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Mist blanketed the valleys below, concealing roads and rivers alike beneath rolling seas of white. For a long while, she saw nothing.
Then the fog moved.
Dark shapes emerged one after another, swift enough that even immortal eyes struggled to follow them. They flowed through the dew-covered forest in bursts of shadow, dissolving into smoke before reforming farther along the mountain road. Hundreds of them.
An army.
The old woman’s breath caught.
“No.”
The word escaped so quietly, the pines alone heard it.
Her gaze, now sharpened after resting beneath Melistra’s old altar, found the figure at their center perched atop a tall, scaled beast born of fey magic. Even from this impossible distance, she knew him. Only one creature in this life stilled her heart with fear. In kind, the forest recoiled from his presence. Branches bowed beneath a wind that did not exist and frost blackened where his shadow passed.
The Bloodlord had finally begun his journey south.
The old woman closed her eyes.
Too soon, she thought with deep sorrow. Goddess, please, I cannot help her yet!
She had pleaded with the stars for one more turning of the moon. One more chance, one more rest beneath the stars from whence she came before she freed her daughter from the clutches of the vampires that had once tried to destroy her.
But Melistra had other plans, and fate quickened its pace.
She had watched her child vanish into the hands of fate long ago.
Pale crimson eyes, impossibly tiny fingers wrapped around her own. Time had stolen nearly everything else. Sometimes she feared she no longer remembered the sound of that little voice. But Saelith’s eyes always remained; not even the stars could forget that gaze filled with life, pale like sun-faded, pink amaranth blooms in a sea of light. Time may have stolen everything else from her, but she would always remember her daughter’s eyes.
With great care, she lowered herself before the shrine. Old bones settled against older stone. There remained only a single flicker of starin within her.
She had guarded it for centuries. Not because she feared death—she found herself craving it as the centuries wore on and her memories faded—but miracles demanded patience, and a part of her never truly stopped hoping Saelith still lived.
Slowly, she placed both palms upon the frost-covered earth.
The earth answered.
Roots awakened beneath the soil. Stars still lingering beyond dawn brightened one by one until silver light threaded through the heavens like strands on a loom waiting to be woven.
“I cannot reach you,” she whispered into the waking world. Beside her, the fey wolf lifted her head, staring at the fading moon before a soft howl loosened from her chest.
“I cannot warn you.”
The wind carried her words west.
“But I can still become the hand that steadies yours.”
She drew one final breath, then surrendered herself to the stars.
forty-seven
Funeral Bells
Lucan did not remember carrying Elarian back to his chambers. He only remembered the weight of her in his arms and the rage he felt for hurting something that had become so precious to him beyond any rational thought. No words passed between them. She remained perfectly still in his arms, as if she could not tell when the caged beast inside would attack again.
Once, he would have cherished the silence.
Now it suffocated him.
