Page 118 of Shadow & Storms

‘Don’t you dare.’ Wilder pulled her to his armoured chest. ‘Don’t you dare give up.’ The words were an echo of ones he’d said before, in the Bloodwoods after her shieldbearer initiation test. ‘I won’t let you,’ he told her. ‘I won’t let you go.’

Thea wanted to touch his face, to trace his jaw one last time, to bring his mouth to hers. But her hands were clumsy.

Wilder’s arms trembled around her. ‘We said after you went to Aveum that we’d never part again. I mean to uphold that vow.’

Thea felt cold. She didn’t know if it was the wound at the back of her head, or the dark marks that bled over her heart.

Wilder rested his forehead against hers, tears spilling down his handsome face, creating tracks through the blood and grit. ‘Please.’

‘I’m sorry —’ Her voice broke. ‘I didn’t want to leave you. I didn’t want to die, not yet.’

A shadow cast over them both, a figure emerging on the parapet. ‘You’re not the one who’s going to die,’ Anya said, crouching at Thea’s side. ‘Chew this.’

She shoved something into Thea’s mouth. When Thea bit down, she recognised the bitter taste.

Dried iruseed. The same herb Wilder had given her when she’d nearly bled to death in the broom closet courtesy of Sebastos Barlowe. It worked the same as it had then, her senses prickling back to life. The pain was still there, but she was conscious, alert, her hands able to move as she directed.

Beside her, Wilder’s breathing was ragged. ‘Fuck,’ he muttered, pressing a hard kiss to her temple. ‘Don’t ever do that to me again.’

But Thea’s gaze drifted to Anya, something about her words niggling at Thea. ‘Who’s going to die?’ she rasped. ‘You said I’m not the one who’s dying… So who is?’

Anya grimaced, her hand reaching for something.

She pulled Thea’s fate stone from beneath her armour, snapping the knotted leather cord as she took it between her fingers. ‘This was never yours.’

Thea could only stare.

‘You had it in your hands when we arrived here. It used to stop you crying. But it was mine. It was always mine. When I came back to Thezmarr to see you and Wren, and I said I didn’t speak to you? I lied. I begged you to remember me. And then I gave you the stone for good.’

Remember me.

The words from the seer came back to her, along with the press of the fate stone in her palm as a child.

Remember me.

A flash of flower necklaces in tiny hands.

Remember me.

Throwing the cursed thing out to sea, only to find it on Wilder’s side table hours later.

Remember me.

Her blood running cold as she scanned the forest floor in Notos for the piece of jade she’d torn from her neck and cast aside.

‘Here,’ Cal had said, offering an outstretched hand. And there it had been: the pale green stone that had haunted Thea her whole life.

Remember me.

‘You gonna ask me about it?’ she had prompted Anya in the Singing Hare, taking the piece of jade between her fingers and rubbing her thumb along its edges.

‘I don’t think I want to… Those things never did anyone any good.’

Remember me.

Thea watched as Anya’s fingers wrapped around the fate stone now. A seer hadn’t whispered those words to her.

Her sister had.

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