Page 44 of Season Warriors & Wolves

“Silas needs him to control her and pressure me into keeping still.”

“He will kill them once they get that last sceptre.”

“Not on my watch.”

He grabbed my arm again. “You will not catch his beast, let it go. We lost a dozen good men on that last stunt we pulled.”

“Yes,” I said, walking away from him. “But I also saw the fucker choke on his own blood long enough to know that he, too, fears death.”

We’d hunt him down again. He could not keep still forever, not with Visha’s traps lurking every corner outside of the city he was hiding inside. Visha’s dream veil had been almost successful, she’d managed to trap him long enough to let my darkness wrap around his heart. Had Melanthe not portalled him out of it, I would have perhaps made him my prisoner. This next time, I wasn’t going to play as nice.

Alaric sat at the edge of an empty bed positioned in the middle of the almost empty room, fiddling with a folded blanket on his lap. I often found him here these days. He could no longer bear looking at the gravestone—so much that he had ordered it removed. He’d almost ordered every gravestone removed had Cai not stepped in. The two had fought, argued and then not spoken since.

Grief had its way into hollowing, weakening and thickening one's feelings all at once.

He doesn't know, Alaric had told me a few months back. He doesn’t know how it feels to bury a child and prepare the grave to bury another.

“His mother made this for him when she was pregnant with him,” he said, putting the blanket back on the bed. “Amara didn’t know how to stay still, she always had to be moving and fighting and training, so her husband made her knit. Then she would sit for hours. She made this first. Sebastian was her biggest joy and she tasked me with his protection.” He laughed bitterly. “For some reason, everyone thought I could raise their children. Except one. Samuel was right in a way to fear children—to fear having a family.” He stood and gave me a tight smile despite the grave fog of pure grief weighing on his shoulders. “I’ve failed every single child I was given. Cai is right, the gods are cruel, and they make fun of us in the cruellest of ways. They handed me what I wanted most just to show me how incapable I was to want what they would never give me in the first place.”

“That is not true.”

He shook his head. “If I have to bury her, son, bury me, too.” It took him a moment to unravel from his own tangled emotion. “You said there was something I needed to know this morning at the court gathering. What is it?”

“We’ve managed to stop another shipment from Silas. Aura.”

His frown deepened. “People?”

“Olympians.”

The old man’s eyes squeezed tightly shut. “Where from?”

“Slave traders. These are soldiers. Trained to obey their master’s orders. They haven’t eaten or drank anything at all, no matter what. Oryn has been trying all day to figure out if they are under craft, but none of us think so. They were conditioned. Tortured. They all have no voice either, tongues were cut out. Silas was probably going to use them against us.”

“I’ll go there at once.”

“Where is she?”

“Went to visit the old man,” he said, patting my shoulder and sliding past me.

Every afternoon I faded to the heights of Drava, right by the cliff overlooking the Dravan Isle and Mahara’s channel. Twelve stone graves lined the edge of it, all bearing one surname—Drava. And right before the very last one, the grave that was yet to turn a shade of a dark grey and moss, stood the heir of Drava, mourning the man who had given up his life for hers. Silently, she let the western wind beat her body as she stood before Alastair’s grave and lowered down a crown of anemones and then another beside it, over Sebastian’s.

“Macaria sends word they have found another heart,” Nia croaked, reaching a hand to her throat, her voice still faint despite the work of the best Crafters and Medi Healers who had tended her to recovery.

I nodded. “Send Cai. The witches seem to have taken a liking to him.”

She managed to wear a rare smile. “They think him fearsome. I’ve learnt they tend to be kinder to those they fear.”

“Is he still—” Being a dick.

“Still. But aren’t we all?” she asked, raising her gaze up at me and offering me pity in the form of a sigh and head shake. “You look terrible. At least shave. She is obsessed with that chin of yours. You will disappoint her if she doesn’t see it first thing.” When I didn’t say anything, she asked, “Any news?”

“None.”

“It has been weeks since Silas got the Eldmoorian sceptre piece. It won’t be long now till he goes for Vrammethen. She will surface.”

“Or something has happened to her,” I said, needing to share the worry that had been caving my chest with pain since I last heard of her. “And he can’t advance with getting the last piece.”

“My little sister has been born,” Thora said, stepping out of a portal. “That is why they’ve waited.”