Many folk have been swallowed by that lair. The fact that she survived is a fucking miracle.
“It gets much hotter up here and I’ll need you to travel in the back,” Noeve gripes past her wobbling smoke stick, loosening the collar of her tunic.
I corral the rage of Rygun’s flame I’d accidentally opened myself to, dousing the heat as I pocket the lark, internally chastising myself.
He’s under stern instruction to keep guard over the burrow Líri and Maell are hutched in east of the Path. There are too many scouts near Gore. Too many spies stationed on the plains south of the wall to risk them flying anywhere near our destination.
If I don’t keep Rygun on lockdown—don’t maintain the calm flow ebbing through our bond—he might drop his guard on the others. Make a launch for me just to see for himself that I’m okay.
“Apologies. Won’t happen again.”
“Mm-hmm.”
Noeve continues to puff plumes of smoke through the drifting snow while I churn, wishing Borg had something for me on Veya’s whereabouts or well-being.
Anything.
Chances are she couldn’t find the diary and is currently drinking her sorrows in some back alley, ridding drunkards of their riches at a Skripi table. Or perhaps she found an opportunity to gather important intel on our brothers’ military status. But this chest-crushing feeling of not knowing—
It’s hard to breathe through.
“So you just—what—tossed them over the edge?” Another flurry of feathers float into my lap as Pyrok digs through his second sack of plucked goggin bird plumage, on a staunch mission to find his discarded flasks.“Gone?”
“Gone,” I echo, scanning the thin path streaming in our wake like a creek of snow-crusted mud. “I don’t have it in me to watch you asphyxiate on your own drunken vomit, Pyrok. Way I saw it, it was a matter of life or death. They had to go.”
He stills, like he’s thinking hard, then grunts and resumes his rummaging—gouging through the feathers with gusto. “You’re lying to me. They’re in here somewhere.”
“You think I made a treasure hunt with your flasks? Really?”
Pyrok groans, pulls his head free, and glares at me. Framed in wild red hair dashed with feathers, it’s almost impossible to take him seriously. “I know you’ve been in a shit mood since we left the spawning grounds, but that doesn’t mean you have to dampenmine.”
He’s not wrong. But after two cycles of hard travel, I’ve come to realize things aren’t quite as dire as I thought they were.
Even if Kaan were to discover Arkyn’s residence, it’s not like he’s going to fly Rygun into The Shade to hunt him down. It’s too cold for a Sabersythe so big. He’d have to charter a Moltenmaw, and given the coming moonfall, I doubt there are any to commission.
I have time to beat back his urge to avenge me. To convince him to focus on more important things.
Of which there aremany.
I see the endless stream of larks he receives. Saw the tight worry on his face when he dropped Roan in Beluhn with Ahvi’s dense pile of instructions on how to duplicate the runes on Bothaim’s arches. Heard the way his voice caught when Noeve brought up his sister earlier.
My past is a sinkhole that’ll swallow Kaan if I don’t find a way to stop him from inching closer to it. So I guess I’ll just … do that.
Find a way.
A bell chimes in the distance, swiftly responded to by Noeve jiggling her own loud enough to toll through the mist.
I open my mouth to question the meaning.
“Signal the path is occupied,” Pyrok mutters, rebinding the bag with a length of string. He stuffs it to the side and groans again, flopping against the puffy pile. “You should care less next time. That’d be great.”
“Tried that. Doesn’t end well,” I murmur as the path begins to widen in our wake. Just slightly, but a sure sign we’re coming upon the other side.
I whisper another soft request for Clode to remain still, plying her with compliments over how beautifully she’s controlling her gusty impulses, confused when she doesn’t respond immediately. She’s rarely so distracted that she makes me wait.
“Carts ahead,” Noeve calls back.
Shit.
