I panic, and the light dies, the heat fading until my knees threaten to dump me on my ass.
Vines have burned away, leaving the center of the Hallow free of debris. Little copper runes glow in the sentinel stones, slowly fading as the power leaves me.
The fetch is gone.
“Foolish child.” I sense a gentle hand stroking through my hair. “You sip the merest taste of true power and you want to gobble it all down like a glutton. Everything has a price.”
My knees give out, and I hit the stone. What’s happening to me?
“Sleep,” she whispers. “Recover. I will watch over you until the dawn rises.”
There is no choice. My eyes close even as the last glowing rune dies out like an extinguished firefly.
And then there’s nothing but silence.
Something warm rests on my chest, and a vibration trembles through me. I dream of sunshine and clover—the scent of my sister’s hair—and for a second we’re lying in her bed, tucked away from the world and the dangerous whispers of the court.
“Nothing can tear us apart,” Andraste tells me solemnly, pulling a little dagger from its sheath. She holds out her palm and slices the knife down it.
“Forever sisters,” I reply, taking the knife from her and mimicking her actions.
We clasp palms, and a shiver of bells tinkle in the background as though Maia herself hears our pledge.
But Andraste betrayed me. This isn’t real, I want to scream at myself. And the weight on my chest is heavier.
I blink, and a pair of lambent yellow eyes stare directly into mine.
Mother of—
A yell escapes me and as I scramble to sit up, a set of razor-sharp claws dig into my chest. I slam a hand into it, and a hiss escapes the mound of dark gray fur as it lands in the leaf mulch beside me.
Blessed Maia. I shove to my feet, trying to work out where I am and what happened and where the cursed cat came from.
“Shit.” Everything comes rushing back in upon me.
The fetch. The Mother of Night. The way I used the Hallow.
Dawn light silvers the sky far to the east, but nothing’s changed. I’m alone, and I have no idea where I am or how to get home. I swear I could sleep for a week too, but there’s no peace to be found here. I have to keep moving.
“I don’t suppose you know where we are?” I ask the cat.
“Meow,” it says, sitting and licking its paw.
“That’s precisely what I thought.” I give a sigh, and then start down the slope toward the Hallow.
The second I step through the lintel stones onto the slate circle, my heart falls.
There’s no buzz.
No whiplash of energy.
Nothing.
It feels like the Hallow’s been sucked dry.
Curse it. Hallows need at least an hour to recharge after they’re used as a portal, but whatever I did last night seems to have drained it.
I stare at the spine of mountains in the distance, an icy wind stirring the silk of my skirt. Thiago will be frantic, but there’s no help for it.
“I guess I’m just going to have to wait,” I tell the cat.
Night falls, and with it comes shadows moving up the mountainside.
I slip through the trees, shivering despite the summer blood that warms my veins. I didn’t want to leave the Hallow, but clearly the ray of light I shot into the air last night served as some sort of beacon.
I’m being hunted.
One knife. Limited magic. No Hallow to draw upon.
And no idea of what’s out there.
I slit my skirts apart, tying the ends around my calves so they form a simile of trousers, and pin my hair into a tight knot. And then I head into the trees.
There’s a stream burbling nearby, and I’ve spent enough time in the mountains to know that if I follow it downhill, I should come upon some sign of civilization. If there’s a Hallow here, then there are fae.
Or there were fae, says the cold, practical part of my mind I can’t deny. You saw those glyphs. Something chipped them out of the stone. A long time ago.
The cat meows plaintively at me.
It’s following me.
Curse the night, but this little bastard is going to get us both killed. Shooting it a glare, I try to silently shoo it away.
It blinks those lambent yellow eyes at me, then licks its paw, which I take to mean is its version of eat nightshade.
There’s nothing I can do. Perhaps it will grow weary of tracking me if I continue past the boundary of its home territory.
Wishful thinking.
Meow.
The high-pitched call echoes through the woods.
Meow. Meow. Meow.
My hand clenches around the hilt of my knife. Mother of—
But no, we’re not thinking of her.
I slowly turn around.
The cat levels that unblinking stare upon me.
“Listen, you furry little asshole,” I whisper. “I don’t know why you’re following me, but this is a stupid idea. We’re deep in a forest crawling with trolls or something worse.” It doesn’t even blink at me. I snap my teeth together. “Trolls will eat you. Go back to where you came from.”
Nothing.
I give up. “Fine. Follow me to your doom. Perhaps they’ll floss their teeth with your tail.”
“Perhaps you should listen, you feckless idiot,” it says, the words skipping past my ears and imprinting themselves directly in my brain. “I’ve been trying to tell you that you’re going the wrong way for the past mile.”
My mouth falls open, and I clear an inch of steel from my sheath before I catch the mocking gleam in its eyes.
“What did you just say?”
It spoke. I swear it spoke.
The cat scrapes that long pink tongue across its paw.
I’m in Unseelie. Of course it’s not just a cat.
“What are you?”
It ripples through the shadows, and I can barely make out where it begins and they end.
“I came to find you,” it says cryptically. “And I am not a what. I am a who.”
Curse the night.
It’s a grimalkin.
Chapter Twenty-Four
We make camp near the
