Maekallus growls in response. “If you were a more docile mortal—”
He couldn’t possibly be worried about my safety. I have the Will Stone. Still, doubt creeps into my chest. “How many can I control at once?”
He shakes his head. “I’m not sure. Several. Scroud . . .” He pauses, and I wonder if his memories are painful, even now. “He had a method to it. Shifts, clockwork, something. I wouldn’t feel his pull constantly—it ebbed and flowed, but not consistently enough for me to find an easy way around it. Once I did, I ran beyond the reach of his influence. But Scroud’s army was substantial, twenty years ago.” He meets my eyes. “I doubt the numbers are the same now, without that rock’s power, but . . .” He offers a half-hearted shrug.
“So he couldn’t have controlled his entire army at once, only parts of it?”
“I don’t know.” He pauses, running his knuckles along the underside of his chin. “Don’t go into the Deep. Bring Grapf to you. The scrying spell could sense him over the threshold . . . perhaps the portal ring will let the stone’s power extend through the barrier between our realms.”
I look away, gooseflesh rising on my arms. “Don’t worry, Maekallus. I’ve seen enough of your realm to know to stay away.”
“Nightmares again?”
I nod.
He sets his jaw. Silence stretches for nearly a minute before he speaks again. “Enna, had I known—”
I glare at him, and his words die beneath my scrutiny. For some reason, I feel the weight of each individual letter panging beneath my breast. A sore lump presses into my throat, and I swallow it down.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, crouching by the brook.
I sigh. Consider. “Maekallus.”
He lifts his head until his horn points at my crown.
“What does it . . . feel like? My soul?”
He frowns. Doesn’t answer at first, but I let the weight of silence press against him. His amber eyes look toward the water. “Terrible,” he says, his voice gruff. “Wonderful. Strange. I’ve had souls before, Enna. I am what I am. But never like this. They’ve never been more than . . . food.”
I consider this, unable to empathize.
“It makes me remember things that aren’t mine to remember.”
“My memories?” My face heats.
But he shakes his head. “No. This is your soul, but it isn’t you. The memories . . . they’re someone else’s.”
“Yours?”
He meets my eyes again, his amber gaze full of some strange emotion. “I don’t know.”
We stay like that for a moment, just staring at one another. I wish I could crawl inside his head and see what he sees, feel what he feels. I wish I could understand better. When I speak, my voice chokes to a whisper. “You’ll give it back, won’t you?”
The skin around his eyes tightens. “I will do anything to save you, Enna.”
That hits my heart harder than the rest, and I glance away to prevent tears from betraying me. Once I’ve regained my composure, I say, “I’ll meet you in the glade, near sunset.”
“Let me carry you home.”
“No. I have enough strength today. We’ll make this work, Maekallus.”
He nods, and I turn away. His gaze touches me like a feather across my neck, and despite my best efforts to stay strong, I glance back and meet it.
Once I’m home, I massage my chest and will the heartache to pass, but the Will Stone is not strong enough to obey me.
This will be the last time I lie to my father.
I tell him a woman—one whom I’ve invented—is in labor in town, and that the midwife is ill with the same ailment that plagued him, so I’ve volunteered to help her through the birth. I make sure he’s fed and comfortable in his chair by the fire, and every window is lined with herbs to protect the house against mystings, before I set out into the wildwood. The sun hangs high over the mountains. Even with my slow pace, I should be able to reach Maekallus by the designated time. My mother’s dagger rests in a belt over my hips. The Will Stone is cold in my hands, warning me of other mystings in the wildwood.
I’m surprised to see my scrying spell intact when I reach Maekallus’s glade, its white shimmer hanging in the air. I drink water and take a bite from a peach I brought, hoping it will renew my energy. Though only a few hours have passed, Maekallus looks worse than before. The black around his eye is creeping toward his jaw. More of his stomach and back are corrupted.
It would take only one kiss. One kiss, and I could feel his arms around me, his mouth against mine. A moment of bliss for a piece of my dwindling spirit. It’s absurd that the exchange tempts me, even if only for a breath. I might not make it tonight if I give up anything more, and he’s hardly a tar puddle.
Still, I hate seeing him suffer, however much he might deserve it.
I swallow and wipe perspiration from my brow. “I . . . need you to carry me part of the way. It’s . . . far.”
He reaches a hand for me, and I’m about to insist I ride on his back—I shouldn’t want to be in his arms—but the words jumble against my tongue. Maekallus swoops me up. I wonder how much of his own strength remains.
I point in the direction the scrying spell leads, but he says, “I know the way.”
I turn my head, trying not to smell the scent of corruption on his skin. It makes his touch colder, more like the mysting he should be. I focus on the task ahead, on the portal ring, and on Scroud.
“What if Scroud is there?” I ask.
“Then we come back in the morning.”
“But—”
“I don’t know, Enna.” I can barely hear him over his footsteps. “I don’t know.”
I clutch the Will Stone in both hands as Maekallus picks his way through the wildwood. It turns colder and colder, and I curl against him for heat. My pulse quickens with the stone’s warnings. I remind myself that my father got close enough to Scroud to steal his most precious belonging and lived to tell the tale.
Over a mile stretches beneath Maekallus before I put my hand to his chest. “Stop.”
He pauses. “We can get closer—”
“Put me down.”
I don’t will it, but he obliges as if I had. The brief rest granted me a little more strength. I look at the glimmering scrying spell ahead of me, then at the sun. I need to move quickly.
“Enna.”
I meet his eyes and keep my voice low. “Go back to the glade.”
“No.”
I hold up my left hand and let the Will Stone dangle between us.
He remains unmoving. Petulant.
I lower my hand. He knows I don’t want to force him. And I won’t. “I can do this. I have the stone. I can see the scrying spell. You can’t.”
He glowers. The heat of his gaze is stronger than that of the lowering sun. He lifts a hand and touches my jaw, sending pinpricks down the side of my neck. When I don’t pull away, he leans forward and whispers in my ear, “Be ready for anything. Move forward only for your sake, not for mine.”
He kisses me just beneath my earlobe. For a moment, in the back of my thoughts, we are two different people in a different place, free of the threat of monsters and the ache of betrayal. I blink, and the moment is gone.
Maekallus backs away, pulling the thin red light of the binding spell a few steps closer to the glade. I wrench away from his gaze and focus on the trail of mist. Steel myself. Will strength to my limbs.
I tread through the wildwood on the tips of my toes, creeping over the uneven forest floor as fast as I can without being too loud or wasting away my energy. Maekallus will not follow me, for he knows I am right—his spell would give him away. Give us away. I wonder if he discovered as much when scouting yesterday, without the power of the Will Stone to hide him. But my focus will need to be on the gobler—on summoning it and keeping it hidden from the mystings at the portal ring. I’m not confident I can do that and keep Maekallus masked, and I don’t dare test the breadth of the Will Stone’s power here.