Lorelei might not even be invited to the hunt when she died. Once he left the world he might never reconnect with her again. There was more than wolf inside her. She was not just Llorveth’s child, but also Foreln’s and Madra’s, and if Gwendoliir’s statements could be believed, she was Heidr’s, more than any of the others. Inside her there were elements of the All-Creator, and though he guessed that explained how she might be able to do the things the people of Dunvarak claimed she’d done for them, Finn still didn’t understand it.
He didn’t like it.
That was about all he knew with any certainty.
Well, that and how disappointed he was going to be to die.
Shoving thoughts of impending death away, he focused on finding the trail. He padded through the dust and stone, claws clacking with every nonchalant step. He eventually grew distracted from his task when he chased after a goat that came trotting unsuspecting over the ridge. In the end, it was the pursuit of the goat that brought him to his destination in the waning light of the cloud-cast sun, faded rose-gold at his back and the east-moving wind dying down as he stood directly in the shadow of the mountain.
The goat scrambled up the stone, bits of it breaking off and tumbling down the mountain. It bleated dismay. Finn stopped, no time to lament the loss of such easy prey when his fur tingled and rose in the presence of strange magic. It rolled down the mountainside like the water of a natural spring, an enticing finger beckoning forth anyone who dared to follow.
For the briefest moment the wolf started forward, drawn to the path. The stones beneath his paws felt strange and then it struck him like lightning coursing through his body and sending him half-leaping backward with an echoing yelp of pain. In that strike there were thousands of senseless images, and they flashed through his mind. Running together so quickly they barely made any sense to the wolf at all, but they were terrifying.
The wolf shuddered, shook off the bad energy like cold rain and backed tentatively away from the mountain. The light caught the sign, too late as he seemed to have stumbled across the path without its help. A single rune, carved in the lost ages by men who no longer walked the world.
Finn scanned the scene, committing the smells to memory, and then to mark his territory in order to find his way back to that place come morning, he pissed on the single, withered tree near the rune.
Then he ran, furiously racing back in the direction he’d come from, following the goat scent and his own trail until he could once more smell Lorelei on the wind. He didn’t stop until he came to the place where he’d left his clothes, and by the time he dressed and entered camp night had completely fallen.
Brendolowyn paced impatiently in front of the fire, waiting for him to enter their space so he could lower the protective magic around their safe haven for the night.
Lorelei barely looked up from the cooking pot, where she stirred fresh herbs into the bubbling broth, flavored with the last of the dried vegetables the Alvarii filled their packs with. It smelled tempting enough, but the lingering effects of the magic he’d felt at the base of the mountain, of the images he’d seen, stifled his generally insatiable hunger. His stomach was more than just uneasy; he felt nauseated by that magic.
Finn hadn’t realized until that moment just what they were up against, and though he’d never say the words out loud, he was suddenly terrified. He was going to die up there, and there was a very real possibility he wouldn’t be able to protect her before it happened.
“Did you find the rune that marks the passage?” the mage asked, pausing in mid-summon of the magic he was drawing from the land around them.
The sound of his voice startled Finn from his reverie, and then he nodded. “Aye,” he muttered, and then hunkered down beside the fire to warm the unearthly chill from his bones. He held his hands so close to the flame he could feel them leaping up to taste and burn his skin, but the heat did nothing to warm him.
It wasn’t until Lorelei grabbed his arm and pulled him back onto his backside beside her that he felt the lingering aftereffects of those flames sending needling stabs of pain through his fingers.
“And?” she prompted, leaning out to look at him.
He didn’t say anything until Brendolowyn drew closer to the fire. The intensity of his companion’s stare prompted him, but only slightly, from the strange stupor that gripped him in the overwhelming presence of that magic.
“Dark magic on the path,” he muttered. “Unlike any I’ve ever felt before.”
He was surprised by the reach of the half-elf’s hand. Warm fingers rested against the bare skin of his arm, and then he closed his eyes. Finn didn’t know what he was doing, but all the images he’d seen at the base of the mountain moved through him again, and it took everything he had not to shove the mage away in protest and collapse into a vomiting puddle on the ground.
Bren cursed under his breath when he finally withdrew his touch, at least Finn thought it was a curse. The language was unfamiliar, and for a moment the three of them just sat near the fire in silence, until the pop and spark prompted Finn to leap back with a humbling fright that brought Lorelei’s hand to his shoulder to instantly soothe his frazzled nerves.
“A safeguard meant to deter the unsuspecting traveler, it reveals hideous images to unsuspecting passersby in hopes it will send them screaming in terror.” Bren shook his head, the gathered folds of his lowered hood rustling softly against his shoulders. “You’re lucky you still have your wits intact. A lesser man might have lost himself to the fear entirely.”
“I’m not gonna lie,” he avoided Lorelei’s gaze, “it was pretty terrifying.”
“There are charms that work against such terrors, but I don’t have time to prepare them. Besides, once we breech the mountain, the disturbance of its magic will alert the guardian that set the safeguards in place to our coming. It will begin needling at us as we make our way toward the hoard it guards in continued hope we will be overrun with enough terror to turn away.”
“Can you somehow block its awareness?” Lorelei asked, her hand almost instinctively reaching for her father’s amulet around her neck. She fondled the knotwork, her fingers absently caressing the bronze before her hand dropped heavily into her lap. She knew next to nothing about magic, but her suggestion was the first thing Finn thought of as well. “What about the cloaking spell?”
“Magic that strong,” the mage lowered his head, as if ashamed, the tangle of braids he wore shifting around his sharp face.
His entire purpose for being there was to battle magic, and he wasn’t sure if he could do that? Finn’s fists clenched atop his thighs, his mouth yawning in protest, but before he could utter a word Brendolowyn went on.
“The cloaking spell we’ve been using around our camp and as we’ve traveled these last few days would be ideal, but it is a weak spell, designed to ward off those who know nothing of magic. If I had some means to amplify it… but no…” Once more he shook his head, defeat furrowing creases into his brow. “Using it will only alert the drakoren to our coming. If I expend all of my energy casting and maintaining a spell that won’t even work, I will be useless against the creature when we do actually reach the place it hides.”
“Well that’s just great,” Finn rumbled.
He felt Lorelei’s elbow in his ribs, before he even finished speaking the words, but even she couldn’t deny the absurdity of it. What good was magic as a safeguard if it couldn’t even be used to protect them?
Brendolowyn gathered his robes, drew his knees up and pushed himself to stand again. “I will need time to think on this,” he said, “but first I need to get our barrier in place.” And then he left the two of them alone by the fire to finish what he’d started.
“Well this is fabulous.” Finn’s sarcasm wasn’t lost on Lorelei, but she didn’t disagree either.
Instead she ladled him a bowl of vegetable broth, heavy with the bitter scent of cabbage, and handed it over to him. He didn’t sip it, but held it in his hands, which still felt
strange and tingly from his encounter with the magic of the mountain. Gods, he felt so unprepared. The entire journey they’d taken on what now felt like a whim, and they had so little to go on. Not even their visit with the Alvarii, people who actually knew about the thing they faced in the mountain, was of any use.
They weren’t going to make it back from this. Not a single one of them.
“Do you really think we will die in there?” she asked, startling him from his thought with question about words he hadn’t even spoken aloud.
It was unconscious, he realized. She hadn’t even realized she’d picked up on his general train of thought, but it made him feel closer to her. Holding his bowl in one hand, he reached across the space between them and touched her arm, fingers curving around her wrist and resting there in an act of comfort.
“We are going to do more than just make it back from all of this,” he said. “We’re going to make that drakoren wish it was never born.”
“You don’t really believe that.” Her voice was tentative, but without blame. “You think we’ll die up there.”
Drawing her lower lip between her teeth, he watched her brow furrow. Those thin lines of worry had no business on a forehead as smooth and young as hers, but he’d noticed them more and more often of late. Burrowing into her face as she sat pensively aback her horse while they traveled, staring out at a world she’d barely begun to see and fretting over the fact that she very likely never would—it wasn’t right.
“But what if you’re right, Finn?” She interrupted his lament. “What if something happens? If we die in there?”
And by we, he was sure she meant just him. She couldn’t die and still save the people of Dunvarak long before they’d ever know they needed her. Hearing the worry in her tone did less to make him feel better about things than he’d hoped. She was more than just worried about him. She was genuinely terrified none of them were going to come down the other side of the mountain when all was said and done.
“We will make it back from this, Princess. All three of us. I promise you.”
He shouldn’t make such promises, especially given the prophecies suggesting they didn’t exactly have the best track record for completing the last part of their journey with all members intact, but he’d say anything to take the edge of fear from her voice, to diminish those accursed wrinkles he hated seeing in her brow.
Her hand was trembling when she brought it up to rest atop his, her fingers cold as they coiled partway around his wrist, and when he lifted his eyes to meet hers, he saw something inside her so unexpected it nearly took his breath away.
She really didn’t think she could go on living if she lost him. She couldn’t imagine a world in which she’d want to live without her mate.
“I promise you,” he repeated. “We will come back from this, and we will take the Horns of Llorveth back to Dunvarak. All of your wolves will wake and you and I will run together, the way we were meant to.”
And then the space between them was suddenly filled with her body, and before he could utter another sound, she was kissing him, her soft mouth aggressively moving over his, her free hand tangling into the hair at the nape of his nape of his neck to hold him there. Hot soup sloshed over the edges of his bowl, splashing out over his hands and making him hiss and withdraw.
“What if you’re wrong?” She drew back and stared at him.
Tears glinted in her eyes, golden orange in the leaping flames of their fire. He rose to his full height and stepped up to her until his shadow was all around her. “I am never wrong.”
“You’re so humble sometimes, I just don’t even know what to say to you.” She was grinning, appreciative of his arrogance even if she didn’t believe his claims. She was grateful for the effort. Her hands were on his wrist, the cold tips of her fingers pressing into muscle and flesh. Staring up at him, he watched the shimmer of those tears spill down her cheeks. “I just don’t want you to die, Finn.”
“Good,” he snorted laughter. “That makes two of us.”
“Can’t you take anything seriously?”
“Not if I don’t have to.”
Narrowing those eyes into a scowling squint, she withdrew her hand and said nothing more than, “Eat.”
And though his stomach was still a mess of knots, the nausea and dizziness making it impossible to enjoy the food she’d given him, he did as he was told and sipped at the broth while the mage muttered words of magic behind them and Lorelei stared into the fire.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Lorelei had not slept properly in days. Most nights she laid awake, her body loosely curled around Finn’s, ears attuned to the long, steady snore of his breath and the eerie silence of the night beyond the protective barrier around their camp. It was a strange thing for the night to be so quiet, no bugs or frogs croaking, no owls calling, no trolls pacing and grumbling at their ill luck.
She didn’t know how Finn was able to sleep, especially not after the jolting encounter he had with the magic of the mountain, but there he was. Flat on his back beside her, mouth half-open and filling the tent with rumbling breaths loud enough to wake the dead, he almost looked peaceful.
It was well after midnight when she could no longer suffer the sound, and disentangling herself from his loose, but protective arm across her back, she crouched and made her way out of the tent.
The fire burned low, casting the thinnest veil of orange light in a radius around the pit, but the heat it put off was a welcome invitation she obliged without a second thought. Arms wrapped around herself, she hunkered down in the dry, yellowed grass and dropped onto her backside to sit with her legs crossed and limbs hugged close.
Staring into the coals, the colors mingling white and blue against the brilliant orange in the center, she focused on that eerie light without even realizing she’d allowed it to lull and carry her away to a place where she felt at peace with the things she had to do.
It was a rare thing to find that place inside herself.
Most of her thoughts were frayed around the edges and tinged in self-defeat.
She’d taken the entire quest at face value ever since it was presented to her. From the time Rhiorna told her she was meant to do something great until the moment she sat down in Yovenna’s cottage and listened to the old seer spin yarns from a dream, Lorelei allowed the excitement of having her own purpose cloud her judgment. She’d done her best to take advantage of Gwendoliir’s wisdom, but what more could he have told her than he already did. She needed to keep Finn alive, or all was lost. But obviously she failed at doing just that a countless number of times. How was she supposed to change it? Why hadn’t anyone been able to tell her that?
Inevitably, the serpent that spun against the world, the one the old Alvarii claimed she shared a soul with, would bring them back to do it all over again.
There were so many questions she should have asked, but what did she know? She was only seventeen… No, wait. Was she still seventeen? What month was it? What day? Had she rolled right through her naming day and not even noticed? For the life of her, she couldn’t put her finger on the date. She only knew it was autumn and she’d been born in autumn, on the eleventh day of Deceliir. Oteraan was almost spent when she departed Leithe with Trystay and there were six weeks until her eighteenth birthday. Trys promised her a celebration the likes of which she’d never seen, but she supposed such promises were easy to make when one had no intention of keeping them.
Had it really been so many weeks since she ran from the caravan, stumbling into the Edgelands with Trystay’s hounds yowling and giving chase through the night? Had she missed her birthday?
Try as she might to tick off the days in her mind, she couldn’t account for them all. It felt like it had been longer than six weeks. Sometimes their journey through the frigid and unyielding terrain of Rimian seemed as though it lasted months and time itself felt lost and muddled in her mind.
Either way, seventeen or eighteen, she spent the years of her life hidden away in
a tower with her sister, being taught lies about the world and believing she had the power to make a difference in the outcome of her own future if she just squawked a little louder in the company of her kingly father’s steward.
A cracking twig under foot jolted her from the depth of her lament. Head jerking up, a startled gasp caught in the back of her throat and was lost in the heated pop and spark of the wood in the fire. As the flashes cleared, thin puffs of smoke lingered in the aftermath. She leaned forward, relatively certain there were two eyes staring back at her through the protective magical veil around their camp.
Were she standing, she wouldn’t have come eye-level with them, and at first she was convinced it was only a bear, or some other nocturnal animal, but then it tilted its head, stared directly at her with a sense of compassion that signaled a deep whining sound from the creature’s chest. The sound stirred strange emotion inside her.
It could see her. More than that, it was staring directly at her, and then she caught glimpse of a silver essence several feet behind the creature, gliding across the stone-thin grasses to stand beside it. It wavered, taking shape and casting a warm glow on the beast it stood beside, and as her eyes clued into what stood before her, the emotions swelling in her chest were almost more than she could bear.
“Mother?” she whispered, scrambling to her feet so quickly she kicked dust and stone into the fire pit and made it smoke.
“Lorelei…” Her whisper echoed through the night, loud enough it should have woken her sleeping companions, but no one stirred in the tents at her back. Finn’s snores remained steady, the flaps of Bren’s tent unmoving.
“Mother?” It couldn’t be real. “Mother, am I dreaming?”
“Lorelei, come with us.” The wispy essence of her mother brought a hand up to touch the veil between them, fingers passing through it and reaching toward her. “Come with us, Lorelei, and we will show you the way.”
Tentatively, she stepped toward the barrier, eyes cast toward the hulking, shaggy figure beside the ethereal being that spoke with her mother’s voice. Stretched across its broad neck she caught the glint of amber and moonstone, dark bronze and her hand instinctively lifted to the amulet around her own neck, knowing instantly it was the same one.
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