I reached immediately for my connection to Riordan, hoping I could reach him now that I was back in the Vale. But whatever they had done to prevent me from accessing my magic and bonds was still in effect in the Vale. It had to be the vine bracelets Nell had left around my wrists.
“Lead on, and do not fuck with me, Amira. Ciaran will happily take it out on your griffin,” Nell threatened as she movedup behind me.
I had no intention of leading her astray, my guilt over Sage demanded atonement, so I merely nodded at her in agreement. Although the ease with which she threatened me was terribly jarring. Perhaps I should not have been surprised since she’d never tried to hide her viciousness, but I had never expected to become her target.
I straightened and turned around to face the woodland, surprised that there was no sign of the portal she would have created in a tree trunk. She must have closed it.
We were silent for a long time while she followed me under the trees. Moving through the thick underbrush was so much easier this time since the foliage seemed intent on moving out of her way. Even the sprites were kinder to Nell as they began to land all over her. They didn’t even try to bite her when she swatted at them in annoyance. They merely flew away with peels of tinkling laughter and settled in the branches above to watch. They seemed completely enamoured of her despite her abuse of them, but they were still too wary of me to even land on me.
“Ugh! Go find a glade somewhere to frolic and leave me alone already!” Ornella finally shouted at them.
The sprites gave wild shrieks of laughter again before they finally scattered into the forest, and then the quiet descended on us once more.
“They were much nicer to you than they were to us when we came through,” I told her, hoping to strike up a conversation with her.
“Good,” was all she responded with, and it took some time before I worked up the courage to speak again.
“You are still my friend—” I began, slowing my steps so I could walk beside her instead of ahead of her.
“Whatever friendship we had is over,” she cut me off, shoving my back to keep me moving forward, and the denunciation knifed through me ruthlessly.
“Please believe that I never meant to hurtyou—”
“It does not matter. Youdid,” she insisted, her voice clearly forced through her teeth with anger. “Sage is…everythingto me. You are right to be afraid of what Rian can do to Riordan and his kingdom. But you cannot even fathom the monsterIwill become if Sage has been hurt. You have devastated me beyond all possible recompense, and I will not hesitate to return the anguish to you tenfold if Sage is not returned to me.”
I had no idea how to reply to such a chilling promise. Especially when my skin crawled with the instinctive certainty that she was telling me the truth.
So I decided to hold my tongue.
Orion
Amira had been gone for several hours, and I was pretty sure I was going out of my mind. I would have normally dealt with such anxiety by bruising and splitting open my knuckles on a practice dummy. But all I could do in that tent with my limbs bound was stew over the conversation with the Autumn Prince. I agonized over Amira’s safety and how Riordan would react to Rian’s demands.
And of course I stared at the unblemished circles on my forearms where my brands had once been…
Gone. Those vile markings weregone. I was free for the first time in my adult life, and it felt surreal. I was still not perfectly convinced that this was not a strange dream from which I would soon wake in heartbreak.
“What are you doing here?” demanded the female orc who was on guard duty. She had been sitting at the table playing a solitary card game and had not bothered to even try and engage with me.
I glanced up to see who she was talking to and nearly failed to control my reaction when I saw a familiar face.
Uruk, our Autumn Court spy, was standing just inside the curtained doorway of my prison tent. Riordan clearly had not wasted any time sending the orc to snoop around and locate us in the camp. Which meant my king would be coming for us sooner than I would have anticipated, and the warning from Rian was being disregarded.
“Sorry,” Uruk blurted, doing a good job of looking lost as he glanced around the tent in confusion. “I was sent for clean blankets, and I thought they said to come—”
“They are in the back of the mess hall with the rest of the supplies! Sweet Elements, you lot that come from the Raveina Mountains sure are dense!” the female berated.
“Sorry!” Uruk mumbled, bumbling around in the door of the tent in a way that was so unlike him it could only be intentional. He was using the opportunity to look at me and all around the tent more fully. “Were there not two?” he dared to ask the ornery guard who sighed harshly.
“What?” she snipped at him as she turned away from her solitary game of cards once more.
“I saw they brought back two! Just want to make sure one didn’t get away on you,” he tried to explain himself.
“She did not get away on me! They took her away for some kind of a mission. I don’t know, but you need to get out of here! You are not supposed to be in here without authorization from the riders!” she reminded him.
“Right! Sorry. See you soon,” he added a little more seriously when he met my eyes briefly before he finally ducked out of the tent.
Chapter thirty-eight
