Helmar’s opaque blue eyes tracked my movement as his dry lips cracked into a welcoming smile. A smile I’d grown to dread in the months he’d held me captive in Stynguard, the months he tried to force my connection to magic through fear and pain, the months he tested the darkness of the Obscura Bone on his prisoners….
I forced breath from my lungs as the hazy images of bloody rooms and festering wounds encroached on my vision.
Mount Telum’s rubelline is activated. He cannot hurt me here if he has no magic. I’m more than a scholar now. I’m a trained soldier. I’m a mage. I’m a Bellator.
Helmar looked as if he’d aged a century since I last saw him in Stynguard. Had King Saros been using the Aeterna Bone to keep him young all these years? How oldwasthe high priest?
Helmar stepped farther into the small cottage and leaned his head to the side, as if trying to get my attention… As if he were someone who didn’t know the signs, and he needed to get the attention of a man without working ears. I forced the rage down, knowing High Priest Helmar could very well speak my language with his hands. His years of playing politics in the Court of Two Moons taught him well. The old actor was convincing, masquerading as an innocent old hermit in the woods.
My gaze darted to his lips as he spoke slow and deliberate words.
“Your friend took down a large stag… Asked me to bring horses to haul it back. Join me?”
Ezrich.
We had to get the hell out of here. I gave the high priest a nod and motioned to the door, tucking my dagger in my waistband as he led the way.
Sunshine slipped through the trees, leaving harsh shadows along the line of the forest.
Tempest was edgy. Her feathery charcoal ears flattened as I approached with the high priest. Helmar’s gray robes flapped as he mounted Anchor with surprising ease, given the permanent hunch in his upper back.
I could feel the creek of my saddle as I swung onto Tempest’s back, gathering her reins in one hand and doing my best not to rest my other on the concealed dagger at my hip. Haunted memories crept from the dark corners of my mind, Helmar’s presence luring them into the light.
He cannot hurt me here.
Fear crawled over me despite the reminder. Helmar urged the gelding into a trot down a dark lane of the forest, and I lifted my reins as my legs gently pressed against Tempest’s sides.
Her ears flattened, and she huffed a breath through her velvety nose. I rubbed her withers before urging her forward with a softcluckof my tongue, and we trotted after the high priest.
Minutes stretchedas the woods became thick, the trees close and the undergrowth crowding the narrow path. Thick moss crawled over the fallen trunk of a tree the horses clomped over, gray mushrooms peppering its sides.
Where was Ezrich?
I scanned the dark forest, uncertainty slinking over me.
I should have killed the high priest at the cottage.
The thought had barely formed before Helmar craned his neck to look back at me. His yellowed teeth peeked through his lips as he offered a thin smile. He gestured ahead of him withhis frail hand, the bones of his fingers curving in toward one another.
“Little farther,” his lips read.
Our horses led us through a tangle of branches, the thick leaves in the canopy a blockade against the strangled rays of sun. A waft of iron-laced wind curled its way through the winding path, shoving up my nostrils and churning the limited contents of my breakfast.
Blood.
My hand moved to the dagger at my waist as I recognized the scent, and Helmar’s shoulders rocked as Anchor stepped cautiously over a damp boulder before picking up speed as the angle of the path inclined. Tempest’s head bobbed, and as she stepped onto the boulder, something prickled beneath my palms.
Helmar and Anchor disappeared as they crested the ridge, dim light filtering into the space they abandoned. Tempest picked up a jaunty trot as she hurried up the hill, and as we reached the top, panic rushed me.
My legs were hard on Tempest’s sides and I gripped my dagger as a circular clearing opened before us. My eyes landed on Ezrich’s bloody body stretched between two thick trees, where arrows impaled his dark forearms to the trunks. His muscles stretched and oozed blood as his weight dragged his body away from the thick shafts.
High Priest Helmar urged Anchor over a small line of rocks spread across the clearing just as I flung my dagger at his face. Helmar’s hunched form moved faster than I expected, and with a sweep of his gaunt arm, the familiar buckle of wind brushed against my face as he snapped a shield into place. My dagger bounced off.
Shock coursed through my system, and my attention snapped to the line of stones in the dirt.
High PriestHelmar had found the edge of the rubelline zone.
My thighs pressed against Tempest’s sides, but she was already moving, as if she knew our only chance at surviving this sat on the other side of those stones—outside the edge of the rubelline zone where I could access my magic.
