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True enough. The weariness of the mirror was settling in. But the moment I turned to go, something harsh, like a tangle of barbs, curled around my arm and pulled me toward the gates.

“Melder!” A long, feral hiss sliced through Skul Drek’s sharp teeth. His darkness enrobed me, every strand of shadow he could muster laced around my body, limbs, even my throat.

I cried out and reached for him, but whatever blood spell was at the gates fought harder. Something had me in its grasp, something dark.

In the fetid darkness of the mirror, laughter echoed. First it was low, nothing but a whisper in the breeze. But it grew, louder, crueler.

I clung to the skeins of night from Skul Drek, frantically grappling for his hands until I curled my golden palms around the ice of his skin.

“There you are.”

A sharp gasp slipped from my lips when I looked over my shoulder. Buried in the mists near the gates, sharp, burning eyes and a cruel, poisonous smile met me there.

Fadey.

A thin, frayed tendril of an ashen rope slithered across the smoky ground of the mirror. My eyes widened. The tether was knotted around my ankle, and across the meadow, where Fadey’s ghostly form stood near the crumbling gates, he twirled the other end around his long fingers.

“Lyra. I found you again.”

In Stonegate, Fadey insisted that the blood craft of Queen Ingir had tethered us, that he could slip into my mind and thoughts, that he could find me here in the mirror.

Fadey pulled on the weak rope, and my leg jerked painfully behind me.

Skul Drek hissed and clacked his teeth, gathering me in his arms and surrounding me in his shadows. Cold whipped against my cheeks. The blaze of our sealed bond cast out the darkness and blurred the moldy gates of the Jorvan keep.

I felt my body torn away, a rough wrench of my leg snapped the tie of Fadey’s haunted rope, and in the next breath, I landed in a heap atop the murky form of my husband’s soul.

I leaned into his shadows, desperate for something to numb the wretched pain. My brow pressed against his chest, and in the next moment, a warm palm cupped one side of my face.

Roark looked down at me from the long wooden bench. Somewhere in the trance, I had dropped to my knees.

Tears fell from my lashes. “Fadey…” I didn’t know what else to say and let my forehead fall to his chest.

Roark nodded and pressed a long kiss to my forehead. His words were formed low, where I could look down and watch the gestures. No more melding.

“We must keep hunting. What else are we to do?” I said, a little desperate.

Lyra. I will not risk you, understand? We don’t know these spell casts. Until we learn how he’s able to find you now, we don’t hunt the bones.

My shoulders slumped. I wanted to protest, wanted to argue, but whether it was the exhaustion from the melder’s trance or knowing Roark’s fear was warranted, I could not muster the words.

“What happened in…wherever you go?” Gunter’s voice drew my attention.

I leaned deeper against Roark’s chest. “Fadey. He…he was there. I thought…I thought only I could step into the mirror, but he nearly pulled me to him.”

Emi’s eyes went wide. “What did he do to you?”

I retold the shift toward the gates, the desire to feel if Kael still lived, then of the blood craft guarding the gates.

The wards must’ve summoned Fadey. Roark spoke in harsh gestures.

“You said there was a rope around you?” Gunter folded his arms over his chest.

“It looked almost like a thread of a bond, like he’d found a way to tie me to him, but it was faded and nowhere near as strong as mine and Roark’s.”

One of Gunter’s brows lifted. “Even weak bonds can only be formed from a connection, be it blood, affection, or through vows.”

I held no affection for Fadey, nor his blood, and I certainly had made no vow with him. “He said Ingir crafted a spell from my blood to tether him to my mind and the realm of souls.”