“Tolek and Lyria’s siblings.”
After a beat, Lancaster repeated, “Why are we here?”
“Just looking,” I said. Because on that eve before we left Xenovia, when Tolek and I had stayed up whittling cypher weapons for my protection, he’d asked me to come here. He’d told me everything he and Lyria had wanted to do together—that they wanted to protect their siblings from their father’s cruel hands—and asked me to check on them. He said he wouldn’t drag them into the war we were facing, but he had to know they were okay.
For Lyria.
He’d given me coins to leave scattered in the trees for them to find, claiming his father would never go out there. It wasn’t enough to provide for them—we assumed with them now possibly baring the Vincienzo titles, his father would do that—but it was a small token. A little gift to let them know someone was looking out for them.
The three youngest Vincienzos bickered over the marbles they were rolling across the veranda, the stars glimmering down so hopefully on them.
These children were notfightingin the war, but they would be touched by it. Warrior and human young ones alike who were so very blameless would feel the repercussions for decades to come—centuries in warrior cases. Wasn’t it often the most innocent who carried the worst burdens? Their sister was already gone. Who else would they lose? Who wouldwe?
Determination struck truer than ever to do what we could to end this before that outcome came to fruition.
As we watched, the boys teamed up on their sister, but she stood with her chin tilted up and hands on her hips, the same victorious grin Lyria used to wear splitting her round cheeks.My eyes burned at the way she moved so confidently, her long chocolate braid swinging down her back.
She was just like her.
“Come on,” I whispered to Lancaster, swallowing past a thick throat. “We’ve seen them. They’re safe. Let’s go.”
“This is where you grew up,”Lancaster said once we were off the Vincienzo property and creeping through a sleeping Palerman.
“It is,” I said.
We were only stopping here for the night. Partly to check on Tolek’s family and partly because it provided a safe place to rest before the last leg of travel to the human camps. Strolling through the town that had once been nothing but innocent nights—where I’d last lived with my parents and forged fond memories with my friends around every corner—clad in warrior leathers and sharpened blades, with a weapon brewing within me to hunt the male beside me, was an odd difference I couldn’t quite reconcile.
But I gritted my teeth and shoved it aside as I led Lancaster down a dim alley. I needed to hold myself together for what came next.
“The bargain between you and Ophelia and Tolek still stands, correct?” I asked, trying to distract myself.
“Indefinitely,” Lancaster stated.
“Why couldn’t you summon her back from Damenal, then?”
We stopped at the top of a darkened staircase. “It doesn’t work like that,” he explained. “The boundary around Damenal was created by Echnid to keep magic out. I am powerful for a fae, but even I cannot overcome a God. My bargain would notwork across it.” His eyes narrowed, flicking between mine as he considered something. “Even someone with Godsblood couldn’t overpower it, with the weaknesses of the diluted blood.”
“Right,” I said lamely, unpacking that final sentence. Lancaster and Mora were powerful, but not enough to use bargain magic across a God’s jurisdiction.
For a moment, my mind flickered back to the cavern when my Bounty senses had emerged. I’d sworn there was some different scent among us. Something ancient. Perhaps it had only been Echnid.
I didn’t know what it meant that I was vastly more comfortable discussing this with the Hunter in a dark alley than addressing what waited for me inside. With a sigh, I turned toward the stairs, forcing myself to face this problem now.
There was less garbage piled up back here than there used to be. Fewer broken bottles and less shattered glass crunching beneath my boots. It warmed me despite the temperature dropping as we descended the staircase, kept my blood pumping as I broke the lock on the back door.
“No one will be here?” Lancaster double checked as I forced rusty hinges to creak open, the bottom of the wood scraping through a layer of dust. Guilt tightened my chest at the sight.
I cast him a glance over my shoulder and hoped in the dim mystlight filtering down from the alley he couldn’t see how torn up it was. “No.”
We crept through the storeroom. The walls were still lined with brown bottles and unpacked crates that made my heart ache. When we stepped into the barroom of the Cub’s Tavern, and the scratched tables and worn floorboards weren’t illuminated by a fire in the hearth, everything in me went cold.
My throat thickened, but I didn’t linger, heading straight behind the bar to a door through the little hallway that also led to the kitchen. We hadn’t served food in years, but still, every timeI looked through that curtain, I saw my mother at the mystlight stove, and the back of my eyes stung. My control was slipping.
I kept going until I hit the end of the hall, a heavy door waiting. Taking a thick-handled knife from my waist, I jammed it into the lock until it splintered, not bothering to save the bolt. Then, I scampered up the stairs, emerging into a small apartment that both wrapped a layer of comfort around my shoulders and threatened to tear down my defenses.
Everything was precisely as I left it a year ago.
Threadbare rug, sofa, and armchairs before the fire, the kitchen perfectly cleaned, though now wrapped in a layer of dust. The hall to the back bedroom free of clutter, but my mother’s spare cloaks draped on hooks along the wall. My father’s boots beside the door.
