“Please,” I said, and my voice broke on the word.
Behind me, Rhys moaned my name again.
Mor scanned my face once more, and gripped my hand.
We vanished into wind and night.
Brightness assaulted me, and I gobbled up my surroundings: mountains and snow all around, fresh and gleaming in the midday light, so clean against the dirt on me.
We were high up on the peaks, and about a hundred yards away, a log cabin stood tucked between two upper fangs of the mountains, shielding it from the wind. The house was dark—there was nothing around it for as far as I could see.
“The house is warded, so no one can winnow in. No one can get beyond this point, actually, without our family’s permission.” Mor stepped ahead, snow crunching under her boots. Without the wind, the day was mild enough to remind me that spring had dawned in the world, though I’d bet it would be freezing once the sun vanished. I trailed after her, something zinging against my skin. “You’re—allowed in,” Mor said.
“Because I’m his mate?”
She kept wading through the knee-high snow. “Did you guess, or did he tell you?”
“The Suriel told me. After I went to hunt it for information on how to heal him.”
She swore. “Is he—is he all right?”
“He’ll live,” I said. She didn’t ask any other questions. And I wasn’t feeling generous enough to supply further information. We reached the door to the cabin, which she unlocked with a wave of her hand.
A main, wood-paneled room consisting of a kitchen to the right, a living area with a leather sofa covered in furs to the left; a small hall in the back that led to two bedrooms and a shared bathing room, and nothing else.
“We got sent up here for ‘reflection’ when we were younger,” Mor said. “Rhys used to smuggle in books and booze for me.”
I cringed at the sound of his name. “It’s perfect,” I said tightly. Mor waved a hand, and a fire sprang to life in the hearth, heat flooding the room. Food landed on the counters of the kitchen, and something in the pipes groaned. “No need for firewood,” she said. “It’ll burn until you leave.” She lifted a brow as if to ask when that would be.
I looked away. “Please don’t tell him where I am.”
“He’ll try to find you.”
“Tell him I don’t want to be found. Not for a while.”
Mor bit her lip. “It’s not my business—”
“Then don’t say anything.”
She did, anyway. “He wanted to tell you. And it killed him not to. But … I’ve never seen him so happy as he is when he’s with you. And I don’t think that has anything to do with you being his mate.”
“I don’t care.” She fell silent, and I could feel the words she wanted to say building up. So I said, “Thank you for bringing me here.” A polite dismissal.
Mor bowed her head. “I’ll check back in three days. There are clothes in the bedrooms, and all the hot water you want. The house is spelled to take care of you—merely wish or speak for things, and it’ll be done.”
I only wanted solitude and quiet, but … a hot bath sounded like a nice way to start.
She left the cottage before I could say anything else.
Alone, no one around for miles, I stood in the silent cabin and stared at nothing.
PART THREE
THE HOUSE OF MIST
CHAPTER
52
There was a deep, sunken tub in the floor of the mountain cabin—large enough to accommodate Illyrian wings. I filled it with water near-scalding, not caring how the magic of this house operated, only that it worked. Hissing and wincing, I climbed in.
Three days without a bath and I could have wept at the warmth and cleanliness of it.
No matter that I’d once gone weeks without one—not when drawing hot water for it in my family’s cottage had been more trouble than it was worth. Not when we didn’t even have a bathtub and it required buckets and buckets to get clean.
I washed with dark soap that smelled of smoke and pine, and when I was done, I sat there, watching the steam slither amongst the few candles.
Mate.
The word chased me from the bath sooner than I wanted, and hounded me as I pulled on the clothes I’d found in a drawer of the bedroom: dark leggings, a large, cream-colored sweater that hung to mid-thigh, and thick socks. My stomach grumbled, and I realized I hadn’t eaten since the day before, because—
Because he’d been injured, and I’d gone out of my mind—absolutely insane—when he’d been taken from me, shot out of the sky like a bird.
I’d acted on instinct, on a drive to protect him that had come from so deep in me …
So deep in me—
I found a container of soup on the wood counter that Mor must have brought in, and scrounged up a cast iron pot to heat it. Fresh, crusty bread sat near the stove, and I ate half of it while waiting for the soup to warm.
