by Tessa Dawn
They were ready.
At least he hoped they were.
They had the map. They had packed everything they needed to track, to fight…to survive. And Nachari knew how to open the portal, how to usher them into the strange new world of Mhier, the native home of the Lycanthrope.
Now all they needed was a little luck.
And a lot of courage.
And a chance, just one chance, to atone for the unforgiveable sins of the past: a healer who couldn’t save his mother; a son who no longer knew his father; a vampire who walked with one foot in both worlds because he never truly felt worthy of existing in either one.
Although just why, he couldn’t say.
Kagen Silivasi had been a faithful servant to the house of Jadon, a loyal brother to his beloved siblings, and a consummate healer to his noble race, the Vampyr. He had tended broken bones, mended wounded flesh, and always, always, saved lives.
At any cost.
It was the least he could do.
Yet, it was never enough…not even close.
And therein lay the rub: that unidentifiable ember that burned at the center of his soul, masking, if not outright hiding, something so combustible and profound that he didn’t dare confront it, let alone try and name it.
It just was.
And his carefully controlled life—indeed, his seemingly perfect persona—concealed it like a pile of cooled gray ash, cleverly masking whatever lay beneath the slag, cloaking the nameless pain, concealing the anonymous rage.
Disguising the red-hot coals glowing just beneath the surface.
For reasons he couldn’t name or even comprehend, Kagen Silivasi worked tirelessly to remain detached from his past, to stay ahead of a memory he didn’t even possess, and he healed fervently in an attempt to avoid that mysterious, marginal part of his soul that frightened him the most, the part that wasn’t a healer at all.
The part that, given half a chance, would seek to take life rather than sustain it.
The part that wanted to hunt…and claim…and devour.
And kill.
Until all the rivers ran crimson with blood.
Until somehow, those same blood rivers—those sanguine pools of righteous retribution—eventually swept away the original sin.
four
Mhier
Although it was late, nearly midnight, when Arielle Nightsong finally made her way out of the Mystic Mountains, traveling the well-worn path that snaked between Thane’s valley and the rebel camp, she stopped at the second of three streams that branched off the Lykos River to get a drink of water and refill her canteen. She intended to circle back once more, just in case she had been followed, before crossing the remaining two streams, traversing the rocky gorge, and entering the Rebel Camp on the other side of the final tributary. She dipped a near-frozen hand into the frigid water and watched as the clear, icy liquid washed over her skin, causing instant frost to form on her flesh, before seeping through her open fingers as it slowly rejoined the stream. Luckily, each subsequent river would grow warmer as she moved further away from the base of the mountains and closer to the camp.
Ignoring the chill, she dipped her hand in the water once more, and this time, she drank heartily.
The water may have been cold, but it was also refreshing; and she was grateful that the resistance had chosen to hide their camp in such a remote yet hospitable place. Not only was the encampment hard to locate—it was flanked on one side by the gorge and required passing through the formidable Mystic Mountains; and it was bordered on the other side by the Skeleton Swamps, a place no one dared to go, lest they never escape alive—but it forced its inhabitants to cross three fast-flowing streams before they arrived as well. And unlike the tainted, muddy waters that flowed like coagulated blood through Mhier’s central waterway, the ternary streams were crystal and clear: pure enough to bathe in, drink from, and irrigate for crops. Not to mention, the rivers washed away the scent of travelers, a definite bonus when your enemies were wolves.
Arielle rocked back on her heels and glanced at the peaceful river before her. She thought about her mother and her biological father, wondering if the infamous Ryder Nightsong, the founder of the resistance, had ever dipped his hands into this same stream. She wondered if her mother had ever stolen away in the night to make love to the handsome rebel when she was yet Arielle’s age.
But that had been eons ago, or at least it seemed like it had been:
Arielle’s mother had been slain by Teague Verasachi, the alpha general of the southern pack, nearly eighteen years ago, when Arielle was only ten years old. It had happened during an ill-advised raid on Teague’s encampment: At the time, the rebels had not yet learned how to grow their own food, how to live as a self-sufficient unit; and desperately needing to restock their supplies for the winter, they had risked entering the Alpha’s district in order to steal from the general’s food caches. The decision had been as foolish as it was deadly. And Alina Page, Arielle’s mother, had paid with her life.
Arielle shivered, remembering the horrific autumn of her tenth year. Not only had her mother been brutally beaten and killed, but Arielle had been captured as well and given to King Thane as a gift from Teague. She had spent seven long years in the slave encampment before finally escaping just prior to her eighteenth birthday, the year Thane would have taken her as wife number seven.
Arielle dipped her hands in the river and scrubbed her cheeks until they stung, as if shocking herself with the cold could alter the path of her thoughts. She quickly turned her attention to Ryder, instead, wondering if the topic wasn’t just as unwise: Legend had it that the founder of the human resistance, her biological father, had been killed trying to rescue Arielle from Thane’s clutches, but Arielle didn’t know if the rumors were true. She had never met her father. She had never even seen her father, and she had a hard time believing that after seventeen years of life, he had suddenly taken an interest in his bastard offspring.
Although the man was reputed to be an unparalleled fighter, he was also renowned as a shameless lover, an unapologetic seducer of women. Alina Page had only been one of many, but she had been the only one to bear him a child. She had loved the infamous warrior deeply, never speaking an ill word of him, and always reminding Arielle that she, proudly, came from his formidable stock.
Now, gazing at the icy stream before her and the beautiful valley beyond, Arielle couldn’t help but hope that her mother had, at least once, stood on these banks with the man she adored, that, together, they had admired the valley.
She was just about to fill her canteen when she heard a faint noise coming from the gorge, just beyond a grouping of birch trees, the unmistakable rustling of leaves beneath heavy, approaching footsteps. Nimbly spinning around, she drew an arrow from her quiver and notched it against her bow. She crouched down low behind a large, rounded boulder and held her breath. Dearest Ancestors, please tell me I wasn’t followed. Please tell me Thane hasn’t found me.
She looked off to the side and tilted her head, as if aligning her ears with the sound might sharpen her hearing.
“Arielle?” The masculine voice was hushed and urgent. “Arielle!” It came again, and she struggled to identify the caller.
“Arielle? Is that you?” The voice belonged to Walker Alencion, one of the five men still fighting for the resistance.
“Walker!” she exclaimed, fisting her hand around the upper limb of her bow in anger. She placed her arrow back in the quiver, hoisted the bow over her shoulder, and brushed the dirt off her animal-hide skirt.
“Yeah,” he whispered, his voice coming closer. “It’s me.” He stepped out of the brush, made his way down the riverbank, and stopped a few feet in front of her. “What are you doing out so late?”
“Hell’s fire, Walker! You almost scared the daylights out of me.”
Walker winced. “Sorry.” He reached out to take the heavy bow from her shoulder, and then he reached behind his back and retrieved a wilted bouquet of red-and-y
ellow wild flowers. “I picked these for you.”
“At midnight?” Arielle protested, practically seething. This was the last thing she needed to deal with right now: Walker, and his never-ending advances.
“No, not at midnight,” he said defensively, sounding curiously immature for a twenty-nine-year-old male. “Earlier today. But you weren’t around, so I had to wait to give them to you.”
Arielle frowned. She reached out and took the flowers, pausing to give them a cursory sniff out of kindness.
“Where were you?” he asked.
Arielle sighed. “We don’t have time to talk right now.” She immediately regretted the clipped tone of her voice—she had to be patient with Walker; he was far too sensitive for his own good—still, she needed to set firm boundaries. “I mean, thank you for the flowers, but we should be getting back to camp.” She started walking briskly in the direction of the rebel encampment, and then she held out the flowers to demonstrate her objection. “I really wish you would stop doing these kinds of things for me, Walker. It’s…well…it’s kind of awkward.” Arielle had tried in a dozen different ways to softly rebuke Walker’s advances. She had tried to show him with her actions and her words that she was a loyal, trustworthy friend, but nothing more…and she never would be. At times, it became more than just a little bit frustrating; it became downright maddening, how avid he was about winning her affections, something that was never going to happen…
For a dozen different reasons.
Walker frowned, shuffling to keep up with Arielle’s brisk pace. “I don’t mind, Arielle. I like doing nice things for you.”
She tucked her unruly hair behind her ears and pressed on. “I know you do, but”—she almost said, I don’t like it, then thought better of it—“never mind.” She glanced at a thick group of bushes, just shy of the second waterway, and scanned the area for the presence of others before pushing back a cluster of branches in order to expose a rustic, hidden canoe. The behavior was instinctive. It was one thing to take chances with one’s own life, to sneak into Thane’s encampment to see Keitaro, to risk leading someone back to the Rebel Camp, but it was another thing to reveal one of the Rebels’ hidden treasures: a food cache, a concealed armament of weapons, or one of the secret water vessels they kept at hand to cross the ternary rivers. Arielle, along with every other member of the resistance, had grown up learning how to watch, look, and listen at every turn, along every leg of the journey home. “Would you mind grabbing that oar?” she said, pointing to a chipped, timeworn paddle. “How’s everything in camp?”
“Everything is fine,” Walker said, reaching for the oar. He hefted it easily from the boat and helped her drag the canoe from the brush into the water. She automatically sat in front, and he automatically began rowing in the back, his strong, lean arms flexing from the strength of the water’s resistance.
Arielle took a deep breath and stared out over the fast-moving river. She understood how much work it was to keep the vessel upright and heading in the right direction in such a rapidly flowing stream, but all the men and women were adept at doing it by now. She watched Walker as he rowed faster and faster, dipping the oar deeper and deeper, wishing that she could return his romantic feelings. Though flushed with color from exertion, his narrow face was handsome enough, and his flame-red hair was soft and curly, not wild and unruly like her long, bronze-colored locks. He was a gentle man, most of the time, and a fine warrior. He was dangerous with a battle-axe, and he could take down a gamma lycan from twenty yards away, using only a bola with two silver balls; but he was just, somehow, awkward, gangly, unseemly, even beneath all that sinewy muscle. And his insecurity didn’t help matters much. Just the same, he was a loyal friend and a die-hard rebel, and he hated the lycans with every ounce of his being. On that front, he and Arielle had scores in common.
“Where were you earlier?” he asked again, angling the oar in the stream to guide the boat around an impending log.
When Arielle didn’t answer, he frowned immediately, the gesture causing deep lines of disappointment to appear between his brows. “Keitaro…the slave…again?”
Arielle sat up straight on the bench at the back of the boat. She unfastened the extra oar from beneath the rear deck and began to paddle, needing something else to look at, something else to do, other than to sit and stare at Walker. “Shh!” she warned him. “There are some things you shouldn’t even speak out loud. Don’t even think them.”
Walker jerked back then, his mouth turning down in a scowl. “What’s with you and that vampire?” He said the last word with clear disdain.
Arielle took offense, backing him up as she leaned angrily toward him. “You are not my father, Walker. I don’t have to explain myself to—”
“I know!” he practically shouted, holding his right hand up so high in front of him, he almost dropped the oar. He bent over and caught it quickly, before it fell into the water. “I’m just saying that I don’t understand…I really don’t get it…you just shouldn’t go out of your way”—his eyes darted upward and to the left like he was searching for a plausible explanation, or perhaps concocting a lie—“I’m just saying that you should probably take me with you next time.” He quickly amended the statement: “I mean, at least take someone with you, one of the men. I just don’t think it’s safe for you to sneak into the quarters of a vampire, slave or not, all alone. And that’s to say nothing of the danger you put yourself in every time you enter King Thane’s district.” He sighed in exasperation. “It’s almost as if you want to get caught. It’s insane, Arielle.” His voice thickened as he stood his ground. “The risk isn’t worth it.”
Arielle looked down at her lap in sudden contrition. “You wouldn’t understand, Walker.” She spoke softly, hoping to appeal to his compassion. “You had a father.”
“Is that what he is to you?” His tone was mildly accusatory, and maybe even a little bit jealous. “A father?”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
He shrugged. “Do you feed him? Your blood?”
Arielle refused to answer that question. Not only was it highly personal, but the way Walker had said it, it sounded almost vulgar. “What do you want from me, Walker?” She took her left hand off the oar and held it up in exasperation. “I care for him. He’s a prisoner, and I know very well what that’s like. I don’t ask you or anyone else to take the risk with me. Why do you care so much?”
It was the wrong question.
Walker stopped rowing then, and she instinctively did the same. They got out of the boat, pulled it to shore, and tucked it beneath another grouping of thick, wild brush. And then, they headed for the third and final stream. Once they were safely in the last canoe, both seated and about to push off from the bank, he reached out to touch her face, to softly stroke her cheek, and she drew back reflexively.
“Don’t touch me like that,” she whispered, turning her face away.
“Like what?” he responded, his pale gray eyes brimming with hurt from the reprisal. “Like this?” He reached out and touched her again.
Arielle gasped and batted his hand away.
Instinctively, he reached out and grasped her jaw, squeezing her cheeks in a pincer grasp, tighter than he surely intended. “Could I touch you if I were a vampire?” He leaned in closer, and his lips hovered just above hers. “Could I kiss you?”
Arielle was stunned.
Speechless.
Both by his words and his actions.
While Walker had always been known to have an odd, awkward way about him, he had never acted like this before, at least not with her. She planted her palms squarely on his chest and shoved him back, thrusting hard enough to let him know she meant business. “How dare you!”
Walker shot back in his seat, nearly falling off the narrow, wooden plank. “I’m sorry, Arielle.” He rushed the words. “I don’t know what got into me. I just…I…I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“Well, you did.” Arielle stared at him like he had fi
sh guts on his face, and she was just about to give him a firm tongue-lashing when a white owl flew across the river toward the embankment, and dipped its wings so low to the boat that its outstretched feathers nearly clipped her cheek. She ducked and pressed a hand to her chest. “Did you see that, Walker?” The sudden appearance of the ominous bird of prey distracted her from her imminent rant; after all, white owls were extremely rare in Mhier, and their presence had always portended a bad omen.
Walker drew in a sharp intake of breath and slowly shook his head. “Yeah, I wonder what it means.”
Arielle cringed. “I don’t know, but whatever it is, it isn’t good.”
“Change is coming,” Walker said absently. “Change…and death.”
Arielle stared at him then, wondering where the cryptic words were coming from. “Could it have something to do with King Thane or Queen Cassandra?” she asked, not believing that it did.
“When the white owl soars in a midnight sky, friends and foes alike will die. When the white owl dips his snow-tipped wing—”
“Hearts will weep and tongues will sing,” she interjected.
“A song of grief, lives lost too soon—”
“A song of blood, beneath the moon.” Arielle finished the refrain, and Walker slowly nodded.
“It was a childhood refrain,” he said. “I remember singing it around the campfire as a kid.”
“Yeah, me, too,” she said. “Only we sang it in the slave camp.”
Walker shivered. “What do you think it means? I mean, specifically?”
Arielle reached for an oar and glanced up at the moon. “I have no idea,” she said, pushing off the embankment to launch the canoe.
Walker stood to help her, placing his own oar deep into the sandy riverbed to gain enough leverage to propel the boat forward. “I hope it didn’t happen because I scared you. I’m not a threat to you, Arielle. I hope you know that. Never.”