But he would be gone one day. When this was all over and we parted ways, he would be gone from my life. That was what I wanted—what I planned.
Then why did I suddenly feel like crying?
We camped out near the road, several hours after the sun had set. It was cold, but not nearly as cold as it had been in the Blood Forest. Casteel hadn’t spoken much beyond offering me food or asking if I needed a break, but as I lay there in the middle of the starless night, he returned to my side, stretching out behind me. I woke in his arms.
The next three days were just like that.
Casteel barely spoke. Whatever he felt, and I didn’t open myself up to him to truly know, was a shadow colder than the nights. So many times, I wanted to ask—I wanted to tell him that I knew about Shea. That I was sorry he’d lost her. I wanted to ask questions about her—about them. I wanted him to do what Alastir had said he hadn’t. I wanted him to talk, because I knew his silence fed his anguish. I said nothing, though, telling myself it wasn’t my place. That the less I knew, the better.
But he came to my side in the night, and he was there when a nightmare found me, waking me before I could give sound to the screams building inside me. He held me in silence, his hand stroking my back until I fell back to sleep.
The nightmares…they were different. Patchy, as if I were popping in and out of them instead of following the events of the night as before. They didn’t make any sense to me, either. Not the wounds on my mother, not the screams or the choking smoke. Not that creepy voice whispering about bleeding poppies. It was like the nightmares weren’t real anymore.
That was what I was thinking about as we saddled the horses and traveled the road to Spessa’s End on the fourth day. I had no idea how much time had passed when I saw something in the trees to my left. I couldn’t make out what it was, and just when I thought I was seeing things, I saw it again, several trees down the road.
It hung from a limb stripped of pine needles and bare of snow. A rope shaped into some kind of symbol—a circle. I twisted in my seat, but I couldn’t find where it had been in the mass of trees. The arm around my waist tightened, the first reaction from Casteel in days. I could feel the tension in his arm as I scanned the woods.
The shape tugged at the recesses of my memory. It looked like something I’d seen before. To the right, I saw it again—a brown rope hanging from another bare limb, fashioned almost like a noose, but with a stick or something crossing through the center.
I’d seen something similar in the Blood Forest. Except it had been created out of rocks and had reminded me of the Royal Crest. But now that I could see this one more clearly, I realized it was only like the Crest.
It wasn’t a straight line like an arrow, situated at a slant, but one that was slanted in the opposite direction. And that…that wasn’t a stick bound to the rope. It was too ashen in color, the ends knobby.
Oh, gods.
It was a bone.
Setti slowed, and Casteel’s arm slid away from me.
Slowly, I lifted my gaze, and trepidation took hold. There were dozens of them hanging amongst the trees, all different, at dizzying heights.
“Casteel?” I said quietly. “Do you see what’s in the trees?”
“Yes.”
“I saw the same shapes in the Blood Forest.”
“Cas,” Kieran’s voice was low, barely audible.
“I know,” he answered, and I heard a quiet snap of a clasp. When his arm came back around me, he held the strange bow in my lap. As close as it was, I could see that the nocked arrow was thicker than normal, and although I’d seen the kind of damage the bolt could do, it was still somehow unfathomable.
I stared at the bow and the bloodstone arrow. “Is it Craven?” I asked, having seen the rocks right before they arrived. I looked down, seeing no mist.
“I don’t think Craven have started to decorate trees with craft projects, Princess,” he said, and my heart gave a stupid little leap. It was the first time he’d called me that in days. He shifted the handle of the bow into my hand. “The lovely decorations are courtesy of the Dead Bones Clan.”
“The what?” I turned my head toward his.
“They used to live all across Solis, especially where the Blood Forest is now, but they’ve since relocated to these woods and hills over the past several decades.”
“I’ve never heard of them.”
“There are a lot of things the Ascended don’t share with the people of Solis. Like the fact that there are people who live and survive outside the protection of the Rise.”