I hadn’t even gone into it and it felt like it was already tormenting me. Haunting me.
I watched the moon move across the sky. Every inch it gained was an agonising lifetime in which my body grew numb and my eyelids grew heavy. I called on the Vold magic to kick up my fluttering heartbeat and fill me with a small amount of adrenaline. The little lights on my dress had dwindled and died, leaving me in complete darkness as the moon dropped behind the Wailing Crag. I kept up the trickle of Vold energy all night, and finally released it before the sun began to breach the sky.
I saw a flicker of light in my periphery as I tried to stop myself sagging in exhaustion, and heard something that sounded like stone grinding against stone. My body was too numb to still any further, but I held my breath, trying to listen above the roar of the wind. When the arm reached around the pillar and a large hand slapped over my mouth, my scream became just another rush of air in the darkness. I stopped almost immediately, something stirring inside my chest. There was something familiar about the person, but I couldn’t place it.
The sheer size of the hand and the faint tang of sweat against his skin suggested it was a man, but he wasn’t acting like one of the great masters. He waited a second longer, and then started untying the twine. When both of my wrists were freed, his hand crept around my shoulder, the roughness of his fingers and the almost-possessive drag of his touch so familiar that I found his name caught in my throat.
Calder.
He tapped the frozen skin beside the oyntille, and I tried to bend my arm, the movement agonising as I forced my fingers to the beetle, hoarsely saying its name. I fumbled, almost losing it as it dropped into my hold. As soon as I began edging around the pillar, Calder grabbed my left arm and dragged me through. I threw my arms around him, marvelling at how he felt as he picked me up. There was no slick of oily darkness, no writhing shadows, and when I finally pulled back to look into his face, his mismatched eyes blazed back at me.
One blue, and one gold.
I hiccupped something that might have been a question or a sob, and then I was hugging him even tighter than before. He had one arm tight around the back of my thighs, the other tugging on my hair, lifting my face out of his neck.
“It’s not good news, Ven.”
I shook my hair free, kissing his cheek, and then his other cheek. He rumbled out a sound, and I gripped his face in my hands, trying to see him in the darkness by feeling them. I touched his scars, the firm set of his mouth, the downturned brows.
“It can’t be that bad. You’re here,” I said hopefully, as he walked to the trap door to the room below.
He began to set me down, but then seemed to change his mind, transferring my weight over to one arm as he jumped down through the opening. For someone his height, it wasn’t that far a drop, and it didn’t seem to faze him at all. He moved through the darkness that persisted inside my old prison, finally setting me down on the edge of the bed I remembered, pulling a thick fur blanket around my shoulders. He wrapped my legs in another. The shock of seeing him was beginning to wear off and the shock of the cold was setting back in. My teeth gnashed together, my body vibrating with endless shuddering.
He pushed the blankets off and shifted back, leaning against the wall as he drew me into his lap. He covered me in the blankets again, bowing over me from behind, his arms wrapped around my torso. In a matter of minutes, the heat of his body was thawing me out.
“Is it gone completely?” I asked, fearing the answer.
“No.” He pressed his nose to the top of my head and a shiver raced through me—one that had nothing to do with the cold.
My relief at seeing him again was a strangely ethereal emotion—one that didn’t feel comparable to anything in this world. There was some part of me that must have been preparing to lose him forever, despite my desperation to save him. I felt he was delivered from the dead, back to my side.
“But it’s … less?” I guessed, when he didn’t elaborate.
“It’s what it was before.” His arms tightened fractionally, and I felt a twinge of pain in my ribs but didn’t say anything.
“How did you get here?” I asked, putting aside that information for the time being.
“It brought me back here,” he said. “Down there, specifically.” He nodded toward the stone wall.
“The Vilwood?” I asked, my voice suddenly full of fear.
“The base of the Crag. Just outside the Vilwood. Tell me what you know, Ven.”
“It’s our next battle.” I was starting to panic, thinking of the page full of darkness in the little red book tucked away back at the tower. “I have to make it through the Vilwood. Andel said it’s the true test of insanity—it’s how I’ll prove the sharpness of my mind.”
“Then it seems he wasn’t wrong.” Calder’s voice was a tense rumble.
“How did you get up here?” I found myself wondering aloud.
“There are climbing tracks down the Crag,” he answered. “Only a Vold would be able to master them, so I assume they were created back when the people of Fyrio were still battling the other tribes at the base of the mountain.”
“How did you know where I was? How did you get into the room?”
He made a sound that could almost have been a laugh but was more a puff of air as he dipped his head into my neck. He had to pull me up a little higher on his lap, but he was soon able to press his face into my skin.
“The mirror,” he muttered, breathing in deeply. “I hid in one of the guard rooms in the Citadel to try and get warm, and two Sentinels came in carrying these little silver mirrors and talking about you being tied to the top of the Obelisk. As for getting up here, it was actually the easiest part. You’re right above the Scholar’s lair. I just walked around until I could sense your Vold energy and then found a part of the stone ceiling that lifted up. It looks like Andel hasn’t been there in weeks. Is he dead?”
I scoffed. “More alive than ever. They disappear during the day, but will never let me sleep alone.”
“In case you have a sudden head trauma and accidentally decide you like one of them more than the others?” he asked sarcastically.
“Actually, yes. Pretty much.”
He sighed, drawing his face from my neck. “I have to tie you back up.”
I pulled away just enough to twist around and face him, my eyes narrowing on the shadowy contours of his face.
“What.” It wasn’t a question, but an expression of angry disbelief.
His hands slipped either side of my face, his thumbs running along my jaw. “I’m far more useful to you if the masters think I’m stuck in the midworld. I can help you get through the Vilwood and they won’t even realise I’m there with you until it’s too late.”
I struggled with the sense of what he was saying, torn apart by the sudden warmth of his appearance, the strong, safe circle of his arms.
Why does my hatred for you only grow?
I shoved aside the memory. Maybe he couldn’t hate me in that moment because in the dark, all he could feel was my energy—the piece of me that had once belonged to Alina. The piece of me that belonged with him.
“How long until the battle?” he asked, when I didn’t say anything.
“Three more nights.” My voice was husky, my heart weeping. The closer I strained toward Calder, the more it hurt.