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“You’ve invited the fates to your door. This is exceptional, even for you.”

I smiled at him then, and it was the first real smile I had shown someone in years. Our gazes locked again for a moment too long until he shook his head and sighed.

I shrugged, and a blazing pain ran up my arms from my wrists. But I stopped the whimper that wanted to escape.

“And if you want the whole of it… I killed one of the simpering Masters who was always taking us. He had Red and…”

“Taking!” He shot forward and gripped my chin, tilting it up so that our eyes met again.

The deep scratches on my neck strained in protest. I bit my tongue to stop my eyes from watering, but a trickle of pain leaked out of the corner anyway.

“Where did you think you left me?” I said between gritted teeth. “You…” I couldn’t even get into it with him.

I changed the subject and wrenched my chin out of his grip even as one of the gouges started to bleed again. Wet, sticky blood ran down my chest. His gaze followed it—then returned to mine. “My…” cover was blown. How much could I say with the guards in the room? My gaze flicked to them, watching my every move. “Clea was arrested. Two others missing…” I shifted my attention to the door. “Have you been here the whole time?”

“Taken to the mines.” I faced him then, but he was studying my neck. “And then here. I’m no longer…” He ran a hand over a scar on his chin. “I had some… choices to make, and I ended up…” A Celt.

Leaving the rebellion—was that what he was trying to say? That he had left us and chosen these people and this strange land?

The thought of it felt like a punch. I took in a long breath, giving myself a moment to make sure my mask was in place. But it was the word. Taken. That burrowed into me. He had been imprisoned. Hurt? I scanned him for signs of it, but there was nothing but a Celtic warrior’s uniform of leather, wool, and weapons. Sharp jaw and long dark hair with the same green eyes.

Instead, images flared in my mind of places I had been kept when I had been caught reading in the boarding house—iron doors, shackles, blood-darkened stone. A rippling silence stretched between us, thick like the snow coming down outside the window. Somewhere deeper in the forest outside the cabin came a high-pitched, furious screech. Was it a rogue phoenix?

“Untie her.” He didn’t look at the men as he said it. His eyes were focused on my neck. “Who did that?” His fingers reached out, but I flinched away. “Who?” The pain in my wrists had faded during our conversation, but as soon as Aster mentioned it, the razor-sharp throbbing returned.

When I didn’t answer, Aster ran a hand over his face and tipped his head to the guards as they came towards me. One of them paused just behind me. He was questioning the order while the other opened the door, giving me a view of the glaring, white-blanketed woodlands stretching out behind him.

Aster strode towards the door, shaking his head. “You shouldn’t have come here.” And there was the rejection that I had been waiting for.

Confusion flickered across his face, and then he ran a thumb over his bottom lip the way he had always done when he was considering his next move.

He barked at the man standing behind me. “I said, untie her.”

“Lord?”

Lord?

“Now,” his voice was low and demanding.

The cord fell away. I flexed my rope-burned wrists as blood rushed back into my fingertips.

“Walk,” he said, already turning away. “We’ll talk on the way.”

He didn’t wait to see if I followed, but of course I did. I would always follow him, and I really wished that I didn’t want to, but where else was I to go? And some part of me still trusted him.

The Ruckus revealed itself as we walked a snow-lined path. I hugged my arms around myself as my toes numbed. Platforms woven into trees, rope bridges topped with snow, watchfires carefully hidden beneath canopies of broad evergreens. This wasn’t the violent chaos I’d expected, and the people weren’t living in caves like we had been told.

Wild, untamed nature and the weather cleverly hid the camp.

Warriors locked their gaze on Aster in respect or devotion, and then their eyes flicked to me and their faces morphed into distrust upon seeing my dress. I was wearing the clothes of a Barren noblewoman. I was the enemy, or at the very least someone to be wary of.

We stopped beneath a massive fir tree whose branches were so laden that they touched the snow. Aster dismissed the guards with a glance.

“How bad is this going to go?” I murmured, looking up at him, needing him to tell me that it was fine and that he would protect me.

“Bad. It’s out of my hands now. You made quite an entrance.”

He motioned further into the forest, and as he did, his shirt lifted to display the black lines of new tattoos. The man who was the only tether I had to home was now a Celtic warrior. A lord of an unknown land. The betrayal should have burrowed deep into my chest, but disbelief is a powerful beast. Had he really given up on Annatalia? We worshipped the Skyworld. He had worshipped the Skyworld. It was why he had been searching to end the curse and get the phoenixes back. To get Lex back. Had he really walked away from it all?