by Sadie Moss
Echo shrugs. “She has a point. Her mold is a kind of magic in and of itself.”
“Poultice,” I growl. “You’re all pains in my ass.”
Echo and Paris chuckle, but Callum remains stoic while I tear thin strips from my dress to bandage his wound. Not that I don’t trust Paris’s magic to hold, but now that I’ve begun the process of treating Callum’s wounds, my healer’s training won’t let me stop until I’ve completed all the steps.
As I begin to lay the makeshift bandages across the poultice, I finally get up the nerve to ask the question that’s been eating away at me ever since I tumbled out of the portal with a severed head beside me.
The only question that really matters.
“What on earth happened back at the palace?” I whisper softly.
“Were you not there?” Paris asks with a grin that clearly shows he thinks he’s clever.
Normally he and Echo can both lighten my mood with their teasing, but right now, his words only tighten the knot in my stomach.
Yes. I was there. And what I saw made no sense.
Not even acknowledging his joke, I glance at all three of men. “Kaius announced he was going to extinguish me, and you all agreed with him.”
The messengers exchange a glance, communicating something without words. I don’t know what it is, but their expressions turn serious and pensive.
“Messengers are created with one purpose,” Echo finally says, meeting my gaze. “To serve their god. Were we to disagree with him, Kaius would have extinguished us. We had to play along.”
“You were planning to escape the whole time?” I ask. “Even when it was you he wanted to punish and not me?”
The dark-haired messenger clears his throat and shoots Callum a look. “I am, uh, unsure of what our original plan was.”
“We were fine,” Callum grouses, the muscles of his forearms rippling as he curls his hands into fists, fixing his glare on me. “Then you came in and farsed everything.”
“Did I though?” I shoot back, my words like flint. I now owe them a much greater debt than they owe me, but I still won’t be blamed for wanting to help them—for caring if their god snuffed them out like candle flames. “Or did I save you from an untimely death by shifting Kaius’s attention, and thus giving you the opportunity to flee?”
Echo grins, his arms resting on his knees, while Paris dramatically scoots away from us both, as if we’re treading on thin ice with Callum and everything is about to fall apart.
I finish tying the knot to hold the makeshift bandages against Callum’s side, and I don’t bother being easy about it. I yank the knot tight, relishing the pained grunt that comes from his lips.
Callum shoves my hands away and sits up with a wince, his hand moving to his side. “We’ll never be able to return to Ironholde.”
“I know.” Paris’s jaw clenches, and once again, I’m struck by the feeling that these men aren’t telling me everything. That there’s more to what just happened than I can fully understand. “If Kaius was angry over our interference in Zelus’s territory, that will be nothing compared to his rage over our direct disobedience.”
“He’ll be furious at our escape. Not to mention the fact that we stole away his prisoner,” Echo says, reaching out to brush his knuckles over my cheek.
“Why? Surely I’m not that significant to his plans.” Ignoring the way my nerves light up under Echo’s touch, I shake my head. “I’m just a lost soul, not even one who worshipped him in life. What difference do I make in the grand scheme of his kingdom?”
Callum shakes his head as he slowly gets to his knees and stands, hand still pressed to his bandages. “He wanted to make an example of you. We took away his public execution.”
Paris and Echo both bristle, as if they hate hearing even a mention of my being extinguished by Kaius.
As I recognize their fury, I also realize I can feel a strain of tension in the air between all four of us. But like all the emotions that flow through our soul connection, I can’t quite understand where it’s coming from or what it means.
I wish the threads between us carried more than just a sense of their feelings, because this not knowing will be the death of me. I can never understand what any of the messengers are thinking, and I’m tired of trying. I can’t deal with this new tension in the air any more than I can deal with Callum’s coldness after the heated passion of his lips on mine.
So I ignore the strain between us and ask what I consider the next most pressing question. “What do we do now? We’re in the Unclaimed Expanse, and certainly we’re still being hunted. So what’s our next move?”
“Kaius will tear the kingdom apart to find us,” Echo says, hopping lithely to his feet and turning to address Callum. “We aren’t safe here.”
“We won’t be safe anywhere accessible to Kaius,” Paris adds. He’s still on the ground, lounging languidly as if we have all the time in the world.
“Sierian,” Callum says gruffly. “Her realm is close. It borders Kaius’s domain in the human realm, although they’re separated by the Unclaimed Expanse in this realm. We can seek asylum there.”
“Who’s Sierian?” I ask. The name sounds slightly familiar, as if I heard it once in life but it didn’t stick in my mind enough for me to carry it into death.
“A goddess.” Echo glances around as he speaks, probably trying to get his bearings—although how that’s possible in this ever-changing landscape, I have no idea.
“A benevolent goddess,” Paris corrects, coming to join us. “We’ll have to find a portal to earth in the Expanse and then travel the weave to reach her human domain.”
I look at Callum, forcing myself to stand tall in front of him, tired of the way he continues to avoid my gaze and my questions. “Will that be far enough away to protect us?”
He finally looks at me, his face cold and remote but a banked fire burning in his eyes. “It will have to be.”
11
Over the next few days, we travel through the Unclaimed Expanse, searching for a portal to the mortal world that the men are sure is close by.
Their surety is suspect, however, in the way they argue over every direction we take. By the end of the second day, the three of them have nearly come to blows twice over which way to go. I’m positive we’re going to die out here before they come to an agreement on where this supposed portal exists, or they’re going to kill each other in the process.
We spend the first full day nursing what’s left of Callum’s canteen until we reach a small, nearly dry lake where we can all replenish our stores. On the second day, we run out of dry goods, and by the third sunset, we’re all hungry enough to eat the brambles growing from the dry ground. I’ve kept a close eye on Callum’s wound, and although I know it still pains him, it is healing slowly. My ministrations are at least keeping infection at bay, buying us time until we’re able to heal him magically.
I can’t believe the sheer amount of open space we’ve traveled, and the distance we seem to have covered in just three days. The Unclaimed Expanse is a changing landscape, shifting from the familiar dead and barren plains to thick, bare forests to low rocky hills. Nothing remains the same for long in this huge swath of land.
“Does the Expanse ever end?” I gripe as we make camp on the third evening. Callum has headed off into the woods, seeking more fresh water while the rest of us set up for the night. “Or will we just be here forever until we starve to death or shrivel into husks with just as much life in them as the trees?”
“It’s the shriveling,” Paris replies from where he’s bent over, stacking rocks in a circle for our fire pit. “We’ll be here until we shrivel.”
Echo gives his brother a rude gesture, then smiles at me. “The Expanse isn’t as big as it seems. It exists outside of any god’s domain, so only wild magic rules here. That magic shifts the landscape, making it stretch and expand.”
“That sounds like it could be catastrophically dangerous for a wandering soul.”
A shiver passes up my spine as it strikes me for the first time how farsing lucky I am that these three men found me when I first entered the afterworld. If they hadn’t come upon me when they did, I could’ve become trapped in this ever-changing terrain for days, weeks, or even longer. I could’ve wasted away to nothing out here.
“Yes.” Echo’s voice is quieter, his smile gone. Is he thinking the same thing I am? Considering what could’ve become of me? “It could be.”
There’s a softness in his tone that makes me want to crawl onto his lap and wrap my arms around him, to kiss him and murmur words of thanks in his ear. But after the incident with Callum, I’m wary of revealing too much of my feelings to these men.
As we finish setting up camp, my thoughts turn to the day I ran off alone into the Expanse to try to find a portal back home. The afterworld beast wasn’t the only threat I might have faced out here by myself, and that was the second time the men saved me from danger in this wild place.
Why? The question beats like a drum in my head. It’s the same question I asked Paris in the woods the night he caught me watching Callum and Echo bathe. The question I asked after the three men disobeyed their god to save me from extinguishment. Why? Why do all this for me?
I’m standing with my back to the campsite, staring out over the vast plain and lost in thought, when Echo joins me.
“Since we’re out of food,” he murmurs, coming to stand beside me as his arm brushes mine, “Paris suggested we hunt. He can cook our meal over the fire tonight.”
“Will there be much to kill in this place? Much worth eating?”
Echo motions to the forest on the other side of our camp. “There will be some creatures in there. It won’t be the most glamorous of meals, but it will be sustenance.”
“I lived for years in a place where meals were never glamorous,” I remind him with a chuckle. “Food was simply a barrier between life and death where I come from.”
His smile falls away, and he turns toward me, his fingers trailing down my arm before he takes my hand in his. “I hate that you had to live like that, Sage.”
“Specifically me?” I ask, my tone sharper than I intend for it to be. “Because quite a lot of people live like that while the citizens of Ironholde live like gods.”
“No, not just you. What you’re speaking of, it is… awful.” Echo seems to choose his words carefully, as if he’s afraid I’m going to get even angrier if he says the wrong thing.
I don’t even know what I’m getting angry over. The messenger before me with the dancing brown eyes and the slightly crooked nose didn’t have a hand in the decline of Zelus’s territories. He doesn’t even serve Zelus. The existence he led in Ironholde had little to do with his own choices, and more to do with bounties and rewards allotted to him by Kaius for years of faithful service.
He is a messenger. Created to serve his god. What right do I have to expect him to know what was going on in the earthly realm in another god’s territory? Or to fix it even if he did know?
Maybe I’m just on edge thinking of the dangers out here in the Unclaimed Expanse and the parallel dangers of the mortal realm.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur, my shoulders sagging. “That wasn’t very kind of me.”
Echo tightens his grip on my hand while the fingers of his other hand slip into my hair, cupping the back of my head. He tilts my face up to his gently and waits until our gazes meet and hold before he speaks. “You are allowed to be angry.”
We stare into one another’s eyes for a long moment, and I feel like I’m falling into the endless depths of his irises. I wonder what he knows about being angry or hiding his emotions, because he always seems so even-keeled and at peace with the universe and his place in it. Callum is solid and hard as a rock, Paris is all seductive charm, and Echo is the middle ground between them.
Or at least, that’s how it’s always seemed to me. But it isn’t as if I’ve been in Ironholde all that long; truthfully, I know very little about any of them.
I want to know more.
So much more.
Finally, Echo releases me and steps back, although there’s a slowness to his movements that speaks of reluctance. Certainly he’s not shoving me away like Callum did.
“We need hunting tools. I doubt your dagger and my sword will do us much good in long-range hunting, and the kinds of animals we’re going to want to eat are the kinds that will run away from us, not stick around to fight. You aren’t harboring a bow and arrow on your person anywhere, are you?” His lips quirk into a crooked smile that tugs my own mouth into an answering grin.
“No, unfortunately not. You aren’t harboring any supernatural speed and strength that could allow you to take down a buck with your bare hands?” I ask innocently.
Echo snorts. “I wish. Messengers have many powers, but there are limits to our abilities.”
I gaze around the campsite, digging around in my limited knowledge for other possibilities. There are plenty of rocks scattered around the dried dirt and grass, and the forest is a veritable plethora of long, solid branches. We have blades—not just the swords, but all three men carry daggers too. “We could make spears.”
A slow grin spreads across Echo’s handsome face. “I like the way you think, little soul.”
I lose another few inches at the hem of my dress in our quest to create hunting spears. We find two strong branches just inside the tree line, then use the fabric from my dress to lash daggers to the end of each. Though we wrap them as tightly as we can—using what little magic of the weave we can access to create additional binding—I’m sure the moment the spear glances off an animal’s bones, the dagger will separate from the wood. But in the meantime, this will be a useful tool, and hopefully give us the upper hand long enough to kill.
The spears won’t be as easy to use as a bow and arrow, but they’ll be functional. It’s not like we have much choice. Even if I could fashion a bow out of branches, we’d have nothing to use for the string. Besides, I’m capable of many things, but weapons carving isn’t one.
Makeshift weapons in hand, Echo and I leave Paris nursing his roaring fire and venture into the woods to look for dinner.
For the first time since I died and came to live in Ironholde, I feel completely in my element. This is what I lived for before I died. All those afternoons I spent with my hunting party in the forest around my village, chasing down food to help my family and friends has led to this moment. We prowl through the forest, careful of where we step, both on high alert for any sight or sound of an animal.
Several long moments pass with no sign of anything moving around us. Echo’s certainty that there are prey animals for us to find in here doesn’t instill confidence in me when nothing is moving, not even a breeze.
Even though the magic is weak and insubstantial here in the Unclaimed Expanse, I attempt to use it to help us anyway. I’m able to pull strands of the weave and use the magic as a kind of veil in my vision to help me look farther into the darkening woods. The magic amplifies my senses and brightens the landscape around me, helping me see better—though only by a small amount. Suddenly, I’m moving faster and more confidently, as if my body has become part of the forest. Echo follows my every move, moving fluidly over obstacles by my side.
I can’t help but notice him from the corner of my eye as we move. He’s watching my every step, his eyes glittering in the gathering dusk. He doesn’t say anything about the weave, or the way I’ve taken to leading us, but there’s a warm admiration in his eyes that makes my heart stutter.
My skin flushes when I realize that beneath the admiration is heat. He’s watching me with admiration and desire. I can feel his gaze as if it’s no different than his hands on my skin, a tangible expression of his current feeling.
Ever since the moment back at my village when I kissed all three of the messengers, the connection between us has strengthened somehow, becoming urgent and demanding. His attentiveness to me just reminds me that our connection is almost painful in
its intensity, the two parts of my soul that exist between us begging to be united.
The sun is well below the canopy by the time I catch a glimpse of something moving within the shadowy trees. I put up a finger, pausing as I track the motion. I pluck at the weave, bringing another strand down to lighten my vision. It takes an extreme level of focus to use the weave for even this simple magic here, and I breathe deep as I solidify my control over the strands of power.
Then I take off like an arrow.
We sprint as silently as possible behind the creature for several yards until I lose sight of it running into a dark cave.
Farse it.
I stop quickly and slide behind a large tree trunk, fingers clutching the rough bark as I stare at the inky opening in a rocky outcropping.
“I would venture to guess going into a cave in the Unclaimed Expanse is a probable death sentence,” I murmur over my shoulder to Echo, who halted when I did.
“You would be right. There are likely worse things in there than an afterworld deer,” Echo agrees. He’s right behind me, peering over my shoulder as his gaze tracks mine. He’s so close I can feel the warmth of his body against my back.
I’m distracted for an interminable moment by that heat before I finally say, “We’ll wait a few minutes and see if it emerges again before we try to find another one.”
“You don’t even need my help.” Echo keeps his voice low to preserve our hiding place, but not so low I can’t hear it. “You could chase down and fell this creature without my assistance at all.”
I scoff. “Did you think I was lying every time I told you I was a hunter for my village?”
“No. Of course not. I just didn’t realize you could put a messenger to shame with your tracking skills.” His fingers slip through my hair as he gently moves the mass of locks aside to bare the skin of my neck. I can feel his gaze on me like a warm, lazy summer wind, and I turn toward it unconsciously. “Kaius would have been a fool to execute someone as clever as you.”
I’ve lost all control of my heartbeat, and maybe even my senses too. I torture myself daily wondering what these men feel for me—if they embrace the bond between us or resent it. If any of the feelings that seem to charge the air between us are real.