Fury Bound (The Wolves of Ruin, #2) — Chapter no 44

44

MERYN

turn wide eyes toward the island.I Suddenly, out of nowhere, massive spiked rocks spear out of the sea.

They must’ve been hidden by the fog, but we’re in it now, the ship soaring toward them.

White water splashes up toward us as the hull groans under the weight

of the sudden turn.

“Fuck!” I shout, staggering back.

Stark’s hand closes around my arm, yanking me. “Cratos!” he bellows, sprinting with me.

My balance is upset by the tilt of the ship’s deck, and Stark has to catch me and drag me back up. Cratos is on his feet, fangs bared, growling.

We reach Cratos right as the ship’s hull hits the rocks.

I cry out as I’m thrown to the deck, but Cratos is above me. He braces his massive body, using his weight and strength to ground the three of us.

He sinks his teeth into the ropes hanging from the ship’s mast.

Stark holds me with one arm and clings to Cratos’s fur with the other.

There’s an awful creaking, scraping sound as the ship glances off the stones.

A blur of white flashes past my eyes. I scream when I realize it’s Anassa writhing, her body flying over the deck, her claws scraping against the wood as she tries to resist the pull of gravity.

Her body slams into the railing, and she yelps, making Cratos growl and groan, though he doesn’t release his grip even then. Almost immediately, though, the ship starts to right itself.

Instantly, Cratos abandons us, rushing to Anassa’s side.

I pant, watching him worry over her, fear crystallizing in my veins. He literally bites her as if he needs to hold on to her.

Then she snaps at him and growls, getting back to her feet. I don’t have to hear their words to understand she’s telling him she’s fine and to stop being so dramatic. He nips at her ear, and she flicks it at him, her eyes seeking me.

I find my feet and rush to her. Unlike with Cratos, she lets me hold her.

“Scared the shit out of me.”

“I hate ships.”

“You and me both.”

I lift my head. Stark leans on the railing, staring out at the jagged rocks.

The rigging is squeaking and hissing. Lucien turns a lever that draws the ropes tight, dragging and folding the sails closed.

There’s a loud, metallic rattling sound as the anchor dislodges from its resting place.

“We can’t sail through that,” Lucien says by way of explanation.

“There’s no clear path.”

I scratch Anassa’s face for a moment and then move to join him.

He’s right. The rocks we hit aren’t the only ones—the sea is covered in them. “No clear path at all?” I ask.

“Nothing I can see,” Venna tells me. “See the shadow in that open bit?

There are likely more rocks just beneath the surface of the water.”

I grimace. The island is so tantalizingly close, but there’s still a vast stretch of white-capped water between us and its shore. Even if there were wide-open areas before us, if we tried to sail closer, more rock formations

could emerge suddenly from the mist.

We can’t trust our eyes here.

“She’s right,” Lucien confirms, thudding down the steps from the helm.

“Navigating any closer would risk the ship. We’re already in dangerous waters.”

“Are you all right?” I ask. There’s blood dripping from his arm.

He waves his hand dismissively. “Rigging bit me on its way up. Already almost healed. How are you going to approach?”

The debate immediately starts up, but Anassa’s voice cuts in. “There is only one solution to the approach. It is obvious, is it not?”

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“We swim.”

I choke and look up at her. “Excuse me?!”

“What?” Venna asks. “What did she say?”

“Anassa said we should swim. Which is ridiculous. And reckless. The water looks freezing, the distance is way too far, and, I’ll remind you, I’ve never swum in my life!” I yell, panic gripping me.

Growing up in perpetually frozen, landlocked Sturmfrost didn’t exactly provide much opportunity for swimming lessons. And death by drowning seems like an awful way to go.

But Anassa just lifts her head and plants her feet. It’s her I’m right, you’re wrong look, and it’s clearly convinced Cratos, who’s nudging at Stark’s arm until it’s slung over his nose. Get on, that means.

“Can direwolves even swim with all that fur?” I demand.

“They… can,” Stark admits, scratching at Cratos’s ear. His hesitation implies some negative previous experience. Great.

“That doesn’t mean they should!” I protest.

“Doesn’t it?” Noemi asks. “We need to get to the island.”

The debate starts up again. I am consistently on the side of hey, let’s not jump into the sea and drown. I’d really rather live a little longer, please?

But apparently, I’m outvoted.

“You can’t outvote me,” I snap, only partially joking. “I’m your queen.”

“I think we just did,” Venna says.

“We can bring our riders safely to shore. If the island is accessible only to Bonded, this may be our only way in,” Anassa insists.

I drag my hand over my face. “I’m going to kill all of you.”

“Not if the sea gets us first,” Venna says very deliberately to piss me off.

I smack at her as she passes me, and she chuckles.

Lucien is lingering to the side, and I shoot him a look. “If you sail this boat away while we’re on the island…”

He puts a hand on his hip. “It would sort of defeat the point of sending you in there to retrieve another Tear if I just left you here to die, no?”

I narrow my eyes. “And my crown?”

Lucien leans against the railing. “I hardly think you should wear it swimming, do you? Enjoy the water; it should be refreshing after all that vomit.”

Scoffing, I turn to Anassa. She has a smug look on her face, her eyes

blinking lazily like she’s just killed the biggest deer in the bunch. She loves getting her way.

“Mm-hmm,” I grumble, and start stripping my outer layers. The less clothing, the less water weight I’ll have to fight against to stay mounted.

Cold air lifts the hairs all over my body, and the mist immediately saps my heat as I rigidly climb up Anassa’s side.

“I hate this,” I tell Anassa as she approaches the railing. The others all mount up and gather at the edge of the deck now. “I hate this, and I blame you,” I tell her. “I think you just want to get off this fucking ship.”

She snorts at me.

Stark and Cratos approach. His eyes catch mine, and his intention ripples over the bond. It isn’t quite words, but it feels like, I’m with you.

“You better not drop me,” I whisper in Anassa’s ear. “I plan on dying in a much more heroic way.”

She huffs an amused breath, and then we’re launching over the railing.

There’s a brief moment when we’re both flying through the air. I tighten my grip on her fur. We hit the water, and icy cold shrieks over my nerves.

The air rushes from my lungs, and I’m convinced I’m about to pass out.

Then the salt stings my eyes, and my mouth floods with the overwhelming, awful taste of it. I’m choking and gasping back to myself.

I lean into Anassa, bracing against wave after wave, my hands locking up on her fur. Her powerful muscles move through the water.

I can’t tell how fast we are or aren’t moving. As soon as one wave passes, leaving my eyes burning and my lungs crying out for air, another hits me like a suffocating blow. There’s no relief from the onslaught.

My mind goes as numb as my body, slowing by the second.

I try to keep track of the others in the swirling chaos, but they’re invisible behind the waves and fog. The jarring, freezing water keeps jolting me out of my focus when I try to find them through the bonds.

Rocks keep emerging from the fog like massive teeth, and I can sense the sea beneath me, yawning wide to swallow us up.

The waves start to come at another angle, and the current pulls us sideways, fighting our progress by dragging us in the wrong direction. The only thing keeping me sane is Anassa’s strength. She moves, cutting through the sea like a silver blade.

I trust her. All I have to do is hold on. Cling to her. Let her carry me to

safety.

A high-pitched howl fills the air, and I’m instantly on alert, trying to catch a glimpse of its cause through the fog.

Noemi’s direwolf, Ephyse, is swimming backward, moving with the waves instead of against them. And Noemi is in the water, gasping and

trying to scream.

They’re separated.

Noemi’s head goes under, then comes up again.

My alarm riots through the bonds. It cuts right through the brain fog and the fear, and my overwhelming, consuming need to protect Noemi rages through all of us. Anassa starts to turn, her muscles shuddering as she

responds to my impulse.

Ephyse howls again.

I can’t see Noemi any longer. I’ve lost her. Anassa has, too, judging by the way she’s treading water, head swiveling, trying to use her nose even as the saltwater scent masks everything and the fog blinds us.

Then I feel it. The fear. The dark. The gasp for air that drags stinging salt

water into her lungs.

Drowning. Dying.

The woman’s body from my original vision rises in my mind. Was it Noemi? Are we doomed to lose her?

I let out the scream she can’t. My voice carries clear over the waves. My senses blur with hers for a moment, and my hands start to loosen in Anassa’s fur, waves battering at me, threatening to drag me down with Noemi.

And then comes a crippling pain in my arm. Light. Noemi is fading, blood is seeping into the water, but she’s being lifted.

“MERYN!”

Anassa’s voice slams me back into my body. I was slipping away.

I choke and tighten my grip on her again. “Noemi. She—”

“She is safe.”

I gasp and turn, blink rapidly against the sting in my eyes. Cratos’s massive body plows through the waves at a speed that should be impossible. Stark is on his back, holding on with a single strong hand, leaning forward to reach Noemi. She’s entirely limp with an arm clamped in Cratos’s teeth.

She’s bleeding, but she’s still alive.

Ephyse lets out a desperate whimper, swimming close to Cratos to try to nudge Noemi’s limp body up toward Stark.

Anassa begs me to focus. She can’t hold out forever. I throw myself at the mercy of my direwolf, letting trust take over.

The fear never entirely fades, but I can tell the shore is getting closer.

The entire swim should have taken minutes, but with the current fighting us and the cold fire of terror burning me up from inside, it seems like it takes hours. Years off my life, really.

We break through a particularly dense patch of fog, and suddenly the island’s shoreline appears right before us, much closer than I thought we were.

Relief floods me. Even if I were to fall from Anassa now, she’d be able to retrieve me.

I start to slump against her back as she makes one final push for the island. Once we’re in the shallows, she finds her footing on the rocky bottom and stands. The weight of her soaked fur must be punishing, but she pushes herself up all the same and staggers toward the beach.

Clinging weakly to her neck, I try to encourage her, to give her my thanks, to communicate how fucking impressed I am with her.

She rumbles and collapses onto the pebbly shore. I slip from her back and thud into the loose, rounded, dark rocks, lying there like a waterlogged corpse and relishing the sweet, sweet solidity of the ground.

I’m gasping for breath, and my entire body is trembling, but without the waves attacking me, I can focus enough to sort through the communication bonds in my head. All four of us are alive.

Exhausted, but alive.

Through salt-stung eyes, I see the others struggling to shore. Venna’s wolf is barely swimming, but Cratos is there, lending his strength, pushing him along. Stark is already on shore. He has Noemi under his arm.

She’s bleeding still, but she’s conscious again, retching sea water onto the stones. Ephyse finally reaches her, bending down to focus on healing

her arm.

“Come closer,” Anassa urges, concerned.

She nudges me with her nose and licks me, and I understand why she’s afraid. My body is turning blue, and I can’t stop violently shaking. I’m

fairly certain I’m on the verge of hypothermia.

I cough and groan as I try to crawl closer to Anassa, hoping her body will lend me some warmth. She attempts to pull me in with her paw and shifts to reach me better. But I just sort of collapse onto the stone, pulled down under the weight of my soaked clothes, face buried in her briny fur.

When she licks her tongue over my head again, warmth settles over me as if she just laid a blanket over me.

I open my eyes, surprised. Immediately, the bite in the air around me lessens. Heat suffuses my blood. The stones under my hands warm as if they’ve been sitting in the sun for hours despite the dense fog.

The water dragging me down evaporates, hissing and drifting from my skin in steam. Within moments, I’m entirely dry, as if I were never in the water at all.

I look around, baffled. The same thing is happening to the others. Their clothes and hair dry in seconds.

The wolves shake themselves as they withdraw from the sea, sending water spraying everywhere, but when they fall still, their fur is light and fluffy. Dry.

Stark meets my eyes, looking just as bewildered as I am. He smooths a hand down his dry clothes and shakes his head.

It shouldn’t be possible. Things like this don’t just happen. It’s magic like I’ve never seen.

It takes us all several minutes to recover from the shock of the swim and the subsequent magical recovery. Clearly, we’re in the right place. The island seems to be testing us, and when we pass the test, it rewards us. That much is clear.

But as I stand on the beach and look up at the tower, a gut-wrenching sense of danger settles over me.

This island is old, and it’s alive enough to recognize us as Bonded, to push back against us, to dry us off like a parent ruffling a towel over their children.

The others gather around me. I reach up to cup Stark’s neck.

“Thank you,” I tell him. He rests his hand over mine briefly, and I release him to turn to the others. “Move carefully,” I tell them. “There’s no way that was all this island has in store for us. I’m guessing it’s just beginning.”

The island is smaller than it appeared from the ship, but it’s no less ominous. It’s dominated by a rocky central hill upon which stands the tower. Up close, it looks less like a natural formation and more like it was intentionally carved from gray stone by a masterly hand. Steep stairs cut into the rocky hill leading up to a door.

The tower itself is weather-beaten, with slimy stains clinging to it where the sea spray meets its exposed walls. Yet its surface is remarkably intact, despite its obvious age. It rises at least twenty stories, like a lighthouse

without a light, lost in the fog.

Lonely.

That’s what this is, sinking deep into my bones. Loneliness.

An ancient echo of the goddess, maybe, if our crazy theories are right and she really was here long ago.

As we climb the slippery steps toward the entrance, my eyes start to play more tricks on me. There’s movement.

It isn’t like my shadows, which are easy to track when one knows where to look for them. Here, my mind keeps registering motion, but when I turn to look at it, everything is utterly still.

I realize, gradually, that the stones themselves are shifting. I can’t catch the motion with my eyes. I’m not fast enough. But when I’m not looking directly at the tower, the patterns in the stonework slide and shift in my peripheral vision.

It makes me dizzy, and it makes me feel like we’re being watched.

Followed.

“Just keep walking,” I advise the others, and they do. Our wolves move with care, their massive footfalls quiet.

The fog thins, and we can see the tower’s entrance clearly. It’s an enormous door made of a single, enormous slab of stone. Rectangular, with an uneven surface. Carved into the natural rock face, however, are words.

“What is this?” Noemi asks.

I step up to the stone door and crane my neck to read the inscription. A poem.

THE FIRST WALK PATHS THE LIGHT CAN’T TRACE, THROUGH SECRETS WRAPPED IN SHADOWS’ GRACE.

THEY SEE THE CRACKS IN EVERY LIE, AND STRIKE BEFORE THE WATCHERS SPY.

THE NEXT ERUPTS WHERE CHAOS BLEEDS, THEIR WRATH THE FORCE THAT BATTLE FEEDS.

THEY BREAK THE LINES, THEY SPARK THE FLAME, SO OTHERS LIVE—AND SPEAK THEIR NAME.

THE THIRD MOVE AS A SINGLE TIDE, WITH SHIELD TO SHIELD AND STRIDE TO STRIDE.

THEY HOLD THE LINE WHEN OTHERS FALL, A LIVING WALL, AN ANSWERED CALL.

THE LAST BEARS WEIGHT NO SOUL WOULD CHOOSE,

TO COUNT THE COST, TO RISK AND LOSE.

THEY DRAW THE MAP WHERE LIVES ENTWINE, AND SHAPE THE FIELD BY GRAND DESIGN.

FOUR AS ONE, THEIR PATHS ALIGN, A WOVEN FORCE, A FATE DIVINE.

“It’s about us,” Venna says. She looks at me. “The packs. Right?”

“I’m not sure,” I reply. “It seems like it? But either way, we have to keep moving.”

I take a deep breath and reach out. When I place my palm against the cool stone of the door and push, the entire slab starts to shift. It makes a wretched grinding, rumbling sound as it swings inward.

And yet… no resistance. More magic, then.

I step forward and stare down into the revealed space.

Down, not up. How perplexing. What kind of tower goes down?

There’s a spiral staircase, illuminated by an eerie bluish light that seems to come from the stone itself. The glow shifts around us, brightening and dampening like the tower is breathing.

“In we go,” I whisper. And I take the first step into the tower’s depths.