Page 216 of Commanding Blood And Bonds
So that’s what we missed when Blaz’s illusions masked him. Whoops.
Cyrus’s ensuing deadpan made it clear he didn’t appreciate me memorizing his tattoos. Too bad.
I closed my eyes and whispered the incantation. My forearm burned as the bond sealed, and we all recoiled with the enthusiasm of someone who’d just grabbed a flaming pile of horseshit.
A Celtic knot had branded itself into my skin, encircled in a braid. Each of our initials marked a quadrant.
Clasping my hands in front of me, I rocked on my feet and looked up at the two of them. “The game is set. May God have mercy on your souls.”
FORTY-ONE
THE CRYPT
CYRUS
“Fuck, I hate that feeling,” I muttered as we landed on the rocky black shores of the English coast. Travel by shadow was infinitely less jarring—but shadows couldn’t carry us to the opposite side of the planet.
“You get used to it,” Carr said, slapping a hand between my shoulders and giving me a little shove forward.
Freya, evidently done waiting, was already halfway across the beach. Her stone-faced companion simply motioned us after her. Not about to walk ahead of us. Smart man. Not that I’d pull any shit today. Not that I could even if I wanted to—with the brand burning on my forearm.
The irony was, they didn’t need the insurance.
From the time I could read, The Brothers of Blackthorn had been an obsession—one I shared with a brother close enough in age we might as well have been twins. The idea of a relic corrupting our friendship had always felt laughable. But in his absence, I’d realized how easily power could’ve sunk its talons into one of us. Just like it had the brothers.
Carr jerked his chin at Jax, and I nodded—too tired to argue with a cousin hellbent on ‘protecting’ me. Eyes fixed on the woman who’d shredded my life into ribbons over the last four weeks, I followed her across the crunching pebbled shore.
She hadn’t said where we were landing, but far to my left, the teeth of jagged stone ruins jutted from the earth—cathedral-style arches and blown-out windows marking the bones of an old castle. Ahead, on the crest of a hill, a church leaned into the wind, half-swallowed by earth. To the right: crumbling spires, lone stone slabs—the ghost of a village, long buried in history.
Could this be…Carr’s train of thought drifted, but I could feel his mind turning. It looked like Bellpost. Proper. She hadn’t hidden it in a crypt—
She’d hidden it in the crypt.
Just under their noses for all this time.
Holy shit.
You could say that again.
Ho-ly shit.
“Hurry the fuck up!” Freya barked from midway up the cliffside stairs, her short auburn hair whipping in the wind. Pale skin, piercing gaze—she looked like she belonged to the land itself. “Trust me, our time here is limited before we have very unwanted company, and the clock started ticking the second we rattled the wards.”
I quickened my stride. “You hid it at Bellpost?” I asked, disbelief leaking into my voice.
“Sometimes the most obvious places are the ones most overlooked.”
“Fucking hell.”
“Also,” she added, “if you hide something where they’ve already searched, they’re less likely to go back.”
“Most people know better than to disrespect the dead,” Carr muttered.
“Most people suck,” Freya said, breezing ahead. My smile was involuntary.
The familiar cry of ravens cut through the wind. We all glanced toward the cliffs, silence falling hard as we climbed. Only once we emerged between the walls of black rock onto the rolling green did anyone speak again.
“Drink,” Freya ordered, tossing a slim water bottle from her pack and watching us with a wariness that said she’d rather toss us off the cliff. “Last chance to turn back.”
