He reaches out a hand—the one with the bargain’s seal on it, the bandage torn—and grasps my left wrist. Weakly hauls it up to his eyes. The Telling Stone dangles from its silver chain.
For a moment, the pain contorting his features lifts. “This,” he croaks, eyes wide. His yellow gaze shifts to me. “You never . . . needed me . . . if you had this.”
He tenses and drops both his head and my wrist, groaning. Black pours from his wounds. He starts to collapse, but I grab him, hooking one arm beneath his shoulder. His blood seeps through my sleeve.
I turn his face and kiss him.
His blood is metallic, just like human blood. I taste it on my lips. He doesn’t respond, but he doesn’t need to. I feel the break inside me. It makes me weep all the more as it passes from me to him, ethereal and unseen.
Maekallus jerks back, breath rushing into him. He gasps, coughs.
Blood patterns his skin in honeycombs, but the lesions close, and every last speck of blackness vanishes.
It’s the last thing I see before shadow swallows the wildwood.
CHAPTER 16
One can summon a mysting by drawing a ring on the earth and, within the ring, an eight-pointed star formed by two overlapping squares. Each corner of the star must touch the outer ring. A sacrifice must be made to activate it. Blood is the surest means of stimulation, but fire will also work.
I open my eyes to Maekallus’s face framed by the sun-laced canopy of the wildwood. His yellow eyes dart back and forth, studying me. I blink several times and try to sit up. An encompassing headache introduces itself.
His hand on my back helps me until I’m upright. Blood crusts on my sleeve. Crusting already?
I blacked out. For several minutes, at least.
“Enna?” he asks.
It takes me a moment to comprehend. I see my surroundings. I’m in the wildwood, but I cannot remember how I came to be here. A grinler with a broken neck lies some paces away. A grinler? I stare at it. For a long time. Maekallus repeats my name.
I look back at him, at the thread of light wrapping around the right side of his chest and beaming back toward the glade. That’s when it strikes me.
He’s not in the glade.
He’s here. Where the grinlers attacked. The memory seeps into my mind like molasses. I wait until it’s all there before speaking.
“How are you here?” My voice is raspy. There’s water in my basket, but I don’t reach for it.
His eyes drop to my wrist. There’s no point in dissembling, not anymore. I lift it and take the cool Telling Stone in my other hand, turning it about, letting its smooth surface catch filtered sunlight.
“That’s what they wanted.” It’s a statement, not a question. The goblers, he means.
I nod. “I don’t know why. It’s just a Telling charm.”
His eyes narrow. “That’s no charm.”
I clutch the stone in my fist, hiding it from him. “It is. That’s how I knew about the gobler. It turns cold when mystings are nearby.”
He takes my wrist and pulls until I release the dark rock. He lifts my hand so the stone dangles before my face. “This is Scroud’s Will Stone.”
My mouth is dry. I try to swallow, to work up some moisture. “Will Stone?” Scroud?
He lets me go and leans back. A long breath passes his lips. “It’s said to be the petrified heart of the god who first created the mystings.”
The words chill me. “But . . . a god cannot—”
“I don’t know the lore.” He glances down, his horn dangerously close to my forehead. I push the point away; he lifts his head to oblige. “That once belonged to a very powerful mysting lord named Scroud. An orjan.”
Orjans are in the notes I copied from my grandmother’s journal. Humanoid and intelligent, like a narval, but with bluish skin similar to a gobler’s. Two great horns that curve back over the head like a helmet. Tusks similar to a grinler’s. The eyes are shaded completely black.
Had my father stolen this Telling—Will—Stone from such a creature?
“What do you mean, a ‘Will’ Stone?” I press.
He watches me for a moment longer, perhaps trying to discern my genuineness. Then he stands, pushing off the bloody muck beneath him.
His tail is gone.
It once hung over the waist of his pants, but it’s vanished, and Maekallus’s backside is smooth. I gape at him, choking on words. Should I tell him? How?
Emptiness echoes inside me. My dwindling soul?
“Scroud was powerful because of that.” Maekallus points to my bracelet. “It bends the will of those around you. He built up an army with it.” He cringes. “Even I bowed to its power once.”
When I don’t answer, he continues, “You’ve heard of the War That Almost Was. Scroud’s first attempt to claim a piece of the mortal realm. Foolish, but none of us could deny him. Not with that.” He spits the last word. “He wanted my kind for scouts. And we couldn’t say no. The second his army grew too numerous and he got distracted, I ran for it. Then your mortals drove him back, and someone took his precious amulet away from him. His war barely started before it ended.” Then, as an afterthought, he adds, “He’s spent the last two decades looking for it. He’s held on to some of his recruits. The goblers, for instance. He must be poking holes all over the mortal realm, looking for it.”
He regards me with something between disdain and awe. I, of course, was not the one to take it, but surely he is piecing together who did.
I stand, my legs sore, my dress bloody. I wipe my hands clean on the skirt. Beneath my loose bandage, my palm bears a pale scar. “But I . . . I never . . .”
My mouth closes. My mind is slow, but the memories come. Maekallus agreeing to my meager price so easily. The apothecary relinquishing information. Tennith escorting me to Caisgard. My father allowing me to go. Maekallus returning my book so promptly. The grinlers running away, their meal uneaten.
My gaze drops to Maekallus’s chest. Had I not, in my heart, called out to him as the grinlers surrounded me?
“I willed you here.” The words are but a breath. I broke the limits of his mortal cage.
He touches the spot on his chest where the spell buries into his flesh.
It makes sense. Even with half a mind, my father should not have permitted me to go to Caisgard in the company of an unmarried bachelor. And knowing Maekallus as I do now, I know he never would have consented to help me for mere coin. And he . . . he’s seen this stone before. It bent him to another’s will then, just as it does now.
Did the stone also compel him to fight so brutally, or did he want to defend me?
“Mystings have searched for it for years,” he continues. “Somehow that gobler traced it here, and when he didn’t come back, his friends came looking. I wonder . . .”
“What?”
He presses his lips together.
“What, Maekallus?”
“If they’re Scroud’s henchman, we’re in more trouble than we thought. He might not have the stone anymore, but his influence is . . . substantial.”
While I’m somewhat comforted by the use of the word we, I shiver. “They’ve not returned.” Besides Maekallus, the only mystings who have witnessed my ownership of the stone are dead.
Maekallus frowns. “No. Not yet.” He perks up suddenly and looks at me as though I’m a stranger. Like he’s realized something.