Page 41 of Court of Wolves

Felis would be next, and then they’d come for the circle on the border of Sainsa, V’haiv, and Aether. Those countries, too, would be overcome, conquered by the saints who’d cut Isak apart and turned him into a monster.

He rushed from the room, collapsing to his knees in front of the chamber pot in the bathing room. Everything he’d eaten forced itself from his stomach, leaving him weak and shaky. He retched, over and over, his hands trembling.

“Here, Isak,” Sunny’s gentle voice made him jump. He gratefully accepted the glass of water and startled again when she laid a cloth damp with cold water across his brow. It helped instantly with the nausea. “I think you should come with us to V’haiv. Or maybe we’ll cross the ocean to another continent.”

“They’re not even mapped,” he said with a rusty laugh. “You could end up anywhere. It could be a land ruled by peacocks.”

“Well, then you’ll fit in just fine,” she said with a soft, teasing lilt that made him miss his mother with a sudden fierceness. He missed Jaro too, remembered the days they’d fallen asleep clinging to each other for warmth and comfort.

“So will your mate,” he said in a passing attempt at humour.

“Fit in among them?” Sunny’s mouth curled, wry. “Give her a week and she’ll be the queen of peacocks.”

Isak laughed. It hurt, his throat burned by his own stomach acid, but he laughed. “Thank you.”

She patted his shoulder. “I can’t imagine the turmoil of having your mate missing. I wouldn’t know how to cope if I lost Anzhelika.”

Guilt burned as badly as the acid in his stomach. “Sunny, I—” He rubbed the cold cloth over his face, hiding from her. A coward through and through. “I misled you about Maia. She is my mate, but we’re not even together. I was a dick to her every time we met. To tell you the truth, I don’t think she even likes me.” His laugh was bitter and wretched. “It feels wrong to ask you to help me, like she’s this great love I’ve lost when she can’t stand the sight of me.”

He expected Sunny to leave him there in the cold bathroom but she just sighed and said, “I think in some ways that makes it harder.”

He tipped his head back to look at her, a lock of wavy hair falling from the knot on the back of his head. He met her kind eyes and didn’t know what to say.

“Not only have you lost your soulmate, but you haven’t settled the bond. No wonder you’re in such pain. Your soul must be tearing itself apart to get to her.”

That summed it up pretty well. Isak loosed a great sigh and rinsed the taste of vomit from his mouth. “Yeah,” he rasped. “So you’re not pissed I exaggerated my relationship with Maia?”

Sunny laughed, a soft whisper of a sound, her eyes crinkling. “Isak, she’s part of your soul and you are part of hers. That doesn’t change if you’re realms apart, if you never meet, or even if you hate each other—nothing could ever change it. She’s your mate, and the thought of losing my mate is so abhorrent that of course I’ll help you save yours. Then, when you have her back, you can go about earning her forgiveness for being a dick.”

Isak laughed, less rusty this time. “That’s the plan.”

It hadn’t been until the dream, until he’d sat beside Maia and heard her say in that hopeless, bereft tone that all she wanted was to be free. It had triggered something in him, awoken a part of him he’d been trying to bury. Now, it was awake and there was no knocking it back out. She was his mate, and he was supposed to protect her, care for her, keep her happy and provided for and safe. It was in his blood and bones, as much a part of him as shifting.

“Come on,” Sunny murmured, standing, patting his shoulder. “I’ll make you ginger tea. It’ll settle your stomach. You can’t break into the Nysavion Hold with an upset stomach.”

He got up with a groan—and gasped, jerking back when the bathroom flashed around him for a second, overlapped with a cobbled street lined with precariously balanced, multi-storey buildings. The scent of salt, fish, and blood hung in the air, so thick he could taste it. And just ahead of him, Bryon stood holding a golden sword, testing its heft and weight in his broad hand.

“Isak!” Sunny exclaimed, grasping his shoulders. The vision disintegrated like smoke scattered by a hand. “What happened?”

He shook his head, his breathing faster. “I don’t know.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Maia fought against Heweryion’s grip on her, hating the weakness in her body, hating that she’d survived on scraps and useless sips of water for days, that it had already robbed her of the strength she’d begun to build in the compound and in Venhaus. She pulled on her saint magic but she was too afraid, too shaky, to guide it into anything useful.

Bryon tightened his grip on the golden sword, glanced once at her, and swung himself towards the nearest civilian like a battering ram, a weapon in himself. Maia shook her head, grabbing fistfuls of magic from around her, from within her. A shark leapt from the water but did nothing to deter Karmen. A huge swell of water crested the cobbled street but all it did was wash away the blood when Bryon tore his sword through three men who tried to flee. Swift, honourable deaths.

“Oh, don’t kill them,” Karmen chided with a sigh. “I need to know the location of the circle.”

“I know what I’m doing,” Bryon grumbled.

“You better,” Karmen replied, sing-song and cheerful. “Or I’ll leave that iron in her wings. It hasn’t yet blackened her soul but it won’t be long before she’s entirely unstable.”

Maia began to gasp, to choke, to cry. She heard Karmen mention blackiron minutes ago but… this was abouther?Bryon was killing people, taking down innocents even as his expression twisted with hatred because ofher.Whatever grasp Maia had on her magic slipping away in an instant. Her stomach roiled and by some miracle she managed not to throw up as Bryon took down two others. Karmen grew impatient.

“I will spare the rest of you,” Bryon shouted as a mother and child fled one of the crooked buildings. “You have my word, on my honour, I will spare everyone else if you tell me where to find the saints' circle.”

“Don’t,” Maia choked out. He flinched, like her words were arrows. “Not for me. Stop this.”

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