Az stiffens. “I’ll need your word from both of you,” he says to Fin and Lydia. “And you won’t fight my guards as they escort you out of the palace.”
“As long as Elias remains safe, you have mine,” says Lydia.
Fin takes longer, surveying Asha with grief in his eyes. “Just don’t make her do anything she doesn’t want to, and you have mine too.”
Az smiles. “Then we’re all agreed.”
The fae bargains snap into place, and just barely, I think I see a flicker of worry in Asha’s beautiful, haunting eyes.
Several of the guards remove Lydia and Fin from the premises, carrying Elias’s limp body with them.
A nearby guard removes my shackles.
I smile at my wife, just faintly, and reach for her hand, readying to take any feelings away she might have for me, searching her face for any sense she might have changed her mind.
Please change your mind. Please let this be one of your tricks, I whisper to her with the yearning in my eyes.
Tears roll down Asha’s cheek.
She looks at my outstretched hand, free of its bonds, then whips a dagger from her belt and turns it on her own heart.
CHAPTER 110
ZORA
By the time we reach the entrance of the winding cavern where Nox stepped through the eyelet, the stench is almost unbearable. Farin is still having difficulty moving his left arm, a byproduct of his wound.
I can tell it hurts him by the way he swallows in between words. The way his sentences are sometimes cut short.
But he doesn’t complain.
When we reach the cave that once housed the eyelet, a draft runs up my sleeve, causing the hairs on my arms to stand on edge.
“I’m guessing you felt that,” says Farin.
I nod. “It was coming from the back wall of the cave, not the tunnels.”
“So the eyelet is still here?”
I shake my head, unsure. Something’s here all right, but I’m not confident it’s anything balanced enough to provide us safe passage.
Still, I think I can fix that.
Maybe.
I cross the room, passing the corpse of the spider Farin killed. Then I run my fingers across the dangling spider silk that coats the back wall. It’s torn and shredded from where the eyelet closed, but the strands that remain are thick, firm to the touch.
“You really think this will work?” asks Farin, coming up behind me, his fingers gently squeezing my shoulder.
In the distance, we hear the rumble of the island, the beast of the volcano that dwells within the earth.
My throat goes dry. “It has to.”
“Nox said Gunter was the one weaving my stories into the Fabric this entire time,” I say, tying a knot between two loose strands of spider silk. “That Gunter tapped into the Fabric with thread made from the flax that grew near the Rip. Flax infused with the Fabric’s magic. So what’s to say,” I say, stroking the silk, “we can’t weave our own eyelet?”
Farin reaches from behind me, feeling the silk himself. “You think the silk is infused with magic from being near the eyelet, like the flax was infused with magic by being near the Rip? I thought the magic in the silk is what made the eyelet.”
I shrug. “Does it matter which came first, as long as it still contains the magic?”
Farin hesitates.
“What?” I ask.
“It’s just that, I thought you said the Fates were the ones who created the eyelets.”
“So?”
Farin shuffles. “I’m not sure the Fates will be fond of me trying to replicate their artwork.”
I flash him a smile, if only to hold the queasiness in my stomach in. If only so I don’t have to ask what, exactly, Farin’s relationship is with the Fates. “Then don’t get in my way.”
Farin flashes me an amused smirk, then steps backward, gesturing me forward.
I get to work.
It takes several hours, but eventually I manage to weave a portrait similar to the one we initially found here. I can’t replicate it perfectly, of course. Not when part of the silk has been damaged and my memory isn’t perfect, nor are my weaving skills.
But when I take a step back, I find I’m proud of my work.
