Page 59 of A Kingdom of Wild and Power
‘But you are not.’
‘No…I am not.’ Bryn dragged a hand across his face and stared down at his bare chest and torso, mottled with scars and healing wounds. The cold should have been biting him raw by now, should have driven him back towards shelter. But he felt nothing at all.
Then Kage spoke again, his voice quieter this time, edged with something searching.
‘Why?’
Bryn’s shoulders trembled.
‘Why are you not dead, Bryn?’
Bryn stiffened as he glanced over his shoulder, lifting his gaze to meet those familiar dark eyes. Kage Blackburn looked much the same as he always had and yet, something was wrong. Not wrong enough to name, not sharp enough to grasp, but there all the same. As if something essential had shifted. Perhaps Kage had changed. Or perhaps it was the world that no longer sat where it once had.
‘Do ya remember that story I told ya,’ Bryn asked quietly, his voice rough, ‘from a different life?’ He swallowed. ‘Da one about da sickness that nearly wiped us all out. Me sista, Wren… she went into da forest and neva told anyone what she did. But folk whispered. They said she bargained with a spirit. That she sold her soul so da wild wolves would hunt for us and bring us food so we could survive.’
He let Kage help him to his feet, leaning heavily as they moved, step by careful step, back into the hut. Bryn sank down onto the furs with a weary sigh. For a fleeting moment, something like relief stirred in him when Kage pulled thick pelts around his shoulders, tucking warmth close with agentleness Bryn remembered well.
Almost, he smiled.
But the expression never quite reached his face.
Because when Kage’s long fingers brushed his skin, Bryn felt it then, clear and undeniable. Cold. Not the clean, honest cold of snow and winter air, but something deeper, somethingwrong.
Kage’s skin was colder than the snow outside.
And Bryn did not remember him ever feeling like that before.
‘Wren told me what she did,’ Bryn went on, his voice barely holding together. ‘She said she struck a bargain. That when one of us dies, da other cannot.’ His gaze lifted, fixing on that stern face he had dreamt of through endless nights, the face he had prayed to see again. ‘Do ya understand what that means, Kage Blackburn? If Wren dies, then no matter what happens to me, I cannot follow. And if I die… then neither can she.’
Kage went utterly still.
Only then did Bryn truly notice how Kage wore no heavy coat, no furs, only his usual wyverian clothes. The cold here gnawed at bone, even for wolverians. Wyverians should have been shaking by now. And yet Kage stood unmoved, untouched, as though winter itself dared not claim him.
‘If I survived this,’ Bryn mumbled, his heart beginning to thunder once more, ‘then that means…’ His words faltered as he stared into those black eyes, eyes he knew as well as his own, and yet did not. They looked dimmer now. Hollow. As if something vital had gone out and never returned.
What had happened to him? What had the world done to Kage Blackburn?
‘It means…’ Bryn dragged in a breath, sharp and painful, as though the truth itself cut his lungs. ‘It means Wren is dead.’
I don’t know why I was never able to love Melinoe. When she was born, I tried. I tried to love her. But I never felt anything towards her. As if I’d never even birthed her. All I could see was her father’s face when I looked at her. All I saw was the man that was keeping me caged in. Who would never allow me to leave. And with time, I began to despise my own child. I hated myself for it. So in turn, to protect her from my hatred, I turned my back on her. Ignored her.
And abandoned her.
Tabitha Wysteria
‘Is it truly safe for you to keep visiting this realm in your condition?’ Vera asked softly.
Mal halted a few steps from the castle, its shadowed towers rising just ahead. Lately, she found herself returning here more and more often, slipping into this private dominion of smoke and dusk. She felt safer within it, perhaps because the damned creature could not follow her here, could not whisper its poison into her ear.
‘This ismyrealm,’ Mal replied, moving forward again. ‘Why would it harm me?’
Vera’s purple eyes drifted downward, settling on the swell of Mal’s stomach. ‘It is not necessarilyyou I worry about.’
‘The child is not only Ash’s,’ Mal said, her jaw tightening. ‘She is mine as well. This place will not harm my daughter.’
But you might,a treacherous thought murmured from the depths of her mind. Mal crushed it instantly, straightened her shoulders, and strode into the castle.
Allegra was already in the main hall, seated at the long table. The moment she sensed Mal’s presence, she lifted her head, brown curls floating as though stirred by an unseen tide. Mal joined her, settling into the chair and resting both hands over her stomach.
