Page 89 of Snag
I glance back over my shoulder. Rought and Rath have crowded around their uncle, but all three of them are watching as I leave. Just before I cross out of their line of sight, Rath throws his discarded cut at the Outcast’s feet.
I turn my attention forward — where it always should be — and exit through the front door, my heart weighted with even more questions than I had when I entered.
ELEVEN
Slowly crossingtoward the woods only a few meters from the north side of the house, I breathe in deeply in an attempt to settle my mind. I’m more than a bit staggered by the secrets my aunt was keeping. Though I also understand that Disa was always clear that her role, her duty — as dictated by the universe — was to live in the present. As she raised me. As I’m now supposed to be.
If I allow myself to be truly maudlin for a moment, though, I’m not certain anyone raised me in the traditional sense after my mother died. Of course, other than the intermittent visceral flashes I’ve been experiencing in the last few days, I am apparently missing large portions of thirteen years of my life.
More secrets kept from me by my aunt.
Someone always fed me, someone tutored me, someone was always around — a rotation of aunts and uncles, mixed with a few cousins, following some schedule that kept them near enough. But never close enough to form actual familial bonds. By my aunt’s edict? Because I was the Conduit’s vessel?
Maybe Disa always planned to explain it to me … that’s what her note implied, yes?
I’m sorry for everything you are about to discover
and that I wasn’t the one to tell you.
Or maybe that note was penned out of regret for everything my aunt was leaving for me to hold. Did she think I wouldn’t be haunted by her death? Or the past she’d hidden from me? Maybe she thought she’d trained me better than that. Maybe she thought I would simply step into my role and wait for the universe to move me where it willed.
“I’m never going to know,” I whisper to myself, as if I need to chastise myself out loud for it to truly sink in. I’m beyond the tree line, weaving through evergreens now. “I’m never going to know, so what’s the point in rolling the questions around in my mind?”
The ground between the huge conifers is bare, packed down in places, a combination of the still-chilly late-winter weather and the dozens of shifters who must run through these woods on a daily basis. I don’t have a great sense of the history of the area, but I presume it would have been clear-cut well over a century ago, when the settlers attempted to strip this land of its resources and seize it from the First Nations. Back when the territories were first united, only to be torn apart into separate countries with the vast stretches of the wilds in between.
Even if they weren’t second growth, it seems unlikely that the trees would be this large without help, presumably from multiple mages with earth affinities. Though this thick growth could simply be a side effect of the Outcast building a strong, unified pack filled with rare and powerful shifters.
Ilet those niggling thoughts fall away, allowing myself to just breathe. The air is mossy and damp. Comforting. If I were anyone but me, anyone but the Conduit, I might have assumed I was breathing in essence.
I am me, though.
I’m immune to more than just malicious spells.
I walk apart.
Except … I recall the essence shifting between Rought and me as I rode him on the couch. And an echo of the grip the gryphon had on my hips as he pinned me to the bed only a couple of hours ago.
I could reach for the tether that binds Rought and the gryphon to me now. As tenuous as it still feels, I know I could find it, touch it. Maybe even strengthen it by reaching through it, brushing my mind, my consciousness, against my soul-bound mate.
I’m not so alone anymore.
I’m also not so childish as to seek out that connection in a minor moment of confused melancholy. Rought’s conversation with his uncle is far more important than me suddenly feeling like I wouldn’t mind a cuddle.
I find the first carved totem another dozen steps into the trees.
This carving is rougher hewn … as if made by claws, articulate but deadly. The Outcast’s claws— or rather, the claws of whatever beast he transforms into. Unlike the smoother, more considered carvings in the house, the wood here has been left to weather. The grayed totem stands about a foot taller than me. I have no idea what the markings represent, or even whether it’s a language or pictographs. Perhaps only the Outcast can read them. Perhaps he’s a member or a descendant of a lost tribe.
I don’t touch the totem. I don’t wish to trigger or dispel the boundary ward.
The power of the Outcast — both the shifter and the club he created — isn’t under my purview. I’m not some … autocrat. Or savior. I neither make rules nor enforce them. I don’t even bring balance or protection. Not on a global scale, at least.
Not unless or until the universe deems it necessary.
As I wander farther, juggling thoughts of all my aunt’s secrets and what I was taught was my fundamental role, the sound of the surf picks up. Wisps of low-lying fog tell me I’m nearing the coastline. I pause among the trees instead of continuing. Breathing, settling. I can’t remember the last time I set foot in nature like this … the last time I voluntarily hiked or biked or swam in the ocean.
It takes a moment, as if I have to truly settle my mind to catch it without actively reaching for it, but I can feel my connection to Rought. Or rather, I can feel where he is. That connection is quiet, though not as tenuous as I previously deemed it. Still, I hesitate to reach for it, even tentatively, because I don’t want to accidentally overpower it. Which is more of a feeling than a rational thought.
I have a soul-bound mate. Someone — or something, perhaps the trauma from my first death — tried to tear Rought and me apart. But the gryphon … Rought’s beast hadn’t manifested yet. And the gryphon held the bond.
