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Elisabet regarded Lyra once more before mutely abandoning the council room without a backward glance.

My body shook when Gunter gripped my shoulder and one of Lyra’s. “Toss me in the molten hell,” he said, his voice light. “For a moment I wasn’t so certain it’d turn out in our favor.”

Lyra let out a shaky chuckle but curled her fingers around my arm. “What do we do now?”

I looked down at her. Be ready to meld again. We have the Wanderer to hunt.

20

Lyra

“I don’t even know how to search. This is not helping.”

Bright copper eyes locked with mine in the mists. All around, rot and decay peeled from trees and stone pillars. A frosted breeze kept raising my skin. I nuzzled deeper into Skul Drek, the burn from the endless stitches of our bond warming me from the soul out.

Instead of threats and snarls, I was enrobed in his darkness.

Dravenmoor was far more expansive than the tighter forests and peaks of Jorvandal. To walk in the rotted mirror realm, there were fewer places to hide bones of the fallen but more empty space to wander without much to show for it.

In nearly a week of foraging in the mirror, I’d found burial mounds for fara wolves whose souls were gamey on my tongue, like my craft could reach out and taste them without melding. Another find belonged to a few tiny birds that must’ve fallen from their nest not so many months before.

Asmund’s bones were added to a small burial ground for Dark Watchers. His execution was swift and public. Elisabet’s word traveled to the whole of the clan that the same would be proffered to anyone who brought harm to me, for it would now be treason against the royal household.

I found Draven burial mounds but did not search too far before Skul Drek practically growled at me and urged me to let them rest.

Today, there was even less. Misty, blackened riverbanks and crumbling courtyard gates, but no new bones. No matter how often I closed my eyes and imagined a new land, somewhere in the distance, like back near the Black Fjords or the Red Ravines.

Landscapes were always shifting in the mirror, almost as though I could stand omniscient, but I could not find a single thread with any difference from the fara bones or fallen Dravens.

“If I could see over the Night Ledges…” I shook my head and knelt to unstitch the melding I’d done to squirrel and pheasant bones.

To fall into the mirror with Skul Drek shouldn’t require melding, according to Gunter. The soul bond between me, Roark, and his shadowed soul ought to pull us to one another. With the sealing so fresh, at times I could only find the tether with my craft as I’d done before.

Small creatures served well enough for now.

I curled my palm around the burning cord between me and my phantom and used it to stand again. When I touched the bond, I let out a hiss through my teeth. Good gods, a rush of blood flooded my lower belly, nearly bringing me back to my knees with a surge of pleasure.

When Skul Drek grunted and yanked me against his iridescent form, no doubt he’d felt the same.

I chuckled and touched the cold shadows of his face. “You felt it too.”

His words were a lash, harsh and quick, but his frigid grip tightened around my waist. “Stay your hands, Melder.”

My brows raised and at once I let my palms run down his murky chest. “Why?”

Ribbons of shadows pulled my hands away, tethering them behind my back, and in the next breath, my body was enfolded within the cloak of mists of his form.

His gasp caressed my cheek. “Cruel, Melder.”

“I’m not cruel,” I said, a little breathless. “I just happen to enjoy touching you.”

Skul Drek flashed his teeth. “I am he, we are we. A melder’s touch burns with pleasure.”

“Gods. Sorry.” I recoiled and covered my mouth with one palm to hide the laugh stuck in the back of my throat.

Every touch to Skul Drek would be felt by Roark, likely driving him a little mad while we spoke soul to soul. The glow of Emi’s form was in the distance, along with Gunter and Brynn. Auki had fara duties with a young pack preparing to bond with new Dravens.

Roark would be suffering silently, perhaps twisted up in frustration, in front of everyone.