Something had clearly happened between the two, but I’d have to get the full story later.
We hadn’t heard anything from Vail during all this time, and I was trying very hard not to dwell on that fact. Thanks to our mate bond, I could feel him, but it was definitely fainter the farther he went. Our bond was stronger than it had been—it no longer felt like it was crumbling—but, clearly, distance had an impact.
Roth had found a couple of books that mentioned Fae mate bonds. From what we could tell, the bonds formed in one of two ways. Naturally, which only occurred when the people forming the bond were genuinely in love with each other and declared their devotion, or through spell castings. It seemed the Fae had been fans of arranged political marriages, and mate bonds were used in those cases as well.
I hadn’t come across anything about them being possible to break like Erendriel had claimed, but the books hadn’t had a ton of information. It didn’t matter though, because I was keeping my mates, and I’d kill anyone who tried to take them from me—the Seelie King included.
To keep myself from going insane, I’d started limiting how often I checked the bond between me and Vail. Otherwise, I’d just obsess over it, and I was worried that I might tug on it or send some of my emotions barreling down the bond and distract Vail at the worst possible moment.
My imagination had run wild with Vail fighting against monsters or some of Carmilla’s rangers, only to miss a step because I’d practically screamed my growing panic through our mate bond.
So I’d diverted my obsessive mind into fine-tuning the transformation spell and going over the plan with everyone repeatedly.
Which apparently was starting to get on everyone’s nerves.
Kieran, of all people, had threatened to find a spell to seal my lips shut if I attempted to run through everything again, which had everyone grunting in agreement. According to Talis, I had perfected the transformation spell. Granted, I was pretty sure they’d been only half listening the last time we’d spoken.
I’d managed to bore an ancient Fae crown. Go me.
Logically, it made sense that Vail hadn’t sent any messages of his progress. Strikers were our main form of communication, and they were trained to either follow specific routes or track people down. The temple wasn’t on any normal routes, and while every House had strikers trained to find me, Vail couldn’t exactly stop by and ask to borrow one.
I knew all of this, yet it did nothing to keep me from freaking out. Vail had been gone for five days now. He’d said it might take longer than that to return, but all I could think about were the worst-case scenarios. We’d also been holed up in this temple for a week now, so everyone’s nerves were a little frayed.
Erendriel had promised to return when I needed him and gave me a coin to summon him. I didn’t understand how he was moving around so quickly, because he definitely wasn’t in the temple during the day, and there wasn’t much around here. Draven didn’t know how he did it either, only that he could go from one end of the continent to the other in the same day—the same hour, even.
Now that I knew about the mirrors, it didn’t seem so impossible, but it wasn’t like he was lugging an eight-foot mirror around with him.
There had been no sign of Serril or any other wraiths either, but it was still suspicious that Erendriel hadn’t left someone behind to keep an eye on us.
We’d been careful about setting up the rest of our plans—only working on the temple during the day and only after Draven did a thorough pass-through to make sure no wraiths had found a dark corner to lurk in. Everything was coming together—we just needed Vail to come back.
I needed Vail to come back.
“Have we accounted for?—”
“Yes!” Roth, Alaric, and Rynn all said at once.
I stopped where I’d been pacing in the middle of the room and glared at the three of them. “You don’t even know what I was going to say,” I accused.
“You no doubt thought of yet another variation of how things could go wrong.” Alaric closed the book he’d been reading and selected a new one from the piles in front of him.
“Even though we’ve already come up with multiple contingency plans at this point.” Roth’s ropes snapped out to steal the book Alaric had chosen and tossed a different one to him.
“It’s impossible to plan for all scenarios—that way lies madness—and we’ve covered all the major ones,” Rynn added, not even looking up from the scroll her eyes were glued to.
“Sure, but what if?—”
“For the love of the moon, shut up!” Cali growled from where she’d been resting her eyes on her folded-up arms at the weapons table.
“Why don’t you go for a walk?” Kieran offered. “Maybe practice your magic a bit?”
“Don’t go far though.” Draven glanced up from the sword he’d been admiring. “And please don’t bring any more snakes inside. I don’t think I can listen to Rynn scream again.”
“Oh, don’t start,” Rynn sneered, finally looking away from the text she’d been absorbed in. “I’ve been listening to all of you make Samara scream for days now. My ears are bleeding, and I’m honestly worried for my best friend’s pussy at this point.”
“Yeah, exactly how much pounding can that thing take?” Cali twisted her head so she could stare at me—well, a certain part of me anyway.
“Oh, we haven’t just been playing with that perfect little pussy,” Kieran said cheerfully. “We’ve als?—”
