Page 112 of Spring Guardians & Songbirds

Mal grinned wide. “He gets to go, I get to go. My muffin and I come as a package.”

“Don’t play with my nerves, Princeling,” Caiden snarled.

My brother frowned. “Why so sour, my kumquat? You used to like when I played with you.”

Snow blink between the two, her mouth lifting, and Caiden flicked her forehead. “Not like that.”

I touched the little red spot forming on her forehead. “Caiden, do that again and you’ll have to learn how to hold a fork with your toes.”

Two short fading trips later, the four of us stood at the foot of Danic mountain. Snow made a sound of awe while she trailed the height of the old cluster of rock disappearing between a swirling black vortex that rose to the skies. The taste of magic was thick in the air. Almost thick to the point of suffocating before I weaved a hand inside it and willed whatever was dark and death to make a path for death and dark himself. The old magic parted into a narrow corridor and began crawling away from me, hissing like fire meeting water.

When she took a step inside, her body shuddered. “It’s making me tingly.”

“Because your magic produces life and this one feeds on it. You are polar opposites.”

Memphis unravelled her slithery form from Snow’s body and caromed in the air, morphing into a large raven.

“You’re riding with me,” I said and helped her onto my horse’s back before she or Caiden had a chance to object.

I pulled myself up behind her, taking the opportunity to gather her tight against me, till her body almost melted onto mine.

“Is there a reason why you are holding me so tight?”

“Yes,” I murmured in her ear, and she shivered a little. “Don’t want the mist monsters to grab you from me.”

Her body went tight with panic, and she searched the massive black cloud ahead of us. “Mist mon—” Then, her elbow went to my side. She had so much strength for her small form. Gods, a breath whooshed out of me.

“You sure you don’t want to hold my hand, my muffin?” Mal asked Caiden with a smirk as our horses trotted anxiously inside the blanket of terror.

The general bristled. “Don’t be all cute with me.”

“If you’re all done flirting, might we go?” Snow said, shivering suddenly. She gasped and then whispered, “I can’t see anything.”

I rested a hand on her stomach, feeling her pulse beat madly beneath my touch. “I see for the two of us. Nothing can harm you.”

Her body relaxed a little. “Why is it not touching us?”

“Because I am not letting it.”

“How?”

“I am one with darkness. An Obscur brought prisoners through the mist, abandoning them in it.”

“Fancy.”

“A perverse punishment to keep saintly hands bloodless.”

“Correction,” she said. “Very fancy. Blood is a menace.”

I leaned forward to kiss her temple. “I meant figuratively, my dahaara.” She no longer flinched, but her body did that shivering thing that made me think she might as well have flinched. Her being afraid of me was worse than having her hate me.

She cleared her throat. “And what if he is truly dead?

“He was sentenced to solitude, not death,” I explained. “Whichever of my ancestors brought him here would have made it possible for him to survive in it. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he probably thrived in it rather than survived.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Solitude has a way of making you want to prove that you were better off alone in the first place. A poor means of rejecting the feeling of abandonment.”