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“Her muscles are weary,”Malyr’s voice sounded through the unkindness, something Galantia had still not figured out how to do. “We will make camp in that copse of trees for the night.”
“We must keep our distance from the river,”Asker’s voice added.“There is no saying how far over its bank it spreads.”
We dived, gliding into the copse of trees, our claws dragging through snow. Shadows surrounded me, interrupted only by Galantia, who stumbled several steps forward through the snow, hissing and cursing. Goddess help us, she was a fucking poor flyer. Something to do with her feathers, Asker had explained, which were awfully brittle. Not that I minded preening them…
Malyr grabbed her arm, yanking her straight until she steadied. He frowned at her, then frowned at me. Then, without saying a word, he released her and walked off to survey the airy forest.
I stared after him, my teeth grinding together. Something had happened behind that waterfall, and it sure as fuck hadn’t been lessons in shifting. I had my idea, but I couldn’t be certain. Whatever it was, the way Galantia had handled it must’ve done something to Malyr’s head, given how he’d barely shown his face since, spending his nights alone on rooftops staring at the ocean.
“Smoother landings will come,” Marla said with a pat on Galantia’s shoulder before she looked over at Nathiel. “These trunks and branches should make solid columns and rafters. How about you get to work?”
The young weaver—seventeen, from what he’d told me—ran his light brown fingers through his long, black curls, his hazel eyes taking in the trees. Then, with a flick of his hand, shadows streamed from his fingers. Using the trunks for beams and the branches for warp yarn, he wove thick walls of shadowcloth. The shadows formed roofs where branches intersected or touched, creating tent-like structures throughout the forest.
“Stop gaping, sweetheart, or your tongue will freeze to the roof of your mouth,” I said with a grin as I stepped up beside Galantia, her brown pelt dress enchanted with shadowthread matching her eyes perfectly. “Did you expect that any of us were willing to roost on a dead tree for a second night?”
She shrugged. “It wasn’t so bad.”
“Wasn’t so bad?” Fuck, it had been so drafty and awful, I still couldn’t turn my head to the left properly. “You might be a Raven, but it’s alright to enjoy the comforts of having a human form whenever possible. I’ll get the fire started.” I lowered my forehead to hers, loving the way her lips immediately found mine in a quick kiss. “Help me with kindling?”
“Of course.” Using her ravens, she clamped dry twigs from the trees using their beaks, piling them where I dug a pit in the snow.
“I’ll go find some halfway decent wood,” I said to them before I rose and walked deeper into the forest.
Asker carved spits with his sword to my left, and to my right, Marla assisted Nathiel in weaving blankets. Malyr stood ahead of me, saying something to Lorn I couldn’t hear, before she turned away and flew off. To hunt, probably. My aim with the bow had been useless these days.
Probably because I had no arrows…
“I don’t like having Lorn anywhere near Galantia,” I mumbled as I stepped up beside Malyr, assessing the trees for potential firewood. “Has it ever crossed your mind that she might have put fire to that rope during our attack? We came back without Galantia, and you ordered Taradur to hold back on the siege weapons. Lorn isn’t stupid; she knew Galantia was in there.”
Malyr’s gaze wandered in the direction in which Lorn had left, but he shook his head. “She wouldn’t do that. Scare Galantia? Injure? Harass? All that, yes, but not kill.”
I scoffed, “Lorn hates her.”
“I never said she did not. That does not change the fact that she, against all my efforts to make her see otherwise, thinks she loves me. She would not do this to me.”
“I sure hope you’re right,” I said. “She’s not someone I can easily fight off, should it come to that.”
“Nobody is easy for you to fight off in your current state,” Malyr mumbled, giving me a concerned side-glance. “You think I’m not aware that you cannot conjure arrows? Daggers? Galantia is draining your shadows.”
And my amplified senses right along with it, especially with how Malyr had made himself rare, but I’d rather have a woodpecker repeatedly stab its beak into my brain than confess how I struggled to soothe Galantia’s void. “Why did you have to bring Lorn?”
He frowned at me for long moments before he looked up and down at the trees. “She is the only other deathweaver somewhat capable of controlling my shadows, and that is hardly a bad thing to have around in Vhaerya. We need her.”
“Care to finally tell me why?”
“You will see,” he said for the tenth time over the course of nearly two weeks. He jutted his chin at a dead birch, eaten up by woodworms. “That one should do for the night?”
I looked over the brittle trunk, some of the smaller branches dangling on nothing more but strings of bark. “Definitely.”
Malyr lifted his wielding hand at the tree. His shadows shot forward in dozens of black ropes, wrapping around the tree, squeezing harder and harder. Several cracks resonated in the forest at once, sending chunks of wood flying in all directions, but most fell to the ground by the exposed roots.
With a nod, he turned away and flew off, leaving me with a pile of wood as brittle as this quiet truce between us—yet another result of whatever had happened behind that waterfall. No snarky remarks, no backhanded attempts at getting to Galantia. No chest-pounding male aggression between us, and no jealous outbursts over the fact that his fated mate roosted with me at night.
As if he’d given up…
Unlikely.
“That wood will do,” Marla said in passing, offering me a smile before she leaned over, collecting the pieces in the gathered train of her dress. “Twice, Malyr went to the healers at Tidestone, requesting a light tea of gray devil bark for the pain.” A pound of her fist against her chest. “It’s been many, many years, but I still remember how I ached for Asker.”
