Sorrow's Peak (Serpent of Time Book 2)

by Jennifer Melzer

  He’d confided in her while they sat by the fire two nights earlier, telling her just how difficult it was becoming for him to hold back the beast that wanted desperately to tear through his skin. He was used to running and hunting with his sister, Ruwena, embracing the beast to keep it sated so it didn’t overrun him, but it more than a week passed since he’d transformed and the wolf was itchy and restless beneath his skin. He didn’t have to say it again, but she knew her nearness was part of the problem; its want for her was driving the beast to madness.

  She felt the beast, saw it always lingering and visible in the depths of his pale eyes if she stared too long. It seemed especially riled when the trolls came out at night to stomp and rage beyond Bren’s barrier, even more so when she was curled up beneath the blanket with him by the fire, resting her head against his arm. A part of her felt reassured in knowing even if the trolls did manage to break through the barrier, the wolf would tear them to pieces before they ever came near her, but his denial of its release made him short-tempered and impatient and at times she was actually a little afraid of him.

  She didn’t tell him as much. Part of her worried it would break his heart to know she was scared of him.

  He snapped intolerably at Brendolowyn every chance he got, and sometimes ignored her entirely when she tried to make pleasant conversation with him. The happy-go-lucky young man she grew fonder of each day slipped further and further away from the surface, and it would only be a matter of time before he was gone entirely if he did not allow the beast inside him to run and hunt.

  Was that how the entire village of Drekne was all the time? Lingering at the edge of madness because they denied their beasts in accordance with the Edgelands Proclamation King Aelfric imposed upon them at the end of the War of Silence? Vilnjar didn’t seem crazy when she first met him, a little stiff and edgy, but Rhiorna was another story entirely, and the Council of the Nine… Thinking about the one called Cobin still gave her the shivers.

  Finn’s hand lingered on her arm, grip softening as she withdrew and took unsteady steps across the ice to survey the place Brendolowyn was scanning to make camp. She drew both of their horses with her, some part of her foolishly hoping if she did slip and fall, she could grab onto one of them to pull herself back up. Shameful, she knew, but it was better than cracking her skull on the hard ground.

  Bren didn’t seem to have near as much difficulty navigating the ice, his steps careful, but graceful, as if he walked on solid, steady ground. Not once had she seen his foot so much as twitch with the threat of giving way; it made her a little jealous.

  “How long before sunset, Elf?”

  Brendolowyn reached for the tethers as she approached, knotting all three horses together and draping the leather reins over a low-hanging, branch coated in a glassy layer. Hood half-lowered around the tangled braids of his golden-brown hair, he looked past her to where Finn stood. His lavender eyes burned bitter with resentment over the derision in Finn’s tone, but his voice did not betray his annoyance. “Less than an hour.”

  “I don’t need an hour.”

  Finn lifted a hand to unbutton the knotted toggle holding his cloak together beneath his chin. The scruffy beard he shaved away at the bathhouse in Dunvarak grew back, coarse black hairs covered his neck, chin and cheeks, only adding to the savagery of his appearance, and though that part of him terrified her beyond belief, it intrigued her as well. There was something deliciously manly about Finn, fierce and masculine and so enticing she bit her lower lip to keep from thinking about him in ways she didn’t have time to indulge.

  “Help the princess set up camp and hold off on raising your barrier.”

  “Hold off?” Brendolowyn sneered. “Whatever for? The surrounding area will be crawling with trolls the minute the sun disappears from the sky, and we’re nearing the coast. There’s no telling what other enemies might wait in the darkness.”

  “I’ll be back before the sun goes down.” There was an edge to his tone almost daring Brendolowyn to challenge him. When no one spoke, he drew off his cloak and handed it over to Lorelei with silent pleading. “I need to hunt.”

  He didn’t have to say anymore.

  “Be careful,” she whispered, taking the cloak and folding its wet and heavy weight over the crook of her arm.

  “Always.”

  The look he gave her denied that promise, and without another word he turned his back toward them and headed off into the mists. She watched after him until he was little more than a ghost in the fog, and then turned around to help Bren set up camp. They worked silently together, raising the tents first. By the time they finished thin daggers of ice dripped from the corners of both tents that would trickle away once the heat of their fire was trapped inside the barrier.

  “The U’lfer has well-earned the name his people gave him,” Brendolowyn muttered, hunkering down to start a fire. “He’s going to get himself killed out there, or worse, get us killed.”

  “We can’t understand what it’s like for him,” she defended, and went to work setting up their tents. “I can’t begin to imagine what it must be like to battle with himself the way he does.”

  “Well, perhaps this little hunt will at least improve his mood,” Bren said, arranging the wood and kindling. “I don’t know how much more of his bad attitude I can suffer.”

  “He has been antsy,” she agreed, drawing her arms up and crossing them over her chest. “To always hear the wolf inside, to be at its constant whim… What do you think that’s like?”

  “We will know soon enough, I suppose.”

  “I suppose we will.”

  She thought about it almost as much as she dwelt on Llorveth’s silence. What it would be like when their wolf spirits were free, when she could actually feel it swelling within her and longing to run wild. For the moment, it was little more than a calling somewhere deep inside her, like a voice on a distant mountain caught in echoes through the valley below, its words distorted and strange and senseless.

  “Sometimes I feel it in him,” she went on. “Lingering beneath the surface like… I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s as terrifying as it is comforting.”

  “You share a bond with him then?”

  He did not look up at her when he asked this, but she swore there was an underlying tone of curious jealousy in his voice. Or maybe she was just imagining it, leftover guilt from the dream she had her first morning in Dunvarak. A dream of a tawny wolf chasing her through the woods, playfully rolling with her and filling her mind with its thoughts.

  We were made for each other, two halves of the same whole. We could be soul mates, Lorelei.

  She watched as he drew upon the elements around them until a spiraling ball of fire grew in the palm of his hand. Such raw power harnessed, she thought, such an intimate connection to the elements—to the world around him. He directed it into the kindling, sparks leaping and dancing as it ignited dangerously and lapped at the open air like hungry tongues, the fire spreading fast as trails of greying smoke drifted toward the sky.

  “I am his mate,” she finally answered. “I feel a lot of things when I am near him.”

  “You are only his mate if you choose him,” he tried to sound casual in his observation, but she could hear the derision in his voice. “Your mother’s blood dulls the call of the soul’s mate upon yours. You should be free to choose from among your suitors, free to love whomever you wish.”

  If her mother’s blood dulled the call of Finn’s soul, she couldn’t even begin to imagine what the nearness of a full-fledged U’lfer mate would feel like, how it must torment Finn to be so close to her and not be able to touch her the way he wanted to. She remembered how desperate he’d seemed the night before they departed, the fire in his eyes and the growl of his voice as he said, “You are mine.”

  “The seer says I will choose him.”

  “The seer also said you were meant to awaken the Tid Ormen,” he pointed out, pushing out of his crouch. Even without the barrier up, s
he could feel its warmth spreading through the air toward her, feel it melting away the chill sinking down deep into her bones. “In doing so, you will be forced to break from predetermined past-life choices. Has it never occurred to you maybe you will choose not to mate with the U’lfer?”

  There was no malice in his question, only curiosity quirked his brow into a sharp angle above his eye when she turned back over her shoulder to look at him. “No,” she lied. “It has not ever occurred to me. In fact, I try not to think about it very much at all when there are far more important concerns than the flutters of my heart. I do think it would be a cruel thing to deny their bond, to force him to a life of solitude and longing.”

  “Perhaps,” he shrugged. “But anything could happen.”

  Yovenna’s words echoed in her memory. A journey three would depart for, but only two would return from… The mere thought of Finn not returning with them from their task made something inside of her feel hollow and scared. She felt the same jolt of sorrow at the thought of losing Bren. He was still a mystery in so many ways, not as open as Finn, or as bold in the voicing of his thoughts, but that intrigued her more than she would ever let on.

  “I know,” she lamented. “If waking the Tid Ormen means changing something, I would keep all three of us alive through this task. Return to Dunvarak together and see the seer’s prophecy shattered by our survival.”

  He seemed to swallow, the sharpness of his Adam’s apple rising and falling beneath his scarf. “I will do my part to see the prophecy undone,” but there was a lack of certainty in that promise and it lingered in the silence between them long after they finished setting up camp.

  Lorelei found dried vegetables in her pack and wilting herbs to make a soup. She trekked away from their boundary and filled their pot with snow to melt over the fire. She had to walk several feet away to find a patch that wasn’t frozen solid and then she had to break it with her fist before scooping it into the pot. The sound of fluttering wings brought Hrafn swooping into their camp. He perched atop Bren’s tent and crawked at her as she returned to the fire and hunkered down to set the pot over the flames and watch it melt.

  “Hrafn says you should let me do the cooking tonight.” Brendolowyn reached down between them for the herb pouches and tugged the leather strings open to dip his fingers inside.

  A slow smile began to form at the edges of her lips. “My cooking isn’t that bad, Bird.”

  Bren laughed as Hrafn screeched and chittered. He grabbed a pinch of herb and sprinkled it over the melting snow. “It isn’t that it’s bad, my lady, but it’s…” he paused, regarding her playfully, “well, I wouldn’t exactly say that it’s good either.” The bird crowed in agreement, the sound echoing through the fog.

  Brendolowyn ducked to the side when she raised a threatening fist and shook it at him, both of them laughing.

  “I have never done anything like this in my life,” she confessed as she drew back. “I’ve never had to do anything for myself before. Even when I was in Trystay’s camp, his people waited on me hand and foot. Sometimes it makes me worry that what Finn says about me is true.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “He thinks I’m a spoiled princess who doesn’t know how to look after herself.”

  “If it’s any consolation, my lady, I’d say you’re doing a fine job so far, but if I might, doesn’t it seem odd this Trystay held you in such high regard, considering he was planning to kill you?”

  “It does,” she agreed, “doesn’t it?”

  She couldn’t count the number of times the oddness of his behavior crossed her mind in the last two weeks. He’d been so kind, so attentive and his feigned interest in her was so believable she’d fallen for it like some lovesick girl with no brain in her head at all.

  “I never would have guessed he’d made such plans had I not overheard things I was never meant to hear.”

  “How did you find out his plot?”

  She looked sheepishly away, the cold immediately burning from her cheeks with a harsh blush that made her feel momentarily nauseous. Only a couple of weeks passed since she’d fled, and though she did not let herself think often about the night she ran from the man she was supposed to marry, whenever she did her thoughts were conflicted with guilt and relief. Had she not made the decision she made, she would likely be dead, she would never have known Finn or Bren or learned she had a brother and a nephew.

  “He…” she stammered and shook her head. “Even before we left Rivenn, he was aggressive in his affections. At the time I thought he was just passionate, that his desire for me was romantic.” Saying those words out loud made her feel like a stupid little girl all over again. “I had no experience with men beyond interactions with Aelfric’s soldiers, but even most of them treated me like I was a child. None would have dared flirtation, but Trys… He paid me just enough attention to make me feel alive and… wanted.”

  “Lorelei, you don’t have to…”

  “He would sneak into the gardens to find me in the days before we departed from Rivenn, steal me into the shadows where no one else could see and kiss me, tell me how beautiful I was, how much he wanted me and how much it hurt he could not have me until we were wed. ‘Just a little taste,’ he would say, his hands moving over my body, his mouth on mine…”

  She could almost feel the fever of his touch, the heat of his breath as his soft tongue darted out to tickle her ear, his wandering hand sliding over her hip and gently gathering the folds of her gown to slip his fingers inside and caress the top of her thigh as he backed her into garden wall and pressed his body hard against hers.

  Her sister saved her from him every time, running into the garden and calling her name, drawing their bodies apart with gasps, but Mirien couldn’t save her when they were gone from the palace. She’d been left to fend for herself, to fight off his advances and reiterate the things her mother said to her before she parted: It will be magic on our wedding night.

  But Trystay promised it would be magical no matter when she opened her legs to him and let him inside. The things she felt whenever he touched her, the tingling eagerness sparking low in her belly and the strange ache she felt between her thighs grew stronger every time he was near.

  “When we were traveling, he would tempt me. Tell me we were to be married, and none would ever know if we indulged in pleasures of the flesh before we stood with the priests and said vows. Sometimes in the litter he would kiss me,” she whispered, her embarrassment burning beneath the skin, “touch me in ways that left me wanting him.”

  “Lorelei,” Bren interrupted. “If this is too difficult…”

  “I want to,” she said distantly. “I feel like I need to.”

  It took her several minutes to find her courage again after his interruption, but at last she pursed her dry lips together and then released them.

  “On the night I ran away he got angry with me for refusing him again. He called me a childish tease and threatened to return me to my father and call the wedding off. I lay there in the dark feeling guilty and foolish, turning it all over and over again in my mind, weighing it out until I realized he was right. If we were to be married, there was no harm in...”

  Brendolowyn reached across the space between them and touched her arm. She couldn’t look up at him, afraid she’d see condemnation in his eyes, despite the comfort of his touch.

  “So I went to him, sneaking through the shadows until I came upon his tent, but he was not alone. I’d never seen the woman he was with before in the camp. I have no idea if she was always there, or if she’d met with the caravan on the road. She was Ninvarii—a sorceress. Dark of skin, light of hair, so beautiful I could never have compared to such a creature. She must have ensnared him, I thought at first, remembering all the things Aelfric and my teacher told me about the foul practice of magic. I was so jealous, I almost charged in and tore into her like a cat, but then I heard them talking. She was jealous too, angry with him for trying to pry my thighs when he was more th
an welcome between hers. He laughed at her and then promised after my death was pinned on the Underground Resistance, it would be her who stood beside him as queen when he wrenched Leithe from Aelfric’s hands and his father gave him his very own kingdom to rule.”

  The tears slipping down her cheeks burned hot against her cold skin, but cooled before they reached her chin and dripped off onto her cloak. She swallowed hard against the rising tightness in her throat; it ached until she felt like she would choke.

  “I stood there in a trance, trying to figure out what I should do. Running seemed to be the only smart thing, but one of his men caught me outside the tent just as I was backing away to make a run for it. He grabbed me, so I did the only thing I could think of. I kicked him between the legs and shoved him to the ground. Then I ran. He raised the alarm and set the dogs on me, but I had a good head start… I don’t know how long I ran, but every muscle in my body felt like it was on fire and my lungs burned with every breath. I didn’t even have my shoes on,” she laughed, a distant chuckle, and shook her head. “I had no plan, no thought of where I would go, but then I heard them, the wolves, and I knew I was heading into the Edgelands. I decided I would rather be torn apart by wolves than taken back to Trystay alive. I tripped, I guess, and hit my head in the clearing. I thought for sure I was going to die when the wolves came, but they saved me,” she said softly. “Had Finn and his sister not come when they did, I would be dead.”

  She hadn’t felt him come up behind them, didn’t know how long he was standing there watching them together and listening to her embarrassing tale, but the sound of his voice startled her. “And if my sister hadn’t stayed my hand that night, your prince and all of his men would have been as dead as the dogs they set upon you. I should have done it.”

  “Finn.”

  Startled, she jerked away from Bren, as if they actually had something to hide. She never told Finn the whole story, only that Trystay wanted to kill her. She was afraid to turn around and look into his eyes, afraid she would see disgust in them, afraid he would not want to be her mate after hearing what she’d been prepared to do.