Page 129 of The Reaping Rose

“Is that what you tell yourself when you’re forced to live with the fact that your son left you here?”

Cyan’s eyes narrow at the mention of Callum. Callum never speaks of his father, but it’s clear he has no regrets about turning his back on him.

“He’s alive then?” A flicker of something strange hangs in Cyan’s tone.

Interest.

Worry.

I steel my spine. “That’s not your concern anymore.”

Shadows swarm upward. A swell like a wave, darkening like the black sheen that covers Cyan’s eyes. Heat surges beside me, but it’s not enough. At least, not alone.

Glancing at Atlas, his fiery gaze meets mine, and I see the flame dancing at the core of his being. An inferno he molds and manipulates. The core of unrelenting heat. Flames that threaten to burn straight through my resolve when it comes to this male.

It’s a risk to reach out, to place myself against that fire. Yet I stare into Atlas’s eyes and take his hand, letting the fire swell around us. The moment our hands lock, the flames are scalding, and we’re engulfed in his magic. We’re a living flame, reaching to the lightning-kissed sky, daring the gods to douse this.

Atlas doesn’t take his eyes off me as Cyan’s shadows barrel forward. He holds out a hand, and I twine my magic around the swell of flame he harnesses. I amplify that fire until it is not fire at all. It is a being that devours.

Flame surges out, meeting shadow, a burst that nearly takes me out at the knees. Cyan is pushed back a step, and it’s just enough to give us an escape.

“We need to leave,” Atlas says.

I don’t argue as he tugs me toward the forest, holding a wall of fire behind us as we dart between the trees. At the edge, I feel the sharp bite of shadow trying to break through. But the flames are just hot enough to hold them back. To mask our path as they creep along the ground, and we run.

Magic like Cyan’s is ancient, and he’s had well over a thousand years to hone it into the weapon it is now. Or is it the shadows that molded him? When I looked into his eyes, it wasn’t Callum’s father who stared back. It was something dark and endless, as if his magic claimed his mind years ago.

Flame and shadow fight at our backs while we run.

Deeper and deeper.

Into the darkest, most tangled parts of Echme’s forests, we run. Not stopping for fear those shadows will swallow us whole.

Atlas stops at a fork ahead of us. One path is cleared of brush and probably safer, but that will also make it easier for Cyan to find us if he catches up.

“This way.” I nudge my chin toward the path that leads through the thick of the forest.

We can’t risk shortcuts when there’s no more hiding in plain sight. While Atlas’s magic works easily around weaker Fae minds, he won’t be able to sear us from Cyan’s memories. If his party catches up, we won’t win a second time. And now that the throb of the orb is stronger the deeper we move north, we can’t risk it.

We’re heading in the right direction. I feel it. The orb is a beacon that calls to us even when it might be far away.

I clutch my side, which has begun aching again. My boots rub my toes raw. Even with the thickness of magic around us, the closer we draw to the orb, the less our immortality seems to be doing us any favors.

We’ve been moving faster since our run-in with Cyan, chasing the pulse through the depths of the Echme forests. Days melt into night. Sunsets and sunrises become one and the same. We barely stop to rest. I stopped counting the nightfalls. The cuts. The aching muscles.

The deeper we go, the thicker the trees. The wilder the caw of angry beasts lurking in the darkness. Even with Cyan at a distance now, we aren’t safe from him or the monsters haunting the woods around us.

The only benefit to my exhaustion is that it’s dulled my anger.

“How long were you with the Crown Guard?” Atlas asks, slicing his blade through a wall of vines that blocks our path.

We’ve been too tired to hold much of a conversation the past few days. When we aren’t moving, one of us sleeps while the other keeps watch. There’s nothing but an endless journey that’s slowly wearing us down.

I’m hungry. Tired. It’s the only explanation for why I’ve started entertaining Atlas’s attempts at conversation.

“I was with them a little over a century.” I duck when he holds the vines up for me to pass through. “I joined after my parents were murdered.”

It’s ironic, joining the king’s fight thinking I was getting justice for the murder of my family. Only to hand my services over to the male who was responsible for their deaths.