Chapter 129 Hundred and thirty four
“Where did he go?” Sienna demanded as she shoved aside the low branches and stepped into the deeper part of the pines, her voice cutting through the cold morning light.
Torin hurried behind her, breath uneven, boots sinking into the damp needles blanketing the forest floor. “Majesty, slow down, no one can keep up with him. He moves like, ”
“Don’t say ‘ghost.’” Sienna didn’t stop walking. “He’s still a man.”
“Barely,” Lysa muttered, keeping pace with them, though her eyes kept darting toward the shadows. “We’re lucky he didn’t kill us by accident last night.”
“He saved you,” Sienna shot back.
“True,” Lysa said. “But he didn’t look at us like people.”
“And how did he look at you?” Sienna snapped.
Lysa swallowed. “Like prey he chose not to eat.”
Sienna exhaled, long and slow, trying not to let the words sink too deep. The forest felt too alive, branches whispering above them, the wind shifting directions too quickly, the silence stretching in odd ways as if holding its breath. Ryder’s presence lingered everywhere. She could feel him in the shiver of the leaves. In the cold curl of air brushing her cheek. In the faint ache under her ribs where the bond once lived.
Sienna stopped suddenly. “He passed through here.”
Torin crouched beside her. “How do you know?”
She didn’t answer with words. She simply pointed.
A crushed arrow lay buried halfway into the trunk of a pine, snapped not from impact but by a bare hand. The wood was splintered inward, the shaft twisted like wet cloth.
Lysa knelt on Sienna’s other side. “This wasn’t shot. It was thrown.”
“By him,” Torin said quietly.
Sienna touched the broken arrow shaft with careful fingers. There was no warmth left in it, but something lingered in the air, a vibration, a charged echo as if the forest still whispered the motion that had passed through it.
She rose. “He was fighting again.”
Lysa frowned. “Against who?”
A faint tremor in the air answered the question.
Sienna turned toward the sound.
Three bodies lay half-hidden under a cluster of ferns, assassins in dark leather, their sigils burned black on their chest pieces. One had no face left. One had a broken spine. The last stared at the sky with empty eyes, fingers curled around nothing.
Sienna felt her heart twist, but not in fear.
In understanding.
“He’s hunting anyone who hunts me,” she murmured.
Lysa crossed herself out of habit. “This is not hunting. This is vengeance.”
Torin shook his head. “This is protection.”
“Protection?” Lysa scoffed. “Look at them. He didn’t protect. He obliterated.”
“He kept Sienna alive,” Torin said. “Maybe that’s all that matters.”
Sienna stepped away before either could continue arguing. She followed the trail, not footprints, for Ryder didn’t leave them anymore. Instead she followed the aftermath of his passage: a burned sigil on a tree trunk, fading smoke. A crushed blade half-buried in mud. A single thread of black fabric caught on a thorn.
She touched the fabric gently.
It hummed with power. Old. Wild. Unstable.
Lysa came up beside her. “He’s losing control.”
“No,” Sienna whispered. “He’s fighting to keep it.”
The air shifted again, a low pulse of something dark and aching. Sienna’s pulse quickened. She walked faster, the trees thickening around her, branches knitting tight overhead until the light dimmed to a muted silver-green. Torin and Lysa followed, quieter now, watching her more than the forest.
Finally Sienna stopped at the edge of a clearing.
Torin peered over her shoulder. “By the goddess…”
The clearing was destruction carved into earth.
Arrows lay scattered. Burned sigils covered stones. A tree had been split clean down its center, sap bleeding like pale honey along its trunk. The ground was torn apart, claw marks slicing through the soil in violent arcs.
Lysa knelt beside one of the scars. “These aren’t wolf marks.”
“No,” Sienna agreed softly. “They’re his.”
Torin pointed toward the far side. “There. Look.”
Sienna followed his gaze.
A body leaned against a fallen tree, still alive but barely conscious. Sienna moved before Torin or Lysa could stop her. She knelt beside the soldier, noticing the fear in his eyes even as he clutched his bleeding side.
He tried to speak. “P-please…”
Sienna pressed a hand to his shoulder. “Who did this to you?”
The soldier’s lips trembled. “Not… a man.”
Sienna’s jaw clenched. “Tell me.”
“He came out of the dark,” the soldier whispered. “Faster than my eyes could follow. We didn’t even draw our blades. He didn’t kill me. He just… looked at me.”
Torin frowned. “Looked at you?”
The soldier nodded. “Like he was deciding something.”
“What something?” Sienna asked.
The soldier’s eyes filled with tears. “Whether I deserved to die.”
Sienna swallowed. “And why didn’t he kill you?”
The soldier sobbed. “Because I said your name.”
Silence filled the clearing.
Lysa looked at Sienna slowly. “He stopped because of you.”
Torin murmured, “He’s still in there.”
Sienna rose to her feet, breath trembling, eyes burning. “We keep going.”
Torin stepped in front of her. “Majesty, with respect, this trail leads deeper than anything we’ve followed before. If we go farther, we step into territory the nomads warned us about.”
“I don’t care.”
“You should,” Lysa insisted. “Those woods have no rules. No laws. Everything inside is hostile. Even the ground shifts.”
“Then we move carefully,” Sienna said.
Torin stepped closer, lowering his voice. “We move suicidally.”
Sienna inhaled slowly. “He survived it.”
“Because he’s not him anymore,” Lysa said. “You said it yourself, he moves differently, breathes differently, exists differently. He’s more spirit than flesh.”
“He’s flesh,” Sienna snapped. “He bleeds. He aches. He suffers.”
Torin looked at her with soft eyes. “He bleeds differently, Majesty. He’s becoming something else. Something ancient.”
Sienna turned away sharply. “He’s becoming what the curse is forcing him to be. That’s not the same as choosing. I will not abandon him to it.”
Lysa crossed her arms. “You’re not abandoning him. You’re surviving.”
Sienna’s voice softened. “He saved your lives.”
Lysa hesitated.
“That wasn’t the curse,” Sienna said quietly. “That was him.”
The air thickened with unspoken truths.
Finally Torin sighed. “Very well. But we walk at your pace, not the forest’s.”
Sienna nodded and stepped forward.
The deeper woods were colder. Not naturally so, but as if the air recoiled from the ground. Sounds twisted strangely, branches snapping far too loudly, wind whistling in wrong rhythms. Sienna’s steps slowed as she scanned the ground.
Blood.
Silver-tinged.
Fresh.
She crouched and touched it. A flash burned behind her eyes, Ryder staggering, clutching his side, breath ragged.
She gasped and jerked her hand back.
Torin grabbed her arm. “Majesty?”
“I saw him,” Sienna whispered. “Just now.”
“Through the bond?” Lysa asked.
“We don’t have a bond anymore.”
“Then how, ”
“I don’t know.”
But she did. Somewhere deep, the curse stitched them together still. Not lovingly. Not gently. But violently, like a wound refusing to close.
Sienna pushed forward again, following more blood droplets, each one leading deeper until the trees opened suddenly into another clearing.
This one was silent.
Still.
Too still.
Torin lifted his weapon.
Lysa whispered, “Something happened here.”
Sienna’s eyes narrowed. “He was here.”
“Yes,” Torin said. “But he wasn’t alone.”
Sienna walked to the center of the clearing. The earth was scorched black. Ash coated the ground in a perfect circle.
And in the very center of that circle,
A single footprint.
Large.
Deep.
Fresh enough to hold shape.
Ryder’s.
Sienna knelt and brushed her fingers over it.
Heat pulsed beneath the earth.
Torin took a step back. “Majesty, don’t, ”
Before he finished, the ground trembled faintly.
The air shifted.
The pines rustled.
And from somewhere in the shadows behind them,
A low growl rolled through the trees.
Not wolf.
Not man.
Something between.
Sienna stood slowly, heart pounding so hard it shook her bones.
Torin whispered, “He’s here.”
Lysa whispered, “No… something else is.”
Sienna turned toward the darkness.
And something moved.