Brandon Ashveil's Arc

Chapter 12 of 18

They walked south through wet grass until Brandon's legs gave out. Dayna caught his elbow and steered him under a low pine. He sat with his back to the trunk. The thread in his chest pulled north, thin and steady. Thornweave was still alive on the slab. Thornweave was still coming. "One thread left," Brandon said. "And I can't cut it without killing us both. Every book you have says so." Dayna sat down across from him. Her satchel was almost empty. Dirt smeared her cheek. She was the only human he had trusted in two years, and right now she looked smaller than he had ever seen her. "Every book," she agreed. "Because every book treats the bond like rope. You cut rope, both ends fall." "So we're finished." "No." She pulled the firefly lantern from her satchel and set it between them. Four lights drifted inside the glass. "A bond isn't rope. It's a road. Two people walking it. You cut the road, they both fall off. But if one of them steps off first, on purpose, the road ends where he stands." Brandon watched her. "Steps off how." "He has to want to let go. Not you. Him." She met his eyes. "Thornweave has to release the thread from his side. Then you can close yours without dying." "He won't. He told me he'd come for me." "I know." She looked at the lantern. "So we go home. To the longhall. I have older books there, the ones my grandmother kept. There's a working that lets you speak through a bond without traveling it. If we can talk to him without you standing over his slab, maybe we find something he wants more than your death." Brandon almost laughed. "You're telling me to bargain with him." "I'm telling you the last thread is his hand, not yours." He looked at her. Her hair was tangled with grove-damp. Her hands, small and stained, rested on her knees. She had killed two fae for him. She had gone under stone for him. She had never once told him what he wanted to hear. "Why are you still here," he said. It wasn't a question. Dayna's mouth moved, then stopped. She reached across the pine needles and put her palm flat against his chest, over the place where the thread pulled. Her hand was warm through his shirt. "Because I don't want you to die," she said. "And I stopped pretending that was about payment three groves ago." Brandon covered her hand with his. The thread in his chest kept pulling north. It didn't matter. For the first time since Thornweave's fever had found him, something in him pulled the other way. "Home, then," he said. "Your longhall. We find the working. We make him let go." She nodded. She did not move her hand. Neither did he.