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“Things are worse than anyone can remember,” he said, meat juice running down his chin. “Too many people rely on trade and connections with the human realm now. Our own farms can’t supply enough.”
The small female nodded, holding her hands to the fire as twilight set in. “We’ve met a lot of people since leaving our village, and one thing is clear. The Queen has been neglecting the people for a long time, but poverty is so bad now that people are beginning to starve. And they aren’t happy about it.”
Cordy gave her a questioning look. “What do you mean?”
The female gave her a half-smile. “As the weeks go by, the whispers get stronger. The people are ready to fight back. To take a stand against the Queen.”
“But will they?” I asked, unconvinced.
The brown-haired male grinned excitedly. “You’d be surprised. They’re already pushing back. It won’t take much more before they rebel completely.”
“And they’re talking about you.”
My head whipped around as the fourth witch spoke for the first time. Older, his greying hair was cut short and neat. He held his heavy cloak around him like a shield as he watched us warily.
“Us?” Noah asked.
The tradesman pointed at Cordy. “Her. We all heard what the Queen was saying about the treacherous daughter who was helping the shifters rebel. But then other whispers were heard. A village liberated. A peace meeting where the Queen ignored the ancient rules of treaty and spilled blood. A daughter with power to match her mother.”
He met her eyes with clear respect. “The people are very interested in you.”
I stifled a grin as Cordy looked into the fire and squirmed a little, uncomfortable with the attention.
“What are you doing out here?”
Cordy’s gaze flicked up to the brown-haired witch at his blatant dig for information. She quirked a brow in a clear refusal to answer, making Liam smirk.
“We won’t mention seeing you,” the older male said, cutting through the awkward silence. “You can continue your journey in peace.”
The others all nodded in agreement. The relief rolling down the bond told me that Cordy believed the promise.
As the fire burned low that night and we settled down to sleep, the visitors long gone, I felt a sense of peace settle in my gut. Until today, I had been struggling to let go of the guilt. Abandoning Cordy, betraying my brothers, the death of my parents and destabilisation of my pack – it was all at least partly my fault.
But I knew now, without a doubt, that the Queen’s poison had spread far and wide. We weren’t alone in our suffering. And we weren’t the only ones fighting back either. It was time to move past blame and focus on the future.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Cordelia
Awarenesstrickledinslowlyas I woke, a small gasp of breath filling my lungs with frigid air. My eyes cracked open with difficulty, exhaustion clinging to me and leaving me wondering what had woken me when I clearly needed more rest.
A soul-deep shudder rocked through me as I stirred, stretching out my stiff body against the rock-hard floor, the cold so intense now that I could feel it as an ache in my bones. The light above my head had dimmed, barely shining as the power I had fed it earlier began to run low. I flicked more magic at it with a twitch of my fingers, lighting up the empty space around me.
The resting chamber was identical to all the others we had found in these tunnels. Same bare, stone space, same unavoidable chill. Sadly, sleeping down here was inescapable as there simply weren’t enough exits on our route to let us sleep under the stars. We also wanted to avoid anymore encounters with witches, especially when I was an unintentional player in the unrest that was stirring. It was never easy to truly rest though, with the chilled floor beneath me and my old trauma leaving me with a constant, niggling unease that I knew I would never fully shake off. Even when I was surrounded by the warmth and security of my mates, sleep didn’t come easily in these tunnels.
Glancing around me, I frowned as I found myself completely alone. Our bags still lay where they had been dropped a few hours before, with the guys’ discarded clothes still littered around from where they had shifted to keep me as warm as possible. I guessed something had drawn their wolves’ attention and caused them to investigate, but the fact they had left me alone and unconscious worried me. They never left me without at least one of them nearby; it was instinct for them to put my safety above everything else.
“Guys?” I called softly, reaching out to grab the closest shirt and tug it on over my own clothes in an attempt to find extra warmth.
One sniff told me it was Liam’s, his rich scent enveloping me and giving me some comfort, but the feeling of wrongness in my gut only intensified as no one answered my call. Groaning lightly at the stiffness in my legs, I pushed myself up to standing, refusing to sit here like a damsel in distress. Leaving everything else where it lay, I tightened the laces of my leather boots and made my way over to the small doorway that led back out into the main tunnel system.
Blackness greeted me, as it always did in this place. Summoning my light, I anchored it behind me as I cautiously stepped out into the tunnel, trailing my fingers along the rough rock wall as if it could strengthen me. Reaching the intersection where the tunnel led either onwards or back from where we came, I closed my eyes and reached for my bonds. I refused to wander in either direction without checking where I needed to go, and if they’d split and headed both ways, I’d pick whoever was closest.
My eyes shot open again in the next second, my spine shooting straight as a profound panic rolled over me. Pressing my back to the wall, I turned and hunched over, my vision wavering as the terror took hold and I lost feeling in my fingers.
There was nothing. The bonds weren’t blocked or stretched; they were gone.
Even separated in different worlds, the bonds had been there, anchored to my soul and unbreakable even in death. Now though? There was nothing. I couldn’t sense any of the guys in any way. There wasn’t even a scar or a fracture that I could feel to tell me they had ever been there. It had all just been… erased.
