by Leigh Evans
He’s hurting for me.
“Trowbridge, the truth,” I said. “Is there any chance Lexi can get through the portal without the Black Mage knowing?”
A pause—and for that, I’ll always love him—as he thought it over seriously.
“No,” he said finally. “He’d have to have some pretty serious magic to get through what’s waiting for him at the other end and he doesn’t.”
I nodded and turned back for the window.
“Coming here was the act of a desperate man, sweetheart,” he said as he crossed the room. His tone was careful, just as his steps were slow and measured—a man gingerly navigating himself over a piece of thin ice.
Did he think I was on the verge of breaking?
Not me. I’m almost numb.
My mate touched my arm, and when I didn’t jerk away, he carefully eased me back into his warm embrace and folded his arms around my crossed ones. “Your brother was being put out to pasture, and he knew it. Back in the day, his wolf blood had been overlooked, but tolerance isn’t what it used to be at Court, especially not for a guy whose addiction had become a liability. He was on the way out. The Shadow had outlived his usefulness to the Black Mage and become an embarrassment.”
“I can’t think of a way out of this,” I murmured, watching Merry slide down her chain. She met the obstacle of Trowbridge’s arm, and settled into the vee between my breasts. “He can’t go back; he can’t stay.”
His chin rested on my temple. All I’d have to do would be to lift my chin, and he’d kiss me, and somehow in the moment, I’d forget everything.
Right?
“If it’s any help,” he said. “I could tell you that life for someone with wolf blood is only going to get a whole lot worse in Merenwyn. Once the Old Mage dies, the Black Mage will have full access to the Book of Spells, and he’ll be as powerful as his teacher once was, but he won’t have the tolerance for wolves and other races like the old one. The first thing he’ll do is wipe out anything and anyone that has ever thwarted him.”
“Your Raha’ells?”
His tone hardened. “The Raha’ells have made him look weak. He’ll take care of them the moment the balance of power tips. Anyone with wolf blood in them will be at risk.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“I’ll learn to get over it,” he lied, tightening his embrace. “You know, it won’t just be the wolves who will suffer when the Book of Spells’s wards dissolve.”
All this suffering attached to the actions of one mage.
The wish for revenge. It burned inside me, as fierce as it had the moment Rachel Scawens’s son sawed through Trowbridge’s finger.
Very lightly, Trowbridge brushed his thumb over Merry’s warm amber belly. “I used to hate the sight of her on your chest,” he mused. “But I wouldn’t have made it without her in Merenwyn.”
He opened his palm, and Merry crawled into it with practiced ease.
They’ve done that many times before, I thought, feeling a stab of jealousy.
“She doesn’t belong in this piece of rock. She’s got heart,” he said somberly. Merry-mine wrapped a tendril of ivy around his thumb. “When the Black Mage knows the magic, there’s nothing to stop him from making another Merry or Ralph.”
A beat of red deep inside the heart of the amber. It hurt me to look at her, and so I stared outside to the scene on the front lawn. The men had finished raking up the debris from under the tree. One of them glanced at our window, and I reared back.
“They heard us, didn’t they?” I asked.
“Yes.”
My cheeks heated. They probably heard us make love, too. “Don’t you worry that they’ll speak to the wrong people?”
“Those two gave me their blood vow. Anyone who’s on the property has, and their loyalty is absolute. Those who haven’t, have twenty-four hours to do so.”
Or what? I wanted to ask, but didn’t. “Did your sister make the vow?”
His chest lifted and fell. “No.”
“It’s such a mess, Trowbridge,” I said. “If the Black Mage has an amulet, will he come here?”
“If he believes the Royal Amulet is here, he’ll come.”
“You lied to the pack.”
“It’s a skill I picked up in Merenwyn.”
“Is there any way we can stop it?”
“Not unless someone kills the Black Mage.” Suddenly, Trowbridge swiveled around, his ear cocked toward the door. A moment later, I heard the sound of boots coming up the stairs. “It’s Harry,” he told me, as if I didn’t recognize the sound of those cowboy heels. “He must have some news about Brenda Pritty.”
I tried for a smile and failed. “Then you better go talk to him, hadn’t you?”
“It can wait,” he said.
“No, it can’t, and you know it.” I headed for the bathroom.
Harry knocked on the door. “Sorry, boss, I didn’t want to disturb you, but I just got the information you needed.”
I shut the door, then turned on the tap so that Harry wouldn’t hear me pee. (Yeah, I know he could still hear me but it’s a mental thing, okay?) Trowbridge’s hair littered the floor. One long dread hung over the rim of the garbage can by the toilet. I picked it up. It felt soft in my hand.
Not dead to the touch at all.
I flushed and washed my hands. As I stared at my reflection in the mirror, I thought about how I hated death more than anything else in the world. I’d lost to it twice now, and I’m a really sore loser. Maybe that’s what drove me to protect those I love even when common sense told me not to.
So fix this.
My brain spun around the problem. Lexi needed to return to Merenwyn, but if he did, he’d be facing one very angry mage. Everything always came back to the Black Mage. His soul ball must be as dark as—
Ohhhh.
Contrary to a popular misconception, and the vampires of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you really can’t survive without a soul … The Black Mage’s dark heart was easy pickings in Threall.
All I needed to do to change everything from terrible to bearable was travel to the land of myst, dodge Mad-one, take a stick, and break his soul ball. And then … I could return home. Tell Lexi that his sister, the mystwalker abomination, had slain the monster. That it was safe to go back to Merenwyn and thumb his way through the Old Mage’s spell book until he found the antidote to his addiction.
Murder of the most sinister kind.
But if I did it … If I killed the dark wizard’s twisted soul, I could save Lexi, and Merry’s people, and even Trowbridge’s Raha’ells, so much hurt, so much pain. All I had to do was to be willing to extinguish one light in Threall.
And yet.
Murder.
I killed Dawn Danvers. I rubbed my mouth, thoughtful. Most of the time, I didn’t think of her too much. She’d had to go; she’d hurt mine, and was planning to kill mine. But some nights—when the wind stirred the trees—I found myself thinking of her. I couldn’t seem to erase the memory of her terrified expression when my Fae dragged her toward the pond. I couldn’t seem to forget the way her nails had tried to gouge the cable of Fae magic wrapped around her waist. Sometimes I woke up, heart thudding in my chest, remembering her wild and terrified eyes staring at me from under the water.
If I could do that, I can do this.
Merry scratched my neck, as if to say, “What’s up?”
I shook my head.
The end justifies the means, right?
I turned the idea over, inspecting it from all sides. One speed bump was Mad-one—she’d finally completely lost it. You had to be three-quarters cracker dog to believe I was “the chosen one.” Talk about wishful thinking. She must be dying to find a replacement.
What would I do if she started hovercrafting after me, tossing fireballs?
I’d run damn fast, that’s what I’d do.
Though, no matter how quickly I sprinted down the field, I’d always been a slow tree climber—partly due to my fear over the pros
pect of falling, partly because I’d never had Lexi’s agility. And from what I could remember, the specimen I intended to scale was a monster. Heavily foliaged, its trunk twisted and fat, garnished with knobs of bulbous growths uglier than warts on a witch’s chin. Even now, safe in the Alpha’s bedroom, my skin crawled at the thought of touching that bark. What thoughts would I hear, when I touched his tree? Goddess, it would be like sticking your hand into a pile of offal.
Oh crap. What if he saw into me?
I held a glass under the faucet—hey, look at that, the water pouring out of the tap looks a lot like the portal to Merenwyn when you see it from Threall—and filled it up. Tossing my head back, I swallowed it right down, all the time thinking, Protect, protect, protect.
Okay. The simplest solution would be to put everything precious in a strongbox—Trowbridge, Lexi, Cordelia, Merry and Ralph, Harry, and even Biggs. Everything that was crucial to me sealed in a treasure chest. I wiped the corner of my mouth. I could do that. I was great at compartmentalizing.
Would that be enough?
“You think too much,” Trowbridge had just told me.
Don’t think. Do.
I turned off the tap, and eavesdropped for a second.
“They say she has a drug problem?” asked Trowbridge.
“Yup,” said Harry. “A big one, from all accounts. Which means—”
“We’ve got to track her down,” finished the Alpha of Creemore. “Find out who she’s told.”
Harry cleared his throat. “Before you arrived Knox said he’d contacted his superior at the NAW, which means Reeve Whitlock probably has at least a verbal report on what’s been going down in Creemore.”
“Doesn’t matter. Without the video, there’s no proof that the portal ever was opened. If it only went as far as Brenda Pritty, we’re good.”
Pack business.
Let Trowbridge take care of his people while I take care of mine.
* * *
I closed my eyes. Concentrated.
Pull away from here. Think of Threall.
I imagined myself as a bird, flying in from the south, my eyes opened wide instead of squeezed tight. Threall was an open field, roughly the size and shape of a hockey rink. Forests to the left and right of the clearing, each separate grove of trees hedged by overgrown hawthorns. Blue mysts weaving across the moss-covered ground. Tree stumps dotting the ground, their jagged edges worn smooth by Threall’s ever-present, soft and fragrant wind.
Yes! I felt a lifting of my soul. A stretch of my skin.
I had feathers, I had wind.
Imagine every detail.
Three trees to avoid in the pasture. Two black walnuts, down at the far end. Skirt over them, be careful of—
I could hear the outside world again.
Detach from the world.
Another swoop and then another run. A close-up of the lone tree at the dead end of the clearing: one ancient beech tree, growing under the lee of the sheer wall of rock. Surrounding it, a hand-constructed fence, made from broken branches and sharp spars of wood, all of them jammed hard into the ground at a forty-five-degree angle so that each dead bough was fitted into the complex embrace of the one below it.
I circled Mad-one’s lair, trying to see through the deep foliage. Past the knotted and gnarled boughs. Looking for a mystwalker, dressed in a long blue gown.
“Hedi?” I heard Trowbridge cry.
No, not back down to where there was nothing but a terrible future. Not there. Choices—the repercussions that would follow them—were being pursued, and things—precious and irreplaceable—were going to be destroyed, unless I did the thing that only I could do.
Fly.
I flapped my wings, hoping to soar.
One last, terrible pain.
I heard one last despairing, “Hedi!”
And then finally, I was free.
Chapter Twenty-three
This felt a tad repetitive.
Once again, I was flat on my stomach, eyes closed, skin registering the prickling resistance of the moss beneath me. For a bit I lay there, recovering, because, for the record, deliberately growing a body is just as horrendously painful as purposely cutting yourself off from your mortal shell. It’s all about gravity, you know? Most of us don’t realize the constant tug of it or even recognize the weight of our bodies.
Then again, most of us can’t travel to Threall.
A faint breeze, sweet and floral, teased my hair. It picked up a paper fragment of a soul ball and played with it with sly cruelty, impaling it for a taunting second on the curved thorn of a hawthorn before sending it skipping across a brackish puddle. I tracked its progress with my eyes—this fluttering scrap, once the sheath of a soul, now a toy to a heartless wind—feeling strangely sad and old, as it was carried past the scaled trunk of the Old Mage’s black walnut tree.
Each time, I land here. Not under the canopy of the Black Mage’s specimen, but near this wind-battered relic. Why? Was I more like Lexi than I knew? Did my covetous soul recognize that magic lay beneath Threall’s thin crust? That beneath my belly were the wizard’s roots, ebbing life—a fibrous pathway to a mind both agile and—
Goddess, stop. Get up. Roll away.
Rolling to my knees, I forced my attention from his dying tree and found things, if possible, had only gotten worse in Threall during my absence. Daylight was waning and with its creeping loss bomb craters had proliferated, trees had suffered limb amputations, and the once serene, mossy clearing had nearly finished its de-evolution into an unloved wetland.
So much water. So much mud and mangled moss.
A few feet to my left, just past her foxhole, the Mystwalker sat slumped on a tree stump, her feet resting on a broken tree branch. She half turned, her lip twisted in a predictable snarl. “’Tis but you,” she noted.
Evidently, I’d been recast from threat to irritation.
I rose to my feet to gaze better at the disordered forest beyond the straggling line of hawthorns. The woods were dark and quiet. I’d like to wander through them one day. When I’m not running from something. Or for that matter, running to something.
“It is the wildness in you,” Mad-one said quietly.
When I turned, she nodded toward the sanctuary of the trees. “Your soul recognizes its loss and wants it to be reconciled. It is why that side of my Threall fascinates you.” Then she studied me, her head tilted, her eyes weary and bleak. “You should find a place of concealment. It would be a pity to lose the chosen one before she is of practical use.”
“And who or what am I hiding from?”
“The same vile beast as before—the devil’s spawn.”
He had to be one big-ass monster to have done this much damage. The cudgel lay where I’d dropped it. I bent to pick it up, and said, with as much casual indifference as I could muster, “I see no spawn.”
“He will return.”
“Where’d he go?”
Her mouth flattened.
Ah. So he’d returned to where she could not—home to Merenwyn.
The sudden leak of sympathy I felt for the Mystwalker of Threall turned me testy. “You want to tell me why you haven’t blown the ‘devil’s spawn’ off the edge of the world like you once tried to do to me?”
“He is fleet of foot,” she said sourly.
Great. The Threall destroyer was a fast-moving guy with a pitchfork and horns.
I blew some air through my teeth. “If I could fly like you, I’d have nipped up to the top of the Black Mage’s tree, and ripped his soul ball out of its boughs faster than you could say rock-a-bye baby.”
Using the slow voice usually reserved for speaking to very young children, she said, “He has cast a ward of protection around the citadel of his cyreath—surely you can see that? And even if I wished to pass through its cloying barrier, my soul is bound. I cannot hurt a member of the Inner Court or its mage. If you were a bound mystwalker instead of an ignorant fool you would know that.”
Always with the
cheap shots. “What is a citadel of your cyreath?”
A long finger, soot tipped, smeared with mud, pointed toward the nearest tree. “That is a citadel.” Then she gestured toward the soul ball. “That is a cyreath.” With a look of utter disgust, she wiped her hand clean with her skirt. “Also, that which you would know if you were a mystwalker with the most rudimentary education.”
I had a comment for that—something along the lines of “Oh shut up, Miss Smarty-pants”—but refrained. Instead I asked, “How bad is his ward?”
“You could pass through it,” she replied, her voice thoughtful.
Could I?
If there really is a ward then it’s damn near invisible, I thought, gazing at the citadel of the Black Mage’s twisted soul. I might have miscalculated how easy of a task a little soul destruction was going to be because I hadn’t factored fear into my stunningly simple plan of scaling his walnut tree and beating the shit out of his “cyreath,” and, oh sweet heavens, I should have. How could a thirty-foot tree seem to be so alive? So sentient? So malevolent?
Gray-green lichen crawled up its twisted trunk.
Climb that? How? That first fork was chin-high, if not higher. I’d need to perch my foot on top of one of those bulbous growths, and insert my hand into a dark knothole—oh please, no spiders—just to reach that first fork. After that I’d have to pick a path to where his mottled purple soul ball swayed from its perch over the abyss that had no bottom, trusting that my weight would be supported by branches that grew steadily thinner and weaker the higher I went.
All of it accomplished under the watchful eye of the Mystwalker of Threall.
She of the fireballs and bad temper.
I tapped my cudgel against my thigh, thinking how much I’d like to use it on Mad-one, while she busied herself by daintily rearranging the folds of her scorched skirt. After I’d counted all my toes and fingers, I slid a glance toward her in time to see her quickly avert her eyes.
This is ridiculous. I’m playing “who’s the bigger bitch” with Mad-one while Lexi is throwing himself at the door of his prison. “So, am I right in thinking that you don’t have any particular problem with me killing the Black Mage?”