Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 93948 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 470(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 313(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93948 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 470(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 313(@300wpm)
As soon as the power stabilizes, I take a deep breath and exhale just as slowly. It hurts to do this. Not the power expenditure, but the hope that I should have killed long months ago. Instead, here I am, a year later, trying to call her home.
Another deep breath and I’m ready. I send my magic out, farther and farther and farther, to the very edges of my ability. The amplification circle drains my magic twice as fast as normal, so I can only hold it for about fifteen minutes.
I close my eyes. “Siobhan. Siobhan, come home. Your hunt is finished. You’ve saved us all. Come home to us.” Again and again and again, the words carrying a lilt of melody that helps the magic cling to them.
At the end of fifteen minutes, I reluctantly release the magic. Beneath me, the chalk amplification circle has blurred to the point of being unrecognizable, its use fulfilled. I sit back on my heels and let loose a shaky breath.
“That’s beautiful.”
I look up to find Nox standing before me. They’re dressed in black, which somehow suits them even more than crimson, their duster flowing dramatically in the light wind, their clothing beneath fitted to their body. I use my forearm to wipe the sweat from my brow. “I’m glad you made it in time.”
“Me, too.” They carefully step into the circle, avoiding the sigils and offering me their hand. “Tomorrow, the next step starts.”
“Yes.” I let them pull me to my feet and then hug them close. “Fuck, I missed you.”
Nox holds me just as tightly. “I missed you, too.”
Tomorrow, the newly formed Council votes on how to proceed with returning the refugees to their home realms—and settling the ones who have no interest in returning in communities with room to spare. People will get a choice; I’m determined to ensure it’s so. We’re starting the new Threshold on the right foot, on the promise of being better.
Even though I know I shouldn’t, I can’t help but ask. “Have you seen her?”
“I don’t think so,” Nox says slowly. “We caught the edge of the Hunt a month ago. I don’t know if they were coming or going, but we heard them and saw the mist. No hounds or riders, though.”
We had thought the Wild Hunt would disappear the same way it’s been gone for time unknowing. Instead, wherever they ride, they seem to use Threshold the same way normal people do—as access to other realms. There are regular sightings, but they don’t bother any of the people left after the purge of the Cŵn Annwn.
If they had disappeared, maybe I would have been able to give up hope that Siobhan would return to us someday. As it is, I can’t help doing everything in my power to summon her home.
Nox loops their arm through mine and turns us toward the door to the stairs. “You know, you’re getting quite the reputation. The young eligible nobles wax poetic about the Lyarian Banshee, calling his lost love home. It’s considered quite the coup if they can seduce you out of your sadness.”
I wince. There have been plenty of attempts in the last year. “You know I’m not interested in any of them.”
“I know.” They press a kiss to my cheek. We share a bed when they’re in town, and we’ve spent no little amount of time losing ourselves in pleasure, but there’s no escaping the grief of Siobhan’s absence. I keep thinking it will fade, will lose some of its jagged teeth, but it endures. Instead, it’s as if it’s compounded when Nox and I are together, two-thirds of a whole that might never be whole again.
“What if she never returns?” I hate to give voice to the fear I can’t escape, but if I can trust anyone to hold space for it, it’s Nox.
We walk in silence through the building and out onto the street. “I’d like to join you tomorrow night. Give a little warm wind to carry your call farther.”
I glance at them. “Do you think it will help?”
“It can’t hurt.”
It’s not until we’re back in my bed, sweat cooling on my skin and Nox sleeping beside me, that I realize they never really answered my question.
Siobhan
Blood in my mouth. Flesh between my teeth. The ground falling away beneath my paws. Always the next surge, the next prey, the next call from the Hunter to change direction. There is nothing else.
Except…
Siobhan.
I miss a step and nearly fumble into my siblings around me. One of them snaps at me, but it’s half-hearted at best. We’re picking up speed again, intent on our next destination.
Siobhan.
I shake my head roughly, trying to clear it. I know that voice, though it’s strange in the cadence. I’ve heard its owner say that name a thousand times, a million, until it’s as familiar as my own heartbeat. I’ve heard him speak…my name?