What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1)(24)
I spun as I stood, glancing over to where Brann knelt over our mother, her chair knocked backwards by the force of the shattering Veil. His gaze met mine, his wide eyes filled with terror as I closed the distance between us. The High Priest and Lord Byron hadn’t yet managed to get to their feet, lying on the ground as I moved past them in confusion.
Why wasn’t anyone else moving?
Brann shoved our mother’s chair upright as I knelt in front of her, grasping my cloak and bunching it up around my neck. My skin burned anew when his fingers brushed against me, and I barely resisted the urge to scream out in pain, to vent my agony into the darkened sky, but something written in the lines of his face warned me to stay quiet.
I drew in deep lungfuls of air instead as my eyes watered, my throat closing around the need to free the icy fire spreading through my body. “It hurts,” I whispered as my mother snagged my gaze, her eyes filling with tears while she stared at me and then slowly nodded to Brann with some meaning that I didn’t understand.
“Shh. You have to be quiet,” Brann murmured, taking my elbow and helping me back to my feet. The Mist Guards around the gardens had finally shoved their way to their feet, as well, gripping their blades tightly as they moved through the people who remained lying on the ground.
My mother grabbed my hands, squeezing them and leaning forward to place a lingering kiss on the back of each one. “Take her and go,” she said to my brother, her voice dropping low, in command despite the tremble of her bottom lip.
“What? Why would we—” I fell silent when Brann nudged me with his elbow, taking my hands from our mother’s. He lifted the hood on my cloak up to cover my neck fully, pulling the braid out of my hair with frenzied fingers that tugged at the strands until they fell around my shoulders and hung around my face. “Brann,” I murmured, lost in the urgency of his expression.
What was wrong with him?
He caught my hand in his, starting to inch us back toward the woods at the edge of the gardens. We watched to see if anyone would notice as we slipped away while Mother nodded in encouragement. My gaze went back and forth between them, not understanding what was happening.
Where were we going?
Brann paused, wincing as his eyes caught on something in the front row of twilight berries. A Mist Guard stood over Rook, one of the swordsmiths from our village, and glared down at the spot where he clutched his neck. Pain had transformed his face into a picture of torment, and I lifted a hand to touch the same spot on my body—the very same place that had burned with cold heat when Brann’s hand brushed against it.
“Please, don’t!” Rook yelled. The guard ignored him, shoving his blade through the smith’s chest and pinning him to the ground before he withdrew it. The villager’s eyes relaxed almost instantly, his chest shuddering with his final breath as I lifted a hand to cover my mouth and keep silent.
He’d been a well-loved member of the community. He’d supplied the Mist Guard with the very swords he’d used to run him through. There’d been no moment when I ever thought they would be capable of executing him so coldly.
But with the Fae able to walk among us once again, anything was possible.
“He was Marked,” my brother said pointedly, his eyes dropping to the cape that concealed my burning flesh, which seemed to worsen with every moment that passed. As if something cut through me, bit by bit, tearing the skin from my body to reveal that which should have always been there.
The Mist Guard kicked Rook’s hand away from his neck, giving me my first view of the swirling patterns on his skin. They glowed the color of freshly grown grass in spring, the Mark of the Fae whose magic claimed him as her consort. An otherworldly scream filled with anguish made the ground tremble all over again, and it took me far too long to realize it hadn’t been one of the beasts from the caves in the woods.
The sound came from a female on the other side of the Mist, feeling the loss of a treasure she’d only just found.
Something like her would come for me.
I reached up, sliding my hand inside my cloak to touch that cold fire on my skin as understanding crashed over me in sudden awareness.
Oh Gods.
I turned back to my mother, her words lost to the wind that howled toward us over the open water where the Veil had once been, but her lips moved clearly, making sure I could understand even with the distance between us. “Go. Quickly,” my mother mouthed, turning to watch Lord Byron as Brann pulled me toward the trees. The woods were dark and menacing without the sun shining down between the branches, and fear lodged deep in my chest. Even I didn’t dare to wander in the woods in this kind of darkness, without the moon and stars to illuminate the dangers waiting for us.
I didn’t want to leave her, to abandon her to the village and the danger that was coming.
“Brann, the woods—”
“At least you’ll stand a chance this way,” he said, picking up his pace as we ducked beneath the low-hanging branches at the edge of the forest. Even having seen what had come of Rook, even understanding what that Mark on his neck had meant in the vaguest sense, the reality of what that meant for me lingered just out of reach.
All that mattered in the moment was survival, and that the people I’d worked alongside, who’d been a part of my life for as long as I could remember, would now want me dead.
The very same man who’d only moments ago been determined to stall my execution, so he could get me into his bed, would now be the one to order it, as if I’d never existed in the first place, wiped from memory and record. I’d been willing to die, but not like this.