I awoke to the smell of bacon. I don’t care how horrible of a time someone has had, if they get to wake up to bacon, things couldn’t be all bad.
I sat up, shifting aside the dirty pile of blankets Asher must have piled over me to keep me warm. My head felt like someone had taken a pickaxe to it, spiking with pain every time I looked into direct light. My chest was like an open wound. But I was alive. I was here.
And so was Asher.
I gingerly limped down the hall to the kitchen. Asher stood at the stove, whistling softly as he turned bacon over in one pan and pushed around what looked like fried fish with another. He saw me in the doorway and grinned.
“Hope you like meat. Your choices are fat of the pig, or cod. They have a lot of cod here. A lot.”
“I noticed,” I said, so overwhelmed at seeing him alive and okay that I temporarily couldn’t move. “They didn’t…you didn’t have a hard time getting it?”
“You mean did those suspicious villagers hassle me for being an outsider?” Asher flashed me a dazzling grin, the kind that made girls melt and pretty much anyone else fall instantly in love with him. “What do you think?”
I groaned. “Of course they didn’t.”
“I think the older woman at the checkout was quite smitten with me.”
“Of course she was.”
He pushed the bacon around a few more times, then flipped both it and the cod onto two paper plates and brought them over to the counter. “Only one chair, I’m afraid. I have to suggest, next time you pick a hideaway, maybe choose something that’s more furnished—”
I was kissing him before he was finished, needing to be close to him, overwhelmed by the one-eighty the last few hours had brought.
He immediately responded in kind, deepening the kiss, his hands wrapping around me and pulling me close. The touch of him made the nightmare of the last couple weeks nothing but a bad memory. It almost made what had happened before Kasia cast me out here bearable.
I felt something hot and wet on my cheeks. I pulled away, shocked. “Asher—”
Tears streamed down his cheeks. He hugged me tighter than I think he’d ever hugged me before, then rested his forehead on mine, eyes closed. “I thought I lost you. I thought you were dead.”
“Not quite. Even if I was, I’d return from beyond the grave to annoy you.”
He chuckled. “I’d expect nothing less.”
His fingers moved down to my right sleeve. He pushed it up to reveal the bandages. “They’re still there.”
“And he’s gone from here.” I pointed at my chest.
“How is that possible? If he’s gone…”
“I’m not sure. I’m not…Asher, how are the others? Are Mia and Colson okay? Is the Academy…” I had trouble forming the words. “There was a Fae assassin here.”
Asher’s expression turned stormy. “I found him outside. Dead,” he added at my horrified expression. “I buried him. I’m amazed you were able to fight him off at all.”
“I think General Zell sent him.”
Asher shook his head. “I think it was one of the more radical Fae factions. General Zell’s too busy with locking down the Academy right now.”
“Locking down—”
He gently tugged me over to the rickety chair he’d set by the counter and pushed my plate ‘o meat over to me. “Eat. If you’re anything like Nolan was after he lost his god, you need all the strength you can get.”
“But I want to know—”
“Eat,” he insisted. He directed my fingers to the bacon. “Let the fatty goodness compel you.”
I didn’t want to eat, I wanted answers. But I had to admit that the smell was overwhelming. I took it slow, making sure my stomach could handle the rich food before polishing off the entire plate in less than a minute. I wiped my mouth on my sleeve and turned to Asher, who was watching me with a cocked eyebrow.
“Impressive.”
“Details. Now.”
Asher took his time setting his plate aside before facing me. “Everyone’s okay,” he said, and an enormous breath rushed out of me. “As you probably guessed, General Zell and the rest of the Fae have pretty much taken the Academy hostage. Once Prince Zephyr was…killed.” He looked away for a moment, true grief crossing his face. “I know the guy was annoying but I never thought…I couldn’t believe when I saw…”
I covered his hand in mine. “I know. And I know they thought I did it.”
“I’m not sure how. General Zell and his guard came in right after Kasia attacked you. They had to have seen what Kasia did. I think he just needs somebody to blame.”
“What’s the Coalition doing?” I said. “Surely now—”
“They’re doing nothing,” Asher said. “They don’t want to risk the Fae retaliating against the students. The entire place is in lock down. Even after Lucien managed to track traces of your magical signature it still took me a week to find a way out without them noticing. Mia and Colson are supposed to follow after me.”
I started at that. “They’re coming here too?”
“Not here. I’m not sure where. We haven’t exactly planned our next steps.”
I let that process. Some of those closest to me were outside the worst of the fighting, but I had other friends who were still in the thick of it.
“So the Coalition won’t do anything. Where does that leave Kasia?” I said.
“I’m not sure. Things are kind of at a stalemate. I think Kasia intended to drive the Fae away by killing Zephyr. She’s got the power to attack us now, but since the Fae haven’t left, I think she’s hesitant to try anything.”
“She won’t be for long,” I promised, and Asher nodded in agreement. “And the Fae think I killed Zephyr. If I’d only been able to control the Dark Prince. If only—”
“Skylar.” Asher’s hand cupped my cheek. “You did everything you could. The fact that you’re still alive after losing your god…” He swallowed what might have been a sob. “Let’s just focus on one thing at a time. Namely, getting your strength back.”
“I don’t think that’s possible,” I said quietly. “You’ve seen Nolan. You know what happened to him, and he hasn’t recovered yet.”
“But he’s not you,” Asher said. His eyes bored into mine, full of passion. “We’re gonna get your strength back. You’re going to be okay again.”
I felt a lump grow in my throat. “And the Dark Prince?” I managed. “What happened to him?”
Asher frowned. “I’m not sure. I assume Kasia has him.”
I nodded. It was too much to hope that somehow the Dark Prince had resisted her control. She’d had him before me, after all. She knew how to tame unruly gods.
“I don’t know if I can go back,” I said honestly. “I know you think I can regain my strength, but even totally healthy, I wasn’t enough for Kasia.”
Asher slowly nodded, and while it didn’t make me feel amazing, I was glad he was being completely honest with me about our chances. “Just because you won’t have the brute strength to take her down doesn’t mean there isn’t another way. Kasia has to have some sort of weakness we haven’t thought of yet. Something that would help us against her.”
The dream I’d just had returned unbidden to my mind. I got the sense there was something in it that was supposed to help me. After all, the last few dreams had been more like premonitions than anything else.
“What do you know about breaking magical bonds?” I said.
Asher’s brow furrowed. “What?”
I explained to him what I’d seen in the Realm of the gods, about the disembodied voice speaking to me. He was quiet for a long time, playing with the ends of his hair, thinking.
“Believe it or not,” he said at last, “I’ve been working on something like that for a little while. Breaking a bond, I mean.”
“You have? Why?”
“Because of you. Ever since you told me about the Dark Prince I was trying to find a way to safely separate him from you.”
I was struck dumb for a moment. That lump in my throat had come back. “Did you…find anything?”
“A few things, but nothing exactly like what you were dealing with. A lot of the texts regarding gods and Zukami—”
“Are gone,” I said dully. I knew this. I’d heard it plenty of times before.
“Exactly,” Asher said. “But if that’s what the voice said to you—something about breaking a bond—then it’s still worth a shot.”
“Asher, even if we find something that can sever my connection, it’s too late.” I pressed my finger against my aching chest. “The Dark Prince is gone.”
“No, it’s not.” Asher leaned forward, drawing closer to me. I could see him thinking frantically, trying to latch onto the fleeting bits of an idea. “Don’t you get it? That’s the key. Your magical strength was never dependent on the Dark Prince. Yeah, you’re still connected to the realm of the gods. It’s probably some residual mess-up when Kasia separated you two and now you’re suffering the consequences. But once we figure out a way to completely break that connection, you’ll start to heal back to your normal self. I’m sure of it.”
I mulled that over. The Vague and Mostly Unhelpful voice hadn’t specified why it’d wanted me to break the bond, but Asher made the reason seem possible.
I could work with this. We could work with this. I hadn’t realized until that moment, sitting in the dingy little kitchen with Asher, my strength slowly leaving me with every passing day, with the weight of so much still to do waiting to crash down on me, that I hadn’t felt hope like this in a while. I had needed this jumpstart to kick things off again. I was still alive, and as long as that was true, I would continue to fight until I wasn’t.
I realized Asher was shaking. I covered his hands in mine.
“I hate her, I hate her so much,” he said, voice quivering. “I hate what she’s done to you. I hate what she’s done to all of us.”
“I don’t.”
He looked up, shock and confusion flashing across his face. “You don’t mean that.”
I did mean it. I know I did. I just couldn’t explain why. Only that, no matter how much evil Kasia had done, the more I got to know her, the more I’d begun to separate the person she was from the evil she committed. I felt sorry for her. She wasn’t sadistic or psychopathic. She was something far, far scarier: someone who had lost everything and had absolutely nothing more to lose.
I leaned over and gave Asher a lingering kiss. “We’ll find a way to break the bond. And then we’ll head back to the Academy.”
I read questions in his face, but he nodded all the same. “We leave tomorrow.”