With a frown, I shot up, but Vidrol’s hand suddenly tightened in my hair, forcing me back down again.
“What’s going on?” I ground out. “What are you doing?”
“Which one of us?” Vidrol questioned, his fingers now tracing my scalp, soothing the pain he had just caused.
“All of you. Why are you … being …” I struggled for the right word. “Nice?”
“We’re courting you,” Andel said, like it was obvious, even though he was sitting there doing nothing.
I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help myself. It bubbled through me in a wave of hysteria, persisting until my throat was raw.
“You’ve blinded me,” I said, still chuckling, though I no longer sounded amused. “You’re dragging me, blind, through unforgivable terrain. You’re only allowing me one small meal a day. You ignore me most of the time, insult me the rest of the time, and threaten to kill me every now and then just for good measure. You lead me around by a chain like a dog. This isn’t courting. This is enslavement.”
“Are they not the same?” Andel asked, without a hint of sarcasm.
I gave up on the conversation. They were beyond my help—and I didn’t want to help them. I wanted to get to Ledenaether and …
“You have to be dead to go to Ledenaether?” I blurted.
“It’s the world of the dead,” Helki answered, his tone saying obviously.
He was as immature as he was oversized, I decided.
“What would happen if I went there?” I asked. “Would I die?”
“Obviously.” This time, he said it out loud.
“How long would it take?”
Vidrol’s fingers stalled, snatching my chin, forcing my face to stare up, even though I couldn’t meet his eyes. There was nothing for him to discover in my face. He made a sound of frustration, releasing me.
“Why would you want to know that?” Helki asked quietly, our circle of tightly packed bodies suddenly still with tension.
“Because I like to know things.” I forced my voice to sound normal, tacking on the last word with only a hint of sarcasm. “Obviously.”
“What is the one thing you want most right now?” The question came from Vale, spoken in his usual low, rough whisper. He wasn’t going to entertain my current line of questioning. “Something we can give you.”
For just a moment, I allowed myself to think that they would do this one thing for me. For free—well, to advance their own interests, but without requiring a trade from me. I looked inside myself, searching through the panic, the anger, the pain, the frustration, the stubborn determination. Beneath it all, my heart ached, thudding with a hollow sound. My other half was missing. I felt horribly disconnected.
Worried.
I felt like there was something wrong, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was.
“Calder,” I finally said. “I want to see Calder.”
“If you go back to Foraether, the Darkness will take you,” Fjor replied.
“I have to go back there eventually.”
Vidrol’s hands stilled again, the others falling into silence. I snorted, realisation dawning on me. “You thought I was going to stay here until Fyrio was destroyed? Until the Darkness had taken everything? Until I could go back to the new world, with you five? You thought I was going to Hearthenge to just … hang out until the end of the world was over?”
I began my tirade almost in amusement, but by the end, I was almost shouting.
“We can’t bring you Calder,” Fjor replied, moving on from my outburst, uncaring of my motives, of my plan. “He’s gone into hiding.”
“You hear everything,” I told him, repeating Vale’s words. “You hear the whispers of power in the night. If anyone can find him, you can. I only want to speak to him.”
“He’s avoiding using his power,” Fjor returned, a hint of annoyance in his tone. “He doesn’t want to be found.”
“He must have a plan,” I muttered, more to myself. I was beginning to feel, at times, that I was alone, even with them surrounding me. It must have had something to do with the constant darkness blanketing my vision.
“He must,” Fjor agreed, sounding as unconcerned with Calder’s plan as he had with mine.
“Why would you want to go to Hearthenge?” Andel asked me.
There was no use hiding the truth from them. They were going to be standing there as I stepped into the tilrive tree.
“I’m going to Ledenaether,” I told him calmly.
“Figured as much,” Andel muttered back, without pause.
Helki groaned, accompanied by the sound of his head thumping back into the tree he leaned against. “When did you figure out how to do that, twig?”
“What will you trade me for the answer?” I asked.
“I’ll break something on your body,” Helki offered cruelly. “But I’ll let you pick where.”
“And here I was thinking you didn’t know how to court a lady,” I drawled.
Vidrol’s hands hooked beneath my arms, dragging me suddenly up his lap. One arm looped across my ribcage, holding me there. His other hand gripped my chin, turning my blind eyes up to his.
“Enough of your smart words, Tempest. Don’t take us—don’t take this—lightly.”
His touch shifted, his thumb pressing into my soul mark. His soul magic swept into me, pushing the burn of my mark all the way down to the pit of my stomach. My breath stuttered, my chest ached, and he shoved me off his lap and into another.
“Apologise,” he ordered.
I didn’t have to guess whose lap I’d been thrown into. The chest above my head was still rumbling in anger. I began to scramble off, but large hands wrapped around my arms, dragging me up the same way Vidrol had.
“I was going to let you pick where,” Helki whispered, the gravelly cadence of his threat somehow sounding pleasant to my ears, my soul mark still stinging. Vidrol’s magic was swelling and growing inside me. That hollowness inside my heart filled with fire, sensation spreading to my toes. Why was I trying to get away? The body beneath me was shrouded in heat, tight with muscle. His hands were deliciously rough, drawing me up, pulling me closer. He was helping me turn, helping me slip my legs either side of his hips. He was so big, the stretch actually hurt. I winced, and his hands soothed the sting, passing up my thigh, spanning my hips, and settling against my lower back.
“Here?” the deep voice rumbled, tracing the little bumps of my spine.
I nodded, thinking he was asking if he should touch me there.
He laughed, and I thought it sounded cruel for only a moment, but then his hands were distracting me again. They both shaped to my ribcage, the space between his thumb and forefinger stretching out below my breasts. My lips found his jaw, tasting the skin there. I belonged here. I finally belonged somewhere. My soul mark burned thoughts into my head, twisting my mind into a fog of need.
“Here?” he asked, his hands constricting. The pressure on my ribcage felt wonderful.
I nodded, murmuring something. I heard another voice—soft as the mist, acidic like the crack of a storm.
“Careful, Helki.”
The big, rumbling man ignored the voice. His hands travelling down my legs as my lips travelled up his jaw, towards his mouth.