by Sadie Moss
Maybe I’m praying to the Weaver. Whoever he is.
Healing Paris is achingly slow work, and my energy flags fast under the strain of re-energizing dead tissue. But I don’t pause. I hardly even breathe, because I don’t have time for either of those things.
Through the soul-bond that connects us, I sense when Paris awakens. I’m focused on his external injuries now, weaving together an open wound in his chest, and I glance up to find his sapphire eyes sparkling. I already healed the one swollen eye on his achingly beautiful face, and gratefulness rushes through me to see those bright blue irises.
Paris raises a hand to touch the side of my head. “I knew Kaius shouldn’t have discounted you, little soul. It’s the worst mistake he’ll ever make.”
The gash in his chest closes beneath the weave, and I remove my hand with a long breath of relief. Then I capture Paris’s lips with my own, communicating every word I don’t have time to utter aloud right now.
“It’s time to go,” Callum says tightly, gripping my shoulder as I sit back. “We cannot wait any longer.”
I nod, then clasp Paris’s arms to help him to his feet. He’s unsteady for a moment, and Echo comes around to help hold him until he can stand on his own two feet. I’m not surprised to see the blond messenger stumble a little. He was so close to death, it was a miracle I was able to bring him back from the brink.
But the toll all of this magic has taken on me has begun to creep deep into my bones. I feel as unsteady as Paris looks. My body isn’t used to such powerful magic in such deep measures. Exhaustion wraps itself around me as surely as the weave wrapped my men, and I long stupidly for a soft, warm bed and a few hours where I don’t have to run for my life.
Echo tightens his grip around Paris’s back, supporting his weight. “I’ve got him. Go.”
I don’t have to be told twice. Callum and I take the lead, leaving Paris’s cell and heading toward the exit.
But before we make it more than a few feet down the dark stone corridor, heavy footsteps pound down the staircase, followed by concerned voices speaking among themselves as they hurry down into the dungeons.
Concerned about their comrade, probably.
Echo halts behind us, keeping Paris on his feet as we all glance around with desperation. None of us are strong enough to fight, and we have nowhere to go. We certainly can’t go back into our cells and risk being locked away again.
So our only option is to stand our ground.
Two guards round the edge of the staircase, faltering as they realize the hallway isn’t empty. One man lets out a sharp, piercing whistle, alerting the rest of the team to trouble.
Then both guards run toward us.
We’ve been caught.
4
My body tenses, my muscles going taut.
How can we win this fight? We have no weapons with us, and the men don’t even have magic.
I do, at least, so I toss the keyring to Callum quickly—hoping he’s clever enough to turn it into some kind of tool to carve the guards’ eyes out. Then I tug down a handful of strands and throw the weave at the guards’ running feet.
The men trip over the strands inelegantly and pitch forward, rolling across the floor, and we don’t let that small advantage go to waste. The four of us rush them, Callum turning the key ring into a deadly stabbing weapon while Echo’s foot crushes one man’s skull. Though the first two guards are down, more are coming.
And as far as I know, there’s only one way out—the stairs that lead up into the palace.
I shove my panicked emotions into a hidden place inside me and focus on using the weave to trip up the guards as several more of them come charging down the corridor. It's my only method of defense without a true weapon.
I duck one man’s bayonet while wrapping a strand around another man’s neck. I don’t have the strength to rip his head from his neck like Callum might have done, but I’m able to incapacitate him enough to give us a reprieve while more guards rush us.
It doesn’t take long before I can feel my men’s strength flagging through our soul connection. Callum is still wielding the key ring, now covered in blood, and even Paris has pilfered a bayonet from one of the guards to fight back. But I know we can’t last like this.
Did we really come this far only to fail in the last hour?
The guards are too strong. We’re pushed back, fighting with all we have, but losing ground in our drive to reach the exit. They herd us farther into the dungeon, past my cell, past the madman’s cell.
Then a familiar roar of fury echoes down the staircase. One that seems to shake the very foundations of the palace.
The guards all cease moving and immediately back away from the four of us, though they keep their weapons poised high in the air as if waiting for a signal.
I’m breathless, my fingers tingling from the constant weave use. Paris slumps against Echo, and Callum steps ahead of us all in some vain attempt to protect us, even as he lists to the side, some of his wounds reopened and blood dripping from his keyring.
The dungeon walls seem to shake with Kaius’s fury as he pounds down the stairs and explodes into the corridor with magic forming a thick shield around him.
At the sight of him, my lips curl into an unconscious snarl.
In everything I’ve ever done with the weave, it has been a thing of beauty to touch and manipulate. The magic is usually so pure and bright that I feel as if I’m touching divinity. But Kaius has somehow warped that magic and made the weave appear sharper, darker. I can only guess it seems that way because he’s so twisted and evil. Maybe at one time, his weave magic was beautiful too. Before his true nature shone through and blackened everything he touches.
“You insolent fools!” Kaius shrieks, his deep voice near-hysteria, so much so that I think he must have lost his mind. He raises his hands, his face purple, enraged.
I stand my ground, though I want to flinch into Echo’s shoulder. I don’t want to watch my doom hurtle toward me, but a true warrior never looks away, even in the face of certain death. So I brace myself for the killing blow, trying to content myself with the thought that at least I’m with my men. At least we tried to escape. At least we didn’t go down without our best effort.
But before the magic can blast from Kaius’s hands and kill us, a flash of movement comes from my right. A split second later, the madman bursts from his cell with a sharp, fierce cry. His wild gaze latches on to my own for a moment, and then he throws himself into the path of Kaius’s magic.
Brilliant light blooms in the hallway. The madman absorbs the full force of Kaius's fury, his gaze still locked on mine until I can no longer see him in the glow. Then the energy explodes outward, and the man disintegrates into thousands of small shadowy fragments.
Extinguished.
Gone forever.
The full force of Kaius’s rage must have been a horrible thing, because what should have been a simple killing blow is followed by a rumble in the dungeon walls. Stones shake loose from the ceiling and walls, filling the air with dust. Kaius seems frozen in place, as if the amount of power he just unleashed has taxed even someone as powerful as him.
The guards all throw their arms over their heads as the rumbling reaches an apex, and larger stones begin to crack free and shatter at their feet.
Seizing our opening, Callum grabs my wrist and yanks me along with him as he falls into a sprint. The four of us race deeper into the dungeon while the rumbling continues to echo.
Nish. The walls are coming down around us, and we’re heading farther into the dungeon.
“Callum!” I gasp his name and jerk him to a stop. Echo halts on his other side, Paris’s arm tight around his shoulders. “This entire palace could collapse on us at any moment. We’re going to be crushed to death down here. There’s no way out.”
“Yes, there is,” he mutters and resumes his race into the darkness.
I have no choice but to follow.
Everything looks the same this far into th
e depths of the castle. Cell after cell, barred doors jangling from the shaking walls, manacles dancing with the vibrations. I almost hope the palace collapses right on top of Kaius and his men.
It would serve him right.
Callum abruptly lurches to the left and down a side hallway, and I skid on the slippery stones in my haste to follow. Shock fills me as I realize this is the place where we broke into the castle.
Dear gods, was that only a few days ago?
Without missing a beat, the big warrior grabs me by the waist and tosses me through the hole we left in the window in this abandoned part of the dungeon. My dress snags on a jagged edge, but I tear it free and crawl to the side, reaching for Paris’s hands as his brothers boost him out. I stand and tug him up with me, taking the full weight of his body until Callum and Echo join us on the grass.
A change immediately comes over both of them, and they take deep breaths, color returning to their cheeks. They reach up simultaneously and test the strands of magic in the air.
Outside the confines of the dungeon and away from whatever magic-dampening spell Kaius used to neuter them, they have their connection to the weave back. The flash of relief that fills me is almost greater than Kaius’s magical rage.
Then we’re flying along the magic strands of the weave.
Callum leads us with the desperation of a man trying to get the people he loves away from utter annihilation. Echo has a hold of Paris, and I’m on my own feet, but even without the extra weight to hold, I can hardly keep up. Time and space fly past us, a swirl of dizzying color and humming power.
My entire body aches from the constant use of magic—first healing, then fighting, and now, running for my life.
I lose track of time. My entire world becomes this fast-moving journey, my hands clinging to the weave, my body soaring through the vacuum of space. I have no idea if it’s been two minutes or two hours before strong fingers suddenly grip my bicep, and I release the weave to collapse into Callum’s arms.
I blink into brilliant, purple-tinged sunlight, leaning against Callum’s chest as the rest of my body catches up to me. Finally, I straighten and look around.
We’re in a small, lush valley between low hills. There’s nothing here except the grass beneath our feet and the sun in the sky.
Paris is flat on his back among the waving grasses, his eyes closed but a small, relieved smile touching his lips. Echo sits beside him, plucking at the weave and healing the injuries I was unable to fix completely.
When I let go of Callum, he turns away to stare into the distance, lost in thought.
“Where are we?” I ask when the silence stretches too long.
Echo glances up from his work. “Several miles from Ironholde. We couldn’t go much farther with Paris in such a state.”
“I’m perfectly fine,” Paris murmurs, though when he doesn’t open his eyes, his words lose any weight of truth.
“We can’t be safe here.” My heart thunders in my chest, my skin prickling with fear. I have a vivid memory of Kaius’s loyal messengers chasing us last time we fled the palace, and I know they must be right behind us even now. “We need to get away from Kaius’s realm. Maybe travel back to Sierian’s where we’ll have some form of sanctuary.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Callum lift a hand, palm up. Except, he’s not looking at me—he’s staring raptly at his own hand. “No, little soul. We’re safe.”
“We aren’t safe as long as Kaius can find us,” I insist. Why is he so calm? Why are they all like this? He’s staring at his hand as if it holds the secrets of the universe, and all I can imagine is Kaius tracking us to this serene valley and painting it red with our blood.
Callum finally turns around and catches my gaze, though he doesn’t lower his hand. “Our connection has been fully severed.”
I gasp, my fingertips fluttering to my lips. “Your connection to Kaius?”
Paris’s grin widens, and his eyes crack open. “He’s right. I can feel it.” He chuckles lightly. “It’s a very freeing sensation. All the weight of the world off my shoulders…”
“That’s the internal bleeding I just stopped,” Echo quips, rolling his brother onto his side so he can get to a gash in his back.
“Neither he nor his hounds will be able to track us through our connection to him like last time,” Callum assures me, meeting my gaze. “If he wants to find us, he’ll have to hunt us without magic. We’re safe for the moment.”
“He will hunt us though. You know he will, brother. I’ve never seen him so furious,” Echo says, still hunched over Paris’s form.
Callum nods. “We can prepare for that inevitability.”
“Are we just going to run for the rest of our lives?” Paris asks with a sigh.
“No.” I surprise myself with the ferocity of that one word. All three men turn to stare at me. “We aren’t going to run anymore,” I add, feeling as if their gazes are going right through me, deep into my soul where we’re bonded. “I learned something in the dungeons that you need to know.”
I settle on the grass behind Paris’s head, and Callum follows my lead, crouching by my side. My tale only takes a few minutes to lay out. I tell them everything that’s happened since I woke up in the dungeon cell and realized we’d been separated. I explain how Kaius blindly left my connection to the weave still intact, how I eavesdropped on the madman’s ravings, and how I attempted to garner more information from him.
My men watch me raptly as I explain how the madman tried to extinguish his own soul, yet somehow skirted the edge of the oblivion and traveled to a third plane of existence where he learned of the Weaver.
“The one god to rule all gods,” I finish, my voice dropping low.
“You believe this madman?” Echo’s brows pull together thoughtfully.
Paris purses his lips. His brother has finished healing him, and color is returning to his cheeks. “It’s a fair question. He is, in your own words, mad.”
“I do.” My chin drops in an emphatic nod. “You weren’t there to hear him—to hear the way he spoke. Something about going to that place brought about an innocence in him. Whatever happened there, it changed him irrevocably, and he brought that knowledge back.”
I don’t mention that part of the reason I believe the poor mad soul’s ravings is because there’s nothing else to believe in. Either he was telling me the truth, and we have some hope… or he was a delusional liar, and we have none.
Hope. I will choose hope, always.
Callum catches his brothers’ gaze, and something seems to pass between the three of them. When the big warrior turns to me, I see acceptance in his gaze. Whether the three of them trust the madman’s ravings or not, they’ve clearly decided to trust me. That knowledge makes something impossibly sweet swell in my chest, filling me with powerful emotions.
But I keep my expression schooled as Callum speaks.
“All right,” he says solemnly. “So we must reach this third place, this realm that exists on the other side of oblivion. We must somehow survive final death to find the Weaver. But do you have any idea how?”
I nod, my heart punching hard against my ribs. I’ve replayed the madman’s words over and over in my head, trying to sort out the exact meaning of his ramblings. And I had plenty of time to consider this next step while I was waiting for the guard to arrive and open my cell.
“We’ll sacrifice ourselves,” I say slowly, feeling strange just speaking the words. What a strange life I lead that this will be the second time I sacrifice myself in the name of a god. “But we must go to the earthly realm to do it. That’s where the poor soul was when he made his attempt to extinguish himself.”
I bite my lip, meeting Callum’s gaze.
“He said he was bound too closely to life. The last thing he told me before he devolved into nonsensical raving was that he was holding an old leather-bound journal when he attempted the extinguishment. It was his most prized possession. I think… I think that’s what kept him grounded
. What helped him come back. We need to find the same thing for ourselves. Something that will be strong enough to bring us back and keep us from final death.”
I know this sounds like utter lunacy, and I brace myself for Callum to vehemently deny my insane, half-formed plan. But instead, he simply nods again. “All right. What do you propose we use to bind us to the mortal realm?”
My mind spins at his quick approval. I was prepared to argue for hours, to have to reason and cajole and outright plead to get them to even consider going along with this. I wasn’t prepared for their unquestioning trust.
“We each need an object that holds great importance to us.”
“That means returning to the house.” Echo grimaces, his tone dark. “Right under Kaius’s nose.”
“Oh, good.” Paris sits up and stretches, a crooked grin curving his lips. “I could use some clean pants. I think I pissed mine on the third torture session.”
A startled laugh bursts out of me. His words were unexpected, but they are so very Paris. Both his crudeness and his unflappable ability to bring light to a situation that nearly killed him.
Callum rolls his eyes, less amused by his brother than I am. “It will be dangerous, but the good news is that Kaius certainly won’t expect it. He’ll be expecting us to flee as far as we can, not to double back into Ironholde. We’ll move fast—get in, get out. No dawdling for pants.” At that last bit, he tosses a withering glare at Paris.
“But, brother! I have so many to decide between.”
This time, Echo joins me in laughing as he stands and extends a hand down to help Paris up. The easy way the blond messenger bounds to his feet unravels the tight knot of worry that still sits in my stomach.
What we’re about to do is dangerous, even foolhardy.
But for now, at least, we’re all alive and healthy again.
And together.
We travel back to Ironholde swiftly and silently. This will be the first time we’ve returned to the messengers’ house since we left for the mortal realm to save my brother’s life.