My gaze flicked back to the ground. Those things had once been mortal? Good gods…
Now, I felt a little bad about killing them.
Casteel slid his arm around my waist, squeezing. “So, these Gyrms were down there for hundreds of years?”
Reaver nodded.
“That must’ve been really boring,” Emil said.
“Again.” Vonetta looked at him. “Understatement.”
“And it wasn’t whatever your mother did that sent the Sentries here,” Reaver said.
“What do you mean?” Casteel’s eyes narrowed. “And can you please stop giving Kieran the middle finger?”
“I was actually giving it to everyone, but whatever.” Slowly, Reaver lowered his middle finger. “I have a feeling this mountain formed as a way to guard Malec’s tomb, but these types of Gyrms can’t be summoned by Primal magic. They can only be sent by a Primal.”
Slowly, I turned to the mouth of the cave. “You think Nyktos sent them? That he and the Consort knew where their son was?”
Reaver was quiet for a long moment. “When Malec left Iliseeum, he did so right before the others went to sleep. He didn’t leave on good terms, but the…Primal of Life, even in sleep, would’ve sensed his vulnerability. The deity bones would’ve likely blocked their ability to know where he was,” he said, and I realized that whatever Isbeth kept Ires in likely had to be the same. “While sleeping, the Primal of Life must’ve summoned the Sentries to protect him.”
My Primal badassery wasn’t exactly needed from there. No more Gyrms appeared as we entered the cave, coming upon the bone-smothered casket at the end, resting halfway under the earth in the center of a chamber that was barely large enough for all of the Gyrms to have waited in.
I didn’t want to think about that. About how Nyktos had sought to protect his son. Reaver destroyed the roots of the blood trees that had wound their way around the chains. I didn’t want to imagine how his inability to find Ires and do the same for him must plague him every second, both awake and asleep. It had to be why the Consort slept so restlessly.
We left the bone chains on the casket in case the movement stirred the one inside. All of us were quiet, listening for any signs of life as the wooden, unmarked casket was carefully carried out from the cave and placed in the wagon. Reaver stayed with it as we began our trek back to Padonia.
At first, I thought it was out of worry that Malec would wake and attempt to escape, but I saw Reaver a few times, sitting beside the casket with his hand resting on top of it and his eyes closed. And that…that left me with a messy knot of emotion in my chest.
As we neared the edge of the Blood Forest, and Casteel and I rode beside the casket, I finally asked Reaver what preyed on my mind. “Were you friends with Malec?”
He stared at the casket for quite some time before answering. “We were when we were younger, before he began to visit the mortal realm.”
“It changed after that?” Casteel asked as he guided Setti around several piles of rocks.
Reaver nodded. “He lost interest in Iliseeum, and that loss of interest became a…a loss of affection for all who resided there.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Casteel said, his gaze flicking over my head to where Malik rode beside Naill.
Reaver’s stare followed his. “It is strange, is it not, that he was named so closely to Malec?”
I didn’t say a word.
Casteel did. “My mother loved Malec. I think a part of her always will. Naming Malik was a way to…”
“To honor what could have been?”
“Yeah.” Casteel was silent for a moment. “I was thinking about what you said. If Nyktos could send Sentries to watch over Malec, wouldn’t he have known when Malec was entombed? Couldn’t he have prevented that?”
Reaver was quiet for a moment. “The Primal of Life could have. Malec must have been weakened greatly to be entombed. Hurt. Both Nyktos and the Consort would’ve felt that. Neither intervened.”
I stared at the casket, a general sense of unease returning. They sought to protect him but not free him.
“Do you know why they didn’t?” Casteel asked.
Reaver shook his head. “I don’t, but I imagine they had their reasons.”
None of us slept all that well when we stopped to rest the following nights. I thought that we were more than a little unnerved about who was in that casket more than the creatures that called the Blood Forest home. That feeling didn’t ease until we finally rode out from beneath the crimson leaves on the ninth day.