Sorrow's Peak (Serpent of Time Book 2)

by Jennifer Melzer

  “Isn’t that exactly what we’re doing right now? Taking a risk?”

  He harrumphed and turned his back to her. Making his way across the hallway, the last door on that floor was just as forbidden to them as every other, and when he dropped his arm again it was with a grunt, rather than a sigh. “This is so dumb, Princess. Why are we doing this again?”

  “Bren’s suspicions got under my skin.”

  “And yet my suspicions regarding Bren never seem to bother your delicate skin one bit.” When he’d said the mage’s name, it was a mockery of her familiarity with it, higher pitched, almost whiny. Closing the distance between them with three long strides, she stared up at him, her lips pinched tightly together and an unspoken wish that all three of them just try to work together for once, instead of against one another left unspoken. There were footsteps on the stairs at the other end of the hall, two voices in conversation.

  Finn grabbed onto her forearm and jerked her toward the opposite end of the hall to hide behind a potted tree perched in the corner. She stumbled and tripped over her own feet, barely able to keep up with him. He wedged himself into that small space first, then tugged her body close.

  Surely they weren’t disguised in the least behind that thin tree with its sparse green leaves still rustling from their movement. Fingers clutched the clean, soft fabric of his shirt, she rested her head against his chest and squinted through narrowed eyelids toward the opposite end of the hallway. She could barely hear anything over the conjoined pound of their hearts, her face growing hot and her body trembling so fiercely it was dizzying. She swore, the minute she was able to take a step back she’d throw up on him, but she fought the urge and tried to attune her senses to the two bodies on the landing.

  She didn’t recognize the one with his back to her, but she did spy Gwendoliir standing opposite the man he spoke to, their voices hushed, even as they were animated. Shadows from the wall-torches cast across his face, making him look sinister and terrifying, his sharp brows poised above large eyes.

  “I can’t hear what they’re saying,” she whispered.

  Finn’s free hand shot up, cupped across her mouth and pushed her lips against her teeth. He didn’t make a single shushing sound, but he didn’t have to. He tilted his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. Lorelei watched his nostrils flare wide with every breath as he worked to calm himself and keep as silent and still as possible.

  It was the strangest moment to notice such a thing, but she felt far too comfortable wedged so close she could barely tell where her body ended and his began. The taut muscles of his stomach rose and fell against her, making her legs feel even more like jelly under her weight than they did just seconds before. Turning her head down, she pressed her forehead into his shoulder and closed her eyes, trying to listen to the conversation at the opposite end of the hall and failing miserably.

  All she could think about was how natural it felt for his arm to clutch tight across the small of her back. Her mind swarmed through memories of every time he’d kissed her over the last few weeks, the way his lips tasted and how delicious it felt when he held her face in his hands.

  Heart like thunder, she could barely control the rapid rise of its pace or the tight feeling in the lowest part of her stomach she’d come to recognize as desire.

  Why did her feelings for him always happen upon her during the most inconvenient times? And were they even feelings at all, or just bodily urges anyone who touched her that way might incur? It was all so confusing, and it made her feel foolish and childish because she didn’t know how to behave. They were to be together one day, in her heart she’d already chosen him, already knew full well there was no one else in the world who infuriated and intrigued her even half as much as Finn. They were made for each other, and when the time was right she would embrace it.

  “…no traces whatsoever.”

  The sound of those words made it easier for her to shove thoughts of Finn from the forefront of her mind and hone in on the voices several feet away at the end of the hall.

  “It is for the best, my lord,” the other Alvarii responded with a curt nod she glimpsed just after opening her eyes again. She kept them squinted, hoping to narrow in her sight on them and see more clearly. “Such a distraction at this time would not bode well for the desired outcome.”

  “Indeed, it would not,” Gwendoliir mused. He lifted his hand to stroke the length of his hairless chin, still nodding thoughtfully. “And yet it makes me feel awful. Regardless, I have done the best I could with that which I was given to work with. Jonolov does not accept it, but the future is murky to my eyes for the first time in my life. It is most disconcerting.”

  “Perhaps because it is changing, Lord, for the first time.”

  “That may be so,” Gwendoliir nodded, his face long and pensive, a disturbed furrow wrinkling his high, smooth brow. “Nevertheless, the girl is on her way, and there is not much I can do now but focus on other matters which require my attention. Were our guests made comfortable?”

  “Indeed, they were.” The servant he spoke to hesitated, then went on to add, “Though Marandelle said the bristalv gave him a bit of trouble after he left your company.”

  “Of course he did,” the seer’s face further wrinkled with an ugly scowl that showed his age in the most unflattering way. “He may not be full-blooded Alvarii, but Brendolowyn Raven-Storm is no fool. Their quest is of the utmost urgency, and we shoved them aside as if it does not matter to us, when, in fact, it matters more than they could possibly begin to understand.”

  “Perhaps you could make amends, my lord. Meet with the mage again tonight and explain…”

  “I’m too tired for such things tonight, Barius. Tomorrow I will explain as best I can, offer my sincerest apologies and guide them on their way, but for now I must rest. I am not the man I once was, I’m afraid.”

  “You are the same glorious man you have always been.”

  “I suspect you’d say that to me no matter the circumstances.” The seer’s head dropped, the flowing silver of his hair falling in around his shoulders. His face was obscured by the man standing in front of him, but Lorelei didn’t need to see his features to know he was filled with despair. “These visions, murky as they have been, take far more out of me than I’m prepared to admit in less understanding company.”

  “Rest then, my fehrestellje.” A gentle hand lifted to rest on his shoulder, comforting him with a soft stroke that slipped down the length of his arm before meeting with the seer’s hand. Barius tangled their fingers together, then brought the knuckles to his lips to tenderly kiss them. “I will bring the tea to help you sleep.”

  Gwendoliir’s hand lifted to rest upon the other man’s face as he brought his head up. Lorelei still couldn’t see, but she watched as he leaned forward and brushed lips across Barius’s forehead. “I know not what I’ve done to deserve your devotion.” And then he stepped away, hand falling from the other man’s grasp as he walked through the hall to the third door on the left and disappeared inside the room.

  Barius lingered only a moment at the end of the hall, then he too disappeared, heading down the steps he’d just come up to fetch his seer’s tea.

  Finn and Lorelei stood pinned in the corner far longer than was necessary. She didn’t want to step back, even though her heart calmed and her breath resumed its normal pace. It was Finn who finally gripped both of her arms and walked her backwards through the sparse leaves and branches of the decorative houseplant and into the hallway.

  Without a word, he tugged her hand and led her hurriedly back upstairs to her room, where Brendolowyn was still pacing the floors in his bare feet, black robes sweeping behind him at every turn before gathering at his ankles again. He stopped in mid-pace the minute they came through the doors and turned toward them, expectant of their news.

  “We didn’t get past the second floor.” Finn closed the door behind them and Bren walked to join them so they could talk in quieter voices. “Every door dow
n there was locked, but we did overhear the seer talking to his companion.”

  “Anything of interest to note?”

  “Nothing as shady as you seem to suspect. He said his visions were clouded.”

  “And something about a girl being on her way,” Lorelei interjected. “Though he didn’t say much, just that the girl was on her way and all he could do now was focus on giving us what little help he could. He seemed to feel badly about putting us off.”

  “His visions are clouded?” She watched Bren tilt his head leftward. His hair, which he kept in a multitude of braids tied often at the nape of his neck, slipped over his shoulder with the movement.

  “That’s what I gathered,” Finn shrugged. “So we came all this way and he probably won’t be able to help us anyway.”

  “He didn’t say he wouldn’t help us,” Lorelei said. “He said he’d do the best he could. And I hate to say it, but I feel strange, having spied on him that way. Sort of dirty, actually.”

  Or maybe the discomfort had more to do with the close pinning of her body to Finn’s while they were hiding, parts of her stirring in the most indecent ways and less to do with snooping about their host’s home like a pair of spies.

  “I’m sorry to have put you in that situation, my lady.”

  “It’s not your fault,” she shook her head. “I volunteered, and besides, after what you said we had a right to be suspicious. Maybe whatever they are hiding has nothing to do with us, or maybe it has everything to do with us, but I don’t think we’re going to find out what it is unless we outright ask for answers.”

  “Perhaps you are right,” he agreed with a curt nod. “I should leave you, retire to my own room so you can get some rest. Tomorrow promises to be another long day.”

  Before she even had a chance to respond, Brendolowyn edged his way past them and into the hallway, leaving her alone with Finn once again. He lingered at her back, a hulking shadow, and his nearness woke and stirred the things inside her she had to fight so hard to ignore.

  For once, however, he seemed to have no interest in pursuing her heart. He was genuinely worried when he said, “I’m not going to lie, Princess. I don’t like any of this one bit. I’m starting to think we would have been better off just going around this place and facing whatever waits at Great Sorrow’s Peak on our own.”

  “Maybe,” she shrugged, turning to look at him. “I won’t lie either. My curiosity is definitely piqued. I know what Trystay said that night. He was trying to pin my murder on the Alvarii to provoke my fath—” That word still rolled too easily from her tongue. “The king. If he’d been able to provoke him to take action against the Alvarii Underground, the results might very well have devastated his forces. I don’t think he has any idea just how powerful these people really are.”

  “Trystay or your… King Aelfric?”

  “Trystay seems to know exactly what he’s doing, or rather it seemed like he did. I have no idea what he’s thinking now, or what he said to my mother and the king about me running from him. He could have said anything about me at all, and with me not there to defend myself against his accusations, why would they ever believe different?”

  “Because they are your parents,” he balked, taking a step back to really get a look at her. “Maybe not the king. He might be a royal arse to the core, but he raised you from the day you were born as his own and that in itself has to stand for something.”

  “He never made me feel like I was his own.”

  “Hey.” Finn reached out, fingers ducking beneath her chin to lift her face so she had no choice but to look at him. She hadn’t even realized she’d gone sulky until he touched her. Something tight inside her instantly loosened. Her shoulders relaxed, and for a few seconds she just stared into those incredible, wintry eyes of his. “He let you live, for whatever reason, even knowing where you’d come from. Were it not for that kindness, you and I wouldn’t be standing here right now and none of this would matter in the least. But he did and here we are and it does matter. And even though every part of me doubts we will get any help here whatsoever, tomorrow morning we will sit down with this seer and make him tell us everything he knows before we march off to do what it is we’re supposed to do.”

  She didn’t know how he did it, especially considering how often he himself was the source of her disparagement, but he always seemed to know exactly how to make her feel like everything would be okay.

  Lifting her hand, she curled her fingers around the thickness of his wrist and just held his hand where it was for a moment. “Thank you, Finn.”

  “For what?”

  For everything, she thought, for just being you, even though you make me want to scream and tear my hair out. “Thank you for coming with me on this fool’s errand, for always being here for me.”

  “Well, yeah,” he said, as though it should have been obvious, “of course. Now, I hate to say it, but I think the mage is right. We should all try to get some sleep. I’m starving though.”

  “Mhm.” There wasn’t time earlier to think about how tired she was, or how much the journey to Nua Duaan took out of her. The emptiness in her stomach had abated for a while, but his mention of it seemed to make it known again. It churned and ached emptily inside her.

  “I think there’s still some food in my pack.”

  “In mine too.”

  “It’ll be something to sleep in a real bed for a change.”

  They’d been housed in separate rooms, each of them given their own bed to sleep in, and the thought of a night without his body close to hers stirred apprehension inside her. She didn’t protest though; she knew it was difficult for him to be near her sometimes, knowing he couldn’t touch her the way he wanted to, so she withdrew from his touch, let her own arm drop at her side and nodded.

  “It will be a nice change.”

  She didn’t want to sleep in that real bed alone. On the other hand, she knew she couldn’t keep asking him to sleep with her without it giving him the wrong idea. To make matters even more complicated, how long before she wasn’t able to fight off her own urges to reach out to him, turn his body into hers in a way there was no turning back from? No, she couldn’t do that to him. It wasn’t right and it wasn’t fair.

  “If you need me, I’m right across the hall.”

  “Goodnight, Finn.”

  After he’d gone, and she was alone, she stood staring at the elegant four poster bed against the far wall. Gauzy curtains draped from the frame, hanging around the broad mattress. It seemed too large, so empty. She had no idea how she would ever fall asleep in it alone. She wasn’t used to sleeping alone, having spent most of her life curled up in bed beside her little sister, sharing their warmth and whispering secrets through the long hours of the night.

  Thoughts of Mirien intensified the loneliness she felt in Finn’s absence. She was on her mind all the time, Lorelei worrying she might never see her little sister again, never hear her laughter or feel her arms around her in that comforting way she was so prone to sharing. Growing up, Mirien was really all she had. Mirien and Pahjah. Their mother never paid them more mind than she needed to. The king was always too busy to be bothered with their childish needs. That was what nursery maids were for, and in that respect Pahjah did her best to fill the void of both parents.

  Homesickness for a home she could never call her own was only half the battle. More than anything, she just wanted to see her sister again, to know she was all right, to tell her she still loved her more than anyone else in the world.

  She hadn’t noticed the tears in her eyes until she blinked. Spilling down her cheeks in abrupt, warm streams, she lifted a quick hand to brush them away, sniffling and refusing to let another tear fall.

  Finn promised that one day he would help her get back to her sister, no matter the cost. She was going to hold him to that, even if the two of them died trying to get back to Rivenn.

  She only hoped neither of them died before they even got the chance to try.

  CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO

  He hadn’t wanted her to come along, but after she insisted there was a foolish part of him that thrilled at the notion of Showing Frigga through the Edgelands. As if he were sharing some special piece of himself with her, a part of him only she knew existed, but the devastation suffered by the land sprawling before them was nothing short of his worst nightmare. Her father fled with her when she was still too young to remember a land hard won by the sacrifice of proud men—men like his father.

  He’d never felt sicker in his life than he did as they led their weary horse through the despair.

  Gone, as if those lands had never even been there at all. The trees were little more than smoldering stumps and charred stalks that threatened to drift away, the once-green grasses burnt to ash that disintegrated and drifted like black motes upon the wind.

  Exhaustion coupled with defeat sunk Vilnjar’s shoulders, and the heaviness of the air made it difficult for either of them to breathe. They’d torn strips of cloth from one of the blankets in their pack and tied them over their mouths to filter some of the ash and smoke from their lungs, but it was still the only thing he could taste in his mouth.

  Nearly all the water from the stream was polluted with its taint, making their stomachs feel sour and their throats parched with every drink.

  Through the night they’d ridden, fast and hard at first, until they could no longer hear the marching of King Aelfric’s army, or the laying to waste of the land at their backs. Skirting the edges of the traveling fires, they did not slow until they reached the upper Edgelands, of which little remained save for dwindling smoke and ruin as far as the eye could see.

  The once proud trees separating the Edgelands from Aelfric’s kingdom clung to the desperate grey horizon like the charred, clenching bones of broken hands and the thick cloak of smoke clinging to the air burned their eyes until they itched and teared. His lashes felt sticky, thick and dirty as the world wavered in front of them like a sickening mirage on a hot summer day.