Fury Bound (The Wolves of Ruin, #2) — Chapter no 24

24

MERYN

tark and I ride toward the Siphon encampment without fanfare.S Obviously, the point is for us to surprise the Siphon forces, so it doesn’t make sense to make a big scene out of it.

Still, it’s a little anticlimactic.

I keep reaching up to touch the opal in the wolf crown for reassurance.

The amplified power it provides is writhing and alive in my veins. I’m glad for its strength, though I don’t love that I’m relying on it so heavily.

Our route takes us past some of the fields and farms we’re fighting to protect. It’s beautiful in the dim light: softly rolling hills, mist hanging over them in the chill morning air. Rows of pine and oak separating property lines.

Even the ramshackle farmhouses look romantic at this time of day, patterned with shadow.

Then the wind changes, blowing the smoke from the battlefields back toward us and shattering my illusions of an idyllic Nocturnan countryside.

“We are going to stink like charred firewood,” Anassa complains. I grin into her neck, hanging on tightly as we speed toward the front line.

“Sounds like an improvement from dirty dog,” I retort.

Anassa huffs, offended. “As a being with a far superior sense of smell, I can assure you that you are lucky my scent masks your own.”

The lighthearted back-and-forth tapers off as we slow down and move more quietly and cautiously. The risk that we’ll tip our plans to any Siphon scouts increases as we approach.

We ride past mazes of ditches and lines of spikes, in place to help slow

further Siphon advancement.

My heart breaks to see just how thin our defenses are. There are nowhere near as many fighters here as there should be, Bonded and foot soldier alike.

A sparse group of Daemos riders and wolves is on patrol, and they each salute respectfully as they see their Alpha and their queen pass. Here and there, groups of foot soldiers take shelter, weapons close at hand in case of another attack.

We take our time traveling down the line, silently letting soldiers and Bonded see us, recognize us.

Even if it takes us a little longer, being visible is part of the point, whether or not Stark and I are successful today.

Whatever happens, we need to show our forces that their queen and her leaders were willing to put their lives on the line for them. They never got that from their previous rulers.

Morale is too low to miss this chance. I can only hope it makes a difference.

And that we live long enough to see if it helped, either way.

As we finally turn to cross our defensive lines and head into Siphon territory, I call up the rifting I’ve been practicing, channeling it through the crown.

I can hide our presence in this dim twilight. Stark and I blend in and out of the shadows, moving closer and closer to the Siphon ranks.

“I better be able to call my power when the time comes,” I say worriedly to Anassa.

If I can’t get the shadebending to activate today, this is basically a

suicide mission.

“You will,” she replies calmly.

We’re crossing the no-man’s-land between our lines now. The earth here is scorched, dry. Trees are burned or broken, and there’s nowhere to hide.

I put all my focus into rifting, wrestling with light and shadow to keep us as near to invisible as I can. Meanwhile, Stark creeps up on the first Siphon sentry we encounter, circling around silently. Death incarnate.

In a single smooth strike, he removes the Siphon’s head.

The dim light brightens a bit more as we move, and I nudge Anassa faster. Her nose alerts us of another Siphon close ahead of us. I skirt around

a copse of burnt-out trees, coming up on the Siphon from behind.

Something alerts her to our presence, and she whirls around, drawing her sword.

A sharp sweetness hits the air as she tries to call her Siphon magic.

But I’m faster. A throwing knife to the throat silences her, protecting our secrecy. Then Anassa and I dart forward to remove her head.

We continue onward that way, picking off anyone who could give warning.

Energy zips through my veins. Anassa and I hum with grim satisfaction.

Riding alongside Stark and Cratos, delivering death to our foes?

It feels good.

Finally, the sunrise is almost upon us, the sky turning purple and yellow.

“It’s time,” I say over the bond.

Then I drop my hold on the magic, exposing us.

Anassa and Cratos take off, moving at full tilt toward the Siphons’ lines.

We must look like streaks of white and black against the terrain, we’re moving so fast.

We’re already amid their camp when a cry goes up from someone who spots us. Shouts travel through the camp, and horns sound. Siphons scramble from tents, grabbing weapons and pulling on armor in a hurried

rush.

But they’re too late.

Their unnatural speed aids them, but it’s not enough to stop the death we deliver. Stark and I move in tandem, slashing throats as one Siphon gets close, then another. My knives have a life of their own, directing my arms in a deadly dance.

We reach a clearing in the tents that looks to be about the middle of the camp, and I touch minds with Stark: “This spot is perfect. Cover me?”

“My pleasure.”

He and Cratos whirl around to cut down the next attacker. Then four more Siphons close in, and the two of them become a whirlwind of blades and teeth, movements too fast and dizzying to follow.

Anassa helps, smacking down with her massive paw a Siphon who gets too close to me. She decapitates him in one vicious bite.

Meanwhile, I reach inward to that place in my heart where the shadows dwell, praying this will work. I sink deep into focus like Siegrid and I have

been practicing.

I saw myself in the foresight vision.

I know I can do it. I saw it.

For a moment, nothing happens as I struggle to block out the sounds and sights of fighting around me.

The spot where the magic lives is like a psychic bruise deep inside me, tender and potent. My body remembers the shadows activating, dancing to my will.

Still… nothing happens, and I let out a frustrated growl.

Is this it?

Have I condemned us to death, all because the useless Sturmfrost Queen can’t get her powers to work when she needs them?

The spike of irritation and anger sends a little tendril of shadow out from that secret, locked-up place inside me.

It’s just the smallest whisper, but still… “Use it,” I hear Anassa through my focus. “You are not Siegrid. You are Meryn Sturmfrost, Queen of Nocturna. You are my rider. And you and I do things our own way. Do not stifle your anger because someone told you it wasn’t polite or proper. Anger can change the world when wielded

correctly.”

I grit my teeth. Anassa is right.

Fuck Siegrid and her stupid fucking calm.

This is what works for me.

I channel every piece of myself that burns with rage. The flame of my fury is locked deep away, eternal and aching.

But it’s here, always with me.

It is me.

Images flicker across my eyelids.

Saela behind bars, then drenched in blood, face pale as a ghost.

Izabel’s glassy eyes, her body betraying her. Convulsing on the floor.

My mother, lost to the grip of visions she never got a chance to understand.

Anassa, alone for centuries, orphaned by the Siphons, waiting endlessly for a bond that might never come.

Alistair Brightbane’s cursed blue eyes on Killian’s beautiful, lying face.

Something cavernous opens inside me, a depth far beyond what I’ve

realized before. I can sense, on the edges, Killian’s influence. If it weren’t for this bracelet on my wrist, I could cleave the world in two.

Still, it’s an overwhelming, terrifying amount of power.

And then… it’s as if the sunrise starts to reverse itself.

All across the camp, shadows twist and turn and dance as they meet and combine and turn into rivers of darkness. The pitch-black power comes from all around us, rushing and roaring over the farmlands and scarred battlefields and into the Siphon camp.

I reach out my arms, letting the magic fill me. The power is an icy bonfire inside my chest. Cold flames lick out into my arms, my hands, down to every fingertip.

It’s so easy, now that I’m not resisting. Too easy. I hear a half-crazed laugh and realize it’s me making the sound.

“Now, Meryn!” Anassa pulls me back to my task.

I flex my hands, ropes of darkness wreathing themselves around my

body.

Suddenly, it’s too much.

A yawning black pit opens behind my eyes, and my vision blurs. My control starts to slip as more and more shadows gather themselves to me, streaming over the ground and the tents and the Siphons around us like water, and I can’t seem to— “I’m here with you, Meryn!” It’s Stark this time, in my head. Stark’s voice, Stark’s strength holding me.

Lost in the darkness, I look toward the sound of his voice, reaching toward him with every piece of myself. Just like how I reached for him at the campsite.

Only this time, a shadow-spun link begins to form between us.

Finally, a piece of my soul sighs.

It’s beautiful.

A bridge of shining darkness arcs between us, made of glittering ropes of shadow. They braid and twist as they reach him.

And… connect us.

I don’t know what’s happening or how. All I know is that we’re suddenly bound—the shadows tie us together, wrapping around our souls and pulling tight. So tight we might never part.

His anger becomes my anger. My fury becomes his. Every breath brings

us closer in our minds.

The river of our mental connection has contracted. There’s no downstream. There just is. Stark and me, intimately connected in a way that shouldn’t be possible.

“Anassa, what is this?” I shout at her. “Is this your mate bond?”

“No,” she responds, her tone confused. “I do not understand this connection.”

I breathe in, and it’s his breath in my mouth. My eyes flutter open, and I see double: my vision and Stark’s intermingled.

It’s strange and overwhelming, but it’s also so right.

“Don’t dive into your darkness alone,” he says or he thinks—or I say it, or I think it. I can’t tell, anymore, where one of us begins and the other ends.

But I understand what he means. I can sense it, too: He can carry my power. He can wield it, if only I let him have it.

Can I make that choice, to give up a piece of myself? Can I truly trust

him with it?

Yes, my soul screams in return.

“Have it,” I think.

His mouth is my mouth as he breathes in the shadows. I’m intensely aware of the rub of his fingers together; it’s like a featherlight touch on my own hand. The touch of his long eyelashes on his cheek are like a kiss on my skin.

I gasp. My body is alight with heat and pleasure.

And so is his. I’m in every inch of him. His muscles tightening, the flex of his hand on his sword. The hot desire that burns so bright it’s blinding.

He’s in me, too. Sensing the way my body responds. The tempest of need that whirls through me, dangerous as an ice storm.

Our link completes, our overlap total.

Dark power erupts between us.

The power flows through me and into him and back to me.

We no longer need words to communicate—we are bound so close together that his thoughts are my thoughts, his desires my desires.

I grasp on and align my mind with his.

Together we PUSH.

The world loses all sound and color. Time suspends.

And then with a resounding roar, darkness streams out from us in all directions.

The shadows spread and then bear down, down, in crushing pressure.

Every Siphon in a hundred-foot radius of us is suddenly shrieking, their bodies slammed into the dirt.

The magic rushes on, stretching farther and farther. Reaching more and more of the enemy.

The unrelenting pressure pushes in on me, and on Stark, our minds intertwined. I grit my teeth and fist my hands and push more. All around me swirl the sounds of armor cracking and skulls smashing and screams cutting short.

I scream in pleasure and pain, the power and connection overwhelming.

Stark’s voice melds with mine.

And then together as one, we let go.

The power dissipates.

Light leeches back into the world.

I flutter my eyes, sight slowly returning to normal as our minds detach and we snap back into ourselves.

Everything near us has gone quiet. Deathly still.

I keel over on Anassa’s back as the last of the power leaves me and exhaustion floods in.

“What was that?” I mind-speak to Stark, the barriers between the four of us still fuzzy. “What the ever-loving fuck was that?”

His face is confused, wondering. “I… don’t know. That connection was… I don’t know.” We stare at each other. “And then, with your power, it came through me, and together, we could control it, tame it.”

My cheeks flush at that. There’s an echo of our connection, his skin burning hot, the swipe of his tongue across his lips. I shiver.

Anassa chimes in, “I have never heard of this before. But perhaps it is knowledge lost to the Sturmfrost Queens of old and their wolves’ mates?”

I file that away to think more about later, when we aren’t in the middle of a war front.

Everything around us is calm in its horror: mangled bodies. Pools of blood and smashed heads. Metal armor split open and flattened. Broken tentpoles, ripped fabric, and scattered weapons dropped by destroyed hands.

“Guess our theory was right,” Stark observes. “Crushing their skulls

completely works just as well as decapitation.”

I let out a choked laugh, the unreality of it all overwhelming.

A few survivors from a distant part of the Siphons’ camp are moving now, assembling. They’re far off, and I squint to try to make out what’s happening.

“They’re regrouping,” I tell Stark. “There’s a force off to the left that’s forming up, more organized this time—”

“I see them,” he cuts me off. “Do you think you can summon the shadows once more when they get close? Do you think we can do—that— again?”

My mind is still numb from the effort, but I set my jaw and focus inward, finding that anger at my core and pulling at the shadows again.

Everything in me strains. It’s as if they are reluctant, or maybe my call just isn’t as strong in my exhaustion.

Finally, that pool of darkness awakens. The shadows start to gather, streaming in slowly, and I grind my teeth, using everything in me to focus my control— “Meryn,” Anassa’s voice interrupts my focus, and the shadows drop, dispersing back into the landscape around us.

“What is it?”

“They’re retreating.”

Stark and I watch in confusion as the group we spotted moves away from us.

I’m keenly glad: My body is a wrung-out rag. Calling that power again made me feel as if I would burn into ash.

It doesn’t make sense, though. Yes, we wiped out dozens of the enemy, maybe even hundreds. But the fighting force here was at least thousands strong, from what our intelligence gathered. They wouldn’t just give up, would they?

“Something isn’t right,” I tell Anassa. She agrees.

More Siphons emerge from other distant parts of the camp, but none approaches us. Instead, they move off toward the larger group, away from us.

I know better than to see weakness where there is none. It’s my trick.

There’s eerie silence. It lurks in the battle smog, heavy and intrusive. I curl my lip and stare at the retreating line, trying to make out what they’re

doing, what’s happening.

Then they part, flowing like water.

And I see it flickering there, traveling down a wide row between distant camp tents.

A white flag waves against the pink-gray sunrise and the crimson-

drenched encampment.

A flag of peace.

Immediately, my insides writhe and warp with anger. Cratos and Stark move closer, and I notice absently that Cratos’s fur is wet with blood. Stark is just as filthy as his wolf. There’s a spill of blood down his neck, as if he suffered a deep cut near his ear that Cratos quickly healed.

“This could be a trap. You can’t trust it,” he says sternly.

My lips twitch upward. “I know that.”

He looks surprised, then relieved, then amused. All this in subtle twitches I’m somehow able to read.

He’s right, anyway. It’s likely a trap—every bruised and wearied part of me screams it is—but we’re ready to face it together. And if this grants me crucial time to regain my energy, prepare for another blast of magic, so much the better.

The fluttering flag and its bearer move closer to us. We stand and wait, unwilling to give up our position. With everything around us flattened, we have a clear line of sight should anyone try to suddenly attack.

The sun’s early rays strike the figure’s shining armor, glinting and startlingly clean in contrast to the muck and blood on us and all around us.

A woman, I realize. Her dark hair is bound tight, bearing an ethereally beautiful face. She’s almost upon us, and I stare at her prominent cheekbones, delicate jaw, slender neck. Her rich brown skin reflects the oranges of the sunrise.

So much beauty wrapped around something so deadly.

She’s more than a mere soldier, I can tell immediately. She holds her shoulders back the same way Siegrid does, as if she owns the ground she walks upon by virtue of the touch of her foot.

This must be the Siphon general we heard about.

She comes right up to us and doesn’t flinch when Anassa snaps her teeth. She stares, then cranes her head to look up at us. She plants the white flag into the ground by her feet, and her hands fold behind her back.

That subtle motion looks like an insult on her, like she’s telling us that even if we decided to attack her now, she wouldn’t need her hands ready to destroy us.

A bead of sweat slides down my spine. Her nostrils twitch like she can smell it. But instead of baring her fangs, she dips her head. It isn’t a sign of

deference.

It’s barely an acknowledgment.

“I am General Ruby Navarro, representing King Lucien Brightbane of Astreona as his ambassador,” she says in an alluringly silky voice. “You are the queen, are you not? King Lucien has a ceasefire proposal for Queen Meryn Sturmfrost.”

Shock ripples through my body, nearly knocking me off Anassa.

“You’re joking,” I blurt out, my eyes sliding over to Stark. Confusion lights in his gaze as well.

Five hundred years of war paused with its first ceasefire? When the Siphons have the ability to gain more ground in Nocturna than ever before?

I quickly recover and put some metal in my voice. “What is the meaning of this?”

Ruby arches an elegant brow. “Our battle is not with you, Your Highness, nor with your people,” she tells us plainly. “It’s time for Astreona and Nocturna to unite against our common foe.”

She tilts her head so that her eyes darken with malice.

And she hisses his name like it’s a curse. “Alistair Brightbane.”