The trip through the portal was much the same as the previous two times, leaving Seraiah on her knees, hurling up her insides. To her satisfaction, Ren also appeared a little green around the edges.

"How far is this place from here?" Kestrel asked.

"It's close. Less than an hour's ride."

"And you’re sure it's safe? No one else knows about it?”

Ren turned in his saddle to smirk at them. "You've never seen it, have you?"

“I suppose not,” Kestrel said, a frown wrinkling her forehead.

Seraiah wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and mounted her horse. She didn’t trust him, but she didn’t feel anything from the mark, either. If he was attempting to use it to lure her into a trap, it didn’t seem to be working.

“It’s warded,” Ren said. “No one could have found it unless they know something about these particular wards.”

“There must be someone out there who does,” Seraiah said.

His focus moved to her. “If there is, I haven’t met them yet.” He offered her one of those charming smiles again. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep you safe.”

Seraiah scowled back. “If this place is so hard to find, why wasn’t Sterling taken there? We never would have found her. Seems like that’s what you wanted.”

"No," Ren said, the smile slowly slipping away as he held her gaze. "You wouldn't have." He let the words hang between them. An instant later, the smile reappeared as though it had never left. "This way."

If he had been trying to reassure her and earn her trust, he was doing a terrible job of it.

True to his word, it was less than an hour ride before Ren called a halt to their journey. There was nothing different about the woods here that Seraiah could make out, and from the way Kestrel was peering around, she didn’t see anything, either.

"Wait here," Ren instructed them. "I will take the wards down so you can enter."

"You mean so you can warn your friends we’re here," Seraiah mumbled as soon as he was out of earshot. “Are you sure this is a good idea?” she asked Kestrel.

“Not entirely, but we still need answers,” Kestrel said, eyes darting over the trees.

“Perhaps someone else less suspicious might have them. I don’t see why we had to come here. We could have interrogated him perfectly well without following him to his lair.”

“You’re worried about the thing on your neck.”

It wasn’t a question, but Seraiah answered anyway. “Of course I am. You should be too. We have no idea what he could use it for. This could all be one long game to hand me over to the other mages. You and Kai said a seer is a valuable tool, and everyone wants to get their hands on one.”

“I didn’t get the impression—”

Someone cleared their throat.

The two of them whipped toward the sound.

Ren was on foot now with no sign of his horse. "Sorry to interrupt, but your castle awaits." He gestured through the trees behind him.

While they hadn’t been looking, a building had appeared between the trunks. It was not, in fact, a castle, but a tiny cabin made of logs. Even without the wards, it blended well with the forest around it.

Seraiah let Kestrel approach it first, watching for any sign they should turn and flee. Ren, for his part, pretended they weren't ready to stab him and run.

"Make yourselves at home. I will be in after I put the wards back in place. There isn't a stable here for your horses, but there is a hitching post out front. I would advise against letting them roam because they will interfere with the wards. That would not be pretty."

Seraiah peered down at him. She hadn’t yet dismounted, even though Kestrel already had. "And what about us? The wards aren't going to harm us?"

"Shouldn't unless you decide to wander."

They would be trapped here at the mercy of Ren until whenever he decided to take the wards down again.

Kestrel didn't appear bothered by this information as she led her horse over to the hitching post and secured his reins.

Reluctantly, Seraiah dismounted and secured her horse next to Kestrel’s before following her inside the cabin.

Her stomach wasn’t the usual pit of snakes that heralded danger, but Seraiah couldn’t help jumping at every creak of the floorboards beneath her boots.

The cabin only had two rooms. The larger one held a round wooden table and a collection of mismatched wooden chairs. Cabinets lined the east-facing wall while a fireplace took up the west-facing wall. A pot rested on the floor next to the fireplace, alongside a pile of wood.

Directly across from where they had entered was a second door leading to a bedroom. Seraiah peeked around the doorframe. There was a bed and a writing desk under the single small window. The surface of the desk was littered with papers. A chest of drawers was shoved in the space between the bed and the wall.

Seraiah noted that other than the papers on the desk, the place was spotless. There weren’t even ashes in the fireplace. Either Ren was a meticulous cleaner, or he rarely spent any length of time here.

After Kestrel finished her inspection, she wandered back to the main room while Seraiah stepped closer to the desk. She knew it was snooping, but she was curious about the papers.

Picking through them, she discovered that most of them were blank. She finally spotted one with writing and was reaching for it when Ren snuck up behind her.

"Looking for something?"

Seraiah jumped and whirled around, coming face to face with the necromancer. She caught a whiff of lemon verbena, an herb Mama had used frequently in her soaps. It took all of her self-control not to close her eyes and breathe in the scent of home. She hated that he reminded her of it.

"Doesn't matter," Ren said, stepping away from her. "There isn't anything interesting there. You can go ahead and look. You may think I'm stupid, but I'm not that stupid to leave incriminating evidence lying around."

"I never said any such thing." She couldn't decide if he was teasing about the incriminating evidence, but the urge to look at the papers again was strong. A quick peek was all she would need to confirm if he was lying to her.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Seraiah turned and scanned the paper, ignoring Ren's chuckle.

It was nothing more than a list of supplies similar to the logs Papa would have her make to keep track of the materials he used for his work. The handful of other pages with writing revealed similar things. She eyed Ren suspiciously. He may have told the truth about this, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t lying about other things.

----------------------------------------

Ren tugged his soiled tunic off, tossing it to the side before riffling through the chest of drawers for a new one. He was acutely aware of Seraiah’s eyes tracking his movements, studying him from where she leaned against his desk.

“If you want to know, just ask.” His eyes slid to her, giving her his trademark smirk.

Her cheeks took on a faint pink hue, and he thought for sure she would look away. Instead, she boldly kept her eyes focused on him—and not on his face.

“Where did you get that?” she asked.

For a moment, he thought she was asking about the myriad of scars that crisscrossed his body—most of those had come at the hands of his supposed caregivers—but then he noticed her gaze was fixed squarely on the little circular tattoo below his collarbone.

Ren yanked the new tunic over his head, covering it up. “Mages,” he said shortly. He would have preferred if she had asked about the scars instead.

“Is it like this?” she asked, pointing to the dark mass on her neck.

“No, it wasn’t placed by magic, just the usual needle and ink. A brand if you will, marking me as one of them.” Every mage had one, though the location differed.

“So, it was by choice, then?” Seraiah asked.

A wry twist of his mouth. “Not my choice.”

She skimmed her fingers down the side of her neck over the mark—his mark. “I know the feeling.”

“No, I don’t think you do,” he said, brushing past her.

“Does that thing allow them to track you?” she called after him.

He stopped in the doorway, but didn’t turn. “No, it’s nothing more than a design on my skin.”

“I suppose you’re right then,” Seraiah said, hurling her words like sharpened knives. “I have the worse of the two.”

He felt every stab of them. “Yours could be removed,” he said softly. “This,” he turned and gestured with a gloved finger at his chest where the tattoo lay covered, “is permanently etched there, and there is nothing I can do about it.”

She pushed off the desk and moved toward him. “Then take it off.” An eagerness shone in her eyes.

“No.” Ren turned away again. If she wanted to sink that pretty blade she wore on her thigh in his back, then so be it.

“Why not? I’m here with you now, and you said yourself you were using it to track Sterling. Obviously, she isn’t with me, and I don’t know where she is.”

The way her voice changed at the end told him she was lying. She knew exactly where her sister was.

“It might be useful later,” he said, because he knew it would infuriate her. He couldn’t help it. She was too easy to goad.

He also wasn’t entirely sure he could remove the mark, but she did not need to know.

“I doubt that,” Seraiah said. Her glare burned into his back.

Ren shrugged. “Come on, your elf friend is waiting for us.” He exited the room, knowing she’d be right behind him.

“I don’t see why we had to come all the way here for this conversation,” Seraiah said.

“It’s the only place I can be sure there won’t be listening ears,” Ren said.

The female elf was sitting slumped in one of the wooden chairs at the table. The moment she saw them return, she straightened up, a mask falling into place. “We came here like you requested. Now start talking. Tell us what you know about what is going on with Sterling and what Gavaran wanted with her, and maybe we will consider your offer of help.”

Seraiah circled the other side of the table, likely to avoid touching him, and pulled out the chair next to her friend. Ren still remembered the way his former mentor used to sit there in the evening nursing a cup of tea. He tore his eyes away from her and selected a chair. It had been painted white once, but the paint had yellowed and peeled. One of its legs was also shorter than the others, so whoever sat there was always off balance.

It did not bode well for this conversation.

“Where do I start? I met Sterling when she was transferred from the men who took the job to kidnap her. I had nothing to do with the kidnapping or the job posting. My orders were to befriend her, make her trust me, and slip her a potion day by day. Don’t ask me what was in the potion. I didn’t create it. I was only supplied with it.”

Seraiah’s eyes had gone flinty, but he went on. “I was told to look for signs of change with no explanation of what those changes would be. Then it would be time.”

“Time for what?” the elf asked. He’d heard Seraiah call her Kestrel, like the bird. An appropriate moniker from what he knew of her.

“Don’t know. I wasn’t privy to such information. I was to carry out my orders, not ask questions. The first time I reported seeing Sterling’s eyes fill with shadows was only two days before you rescued her.”

“You’ve seen it too,” Seraiah whispered. He didn’t think she meant for him to hear. Then her gaze sharpened, and she said in a normal voice, “Speaking of the rescue. We have questions.”

“And I told you I would try my best to answer them.”

“Why did Gavaran allow us to take her back so easily?” Kestrel asked.

“And why did you go against the other mages and help us?” Seraiah added.

Ren considered the questions. He started with the first one—the one he didn’t quite have an answer for. “I’m not sure it was easy. You needed my help, didn’t you?” He didn’t know why Gavaran made the choices he had. He could only guess.

“We would have been fine without your assistance,” Kestrel said.

“Perhaps. Perhaps not.” He shrugged. “As far as I was aware, Gavaran was paying a visit to retrieve Sterling. She was meant to be transferred to somewhere else, and I wasn’t to go with her. I don’t think it was his plan to let her go, but plans are always evolving. Your guess is as good as mine as to his reasoning.”

“Right,” Kestrel muttered under her breath, barely loud enough for him to hear.

He’d known she wouldn’t be happy with the answer, but short of lying, he couldn’t give her anything else.

“I know you don’t trust me, but the offer to help Sterling was sincere.” While he didn’t need their help, things would be a lot easier if he didn’t make them his enemies.

Seraiah snorted and folded her arms across her chest. “If you want me to believe you’re sincere, stop avoiding my question. Why do you want to help us? Why did you help us then?”

Ren was reluctant to do it, but he’d have to tell them. He’d have to tell them everything.

“Because I would rather see Sterling with you than whatever Gavaran had planned for her.” He took a breath. “I wanted to help her because she reminds me of my sister.”

The memory of his sister’s face flashed through his mind. The way Iona’s little hand had curled around his finger. He hadn’t meant to hurt her.

“Your sister?” Seraiah echoed. It may have been his imagination, but he thought a bit of the ice in her voice was thawing.

“Sterling and I spent a lot of time together in the cave, and she’s the same age my sister would have been. I suppose you could say my conscience kicked in, and I wanted—want—to make up for what happened to Iona.”

Seraiah cocked her head to the side in question. As he suspected, she wanted the whole story—something he had never told anyone.

“I was young, and I didn’t know what I was doing. All I wanted was to help her.” Iona’s face filled his mind’s eye again. He could still hear the rattling cough and see the worry in his mother’s eyes every time she looked at Iona. “She was sick, and she was only getting worse with each passing day.”

Seraiah’s expression softened. “And she died?”

Ren nodded. “But not in the way that you probably think.”

The questioning look was back again. He knew it would soon be replaced by horror.

This was the worst part of the story.

“I didn’t know about my . . . abilities. I had an inkling there was something different about me, but I didn’t really know, not then. When Iona held my hand, I wished she would get better.”

Ren glanced at Seraiah to find she had pressed a hand against her mouth. She had likely already guessed where this was headed.

“With that one wish,” he continued, “I felt the power—I didn’t know it was power then, only that it was something—course through me and into her. For a moment, I swore she was getting better. Iona was healing, but then her heart gave out, and she stopped breathing. My mother realized it before I did and started crying. That’s when I knew something was horribly wrong.”

Ren shut his eyes for a moment, hating himself—hating what he had done. “I knew it was my fault, and I wanted to make it better, so I reached for her hand again, and I wished she would live.”

“You brought her back,” Seraiah whispered, “like you brought Lonan back.” He could hear the revulsion in her voice.

“Yes. Iona was the first person I ever brought back from the dead. My mother’s tears turned into screams. After that, my parents sent for the mages to take me away and that,” he pulled his tunic to the side exposing the tattoo again, “is how I ended up with this. I suppose it could have been worse. They could have handed me over to the king to be executed.”

“So the mages trained you to use your powers,” Seraiah said.

Kestrel’s eyes darted between the two of them, but she didn’t say a word, only waited.

“Funny thing about that,” Ren said, bitterness leaking into his voice, “death magic is also linked to life magic—to healing. The mages who trained me could have taught me to be a healer, but instead, they turned me into this.” He pulled one of his gloves off exposing his blackened skin—exposing the shadows that ran up his arm, fed by the dark power he wielded.

Seraiah and Kestrel exchanged a look, and it was Kestrel who spoke first. “You want revenge.”

Ren dipped his chin as he donned his glove again. “Same as you, and together we might get it.” He held out his hand. “So, what do you say? Shall we form an alliance?”