Page 28 of An Honored Vow

“How do you feel?” I asked in awe.

Gwyn looked at her hand again. Her fingers were no longer glowing but she stared at them anyway. “Like I won’t need to sleep for days.” She snapped her hand into a fist and then unfurled it, the glow returning to her fingertips. “There’s something warm and tingling under my skin. I can feel it move and shift.”

I dropped my arm. I didn’t need to touch her skin to know what that feeling was. “Magic.”

Gwyn’s newly amber eyes flared bright around the pupils as if the magic pulsing inside her recognized the word.

Gwyn was Fae.

I turned to the others. “I’ve never heard of amber-eyed Fae before.”

Gerarda and Elaran just shrugged as Fyrel tentatively reached out to touch Gwyn’s hand. I held my breath, waiting for something to happen, but the glow along her fingertips dissipated as she laced her fingers through Fyrel’s.

Gwyn pulled her closer and grabbed the Elvish dagger from Fyrel’s weapons belt. She gasped as she saw her eyes in the steel for the very first time.

“How is this possible?” she whispered.

Elaran leaned on the wall with her long arms crossed. “Syrra was right that day you broke the seal. You’re aniinokwenar, Keera.”

I scoffed. “The Faemothers birthed new Fae; they didn’t turn Elverin into them.” Though something deep in my belly rumbled with fear. Even Feron had thought my eyes turning gold had meant something more than unlocking all my gifts.

“Faelin did not give birth to her daughters,” Gerarda reminded me. “She prayed to Elverath to gift her with children, and she woke from her sleep with two babes.”

My skin prickled. There were not enough Fae to ensure a win against each of Damien’s cities. And I was not going to birth a new generation of Fae fighters to end the Crown. But creating them? That was a power of untold strength.

A power that scared me more than anything else in my life.

“Since when do you believe in children’s stories?” I shot over my shoulder.

Gerarda flung the knife in her hand across the cave. The hilt vibrated as it sunk into the rock. “Since when do you have gold eyes and can turn Halflings into Fae?”

I opened my mouth to argue, but Fyrel’s panicked gasp made me turn back to Gwyn.

She pressed a dagger to the soft skin of her forearm. I reached for it, but not before she sliced through her flesh and a line of blood dripped down her arm.

Her blood was still amber but shimmered, unmistakably, with gold.

I stood and grabbed the blade Gerarda had thrown at the wall. I sliced a thin line across my own palm. I had just bled amber onto the snow, but now my blood shifted with the same golden glow as Gwyn’s. Slowly the glow of my blood faded as my skin healed but Gwyn’s remained.

“Fae bleed red,” Elaran murmured. “Halflings bleed amber.”

Fyrel cut the sleeve of her tunic and wrapped it around Gwyn’s arm. Gwyn looked up at me through her curls. “Then what am I?”

Elaran tilted her head to the side, staring at Gwyn with a newfound curiosity that made me nervous. She was not a warrior studying a comrade, or a woman gazing at a young girl; she was a general smiling as the tides of war shifted in her favor.

That fear taking root in my belly burst as Elaran said the truth aloud.

“Something entirely new.”

CHAPTERTWELVE

“WE NEED MORE FIREWOOD.” I turned to Gerarda. “You can help. We’re the only ones not injured.”

Gwyn straightened. “I’m not injured!”

“We don’t know what you are.” I crossed my arms. “But haven’t you done enough for one night?”

Fyrel had the good sense to pull Gwyn back to the ground and passed her some of the nuts and dried meat Elaran had found left at the back of the cave.

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