A faint buzzing and ringing filled my ears. And I felt my magic vanish entirely.
“I know a place,” Lucien said, walking toward the cave that would take us to his home.
To the lands of the family who’d betrayed him as badly as this court had betrayed mine.
We hurried through the hills, swift and silent as shadows.
The cave to the Autumn Court had been left unguarded. Lucien looked at me over his shoulder as if to ask if I, too, had been responsible for the lack of guards who were always stationed here.
I gave him another nod. I’d slid into their minds before we’d left, making sure this door would be left open. Cassian had taught me to always have a second escape route. Always.
Lucien paused before the swirling gloom of the cave mouth, the blackness like a wyrm poised to devour us both. A muscle feathered in his jaw.
I said, “Stay, if you want. What’s done is done.”
For Hybern was coming—already here. I had debated it for weeks: whether it was better to claim the Spring Court for ourselves, or to let it fall to our enemies.
But it could not remain neutral—a barrier between our forces in the North and the humans in the South. It would have been easy to call in Rhys and Cassian, to have the latter bring in an Illyrian legion to claim the territory when it was weakest after my own maneuverings. Depending on how much mobility Cassian had retained—if he was still healing.
Yet then we’d hold one territory—with five other courts between us. Sympathy might have swayed for the Spring Court; others might have joined Hybern against us, considering our conquest here proof of our wickedness. But if Spring fell to Hybern … We could rally the other courts to us. Charge as one from the North, drawing Hybern in close.
“You were right,” Lucien declared at last. “That girl I knew did die Under the Mountain.”
I wasn’t sure if it was an insult. But I nodded all the same. “At least we can agree on that.” I stepped into the awaiting cold and dark.
Lucien fell into step beside me as we strode beneath the archway of carved, crude stone, our blades out as we left behind the warmth and green of eternal spring.
And in the distance, so faint I thought I might have imagined it, a beast’s roar cleaved the land.
PART TWO
CURSEBREAKER
CHAPTER
11
The cold was what hit me first.
Brisk, crisp cold, laced with loam and rotting things.
In the twilight, the world beyond the narrow cave mouth was a latticework of red and gold and brown and green, the trees thick and old, the mossy ground strewn with rocks and boulders that cast long shadows.
We emerged, blades out, barely breathing beyond a trickle of air.
But there were no Autumn Court sentries guarding the entrance to Beron’s realm—none that we could see or scent.
Without my magic, I was blind again, unable to sweep a net of awareness through the ancient, vibrant trees to catch any traces of nearby Fae minds.
Utterly helpless. That’s how I’d been before. How I’d survived so long without it … I didn’t want to consider.
We crept on cat-soft feet into the moss and stone and wood, our breath curling in front of us.
Keep moving, keep striding north. Rhys would have realized by now that our bond had gone dark—was likely trying to glean whether I had planned for that. Whether it was worth the risk of revealing our scheming to find me.
But until he did … until he could hear me, find me … I had to keep moving.
So I let Lucien lead the way, wishing I’d at least been able to shift my eyes to something that could pierce the darkening wood. But my magic was still and frozen. A crutch I’d become too reliant upon.
We picked our way through the forest, the chill deepening with each vanishing shaft of sunlight.
We hadn’t spoken since we’d entered that cave between courts. From the stiffness of his shoulders, the hard angle of his jaw as he moved on silent, steady feet, I knew only our need for stealth kept his simmering questions at bay.
Night was fully overhead, the moon not yet risen, when he led us into another cave.
I balked at the entrance.
Lucien merely said, voice flat and as icy as the air, “It doesn’t lead anywhere. It curves away in the back—it’ll keep us out of sight.”
I let him go inside first nonetheless.
Every limb and movement turned sluggish, aching. But I trailed him into the cave, and around the bend he’d indicated.
Flint struck, and I found myself gazing at a makeshift camp of sorts.
The candle Lucien had ignited sat on a natural stone ledge, and on the floor nearby lay three bedrolls and old blankets, crusted with leaves and cobwebs. A little fire pit lay in the sloped center of the space, the ceiling above it charred.
No one had been here in months. Years.
“I used to stay here while hunting. Before—I left,” he said, examining a dusty, leather-bound book left on the stone ledge beside the candle. He set the tome down with a thump. “It’s just for the night. We’ll find something to eat in the morning.”
I only lifted the closest bedroll and smacked it a few times, leaves and clouds of dust flying off before I laid it upon the ground.
“You truly planned this,” he said at last.
I sat on the bedroll and began sorting through my pack, hauling out the warmer clothes, food, and supplies Alis herself had placed within. “Yes.”
“That’s all you have to say?”
I sniffed at the food, wondering what was laced with faebane. It could be in everything. “It’s too risky to eat,” I admitted, evading his question.
Lucien was having none of it. “I knew. I knew you were lying the moment you unleashed that light in Hybern. My friend at the Dawn Court has the same power—her light is identical. And it does not do whatever horseshit you lied about it doing.”
No enemies approached Beron’s home without his knowledge. None left without his permission.
I knew we’d passed beyond Lucien’s known map of their patrol routes and stations when his shoulders sagged.
Mine were slumped already.
I had barely slept, only letting myself do so when Lucien’s breathing slid into a different, deeper rhythm. I knew I couldn’t keep it up for long, but without the ability to shield, to sense any danger …
I wondered if Rhys was looking for me. If he’d felt the silence.
I should have gotten a message out. Told him I was going and how to find me.
The faebane—that was why the bond had sounded so muffled. Perhaps I should have killed Ianthe outright.
But what was done was done.
I was rubbing at my aching eyes, taking a moment’s rest beneath our new bounty: an apple tree, laden with fat, succulent fruit.
I’d filled my bag with what I could fit inside. Two cores already lay discarded beside me, the sweet rotting scent as lulling as the droning of the bees gorging themselves on fallen apples. A third apple was already primed and poised for eating atop my outstretched legs.
After what the Hybern royals had done, I should have sworn off apples forever, but hunger had always blurred lines for me.
Lucien, sitting a few feet away, chucked his fourth apple into the bushes as I bit into mine. “The farmlands and fields are near,” he announced. “We’ll have to stay out of sight. My father doesn’t pay well for his crops, and the land-workers will earn any extra coin they can.”
“Even selling out the location of one of the High Lord’s sons?”
“Especially that way.”
“They didn’t like you?”
His jaw tightened. “As the youngest of seven sons, I wasn’t particularly needed or wanted. Perhaps it was a good thing. I was able to study for longer than my father allowed my brothers before shoving them out the door to rule over some territory within our lands, and I could train for as long as I liked, since no one believed I’d be dumb enough to kill my way up the long list of heirs. And when I grew bored with studying and fighting … I learned what I could of the land from its people. Learned about the people, too.”
He eased to his feet with a groan, his unbound hair glimmering as the midday sun overhead set the blood and wine hues aglow.
“I’d say that sounds more High-Lord-like than the life of an idle, unwanted son.”
A long, steely look. “Did you think it was mere hatred that prompted my brothers to do their best to break and kill me?”
Despite myself, a shudder rippled down my spine. I finished off the apple and uncoiled to my feet, plucking another off a low-hanging branch. “Would you want it—your father’s crown?”
“No one’s ever asked me that,” Lucien mused as we moved on, dodging fallen, rotting apples. The air was sticky-sweet. “The bloodshed that would be required to earn that crown wouldn’t be worth it. Neither would its festering court. I’d gain a crown—only to rule over a crafty, two-faced people.”
“Lord of Foxes,” I said, snorting as I remembered that mask he’d once worn. “But you never answered my question—about why the people here would sell you out.”
The air ahead lightened, and a golden field of barley undulated toward a distant tree line.
“After Jesminda, they would.”
Jesminda. He’d never spoken her name.