Fury Bound (The Wolves of Ruin, #2) — Chapter no 55

55

MERYN

he wolves keep moving despite our despair and exhaustion. DespiteT their aching loss at one of their own.

Away from Linsfall. Away from whatever Phylax traitors have survived, and away from the ragged wound I opened in the earth, scarring the landscape.

Away, with the Goddess Tear of destruction in my pack radiating warmth against my chest and the space where Venna’s bond once was trying and failing and trying and failing to flow.

And my heart is breaking, and breaking, and breaking. The ache of the punishing ride is the only thing that keeps me grounded at all.

After a solid hour with my thighs burning and my lungs on fire, I shout to Lucien, “How long do we have until she turns?”

Venna has remained asleep, but I remember all too well how it went with Saela. She was perfectly fine. She seemed like herself when I met her in Stark’s office at Sturmfrost.

Then all at once, she was tearing out a throat and writhing like an animal

caught in a trap.

Oh goddess. Venna.

“Lucien,” I demand.

Newly turned Siphons are at their most dangerous, I remember. The craving is uncontrollable. For a while, Venna won’t even know me. She’ll look at me and only see the map of my veins beneath my skin.

I know it will feel like she’s dead, too, or irrevocably changed, even if only for a little while. And I don’t know whether I can endure it.

“Hours,” Lucien calls back to me. “About six, give or take.”

I nod and turn inward. Thoughts pummel the inside of my skull. Six hours. How much ground could we cover? How will we manage the initial transformation?

The realization ripples through my mind and Anassa’s simultaneously.

“We will need to split up,” Anassa says.

We can’t manage Venna’s transformation while moving, but we can’t all halt everything to help her through it.

That would take days. Days we don’t have with Killian’s forces closing in.

I don’t announce my decision yet. I keep us riding hard. The wolves must sense the urgency, because they run until their heads hang low, alternating between powerful bursts of speed and a steadier, more sustainable pace. And then they keep running. Without complaint. Without a single snarl or snap of sharp teeth.

They’re mourning, too. The burn in their muscles might be just as welcome a distraction for them as it is for me.

Eventually, we can’t keep going. I’m not entirely certain where we are, but I know Stark and Cratos, who have traveled most of our nation, will

piece it together.

Right now, I have other concerns.

I ease up on Anassa, leaning back with Venna slumped unconscious in my arms. Anassa slows to a lope and then to a heavy-footed, panting trudge.

She hangs her head, sides heaving.

My eyes move over the landscape. The trees have thinned out slightly, but the canopy is still thick enough for cover and the sun hasn’t yet risen.

And though I’m exhausted, I still manage to keep a veil of magic draped around us.

I’m under no illusion that it could ever be enough to shield us fully from harm, however. Anything could happen at any moment. My sense of safety has been shattered—again—on the tip of an arrow.

But I need to do this, and I need to do it now. I need to gather whatever intelligence I can in case it could give us some kind of edge, some solution to all this.

The others stop alongside Anassa. Noemi leans all the way forward on Ephyse and wraps her arms around her wide neck, shutting her eyes,

shaking from exertion. Cratos approaches Anassa and touches his nose to hers. They stay there like that, both still panting.

I look down at Venna. It seems like she’s sleeping, but it isn’t peaceful.

She’s in the grip of dark dreams, and there’s nothing I can do to protect her from them.

“Ven,” I whisper, fighting back the tears.

I cup her head where it’s resting against my shoulder and turn to kiss her hair.

Then I guide a couple of strays locks from her brow, giving my heart a few rapid beats to grieve, to revel in the molten anger that this has happened.

When I lay her down over Anassa’s shoulders, my direwolf sends me a promise. She’ll take care of Venna while I do what I need to do.

I stroke her side as I dismount, legs shaking slightly from the long ride.

Then I move to Stark, gripping his ankle where it rests against Cratos’s side.

He looks down at me, sweat on his brow, hand sunk in Cratos’s fur.

Elias rides behind him; even his nearly perfect Siphon face looks creased with weariness.

“Maybe four more hours, before…” he tells me, and he glances toward Venna.

“I’m not going to wait. I need all the information I can get,” I reply.

“Wait?” Elias asks. He slips down from Cratos’s back.

“She means the Tear,” Lucien says from behind Noemi. He lifts himself up and soars down from wolfback in a flutter of robes. “I agree it is wise to learn as much as we can about these objects before facing Alistair, as he’s armed with one of them. You need me for this, I assume?”

My answer is to retrieve the Tear.

It’s still stained with the Mother Priestess’s blood.

I lift it to examine it in what dappled moonlight makes it through the shivering leaves above. As my sweat cools, cold sets in. Or maybe it’s lingering shock. Yet my hand is warm around the stone.

The opal is so painfully beautiful. I wish it didn’t exist. The power it holds is terrible. And I hate that I’ve already used it for my own purposes.

My eyes dart to Stark. “Watch over me?” I whisper over our bond.

“Always.”

I cradle the Tear in my palms and hold it out toward Lucien so that he

can press his hands over mine.

Being washed away to another time is familiar at this point. Anticipation mounts in me. A hunger to know.

I’m sinking, into the earth, below the ground, falling through darkness.

And then… I’m in a barren, cold forest. The scene is remarkably clear. There’s packed dirt beneath my shoes. I can make out the sharp scent of grass and the contrastingly sweet smells of cedar and sap. The air is brisk, but the light before me is warm.

Lumina’s light. She’s ahead of me, walking slowly. Her feet are bare, peeking out from beneath the hem of a flowing gown made of simple pale linen and adorned only with a single line of pearl-like studs.

She glows from within, as before, but her expression is unreadable.

Lumina stops walking and turns toward me. Nearly no light reaches us, yet she defies the shadows. She may as well be standing in a green field on a summer’s day, grass waving around her to match the fluttering of her hair.

I watch as she holds out her hands with her palms together, closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath.

As she exhales, she breathes out a wave of power. It’s frightening, awe- inspiring, beautiful, impossible. It’s like the first cry of a newborn, her mother’s pain still lingering.

As the wave moves, it consumes the forest. No, it doesn’t consume. It transforms.

In Lumina’s expression, there’s now grief, relief, joy. All of it all at once. She keeps her eyes closed as the woods start to become.

The dirt beneath my feet turns to packed, geometric stone, hardening with every passing second. The tall trees bend, branches growing in strict lines, at unnatural right angles, and then petrifying into the shapes of buildings. Roots become stone steps. Twigs grow up and cross one another and turn into windowpanes.

I spin, mouth agape, as the forest turns into a city before my eyes. Even the smells change, replaced by fresh smoke like the hearths are already burning. With a jolt, I realize I recognize the pattern of these streets. I’ve

been here. Hours ago.

It’s Linsfall.

It looks slightly different. The buildings aren’t as modern, all with straw-

thatched roofs and none reaching more than a single story. But the layout of the roads is familiar in their annoying habit of narrowing and widening unpredictably. And the buildings hold an echo of their future iterations.

When I turn back to look at Lumina, she’s standing in the very center of a city square I recognize.

She stands precisely where the statue of the Faceless Goddess stood.

After a minute, the groaning of the trees vanishes. A minute after that, the deep crackling of stone forming goes silent, too. Only then does Lumina open her eyes.

She surveys everything before her with a beneficent smile.

And then she weeps. She smiles and weeps like she’s glad to finally witness this place she held inside her so long, but like she also misses holding it so impossibly close to her.

Just as I witnessed in the tower’s Tear, her tears roll down to her pointed chin and fall into her hands. They gather and become an opal, new light glistening over the goddess’s features.

A door opens. Another. Suddenly, people are emerging from all the buildings around us.

People, when there were no people anywhere before the goddess’s magic swept through. My heart is racing.

She just… created them?

They’re dressed in simple clothes. I might mistake them for commoners from today’s Linsfall, though the styles are a bit strange and bulky. They all stare at her with wide eyes.

Lumina holds her hands out to them, welcoming, her head slightly cocked to the side.

A shock explodes from the base of my skull and down my spine when I realize it’s an exact mirror of the position the statue stands in.

Stood, I suppose.

“Welcome, my children,” she says. A woman reaches Lumina’s side first, and the goddess places the opal in her hands tenderly.

The woman regards it with reverence and wonder.

“This is your world now,” Lumina says. “Cherish it. Protect it against those who would do it harm.”

“Who are you?” the woman asks in a strange accent.

“Lumina, goddess of creation. And I… wish I could know you,” she

whispers. But the emotion that briefly grips her doesn’t remain in her voice.

“Guard over this Tear, and let nobody take it from you.”

Her voice grows powerful, and the people tremble. I tremble, too, hearing her.

“I will always come when you summon. Be good to one another, and be well.”

She turns, and suddenly she’s gone. I don’t miss it in a blink. She just suddenly isn’t.

The people look around, confused, suddenly alive and suddenly alone.

And the woman holding the Tear holds it to the light, just as I did in the

forest. “Goddess,” she says reverently.

I’m thrown back into my body then.

My teeth grind, and I have to try very hard to remember how to breathe.

After I find a rhythm, I open my eyes. Lucien’s eyes are still closed, his breathing also returning.

I turn to Stark, who has dismounted Cratos and is standing with his arms crossed and his jaw tight. Noemi stands behind him, also looking at me with questions in her eyes.

“I saw the goddess,” I say slowly. “And what I think was the creation of Linsfall and of this Tear. I can’t tell if it came before the things that happened at the Tower, though, or after.”

I pause and think back over what I’ve seen, whether there’s anything new we can learn from this vision.

Lucien is alert again now, too, pacing back and forth with his brows furrowed.

“Lucien, did you pick up on anything that might help us?”

He glances up. “Architecture in Nocturna was always uglier than that in Astreona?”

I sigh. “Okay, but how about anything about the power of the Tears, or how we defeat Killian?”

Lucien shakes his head. “I’m not sure what we know now, to be honest.

The goddess created a city and some people… and then left? What does that mean for the Tears? And why could those people touch the gem, but not the Mother Priestess?” Stark and I shared the story of what happened to her hands during our journey.

I sink down to the ground, leaning my back against a tree stump. “Okay,

well, unfortunately the great and all-knowing Siphon king didn’t pick up any more intel than I did on that little vision journey.”

“Where does that leave us?” Noemi’s voice is quiet but firm. “Even if we don’t entirely understand them, we do know these Tears bestow great power on you and on Killian. He’s been able to win the entire country to his side. Will the power of the new ones we’ve found be enough for you and Lucien to fight him?”

We’ve had this conversation before, multiple times while we’ve been on the road. Ultimately, we continued to hope that collecting more Tears would not just give us more power but also help us understand Killian’s own Tear and how to turn it against him.

I hesitate. If it weren’t for the damn engagement bracelet, it would be easier to tell Noemi that yes, with the Tears of creation and destruction, I could take on anyone or anything.

But will Killian be able to access their power through me? What if he can turn it right back around to destroy us?

I was counting on having Lucien by my side for this battle, another strong magic wielder with Tears amplifying his abilities. And most important, one who is not compromised by an unbreakable link to our enemy.

With Venna about to need constant care, though, I don’t see how we can

all continue forward.

And without Lucien and his two Tears… “I think we have enough firepower now,” I say finally, trying to sound confident. “And we stopped him from getting his hands on the destruction Tear. But Killian can turn his entire army on us, including even people who were formerly our supporters. I don’t want to kill all of Nocturna just to save it.”

I rub my neck, wincing at the pain throughout my body after the night we’ve had.

“At the same time, I don’t see that we can put things off any further.

Killian could go after our final allies in Blumenfall at any time. Plus, we don’t really have a better plan beyond just, get the Tears and hope that’s enough…”

My mind turns to dark despair. I can’t abandon the rest of my people to Killian’s rule. But does it do us any good for me to blindly throw myself at

our enemy, not knowing how many we’ll be up against?

“Then we need a better plan,” Stark says simply. His eyes haven’t left me. His faith that I can solve this kindles something in my chest. I sit up a little straighter.

“You’re right. What do we have that can help us? What are his

weaknesses?”

We all quiet, thinking about that.

“His thirst for power?” Noemi suggests.

She’s not wrong. If Killian had wanted to, he could have found a way to get around his family’s sick legacy, to avoid becoming Alistair’s vessel. He didn’t. He accepted it, because he wanted the power it would bring him. It’s

his second greatest weakness. And… And I think I know the first.

It’s clear to me now. There is a way forward. There is a way to seize my peace again. There’s a way to turn this cursed connection between us, this agony that haunts me, into a weapon I can turn on him.

It hurts, yes. It’s going to hurt. But women in pain give men confidence.

And it only takes one mistake.

“Meryn!”

I jolt. Stark does, too. Noemi looks confused and glances between us.

It’s Egith’s voice, urgent and breathy.

“Killian and his forces are approaching Blumenfall.”

My entire body goes rigid.