A soft boom detonated, arcing out from the Enchassa, an explosion without sound, just a dreadful concussive wave that struck Jeren first and sent her to her knees. She cried out, clutching her chest, so her weapons clattered to the ground on either side of her.
The wave seized Shan, and halted him, as if he hit a wall, sent him crashing to the ground.
The Enchassa straightened, her wounds gone, evil making her beauty sharper and all the more horrific for that. She shook her hands, as if shaking off something unclean.
“You’re marked now. You’re his. And my task is done.”
“What have you done?” Shan shouted.
She smiled at him again, although this time the smile was tinged with something he never expected to see there, something like sorrow. Or kindness. It made his blood boil in rage.
“What I was sent to do, Shan, my dear.”
Jeren surged up again, snarling. “Leave him alone. Don’t touch him. Don’t you dare—”
The Enchassa bared her teeth. Not a smile, not a grimace. “And why not? He’s mine. Always has been. No one spends time with the Fellna and comes back unchanged. You know that. You saw Ylandra.”
“He’s nothing like Ylandra!”
“Of course not, child. Naturally, he’s entirely different. He’s Shanith Al-Fallion after all. Nothing could touch him.” There was no mistaking the sarcasm dripping from her words, the venom in her statement. Jeren recoiled, jerking her head back, fighting the urge to look at him, fighting the need to believe her. “My task is done, as I said. Master, bring me home.”
She lifted her hands, palms upright, and choking darkness fell across them in another wave. Shan struggled, crawling forwards to Jeren even as the shadows tried to swallow him whole, to drag him down into endless darkness and pain. Claws scraped across the edges of his mind, barbed vines coiled around his limbs, but all that mattered was Jeren, reaching her, holding her, making her believe in him instead.
Jeren in danger, Jeren in pain. His Jeren. His wife. His soul.
His hands met cold skin as he pulled her to him. She gave a sob, curled in against his body, for a moment the girl in the snow again, clinging to life, to him.
“Hold tight to me, little one,” he whispered into her hair. It was all he could manage. That and holding her.
The darkness bled away and with it went the Fell. The room, scattered with prone bodies, looked like some kind of death pit. But slowly they stirred, Indarin, Leithen, Vertigern, Naul.
All but a bundle of white feathers by the window.
Jeren’s head jerked up and panic filled her eyes. The same look of loss and terror Shan remembered when Anala—when Anala died.
“Kiah?” Jeren scrambled out of his enfolding arms, stumbled forwards the few feet and fell again, gathering the dead bird in her arms.
Naul lifted his head and howled, a lonely sound of mourning.
“Why?” Jeren shouted. “Why kill her? What was the point?”
No one answered. No one at all.
“Jeren?” Indarin’s voice was calm, worryingly so. “Your shoulder.”
She frowned and looked down, her gaze drawing their attention too. She turned to Shan and he saw what his brother meant. The material covering her left shoulder and upper breast had been burned away. Her pale flesh showed through the ragged gap, her skin marked as if with black ink, the image of an owl in harsh, jagged lines that spread across her shoulder and curved around the swell of her breast. Like the daubs the Fellna called art, like the tattoos with which they covered themselves.
“She took your totem, little one.” He didn’t want to say it. It was worse than the death of Anala. It was worse than anything. “She took Kiah’s life to mark you.”
“As what?”
Shan stared, helpless. He turned to Indarin but his brother just gazed at her, his face as stricken as Shan felt, aching inside as if all but pain was lost.
“As what?” Jeren staggered to her feet. Her shout broke the trance and Indarin’s eyes snapped up with her.
“As the intended bride for Khain, their dark god, he who devours the world.”
Chapter Nine
Jeren wandered through the stricken laneways of Brightling’s Dale without any purpose or destination in mind. There were bodies strewn everywhere, the very men, women and children she had thought to help. With the growing dawn it just became apparent that the Fell had not left quietly. By the twisted expressions on most of the faces, she could guess where they had been hiding, inside them. Just waiting for her.
Or had it been Khain? Surely there was no other explanation for the terrible wave of darkness that had almost smothered them. Brought forth to mark her, liberated from Andalstrom with Kiah’s life and their shredded bond for just long enough to damn her.
Her shoulder throbbed like an old wound in winter, and the skin over her heart, newly marked, still tingled.
“You shouldn’t be out here.” Shan’s voice came from behind her and she turned to face him. Because she had to. Not because she wanted to.
“I don’t think there’s anything dangerous left in all the Dale.”
His half smile told her he didn’t agree, but didn’t want to argue. The pain in his eyes admitted that there was so much he hadn’t shared with her yet. That both surprised her, and didn’t. As if she should always have known.
“Nevertheless, little one, at least let me walk with you.”
She frowned, amazed he could think she could deny him something as trivial as that. Then she remembered the way her people looked at him. The way the Dalers had reacted to his presence at her side. They feared the Fair Ones. They despised them. All the Holters did, except for a precious few.
Jeren reached out her hands and embraced him. He was warm, comforting and the scent of him was a blessed balm to her nerves.
“Is my soul lost?” She could barely form the words. He squeezed her against his body, enfolding her in love.
“Starting with the easy questions then?”
Did he think to put her off? Did he think a joke would make her feel better? “No. Really.”
“If that’s so, it’s true for all of us.”
She rested her forehead against his chest and struggled to breathe calmly. “I was such a fool. I thought I’d come here, ride in as Lady of River Holt and they’d accept me. I thought I’d free them and they’d follow me. I thought—”
Her voice broke on the sob that rose up through her tight throat and tried to strangle her. Shan murmured soft, soothing words in the old tongue until she stilled once more.
“It doesn’t matter. It’s past. What is ahead is all that matters now.”
“I never thought what it was like for you, losing Anala. Or rather, I imagined it like losing a faithful friend, a beloved companion. But it isn’t. It’s like losing a part of yourself. Like something vital has been torn out and the space inside replaced with shadows and scraps of steel. Like something has changed forever.”
He stiffened and belatedly she remembered the Enchassa’s words. Was Shan changed?
“I’ll never leave you, Jeren. I swear. Not willingly.”
“I know.” She sighed and when he pulled her into his arms again, she didn’t fight him. But something was missing between them. Something she would never have noticed until now. “Shan, I—” Her voice betrayed her.
“Nothing has changed.” The ferocity in his voice startled her. “You are still you, I am still and will always be your mate. That will never change, even if they can make us believe it changed. It will still be true. You, of all people, must believe that, Jeren. It gave you strength before. Even when I lost hope, you still believed and you were right. Ylandra, my ancestors grant rest unto her soul, couldn’t part us, the Enchassa couldn’t, your brother couldn’t.”