Don’t let them take me back. Her words echoed through his mind. Her fingers brushed the end of the sect knife at his belt, pausing meaningfully before moving on. Her eyes pleaded with him.
There was no way they could leave this place, they both knew that. No way he would accept the Fellna’s offers or demands. No way he could leave her in their clutches, not now.
She embraced him, pressing her icy body close so she could whisper in his ear. Her breath played against his ear like a winter breeze.
“They want you. Either to join them, or to just... to go away, to let Jeren face her brother alone and fall, either his prisoner or a slave to her own magic. It isn’t a Holtlands matter anymore. They’re pulling the strings. They want her weak enough to be manipulated like Gilliad. Without you, she is. You’re doing their job for them, Shan. Do you understand?”
He nodded. She pulled back, her hands on either shoulder, her whole midsection exposed to him. She lifted her chin proudly and the long line of her throat stood out to him, pale and beautiful.
“Not much time.” She swallowed hard and closed her eyes. “They’re near but at the slightest danger they’ll flee, go to fetch her. You’ll have a brief moment to get away. Follow the path, get back to Jeren. Do it. Now!”
“Ghen’is, M’Rashina.” The old tongue flowed like music from his lips. Honour to you, Sect Mother. He could give her this last thing, this restoration of respect, if only for a moment. She smiled and her eyes glittered like broken glass.
Shan brought the knife up and out in an arc like a flash of lightning, so quick, so fast that at first only the shocked stiffening of her body indicated it had met its mark.
And the blood. It gushed from her neck, down her front and her face relaxed, as if she gave one last sigh of relief.
He caught her as she slumped forwards, brought her gently to the ground, wasting precious seconds. She was dead before she reached it.
The Fell gave a roar of outrage and swarmed, a tangle of limbs and shadows.
Something deep inside Shan hardened. He smoothed back the hair from her face. He should braid it for her, lay her out like the Sect Mother she had been, like the Shistra-Phail warrior she had become once more in the moments before her death. She deserved no less.
But there was no time.
“Come on Naul.” He gathered the gangly-legged pup in his arms and stood. South, that was the way he had to go. Nothing had changed. In fact, it had just become all the more urgent.
The Enchassa wanted to use Jeren. He could never allow that.
With the young wolf in his arms, he began to run.
Jeren never gave Fethan an answer. Not that it mattered. One terse conversation with Indarin and the Ariah sealed her fate on that front. The evening after he had made his offer, she sat with them to eat, Indarin had insisted.
She’d been so angry she could barely speak. Shan hadn’t returned, so she couldn’t even turn to him for support.
“I can no longer teach you,” said Indarin. “And he is the most experienced of all here. But be wary of what he’ll teach you.”
“What do you mean?” the Ariah snapped.
Indarin’s face remained placid. “Your idea, I presume?”
“He came to me. I agreed.”
“You decided, you mean. For everyone.”
She drew herself up straight, her head held high. “That’s part of the role of the Ariah. You told me that yourself.”
Shan’s brother smiled, ducked his head and his voice softened. “Yes. I did. And it is. Forgive me, Ariah. I still stand by what I said. Jeren, be wary of what he will teach you, of what you can do with your abilities.”
Jeren studied him for a moment. “As the Ariah rightly said, what do you mean?”
But Indarin only sighed. “I mean only this. Just because a thing can be done, does not mean it should be done. Just because you can do something, does not mean it is right. Your heart is wavering, Jeren. I don’t need magic to see that.”
“My heart isn’t wavering, Indarin.” It’s broken.
She left them staring after her, wishing they would resolve their own issues before commenting on hers, knowing they would do nothing of the kind.
As she walked back to their tent, her head down and shoulders bowed Vertigern fell into step beside her.
“Is there any sign of him?” he asked. No need to ask who he meant. She knew.
“No.”
“Would you care to take my pavilion, Lady Jeren?” His tone was hushed, strangely respectful. Jeren flashed a sharp glance at him but saw that he was in earnest. “Just for as long as you need it, for your better protection.”
Jeren’s eyes stung and she blinked back tears of gratitude. And guilt. She shouldn’t be grateful to Vertigern for offering her a place away from her husband.
He’d been so angry. His face, as it flared in her memory, was barely recognisable. The monster from her childhood nightmares.
“Very well,” she whispered and her throat closed, tight on the words.
Alone in the huge round tent—at least three times the size of their one, their home—amid the luxuries even a minor lord of the Holtlands felt obligated to travel with, she felt like a traitor.
Shan wasn’t back when she gathered her things from their tent. He wasn’t there when she checked an hour later. For the first time she forced herself to come face to face with idea that he wasn’t coming back at all.
Jeren sat there in the darkness, staring at their belongings and reached out with her mind. Kiah wasn’t far off now, coming closer. The owl would know, would have news. Surely. Some small hope.
The sentry on the edge of the camp stiffened as she approached the darkness, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. It was cold this night, and that was why she shivered like a child waking from a nightmare.
“Lady Jeren?”
“Albrim, isn’t it?” He bowed low, his eyes averted in respect. “When my husband returns, have someone send me word.”
“The Shistra-Phail, my lady?”
It sounded like suspicion in his voice. She glanced sharply at him, but his face was obscured, gave away nothing.
“My husband,” she said with a little more force than was necessary and turned her back on him. Jeren walked back to the pavilion, holding her body stiffly to keep from breaking down completely. No one else thought he was coming back. No one at all.
She unrolled the cloak made from Anala’s fur and stretched it out beside her, wept into its soft depths where no one would hear her. Time unwound around her, and lost between grief and exhaustion Jeren slept.
Movement alerted her, a soft footstep and the swish of material. She woke with a start, only becoming aware that sleep had claimed her when it was swept away. Shan stood in the door of the pavilion. There was no mistaking his silhouette, the square of his shoulders, the proud angle of his head.
“Shan?” Her voice trembled more than she would have liked to admit.
“I didn’t know where you were.”
His voice sounded wrong. Lost and alone. Hollow somehow. Jeren pushed herself up and Shan’s sharp eyes flicked to the fur.
Jeren stared up into his unreadable face.
“You’ve been gone so long. I didn’t-didn’t want to sleep back there on my own any more.”
Her husband’s voice sounded thin with a mixture of anger and grief. “So you came here?”
The anger she’d been hording bubbled up through her body.
“It has been days. I didn’t know if you were coming back at all.” She blurted the words out before she even registered what they were.