revealing a forbidding shoreline that drew closer by the moment.
The Kingdom of Night itself.
Soran slept longer than he meant to, exhausted both from his battle with the Thorn Maiden and from the harpen hunt the previous afternoon. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d used so much magic in a twenty-four-hour period. It took a toll on body and mind. The moment he closed and fastened the Rose Book, he’d stumbled across the room, collapsed on his bed, and fallen into a deep sleep, senseless to everything for many hours.
He woke with the sun in his eyes, wincing and groaning. His body was a mass of aches and cuts. The wounds from the harpens had healed over, but many of the Thorn Maiden’s lacerations were still open and bleeding, leaving ugly stains on his clothes and blankets. He sat up and held out one arm, grimacing at the shredded cloth of his sleeve. He hadn’t changed following the harpen attack, and the garment was more rag than shirt by now.
Rising stiffly, he plucked up his robes from where he’d left them in a pile at the foot of the bed. Lacking the energy to shrug into them, he simply draped them over his shoulder and descended the tower stair. His ears almost unconsciously pricked for sounds of movement below—the clatter of spoons and pans, the scolding chatter, the wyvern’s answering burbles.
All was strangely silent.
Well, that wasn’t much of a surprise. The girl must still be exhausted after the incredible work of spell-conjuring she’d performed yesterday. And the precarious situation they now found themselves in might induce a more solemn, quiet frame of mind in her, at least for the next few days.
This was going to be difficult. Soran frowned, considering. He would have to keep her inside as much as possible. He couldn’t let her go rambling about Roseward on her own just now. A second flock of harpens was the least of his worries, though that would be dangerous enough. Yet he would have to check the ward stones several times each day. Which meant bringing her with him. He couldn’t very well leave her alone in the lighthouse.
Then again, why not? What was it he feared exactly? The Rose Book was the only item of real peril he owned. Nelle, though curious by nature, would surely know better than to go looking for such a dangerous spellbook, especially now that she knew what it was. She’d had her own encounters with the Thorn Maiden. She would be wary.
Yes, perhaps it would be wisest to leave her behind when he tended to the ward stones. The protections on the lighthouse itself should conceal her even from more sensitive fae perceptions. And it was only for a few days. They would pass by Noxaur soon enough, and then . . .
Soran’s thoughts trailed off as he emerged through the hole in the ceiling and glanced around the lower chamber. Nelle wasn’t there.
He shook his head and looked again, his gaze darting first to the alcove bed. He saw the tip of the wyvern’s snout emerging from the pile of blankets and furs, but no sign of the girl. His gaze turned to one place after another, to all the places he would expect to see her rifling through supplies on the shelf, sloshing water in the washbasin, crouching over the hearth, or bowing over books and parchments at the table. His mind tried to fill in some ghostly impression of her, to believe she was where she was supposed to be.
But she was gone.
A growl rumbling in his throat, Soran looked to the door. It was closed fast, but he sensed an alteration in the locks and protections he’d placed on it yesterday. Why had he not thought to lock her in? Damn his folly! He had protected her only against the monsters outside. He’d never thought to protect her from herself.
Soran sprang down the last several steps, dropped his robes on the table, and strode across the room to fling the door open. Cold air sliced through his ragged shirt and bit at his skin, but he didn’t care. He stared out into the morning, hoping against hope that she would be there, standing on the edge of the cliff as he had found her several times before.
She was not. A very different sight met his eye.
A harsh shoreline loomed less than a mile off Roseward’s coast. Barren, desolate, poisonous. Shrouded by a darkness deeper than night. A sharp