Shattered Souls (Guardians of the Maiden Book 3)

Cassiel was dying.

His throat burned from his screams as his soul was being shredded. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Someone was calling his name, but he barely heard it. The unbearable pain of the severed bond reduced him to a wretched thing on the ground, begging for the nothingness of death to take him quickly, merely to ease the agony.

“Cassiel!” Lord Norrlen dropped next to him. He removed the branch pierced through his left wing, though the pain didn’t register under everything else. “Prince Cassiel, what has happened?”

He couldn’t form the words to answer. The trees above spun in and out of focus. Everything hurt. He’d broken several bones when he fell out of the sky, but nothing compared to the agony in his chest where his other half used to be.

A massive black wolf anxiously zigzagged with his nose in the leaves. It spun in erratic circles, sniffing and whining.

“Zev has lost their trail,” Rawn said.

The wolf howled at the sky, and the maddening sound rattled within the emptiness inside of him—because it wasn’t there. The warmth of her life. His connection to her every heartbeat.

It was gone.

“Prince Cassiel.” Rawn shook his shoulders when he gasped for air. “What is wrong with you?”

“Dyna,” he rasped. “I can’t feel her.”

“What?”

“Our bond, it’s gone. I can’t feel her anymore. She…she’s dead.”

Zev went utterly still beneath the patter of rain.

Cassiel’s chest felt as if it was caving in, but it was the fragments of his soul that had collapsed. Tears he had no control over endlessly spilled. He finally had his mate only to lose her on the same day.

Lord Norrlen stared at him. His long blond hair stuck to his face in wet strands, making his pointed ears more prominent. “No. It cannot be.”

“The bond is broken. That only means one thing.”

Zev’s fur gave away to skin as he shifted, his wide yellow eyes on him. Cassiel wouldn’t have minded if the Lycan killed him then. Anything would have been better than this unbridled torment.

Zev turned away and slashed into a tree as he roared a cry. Cassiel covered his face. The world was crumbling around him, piece by piece, until he was falling into an abyss with no end.

“Lady Dyna is not gone,” Lord Norrlen said firmly. “I do not believe it.”

Rawn moved ahead, his agile steps careful as he studied the ground. He held out his hands as if to search for something in the air. Cassiel held his breath. Zev watched him too, both of them grasping at the subtle rise of hope. When the elf went further into the trees with Fair, they scrambled after them.

Stopping in a small glade, Rawn pressed his palms flat in the mud and they glimmered a teal blue with magic. “I feel the workings of a spell here. The mage must have cloaked their tracks with a veil. It’s a powerful concealment spell. No trace of Lady Dyna can be found outside of it.”

A spell.

Cassiel clung to Rawn’s words like a thorn. He inhaled the relief even as doubt threatened to drag him under.

“Lucenna cast something similar when protecting our camp,” Zev said, quickly yanking on a pair of pants. “It must be how Tarn hid from the Azure King all this time.”

Cassiel had to do something. He needed to move. Now that he had a sliver of chance his bonded was alive, wild desperation took root. His wings twitched on his back as his blood worked to heal them. “I will fly overhead.”

“They will have cloaked their camp as well,” Rawn said. “You cannot find it by sight alone.”

Damn it all.

Rawn sighed. “If only I had learned more magic, I could track her now.”

Cassiel and Zev locked eyes. “Lucenna,” they exclaimed together.

“We can ask her for help,” Cassiel told Rawn. “She told us once only she had a lock on Dyna’s Essence.”

Optimism entered Rawn’s face, but then he frowned. “Lady Lucenna wants no part in our opposition with Tarn.”

“Then what else do you propose?” Zev growled. “Dyna is her kin. Do you think she wouldn’t help?”

After the way they parted, Cassiel wasn’t so sure. But Lucenna cared about her. “Whatever her feelings, she could aid us with a spell at the very least.”

They watched Rawn wrestle with a decision. It went against his ethics to pursue her after she asked them not to. Cassiel respected the elf’s morals, but he didn’t have time for them now.

“I’m going after her. She couldn’t have gone far.” Even as Cassiel said it, he knew the chances of finding her quickly were slim. They had parted three days ago. She could be anywhere.

“Tomorrow,” Zev said, his voice full of heavy lament. He sank to his knees before a large oak tree and dropped his head against its trunk. “We will search for her tomorrow.”

Cassiel looked up at the dark sky as the moon rose above the parting clouds. They could go no further today. His skin crawled at the reminder of the Other.

“Did you bring his things?” he asked.

Rawn removed Zev’s flat pack from Fair’s harness, setting it down. It appeared to have nothing, but Cassiel stuck his hand in the vast space and thought of the silver shackles. The cold, rough chains landed in his palm and he heaved to pull them out until there was a large mound at his feet.

Rawn stiffened. “What will you do with those?”

Cassiel glanced at Zev for his reply, but he didn’t answer. “It’s for him.”

Thinking about something else besides his missing bond gave him a moment’s reprieve as he took the time to wrap the chains around the tree, the links clinking in the silence. When he finished, Zev limply held out his scarred wrists. His head remained lowered, his dark hair falling over his face. He looked as defeated and lost as Cassiel felt.

Do you despise me? He wanted to ask. Do you hate me for losing her? For being the one to do this?

He wasn’t brave enough to give the words shape.

Cassiel latched the shackles closed around each wrist and flinched at the loud clang. Zev cried out and fell forward on his hands and knees, gritting his teeth. Smoke rose from the manacles, his skin audibly sizzling. He tried not to breathe in the burning scent.

“I’m sorry,” Cassiel whispered. How awful Dyna must have felt doing this to him every month for years. “Is this safe? You nearly died from silver poisoning not an hour ago.”

“I have no other choice,” Zev growled. “Now go, before I end up killing you.”

Cassiel didn’t know if he meant as the Other or as himself. Zev couldn’t have forgiven him yet for bonding with Dyna. He hadn’t yet forgiven himself.

Cassiel stumbled away. He sensed Rawn had questions but was wise enough to not voice them yet. They stopped a quarter of a mile away when he found a small cave on a cliff side surrounded by dense trees.

Rawn tied Fair’s reins to a nearby bush and stroked his muzzle. “You did well, old friend.”

The white stallion neighed tiredly in reply.

The cave was shallow, with barely enough room to fit them. It protected them from the windchill, but they were soaked through. They both quickly changed into dry clothing. Darkness was coming fast, but there was no firewood available after the rain drenched the forest. Rawn took out a few candlesticks and lit them with a snap of his fingers.

Cassiel sat against the cave wall as he fought the panic that urged him to keep going. He focused on breathing in the cold fresh air to calm himself. Every second he was away from Dyna seemed to fracture another piece inside of him. His heart hardly beat. His lungs barely breathed. There was no strength in his body. He sat with his arms laying limply over his knees, his head hanging, telling himself it wasn’t real.

Dyna had to be out there. She had to be.

If she wasn’t, then he truly had nothing left.

His wings twitched, and a faint ache passed through them. His broken bones had mended, but the rest of him wouldn’t. Not until he found her.

A howl rang in the distance and he dimly looked up at the full moon glowing in the night sky. Its light slipped through the cave entrance, making the rock walls glimmer.

“How are you feeling?” Rawn asked.

It was a senseless question. He was furious. Scared. In so much pain, he should be unconscious.

“I feel as if I’m split in half,” Cassiel muttered. “I tell myself she is not dead, but my soul mourns the loss of her.”

“She lives,” Lord Norrlen reassured him again. “Your bond is not broken.”

Not broken. Not broken.

He closed his swollen eyes and repeated it over and over. His hand shook as he pressed a fist to his chest. Their bond had to be there somewhere inside of him, hidden under the curtain of magic.

“You will not be well until you truly believe her to be,” Rawn said. “You must be stronger than your consciousness, Prince Cassiel. Say it.”

The words shook on his lips. “She is alive.”

“Yes. Again.”

“She is alive.” He dropped his face into his hands, wetness slipping through his fingers. “She is alive.”

Please be alive.

Another mournful howl filled the forest. Zev remembered nothing as the Other, but Cassiel wondered if it could see his memories. Fair nickered nervously at the cave entrance.

“The chains. Every full moon, he…”C0pyright © 2024 Nôv)(elDrama.Org.

“Yes.” Cassiel wiped his face and met Rawn’s grim expression.

“You have done this before.” Rawn looked at the moon and frowned thoughtfully. “He cannot control the change. I should have realized it when I saw the scars. I assumed they were old.”

“Some are. Zev has not mentioned it?”

“He did not.”

No, he wouldn’t. The death of one’s father wasn’t an easy burden to carry. Cassiel couldn’t imagine bearing that weight.

“I did not know either until I witnessed Zev’s first change. He has a hard time speaking of it.”

“I understand.” Rawn didn’t comment more. He laid down and rested his head on his pack, closing his eyes.

There would be no sleep for Cassiel tonight. His body trembled with the urge to find Dyna. His sanity depended on it. But he couldn’t leave while Zev was bound by his chains. Still, Cassiel fought to stay put. He couldn’t get Dyna’s frightened expression out of his mind. She hadn’t been afraid for her life. She feared for theirs and gave hers up willingly so they could live.

Stupid human.

But how could he be angry with her? Dyna did exactly as he had done for her in the Port of Azure. It was his turn now to be forcefully separated from her. He hated it. How could he keep his promise to never leave her alone in the dark if he wasn’t with her? He hoped there was light wherever she was.

Rawn peeked open one eye at the restless bouncing of his knee. “Rest. You will need your strength come dawn.”

“I cannot sleep.”

“Tarn will not harm Lady Dyna. He needs her.”

“And what will happen when he finds out she lied about the map?” Cassiel asked. When they met Tarn for the first time, there had been a chill in the air. That man with those pale, unfeeling eyes had no remorse or conscience. “There are ways of hurting her without killing her.”

Rawn looked up at the cave ceiling without replying. He sat up again, and they both held vigil beneath the moonlight, listening to the howls in the night.

Cassiel curled over his knees. He had to find Dyna alive and whole. For if anything happened to her, he may set the world on fire—and burn with it.