Karina

"Don't stray from the path."

I turned toward the voice, startled. The maid-Mira, I'd finally wrung her name from her the night before-stood at the door to my chamber, holding out a heavy riding cloak. Her expression was tight, her eyes flicking to the window behind me like she feared it would shatter.

"Why would I be leaving the path?" I asked.

She didn't answer. Just thrust the cloak into my arms like that was enough explanation.

I pulled it on. "Where am I going?"

"Your husband requested it."

"Rhydan?"

She flinched slightly at the name.

So he was real to her, too.

"Yes," she said. "He expects you ready by the next bell."

The next bell could be minutes from now. Or hours. This place played games with time.

"Where are we going?"

She hesitated, then met my gaze. "Deeper."

That word settled into my chest like a stone dropped into a frozen lake.

I didn't ask more.

Rhydan met me in the lower courtyard. No guards. No servants. Just him, standing beside a black, antlered horse with eyes like frostbite.

"You're late," he said.

"I didn't hear a bell."

"There wasn't one."

I stared at him. "Then why-"

"You're in Nytherra now, Karina. Time is not a servant here. It's a thing that watches."

"You could've warned me."

"I just did."

He mounted without another word and gestured for me to follow.

My own horse stood nearby-grey, tall, and quiet-eyed. I climbed into the saddle, my body stiff from a night of sleepless tension.

"Where are we going?" I asked once I caught up beside him.

"You need to see what you've married."

"I've already seen the castle. The curse. The chain around my neck."

"You've seen a hallway."

"Then show me the rest."

He didn't smile. But something flickered across his face. Approval, maybe. Or curiosity.

He spurred the horse forward, and I followed into the snow.

The forest was not a forest.

It breathed.

It whispered.

It watched.

I felt it almost instantly-the moment we passed the outer gate. The trees shifted subtly, branches curling downward as we rode beneath them, casting skeletal shadows across our path. The wind didn't howl here. It sang.

Low and wrong.

We didn't speak for the first hour. Or what I assumed was an hour. The light never changed. The sky remained flat, gray, indifferent. The snow deepened, but the path remained strangely clear-dirt and old stones winding like a serpent through the woods.

Then I saw them.

Trees split open down the middle, as if lightning had struck-but they were still standing, still alive, sap oozing from their wounds like slow-moving blood.

"Don't touch them," Rhydan said without turning.

"I wasn't planning to."

"They remember."

"Remember what?"

"Everyone who's tried to break the pact."

I tightened my grip on the reins.

Farther along the path, I noticed stones-flat ones, stacked in careful piles beside trees. Some were carved with runes. Some had names.

One had mine.

I stopped.

"What is this?" I asked, dismounting.

Rhydan didn't stop riding. "Graves. Markers. Warnings."

I knelt by the stone that bore my name. The carving was fresh. Clean.

"Who did this?"

He finally stopped. Turned his horse to face me.

"The forest."

I stared at him. "You're serious."

"You're in a realm bound by blood and oath. The land remembers names before you speak them. Especially names that bleed."

"And this one's already expecting me to die."

"Yes."

He said it with no hesitation. No apology.

I stood slowly. "Do you take all your brides on these pleasant rides into prophecy?"

"Only the ones I don't want to die."

That silenced me.

Because I didn't know if it was a kindness or a curse.

We rode deeper.

The trees changed. Their bark turned black, slick like obsidian. The branches held no leaves, no frost. Just the occasional scrap of silk fluttering in the wind.

I didn't ask what those were.

I didn't want to know.

After a time, we reached a clearing. Wide. Circular. Marked with stones.

At its center stood a massive archway, made of bone and root and rusted iron. It pulsed faintly, like something behind it was alive.

I dismounted again, compelled without understanding why.

Rhydan didn't stop me.

"Is this the Veil?" I asked.

"No. It's a gate."

"To what?"

"To the part of the world you never see. The place this curse holds back."

I stepped closer. "Can you pass through it?"

"Only if the curse breaks."

"And if it breaks?"

He turned his gaze toward the archway. "Then everything that sleeps behind it wakes."

"And me?"

"You are the key, Karina."

"And the lock?"

"Also you."

I looked back at him. "So what happens if I die before the curse completes?"

"The Veil fractures. The world bleeds. And I become something I can't come back from."

He said it so plainly.

I stepped back from the gate. The air around it tasted like copper.

"Is that why you're keeping me alive?"

Rhydan's eyes met mine. "No."

The word hung there between us.

Not a denial.

A choice.

We rested beneath a twisted birch tree that grew in a perfect spiral toward the sky. Rhydan built a fire without flint or steel-just a word, a breath, and the wood caught flame like it had been waiting for him.

"How did you do that?" I asked.

He didn't answer.

"You never answer anything."

"Because you never ask the right questions."

I threw a twig into the fire. "Fine. Why haven't you killed me like the others?"

"You think I killed them?"

"Did you?"

His jaw tensed.

"I tried to save them. All of them. But this place... it eats weakness. And they all broke."

"And you didn't?"

He looked at me for a long time. Then said, "No. I changed instead."

"And if I break?"

"You won't."

"You sound so sure."

"You're angry. Angry people survive."

I looked at him across the fire. "What happened to you?"

He didn't respond.

But something shifted in the flames.

Like they remembered.

By the time we returned to the castle, night had fallen.

Except the moon hadn't moved.

And the stars had disappeared.

The mark on my chest burned again-worse this time, like it was reacting to something near.

Or waiting for something.

I looked up at the towers as we rode through the gates.

Something watched from the highest window.

Not Rhydan.

Not a servant.

Something with glowing blue eyes and a face I couldn't name.

The breath caught in my throat.

Rhydan looked up too-and for the first time since I met him, he drew his sword.