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“Kase,” Malin said, studying the wall of shadows. “Were you going to go somewhere?”
“The ring did it,” Raum said in a lazy tone. “Same as before. Seems now that you’ve powered up all the lovely mesmer in the thing, it beckons to our dear Kase whenever someone dons the bleeding ring.”
Malin’s brow furrowed when she looked to me again. “You connected to Valen this time?”
“I did.” I held up my hand as a signal to stay back. “Valen, move back by Malin. I want to try something.”
Stepping next to the inky wall, I closed my eyes, and crossed the barrier. Like falling too fast, or startling out of a dream, a rush of cool wind brushed over my face, but nearly as soon as it began, I slammed into Valen, even after he had moved his position.
He hurried and caught my arm, steadying me from falling backward. A laugh scraped out when I met his eyes. “This brought me directly to you. Not just a place. It was focused on where you were.”
“I’m trying it.” Raum called out near the misty barrier.
“Raum, wait—”
Why did I even attempt to reason with him? Raum took the wall at a run and was promptly swallowed up in the shadows. In the next breath he was a pace away from me. He stumbled, steadying himself by clutching to my shoulder.
“Three hells, did you see that?”
“No,” Gunnar said with a bit of derision. “We were all turned away at the same moment and missed you suddenly appearing out of thin air.”
“Watch the tone, princeling.” Raum looked at me. “The moment I stepped in, I knew I’d be here. He’s right. His mesmer connects to the ring.”
“But Ivar had been wearing it for turns,” Fiske said.
“Yes,” I agreed. “But Malin is the heir. She’s awakened the true power of it.”
And that power had connected with my mesmer in a fascinating way. All the things I could do with a deep connection to the ring. I could be at Malin’s side in an instant. If an enemy donned the ring, I could—three hells—breath stilled in my chest when schemes and games and marks shaped in my skull with all the things I could do if anenemydonned the ring. A final step, a final plan.
“Kase.” Malin folded her arms over her chest; her attention flicked to the shadows at our backs. “Are you going to explain what has you so thrilled?”
“Yes. Will you run another test for me? Someone wear the ring. Then go far from us, far enough we cannot see you.”
Niklas was practically snapping his teeth to have a chance to touch the ring, so naturally he was the one who volunteered.
“What about The Withering?” Malin asked.
“Valen is not withered. I think it takes time. A few moments won’t do harm.” Niklas held out his hand. “Ring me.”
Junius worried her teeth into her bottom lip as Malin placed the ring on Niklas’s hand.
“Go away, Nik,” I said. “But think of something that scares you.”
“We are always afraid, my friend. Shan’t be but a moment.” Niklas sprinted into the trees, fading from sight.
I waited for ten breaths, then closed my eyes. It took a moment to feel the strange wave of fear. Taut, grimy nerves rolled over my shoulders, down my arms, until an unsettling numbness took hold of my fingertips. A fear of losing Junie, of the unknowns Nik had endured when she’d been a prisoner in the North.
Gasps of surprise rippled through our camp when a new wall rose from the ground. Taller than before, richer in the shade of black. The more I focused on it, the denser it became.
“What is it?” Hob shouted from a log he’d perched upon with Inge.
“It’s fear. Deep, unshakeable fears, but the ring hones them to a single target,” I said. Could I build it out? Surround the grove to aim at a certain place?
I spread out my palms. The darkness blanketed the forest floor, diving beneath the ground like tree roots, then bursting to the surface and shaping a barrier between branches and trunks. The wall encircled at least a hundred paces of the grove from every direction.
“Gunnar, do you see that boulder there?” I pointed to a rocky slope at the edge of the shadow wall. “The tallest one?”
“I see it,” Gunnar said, coming to my side.
