Chapter 59

Chapter 59
Nicholas's POV

The runner reached me just past noon.

He came gasping for breath, and the word he brought was short — one of the marked routes on the eastern cliffs had come down.

The instant the words "cave-in" struck my ears, Shadow woke abruptly in the depths of my mind.

A low growl slammed into my consciousness, carrying an urgency I'd never felt before.

She's on that route. Go find her.

Its voice was heavy and hard, like some instinct pressed deep in the blood, trying to tear through the bindings of reason.

Calm down.

I held it back within me.

We didn't yet know whether she was there.

But Shadow didn't retreat. Its will churned ceaselessly in the depths of my mind, that restlessness like a scalding undercurrent, searing inch by inch through my limbs, until I could scarcely keep standing where I was.

I handed the arrangement of the outer guard to Kael, then went myself to the eastern cliffs at once.

This was not something I could leave to another man with any peace.

I cut through the timber, moving fast the whole way.

Before I even saw the cliff, I caught the smell of fresh-broken rock. That mineral reek, cold and raw, hung in the air, mingled with dust, stagnant enough to be unpleasant.

When I stepped into the open ground below the cliff, one look was enough to tell me this was no accident.

A landslide has a shape of its own.

Rock that falls naturally spills and scatters, and the cliff face is left with the rough, uneven scars of long years of weathering.

But this one had come down too cleanly.

The break ran along a single line, as though the stone had been taught in advance where it should split.

The first thing I thought of was not the beasts.

Beasts only claw, gnaw, tear. They don't split a cliff along its fault, and they certainly don't bring an entire rock face down with such precision.

This was the work of a hand.

I didn't go up the trail to chase the sound of the hunt coming from beyond.

That was not mine to do.

To break into her hunting ground and lay my blade across the path of her quarry would only rob her of the right to prove herself in the trial. She had the right to complete this trial, and the right to let everyone see her ability, rather than let my protection become another shadow laid over her.

So I sent men to clear the sections still in danger, and had the guards call out to the hunters on the far side of the fall to confirm whether anyone was trapped or hurt.

Then I waited.

Go to her. Guard her.

Shadow growled low again in the depths of my mind. The voice was pressed very low, yet stubborn to the point of command.

She can look after herself.

I answered it in my heart, my tone steadier than my true feeling.

What she needs right now isn't for me to stand beside her like a sentry, but for me to find out who did this.

Shadow didn't speak again at once. But that unease didn't disperse. It had only been forced back half a step by reason, still drawn tight in the depths of my mind.

Not long after, I saw her come over the fall from the far side. Ash coated her from hair to boots, her jacket scraped by the stone in a few faint streaks, but her jaw was set tight. She came up to me, and at first said nothing, only drew from inside her jacket a strip of cloth wrapped around something and handed it to me.

I took it and opened it.

A metal wedge lay in my palm.

I turned it over.

My teeth set hard in that moment.

"This isn't a tool a hunter would carry."

My voice was low.

"No one working these woods would bring a thing like this onto a trial route. It's made for one thing, and that thing is not cutting meat or skinning."

I lifted my eyes past her, toward that broken cliff face.

That too-clean line of fault was, right now, more glaring than any testimony. The cold in me sharpened bit by bit, as if honed to an edge.

"Whoever set this climbed the cliff ahead of you and chose the spot." I looked at her. "Did you see anyone? Did you catch any scent you knew?"

Guard her.

Shadow growled low again in the depths of my mind.

This time, I didn't press it down at once.

I only let that instinct sink into my heart, burning cold.

"No," Abigail said.

"No scent I could name." She paused a moment, her voice lower still. "But someone knew our route. This wasn't just a lucky guess. They knew, clearly, which way we'd go."

I lowered my eyes to the wedge in my palm.

"Give this to me," I said, my five fingers slowly closing. "You already have someone you suspect. Tell me who it is, and I'll put men on their team, find out where this wedge came from, and find out who had the chance to climb that cliff ahead of you."

She was quiet for a moment, her gaze steady on the wedge in my hand.

"I can't be certain who it is," she said at last. "I have no proof yet. But last night, near our camp, I saw a mark left by the Crimson Fang Pack. Whoever it belonged to had tried to smooth it over, to hide their tracks."

Her voice dropped lower.

"There's only one person from Crimson Fang who has a team out in these woods with me." She met my eyes. "My dear sister. Olivia."

I said nothing at first, only closed my fist around the wedge.

Shadow stirred in the depths of my mind, low and hard, but I held it still.

"Then I'll start there," I said.