A piercing, animalistic howl bellowed into the intricately carved antechamber of Elder's Willow. It came from all cardinal points, the pained sound manifesting itself into the tangible bumps that creeped up Abel's arms. She shivered and glanced at Matthias who sat stiffly beside her.

She wasn't sure why she appealed to him. After all, there were many reasons why she knew it hadn't been the injured captain who had issued such an emotional cry of distress: the first being she doubted Matthias possessed such a deep, emotional cavity within him. Secondly, the wound in his leg had already been tended to, a thick bandage covering the worst of it. Herbal, cleansing scents emanated from it now, masking the sharp stink of drying, clotted blood.

Nothing to gripe about any longer.

Abel rubbed the eery shivers from her arms. "What was that?"

She caught Nairol's atypical frown. He stood across from her and Matthias, muscular arms crossed over his broad chest, multi-colored eyes narrowing further each time his gaze fell upon the partially-cracked door, which hid Commander Nimosk and Araric.

"It sounded like a dying wolf."

Nairol inclined his head, expression serious for perhaps the first time in his rungs of elven life. "The death of a mate."

"A mate?" Matthias straightened so abruptly it jerked the thick tree roots supporting the limbs of the bench they both sat upon. "But whose—?"

"Murderous traitors!"

The words exploded from the cavernous room beyond, the nearly-shut door rattling from the enormous volume.

"I claim their blood, Nimosk!"

Abel looked between Matthias, who went preternaturally still, and Nairol, who pushed away from the smooth bark of the willow's inner walls and approached the door on lithe feet. Matthias nodded to Nairol who then stood with feet wide before Abel as if Matthias had wordlessly appointed him her personal guard. Well, if that wasn't insulting, Abel wasn't sure what was. Granted, Abel was closest to the door, but she wasn't about to allow these two males to force her into the role of damsel.

"You do not need to—" 

It was Araric's melodic voice that effectively silenced Abel's defense for independent guardianship.

"Such threats in this sanctuary act as blasphemy against Goddess Elayn."

"Silence, Elf." Commander Nimosk's tone offered no alternative. "What has doused your light, Leolin?"

Leolin. The name rang a forgotten bell in Abel's head, bringing with it images of dark tunnels, rumors of flesh-eating worms, lungs smothering beneath the demolition of dirt and rocks. Debris that she had brought down upon their heads before she even knew she held the power to do so. When Matthias nodded in answer to her unspoken question, Abel fully remembered: Leolin had been one of the fae warriors who attacked them beneath the tunnels of Halorium.

Another enraged howl. "My vyre has been extinguished!"

Something heavy smashed into the opposite side of the door. A blinding flash of impossibly white light. Bits of sharp metal burst through the crack in the door. They pelted Abel's pants with needles as if whatever had been destroyed had been blasted into sharp smithereens. Abel yelped, blinking rapidly to clear the surprising blindness from her eyes. She felt Matthias fist her shirt and yank her backwards out of the shrapnel's path.

"Her light smothers in the darkness of the Abyss!"

"Such is the risk of bondage, Leolin," Nimosk said. "It is one of joy and immense sorrow. Meira knew the dangers when we sent her out."

"Thus, I call for their blood! It will paint over the pain of our broken tether."

Abel raised her brows at Matthias. "Bond of the Vyre," he said under his breath. "A fae tradition between a warrior and the pup of a vyre-maiden."

"Akin to our tradition of a mating ritual," Nairol added. His fingers were splayed at his sides, poised above the ground where Earth's threads drifted and awaited their call. "Far less romantically poetic, however."

"But equally devastating upon the death of one of the bonded," Matthias added. "If Astrid killed one of them—"

A corner of Nairol's lip curled like paper held to flame. "Your care for her lingers?"

Another burst of painful light and the door flew outwards, smashing into the willow's bark. The force with which it hit caused the door to splinter into thousands of pieces like fallen ash. It pushed Nairol into the opposite wall. Matthias yanked on Abel's tunic again, but his elvish reflexes failed to be swift enough to outpace the speed of rage. A looming, glowing male glowered over her, his presence hot and stifling like a claustrophobic crate. The tips of his fingers sparked with dying bulbs of lightning.

Leolin.

Well, this was going tits up.

Abel tried to not gape up at the enraged fae warrior. He was certainly imposing. In fact, she had never felt so small. Or powerless. Insignificant.

"You—" His words burned with his spit that seared into her cheeks—"If you fail to apprehend Meira's murderers, I will forfeit your blood for theirs."

Words failed her. Well, except for one that slipped past her stunned tongue, which was, perhaps, the least helpful one she could have come up with to dilute the situation. "Murderers?"

His veins smoldered, spiraling tattoos raging up his bare, dark arms. "Astrid Salvera and Sebastian Kyiva." His teeth gleamed white like an exploding star against his grimacing lips. "They are mine."

"Settle, Leolin." Commander Nimosk pressed a heavy hand into his warrior's vibrating shoulder. "The halfling cannot do as she is told if your grief incinerates her."

"The halfling," Araric interrupted, "will only do what she agrees to with the full knowledge of our history's truth."

"Furthermore," Nairol said, having reclaimed his obnoxiously arrogant tone, "there will be no incineration of the halfling or any of her handsome companions."

It was far easier to think clearly with the creepy white orbs of the fae warrior's glare more than three centimeters away from her face. Abel shoved her shoulder out of Matthias's grasp. "The halfling can speak for herself—" She delved her fist into the pocket of her cloak until her fingers curved around the spine of the book she carried—"and if you so much as lay a hand on Sebastian, you will never get Pavel's Monverta."

Leolin laughed. Actually laughed. A deranged demon from the mines of the Abyss. The pupils of his eyes glowed bright once more, orbs of glistening white that shone menacingly from his tattooed, dark face. 

"Little human," he cooed. "What makes you think we would not simply take it?"

Abel's concealed fingers brushed against the malachite stone still hidden in her pocket. Its threads of power wreathed her smallest finger. Matthias's words echoed against her memory: "Remember, it can offer protection. Concealment."

A smirk flickered across her face. "You cannot take what I no longer have."

The infuriated curses of Leolin erupted even before Abel had fully retrieved her hand from her cloak and unfurled her long fingers. Her palm appeared empty save the polished, emerald stone. To his credit, Nairol kept a straight face; Matthias simply remained as he always was: stiff and reserved.

To make up for the lack of reaction, Leolin exploded. "You thieving shrew!" His only restraint was Commander Nimosk's steely arm banded across his chest. "You lie!"

With her opposite arm, because she couldn't accidentally disrupt the hidden possession laying invisible beneath the malachite stone, Abel shrugged out of her cloak and tossed it into the fae's infuriated expression. 

"Go ahead and search it," she said with a wink and then held her arms wide. It was lucky the Monverta weighed so little. "Search me, as well, if you must."

Araric made a short, gagged noise in the back of his throat. At least the Elder hadn't ratted her out yet; he had been the wildcard when this plan of hers had materialized. Her only hope had hinged on the fact that Araric's distaste for the fae would outweigh his self-righteous sense of Elder duty. After all, calling bluffs had always been a particular skill of hers. She met his accusatory stare for only a moment before turning back to Matthias.

Abel held out her palm. "I trust you to watch over my most beloved jewel." She carefully tipped the malachite stone—and, thus, the Monverta concealed by the gem's protection properties—into Matthias's awaiting grasp. After all, though the malachite's shield worked on the fae, it hid nothing from elves. As an extra flourish to her ruse, she added, "It was my mother's. Gifted to her upon my birthing day as a reminder that, though I may not be as pure as a pearl, I am as jaded as an emerald."

She swore the captain hid a grin.

"No, it certainly was not," Nairol said then, surprising them both. "It was my mother's, you little minx!"

Abel's wrist flicked, desperately wishing to flash him a certain finger, but her rude gesture was interrupted by the sound of tearing cloth. Leolin tore into her cloak with pointed teeth, bits of fabric falling to the ground at his feet. How barbaric. Nairol must have thought along the same lines because he took a step sideways to distance himself from the ravaging beast.

Nimosk, however, spared no glance to his clearly unhinged warrior; instead, he approached Abel with thudding footsteps that shook the knotted, wooden floor beneath her feet. Her heart hammered, but at least she still had her tunic to cover the evidence. It was best to give thanks to the little things at the present moment.

"You claimed the girl had Pavel's Monverta." Though the commander stared down at Abel, it was to Araric he spoke. "You dared to deceive us?"

"A deception is nothing but a mockery of belief," Araric said, "and though I believed it as truth, I did not mock it."

The true reason the Elvish Folk lived for centuries, Abel believed, was the fact elves could talk even mortality itself into dizzying circles.

Matthias stood, clasping both hands behind his back with legs held apart at a hip's-width distance: the perfect picture of the ever obedient duty-bound guard. It was rather annoying. 

"Actually, it was I who believed she had it." He scowled so severely at Abel that her hairs hackled. "Salvera and Kyiva entrusted it to her before they were portalled into Belsynen."

Abel feigned a growl at him. "Traitor."

"As are you." Nimosk's infiltrating gaze swept between them. "That stone was malachite."

Dammit.

Abel had hoped the elves' magical stones were held as elemental secrets amongst their own kin. It seemed only logical, considering the secret tree society Abel imagined Nairol hosted beneath a shrine to Goddess Elayn who produced kisses of leaves upon thy brows every new moon.

They probably even danced around naked and bathed in mud to be one with Earth's threads.

There were worse things, Abel supposed.

As if Earth heard her thoughts, the slightest of tremors rolled beneath Abel's feet as the Willow's roots creaked and shifted.

Matthias unclasped his hands and held the bright stone out to the fae commander. "It is," he affirmed. "See for yourself."

Without warning, Matthias tossed the emerald into the air.

Nimosk caught it and held the malachite up to an oil lantern protruding from the tree's bark. His voice rumbled. "It hides Pavel Kyiva's Monverta from fae eyes, I presume."

"Elaerians, as well," Nairol corrected. "Not to mention the merpeople. Mortals. The Elementi of the burning Ashlands. Elves do not discriminate on such matters."

Leolin stomped on the tattered remains of Abel's cloak. "Submit!"

Disgusted, Abel swiped the enraged fae's spittle off her cheeks.

"Submit to Shadow-Light!"

The only sign of distaste being his ticking jaw, Matthias spread his legs further and held his arms aloft at his sides. "We submit."

"Excuse you?" Abel took a step back until her shoulder bumped into Matthias's arm. A little harder than necessary. She shot him a look that she hoped screamed what-are-you-playing at, you dunce? "I prefer to know what I'm submitting to before I do so."

Commander Nimosk peered at her down the long, sloping bridge of his nose. "Shadow-Light is harmless."

"It is painless," Araric corrected, his tone sharp. "Claiming it to be harmless is as subjective as it is violating."

Leolin snarled. The vines tattooed up his nude arms rippled and sparked like the ink was ignition, and his grief had set fire to it. His eyes glinted, an exploding star. "If you have nothing to hide, then it should violate nothing—"

"It is merely a manipulation of Light's threads," Nimosk said. His voice sliced through Leolin's like a well-aimed arrow and silenced his warrior where it struck. But it was the tilt to Nimosk's lips that settled the apprehension in Abel's stomach. "We will bend light around your body to allow us to expose the shadows you attempt to hide."

"And if I refuse?"

"If you refuse, then you have lied," Nimosk said as bluntly as a snapped bone. "The Elvish Folk cannot lie, for dishonesty goes against the very nature of Goddess Elayn. Your body will return to the Earth to be used as a deadened tree stump for others to rest upon." His mouth curled. "Though a halfling like you might suffer nothing more than having your limbs replaced by brittle, dry branches. Easily broken. Either way, our problem will resolve since the protection of the malachite will die with you."

Aghast, Abel turned to beseech Matthias. "Is that true?"

Matthias inclined his head. "I believe I once told you that elves cannot lie."

She glared at him. "That was under entirely different circumstances!"

When Matthias's fingers found her spine and tapped a pattern into her skin, Abel nearly bit his hand clean off his wrist. Until she recognized the drumming rhythm of his fingers. The coded messages of the Iced Guards. Matthias had begrudgingly taught her himself all those weeks ago when she had first been appointed part of Sebastian's guard.

Trust me.

She stiffened and then tried not to because she couldn't be that obvious. By the Scribes, she was better than this. A thin thread of Earth drifted across her fingertips, twining between her knuckles in a brushing kiss.

You are safe, child.

Abel recognized the voice of Eleanora, the soul of the willow, as her threads circled around Abel's thumbnail before slipping back to the earth where her roots resided.

"Fine," Abel snapped. "I submit."

Nimosk pocketed the malachite stone—presumptuous of him to assume it now belonged to him—and then held his palms outwards. Shimmering wisps of golden light began to gather in his palms. As he pulled from the light in the air, the space around them darkened. Abel pressed backwards into Matthias's hand, which he held flush against her mid-back.

If she truly sprouted twig-hands from this, she would use them to whip Matthias across his backside.

Although she supposed the severity of his whipping would depend solely on how well he had hidden the Monverta. Goddess Elayn, help him. 

"Shut your eyes," the commander said, "and may your shadows be exposed, halfling." 

- - -

Well. This just got interesting. Anyone remember Leolin from book 1? He was just as wild as he is here, so I don't think he can fully blame his reactions on the death of his vyre. I'm sure he truly is upset though...

Until next time, my friends!