The Will and the Wilds(61)

The portal ring’s light brightens almost enough to hurt my eyes, but I can’t look away. I stare, my legs cramping. My teeth chatter; I bite my tongue to hush them.

Something is coming through.

The body emerges, and from its silhouette alone I know it’s not a gobler. Too tall, too lean. It’s a humanoid mysting with dark-blue skin. Broad shoulders and ribs that taper into an alarmingly thin waist. Long black hair. Two thick horns that roll over the skull, crisscrossing like some ornamental plant. An orjan. My grandmother knew less of orjans than she did narvals.

Maekallus’s grip on my hand tightens until I hiss in pain. He lets me go.

“This is bad.” His words are heavy, almost solid.

“Why?”

Maekallus points toward the portal ring. “Because that is the previous owner of the Will Stone.”





CHAPTER 25

A portal ring is made of three summoning circles sealed together inside an outer ring. Portal rings act as a more permanent door between realms for mortals and mystings alike.





I stare at the mysting haloed in light and forget to breathe.

I am far from him, too far to make out his facial features, but I see from the breadth of his shoulders, the confidence in his stance, and the cowering of the other mystings that this creature is powerful, strong, and ruthless. At the same time, I am struck dumb with awe that this is the mysting my father stole from.

My father is an even greater hero than I had realized.

But Scroud is here to take back what was stolen from him.

The orjan turns, and Maekallus jerks me back by the shoulder, putting his body between me and the glade, though the pine hides nearly all of us.

“Don’t breathe,” he whispers, soft as the breeze. I don’t. I squeeze the stone.

His hand comes over mine again. He shakes his head.

I wait a long time, until my lungs begin to burn. Maekallus relaxes a fraction, and I let air run slowly out my nose and back in. Maekallus backs up so he’s fully behind the tree. There’s no space between us.

“Don’t use it,” he warns.

“Why?” I mouth the word more than I speak it.

“He owned it a long time. The stone. I don’t know if . . . he might sense its power.” His breath washes over my brow. “The trail?”

“Into the portal ring.”

He considers. “That must mean he’s close. Just on the other side.”

“Does the ring work both ways?”

He hesitates, his shadow stiff. “Yes. But we can’t risk using it. Not with—”

A voice like shattering granite washes over us. “Maekallus.”

My heart seizes in my chest, and even with the protection of my sleeve, the bracelet burns my flesh. Maekallus jerks up to his feet, but the orjan still looms over him, nearly the same color as the shadows. My entire being jolts with fear. I can’t breathe, I can’t move. I am nothing more than an erratic pulse waiting to be snuffed out.

Scroud’s large dark eyes look over Maekallus, but never once do they stray to me.

“You look different.” His thin lips curl at the word, like Maekallus’s humanified traits disgust him. “Fitting, for a deserter.”

Maekallus is tense, a hare ready to spring. He does nothing to give me away.

And it’s at that moment I realize I’m not being ignored. I am invisible. I’d willed it without even realizing. As far as Scroud is concerned, I am not here.

It offers me only a fraction of courage.

Maekallus bows his head in deference. “I am what I am,” he answers. Exactly what he once told me.

Scroud snorts. “You are untrustworthy. Why have you come here?” He takes in the thread of light leading from Maekallus’s chest. “What—”

He pauses, finally dipping his head to look in my direction. I could swear my heart stops under that gaze. Don’t see me. Don’t see me. Don’t see me. Perhaps he’s noticed the indentation in the wild grass where I sit. Perhaps— Maekallus had told me Scroud might sense his Will Stone. Does he sense it now?

Panic stricken, I do the only thing I know I can. I will the mysting to go, to forget, to vanish back into the portal from which he came.

Not a noise escapes him when he turns and does just as I’d silently ordered. But even when he leaves—even when I can no longer hear his footsteps, and the stone warns only of his minions—I am paralyzed with terror. Maekallus, too, is afraid. He takes a moment before facing me. His shoulders, his chest, even the muscles in his face are tense. It makes me think of a corpse, after the hardening has set in.

“He sensed it.” His word is more wind than whisper. “I know he did.”

I manage to swallow, to wet my tongue enough to speak. “I willed him to forget.”

Maekallus nods, but doubt shines in his amber eyes. I can’t help but mirror it.

We sit there, alone for a time. I sense another mysting vanish into the portal. I wait for the gobler to come up, but he doesn’t.

After what must be another quarter hour, Maekallus says, “We have to move forward. Scout the circle.”

“We don’t have time—”

He clasps my face in his hands. His fingertips are cold—not the cold of a mysting, but of a man shaken. I lean into them, yet the intimacy of the gesture pulls at my most broken pieces, like a knife cutting across burned skin.