The Will and the Wilds(64)

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.

The sky grows more orange as the sun sets behind me. I slip between two trees and around the thick bushes of blackberries, always keeping the scrying spell in sight. My breaths come heavier, my joints resistant. Keep going, I urge myself. This is the only way to free Maekallus. The one way to retrieve my soul.

Movement to my right startles me. I stop and stoop, listening, waiting for a deer to walk by. But it’s no deer that emerges from the brush.

It’s an orjan.





CHAPTER 26

A vuldor-tusk knife is made by collecting a tusk from the lower jaw of a vuldor, hollowing it out, and filling it with mystium blood, which is usually sealed inside with a bronze or copper hilt, as these mortal metals are harmless to mystings.





It is not Scroud. His hair is too light, too short. His horns too crooked. But he is large, far broader and taller than I am—larger, even, than Maekallus.