“Thank the gods.”

“I just want to make sure you understand that, so when you’re free and if you decide to leave—”

“If? You mean when I leave?”

“Yes. My apologies,” he demurred. “When you leave and go out into the world and find yourself a mate who has never lied—”

“Or kidnapped me?”

“Or kidnapped you, there should be no stabbing or punching. Only kisses and promises upheld until dying breaths and beyond,” he said. “That is what you deserve from who you choose to love.”

I didn’t know what to make of that—of him speaking of me…me loving someone else—loving someone for real. Acid pooled in my stomach.

“The thing is, you won’t mess up if you get mad. You won’t do the wrong thing. Each couple is different. Some spend their time whispering sweet words in each other’s ears. Some spend the time baiting one another. Both enjoying being the tiger in the cat and mouse chase. That is us,” he said. “Or who we appear to others. This won’t be hard. Not with the passion between us, and before you try to lie and say there is none, just know that it would provoke me into proving I’m right.”

The last thing I needed was for him to prove that he was right. There was passion between us, whether it was right or wrong, and I supposed it would be far harder to do this if we couldn’t physically bear one another’s touch.

And what he said made too much sense. Not the nonsense about us both being the cat in the cat and mouse chase, which made no sense whatsoever. However, the part about there being no textbook to follow, no guidelines did make sense. So much so, it felt like something I should’ve known.

“You probably think I’m foolish for not knowing—”

“I don’t think you’re foolish. I never have—well, I take that back. I thought you were pretty foolish when you tried to escape,” he said, and my eyes rolled. “You’ve never been in a relationship, and you really haven’t been around many normal ones, so I understand why you wouldn’t be sure how to act. And it’s not like this is a normal situation.”

Feeling a little better, I relaxed some. “And you’ve been in a relationship. I mean, you said you’ve been in love before.”

“I have.”

I watched the snow slip from branches as we passed, thinking of Alastir’s daughter. Shea. That was such a beautiful name, and maybe since Casteel had shared things with me before, he would be willing to talk about her. “What…what happened?”

His fingers stilled and he was quiet for so long that I didn’t think he’d answer, which made me all the more curious. But then he spoke. “She’s gone.”

Even though I already knew that, I felt a piercing ache in my heart, and I opened myself to him without giving it much thought. The moment I connected with him, I was hit by a wave of anguish so potent that it almost shielded the thread of anger underneath. I’d been right. Casteel’s pain and sadness wasn’t just for his brother. It was also for this faceless woman.

I thought about what Casteel had told me the night of the Rite, before the attack. He’d taken me to the willow in the gardens, and he’d told me about a place he used to go with his brother and his best friend. A cavern they had turned into their own private world. He’d said that he’d lost his brother and then his best friend a few years later. Could that best friend have been Shea, this woman he loved?

But his pain…

Before I even knew what I was doing, I’d let go of the saddle and started to remove my glove—

“Don’t,” he warned softly, and my hands froze. “I appreciate the gesture, but I don’t need you to take away my pain, nor do I want that.”

Still connected to him, I couldn’t imagine how that was possible. The agony that waited beneath the smirks and the teasing glances—under all his masks—was nearly unbearable. It threatened to drag me to the frozen ground. Being trampled by Setti was almost preferable to what festered from the wounds that couldn’t be seen. “Why wouldn’t you want that?”

“Because the pain is a reminder and a warning. One I plan to never forget.”

I severed the connection as nausea threatened to creep up my throat. “Did she…did she die because of the Ascended?”

“Everything that has rotted in my life has been tied to the Ascended,” he said, his hand returning to my hip.

“I’m tied to the Ascended,” I said before I could stop myself, before I could ignore the strange stinging.

Casteel didn’t respond. He didn’t say anything. Seconds ticked by and turned into minutes, and it felt as if there was a band tightening around my chest.

Staring straight ahead, I spent the next however many hours wondering how he could stand to even be near me—be close to someone tied to the Ascended as I was. They took his brother. They took the person he loved. They took his freedom. What else could they take from him?

His life?

A chill swept over my skin as I sat straight, my hands clutching the saddle. The idea of Casteel dying, of him no longer being there with those frustrating smirks and teasing glances, his quick-witted replies, and those damn, infuriating dimples? I couldn’t even consider it. He was too vivid, too bright to think of him no longer being there.

But he would be gone one day. When this was all over and we parted ways, he would be gone from my life. That was what I wanted—what I planned.

Then why did I suddenly feel like crying?

We camped out near the road, several hours after the sun had set. It was cold, but not nearly as cold as it had been in the Blood Forest. Casteel hadn’t spoken much beyond offering me food or asking if I needed a break, but as I lay there in the middle of the starless night, he returned to my side, stretching out behind me. I woke in his arms.

The next three days were just like that.

Casteel barely spoke. Whatever he felt, and I didn’t open myself up to him to truly know, was a shadow colder than the nights. So many times, I wanted to ask—I wanted to tell him that I knew about Shea. That I was sorry he’d lost her. I wanted to ask questions about her—about them. I wanted him to do what Alastir had said he hadn’t. I wanted him to talk, because I knew his silence fed his anguish. I said nothing, though, telling myself it wasn’t my place. That the less I knew, the better.

But he came to my side in the night, and he was there when a nightmare found me, waking me before I could give sound to the screams building inside me. He held me in silence, his hand stroking my back until I fell back to sleep.

The nightmares…they were different. Patchy, as if I were popping in and out of them instead of following the events of the night as before. They didn’t make any sense to me, either. Not the wounds on my mother, not the screams or the choking smoke. Not that creepy voice whispering about bleeding poppies. It was like the nightmares weren’t real anymore.

That was what I was thinking about as we saddled the horses and traveled the road to Spessa’s End on the fourth day. I had no idea how much time had passed when I saw something in the trees to my left. I couldn’t make out what it was, and just when I thought I was seeing things, I saw it again, several trees down the road.

It hung from a limb stripped of pine needles and bare of snow. A rope shaped into some kind of symbol—a circle. I twisted in my seat, but I couldn’t find where it had been in the mass of trees. The arm around my waist tightened, the first reaction from Casteel in days. I could feel the tension in his arm as I scanned the woods.

The shape tugged at the recesses of my memory. It looked like something I’d seen before. To the right, I saw it again—a brown rope hanging from another bare limb, fashioned almost like a noose, but with a stick or something crossing through the center.

I’d seen something similar in the Blood Forest. Except it had been created out of rocks and had reminded me of the Royal Crest. But now that I could see this one more clearly, I realized it was only like the Crest.

It wasn’t a straight line like an arrow, situated at a slant, but one that was slanted in the opposite direction. And that…that wasn’t a stick bound to the rope. It was too ashen in color, the ends knobby.

Oh, gods.

It was a bone.

Setti slowed, and Casteel’s arm slid away from me.

Slowly, I lifted my gaze, and trepidation took hold. There were dozens of them hanging amongst the trees, all different, at dizzying heights.

“Casteel?” I said quietly. “Do you see what’s in the trees?”

“Yes.”

“I saw the same shapes in the Blood Forest.”

“Cas,” Kieran’s voice was low, barely audible.

“I know,” he answered, and I heard a quiet snap of a clasp. When his arm came back around me, he held the strange bow in my lap. As close as it was, I could see that the nocked arrow was thicker than normal, and although I’d seen the kind of damage the bolt could do, it was still somehow unfathomable.

I stared at the bow and the bloodstone arrow. “Is it Craven?” I asked, having seen the rocks right before they arrived. I looked down, seeing no mist.

“I don’t think Craven have started to decorate trees with craft projects, Princess,” he said, and my heart gave a stupid little leap. It was the first time he’d called me that in days. He shifted the handle of the bow into my hand. “The lovely decorations are courtesy of the Dead Bones Clan.”

“The what?” I turned my head toward his.

“They used to live all across Solis, especially where the Blood Forest is now, but they’ve since relocated to these woods and hills over the past several decades.”

“I’ve never heard of them.”

“There are a lot of things the Ascended don’t share with the people of Solis. Like the fact that there are people who live and survive outside the protection of the Rise.”

“How?” I demanded. Many of the villages outfitted with smaller Rises were often overrun by Craven.