn’t changed.
Even in the daylight, the trees seemed to whisper. Gnarled branches twisted toward the path like skeletal fingers. Fog clung to the mossy undergrowth in loose, shifting veils that made the world look more like a memory than a place that actually existed. Bridget’s horse stepped carefully over a half-rotted log, hooves crunching in the silence.
It felt exactly as eerie as she remembered. Only this time, it wasn’t just the past creeping in around the edges. It was the present, too.
Her thoughts circled Nylah, over and over. Every few minutes, she checked over her shoulder, half-expecting to see her sister curled up on a blanket behind her or riding beside Cade or Finn with her chin tucked into his back. But the saddle behind Bridget remained painfully empty. And Finn—no,Vega—had taken her. The fact churned in her gut. Especially since the potion Stellan had brewed for Nylah to keep her well had been left behind. Another fact she couldn’t forget. The longer they took to find her, the sicker her sisterwould become.
Suddenly, the group of soldiers surrounding the king veered to the left in front of her, moving toward the old path they’d taken to Cavamyne months ago.
But not the path they needed to take now. Not if they were going to catch up with Finn slash Vega before she made it to Cavamyne.
“We’re going the wrong way,” Bridget said, her voice more breath than sound. In her past life, she’d traveled to Cavamyne more times than she could count and she had always taken the same route. A narrow, hidden path favored by thieves and smugglers slipping across the border unnoticed. It had been perfect for who she was back then. And Vega had known that.
“Yeah, in the 15th century,” Cassia shot back. “I would think a bit of the landscape has changed since then.”
Despite her scathing words, Bridget didn’t flinch. She was too tired.
“I’ve gone this way before,” Archer said from beside her, still intent on following the guards ahead of them. “And it’s the way we took last time.”
Bridget didn’t have to look to know Cade was watching her. She could feel his eyes searing into her like he was trying to climb inside her thoughts and claw out every memory she was still refusing to share with him.
“Vega wouldn’t go this way,” she stated, ignoring the twist in her chest. “This path didn’t exist when we lived here. There’s another one, further east through a valley. It’s rougher, but you don’t have to cut over the mountain. She’ll go that way.”
The steady crunch of hooves filled the silence that followed, echoing against the gnarled trees of the Elder Woods. She could feel their doubt prickling around her. Castor arched a skeptical brow toward Cade.
But Cade didn’t say anything. He just looked at her, gaze heavy with something unreadable. Trust, maybe. Or worry.
Then came the soft click of his heels. His horse surged forward.
“I’ll ride up ahead and tell my father,” Cade said, already pulling ahead.
Bridget watched him disappear around a bend, past Stellan, who kept to the front of the group like a shadow that didn’t belong. He looked stiff in the saddle. But she understood why he stuck with them. In Finn’s body, Vega couldn’t risk blood magic to teleport herself or Nylah. She was trapped in this realm, on foot. Which meant they could encounter her before they even arrived at Cavamyne.
Or maybe that’s just what she hoped.
“Trouble in paradise?” Archer muttered under his breath, but not quietly enough.
