“The end of what?” He had never liked riddles. He just didn’t have the head for them. “You’ve got to give me more than that to go on, Rhiorna. Something solid, something I can work with to make sure I’m on the right path.”
“I’m sorry, Finn, but I cannot.”
“But if you’ve already seen it, why can’t you just tell me? How will I know if I’m doing the right thing?”
“As I said, listen to your heart in all things. It will show you the way.”
“You brought me all the way out here to tell me to listen to my heart?” He took a step back and looked her over, disappointed for the briefest of moments that she wasn’t going to give him anything more than sappy nonsense about his heart. “You’re not going to give me anything else?”
“I may have already said far more than I should have. These are delicate times, on the cusp of being written into reality. The world is changing…”
“Then just tell me what I’m supposed to do so I can make sure it happens as it should.”
“It doesn’t work that way.” Turning back to the fountain, she stared up at the statue of Llorveth and closed her eyes. “The last thing I will say to you is go to her now. Seek her out in the temple and comfort her. She is scared, confused and she feels so alone. Only you can make her feel safe right now. It is your duty as her mate to provide her with that small bit of comfort.”
“So that’s it?” Crossing his thick arms over his chest, he leaned back on his heels to study her. All she was going to give him was some nonsense about following his heart. “I don’t know why you couldn’t just tell me that in the hallway.”
Rhiorna didn’t answer. She remained standing with her eyes closed in front of the rippling pool beneath the fountain like she was a statue herself. After a few minutes Finn got tired of waiting for her to say something—anything else. It was like she wasn’t even there with him at all.
He drew in a deep breath, which did less to calm him than he’d hoped it would, and then he turned away from her to walk back inside. The first room he saw was the healing room, but the bed where Lorelei had lain for days was empty. Ducking his head into the room, he scanned it quickly, but there was no sign of her. He lingered for a moment, part of him wishing she would just appear but there wasn’t exactly anywhere for her to hide.
Turning his head down the long, shadowed corridor that led to the temple, a nervous tingle rippled through his blood and he shook it off the way a man shakes away the chills of someone walking across his grave. He didn’t know why he was so nervous. Wait, yes he did. Talking to her had been easy when he hadn’t known what she was; being himself came naturally because he didn’t have to think too hard about trying to impress her. Now he was supposed to woo her, comfort her and make her feel safe.
It was so confusing, and Rhiorna hadn’t made it any easier to understand. If anything, she’d just made everything more complicated.
Finn reached down to turn the handle of the temple door in his hand and realized his fingers were trembling. A thin sheen of sweat stickied his palms and made the handle feel slippery. He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath, withdrawing his hand and wiggling his fingers at his side while he gathered his courage.
Courage…
He’d never needed courage to talk to a girl before, but then she wasn’t any ordinary girl. She was his girl, his mate and for a moment the reality of that resonated with him on a level that made his knees feel weak.
Did she know? Did she feel the things he was feeling whenever they were in the same space together? The sudden realization that she might be feeling it too should have bolstered his confidence. It didn’t.
Gods, if his mother could see him she would no doubt whack him in the back of the head and call him a coward. He was one of the lucky few, one of the blessed to have found his mate, and there he was cowering at the thought of having a conversation with the girl.
He filled his lungs again, released his fears when he exhaled and reached down to open the doors. Sunlight spilled through the domed, colored glass ceiling, filtering through the carefully angled pattern of the three full moons until their colors merged in a golden orange display above a statue of Llorveth, which was almost exactly like the stag decorating the waterfall in the garden. It was missing its horns, however, the antlers broken off, making the deer look almost feminine.
It had been a long time since he’d entered the Temple of Llorveth. The only priest in the village held service there to honor their lord when each of the moons was full, but he’d stopped attending once he was old enough to realize what a farce those ceremonies were. Lies to make the U’lfer feel like they were still connected to a god who’d obviously abandoned them.
She was sitting in the very front row of pews staring at the statue, head tilted curiously to the left and hands folded neatly in her lap. Streams of red light from the sun falling through the moon above her head made her bright hair look like fire about her shoulders, and for a flicker of a moment Finn felt like he couldn’t breathe.
Even from behind she was beautiful.
He willed his feet to move forward and started down the aisle, jumping a little when the double doors slammed closed behind him. Lorelei didn’t even seem to notice. Her gaze remained forward, even when he arrived beside her and followed he stare once again to the statue in front of her.
“When I was small I used to have the strangest, most terrifying dreams about your god.”
Her nearness had quelled the unnatural sense of panic that gripped him while he was in the garden, and the sound of her voice was like music to his ears.
“He chased me through a dark forest, always just over my shoulder whenever I turned my head. I would wake screaming and Pahjah would be there to comfort me. She would kneel beside me in front of the window and together we would pray to the Ladies for comfort and protection.”
Finn lowered his eyes just in time to catch her blink, a fat droplet slipping down her cheek.
“But every night he returned to chase me through that forest, and the Ladies always loomed in the sky above, but they never intervened.”
“That’s funny.” He crossed his arms and she shot a horrified stare over her shoulder at him. “Not your fear. I mean, that’s not funny. I just meant it’s odd, not funny, I guess.” He was babbling like some kind of idiot, but she didn’t even seem to notice. “When I was small I used to dream I was a great beast running across the sky swallowing the moons. My brother said it was because I had a big mouth and stuffing the moons in my gullet was Llorveth’s way of shutting me up.”
The horror on her face began to fade, a shimmer of amusement gleaming in her glassy eyes just before she turned back toward the statue.
“Maybe our dreams were connected somehow,” he said, “and I ate the moons to punish them for not protecting you.”
“Maybe.”
For a long time neither of them said anything, and Finn just stood there next to the bench watching her stare at Llorveth. There was still the faintest hint of white lavender clinging to her skin and he could feel their hearts beating the same rhythm.
Did she felt it too?
“It’s been a while since I came to temple,” he confessed.
“Why?”
Clearing his throat, he glanced down at the pew and asked, “Could I sit with you?”
Without a word, Lorelei scooted over to make room for him and he slid in awkwardly beside her. It had been so long since he’d been there that he’d grown out of the benches, he realized, wiggling into the most comfortable position he could find and then pressing his back into the wood behind him.
“Why haven’t you come to temple?”
“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “Most times it all feels like lies. Don’t get me wrong, I believe in Llorveth, but the things the priest in Drekne teaches…” Those lessons probably enraged their god, which might explain why he was allowing their people to die out.
“Pahjah used to say there wasn’t a priest alive who ever ta
ught the word of the gods the way it was meant to be spoken. They interpret it the way they want in hopes the gods won’t notice. If you want to hear the true voice of your god, you should visit one of his seers.”
“Who is this Pahjah?”
“She is my nursemaid, or at least she was my nursemaid.”
“A nursemaid, huh?” He pursed his lips together and nodded. “That sounds fancy.”
“It’s not, really, though I suppose I thought it was all my life, but now I don’t know what to think… about anything.”
Finn could feel her sorrow, the tangled web of confusion wrapping itself around her, squeezing and making her feel like she couldn’t breathe. He started to lean nearer to her, an overwhelming urge surging inside him to reach out and embrace her, but his nearness sparked a brief flicker of panic in her. He felt it rise up inside her and the pace of his own heart sped up to match it. It caught him off guard, that unexpected wave of emotional adrenaline, and he found himself moving away from her to catch his breath.
“You must be so afraid.” He felt stupid for saying those incredibly obvious words the minute they left his mouth and half expected her to snap at him the way Rue often did when she thought he was being deliberately simple. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “That was a stupid thing to say.”
The most unexpected sound escaped her: laughter, quiet at first, but building into a swell of confusion mingled with joyous intrigue.
“I am afraid,” she squeaked between rising giggles that verged on tears. “I am so afraid I can’t even think, and I don’t know what’s going to happen to me. Everything is wrong, but it’s not wrong at all, it’s all right, but not okay. Gods, that doesn’t even make sense, but it’s true.”
Just as suddenly as laughter came, the tears won out. Her trembling shoulders began to heave and she stifled the building sob in her hands just before she buried her face in them and lowered her head. He’d never seen anything like it, so much sorrow and confusion mingled with the pain of betrayal and loneliness. She didn’t have to say the words; he could feel everything she felt shuddering through him with every muffled cry.
She felt like she was completely alone in the world, but that wasn’t true. He was there. He would always be there. She just didn’t know it yet.
Tentatively, Finn lifted his arm behind her and lowered it across her back, hand curling over her shoulder and drawing her into his chest. She stiffened at first, her entire body going rigid the minute his arm came down, but then she softened against him and just let herself cry.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Lorelei didn’t know how long she cried, shamefully hiding her face in her hands while taking an odd amount of comfort from the stranger sitting beside her. Odd though, he didn’t feel like a stranger. He felt like an old friend, someone she’d known for as long as she could remember. That feeling was both intriguing and terrifying.
His arm around her was one of the most comfortable things she’d ever felt, and it was hard to resist the urge to snuggle closer to him and exploit that comfort. The last person to assuage her fears before her entire life was turned upside down was Pahjah. Her nurse stood behind her at the mirror, her dark eyes scanning the slip of silky red fabric disapprovingly as she muttered under her breath that high fashion in Hofft was disgustingly revealing.
“In my day showing a little neck was all it took to get a man’s attention.” Lorelei looked to her nurse’s neck, hidden behind the metal slave collar that prevented her from accessing the magic in her blood. She remembered feeling deeply saddened by that, her hand lifting tentatively toward her nurse’s collared neck, but then faltering as it dropped to her side again. “I’ll never understand this increasing obsession with walking around half-naked.”
Lorelei laughed through her own tears, even found enough spark inside herself to ask Pahjah how she actually remembered things that took place more than a million-billion years ago. After swatting at her with a cluck of her tongue, Pahjah wiped away her tears and promised everything in Hofft would be just fine. Trystay obviously adored her, and he would do everything in his power to make sure she was comfortable and well-cared for.
Gods, how wrong she’d been.
Even in that moment, Lorelei had her doubts about her future. She was infatuated with Trystay, almost giddy to the point of hyperventilation that he was so obviously fond of her. It was so unlike her, how willing she became to please him, how almost submissive she grew in his company. For a fleeting moment she forgot how angry she was with her father for practically auctioning her off to the highest bidder in the name of peace and she allowed herself to daydream her future with her dashing, handsome Prince of Hofft.
Underneath it all, something hadn’t felt quite right. The future that promised to be filled with bliss seemed to hang over her like a dark cloud that grew more harrowing with each mile the caravan put between her and her home. Each day on the road Trystay felt more distant, more easily provoked into anger when she refused to follow him to his bed before they were married. He hadn’t spoken to her since mid-afternoon of the day she’d spied him in his tent with the strange Ninvarii priestess, the two of them naked and entwined within the sheets as he murmured promises to his mistress and plotted Lorelei’s murder.
She shivered at the memory of her own conflicted emotions upon spying them together. She’d been terrified, yet liberated by the discovery, the naive little girl that still lived inside her nearly overjoyed at the prospect of going home. But she knew even then, as she gaped in horror to hear the young man, who swore just days before that he would honor and cherish her above all others, plotting to kill her, she would never go home again.
As she blinked back her tears, the quick closing of her eyes brought on the horrific imagery of her desperate, frantic chase through the unfamiliar woods of the Edgelands. She hadn’t felt comfortable or safe since she left Rivenn, but when she woke to find Finn watching over her in the healing room something about his presence felt comfortable, as though he were a guardian sent to protect and keep her safe.
It still amazed her each time she realized the man sitting beside her had been the wolf in the woods who’d saved her. A great, black beast towering over her beneath the moons’ light, his wet nose snuffling curiously into the crook of her neck and through her hair before another joined him. Together they’d raised their gaping maws and unleashed the most terrifying howl, and it had been that sound that surrendered her to darkness.
She couldn’t help but wonder if it had been the beast or the man sitting beside her who carried her home. The thought both intrigued and terrified her, the fact that somewhere beneath a very attractive, very human-looking facade, a beast lay hidden.
A beast like the one Rhiorna said lie dormant inside her just waiting to awaken.
What scared her most about the things Rhiorna said was that a part of her didn’t just believe, she knew they were true. And she’d never told anyone the whole truth about her nightmares as a girl, not even Pahjah. It wasn’t Llorveth that frightened her in those dreams but the wolf that overtook her body and drove her through the darkness, the moons boring down hard upon her soul. She shivered again, turning her head away from the memory as if simply blinking would make it disappear.
She lifted her hand, moved fingers through the damp strings of her hair to push them away from her face. She drew away from the wolf man sitting beside her, though she didn’t really want to. She enjoyed his nearness far too much, felt safe in his company and that scared her almost as much as the wolf she became in her dreams.
“Sorry.” She sniffled and rubbed her hands beneath her eyes to brush away her tears.
Finn shrugged and looked down at her over his shoulder. He had the bluest eyes, like cold crystal—the same blue eyes of the beast in the darkness, but there was nothing savage in them, nothing terrifying. “Don’t be sorry. I’d probably cry too if I woke up in this wretched place. Trust me, I wake up here every day, and maybe I don’t cry, but there are a lot of days I’d like to.”<
br />
That grin. She couldn’t ignore how light it made her feel, how much of the weight pressing down on her shoulders seemed to lift away whenever he looked at her, but hadn’t she felt that same sense of security and intrigue with Trystay? And he’d betrayed her, tried to kill her.
No, there had been no safety in Trystay’s eyes. The adventure he proposed enticed her. His willingness to break the rules had been a trick, a clever ploy to make her believe he was a kindred spirit, someone who wouldn’t clip her wings and lock her in a tower until he wanted to breed her like some prize-winning royal cow. As a little girl she’d daydreamed some great and powerful romance sweeping into her life when she was grown, a handsome prince that would whirl her away from her father like some beautiful storm and finally set her free. For a fleeting moment she actually believed Trystay would give her that, but now she knew better.
Love was the stuff of fairy tales and tragedies, stories like the one Rhiorna told her about her mother and Rognar.
She wasn’t going to fall for that again. She’d just as soon avoid that kind of burden in her life, and for a moment she wondered if the priestesses on the Isle of Dorayne would take her in and allow her to serve the Ladies, living out the rest of her life disentangled from the temptations of the heart and focused on the workings of magic. Her father wouldn’t like that at all, and though she knew that in the current state of things she should be worried less about what her father wouldn’t like and more about how to get out of her situation, she couldn’t help herself. Since waking, she’d learned too much, more than she ever wanted to know, about the man she’d called Father since she was old enough to speak.
Scooting away from him until there was a good inch or two between them, she drew her gaze back to the statue of Llorveth and pushed away all thoughts of how safe and comfortable she felt with his arm around her. She swore she’d felt his heart beating in answer to hers when she’d been near him, a single, simultaneous beat as if their two hearts shared a rhythm. But that was stupid. Love had nothing to do with the physical heart, and that alone made her believe the strange sensation she felt near him couldn’t be real.
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