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Miles silently placed my bedroll next to me and retreated back to his brother’s side where they began to build a fire. I turned back toward them and watched them as they worked alongside each other, their movements as natural as if no time had passed at all. But it quickly became evident that the damage was done. The energy had turned like a sudden squall in the dead of summer. No low rumbles of warning thunder, no smell of oncoming rain. There was no calm before this storm. This was angry, with jagged lightning and a deafening crash out of the clear blue sky, and suddenly I was being rained on.
I’d exploded, and the carnage from my words was worse than any I could have caused with my flames, or my wind, or my storms.
Guilt had been radiating off of Belin since he found us in the forest, almost as if his movements were slowed by the weight of it. But now I felt nothing from him. Not guilt nor anger nor fear. There was just…nothing. He seemed to stand taller, straighter, his movements more defined and rigid as the fire ignited and he began to make camp. It was like he’d shaken me off completely, and I was no longer weighing him down.
It was better this way, right? Itwasbetter this way. I could focus on retrieving the blood from Umbri then turn all my energy, all my fury on Castemont, then on finding Katia and Rhedros. No more of my time would be spent pining over what had been, what could be. I was a queen now. I had more important things to worry about.
Turning my back to them once again, I fixed my eyes on the highest peak of the Onyxian Mountains, gilded by the last rays of the setting sun.
It was better this way. It was better this way.It was better this way.
? ? ?
The familiar feeling of being watched prickled across my skin as we entered the Onyx Pass, the air suddenly feeling denser, the towering trees imposing. It was only mid-morning, the terror of nighttime in the Pass still hours and hours away, but I felt the seeds of that terror being sown in my gut. The brothers rode on either side of me, my own guilt growing more acrid on my tongue with every step I took between them.
Creatures rustled in the forest on either side of us, neither brother betraying even a lick of worry as growls and screeches echoed off the trees. The horses were unsettled as the unmistakable sound of an animal being attacked by a beast much larger than itself sounded down the trail, and my stomach turned as its dying howls were interrupted by ripping and shaking and tearing…then silence.
The smell of death suddenly permeated the air, clutching the three of us in its nauseating jaws. The packed soil of the path was disturbed, and it dawned on me that this was it — this was where the beasts of the Onyx Pass had attacked the group of leechthorn-addled prisoners, where I’d somehow killed dozens of feral animals and healed myself from the marks of their claws and teeth and talons. Their mangled bodies rotted just beyond the treeline where I knew clumps of fur and feathers littered the ground and bones lay snapped and craggy.
I recounted that day, but my mind quickly strayed and I didn’t stop it. Why the hell had I told Belin to stop trying? Why the hell had I threatened to kill him and Miles? Why the hell was I so angry? I’d ruined the fragile understanding that I’d fostered with Miles. And I didn’t know what I wanted with Belin, but what hung between us now made my skin crawl.
Visceral silence trailed us as we made our way deeper and deeper into the Pass. Shadows grew shorter and then longer as the sun rose and sank. All the while, shame was spreading throughout my body, mixing with the rage that still remained and becoming more inescapable as it found every fracture and nook within me.
Moving forward gave part of my mind something to focus on. We were heading to Umbri. This was the first leg of our journey to ultimately free my parents. Those were the concrete facts that pulsed in my head with every footstep. But I knew that every second that passed was one second closer to having to set up camp, and I wouldn’t have the distraction of movement to lean on.
It’d be me, Miles and Belin, my mind, and the beasts of Onyx Pass.
? ? ?
The fire crackled, sending sparks floating into the air. Each spark rose before its light faded into the black of night, as if they were trying to join the stars that hung above us. Miles was asleep next to the fire. I felt unfamiliar eyes on me, almost as if something had been stalking us as we traversed the Pass. But the beasts that lurked in the trees around us had almost faded into the background, and I found I was no longer afraid of them.
I was afraid of myself.
My eyes fell on Belin, the Invisible King sitting across the fire on the trunk of a tree that had fallen across the path, hunched over his sword as he sharpened it on a stone. It was a heady mix that entered my blood at the sight of him, the need to both atone and punish running parallel down the middle of my soul.
My mouth opened and closed as I tried to decide what to do, if I should do anything at all. But before I could make a decision, some distant part of my mind made it for me. “Belin,” I breathed.
Only his eyes looked up from his blade, his head still bowed over his work. I fought to keep the breath moving in and out of me as he stared. No signs of Calomyr remained. In fact, he’d detached from the Calomyr altogether — the Calomyr that had loved me, the Calomyr that had been working for my forgiveness. His face was no longer familiar, instead locked in a stern glare of formality and disdain. His eyes… They still sent lightning through me, but the emotionless state of them grounded each strike, snatched them right out of the sky.
He was a stranger.
His jaw locked as he straightened, features impassive. It was like I was an inconvenience, but he was working to keep the feeling hidden. But I couldn’t break my stare. Could he tell there were words in my chest that so badly wanted to be spoken? Could he tell what I was thinking right now, that I hated him to his core, but would fall to my knees before him if I let my resolve slip one more inch?
Gemstone eyes dropped then, leaving me cold in the absence of his stare. “You are the rightful Queen,” he began, his voice flat, “and I will serve you in my role as your sworn sword. But as you’ve requested, that’s where it ends.” His head raised again, the picture of austerity. “There is no longer anything past my duty to you. Everything I do for you is in service to the realm. So if you aren’t in need of any assistance, I’ll take my leave of you now.”
My mouth opened and closed as I tried to pull myself together, tried to understand what he’d just said. I blinked, my eyes beginning to sting from smoke or tears or both. My voice came out in a faint whisper. “Of course.”
He nodded, turning back to his sword, and I wondered if he knew he’d driven it straight into my ribs…but I knew I’d been the one to aim it.
Chapter 41
Blindbarrow was desolate, only rubble left behind. We’d tied the horses to a broken fence post and stared down the empty main street of Eserene’s closest neighboring village.
“He was here, wasn’t he?” Miles asked as the three of us began walking. “Castemont?”
Belin nodded, expressionless. Nobody wanted to breathe life into the question. It hung above us like a hangman’s noose, haunting us as it swung in the wind.
Was Umbri even here in Blindbarrow anymore?
