Unbound (The Griever's Mark series Book 3) (5 page)

As soon as Astarti and I are back in our rooms, she snaps, “Why do you think you can tell me when to come or go when I’m not supposed to tell you that?”

My temper flares. “This is completely different. What you did yesterday was dangerous, getting on that ship. I had no idea you were there. You could have been killed!”

“Lots of people are getting killed, Logan. This is a war.”

Her calm acceptance of that riles me further. “That doesn’t mean you should seek out danger!”

“I was trying to protect your mother!”

I growl because she has me on that one. All I can say is, “You worry me. You scare me to death. I don’t like it.”

“Do you think I like worrying about you?” She stalks toward me, but everything in her body language changes when she reaches for my face, fingers lightly touching where the bruise was. “Logan,” she says with an edge of desperation, “Logan.”

I try to take her hand, but she pulls it away. She lays it lightly against the bruise on my stomach. She knows exactly where it is. She closes her eyes, and I see that Bran is right. I am hurting her.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

“I know you are, Logan. But I’d rather hear you say you’ll never do this again.”

I want to say that. I open my mouth to try to make that promise, but nothing comes out.

Instead, I wrap my arms around her, begging her to accept this, as she has accepted so many ugly things about me. She is stiff at first, but then she clings to me, and I let her presence fill my mind and push out everything else. I don’t want to think about last night.

This is all I want.

Part of me knows I will do it again. There will come a moment—tomorrow, next month, sometime—when there is something I can’t bring her into. I have to do this. I have to. I will shield her from it as best I can, but that is all I can promise. Bran says it hurts me, but the hurt is only physical. I wish he understood—I wish Astarti understood—that it helps, that it’s the reason I can stand here so calmly right now.

It’s twisted and upside down, but it’s true.

A cruel voice whispers,
She will leave you
.

I tremble at the thought. She has every right to leave me. I pray that she won’t.

Astarti draws back, looking up into my face with pain that I put there. Fresh guilt slides through me.

She says, “I don’t think you’re ready for this. The Dry Land. I wish you would stay here.”

“Not a chance.” She watches my eyes, which I’m sure reveal even more than my voice. She sighs.

“Will you let me take you through the Drift? If you prefer, you could meet us there instead.”

I stiffen at the thought of entering the Drift. The energy is too much. Everything is too exposed.
I
am too exposed. Yet, riding the wind is slower, and I would get there after them. What if there was trouble and I arrived too late?

With a grimace, I say, “Take me through the Drift.”

Chapter 7

I LET THE others get ahead of me and Logan in the Drift. He doesn’t need them to see this.

His energy rolls, coiling and winding through him. It’s nothing like Belos’s, whose energy is comprised of all the souls he’s Taken. Belos’s energy fights itself, one form strangling another, one will struggling for brief dominance. Logan’s energy is like a building storm, wild and dangerous, but with its own internal rhythm.

I have the feeling that if he lost control here, he would be like the Hounding, the ripping wind that once haunted the Drift. The Ancorites told me the Hounding was a filament of the Old Ones as they strained for freedom. You could feel the madness of it. In retrospect, I wonder if it wasn’t really madness but only a mind and will beyond my ability to comprehend. Either way, that’s what Logan comes from, and it scares me to bring him here. If he lost himself in this, would I ever find him again?

I strain to make sound. “
Focus
.”

His energy shivers, but he gains a little control. I take his hand and pull him along to catch up.

We reach the Dry Land, and Belos’s barrier glows in the distance. I know now that the threads are souls, torn apart, stretched, and rewoven to prevent passage through them. Heborian has the same around his castle grounds. I shudder at the sight. Heborian calls it a necessary evil, and I still can’t decide if he’s right.

Within the barrier, a single form glows. It’s not bright enough to be Belos or any of the Seven, so it has to be one of the human servants. Heborian sees it. He angles toward the twisting threads.

We step from the Drift just outside the barrier. I wince at the glaring brightness of the sun. Beside me, Logan brushes himself off like he might have gotten dirty in the Drift.

The narrow slope leading from the dusty flats to the top of the plateau forces us to walk single file. Though danger is unlikely, Horik takes the lead, keeping Heborian behind him. Logan and I bring up the rear.

I’m unaffected by this place until we reach a section of torn ground. This is where Horik was trapped by Belos when he and I came to rescue Logan. It makes me remember how Logan walked up this slope, stepped over Horik, and emerged into the torchlight. For one second, I see his eyes in my memory—black, cold, reflecting a will not his own. I resist the urge to look over my shoulder and see his face. His mind is his own now. I know that. But sometimes I still dream he’s possessed by Belos. I’m sure he dreams that, too.

We reach the rubble-strewn courtyard. No longer able to resist, I turn to study Logan. His face is still and controlled, much like when I first met him on a day that seems a lifetime ago. I know what it means now; he’s shutting everything out.

No. That’s not right. He’s shutting everything in.

His eyes give him away. They turn blue for a second as he gets control, then green whips through them. I wonder what it’s doing to him to be here again. I wish he would just tell me.

At the edge of the courtyard lies only a scattering of broken stone, but the rubble mounts higher and higher to the shattered fortress. One jagged wall is still standing. When Logan caused this destruction, we had to escape and I never got a good look at the mess. I take this new image into myself and let it stand for the end of something.

Bizarrely, I feel a slight wrench. I lived so much of my life here. I hated it, yes, but it was all I knew. I think of what lies buried, my thoughts catching on the ugly little doll I made from rags. She had no face because I had no paint, and she was filthy because there was no water to spare for washing a toy, but I used to sleep with her under my pillow. I can’t remember her name. Maybe I never gave her one.

Logan shifts beside me and asks quietly, “Are you all right? Astarti?”

I touch his warm, strong hand. I love to touch him.

“I’m fine. You?”

His face looked worried when he spoke to me, but as I turn the question back at him, that mask slides into place. He dips his chin. That’s all the answer I’m going to get.

At the sound of a shout, my head whips in the direction of the rubble. A figure moves at the top, in the shade of the jagged wall. From the corner of my eye, I see Horik and Jarl raise their hands. Any faint glow of Drift-work is lost in the harsh light, but a ragged figure comes tumbling down the rubble pile. I wince as the man is bounced over stones. He lands in a groaning heap before Heborian.

I push my way through the gathering as Heborian rolls the man over with a booted toe.

“You know him?” Heborian asks.

I study the dirty face. The man’s skin and lips are cracked and peeling. He must have found some water or he’d be dead, but he’s in bad shape. His thin chest jerks sharply with each breath.

“His name’s Fordan. One of Belos’s. Obviously.”

“One of his what?”

I shrug. “Servants? Hangers-on? He attracts all sorts. Those who make deals want something for themselves, but some just want to serve him. He wouldn’t know anything.”

Fordan is gasping out a word, and I crouch down. Skeletal fingers with broken, filthy nails reach for my face. Someone knocks Fordan’s hand aside. I squint up into Logan’s furious face.

“He wasn’t going to hurt me.”

A muscle bunches in Logan’s jaw, but he moves back a pace, visibly trying to calm himself.

I turn back to Fordan, but he’s passed out. I don’t like his kind, the ones desperate for a scrap of attention from Belos. Belos Leashes them and puts them to work, and they are thrilled to be “chosen.” Despite the disgust I feel, pity flickers inside me. Men like Fordan believe they are nothing, and they feel worth only when someone like Belos deigns to look their way. He’s not the only one like this, but he does seem to be the only one who survived the collapse of the fortress.

“Why don’t we just kill him?”

I turn at Rood’s question. He looks genuinely confused.

I explain, “He’s Leashed to Belos. Killing him only gives Belos another bit of power.”

Rood frowns. “There can’t be enough power in him to make any difference.”

Heborian says, “We’ll take him back to Tornelaine.”

I look at him in surprise. I expected him to agree with Rood.

Rood asks, “So you’ll cut his Leash, then kill him?”

“If that’s the best use I can make of him.”

I squint at Heborian, trying to catch a hint of his meaning, but his face gives nothing away.

With the unconscious Fordan bound and dragged with ropes of Drift-energy, we make our way beyond the barrier. I take Logan back into the Drift, where he can’t hide his agitation behind a forced expression. When I catch Heborian’s eyes on him, I grow suspicious. I was surprised Heborian wanted Logan to come. At first I thought Heborian knew it would be an argument and had decided it wasn’t worth the effort to push the matter. Now I suspect Heborian wanted Logan in the Drift on purpose—to see him, to judge his control.

When we reach the Broken City and step again into the heat and light, I glare at Heborian as he watches Logan. Logan stills behind me, aware of Heborian’s attention. Heborian turns away.

Leaving our prisoner bound and tethered with Drift-energy, we head into the ruins. Spires of stone jut from the earth like enormous fingers. There’s some rubble, but most of it has been worn away to nothing, leaving only the stony fingers. Perhaps someday they, too, will wear away to nothing. Bran says this was the first home of the Old Ones, that it was once a lush and beautiful place. I wonder if it’s true that they destroyed their own creation in their lust for change and movement.
They just cannot stop
, Bran said.

Our group spreads out. I don’t know how Heborian hopes to find the bones, but my stomach turns at the thought. When I first held Heborian’s bone knife, I regarded it as nothing more than a tool. Now I see more clearly that it was once part of a body. The Shackles are the same. When the Old Ones were still trapped, the Hounding was drawn to those tools within the Drift. They sense them, recognize them. I wonder if what we are doing would make them angry.

Logan is a step ahead of me. I watch the way he walks, the way he moves his arms. His movements are confined, tightly controlled. I take his hand, which is stiff and unresponsive, and draw him into the shadow of one of the spires.

“Logan.”

His eyes meet mine. His are mostly blue now, but when I slide my fingers inside his belt, green and gold swirl through his irises. He sucks in a breath. I work my fingers under the hem of his shirt and brush upward over the notched muscles of his stomach. I graze his tightened nipples. He leans against me, pressing my back to the rough stone.

He is more himself today, more what I’m used to. I hate that he hurt himself to do it. I hate that touching him works now when it didn’t last night. But I can’t stop myself. It feels wonderful to have him unwind under my hands, to feel suppleness and desire sweep away his rigidity.

My hands travel around his back. His muscles loosen at the touch. His hips press against me. His arousal matches my own, and I want nothing more than to leave this place and be alone with him.

When I lick the sweat from the hollow of his throat, he moans. His mouth finds mine, and his tongue sweeps inside. I want to tear at his clothes and pull him harder against me, but I force my hands to gentle. I stroke his back, slow my kiss.

He breaks the kiss and presses his lips to my temple. He breathes in the scent of my hair before drawing away.

I give his shirttail a tug. “You might want to tuck that back in.”

He flashes me a crooked grin, and my breath stops for a second, like it always does when he smiles.

As we walk back into the sun, I touch his back from time to time, afraid he’ll stiffen again, but his movements stay fairly relaxed.

We wander among the spires, not really looking for anything. That, I figure, is Heborian’s job. Logan is half a step ahead of me, leading the way to nowhere.

He stops.

His expression is distant. I want to ask him what’s on his mind, but he’ll either tell me or he won’t.

He says neutrally, “While I was bound to Belos, he brought me here a few times. I don’t know why. Maybe he was drawn to this place. Maybe I was. In my memory, I can’t really distinguish his thoughts from mine.”

I try to stay relaxed, but this is the first time he’s offered to speak of this, and I desperately want him to go on.

He squints into the sun. “One time, I had a...vision? I guess that’s what it was. I saw a green valley here. Water, trees. And towering stone structures. These, I suppose. A man rose up from the ground. Or out of the ground maybe? In one moment, he was the size of a man; in another he was a colossal figure. He looked out across the sky.”

Logan stares into the sky, seeking something.

I hazard a question. “What do you think that vision was?”

“I don’t know. I had forgotten it until just now. All that time is muddled.” He makes a dismissive gesture with his hand, as though tossing something behind him. I know the past cannot be so easily cast off, but it helps sometimes to pretend.

Logan and I walk on, and I let him continue leading the way.

He stays relaxed for a while, then he tenses and turns to look behind. “Your father is following us.”

I look around but see only flat land and spires of stone.

Logan clarifies, “He’s in the Drift.”

I’ve known for some time that Logan can sense something of the Drift even from outside it. I understand this better now. As my mother believed, the Drift is the fifth element, the element of spirit. The Old Ones were masters of all, making no distinction between them as Earthmakers and Drifters like to do. Logan can use them all as well, including the Drift. He doesn’t quite know how and he certainly doesn’t want to, but the ability is there. I have a similar ability to access all five elements because of my mixed blood. My power isn’t as strong as Logan’s, and I’m glad of that. Mine is learned and therefore controlled by my thoughts. Logan’s is so instinctive that his thoughts seem to dissolve within those greater forces.

I’ve learned my lesson about doubting Logan’s instincts, so I slide into the Drift. Heborian freezes, surprised to have been caught. I jerk my thumb to tell him to get out. When we both step from the Drift, I fix him with a stare.

“How long have you been spying on us?”

He takes a deep breath, raising his chin. He’s not going to answer, which means it’s been a while. I feel my neck heat at the thought that he probably saw me and Logan behind the spire.

Logan demands, “
Why
have you been following us?”

Heborian crosses his arms comfortably. “I was only following you.”

“And why were you following me?”

“I had a hunch. We’ll see if I was right.” He lets out an earsplitting whistle.

“What is this?” I snap.

“Don’t get excited.” Heborian brushes past me to stand beside Logan. “You were looking at this spot. In fact, you’ve been moving this direction for fifteen minutes.”

Logan says tightly, “Your point?”

Heborian claps him on the shoulder. “I think this is good place to start digging.”