by Rinelle Grey
“When you sent for more troops, I thought you’d just found the mages. But you’ve known they were here for several days, haven’t you?”
Lyall bit back a loud denial, took a deep breath, and attempted to explain calmly. “Brianna isn’t one of them.”
The king’s eyebrows shot up. “Good grief. Can’t you see past your lust for long enough to realise that she’s lying to you? You saw that magical display, and in an area shielded from magic. Can you really still believe she’s innocent?”
“I can and do,” Lyall said firmly. “I’ve been here longer than you have, so how about you give me a chance to explain before you make up your mind?”
“I’m listening.”
Lyall thought over the whole crazy story. Turning up here, seeing Brianna, finding out about her twin, the magical barrier, and then the history of this village all seemed so unbelievable. And then the trolls. He mustn’t forget the trolls.
“This village has been here, guarding the pass over the mountains, since the Great War. Brianna’s people have long since forgotten that this was their purpose, but they’ve guarded the pass against attack after attack despite this. They have nothing to do with the shield, and didn’t even know it existed.”
The king raised an eyebrow. “And they told you all this did they? When they didn’t know it?”
What, did his father think he was stupid? “Of course not. But in an attempt to find whether the mages had been here, I asked Brianna more about the troll attacks…”
“Troll attacks?” his father interrupted. He stared at Lyall in disbelief for a moment, then to Lyall’s chagrin, he laughed! “My goodness. I should have listened to Urster when he said you weren’t up to this task. Surely you didn’t believe superstitious nonsense about trolls?”
Lyall didn’t bother to try to argue his defence, it was plain his father thought little of him, despite choosing to send him on this mission. Instead, he walked across to the table he had been using as a desk, and picked up the troll skull they had unearthed. He held it up without a word.
He felt little satisfaction at the abrupt change in his father’s expression. His eyes widened, and he stared at the skull, then at Lyall. There was no disbelief in his voice as he asked, “What is going on here?”
“It was a magical spell, a curse of sorts,” Lyall explained, only slightly mollified. “Our ancestors put it on the other mages during the Great War and turned them into trolls somehow.”
“How did you find out about this?”
Lyall explained about the crypt, the pictures and the gem. “I sent for more troops when I realised the potential threat these trolls were. Since they have a gem as well, defending against them if they attack again is going to be difficult.”
“Nonsense. They might have a gem, but they can’t possibly have grown in power as much as we have. And we will have a set of twins on our side. They won’t be any match for you.”
Lyall frowned. “About that…”
“Don’t tell me you haven’t bonded her twin yet?”
“Mianna is already married.”
His father’s eyebrows shot up. “So, they sympathised with the twin who refused to obey the law then? The twin law is unbreakable, they have no option but to honour it.”
“It’s not that simple,” Lyall said. “Mianna’s marriage was arranged before Brianna left. In fact, she faked her own death so that her sister could marry as she chose.”
“And now?” his father demanded.
“Now Brianna lives with them as though both of them were married.” His heart twisted at the words, but it couldn’t change the truth of them.
“And you are just going to sit and accept this? I knew you lacked courage, but I would have expected you to be prepared to at least fight for the woman you claim to love! If the husband is dead, the law will default to you.”
“What you are suggesting is murder,” Lyall said. “What right do I have to kill another man and steal his wife? Just because I’m more powerful than he is?”
“Who was first?” his father asked.
Lyall sighed. “I was,” he admitted.
“Then if you won’t enforce your rights, I will,” King Balen said flatly. “Call Urster and we’ll arrange it now.”
“No!”
His father stared at him as though he’d turned green and sprouted horns. “What?”
“I will not let an innocent man be killed just so that I can become more powerful.”
“Are you intending to disobey the law as well?”
“They tried to enforce the law here, centuries ago, and it led directly to the Great War. Don’t you get it? You can’t make a person love someone.”
“And what sort of a message do you think it will send, if the king’s son is exempt from the law?”
“Brianna threatened to tell the village about the barrier if I told them about our relationship.”
His father stared at him. “That’s what this is about? You’re letting that little bitch threaten you into complying with her duplicity? Do you really think that a pitiful little village can stand up to our army?” His father’s voice was scornful, his message plain.
He’d always been like this. Perhaps it was due to being born a prince and always having things his way, or perhaps it was simply his personality. Lyall no longer cared. His mother wasn’t here to be upset, and either way, he couldn’t let a man die just to appease his father’s whims.
He thrust the skull he was still holding into his father’s hands. “That pitiful village has stood up to these trolls and fought them off for centuries. They stand within a magical barrier, within which the only one who can use magic is Brianna. I know which side I’m choosing. I’m going to Brianna and will stand beside her if you try to attack the village.”
His father stood there, staring at him. Before he could object, or attempt to stop him, Lyall slipped out of the tent and into the darkness.
*****
The short walk back to their house was heavy with silence. Brianna tried to take deep breaths to calm herself, but whether it was because the remnants of the magic still tingled through her veins, or because she had no idea how she could even begin to explain the story to Mianna, she just couldn’t find a place of calm at all.
“What was he talking about?” Mianna demanded as soon as the door closed behind them. “What’s bonding? And how does he know you?”
Her twin stared at her as though begging her to have a reasonable explanation.
She didn’t have one. Not one bit of her story with Lyall was reasonable. She should never have let him close to her in the first place, much less followed him to his home and slept with him.
Part of her wanted to explain it away, say the king was talking nonsense, and he must be mad. But she was tired of lying. Every lie she told made it harder to eventually tell the truth.
“I slept with Lyall on Isla de Magi. He’s Lylis’s father.”
The silence in the room was so complete she thought Mianna had forgotten to breathe. Certainly, her twin’s face was turning an unhealthy shade of white. “You… slept with him…? Lylis’s father…?” She shook her head. “Why didn’t you say something?”
Terion stayed quiet, and Brianna was glad. This wasn’t really his fight. It was between her and Mianna.
“I didn’t know how. I didn’t think I’d ever see him again so there seemed no point in telling you who he was. Then when he turned up here, well, he wasn’t exactly being the sort of person you want to introduce to your family,” she joked.
It fell flat.
Mianna’s brow was creased. She frowned. “Do you love him?”
Brianna took a deep breath to deny the possibility, then let it out in a sigh. “Yes.”
Mianna’s eyes widened. “How could you fall in love with someone else? I knew you didn’t love Terion, but I thought…” She broke off and turned away, burying her head in Terion’s chest.
“It doesn’t matter,” Brianna said softly. “Nothing can come of
it. I’ve told him that. I’m staying here with you and Terion. No one else ever needs to know.”
Mianna raised her face and stared at her, uncertain. “Can you really do that? Will he accept that?” Her eyes narrowed then. “What did that man mean by bonded?”
Brianna winced. “Apparently… when two mages sleep together, a bond is formed somehow, making both of them stronger. The twin marriage law is because of that. Twins have the same bond at birth, so marrying both of them… makes a mage twice as strong.”
“So he slept with you to become more powerful?”
She had to admit, it did sound damning. Mianna didn’t know Lyall, couldn’t possibly understand that it wasn’t like that. Half the time she found it hard enough to believe. “It wasn’t like that,” she protested. “If he just wanted to be more powerful, he would have picked the highest powered mage and married her long ago. I’m sure there are plenty who are more powerful than I am.”
“But you’re a twin, that’s better. That’s what you said and what the king said.”
“Lyall didn’t know I was a twin at the time,” she insisted.
Mianna stepped away from Terion and reached for Brianna’s hands. “So he said.” She shook her head. “He’s using you, Bri. Surely you can see that?” Her voice was soft, compassionate. She glanced over at Terion, then back to Brianna. “And if you’re right about twins giving him more power, then he wants both of us.”
Lyall wasn’t like that. After the first time, he hadn’t even mentioned Mianna. But she could see that her twin wasn’t going to believe anything she said in Lyall’s defence. So she fell back on the lie. “He won’t. He can’t do anything to us while we’re inside the village.”
“That’s probably why he’s sent for more mages. They outnumber us now, we can’t possibly hope to defend against them. Our best option might be to run, while we still can. They’re distracted right now with the king arriving. If we go out the side gate…”
“No!”
Mianna stared at her.
“I won’t leave our home. We haven’t let the trolls scare us away in all these centuries, I’m not going to let those mages do it either.”
“Then what are you going to do?” Mianna asked, hands on her hips. “I mean, obviously you know more about magic than you’ve been letting on, but still, there are a couple of hundred of them.”
Those lies just kept getting her into trouble. She was tired of it. “They can’t use their magic inside the barrier.”
“What barrier?”
Brianna sighed. All these explanations were getting a little tedious. “They can’t use magic here in the village, some magical barrier prevents them. The gem we found allows the person holding it to not be affected somehow.”
“So you can do magic and they can’t?” A smile lifted Mianna’s lips. “Now that makes me feel a whole lot better.”
“Until the thought occurs to you that the trolls have one of those gems too.” Terion spoke up for the first time.
As his words sunk in, Mianna’s face transformed from satisfied to horrified.
“But only one of them at a time,” Brianna countered. “We’ve fought the trolls before, and we’re still on even footing. This is no different.” Somehow, her earlier fear of the trolls attacking had paled beside King Balen’s appearance.
“And if the mages attack us at the same time?” Terion asked. “That’s what I’d do in their place. Even without their magic, they could still do a lot of damage.”
Brianna turned on him. “What do you suggest we do then? Do you want to just run away?”
“I don’t know,” Terion said, throwing his hands up helplessly.
A tap on the door interrupted their argument. Mianna and Terion stared at her. As though she had any idea who it was!
She shouldn’t have been surprised to see Lyall standing on the doorstep, but she was. Especially since he was alone.
“Can I come in?” he asked quietly.
As Brianna hesitated, Mianna came up behind her. “No, you can’t. Why do you think you have any rights in our house? You’re just like all those men growing up, you see a set of twins, and think you can get two for the price of one. Well it isn’t going to happen!”
Despite the fact that she agreed with her twin in principle, something in the way she said it irritated her. She rounded on her sister. “Why do you think you’re the only one who gets a say in it? I’ve done my best to make things right for you and Terion all this time, living here with you, not telling anyone that things aren’t the way they seem. Yet you can’t even listen to Lyall and hear what he has to say before deciding that he’s a problem. Why is the man I love worth any less than the one you do?”
Mianna checked. She stared at her sister for a long moment. Then she swallowed. “I’m sorry, Bri. I didn’t think…” She turned to Lyall and Brianna’s heart warmed when she held out her hand to him. “I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced. I hear you and my sister love each other?”
Lyall stared at her for a moment as though he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. Then he nodded and put his hand into hers, clasping it and shaking it. “We do.” He looked over at Brianna and gave her a look that would have melted a heart far stronger than hers. “And I’m looking forward to getting to know her family.”
Terion was still scowling, but Brianna was satisfied. It was a start. Of what, she wasn’t sure, since she still couldn’t see any way they could make this work. But at least there were no more lies, no more hiding things from her sister. That alone was worth it.
The four of them went into the living room and sat around the dining table. It was awkward, and no one seemed ready to start talking, but at least they were in the same room.
“My father is going to cause issues.” Lyall’s voice sounded loud in the silence. He cleared his throat. “He is a firm believer in the twin law and, perhaps more so, in our family maintaining a strong rule.”
“What do you think he will do?” Brianna asked.
Lyall gave a lopsided grin. “I don’t know. I think he’s a little afraid of you, after your display back there.” His voice sobered. “But that won’t stop him for long. He thinks I should insist on my rights and marry both of you.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Mianna said firmly, but her voice wavered.
“I have no wish for an unwilling wife,” Lyall said softly. “So we need to present my father with another option.”
“What?” Brianna asked.
No one said anything. There were more heavy sighs.
“Maybe we need to focus on the immediate problems?” Brianna suggested. “If we can defeat the trolls, the other mages your father is so worried about, perhaps he will be willing to accept an unconventional solution?”
She could think of no real solutions that they hadn’t already considered and discarded, but the suggestion of action seemed to perk Lyall up. “Yes, we need to deal with the trolls first,” he agreed. “I was thinking on the way over here, we need to get an idea of what sort of force we’re up against.”
“How can we do that?” Mianna wrinkled her nose. “No one has ever returned from over the ridge to bring back that kind of information. There could be thousands of them for all we know.”
Lyall smiled. “I highly doubt there are thousands of them. Maybe a few hundred, I would guess. But we don’t need to go physically to find out, we can travel there magically.”
“How can you do that, if you can’t do magic within the village?” Mianna asked suspiciously.
Lyall glanced at Brianna, one eyebrow raised, and she shrugged. “I was explaining everything else, it seemed pointless to leave that fact out.”
Lyall nodded, and turned back to Mianna. “I would need to use the gem, of course.”
Mianna’s suspicious stare didn’t change. But she did turn to Brianna and ask, “Do you trust him?”
“With my life,” Brianna said simply. There was no doubt in her heart.
Mianna searched
her face for a moment, then nodded. “Right then, that will give us a much needed advantage,” she said to Lyall.
He nodded, and held his hand out to Brianna. “Will you come?”
She stared at him for a moment, torn. She wanted to see what really was over the ridge for herself, but she was also afraid of what she might see. “I don’t know how,” she hedged.
“I think you do.” Lyall caught her eyes and held them, waiting.
Brianna hesitated. She knew this must be what she had done when she visited Mianna on her wedding night, but she wasn’t really sure exactly how she had done it or how to do it again. “There’s no real need for me to be there,” she said instead. “You’ll probably be faster on your own.”
“We’ll be more powerful together,” Lyall said solemnly. “And since the trolls have a stone as well, we may not be able to sneak up on them without them noticing.”
“They can hurt you, even if you’re not actually there?” Mianna asked in alarm. “Maybe it’s best to stay home then.”
“The two of us together are more than a match for any mage I’ve ever met,” Lyall said firmly. “I doubt there is any troll that is more powerful.”
“Are you willing to risk Brianna’s life on that certainty?” Terion asked.
“Are you willing to risk the destruction of this village on the possibility that we’re not?” Lyall countered. “If we’re to have any hope of protecting this village, we need to know what we’re up against.” He turned to her. “Brianna?”
Everyone looked at her expectantly. Mianna and Terion’s expressions were worried, Lyall’s quietly encouraging. She bit her lip, then nodded. “Lyall’s right. We need to know what we’re up against. We can come back quickly if we’re noticed.” She ignored the uncertainty digging at the side of her belly. It wasn’t as if she’d be going on her own. Lyall was perfectly capable of defending them if necessary.
Mianna and Terion still didn’t look too sure, but they didn’t object any further, so she sat down next to Lyall and pulled out the stone and stared at it until Lyall’s hand closed over hers. His eyes met hers and any doubts she felt disintegrated.