Sorrow's Peak (Serpent of Time Book 2)

by Jennifer Melzer

  Not yet, anyway.

  While Logren chose his words with careful precision, Lorelei hid behind the rim of her mug, waiting, watching over the curve and breathing in the heady aroma of the ale sloshing at the bottom of the cup. It had a faint citrus smell and a bitter flavor she could still taste in her mouth even though she hadn’t actually taken another sip since she’d raised it to her lips.

  “I didn’t know at the time it was you.” An uneasy laugh scuffed through his tight throat. “It wasn’t until much later I learned it was my own sister who saved my life.”

  “But how?”

  “How did I know it was you?” Shaking his head, the dark auburn waves of his hair whispered against the fabric of his shirt, the braids falling inward to dance along his cheek. “There were artists here who recaptured your image, for one thing. Some of those you saved saw you in greater detail than I, and others still say you spoke to them, you even told them your name.”

  Lorelei still wasn’t convinced. The greatest part of her wanted to believe she’d saved the people of Dunvarak, that in some way she’d found the power to reach out from beyond the limits of time itself to pull them from death’s grip. She just couldn’t wrap her head around it, no matter how she tried.

  “I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but alcohol loosens my tongue and dulls my wits,” he started after giving her a long pause to think his words through. “Bren’s experience with you was the most vivid of them all. Maybe you should ask him about the day the Light of Madra saved him.”

  “Brendolowyn?”

  “He was not even on this continent when you held your hand out to spirit him away from death.” Sloshing the ale in his mug, he slugged what remained in his cup in two loud swallows before lowering it with a thunk to the table and reaching for the bottle again. “It is not my place to tell you of his experience…”

  “Then you should not have brought it up.” That fine line she walked with her half-brother since the day they met had been crossed again, and though she wanted to retreat and hide, it was too late. She cared for him too much, for his family and for the memories of the man they shared as father to back away now. “Why do you do that to me, Logren? Reel me in like a fisherman, hold me by the line then cast me back to sea without any answers at all?”

  “I don’t mean to.” Lowering his head like a scolded child, he reminded her so much of Roggi it was impossible to stay angry with him. “I don’t like having to tiptoe around you, guarding everything I say, stifling my own words for fear of giving you something that isn’t mine to give. But his experience is not mine to share with you, little sister. I can only tell you it was his words, his time with the Light of Madra which convinced me of the outlandish claims our seer made over the years. If there was ever a doubt in my mind you were our saving grace, I only had to think of Bren to believe again.”

  Without acknowledging the bitter taste or the dizziness that would follow if she drank too much too quickly, Lorelei tossed the contents of her cup into her mouth and swallowed hard. Its acidity burned in her throat, hit her stomach fast and hard, immediately spreading warmth to every part of her body in an uneven and disconcerting fashion. She pushed the cup back toward her brother and with a single forward nod of her head gestured for him to fill it again.

  Logren hesitated, fingers curled around the bottle’s neck as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to part with the precious liquid within. Then he tilted it into her cup and filled it to just below the rim before emptying the rest of the bottle into his own mug.

  Come morning she would hate herself for it. She didn’t have a lot of experience when it came to drinking, but the memory of a night in the wine stores with her sister, sneaking drinks and giggling until their heads swam and they could barely hold their bodies upright brought with it recollection of the morning after. Her head would ache and her stomach would feel sick. Her body would be so exhausted she wouldn’t remember how to move it, but how else was one supposed to go into a task so daunting, so senseless, inexplicable and terrifying, if not with a head distracted by the taint of alcohol.

  Tipping her cup toward her brother once more, he didn’t hesitate, but touched his rim to hers in a toast that didn’t need to be spoken, and then they drank into the wee hours of the morning.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Sleep eluded the mage. It never came when he willed it; it rarely, if ever, had, but Brendolowyn felt the exhaustion of its absence so deep in his bones it all but became a part of him.

  Nigh on a month since he’d last gotten a proper night’s rest, and even then it was less than a full, uninterrupted five hours. Both his mind and body forgot what sleep could do for it, his desire for it decreasing exponentially as it became little more than a distant and distracting memory nagging at the back of his mind. As long as he could remember, sleep ran and he gave chase, but the ritual became increasingly worse as the days until her coming passed away.

  Her actual presence in his life made it intolerable, and on the few rare occasions they were briefly alone together he hadn’t known how to behave without feeling like an absolute fool once she was gone again.

  Anxiety. It was a troublesome distraction, and yet each minute ticking him closer to the task at hand only increased the frequency with which it reared its ugly head to provoke him. He must endure the things ahead, and he had to do it without allowing his irrational emotions to get in the way once again.

  Thoughts of her were like a plague inside his mind. Bitter jealousy he shouldn’t even feel gripped him so tight it nearly suffocated him, and he had no such cause to be envious. Jealousy itself was an uncommon emotion for an elf, and yet the curse of his father’s blood stirred it in his veins.

  She displayed no interest in him, save for polite curiosity and potential friendship, and yet seeing her with the insufferable U’lfer made his blood boil every single time. Watching her spin onto the wooden dance floor and whirl delighted in the arms of her potential mate should have brought joy to all who looked upon them. Hearing her laugh, seeing her smile when Finn drew her body close to his was a beautiful thing, and then the U’lfer cast an almost smug look across the room at Brendolowyn before turning her away and hiding her from view.

  It infuriated him, stirring such irrational emotion inside him he barely knew how to contain it. Stalking out of the feast, he’d spent hours walking the quiet streets of Dunvarak while Hrafn circled overhead.

  Feeling the way he did should have been well beneath him. After all, he barely knew the young woman who bore an incredible likeness to his light and savior. They may very well have been one in the same on some level, but she was not the Light of Madra, not yet. She was a frightened girl, inexperienced with life and unwittingly in love with an arrogant beast the gods saw fit to tie some part of her soul to.

  He knew her face from memories of things which had not yet happened and were never meant to, and because of that familiarity, on account of those unmade memories some part of him felt entitled to her. He felt as though it should be his right to the make those memories that could never be.

  Knowing they could not be his made him feel like he was suffocating, the bitter jealousy he shouldn’t even feel gripping him so tight at times it was like he was drowning.

  It had been seen. Her future with Finn was already written in the annals of time, but somehow Brendolowyn managed to rewrite it in his favor. He shoved the U’lfer out of the picture entirely, breaking the pattern of the pre-written cycle and living out the rest of his days as her chosen mate.

  Denial of her happiness was wrong, and he would not do it, but the very sight of her with Finn made his stomach ache. It tested the bond he knew he felt with her in another life and time, a bond she had no idea they shared. Only two others knew of what he might have shared with Lorelei, of the life they could have together if he allowed weakness of heart to interfere with what he knew must be done. And not just for the sake of her happiness, but because her unhappiness and incompletion drained her of the strength she need
ed to do what must be done.

  In the cloud-laden sky above him, Hrafn tilted toward the lyceum tower. His black shadow passed across the dwindling swell of Kierda’s red body. The blood hue of her light stained the city and the heaviness of her pull on his soul made the half-elf feel restless and uncomfortable. It was always so when one of the moons was near full, but his restlessness was more affected by what came with the dawn.

  Departure from the only place he’d ever really felt at home, a journey that would take its toll on body, mind and soul as he trekked endless miles with a woman he could never have and the man who did not deserve her.

  “Who are you to judge his worth?” Yovenna’s voice echoed in the back of his mind, physically unspoken but shaming, nonetheless. “Who are you to come between them?” She was gone, her words only a memory to haunt him, but they did not lose their power with her death. “It is not your place to interfere with what was written before you shattered it.”

  It was a petty emotion, jealousy, one unworthy of his noble heart, and yet he felt it more strongly than he ever felt anything in his life. The threads of a future already written did not lie. They were meant for one another. Time and circumstance forced them together and the ferocity of the love between them could not be denied, but the cost of that love was paid in blood lifetime after lifetime after lifetime.

  “You would be no better than Foreln, stabbing a brother in the back for your own gain.” The seeress’s words were harsh, but true.

  Instead of conceding to her wisdom, as he knew it was the right thing to do, he bitterly muttered, “The U’lfer is not my brother.”

  Not brother, but bitter rival. An enemy who put his own life on the line the night the troll attacked their camp on the road to Dunvarak. Finn threw himself in the troll’s path to save Brendolowyn, even though his dislike for the mage was more than mutual. He had not just been raising a barrier that night, but silently competing and trying to impress her with the skills he possessed.

  His mother used to say, “It is love that brings out the fool in us all,” and never had her wisdom been more obvious in his life. He’d felt like an idiot, even more so when Logren drew him aside to chastise him for mucking up a task he’d performed hundreds, if not thousands, of times with ease in the past.

  “I cannot help myself when she is near me. She is all I think about, all I’ve thought about these years, and now she is here. I can’t stop looking at her, thinking of her…”

  “You cannot allow your feelings for her to get in the way of your tasks,” the brother of his blood reminded him. “If you let her cloud your judgment you will get yourself killed, or worse, you’ll get her killed. I would have you both come back to me when all is said and done. Preferably all three of you so she might live out the rest of her days as she was meant to—as Finn’s mate.”

  He avoided Logren’s hard eyes when he hissed that warning and reminder. They may have taken the blood oath together, spent years watching one another’s backs and swearing to put each other’s lives before their own under any circumstance, but when it came to the Light of Madra Logren’s faith in the seer’s wisdom was unshakable. He believed, as Yovenna did, Lorelei was meant to be with Finn; their very future depended on the joining of her soul with the wolf the gods chose as her mate.

  Brendolowyn knew somewhere deep down inside they were right, but it didn’t make it any less painful. It didn’t stifle the way he felt about her, even if those feelings were unnatural and wrong.

  What was expected of him could very well get him killed, and then who would protect her? The U’lfer? He didn’t think so.

  He kicked at a pebble, the small stone skittering across the cobbled street and ricocheting off the old woman’s porch. It was the closeness of her dwelling that made her voice so clear in his mind, the long nights he spent in her company over the years arguing against the cruelty of his task, even though a part of him knew his repeated actions in another life cycle were wrong. It was not up to him to force the hand of fate simply to satiate the unquenched longing of a heart denied.

  For years, while he waited for the Light of Madra to come, he told himself he would not feel such deep rapport in her company. He would stand aside and do the right thing in this life, the thing he was not able to do before. He contented his mind with the thought that simply being near her would be enough to satisfy the yearning of his soul, but the moment he’d first looked into her eyes he knew he was wrong. If anything, being close to her only made the longing more intense and the scorn of his rival real.

  The dormant wolf tangled with his elven soul knew she was mate-bound; it was the gravest of slights to pursue the mate of another wolf, but the elf did not care. Such things should have been beyond his feeling, or so the beast he’d never embraced liked to tell him. There was a possibility his own soul’s mate was still out there somewhere, and perhaps one day he would find her, but there was an equal measure of Alvarii blood in his veins, and with Alvarii blood came the romantic notion love was a beauty to be endured and chosen by two separate souls, not forced upon a single broken and divided spirit.

  He loved her almost as long as he could remember, the distant memories of his life before he came to the frozen shores of Rimian displaced and forgotten the moment she held her hand to him and spirited him away from death. Before he’d ever seen her face, he’d felt her heart. She was the blessed light who saved him from the folly of his own youth, her bright hand reaching into the darkness of his most trying hour and drawing him out of time to spare him from certain death.

  An idea only, a voice with no form, the embodiment of a goddess’s love and compassion who would feel for him in her own way, but never embrace him as her lover so long as her mate lived. She was the memory of another existence he was never supposed to endure, and he was set with the task of changing that existence, preventing it from ever happening.

  It wasn’t right.

  He was too old to stamp his feet like a child and call life unfair, but it did not stop him from feeling so within.

  “It cannot be, Brendolowyn.” Yovenna’s final warning still lingered in the back of his mind, spoken just hours, perhaps even only mere moments before she took her last breath. “Not this time. Not ever again.” As long as he knew the old woman she had been warning him, telling him not to follow where his heart led because the road was paved with darkness that would corrupt more than just his soul.

  His love would condemn them all if he refused to deny it.

  “Why? What if she were to choose.”

  He already knew the answer, and he wanted to do the right thing, but the moment he met her for the first time he felt like he was being cheated. So young, so filled with life and potential. She would save their world, so long as he let her follow her true path. She would mend broken time. Completely unaware of her own power, her own destiny, her innocence touched his soul in ways that made it shudder blissfully inside his body.

  “If she is meant to be mine, then I should have her.”

  “She is not meant to be yours, and she never was.”

  “But she feels the connection between us. She knows her heart. She came to me this night,” he’d told her. “I knew she was there long before I ever looked up and saw her, could feel her lingering near the bookshelves just watching me, listening to her heart as it beat for me.”

  “You are not this arrogant,” Yovenna sighed. “It is not who you are, Brendolowyn.”

  “It is who I am, obviously, or I would not say such things. She feels the bond, knows it is there. I have tried to put distance between us, but whenever I look into her eyes I know she can feel what I feel. Her heart…”

  “Her heart is young,” Yovenna said. “It has yet to comprehend the role it will play, how imperative it is she listen when it speaks and allows it to guide her on the right path. A path you must accept.”

  “Why should she deny what is meant to be, what has been time and time and time again?”

  “Why do you not see? It is you who a
re the mistake.” The old woman coughed into her shoulder, the words mangled in the choke of phlegm flooding her throat, but clear enough he understood them. “She does not belong to you, and yet lifetime after lifetime your selfishness clouds your judgment and you take her for your own. Would you not see an end to this cycle?”

  “Yes, Yovenna, but…”

  “If you would truly see it end, then there can be no buts, Brendolowyn.” She held up her hand to stop his protests, her milky eyes glassy in the light of the hearth between them. “When the time comes, you must set aside your feelings, deny your selfish impulse and save him, or it will all begin again. The endless cycle of discontent must be stopped. Heidr must see we have all grown, that one brother would not turn his back, but hold out his hand before the other falls and spare him so he might live out the life you would steal from him.”

  “The U’lfer is not my brother.”

  “We are all Llorveth’s children, my dear boy. Brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers. Our lives sprang from his seed and we are all connected. Accept that, or you will doom us all to repeating this cycle again. You will suffer this endlessly.” Her disgruntled sigh yielded to another round of wet, angry coughs that would be her undoing before the sun rose.

  “But did Llorveth not take Madra in the end? Did he not win her from Foreln? He set his own mate aside for Madra. If all you say is true, then why is my path no different than our creator’s?”

  “Already I have said too much, I fear, but Llorveth has allowed me to linger this long because he would have me appeal to you, his son, one last time. Finn has his purpose, just as you have yours. Hold your hand out when the time comes, draw him from the edge of death and set this world back on its path.”