“You and I are very different from our brethren,” they said softly, gaze flitting to Roderick. “I do wish more Rangers thought in such ways.” Bel put a gloved hand on his shoulder, giving it a light squeeze. “I am glad you’re here. It’s good to have….for her to have you here.”
Roderick’s face bore a mark of pleased confusion and they didn’t pull from Bel’s touch. “You and Octavia….”
“It was a long time ago. I want it again and I know she cares for me, but ….” They trailed off, tongue growing thick in their mouth.
Roderick didn’t press and after a few long seconds they turned back to Octavia’s quiet ritual. “Be ready,” Octavia finally said, beckoning them near. “Your charms might go off. It’s rather old magic.”
The crystal Rowan had given her now sat in a notch on the front door. Roderick had never noticed it before; it was cleverly hidden behind a series of sliding panels. Octavia drew a dagger from her belt and in one swift move, sliced her palm and pressed it to the crystal. Light bloomed from deep within and began to pulse. “We should go inside,” Octavia said softly, eyes firmly glued to the crystal. “No sense in standing out in the rain.”
Bel and Roderick followed her in, closing the heavy front door just as a strange sensation buzzed over the manor. For one long moment, they were bathed in soft green light and Roderick could feel the sting of his charms as they vibrated against his hip. And then the light and the sensation were gone; Octavia opened the door and pointed to the edge of the manor’s grounds. “It’s an arcane net,” she explained. “My great grandfather’s only son was a warlock, one of the last worshippers of Tyun, the old goddess of magical knowledge. I know we don’t put stock in such things now, but the world is rather different than it was hundreds of years ago. But he set up the net as a protection device, something that could keep out the worst. From any realm.”
Octavia closed the door as a gust of wind threatened to rip it from her hand. She turned to them both with sadness in her eyes. “I am so glad you’re both here, and I’m so very sorry you’ve been involved. You must promise me, if things get any worse, you’ll take those who have stayed behind and get them out.”
Her words were quiet but they echoed with conviction in the empty entrance of Wilderwood. All Roderick and Bel could do was nod in agreement. “Thank you,” Octavia replied, her voice tight with emotion. “We all need rest. Patrols are going out in the morning to try to track down the source of ….whatever the hell this is. I hate not finishing this so things can return to normal, but I also know I’m not the Faelands expert here.” Octavia’s gaze landed on Bel. They felt it like an anvil on their chest.
“We should speak,” Bel managed to say, wanting so badly to reach out and take her hand. “All three of us, and Gregory. I told him something earlier and I promised I’d not shy away from such things with you, Octavia.”
Roderick’s eyes narrowed. “Did something happen there, Bel? Is this why?”
Bel nodded. “I think it’s connected. Maybe not to me directly but I’ve been harboring this...suspicion that the Queen used me as a pawn. But now with the feather and the plants in the Montgomery’s garden -“ They stopped and gave Octavia a firm look. “You’re doing the right thing. I know others might think it’s premature but you’re protecting people, the town. The Queen doesn’t do anything without purpose and her desire is for power.”
Something flickered over Octavia’s face. Horrified resolution. “She’s trying to come through.”
Bel nodded. “I suspect so. Like I suspect Luther’s hand in this is as an emissary. And this…” They withdrew another dark black feather from their pocket. “There are creatures like this in the Faelands. It didn’t make sense to think such things were already here but if the refugees knew how to twist their genetics, it tracks that the Queen would as well.”
The weight of their words echoed across Octavia and Roderick’s faces. “Twisting genetics?” Octavia asked, her tone like a boulder. She reached out a hand, ran her index finger down the white end of one of Bel’s braids. “What happened to you there?”
***
Rowan’s dreams were never the silent, pleasant kind. Of the triplets she was the one born under a falling star, mere minutes after her sisters. But fall the star did, and with it came the first prophecy. She dreamt of it for years before finally able to put it down on paper. It instantly flashed into flames, leaving a char mark on their mother’s kitchen table. A table that now sat in their home, Rowan currently leaning on it and rubbing the pad of her thumb over that old scorch in the wood.
She hadn’t been able to sleep and instead had wandered the garden, setting alight anything that even so much as looked like Faeland vegetation. It didn’t matter if it was a weed or a daisy, it went up in flames. She’d always been good with fire.
Rowan sighed and made the move toward the teapot but something in her periphery stopped her. She turned, peering into the dark, and saw it. A black feather glistening with something silvery, like mercury droplets. It was most certainly out of place. Instantly the back of her neck prickled with awareness. Her fingers found a knife on the nearby counter and she gripped it tightly, bringing it to her side. Suspicion flooded her mind, so she pinched the inside of her upper arm to be sure.
Not dreaming.
Well, if something feathered had designs on her, she shouldn’t disappoint it. There were many feathered creatures at the edges of realms, lingering in shadow. But as her fingers touched the feather, she saw ruin. Not a dream of ruin. A vision of it carried on the backs of soldiers that bore strange, glowing armor that looked white. They wore black-red roses in their hair and filed their teeth and nails into points. They looked like fae but more monstrous, lustrous. Like beams of light transfigured and molded into humanoid shape, given breath and life through the figure at the front. Tall, commanding, impossibly beautiful. She towered above her troops, almost floating as the trail of her long white dress led them down the road to Wilderwood.
The Queen was ethereal, beautiful, and horrific. Her eyes were devoid of any color or emotion; two black discs that stared steadily ahead. She wore no crown but her white hair was twisted into a pile that came to a point, and it was sewn with more of those roses. Her dress was made of tattered bandages looped through with chiffon as white as birchbark and every rose on it was a deep red. And every place a rose was stabbed through she bled, leaving droplets on the ground.
They came from the forest, the oldest parts of it, where energies meshed and skittered about, and where magic lived in the ground and bark. Rowan thought she could recognize that place again from the magical energy alone, but as she peered closer, she saw it. A single black-red rose growing amongst snaking vines and dry, brittle underbrush. It had not yet opened but Rowan feared what would happen once it did. She reached for it, stretching toward it with every bit of energy she had, and as her fingers hovered over the petals she was thrown. Forced back, flying through the air. And jolted back into her body, the knife clattering to the cold stone floor and the feather burning in a haze of blue smoke.
Not a dream. A vision.
It had not yet happened but it would soon. The rose wasn’t the answer but it was a sign. That is where the Queen would come through; that very spot was the site of a war yet to happen.
Rowan quickly crossed into the study and dug on the bottom shelf for the latest prophecy. Something nagged at her as she fumbled in the dark for their copy of the paper they’d sent to Octavia.
The door stands open but blocked. They will eat and feed and linger as they scrape the sky with naked fingers. A return signals the shift of the wind. And death will grow in their wake, bare fingers choking life from all they touch.
The door stands open but blocked. The hunger he brings will break through. When the eye of the storm stands before all, follow the wind to where the blood splashes against black bark.
The door stands open and needs to be closed.
Rowan wasn’t one to make guesses but in the moment,
the horror of her sister’s prophecy rang true. Death would grow in their wake - a realm shift was never good for the realm being taken over.
The Queen was coming for them, and Bellemy Eislen was the key.
She fought against the urge to crumple the paper and instead set it aside, then began pulling out the books of records. Wilderwood was once wilderness, the forests far more ancient than the town and farmlands. If she could trace the extinct ley lines and find where they would intersect with the existing ones…. Rowan would have bet all the money she had that the focal point would be where Bel had come back through to their realm.
Hands steadier with a task before her, Rowan put on tea, angled the big builder’s desk, and lit an oil lamp. This was going to be a long night.
Thirteen
Octavia sat opposite Roderick while Bel paced in the study. It was the one room outside her bedroom Octavia had designated as off limits to those staying at Wilderwood. That had been on Gregory’s suggestion and it was a good one, even as loath as she was to deny the denizens of town access to anything.
Bel was also drinking, something Octavia saw them do only a handful of times over their year together, and typically only at parties or special occasions. They were toying with the end of one white-striped braid, glass of port in the other hand as they paced. They’d been explaining Ellisar’s experiments, how he tried to save his people with dangerous methods and the more Bel talked, the lower Octavia’s stomach dropped.
Roderick was studying Bel closely but his posture was relaxed; leaning back in a wingback chair, one ankle crossed to his knee, slowly sipping bourbon. But those eyes were alert, his mouth poised in a small frown that Octavia didn’t think was a sign of disapproval or worry.
“I told you I met the Queen once, Octavia,” Bel said, voice raspy, tight. “That was not by choice. We’d crossed into a part of the forest we thought safe but she was suddenly there. We were surrounded by her guards, all of them wearing bright white armor.” They looked away and shivered. “The armor looks like scales but it’s actually bone and teeth from gods knows what monsters that live in that realm. Things I can’t give name to even now.”
Their steps took them past the couch on which Octavia sat, but at the far end - away from her. Their next words were spoken away from the other two. “She said we’d crossed into her realm and by law she could do as she pleased. Next thing I knew, she was in front of me. Horrifying, beautiful. I couldn’t think. The stench of death hovers about her but it’s covered up by those damn bleeding roses. She overwhelms you. She’s completely alien and yet something about those eyes….”
Bel shuddered again, straightened, then turned back to Octavia and Roderick. “Ellisar was convinced she let us go because she wanted to play some kind of long game. I think she simply wanted to see what we’d do, if we’d become desperate. We were playthings for her and her black-eyed soldiers. Puppets to amuse her. But in the moment she stared through me I heard her. ‘You’re different. Unique. An oddity in my realm. Stuck between two worlds and belonging to neither. Maybe you can be my door.’”
Bel reached out to Octavia, a mask of grief settling over their face. “I’m so sorry, my love. I did what I had to in order to get back. I took Ellisar’s experimental potion and it changed me. A little faster, a little stronger, steadier hands.” They met Octavia’s eyes. “I know you could taste it. I didn’t know how to approach it. I’m sorry, I should have…” They sucked in a deep breath, let it out. “And now I realize that I brought this trouble to the people here. This is another part of her game and yet I can’t see my role in it.”
Octavia took their hand, squeezed it in hers. “You’ve nothing to apologize for.” She couldn’t say what was running through her mind; giving voice to it felt too close to her heart and she didn’t trust the stresses of the day to let her rest if she spoke aloud the relief and guilt roiling in her gut. She wanted to soothe Bel’s pain with her touch but they had an audience. Maybe he wouldn’t have minded.
Instead, she stood, circled the couch, and pulled out the thin lead box where the prophecy was stored. She opened it for Bel, who scanned the page quickly. “The first part is correct, then,” she said quietly, casting a glance over at Roderick, who was getting to his feet to take a look. “We used to call deathtwig ‘death fingers’ because it looks like charred, skeletal hands when it first grows. It’s an invasive species from the Faelands, which is why Rowan was so worried when it popped up in their garden. It usually only grows along ley lines and the sisters built their home far away from the lines.”
Bel’s frown grew. “Of which we have many near here. Both ancient and active.”
Now Roderick spoke, his gravel tone echoing, filling the space. “Bel, do you think you can find where you came back through? The spot in the woods precisely.”
Bel’s face showed hesitance. “Those minutes are jumbled in my memory. If I focus on that feeling right before I came back through the portal, I can somewhat see a shape before me. But I mostly remember a feeling, like a wave of cold washed over me as if someone had dunked me in the river.” They blinked, gaze lost to some unseen horizon. “And then I was here and the wolves were chasing me. I think they came through the portal with me. I only remember hearing them snarling and then running toward town.”
Octavia saw the unspoken in their eyes. To safety. To you.
“Tomas caught wind of you within a few miles of the barrier,” Octavia said, hovering near Bel but not touching them. “He tried to trace your scent back later that night but said it got lost.”
“Lost?” Roderick cocked his head at her, already walking over to the large area map on one wall.
Octavia nodded. “Specifically he said the scent died but also smelled like bad eggs. Which he knew wasn’t Bel.” She smiled at Bel as if to apologize. “Gregory had to translate a little for me. Weres are sensitive to sulfuric and antiseptic scents, and since sulfur smells like eggs…”
Roderick nodded and pointed at the map. “These are the active ley lines? Who would have a map of the extinct ones?”
Bel cleared their throat and came to stand by them at the map. “This area was only partially recorded before the Spires War, so the map in the library is about thirty percent complete, at best. As far as I know some of the universities have dedicated scholars to extrapolating best guesses but that’s all we would get.”
“So, a dead end.” He sighed, brow furrowed as he studied the map more closely. “Would the sisters have a way of detecting any portal magic?”
“Potentially but I’m skeptical of what could be left out there,” Bel countered.
“You said Luther left no trace when he disappeared but eventually you were able to track him down.” Octavia’s words came slower as she spoke aloud her thoughts. “Maybe if whatever was shielding him slowly wore out and he had to reappear, start making a trail again.”
The impact of her words hit Roderick like a slap. He stumbled back, braced himself on the nearby desk chair. “It makes sense. There’s no evidence of this but….”
He stared hard at them both. “If Luther’s helping the Queen in some way, he could have been doing her work for years. However they got in contact, he somehow got put in her path. She gave him magic or a, a power or an ability to suddenly disappear. But if it’s granted from the Faelands, eventually our realm wouldn’t sustain the magic and he’d start creating a trail again. It explains why he’d go missing when Yasmin and I went after him and it explains why his trail stopped near Wilderwood.”
Octavia watched him slump over, sadness stealing across his face. She crossed to him, a long-fingered, gloved hand on the spot between his shoulder blades. “I’m so sorry, Roderick. I know you carry guilt over Yasmin’s death and yet if this is even remotely true, it can absolve you of that. If you’ll let it.”
She wasn’t sure what startled him more, her words or her freely given touch. Roderick’s expression softened, his eyes going dark at her nearness. “Thank you.” His gaze caught on her li
ps and for the briefest moment, Octavia would have sworn he was going to kiss her. The implication of such a thought made her swallow hard. “And maybe once this is over I can finally let Yasmin go.”
They broke apart but Octavia could feel the energy in the room. It crackled like Bel’s magic, setting her hair on end and snaking a shiver down her spine. Another brief moment flashed before her, one showing her leaning against Bel while Roderick came to her. Both of them towering over her and yet fully aware of her strength, her speed.
When she blinked she realized Bel was staring at her, a little smile on their lips. But they did lean into Octavia when she moved to stand beside them; her silent offer of support as Roderick penned a message to the Rangers. Once done, he crossed to the window and pushed it open. The quiet melody of metal and glass clinking filled the room and a moment later Roderick was holding a flat disc of pewter out the window. Wings - several dozen pairs - could be heard overhead and Octavia watched as a jet-black raven, bright eyes beady but lustrous, landed on the windowsill.
Roderick began murmuring something to the bird as he tied the message to its leg. Octavia focused and caught the tail end of his sentences. “Be well, my forest friend and let none stand in your path. May the winds guide you.”
Wilderwood Page 13