by Shona Husk
Amanda walked around the table, her steps short because of the narrow skirt of the dress. But it clung to her legs in a way he’d noticed as she walked down the aisle, and in a way he couldn’t avoid noticing now. He learned to control the physical response to attraction long before; the self-loathing that usually followed wasn’t as easy to contain.
He got up. “I’m not very good.” There’d been no call for dancing either as a Roman slave or as a goblin.
“You don’t have to be. It’s a slow song,” she said, like it explained everything.
Dai inclined his head. This wasn’t a battle he was going to win, and losing should be more enjoyable. Any other man would’ve leapt at the chance to dance with her, but instead he was wrestling with memories from his old life that threatened to poison his future.
He took her hand and her fingers curved around his. Her hands were cool and her touch light, as if she wasn’t sure about what she was doing. Her other hand skimmed over his chest to rest on his shoulder like a feather. He faltered for a moment, not sure what to do. He’d spent his life fighting both Romans and goblins, and too long at the mercy of Claudius. Was he even capable of the gentle touch Amanda deserved?
“On my waist,” she murmured, her lips curving in a small smile, as if she was just as hesitant as him.
“We could go into the living room.” His hand settled on her waist, the dress silky beneath his palm.
Amanda tilted her chin and looked up at him. “No, here is fine.”
She moved a little closer, her perfume not masking the warm scent of her skin. She moved slowly, her body lithe in his hands. They were close, yet he wanted to pull her closer and feel her against the length of his body.
But if he did, he knew what would follow and he could only resist so much before he would succumb to the sensation. He focused on the woman in his arms and the light touch of her hands on his skin. He couldn’t remember the last time someone touched him without the intent to injure. Or the last time his hands hadn’t damaged all they touched.
He glanced down, but her eyes were closed. Her expression wasn’t one of contentment, but one of sadness. The gold wedding band on her finger shone in the light. He was standing in for the man she still loved. For a moment he wanted to be the one to remind her what a living one felt like—after all, she shouldn’t be wasting the life she had pining over what she’d lost. Life went on, whether you wanted it to or not. He’d learned that the hard way. In his next heartbeat, he knew he could never be what she needed. He knew his reactions weren’t right, and he would never be normal. He was too broken.
The song ended, but neither of them pulled away. Her hand remained on his shoulder, their fingers still linked. Those little, magical threads were already strung between them, creating a bond.
She opened her eyes and glanced up at him, then leaned a little closer. He wanted to kiss her to see how she’d react. But he took a breath and pushed down the sharp-edged desire. For a moment he’d let himself be lost and he didn’t want to spoil what had happened by taking something that wasn’t offered.
“Mom…”
Amanda pulled back and released his hand as if she’d been stung. The magic between them snapped. The loss was as sharp as a whip, then gone almost before he could recognize the sting.
Brigit glanced between her mother and him, and he knew he’d crossed a line that had never been drawn before. She’d never seen her mother with a man.
“Will you dance with me, Mommy?”
“Yes, of course, sweetie.” She took her daughter’s hand, but as she reached the archway leading to the living room, she glanced over her shoulder at him. Her lips were parted a fraction as if she wanted to say something, but she just smiled and turned away.
Dai blinked slowly and let his vision shift so he could see the weave of magic. She might be walking away, but those tentative golden threads reached for him. This time he let his own meet hers halfway, even though he knew if she took them back it would hurt.
But it was his choice to make. After so many years his life was his own to command. No king. No Claudius. No curse.
He was free, and he was beginning to understand what that meant…even if he wasn’t sure what to do next.
Chapter 2
After Amanda and Brigit had left, Dai had gone for a walk, not wanting to linger in the house, but also needing his own company. He wanted to unravel what was happening between him and Amanda in private, and examine the delicate bond between them without having to answer to Eliza’s raised eyebrows—she hadn’t been so wrapped in the wedding not to notice something was going on.
The sun was starting to drop away, and the temperature was falling with it, so he began to loop back to Eliza’s street. He strolled past the big houses overlooking the river, as if each owner was a king of his own small tribe. The gardens were carefully trimmed and trained in the Roman way, as if even nature could be bent to human will.
Instead of going straight back, he delayed a little longer and went to the park where he’d seen a dying tree. Over the past couple of days as he walked he’d tried to look beyond what everyone else saw and into the way everything was constructed. If he used the magical sight for too long, it made his head ache. But he was willing to risk it today.
He needed to know if he could heal the tree…and then maybe himself.
Dai took a seat on a bench covered in symbols he was unfamiliar with, then took a breath and let his vision slip. He tried to focus on the threads that wove tightly together to make up the tree, but his mind wasn’t truly on the magic. It kept drifting back to the few moments he’d held Amanda.
He glanced at his hand, seeing more than just skin lined with faint scars. He saw the magical construct of his body and the golden strands that linked him to Amanda. He wasn’t imagining her interest. This was the proof—not that he’d be able to explain it to anyone.
If he had his books on magic, healing the tree would’ve been easy. He ignored the doubts that rose about fixing his own scars; healing was a fine art for even in the simplest case, and his damage was far from simple. He rolled his shoulders, but the tightness remained.
Tree first. If he killed it, it didn’t matter as it was dying anyway. If he healed it…well, he’d be one step closer. He was tired of waiting for Birch Trustees to finish examining his library. He and his brother had stashed much of their hoard there over the centuries. The secret bank was known for handling unusual requests with discretion. For the most part, Birch had been nothing but helpful since he and his brother had broken free and become human. The bank had transferred their gold and silver and gems into regular human bank accounts, then supplied fake IDs all round. They had eased what could’ve been an impossible transition.
At first glance there was nothing to distinguish him from any other man in the Fixed Realm…except he’d outlived Rome and knew magic was real. With the sight he looked at the web of lines that made up his hand as he flexed his fingers. Oh yeah, he was a regular twenty-first century man.
And he was finally able to put into practice the things he’d studied but had been unable to do as a goblin. He didn’t need to touch the tree. He could see how the fibers of the trunk were snagged and twisted, cutting off the life that pumped through the earth and eddied around its roots. From his training, he knew it was possible to heal the damage; whether he could do it was another question.
The risk of failing held him motionless. He’d spent too much time studying instead of acting. He’d waited so long to be rid of the curse, and before that he’d been fighting to be free of the bloody Romans. He wanted a life, now.
He forced himself to act. His fingers twitched against his leg as he imagined smoothing the strands of magic that made up the tree. He forced his will into thought. The tangles unraveled and the tree gave a shiver as the life force of the earth was again able to flow freely. If it had been that easy to break the curse and pull the gray of the Shadowlands out of Roan, they would’ve been free centuries ago.
&nbs
p; He paused to watch the tree and see if the magical changes would hold. The tree sighed as if touched by a breeze, but the changes did more than hold. Buds began to form, and new leaves unfurled as if it was spring and not mid-winter.
“Too much,” Dai muttered and tried to pull back some of what he’d done, but the tree pushed him away. The throbbing in his temples began as he tried to do too much with the magic he could barely control. Then the pain spread, tightening around his skull like hands seeking to crush the bone. With a gasp he released all hold on the magic and let the tree win the fight for survival. He lacked the heart to kill anymore.
He blinked to clear the sight, but the headache remained—a warning he was pushing too hard. Everything was easier on paper and in theory. Cautiously he looked around, his heart rate rising as if he expected his tampering to be discovered. But no one noticed that nature had gone wild. Humans didn’t see the magic happening right in front of them anymore. In his time, they would’ve. Next time he would be more careful.
And much more practice was needed before he tried to remove even some of the small scars that marked his body. Then he could try the big one. He closed his eyes and felt the hot pulsing of the fibrous talons lodged in his chest and locked around his heart. With the sight he’d be able to see them, but not one wise man or mage had been willing to risk removing them out of fear of killing him and having to face the wrath of the Goblin King.
Paths you have to walk alone, they’d say as they shook their heads.
That magical grip around his heart would kill him, it was feeding off him, now he no longer had the magic of the Shadowlands and the curse to keep him alive.
Dai opened his eyes and saw the world as any other person. There were smaller magics he could practice with—ones that didn’t involve life and death. He glanced at the tree but couldn’t contain the smile. The tree was alive.
His stomach grumbled, but he sat a moment longer enjoying the last of the sunlight and the feeling of being hungry. It had been a long time since he’d wanted food—or needed it. In the Shadowlands they had existed more like goblins than men, fed by the dark magic that corrupted souls. Living there left a stain. He took a final look at the tree as he left. Someone might look twice and think they’d remembered wrong, but no one would suspect the truth.
***
Eliza’s grand two-story house was silent when he got back. No doubt Roan and Eliza were still upstairs. He didn’t resent what Roan had; he’d once wanted the same, now he wasn’t sure if he was still capable. He’d lived with violence for so long, as victim and perpetrator, that he didn’t trust himself. And then there was the magic. He flexed his back as if he could dislodge the persistent weight lodged between his shoulders.
From his temporary downstairs bedroom—he had no desire to be closer to Roan and Eliza than he had to be—he gathered clean clothes and ripped out the sales tags as he walked to the bathroom. What had once been a guest room and en suite at the back of the house had been turned into an office by Eliza’s father. He liked it, a room full of books. It was like a small version of his library in the Shadowlands but specialized in law instead of magic. Eliza’s father would’ve been an interesting man.
Once he got his books back from Birch, he’d need a whole house to put them in. Texts in every language ever written and lore on more systems of magic than people knew about from cultures that had passed without recognition. He hadn’t been able to stomach the thought of all that knowledge being lost in the Shadowlands forever, so he’d deposited his life’s work in the vaults of Birch Trustees. Now they were taking their sweet time returning his books.
He shivered, as if just the thought of the Shadowlands could chill him to the core, and turned on the heater even though it wasn’t that cold. Not like when he’d been forced to break the ice before washing when he was younger. The shower water warmed while he stripped. All his shirts had long sleeves to hide the marks on his body. The mirror kept his secrets.
Across his skin inked in black were sigils, symbols, and texts in a hundred different languages. All of them now dead. They were the marks of holy men and voodoo priests, witches and wise women that had marked his progression through the various studies of lore. They didn’t just mark his skin; they marked his very being, pulsing with power, and couldn’t be removed. Not that he would. It had taken too much to earn them.
Cuneiform wedges fell from his hip down his leg, a protection against evil. Sanskrit wrapped his wrist and forearm in a proverb he’d failed to live by. A mark of initiation burned into his thigh; on the surface it was nothing more than a crescent moon. On his chest, over his heart, lay a spider at the center of her web. Today she was upright. She’d never moved in the Shadowlands, but in the Fixed Realm she did. And it was unnerving. He touched the spider but felt only his skin. A spider weaves the web, makes it suit her purpose, but never spins without reason. Pity he didn’t know what the movement meant.
Beneath the magic that had failed to break the druid’s curse were the scars that rippled across him like he was a badly woven cloth riddled with uneven weft and knobbled threads. There were knots and thickenings where he knew his skin showed the thin white lines of wounds healed long ago.
He huffed out a breath and looked at his skin as Amanda would. In that moment he knew he could never let her see. He’d never shown anyone, not even Roan. He would erase the scars, if not the memories. He ran his fingers over the bumps in a rib that had been broken too many times. The urge to use magic burned his fingers, but he hesitated. The tree had grown out of control. What if his bone did something unexpected? He didn’t know how to stop it without his books to refer to. It had been easier to experiment on himself when searching for a cure to the curse when he hadn’t been expecting to live—or wanting to live. Now he didn’t want to get killed while trying to fix himself.
His fingers traced up his chest to the growths that weren’t part of his body but were inside his body. Wrapped around his heart and through his ribs were the talons like malformed hands. He didn’t know when they’d grown, but by the time he could see the magical web of the world, they’d been there. And Dai didn’t need magic to know they weren’t healthy.
After all this time he was still cradled in Rome’s brutal hands. The old hate of all things Roman bubbled to the surface, no less bitter than it had been nearly two thousand years before. Four years at the general’s beck and call had done more than mark his skin. He was willing to risk whatever it took to remove those bloodred and black claws sucking the life out of him. With magic he plucked and pulled, but the talons dug deeper, thrusting through bone and invading his heart.
He gasped, struggling for breath against the stabbing pain, tearing at the muscle. He caught himself on the edge of the vanity. “Damn it.”
The mirror shattered as if he’d punched the center. The claws eased their vicious grip. No amount of magic could pry the poisonous grip from his body without killing him. After 1,951 years, his body was still enslaved.
Dai shook his head. He didn’t need the sight to know why the damage hadn’t healed. He’d been denied vengeance on the man who’d stolen his life long before the curse had laid claim to his soul. No matter what the mystics and monks had advised, forgiveness was a pill too large and too jagged for him to swallow. He’d rather live with the talons than let General Claudius off the hook.
Some lessons he’d failed and continued to fail. The tattoo around his wrist burned as if punishing him for his hate or reminding him to let go. His face was reflected back at him in broken pieces. He wasn’t whole—and never would be. A broken mirror couldn’t be fixed, and its shards would cut everything they touched. He was a hazard, a wound waiting to happen.
The golden threads that linked him to Amanda pulsed with life. He should sever them. Who knew what danger she would be in by being connected to him? But he couldn’t do it. She’d feel the same sting, and even though it would last only a moment, he couldn’t hurt her. She deserved better.
Dai placed his
hand over the center of the broken mirror. The glass flexed and reformed with a slight tremble. Only a small dent in the middle gave away the damage. Not perfect, but close enough. A smile crept up the corners of his lips, maybe some things could be fixed. He touched the uneven surface. Not all magic was beyond his control. But his scars ran deep, and he didn’t have enough magic to fix himself. No one did.
***
Amanda shook out the bridesmaid dress and placed it on a coat hanger. It was a beautiful dress, even if it was impractical. Her fingers skimmed over the black fabric, but her skin remembered Dai’s light touch. She was sure she’d seen something in his eyes when he’d looked at her, and yet it was as if he was afraid to touch her. Like she was made of glass and would break.
She shook her head and placed the dress in the closet. At least she’d be able to wear it again since it was black. For the first time, she was glad Eliza’s ex-fiancé had gone for a black-and-white themed wedding. But the dress was out of place in her wardrobe. It wasn’t the only dress, but it was the only evening dress. When was she ever going to wear it? To a school assembly? To work? How about the park?
Who was she kidding? It was never going to be worn again.
Tears burned her eyes, but she wasn’t upset about the dress. She didn’t know when she’d get to dance with a man again. Being in Dai’s arms made her realize how alone she was. She swiped at the stray tear. She was tired. It had been a long day, and an emotional one. Watching Matt’s sister marry was always going to wake his memory. But that’s all it was. She couldn’t dance with a ghost.
***
Their dog’s barking woke Amanda. But it was the following low growl that really scared her. Her stomach contracted and the hair on her arms spiked. She eased out of bed and took the heavy flashlight out of her nightstand drawer. Without turning on a light she slipped out of the bedroom and padded down the hallway. The sound of her footsteps was drowned out by the tumble of blood through her now wide awake body.