Page 28

There was no point in refusing. I had to believe that Thorn was right and that some of my people, who had escaped the Barren’s slavery in our homeland or were forced to labour in the mines, were here.

I’d been riding behind the Celt, a bag over my head, for at least a couple of hours when I was pulled off the horse and my wrists tied behind my back. Moments later, I was sitting on a hard wooden stool in a room only a little warmer than the outside air. The room smelt of damp branches and wood smoke.

Boots pounded on the steps outside and then on the wooden veranda until they stopped, and hushed voices seeped under the door. With my eyes still covered, my other senses honed in on every detail.

Then the door crashed open, and the surrounding walls shuddered. I stilled myself and straightened my spine. They would not see me cower.

Hushed voices entered the room. Moments later, the bag over my head was removed, and I squinted in the brightness, willing my eyes to adjust. The thin cord still tied my wrists together behind my back and dug into my skin. It hummed with rune-infused magic and burned whenever I moved too quickly.

The one-room cabin had flimsy-looking walls, but magic hummed around the edges, telling me it was likely spelled to keep the sound in. I checked the ceiling and corners to find the familiar silver glow of listening runes. Was there nowhere in the cursed lands that one could talk openly?

Wherever this was, it was just another prison without steel bars. I relaxed my shoulders, but my gaze swept the room, studying every inch. The only heat came from the hearth, with a blazing fire in the centre of the back wall. The smoke stuck to my skin, and the heat made me want to lean closer. Forest air seeped in through a crack in the window, filling my lungs with the smell of evergreen leaves and roasted chestnuts. It was so alien it built a lump in my throat. I had really escaped the Barren Lands, only to be captured again. But that didn’t seem to temper my excitement. Especially when there was a window on my left that could be pried open without much effort. Slats of bright winter sun reached in and marked the bare wooden floor—it was close to midday. There was time to run before dusk set in.

I smiled to myself. Welcome to the Ruckus.

In the city, they taught us that the Ruckus lands were filled with secretive Celts. But there were also whispers amongst the rebels that it was a refuge for those who had fled the fighting in the Kingdoms’ War. Deserters were hated by all the kingdoms, and they were lawless. But the Ruckus had none of the toxic magic from the Old War, and therefore everyone coveted it.

“I told you not to look for me.” His low, anger-laced voice vibrated through the space, right into my heart. “Ever.” He was behind me.

Aster? My chest tightened, but not with relief. It was worse. Hope. Was it just another imposter wearing his voice? Was it the Nomad? Because every part of me wanted it to be the real man this time.

Trying to twist around, I tugged at my binding, and searing pain shot up my arms. I gritted my teeth and stifled the whimper because there was no way I would cry out. If this were an interrogation, then I needed to find the place inside myself I could retreat to and hold out as long as possible.

I forced my eyes to find him. “Who are you?”

“Feather…” he murmured my nickname like a warning, and my breath hitched. This time the pain in my arms fueled my fury at being abandoned by him as I scanned the room. It was the nickname the Nomad hadn’t known…

If it’s real this time, there is a lot we need to say.

“Let me go. Now!” I pulled at my restraints as the binding cut into my skin. “I’m…” It was the sharp pain that centered me and made me pause long enough to take a deep breath. Whoever this man was, I needed to focus on the mission. “I heard that those who are displaced can ask for refuge.”

The man stood a few paces away, half-shadowed in the doorway, flanked by two guards whose hands rested on their swords. They didn’t stand to attention the way the Barren’s guards did, and they didn’t ooze power like the Riders or mages. They didn’t have the constant watchful slant of the rebels. These men were far more dangerous—they were the Celtic warriors of old.

Then Aster stepped into the light, and every muscle in my body froze, and I bit down on my tongue to stop the questions from rushing out.

Our gazes locked—his piercing green eyes were the same, but he was different. Utterly different. He stood differently. Wore different clothes. But it was the look he gave me that stilled my pulse. The twist on his perfect lips said, “Be careful what you say.”

In the three years we had been apart, time had taken him away, and what was standing before me was as beautiful as ever, but I wasn’t sure if he was still mine. He didn’t reach for me. He wasn’t pulling me close and burying his hand in my hair to kiss me. He was just standing there, staring.

There was a scar on his cheek that hadn’t been there before. I hardened my gaze, preparing for the sting of rejection.

His bearing was precise now—no wasted movement, no slouching ease. Dark leather crossed his chest where once there had been threadbare cloth. The insignia on his shoulder marked him as someone important—the other two men didn’t have one—but I had no idea what it meant.

His dark hair was pulled back tightly and tied with a leather string as if time no longer allowed his scruffy, youthful, carefree existence. The softness I remembered—late-night murmurs, stolen laughter, the way his gaze followed me when he thought I wasn’t watching…

It was all gone.

He was both familiar and a complete stranger. He was my childhood and my coming of age. We had grown up together, but looking at him now, it seemed as if we had walked totally different paths. Morlan and Patrik’s words came back to me about how he had changed and what had changed him.

My throat contracted as I took in every inch of him. But his eyes—they were storm-dark and seething as they flicked over me, searching for the threat that I had never been. Then he glanced at the Celtic warriors on either side of him, checking their reactions to the situation.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said. His back was pressed against the coarse wooden wall as he held himself back from me.

“I set the marker… and…” He’d always said he would come. Before, he had always returned after his missions, and I wasn’t going to admit that there was a small part of me that had been waiting. Longing to see him, touch him, taste him again. And now he was here, and I couldn’t. He was telling me with his tight shoulders and glaring eyes that I couldn’t do anything but stay where I was. That the men on either side of him were watching, and that was a problem.

A muscle jumped in his jaw, the only tell that unwanted emotions were flooding through him. He was still so, so beautiful; a few stray curls had broken free of the tie, and their tips were sun-kissed from the warm summers the Ruckus enjoyed. His narrowed gaze made me believe he wanted to tell me something that he couldn’t.

The strength that rippled from him was never just physical—he was a master of control. He had taught me how to shut down my emotions, too. To lock away all emotions in the silver box I had created inside my chest, but it seemed utterly impossible to force myself to do it when it came to him. I tried to see the image that he’d made me conjure when I was a scared child—the box was the same colour as the feather tattoo etched on my shoulder. Feather—that’s what he always called me when we were alone. So what was he trying to tell me by using it when we were in the company of Celtic warriors?