I had been staring at the sealed entrance of Reaper’s Cavern for what felt like hours. Though grief beckoned like a siren, I wouldn’t succumb just yet. Instead, I focused on my bewilderment—how could I have been so supremely foolish? How could I have let both Arwen and Mari slip through my fingers?
Fedrik moaned as Griffin attempted something with his leg behind me. After a few long, tedious inhales and the stomp of boots, Griffin arrived at my side. I was still confounded by my own horrible, inexcusable decision-making when he surveyed the solid rock next to me. “How’s the staring going?”
“How’s the prince?”
“He needs help.”
“We have to wait for Arwen. We can’t risk an infirmary. The towns are swarming with Amber soldiers…”
A miserable groan pulled our eyes to the tree where Fedrik leaned, trying to adjust his position. Griffin hadn’t been wrong: the prince’s face was nearly gray, his leg tied off with a tourniquet below the knee.
“That leg will be septic soon,” Griffin said. “We should get him back to camp.”
“We can’t. Not yet.”
“You think I want to leave them?”
I knew we had to help Fedrik, but I couldn’t move. Couldn’t or wouldn’t, I wasn’t sure. The solid, cratered stone mass before me taunted me. I couldn’t leave—wouldn’t leave without—
Mari’s voice pierced my thoughts like an arrowhead. “Holy Stones, there you are!”
Thank the Gods—
Griffin moved like a man possessed, bounding for her. He reached Mari just as she cleared the tree line, only to stall a foot in front of her. A loaded pause followed as he scratched his arm before saying, in relieved greeting, “Witch.”
Mari only huffed and walked around him. “Fedrik, are you all right?”
Fedrik grimaced in response, his eyes elsewhere. He and I were both staring at the same leafy green spot in the jungle Mari had just passed through.
Waiting.
A beat—
And then another.
Before my eyes stung. Before my hands clenched into fists. Before acid burned my throat.
“Where is Arwen?” Mari asked first, her voice smaller than I’d ever heard it.
Fedrik looked stricken. “She isn’t with you?”
My whole body went still, my pulse halting in my veins. “You were just with her.” My sight had gone red, like a fog of blood. “What do you mean, where is she?”
Griffin smoothly stepped in front of Mari, his face a mask of calm. “Fuck, Griff, I’m not going to hurt her,” I bit out. “Mari, tell me what happened.”
The witch swallowed audibly. “We escaped the treasure room and made it through this terrifying stone maze, then an avalanche of rock barreled toward us. We were exhausted—I’ve never run so much in my entire life, but even Arwen was tired, I could tell—” She paused to swallow again. “It was horrible and so much faster than us. We kept going deeper into the caves until we saw a corridor that opened to the jungle, and she… she…”
Finish the thought before I rip it from your tongue—
“She saved me. She used her lighte,” Mari said quietly, “to protect us both and push me in, even though there wasn’t enough time for her. She would have been crushed, so she kept running. I tried to go back, but the tunnel was impenetrable because of the landslide. I tried a disintegration spell, but it didn’t affect the stone, and I don’t have my spell books, and—” Another swallow. “All I could do was hope she made it to you first, but now… I don’t know where she is.”
For a moment, it was silent. Nothing but the caws of birds and the humid breeze rustling the waxy leaves around us.
“I have to go back in.” I wasn’t even sure if I’d spoken the words aloud.
“You heard the witch,” Griffin said. “There’s no way back in.”
“Arwen is probably trapped in there. Her greatest fear. I have to—” I couldn’t think. What could I even do? I turned to Mari. The look in her eyes told me my expression was as horrifying as it felt on my face. I tried to compose myself. “Mari, you have to do something.”
“Like what?” She clutched Briar’s amulet again.
“A locator spell,” Fedrik groaned against the tree, his face very pale.
“I just told you.” Her voice grew frantic. “I don’t have my grimoires. I don’t know these spells off the top of my head. I’m not an encyclopedia.”
This was not the time for Mari to doubt herself. As if reading my thoughts, Griffin held her gaze and said firmly, “You know enough. What about—”
“Oh yes, you know all the spells! Rattle them off for me, will you?”
I nearly knocked myself unconscious. “Please, Mari. Skewer the commander with your wit later. Think now.”
Griffin, the brave bastard, stepped closer to her. “Clear your mind and think of your grimoires. You’ve read them all cover to cover.”
Mari chewed her lip. “Maybe a binding spell? To tie one of us to her. It’d be like running around blindfolded, but they’d know if they were getting closer. They’d be able to feel her.”
“Me. Send me. Do it now.”
“I need a memory of you and her to bind you together.”
A dark cloud passed over the shining sun, and a chill crawled up my spine. “What kind of memory?”
Mari shut her eyes. “Anything with a strong emotion.” She raised her hands to the sky, fingers taut and spread wide toward the tree cover, and murmured words in a language I didn’t recognize.
“There was an evening.” I cleared my throat. “A few months ago, when she spoke during a forum I held. She had great insight. I remember feeling unbelievably proud of her… the way she braved the room. I knew my people still scared her, and yet—”
One of Mari’s eyes peeked open. “I’m going to need more than that, Kane. You have to actually feel something.”
Rare heat flamed up my neck—I didn’t embarrass easily. “Fine,” I gritted out. The memory she needed bobbed to the surface from where I’d suppressed it the past few months.
“The night the wolfbeast attacked Arwen.” I prickled against Fedrik’s and Griffin’s curious eyes. “I had been flying back from Willowridge. The whole way home, I was kicking myself for leaving her. I had this… feeling that something would happen to her while I was gone. That I would be punished somehow. Perhaps because we had grown so close the night before. Or because the people I cared about so often wound up dead.
“When I got back, I raced to her room. I was going to make up some flimsy excuse for visiting her, but she was gone.” My knuckles went tight against the memory of her empty bedroom. “It was like finding a limb missing. Running through the woods, I think I made a promise to every God for her safe return. And when I found her in that clearing… saw her blood leaking onto the forest floor…
“I thought my very heart lived outside my body in that moment, and I watched it wither and die. I would have given my own life ten times over to save her from that pain. From the fever, the nightmares, the agony. It was the longest night of my life. When she awoke the next morning—healing, laughing—it was like dawn breaking over a thousand years of darkness. She—”
“It’s done.”
I hadn’t noticed the wind swirling around us—or that I’d closed my eyes—but when I opened them, Mari’s hair fell softly around her face, and thin, reedy leaves fluttered back down to the ground.
Like a bath of light and warmth, I felt Arwen’s spirit flitting about inside my chest.
Alive—
She was alive.
I clutched at my heart. “She’s all right.”
“Thank the Stones,” Mari breathed. “You should be able to sense where she is. The feeling of being tied to her will intensify as you get closer. Once you touch, the spell will end.”
I made sure I still had my sword and gathered my pack.
“We’ll meet you back at camp,” Griffin said. “We won’t risk finding a healer in Frog Eye unless we have to.”
I nodded and took off toward the layers of greenery ahead of me.
The sensation of my hands being tied stopped me in my tracks. Monkey shouts and bird calls were swallowed by pure silence as I looked down, but my arms hung at my sides, despite the feeling telling me otherwise.
“What is it?” Griffin called.
Fear—true, genuine fear—hammered through my heart.
“I think…” I could feel what Arwen felt. Could feel her being tethered to something, my back mirroring hers, bound to some kind of pole. “I think someone has her.” My voice was hoarse.
Horror knotted both Mari’s and Fedrik’s faces.
I didn’t waste another moment before hurtling for the trees.
