Decree, page 13
There was a good chance he was trying to start an argument. He’d been gritting his teeth for the better part of the day, and the fae had always taken offence to the mention of such things. But he wasn’t going to find one tonight. The fire was crackling, and the sun drifted peacefully down.
“I used to love the snow,” Eden replied with a little smile, those bright eyes flickering up to catch the first light of the stars. “In the springtime, my mother would make me to the Estowyn hills, there was usually a bit at the top. We would play there for hours, until there wasn’t any feeling left in my fingers. When my eyes couldn’t stay open a second longer, she would carry me home.”
His companions never knew what to say when he shared things like that. Mostly because he did it so sparingly. But also because immortals had vastly different reference points. His stories felt like something out of poetry, rather than an anecdote from real life. Time never seemed to matter, distance mattered even less. Did she carry him through the entire night? Those eternal arms never feeling the burden, humming a peaceful tune as the leagues melted away beneath her feet?
“I hadn’t seen it in a long while,” he continued suddenly, “not before setting out on this journey. I’ve been staying mostly in the southern lands.”
Kiera looked at him curiously, wondering what prompted him to speak of such things. “Is there anyone who lives this far north?”
The fae shook his head. “There used to be, but it never summers and the people who built settlements eventually went farther south. It was overrun by giants for a while, but those left centuries ago.”
People do not naturally flourish in isolation.
The others let that knowledge settle over them, gazing up at the vast expanse of stars. The sun had yet to fully set, but night was eager in the tundra, and the brighter constellations had already come out to play. There seemed to be a movement to them that was less discernable when there were other things to catch the eye. The hunter raised his mighty prize. The bear tended her cub.
She nestled down with a shiver, watching as they wheeled about the night sky. “This place might be freezing, but it does the stars well.”
Eden threw her a quick smile, nodding to himself. “I’ve always thought so, too,” he murmured. “They are some of the few things that haven’t changed, not since I was a young boy. It’s enough even to melt the heart of our poor wolf.”
They turned at the same time to Jesse, armed with the same entreating look.
“They are blinding,” he muttered, pulling down the hood of his cloak. “I’ll never fall asleep.”
Chapter 10
Things were better the next morning.
Kiera opened her eyes in an instant, struck with the sudden sensation that something was not quite right, before a warm tongue licked her up the side of the face. She pulled back with a start, gasping aloud, only to see a dark wolf bounding on its feet in front of her, grinning ear to ear.
Someone’s feeling better.
She laughed aloud, rubbing behind his ears, then watched as he took great pleasure in waking each of the immortals as well. It was a tricky business, but he knew them well. Well enough to risk a small degree of wrath, without facing lethal repercussions. Evander caught him by the scruff with a hiss, and a look that promised much more, while Eden merely laughed at the snow those mighty paws kicked over them—fashioning it into a kind of beard.
There was nothing to do, no chores or logistics that hounded them. It was clear now that Arsinia wasn’t going to return, and while that may have been a little disheartening, the path that lay before them was simple: they would travel far enough south to find a raven, then they would await a reply. Given the nature of everything that had come before, that seemed an easy enough agenda.
They should have known better.
“Seven hells,” Kiera gasped, staring at the expanse before her.
They had finally left the beach and that crest of trees that guarded it, and made their way further inland—only to discover a stretch of unblemished snow, far as the eye could see. There were no mountains or hills, nothing to differentiate one place from the next. Just a single, unending plain.
In a strange way, it reminded her of the desert. A place so remote, so outrageously ill-suited for human life, not a thing in the world would venture there. That was the path that awaited them.
That was the place they must cross to get home.
“This has changed much since last I was here,” Eden said slowly, staring around with a bit of the same trepidation she was feeling herself. “There were hills then, a few settlements. I didn’t imagine it would be so...”
There was a quiet pause.
“Empty?” Jesse guessed.
The fae nodded in silence, considering their next steps.
The problem wasn’t the tundra—not exactly. The problem was that they didn’t know how far the tundra might extend. Two days they’d been hurtling in the wrong direction, blown by winds and currents too strong for measure. He’d guessed before, it would be half a week before they were back amongst the familiar world, but what if it was longer? They’d arrived in poor health with few supplies. What if it was much longer? What if they were unable to make it across?
“I don’t want to add to our troubles,” Kiera began innocently, “but now might be a good time to remind you that I received one naiad blessing, and we used it up. So whatever calamities happen out here...? I guess it’s up to one of you to save us.”
In spite of what lay before them, the others couldn’t help but smile. Even the vampire, who tended to brood in such miseries and not color them with humor.
Eden glanced down at her, a trace of that amusement still dancing in his eyes. “No horses are coming to our aid?”
She shook her head firmly. “I’ve done my part. The rest is up to you.”
Jesse walked forward a few steps, squinting as far as those magical eyes could see. No matter the distance, he couldn’t see an end to it. “It’s a little unnerving,” he confessed, that innate sense of direction baffled by the blank sameness of it all. “There is no end to it. Although I guess if we’re being honest, I prefer snow to sand.”
You say that after the desert. What if this had come before?
Kiera pushed that thought aside, and clung to that flailing optimism. “I would prefer the snow as well. And this must end at some point. We’ll just bear it as best we can.”
It was a brave sentiment. But the snow turned out to be troublesome in other ways.
The friends set off in relatively good cheer—grateful still to have survived the shipwreck, grateful that Jesse’s leg had begun to rapidly heal the second he was able to shift—but they hadn’t been walking in the snow for a full minute, before Evander clapped a sudden hand over his eyes.
“This is unbearable,” he said through gritted teeth, wincing away from the sun-bright glare coming off the snow. “I cannot see anything. It’s all just...” He trailed away, shaking his head.
Eden circled back at once, eyeing him in concern.
“It is merely the light—”
“It is the light. It is...everything.” The vampire stood a moment longer, then actually turned back towards the shore, as though that would help. “Eden, I don’t think I can do it.”
The fae stared a moment longer, then took off his cloak.
In earlier days when they’d been travelling in luxury, heaped with riches from the fae, it might have been easier. For now, the only thing he had to offer was the tunic off his back.
“This might help.” He pulled it over his head, then fastened the cloak swiftly around his shoulders, shivering a bit in the cold. “It’s pale enough, you should still be able to see.”
Evander looked at him in surprise, then handed it back. “You’ll freeze—”
“I’ll do nothing of the sort,” the fae countered, refusing to accept it. “See if it works.”
There was a comical silence as the vampire took the sleeves and twisted it into a single strip of fabric, tying it tentative around his eyes. The visual aside, it appeared to be working—up until the precise moment he drew in a breath, and ripped it straight off his face.
“No, I cannot.” He handed it back without further explanation, curt and clipped and refusing to meet his lover’s eyes. “You can just...lead me, I suppose.”
“Why can you not?”
The vampire let out a breath, clearly hoping he wouldn’t be asked.
“It’s the scent,” he finally admitted. “It’s too distracting.”
Whatever Eden had been expecting him to say, it clearly wasn’t that. He stared in surprise for a mere instant before his lips curled with the beginning of a smirk. “So what?” he teased, swinging the tunic playfully in his hands. “You’ll tear off my clothes—”
“I’ll tear open your neck.”
The smirk vanished, as did the tunic.
“...oh.” Eden considered this for a moment before pushing Kiera suddenly forward. “Here—take something of hers.”
She slapped away his hand. “Thanks for that.”
“Your blood doesn’t hold the same appeal as mine,” he said unapologetically. “You are able to do this safely. I cannot.”
“So what?” Jesse demanded. “You expect her to take off her clothes and hand them to your boyfriend? In the middle of a tundra? Just because he’s feeling a bit sensitive about the glare?”
The rest of them turned slowly to the shifter.
Just a few minutes later, Evander was wearing a tunic after all. It was Jesse’s—donated by unanimous consent. Eden tied it behind his dark hair, adjusting the edges around his eyes.
“There, is that better?” He waved a hand in front. “Can you see anything?”
Evander caught him by the wrist, lips twitching at the sides. “Not a thing,” he answered dryly.
The fae grinned, tugging needlessly on the sides. “Well, you look adorable.” He pressed a kiss to the vampire’s forehead, loosening his hair and letting it spill over the sides. “I think this could be the start of a whole new chapter—”
Jesse knocked past him, glaring at the horizon. “Not with my shirt.”
THEY WALKED, AND WALKED, and walked without end.
There were no jokes, no reprieves, no breaks of any kind. When they got tired and thought they could walk no longer, they proceeded to walk some more. There was no other alternative. It was cross the frozen tundra, or die in the process. They had not braved everything they had braved, and endured everything they had endured, only to collapse without sound into the snow.
They walked. And they tried to find their way through it.
“Has something like this happened before?” Jesse asked without warning, breaking the silence that had followed them the last few miles. His eyes were fixed on the vampire, still walking with an ivory tunic wrapped around his head. “Have you never spent time in the snow?”
Though half of it was obscured, it was easy to see the sarcasm sweep across the vampire’s face. He was not blind, after all, merely blunted. Those immortal eyes too keen for such a glare.
“I have been alive for nearly a thousand years,” he answered. “Do you honestly think I’ve never seen snow?”
Jesse shrugged, keeping casually out of reach. “Did you borrow a tunic then as well?”
It was a bold move—tormenting a person in such a state. It was even bolder, given that the person was a vampire. But Evander happened to like bold people. It was the reason he fell in love.
“There was a full season, I once spent in the snow,” he replied, walking in step alongside the fae. “A small group of us were travelling over the eastern mountains. It was taking longer than we expected, and it was bitterly cold. It wasn’t the cold that bothered us so much, as the uncertainty. It had been three weeks, we’d been in the mountains. Three weeks without warmth or blood. When was it ever going to stop? We tried all the tricks we knew, passing the time as best we could. But there came a point when the younger members of our group reached a point of desperation.”
He paused, drawing the memory from so long ago.
“I remember the night that it happened. I’d been sleeping inside a pocket of trees to protect from the wind, but I woke up when the rest of them started shouting. They’d found something, you should have heard their excitement. There was a light, bobbing up and down atop the snow.”
At this point, the others stopped where they were standing to listen. Even the fae was utterly riveted, hanging on the words of a story he’d never been told.
“There were a few people who shouted a warning—the oldest of us, the ones who assuredly knew better. But there was no reasoning with them. They were cold, and thirsty—and bored. It’s often the boredom that strikes worst of all. They rushed towards those lights without considering any different, without considering what dangers might befall them when they arrived.”
He took a moment to catch a breath, lost in the memory.
“They were furrows,” he concluded, shaking his head. “Tiny creatures that lure their prey by simulating such things, by mimicking an end to the tedium. Those lights they were holding weren’t even real. By the time my people reached them...they were completely overrun.”
Kiera listened in silence, staring at the back of his head.
There wasn’t a world in which she could imagine his story. There wasn’t a world in which she could imagine him travelling with a group of vampires—and something catching those vampires off guard. There was no precedent for anything he was saying. She’d never heard of furrows.
“I don’t understand,” Jesse said hesitantly, “what are they?”
Eden flashed him a quick look. “They are predators,” he answered softly. “Closer in size to squirrels, though they operate more like ants. Their hives are tens of thousands strong...and they have very sharp teeth.”
They had very sharp teeth. There was nothing like them now.
...I think?
“That’s a horrible story,” Kiera said apologetically, having so rarely heard the vampire speak of his own kind. At least, not in so many words. “Are there any of those creatures still living?”
Evander shook his head, less involved in the recounting than his captive audience. “They died out long ago. The same as many creatures that are no longer alive today.”
“So you think,” Eden muttered under his breath, “those lines have been shifting.”
Evander gave him a playful nudge. “To your delight.”
The fae smiled reluctantly. “Sometimes, to my delight.”
The subject dropped, and they spoke of it no further. The sun passed over them and then began to slip in the sky before Jesse finally said the words the others had been thinking.
“We should hunt.”
For what—the shifter had no idea. For the last several leagues, he’d been eyeing the frozen tundra without seeing the slightest trace of life. He wouldn’t have said anything, if the girl he loved wasn’t flagging in her boots beside him, if he wasn’t flagging in his boots himself.
The fae glanced back a second later, such desires rising slower in himself. He eyed their hesitant, doubtful expressions, before turning to the snow with the hint of a smile. “And where will you start?”
Jesse’s eyes flashed up in dismay, but he was quick to mask it. The last several months had shown the vast canyon between their expertise, the centuries’ old difference in skill, but the fae looked no more than twenty. He usually acted no more than twenty. That canyon was easy to ignore.
“I don’t know,” he said lightly, avoiding that immortal gaze, “what would you suggest?”
To his eternal credit, Eden didn’t gloat. Nor did he make the shifter beg. He merely stepped alongside him—those bright eyes sweeping over the frozen banks.
“We will have to search for something, I suppose. The same as anywhere else.”
Steady words, but they did nothing to help. In fact, the shifter was looking more and more frustrated—more ready to shake that infuriating hand from his shoulder.
“Alright,” he said with strained patience, “and how would you suggest we do that?” His gaze drifted from one horizon to the other, finding nothing but a blank curtain of snow. “If there’s nothing here, should we just—”
“I’m sure there’s something here. We just need to find it.”
It was silent for a moment. Then Jesse turned to him with a sigh. “Can you please just tell me?”
Eden’s eyes twinkled, as he knelt to the ground. “Your eyes can see nothing, but what can you hear?” He pressed the tips of his fingers to the snow—so lightly, they didn’t leave a print. “What can you feel?”
Out of curiosity more than anything else, the shifter knelt beside him, mimicking the gesture with a pensive frown. He stayed there for a moment, then shook his head. “There is nothing.”
If the fae was disappointed, he didn’t show it. He merely placed his hand on top of Jesse’s, pressing the wolf’s fingertips to the snow with a look of brotherly patience. “...there.”
Jesse shook his head again. “I feel nothing but the cold.”
Eden waited a moment longer, then lifted to his feet. “Then you have much to learn.”
Without another word, he lifted the bow from his back and notched the string, taking a mere second to aim, before burying an arrow deep in the ground. It was a shot unlike any his companions had ever seen—one that lifted with sudden height, only to plunge down with even greater force.
There was nothing to mark its passage, only a look of vague satisfaction on Eden’s face.
“A clean kill.”
Kiera strained forward in amazement, able to see nothing but the rolling drifts. “How do you know you got anything?”
He merely smiled, gesturing her forward. “Go check.”
She wanted to refuse out of spite—it was a long distance, after all. But something about those twinkling eyes got both she and Jesse moving. They walked over the plain together, hand in hand, grumbling about immortals and all their little frustrations, when they stopped abruptly of one accord—staring at the crimson stain of blood, blossoming over the snow.
