Every so often, we stop to rest for a few hours, usually curled together against a tree. Then we get back to the path and trudge onward.
We haven’t talked about what happened. Whatever the wraith did to Alexus, it rattled him. He rode in a daze for several hours after, his mind in another world. But when my grief for my friend became too much, he shook off his own unease and held me, wiped my tears and whispered kindness into my ears as another cresting wave arrived.
As we travel, Alexus fills the time by telling me stories about distant lands that I’m sure must be fiction, and he speaks to me in Elikesh, reciting what sounds like poems that are so beautiful they easily lull me to sleep. Another few times, we pause our riding to move our legs and nibble on what we can from the pack. The cold has ruined the apples, though we still feed the mush and skins to the horses. We’ve already drained the flask, leaving us longing for the drink’s warmth in the pits of our bellies.
We’re wearing down fast. We need real sustenance and sleep and fire, or this construct could become our final resting place.
When we set to riding again, I beg Nephele to send aid soon, to find some enchantment that will weave everything we need into this godsforsaken construct. The snow and blistering winds have all but stopped, and Alexus swears the cold has relented, but we’re both still struggling. My eyes keep closing of their own volition, an awful fate, because when my eyes are closed, I see all the things that led me to this moment, beginning with the God Knife being delivered to our cottage door. After that, I see my scheming and thieving, my hidden preparations, and the little white lie I told my mother the morning of Collecting Day.
It only gets worse from there.
I’m also met with the devastating truth of our circumstance when I close my eyes. Three times since we left Helena in the wood, the Prince of the East has found me. He stares at me from my dreams like a figment, but I know he’s here, very much alive, and I know he’s watching.
I just don’t know how, and I don’t know why.
Two thoughts swirl in my mind. Keeper. Why had he called me that on the green? The word repeats in the back of my brain, but it holds no meaning. The other thought takes me back to the stream. Alexus said a rumor reached Winterhold that the Prince of the East meant to break King Regner’s treaty and invade the Northlands, all because he wants the Frost King. At the time, I couldn’t have cared less what he meant to do with the king, but now, I understand that the Prince of the East has a larger mission.
And I need to know what it is.
We stop once more, and this time, huddled under a tree, I can’t sleep, even though Alexus holds me close, sharing his heat. I warm my hands between our bodies until I feel like I can manage a few sentences. It’s the same question I asked before I had to leave Helena, but one I’ve avoided since for fear of conjuring the enemy. But I can’t avoid it anymore.
“Why is the prince doing this? What does he want with the king? A real answer this time.”
Alexus scrubs his brow. “Those are two different questions. I truly can’t say that I know why he’s doing this. I don’t know his ultimate goal. I have ideas, but the longer I’m in this construct, the less certain I am about anything I thought I knew. Like Helena. Whether he used her to slow us down or stop us all together, I’m uncertain. The wraith wanted to kill me, not you, and I’m not sure what to make of that, what the prince intends to do with you once he has you.” He switches to signing. “Unless he knows what you are.”
I swallow hard, and my pulse pounds.
“Do you think he knows?” Alexus adds. “Did he see your witch’s marks?”
I shake my head in earnest, but then I replay every second of our fight on the green. I don’t recall the prince ever looking at my marks once they became visible. My hands, neck, and chest markings were uncovered, but at least one hand—the one he focused on—was drenched in his blood. As for my neck and chest, my hair is long and thick.
My mind reels. What if the prince does know? When I saw him while riding with Helena, he said Hello, Keeper. I see you. I’d felt a sense of being watched—being followed—but nothing had been there.
Or had it?
A dark crow flies from tree to tree along the road’s edge, and its eyes fix on me. I curl closer against Alexus and burrow deeper inside his dark cloak, thankful for the protection.
What if those are the eyes I’ve felt? What if his crows saw me healing Alexus? Helena? Maybe he sensed me healing Helena through his wraith.
Gods. What if I end up with the prince after all? His personal Healer and Seer?
While my thoughts melt into sheer panic, Alexus falls asleep, his body softening around mine. So much for my question about the king. I’m not sure I can cope with more information right now anyway.
Another crow flutters overhead, keeping its eyes on me—just for its prince, I’m certain. I can’t prevent the little pricks from spying, but at least I know to look for them now. And I swear, at some point, I’m going to kill them with my bare hands.
This time, when my eyes close and the prince appears, there’s a feeling that he’s searching for something more than me.
“What in Thamaos’s name are you?” he whispers, reaching out across time and space to touch my face, watching me from gods’ know where, even as I rest in Alexus’s arms.
What am I? I send the message from my mind. What the fuck are you?
Opening my eyes, I shiver from the memory of his closeness. It felt like he was an inch from my face, the warmth of his fingertips lingering like a real touch. Did he ask what I am because he heard Alexus earlier?
The prince’s ability to project himself into my consciousness, and the fact that he can disappear on a whim, makes me wonder if he’s inside this construct at all. I can’t imagine why he would stay here if he can simply vanish into nothingness, unlike we mere mortals who haven’t harnessed darkness itself.
Then again, if he’s so skilled in traveling through this world like the wind, why invade the vale at all? Why not go straight to Winterhold for the man he wants and whisk him away on a red cloud of death? Why come to me like this, like a ghost? Why can he not simply appear right here on this very path in all his shadow-infested glory?
Is it because he’s truly a coward? Is he scared that I might do more than wound him this time?
Coward. I think the word, my body temperature rising from the heat of irritation and low-boiling rage. Coward, I repeat, and push the slur as hard as I can into the ether, praying he hears and that I make him angry enough to meet me face to face.
The moment shatters, though, because something across the path catches my eye: indigo light, a braided web of magick floating in the air in a thin clearing beyond the path’s edge, nearly hidden by trees.
I close my eyes, worried I’m so exhausted that I’m imagining things. But when I open them, the magick is still there.