Chapter 129 The Locket Part 1
The night after the city fell was a world Daisy had never known. The woods east of Brightwater were old before the first stone of the castle was set, and tonight, under the bone-white stare of the moons, they hummed with a silence so vast it hurt her ears. Smoke from the burning city still clung to her cloak, sharp and bitter, crowding out the deep scent of moss and leaf-mulch. For a moment, every breath tasted of ruin and of home now lost.
They hid in a hollow between three collapsed trunks, the ground spongy with moss and old leaf-rot. Xeris stood at the edge, back to the group, every muscle in his frame pulled tight as wire. His breath smoked in the cold. Maribel slept against his chest, wrapped in two coats and a moth-eaten blanket; Delia hovered at her side, pressing fingers to the old woman’s wrist every few minutes, her own lips moving in a ceaseless litany of “hold on, hold on.” Mira and Samuel scanned the gloom, speaking in whispers Daisy couldn’t catch.
Daisy’s gaze kept drifting to Maribel’s chest, searching each unsteady rise and fall for a sign the older woman would last til dawn. The sight tightened something fierce inside her, more than any threat outside the hollow. If Maribel slipped away now, Daisy wasn’t sure the rest of them could hold together.
Only Oliver was missing from the cluster. He’d gone ahead at Daisy’s request—“Find the best way through, and don’t be seen”—and had vanished into the blackness without so much as a parting quip. She hadn’t realized how much she’d miss the noise of him until it was gone.
The locket in Daisy’s hand felt heavier by the minute. The metal had warmed to her body, the chain digging a groove in her palm. Now, every so often, she felt a faint tickle under her skin, a pulse that was not quite magic, not quite her own blood—a rhythm out of place, caught between protection and warning. The locket was an old thing, unpredictable, and in desperate hours it had shielded her from things seen and unseen—once kindling light against darkness, once closing wounds that should have ended her. Yet its power always came at a cost she barely understood, and it remained uncertain whether it would answer in the moment they needed it most. Each throb twisted with her own hope and uncertainty, echoing all the ways she feared failing those who still followed her.
Delia shifted, looking up from Maribel’s breathing. “It’s safe enough for now. But we can’t stay long. The Veilseekers—”
“They’re hunting the chain,” Daisy finished. “And Willow—traitor and once one of our own—has made sure they know exactly where to look.”
Delia’s face was drawn, streaked with dirt and dried blood. “We lost so many, Daisy. Healer Madox, with his terrible jokes, and little Tavi—he was still clutching his wooden horse when the fire came. They trusted us to get them out.”
Daisy set her jaw, a wave of guilt and defiance twisting inside her. “If I hadn’t dragged us out, we’d be worse than dead. The Emperor would use us as an example. Maybe he still will.” The admission stung, fear and responsibility mingling as she forced herself to meet Delia’s gaze, unwilling to let regret paralyze her.
Delia said nothing, just bent over Maribel again. Daisy felt a knife of guilt twist through her, but let it go. She’d made her choice, and the price was already paid.
Xeris didn’t move, but Daisy felt his gaze sweep over her. Even in human form, his presence was a thing alive, restless, hungry. Once, in the quiet before dawn years ago, they had hunted together beneath these same woods, laughter echoing between the trees as he startled a flock of crows to see her smile. Now that memory was distant, buried beneath hardship, and she wondered what he was thinking—a dragon made of defeat and exile. She wondered if he hated her for it.
A whisper of motion in the trees. Daisy was on her feet in an instant, body low, hand on her knife. She felt the chain flare, the locket’s heat crawling up her arm.
Oliver appeared between two oaks, so quiet she almost missed him. He looked at her first, then at Maribel, then back to her again.
“Clear for a mile east,” he said. “No patrols, not even animal traps. It’s weird. Like nothing wants to be here.”
He gestured with his chin toward an abandoned torch staked in the frozen ground nearby. Its flame wavered in the wind, while the snow beneath remained untouched and pale, unmelted by the heat. The surrounding silence heightened every sound, so that the crunch of their boots seemed unnaturally loud, as if the woods themselves had receded, leaving only emptiness and a lingering chill.
Daisy felt the locket throb.
“What about the river?” she asked.
“Frozen. But think. We’ll have to cross before sunrise, or the current will break it up.”
Mira appeared at Oliver's shoulder, her eyes catching the moonlight. "There's a path," she said, "an old road. Not a true road, but more like a memory—an ancient route shaped by lost travelers, half claimed by the forest and half remembered by those who once walked it. But it'll get us to the hollow." She knelt and brushed aside a patch of dead leaves, revealing the faintest trace of a rut in the earth. "We have to stay on it. If we drift off, we'll be swallowed up—sometimes the forest folds around you, and you come out somewhere you never meant to be. Or you don't come out at all." For a moment, something in the air shimmered, and the edges of the path seemed to waver as if the woods themselves were watching. Everyone knew stories of these trees: how sometimes a lantern-glow would lead travelers in circles, how footsteps echoed in voices that did not belong to them. Here, it was said, the woods remembered those who got lost—and sometimes did not let them go.
Samuel, voice flat: “You sure?”
“Not in the least,” Mira replied. “But it’s all we have.”