Promise Forever: Fairy Tales with a Modern Twist

by Pauline Creeden

  “Oriana is the only person who’s managed to get around, as you called them, Kalinda’s rough edges. Bronze Ward is a perfect example of what I mean. For a while, Helen and Tuncay did something right, something other than taking breaks from each other. I don’t know what it was, probably another experiment like Bronze Ward.”

  Marrok had a clue, and it damn sure was a risky experiment. A risky, failed experiment, because everyone knew how Helen and Tuncay’s love story had ended. Happily-ever-afters did not exist for witches and werewolves.

  He pushed to his feet, sure-footed and ready to see his girls. Running away resolved nothing. He agreed with Bader on that point.

  “Feel better?”

  How could he? Between Lita’s and Bader’s advice, he had no clear path to take that would guarantee he wouldn’t lose his family in the end. He felt like he waded in waist-deep quicksand, nowhere to go but down.

  “I’m going to go see my wife and daughter. Coming?”

  “No.”

  “Suit yourself. Do you want me to tell Kalinda where to find you?”

  If Bader’s eyebrows could reach any further northward, he didn’t want to know.

  “Okay, I guess you don’t.” Marrok strolled to the closed library door, opened it, but didn’t exit. “Did Matriarch Helen really cut off her arms and legs? I mean why would she do something like that?”

  Bader’s sigh was as heavy as a boulder to the chest. “I don’t know. I don’t think Kalinda does either. I’m uncertain if that’s what actually happened. Maybe you’ll find answers in her journals. Maybe not. Until Oriana, Kalinda’s never allowed anyone to go through her mother’s belongings. Kalinda found Helen, bleeding out, her magic burning the room down around her.”

  Marrok forced himself not to envision the image Bader had painted. None of what he’d said was in any of the history books he’d read. The story was that Matriarch Helen had died performing an advanced-level spell that had resulted in malfunctioning weapons she couldn’t control.

  “She locked herself in her bedroom with her trusted Crimson Hunter. Neither witch came out alive. Helen’s magic was unmatched, wilder than anything I’ve ever seen. Only Kalinda could bypass her mother’s spell to get us in her room. But it was too late. Flames were everywhere, but that didn’t stop Tuncay from charging in there. Kalinda would’ve done the same but . . .”

  Marrok turned back to Bader. The werewolf hadn’t moved, but his tone and face were no longer cool and calm. For once, his scent matched the emotions on his face—horror, sadness.

  “I stopped her from going in there. It took all my werewolf strength to do it, too. We fought, right there in front of her parent’s burning suite. We fought, and I’d never been more afraid in my life.”

  “That Kalinda would hurt you?”

  “No, that I wouldn’t be strong enough to stop her from killing herself. When Tuncay ran in there, in his human form, he had to have known he wouldn’t survive the wild sun magic in that room. But he went anyway, choosing to die with his witch than live without her.”

  Marrok stared at Bader, mouth clamped tight. What in the hell could he say? The tragic tale explained so much about his mother-in-law. Her rough edges were born in witch fire.

  “I lost Kalinda that day. Long before our son was born and died, I lost my wife. Oriana’s Rite of Endometal Fusion ceremony was a convenient excuse for us to put a halt to the pretense. I traded my daughter for the relief I felt at no longer living with a woman who hated me for loving her.”

  “She would’ve died with her parents, if not for you.”

  “Kalinda did die with Helen and Tuncay. At least a part of her did. What remained was a witch whose final memories of her parents were their cries as they burned, she unable to save them, whether I stood in her way or not.” Bader’s hand lifted to his chest, right above his Aku of Irongarde symbol—Kalinda’s mate mark. “Since then, she’s never been able to separate the worst day of her life from the werewolf who forced her to live in a world without her parents. After that, we eventually did our duty to the realm, giving them their next Matriarch of Earth Rift.”

  In an atypically ungraceful move, Bader flopped onto the couch, his hair jewelry producing an inharmonic bell sound fabled to ward-off evil spirits.

  Marrok didn’t believe in evil spirits but something terrible had laid claim to Earth Rift.

  “Whatever you and Oriana are doing with Helen’s journals, you need to stop. She and Tuncay plotted and planned and got in way over their heads. Their schemes killed them and Helen’s Crimson Hunter, Farkas. It took four witches to extinguish Helen’s flames, that’s how potent her magic was without the steel buffers in her arms and legs.”

  For all that Kalinda had followed Matriarch Alba’s decree and had Oriana injected with liquid silver, she’d limited it to her arms. From that precedent and perhaps small act of defiance, other mothers followed her lead. The more he learned, the more he realized how little the people of Earth Rift understood their Matriarchs—current and past.

  “I see so much of Kalinda in Oriana. But my daughter is more like her grandmother than I realized. You’ve studied Helen, do you disagree?”

  He shook his head, wishing he hadn’t seen the same drive in Oriana he’d read in Helen’s journals. Their passion to end the divide between witches and werewolves were undeniable, admirable, but also too terrifying for Marrok to stand by and let Oriana go it alone.

  “With or without me, Oriana won’t stop until she has her answers. I’ll keep her safe, make sure she doesn’t go too far.”

  “I’m sure Tuncay thought he could do the same. In the end, Helen trusted Farkas more than she did Tuncay. Why do you think that was?”

  Again, Marrok stared at Bader. The day of his daughter’s birth shouldn’t have been accompanied by this kind of brutal conversation. Yet, like Lita on his wedding day, Bader had decided to add a gray cloud of truth to his sunny day.

  “Tuncay would’ve stopped her. He wouldn’t have wanted Helen to risk her life on an experiment that could kill her. Like you with Kalinda, he’d rather her hate him than watch her die, knowing he could’ve saved her. As Crimson Hunter, it was Farkas’s duty to do the will of her Matriarch, even if she disagreed.”

  “I can’t lose my daughter, Marrok. Do you understand?”

  “I won’t fail Oriana.”

  “That’s just it, Tuncay didn’t fail Helen. Yet she still died. Do you know why Oriana is so bad at magical jumps?”

  “Because she doesn’t practice and knows Solange will bail her ass out of any situation she may get herself in?

  Bader laughed and, yeah, so did Marrok because it was the truth, and they needed the release.

  “Well, yes, there is that. But that’s not the reason. Oriana uses it as a reminder of what happens when a witch takes her magic for granted. When I said Oriana was like Helen, I wasn’t only talking about their passion and purpose but also their powerset. She runs hot, even with the steel in her arms.”

  His healed burns were proof of how hot Oriana got when in the throes of passion, her mind not on controlling her wild sun magic but on giving and receiving pleasure.

  “She needs you, more than you realize. And Kalinda needed me more than I realized.”

  “What about the hunger?”

  “You won’t die from it. Some days you’ll wish you could. Other days you think you’ll do anything to make the pain go away. But you won’t. You have to trust, no matter how bad it gets, how starved you feel, that you’ll never hurt your wife and daughter. I didn’t have enough faith in myself. But Tuncay did. If one werewolf could survive the hunger then we all can.”

  Bader rose again and, to Marrok’s surprise, the older werewolf hugged him. Not one of those one-arm “manly” hugs either, but two arms around his neck kind of hug a father bestowed on his son. Marrok may have been raised in a house of males, but Io was an affectionate father, as quick to display his love for his sons, as he was to get in their face when they did something wrong.


  Marrok returned the hug.

  “She’s not afraid of you.”

  “That’s what she says.”

  “Believe her.” Bader stepped back from Marrok. “Until that day we fought, I never believed Kalinda. But she truly wasn’t afraid of me. I also knew, no matter how hard she fought, she wouldn’t do anything to truly hurt me. I used her love against her that day. We both knew it, and she despised me for it. She still does.”

  “Time has a way of healing old wounds, at least that’s what my father says. I don’t think Kalinda hates you.”

  “You’re twenty-seven. Talk to me when your marriage is older than my cufflinks.”

  “Was that another joke?”

  “It depends. Was it funny?”

  “A little.”

  Bader smacked Marrok on his shoulder. “Then it was. You better go see Oriana. I’ve grown fond of you, so I’d hate to have her magically jump you to the top of Mage Peak before you’ve had a chance to give Keira a brother and me a grandson.” He pushed him out the door. “Go, and don’t tell my wife where to find me.”

  As soon as Marrok entered Oriana’s bedroom, Kalinda sitting in a chair next to her sleeping daughter, Keira in the bassinet beside her, Marrok smiled at his mother-in-law and lied. “Bader wanted you to know that he’s in the library, if you wanted to talk before he left for the night.”

  Yeah, Marrok may have only been twenty-seven to Bader’s sixty-four, but Bader wouldn’t have mentioned for him not to tell Kalinda where he was if he didn’t think she would seek him out. More, if he didn’t want to be sought out by his wife. Sometimes, all the encouragement a werewolf needed was for a witch to make the first move.

  “Thank you, Marrok,” Kalinda whispered, her eyes on her sleeping daughter. “It was a hard labor, but she did great.”

  “No magic. No medicine. The story of Oriana’s pregnancy.”

  “You forgot stubborn.”

  Marrok walked Kalinda to the suite door. “She was stubborn before her pregnancy. Don’t forget about Bader.”

  When she paused, hand on the doorknob, Marrok wondered if he’d overplayed his hand with the reminder. Then she shook her head, as if tossing out whatever notion had settled there.

  “Goodnight, and congratulations on the birth of a healthy baby girl.”

  “Thank you.”

  On his way back to the bedroom, he stripped down to his boxers. “Hey, cutie,” he cooed, noticing his daughter’s big, brown eyes were open. “Look at you. What a beauty.” Careful to hold her securely, he lifted Keira into his arms, the newborn tiny yet solid.

  Sitting on the edge of the bed opposite where his wife slept, Marrok held his daughter. “It was love at first sight.” He snuggled her soft cheek with his nose. “Don’t tell your mother. She’d be jealous, but you’re my best girl, my absolute favorite little witch.”

  She smelled faintly of lemons, but also a floral scent uniquely her own. As Keira grew, her baby scent would yield to the scent of her magic, werewolves’ olfactory temptation. Kissing her delicate forehead, Marrok breathed her in and took the advice he’d given Oriana months ago.

  He would enjoy parenthood, not thinking of the next twelve years as a ticking time bomb.

  Having rocked her to sleep, he returned Keira to her bassinet. Dimming the light, Marrok joined Oriana in bed, spooning closely, arm around her waist, head on the same double pillow.

  Closing his eyes, he began to drift off to sleep. But a low, soft voice murmured, “Best girl, huh? Favorite witch?” A sharp elbow to the gut had him coughing and laughing.

  “You’re number two, if that makes you feel better. But if we have another daughter then you’ll drop to number three. But hey, third place. That’s not bad.”

  Oriana laughed.

  Marrok grinned and didn’t see the pillow before it smacked him in the face, Oriana still laughing.

  Accountable

  January 10, 2241

  Steelcross Realm

  Steelrise

  Oriana read the report in her hand. Twice. “Are you sure?”

  Solange, who sat at the opposite side of the conference table from Oriana and Marrok, frowned and nodded.

  Marrok balled the paper, tossing it into the wastebasket at the end of the table. Oriana wished she could dismiss the details of the report as easily.

  “We do our best to track every werewolf.”

  “I know. But . . .?”

  Solange’s gaze slid to Marrok. After nearly three years of marriage, Oriana still found herself reminding those in her court, including her best friend, that Marrok’s title of Cyrus of Steelcross entitled him to access to the same intelligence briefings as Oriana.

  “Let’s not travel this road again, Solange.” Without looking, she placed her right hand atop Marrok’s left. “Go on.”

  “Of course, Matriarch. A recent audit of our Rage Disruptor tracking system revealed data gaps.”

  “I read that in the report. Is the count accurate?”

  She had to ask, although Solange wouldn’t have requested a formal meeting if she hadn’t tripled checked the auditor’s findings.

  “Thirteen hundred, give or take a hundred.”

  Marrok turned his hand over, pressing his palm against hers and lacing their fingers when she would’ve slammed her hand onto the table.

  “How in the hell did we lose track of thirteen hundred werewolves?”

  “No answer I can give you will satisfy. Outdated program. Lazy technicians. Skipped maintenance checks. We take the program for granted. It’s what could happen if we set the Magerun system to autopilot and forgot about it.”

  “Lazy technicians, maybe. Dates of maintenance review can be obtained. But an outdated program, doubtful. Unless werewolf DNA can change, and our magic expires like meat or medicine, the program works as it should. The auditor concluded the same, but you’re implying there’s some sort of system glitch.”

  “I have no idea why the system ceased reading their Silver Snares. But a glitch makes the most sense.”

  “Not the collars,” Marrok said. “The system tracks disrupters, not collars.”

  “Technically, you’re both correct. One device, two parts, and three spells to make the mechanism work seamlessly. It’s perfect symmetry. Foolproof. Failproof. So why don’t we have tracking data on over a thousand werewolves?”

  “I don’t yet know. I’ve only learned of the glitch two days ago. Too early for a thorough investigation.”

  “It’s not a glitch. What’s the demographic breakdown? That wasn’t in your report.”

  Oriana and Solange had been friends since childhood. Solange’s mother had served as Oriana’s mage tutor. Mage Soleil oversaw her magic training when it became obvious to Kalinda that an impatient mother training her stubborn daughter led to nothing but frustration and tears. Solange and Soleil had moved into Iron Spire. Suddenly, with another child in residence, the tower no longer felt as lonely or her days filled with boredom.

  They’d turned the spire into their personal playground and, for the first time, Oriana had a friend. Solange had viewed her as more than a Matriarch-in-training. Cheeky as hell, badass to the bone, Solange’s loyalty to Oriana was known throughout the realms, as was her dedication to the Crimson Guard.

  She’d never known her friend to lie to her, not even about dating Alarick. Neither Solange nor Alarick would describe their secret relationship using that word. Maybe it was just “screwing” as Solange had told Oriana, with more vehemence than the conversation had warranted. Or perhaps the couple found solace in their mutual delusions.

  What had always been true was that Solange placed kinship above everything else. Her integrity and loyalty served her well as Captain of the Crimson Guard. With those traits, however, came blinders, invisible to all except those who knew Solange well.

  “Tell me what you don’t want to say but know I will drag out of you. You’re better than the report you gave us. Tell us everything you know. Leave it to me to decide wh
at’s important.”

  For a beat, Solange appeared as if she would argue, eyes boring into hers, lips parted, shoulders stiff. Then she scooted closer to the table, hands lacing in front of her, resolve in her tone. “They’re all Muraco.”

  Oriana opened and closed her mouth a half dozen times before she could wrap her mind around Solange’s simple but devastating sentence. “Are you telling us we can’t track thirteen hundred Muraco or that we don’t know where they are?”

  “Umm, both.”

  Maybe she should smash her head instead of her hand against the table. This couldn’t be happening. But it explained Solange’s hesitance. Not the horrible truth of their being thirteen hundred feral werewolves on the lose and they unable to track them but where the Muracos had likely come from.

  Oriana would deal with that potential betrayal later. As she’d suspected, not a glitch, although she wished Solange was right.

  “Wait, wait.” Marrok sounded as dazed as she felt. “I thought we were talking about missing werewolves in the non-literal sense. But that’s not what you just said. You mean gone, gone not metaphorically gone. And all of them are Muraco. Shit.”

  “Yes, gone in every sense of the word, except for dead, which I’d take over them being free and on the run.”

  “If the escaped Muracos have infected black werewolves then we don’t know know how many Muracos are actually on the loose.” Marrok released her hand, but their connection went beyond the physical. “This is bad.”

  “The understatement of the year, my love. Only a skilled witch with the right medical tool can remove Rage Disrupters from a werewolf’s brain. If not done correctly, brain damage or death will result.”

  It went without saying that no werewolf was officially trained in the technique. Even the number of witch healers licensed to insert Rage Disrupters were few, all vetted through a rigorous process. Unlike the number of missing Muraco, the list of licensed healers capable of removing disrupters was short, as were the locations where Muracos resided. If Solange knew Muracos were missing that also meant she knew from where. Considering how hesitant her friend had been to share all she’d discovered, and that she still hadn’t uttered the word hanging between them, like rotten fruit on a dead tree, Oriana knew precisely where the Muraco had come from.