Page 32 of Betrothed

Gods, she wanted…

“Fawn,” Errol said, so loud it made her startle. “Really, stop this. There’s no reason for it.”

Fawn watched him through her tears. There was a reason for it—just not the one he thought.

She wiped her cheeks again. Then she quickly and methodically packed her emotions away, as she had been taught to do all her life, and decided on her plan.

“Errol,” she said hoarsely. “I have an idea.”

Errol blinked in surprise. “What are you talking about? Come, you’re warm enough. You should get to bed.”

He stood.

Fawn grabbed his wrist. “Wait! Just listen. I think I know where he’s going.”

It was a long shot. But Errol would be hurting, and not just from his arrow wound. He would want support, and both his brothers in the mortal realm lived either on or just beyond the mountains. If she could catch him on his way…

“Alright,” Errol said slowly. “So, you wish to guide us?”

“No,” Fawn said, and took a deep breath. “I want you to use me as bait.”

Thirteen

Zax stopped at the base of his brother’s mountain, panting.

The mountains were Titans once, his oldest brother, Slate, had told him. Some say they still speak to us. Some say they still listen.

Zax had prayed to the Titans and listened for a sign. He thought they had heard him, thought they had heard the desperate plea of a man who had been trying for so long to find a companion, only for the objects of his desire to run away screaming.

“I believed in you,” Zax told the mountain. “I believed you would help! Why have you done this?”

The mountain was still. His brother was still a day’s journey away, at least. He would not hear Zax’s wailing. Only the Titans would hear him. If they even existed so long after their deaths.

“Are you even really there?” Zax cried. “Or am I a fool, as many of my brothers have said? I thought you gave her to me.”

There was no reply except the wind through the trees.

“I thought I was a good husband,” Zax said miserably. “Was I wrong about that, too? I thought—I thought she cared for me.”

Still no response. Zax was standing at the base of a mountain, talking to himself. He thought he would come back here with a wife, but he was alone. As usual.

Zax threw back his head and howled with all the despair in his scarred body, then he slumped to the ground.

His knees slammed into the rocks, sending a jolt of pain up his injured side. But there was something else with it. A strange thrum of magic, so small he barely noticed it underneath the pain. But it was there, he was sure of it.

He looked around uncertainly. There was no one there, and no Titan whispers in his head, as his brother had.

Zax took the freckle rock out of his pocket. He rubbed the shiny surface, remembering the soft warmth of Fawn’s cheeks. Then he threw the rock away, not bothering to watch it bounce into the rocky distance and out of sight.

But the rock did not clatter as he’d thought. There was only more silence.

Zax turned.

His eldest brother Slate was standing next to him, tall and commanding as ever, his eyes shining familiar blue. He was holding the freckle rock he had thrown away. There was a portal glowing next to him, dark and shadowy.

“Slate,” Zax choked.

Slate inclined his head. “Here I am.”