After a long silence, during which Trystay couldn’t tell if the man was thinking or simply staring down at his hands in his lap in hopes that some solution would magically manifest itself, Aelfric finally offered a meek nod. “Fine.”
“As you are drawing up orders for your men, you will also draw a clear decree summarizing Lorelei’s crimes. She is to be returned to Rivenn, unharmed, so she can face charges of treason against her king.”
“Yes,” Aelfric agreed. “Of course.”
“Are we in agreement on all matters presented?”
“Yes,” the king sighed, still refusing to lift his defeated head. “We have an agreement.”
“Excellent.” Trystay clapped his hands together in a triumphant gesture, the dry sound ringing through the quiet room. “I will dispatch the search party at once and bring your daughter back to you, Your Majesty, and when she is returned you will make formal announcement that we are to be wed.”
“As you wish.”
There was a lightness to Trystay’s step as he spun around and marched from the room, his guard and his stoic, Ninvarii sorceress falling in behind him and closing King Aelfric inside like a prisoner. They did not need to bar the door, his grief alone was enough to prohibit him from doing something foolish, and Trystay knew it.
Power.
It was a delicious thing, he thought, and for the first time in his life he knew his father would be proud of him for taking that which he wanted by manipulation, rather than force.
Soon he would hold enough power to rival his own father, not that lording over his father was part of his plan, but who knew, perhaps one day that was exactly what he’d do. The only way to prove oneself a man was to be the last one standing, even if the corpse he towered over was the corpse of his father.
In the meanwhile, it pleased him a great deal to imagine his father would praise his ingenuity and effort as well, saving a situation gone horribly wrong before it spun out of his hands entirely. He bettered the terms of their original agreement in ways they never imagined when he sent his son forth to Leithe.
Deallora followed him into his chambers, closing the doors behind her to provide them privacy from his men on the other side.
“Plotting vengeance against the U’lfer is not wise, Highness. My goddess…”
“Your goddess has done nothing for me, Dea.”
“She does all for you, Highness. She has shown me your path to greatness, and if you go after the U’lfer, if you pursue Lorelei…”
“You’re still jealous of her.” Trystay narrowed suspicious and taunting gaze over his sorceress, his lover, searching for the barest hint of animosity in her features.
“I am not jealous of her,” she insisted, though he sensed annoyance in her tone at the suggestion. “What is she to me? A threat? I already have you, Highness.”
Trystay surged forward so quickly the wrapping of his fingers around her throat caught the sorceress off-guard, but when he squeezed she made every effort not to show pain or surprise.
“You don’t have me,” he hissed. Three steps forward and he threw her back into the door with a rattling thud. He surged inward until the tip of his nose touched hers. Her proud, golden eyes did not widen, her body did not flinch, but remained stiff and indifferent to his abuse. “I have you. I own you, and don’t you ever forget it.”
He watched as her nostrils flared, her full, coral-traced lips twitching beneath her nose until the edges rose into defiant grin. “Ninvariin owns me.” She tilted her head, a thoughtful inspection as her cold eyes darted across his face. “I am on loan from Her, and don’t you ever forget it.”
And then she kissed him, the prince moaning softly in his throat as she shoved him backward through the room until he felt the mattress edge the backs of his knees. Taking a step away from him, Deallora brought up her hand in a fluid gesture, a surge of pale blue light dancing across the tips of her fingers before it passed between them with a playful force that sprawled him onto his back in the bed behind him.
She lingered at the edge of the bed, magic’s pale essence still flickering across the palm of her hand. “You must heed Her wisdom, Highness.” Lifting one knee onto the bed, she passed the other across the tops of his thighs and lowered herself onto his lap. “Everything is changing. There are events in the offing you cannot even begin to understand.”
The sorceress leaned forward, resting her hand on his shoulder as she descended until they were face to face. Even through the leather of his armor, he could feel her magic, the electric tingle of it invoking a series of delightful chills that raised the hairs on his arms, along the back of his neck. The energy trickled down his spine, but he did not shiver. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.
“Going after the U’lfer will not serve you,” she went on. “In time they will come to you. Lorelei herself will march into this castle and demand you give her back her sister.”
“I wait for no one.” He lifted his hands to her shoulders, fingertips squeezing so hard her olive skin would boast tiny, circular bruises later where his fingers pushed into her. “I send Aelfric’s men south to finish a job he should have finished long ago. The U’lfer will burn, Dea. Every last one of them.”
He surged upward, shifting her onto her back in a bold, deft maneuver and then rolling in to perch above her like a predator. Her long, exotic eyes did not waver from his face, the molten gold irises flashing with defiance. “It is a mistake, Your Highness. Let me show you what I’ve seen.”
“The only thing I want you to show me now is a little love.” He dipped his head inward, brushed lips across her chin. “Show your prince a little kindness in a world that’s been so very, very cruel to him.”
When she opened her mouth to speak again, Trystay silenced her with kisses, her protests eventually lost in a mingling of gasps and sighs. By the time he’d finished with her, she protested no more, having remembered her rightful place beneath him.
CHAPTER ONE
It was still dark when she gasped awake. The aches in her body, mingled with the grogginess of her mind, made it hard to remember where she was. On instinct she reached into the space beside her for comfort from her sister. Her fingertips brushed the cold, wooden panels of the wall, and with uncertainty she turned head over shoulder to search the empty room around her.
Lorelei sat up, blinking the sleep from her eyes before lifting balled fists to rub it away. She was in the spare bedroom of her brother’s house, she remembered, sleeping alone on the long night before she was meant to embark on a journey the gods planned for her before she’d ever been born.
The weight of it pressed down hard on her shoulders until no amount of stretching her arms and back alleviated its pressures. She supposed she’d have to get used to that feeling.
She turned her legs over the edge of the bed, inching them toward the floor until the smooth boards touched her bare toes. Feeling around with her feet, she found her boots, leaned over to grab them and then brought them into her lap. For a long time she just sat there holding them, not entirely sure if she wanted to put them on or lie down again and try to go back to sleep.
Judging from the exhaustion in her body she hadn’t slept for long, but that could have been the journey finally catching up to her. She only knew she was tired; she wanted to go back to the warm place she’d been only moments before in her dreams, but the memory escaped her no matter how much she grasped at it. She’d been dreaming of her mother and father—her real father, Rognar, but beyond that she couldn’t guess. It was a happy dream, she knew that too, and she wanted desperately to return to that blissful place again.
Outside the door the floorboards creaked, footsteps taking extra precaution for silence but failing miserably, and for a moment she wondered if it was Finn come to tell her he couldn’t sleep without her after all. Maybe there was time enough to invite him back into the room, to find that cramped but comfortable position their bodies worked so desperately to achieve the night before and sleep a few more hours
, but when no knock came she realized it probably never would.
He wanted her to come to him.
Wriggling into her boots, she made quietly for the door, opened it and peered down the darkened hallway. Finn was not there, but a low-burning light lingered just beyond the hall in the main room where the family took their meals. There was definitely someone out there, she could hear the body shuffling around, and then it occurred to her perhaps it was Brendolowyn. Her brother mentioned sometimes the mage slept in their home when he wasn’t too preoccupied with his work at the lyceum, but Finn and Lorelei were given his room.
Not that she needed the added confusion of her strange feelings for the mage at the moment, but if they were going to be traveling together she might do something to set them aside. Taking a deep breath, she stepped into the hallway and followed the light of that lantern into the spacious main room. Only it wasn’t Finn or Brendolowyn shuffling around the kitchens. It was her brother. He hadn’t heard her coming at first and he startled a little when her weight came down on a particularly noisy floorboard.
Logren spun around, a bottle in one hand, a mug in the other. He gasped to see her standing just a few feet away from him.
“Llorveth’s horns, girl!” he cursed. “You damn near scared the wits out of me.”
“Sorry,” she shrugged, turning a sheepish gaze to the dark floor beneath her. “I heard someone out here and thought maybe it was Finn.”
Or Brendolowyn, she thought, still staring at the floor.
“Only me, I’m afraid,” he chuckled in a gruff whisper. “Did the two of you have a falling out?”
“No,” shaking her head, she finally brought her eyes up and let them adjust to the low light of the room. “Nothing like that. He just…” She wasn’t exactly sure what Finn was trying to accomplish, putting up a wall between them as he’d done. “I don’t know, he just didn’t think it was a good idea to sleep in the same room, things being as they are.”
“And how are things?” Logren cocked his brow, the left shooting slightly higher than the right and the skin above them both wrinkling with curiosity. “Between the two of you, I mean.”
“Complicated,” she shrugged.
“Aye,” he nodded agreement. “They always are, aren’t they?”
“I don’t know. I guess.” Her shoulders were still hitched close to her ears, a certain tightness building in the muscles as she held them there. “I don’t exactly have a lot of experience in that area, not really.”
“No,” he nodded. “I suppose you don’t.”
Turning back toward the counter behind him, he grabbed another mug and set them both on the table. Lifting his leg across the bench, he sat down and gestured for her to take the seat across from him.
“Have a seat and drink with me, little sister. We haven’t had much time. We can talk a while before it’s time to say our goodbyes.”
She had no idea what time it was, or how many hours were left before sunup, but tired as she was, she knew she wouldn’t sleep if she went back to her room and lay alone in the dark until someone told her it was time to go. She took tentative steps toward the table, edged onto the bench he’d gestured to and watched him pour pale amber liquid into two mugs. He pushed the one with less in it toward her and she reached for it, curling her fingers around the wooden drinking vessel to draw it closer.
“I had a dream about our father,” she said after a long silence, and then as if it would keep him from asking her to elaborate, she lifted her mug to her lips and took a slow sip of the bitter brew.
Logren didn’t ask for details, only stared at her from where he sat, his thick eyebrows knitted together in curiosity. The man in her dream looked so much like the one in front of her she thought maybe she hadn’t dreamed about their father at all; maybe it was only wishful thinking as she reached into the great unknown for some connection to the man who loved her mother once before he died.
“I don’t remember much about it, just that it was about him,” after a moment’s pause she added, “and my mother. He looked like you,” she added as an afterthought. “Only different.”
A soft breath of laughter escaped her half-brother and he relaxed the muscles of his face. Taking a drink, he swallowed loudly, gulping several mouthfuls down before lowering the cup to the tabletop and clunking it down upon the wood.
“A lot of people say that,” he told her, “that I look like him, only different. Hodon says I’m the spitting image, and sometimes I try to see it for myself when I look into the glass and study my own reflection there, but try as I might I can no longer remember what he looked like.” His amusement was replaced with lament, and he tilted the cup to his lips again. “Except now,” he went on after taking a drink. “Sometimes when I look at you I catch glimpses and I remember. It’s your eyes,” he decided. “They’re just the way his were.”
“You and I have the same eyes,” she pointed out.
“Do we?”
“I think we do.” In fact, she’d never known anyone with eyes quite like hers, except Rhiorna, but even the color of Rhiorna’s eyes was different, more citrine than amber.
“The same color, maybe,” he nodded, “but yours are shaped the way his were. I have my mother’s eyes. His nose though,” he chuckled and lifted a hand to draw it down the length. “Praise be to all the gods you weren’t cursed with this monstrosity.”
Lorelei reached self-consciously toward her nose, fingertip tracing its length before they dipped slightly upward at the tip and dropped off. She lowered her hand into her lap again and took another drink of the warm, sour-tasting ale in her cup.
“Are we all that’s left of him? I overheard Vilnjar say there are probably dozens like us out there. That our father had quite the uh… reputation.”
“Vilnjar thinks he knows everything there is to know about everything,” he harrumphed. “I can assure you it’s only you and me,” he said. “We are all Rognar left behind in this world, that and a lifetime of grief for all who ever loved him. If there were others, I’d have learned of them by now. Nearly all that remains of our people are here in Dunvarak. There are a handful of wanderers, the restless few who’ve no desire to come here, but none of those wanderers are Rognar’s children. You and me, we are his legacy.”
“I don’t know why, but I am relieved by that.”
“As am I,” he agreed, and they tilted cups together before taking a mutual drink.
“You named Roggi for him?”
“Aye, I did.”
“You loved him a great deal.” It wasn’t a question, not even an observation really. She didn’t know why she even said it, but she felt it with every part of herself so deeply it was almost painful.
“More than everything. You would have too,” he said with grave certainty. “It was impossible not to love him, and not just because he was my father, Lorelei. He was a good man, a strong wolf. The kind of leader men laid down to die for.”
“And the things he fought for?”
“He fought for you,” he told her, “for you and me, for our mothers, the men who stood beside him and their families. All he ever wanted was a place we could all call home.”
“Well,” she started, “I suppose in the end he got exactly what he wanted, just not the way he wanted it.”
He didn’t get to call the Edgelands home, or Dunvarak, and his family endured without him. How different might her life have been growing up with Rognar? Seeing her mother happy and alive? Knowing her brother long before he was old enough to start a family of his own? There would be no Mirien. The thought alone was devastating.
“I suppose he did,” but there was a bitter hint in his voice that made her feel bad for saying what she did. For a long time they were both silent, and she watched her brother fill his cup again and take long swallows of liquid that only served to add bitterness to his heart.
She couldn’t imagine his pain, didn’t want to even try. It was hard enough just knowing their father was a great warlord, loved and respec
ted by nearly all who knew him. Even after the end of the War of Silence, there were men and women in Dunvarak who thought Rognar was a great hero.
Expectations for the children of such a hero would be high, perhaps higher than either of them would ever be able to live up to. Gods, the things the people of Dunvarak believed she was going to do were outrageous, and even though Yovenna saw them take place in that strange way seers are granted visions, Lorelei still didn’t know if she could live up to their expectations. Perhaps it might have been easier if he left behind other children; they could more fairly distribute the burden, but as it stood there was no one else. Not even her brother had a part to play in the grandest of her tasks. That made her sad.
Somewhere back the hallway she heard floorboards creak and groan and her head turned toward the dark passage in expectation. Surely their voices were heard and at any moment someone would come to invade that rare moment brother and sister grabbed together. It was the first time the two of them were really alone since he and his men came to their rescue in the Edgelands.
There was so much she wanted to say to him, so many things she wanted to ask, but several minutes passed before she found her voice again.
“The story you told,” she began, remembering in the silence that followed the details of a tale shared around the fire as they traveled to Dunvarak. He said she saved him, that somehow beyond all reason she reached out to him from the great beyond before she was even born and pulled him from the fires that took his mother’s life. “You said I reached out to you through the flames? How can you be sure it was me who saved you, Logren? I mean, I wasn’t even born yet… How could it have been me?”
The only explanation she had to make sense of the events, of the fact that the people of Dunvarak believed she’d somehow saved them all, came through the words of a seer who told her she was meant to battle some serpent the creator of all things set upon the world to keep time itself from moving forward. She wanted to believe the things Yovenna said to her; as outlandish as the words were, they made sense of events that seemed otherwise senseless. But try as she might to come to terms with the fact that she was meant to battle a time serpent, she just couldn’t.
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