CHAPTER33
Aodhan awoke to a sense that something was… not wrong, exactly. But not right, either.
He sat up amidst the nest of torn books, blanket sliding from his shoulders. “Cathy?”
Even as he called her name, he knew she wouldn’t answer. She was a remote, gleaming presence, like a star in his soul. The bond still tied them together, but it was stretched by distance.
He swore, getting to his feet. A gesture and a muttered word had his robes settling around his shoulders, reforming out of scattered fragments. Too impatient to wait for the tree to make a doorway, he hurried down the spiral stairs to the ground level of the library.
He’d barely taken a single step in the direction of the door when a caw echoed from the shadowed shelves above. The crow-cat flurried down, a piece of paper in her beak. Landing on his shoulder, she attempted to insert the note into his ear.
“Thank you.” He plucked the paper from her beak before she permanently wrecked his hearing. “For future reference, try putting it in my hand.”
He unfolded the note. The handwriting was unfamiliar, but he didn’t need to read the signature to know who it was from.
Aodhan,
By the time you get this, we’ll be gone—at least, if things go to plan. Motley’s taking us back to Maeve’s court. Assuming she keeps her word, we’ll have already gone through the stone circle, back to my world.
I know that the bond will make you want to follow. You must fight it. Remember what you’ve always wanted, what you’ve fought so hard to achieve. I won’t let anything take that away from you. Not even me.
As your knight, I ask you: Do the ritual. Sever the bond. Please.
I will always—
Here she’d written something, then scratched it out.
—be grateful to you.
Yours,
Cathy
Aodhan stared at that indecipherable blot of ink. It was impossible to tell what might lie underneath it; what she’d first written, before changing her mind.
The crow-cat cocked her head, peering down at the note as though reading it as well. She let out a soft, plaintive caw.
“Quite,” he murmured. “Damn it, Cathy. You could at least have let me say goodbye.”
Except she couldn’t, of course. No matter how much she’d argued or begged, he would have followed her. Straight off a cliff, if that had been where she led. She’d known that he had no control around her.
The bond still tugged at him—but it was just a feather-light presence, like a thread tied around his soul. He had a strange sensation of it vanishing into fog, as though she was trying to hide from him. Wherever she was now, she truly didn’t want him to follow.
His gaze moved back up, resting on the phrase As your knight.
“Well,” he said again. He folded the note back up, carefully, and slipped it into a pocket next to his heart. “Well. That seems clear enough. Workshop!”
Nothing happened.
Aodhan glared at the blank stretch of wood where a doorway should have opened. “I said, workshop.”
The wall remained resolutely blank.
Aodhan let out an exasperated sigh. Fortunately, he’d prepared for many eventualities, including a sulking oak. It took him a moment to remember where he’d built the trapdoor, and even longer to lever it open, but eventually he revealed a set of stairs leading downward.
Snapping his fingers to summon a fae light, he descended, sending up thick clouds of dust with each step. The crow-cat followed, her wings disturbing decades of spiderwebs.
By the time they reached the workshop, they were both looking somewhat the worse for wear. Coughing, Aodhan did his best to brush off the crow-cat, while she berated him at the top of her lungs. With a final indignant squawk, she took herself off to his desk, settling down to groom the rest of the dust out of her feathers.