by Zoë Archer
But Astrid had forever been full of life. She was, as Michael once confided, life itself. An irrepressible energy, a force that no one could ever stop, and no one tried. Michael had been content to bask in her reflected glow, though he had his own quiet strength. Catullus always knew when she was at headquarters, even when he was in the quiet of his basement workshop. The whole building filled with her vibrancy. Blades, sequestered in their rooms, were drawn from their solitude by her energy. The parlor was never so full of people as when she was there, telling stories, acting out with a sheepish Michael their latest adventure. Laughter and exuberance. It felt much duller when she was away on a mission, as though all the lamps had been dimmed.
Yet here, in this homely little cabin, she had lived quietly, shut away not only from her family, the Blades, but also, Catullus realized, shut away from herself. The thought saddened and angered him.
“Hey, Graves,” shouted Quinn behind him. “You better come out here.”
Shutting away thoughts of Astrid’s self-imposed exile, Catullus turned and went down the front steps. He found the guide Jourdain bent low to the ground, with Quinn standing concernedly nearby.
“These tracks,” Jourdain said. “They say that your friend set out with a companion. A little while later, a group of men came, and now they follow her, but take a different track. She must know a secret way out of this meadow.” The Métis stood and dusted his hands together.
“How far apart are they?” Catullus asked.
“Can’t say. These tracks are far from fresh. But there are seven mounted men with pack animals following her.”
Catullus swore and his hand tightened on the leather sling of his shotgun. The Heirs were most definitely pursuing her.
“Those men, the ones Sergeant Williamson told you about,” Jourdain said. “I remember when they came through the post. They wanted me for a guide, but I didn’t like them. Four Englishmen hired and left with three guides.”
“You didn’t say anything before,” Quinn grumbled.
Jourdain shrugged. “Wasn’t sure they were the same people. But it makes sense now.”
“Did any of them give their names?” Catullus demanded.
The Métis frowned in thought. “Halling was one.”
Catullus felt marginally better. Richard Halling, a baronet’s son, was hardly a threat, though he could land a mean punch when finally cornered.
“Milbourne,” Jourdain added, and that made Catullus a bit nervous, considering that Sir John Milbourne could shoot the kernel out of an apricot with surgical precision. “There was also…Buckbridge…Bracebank?”
“Bracebridge?” Catullus filled in.
“That’s the one.”
Catullus’s lips thinned with concern. Lesley Bracebridge had been the protégé of the Heirs’ most powerful mage. And now that Chernock was dead, killed in Greece, Bracebridge would be more than eager to prove himself as the Heirs’ most formidable dark-magic user. Who knew what kind of magic Bracebridge would use against Astrid, what untapped Sources he sought, not only for the Heirs’ demands, but his own.
“And the fourth?” Catullus asked.
Jourdain stared at his boots for a long while, sifting through his memory. There were any number of names that Catullus did not want to hear, but two in particular stood out. He prayed that Jourdain did not say—
“Staunton.” The guide smiled, proud to have recalled everyone’s names, but his smile faded as soon as he saw Catullus’s face.
Catullus immediately went to his horse and mounted. Without speaking, Quinn and Jourdain did the same. There wasn’t time to waste on something as unimportant as words.
Astrid and Nathan didn’t speak for hours. On foot, they needed to put distance between themselves and the Earth Spirits, and, even with He Watches Stars’s medicine, did not want to risk any sharp-eared shape changer hearing them. So they moved onward by unspoken agreement, through forested slopes and past mountain-ringed lakes, as dawn blazed to life overhead.
The old medicine man must have kept his word to keep the Earth Spirits from pursuing. Astrid could not sense their magic nearby and, with each step she took away from their village, their presence dimmed.
They crossed a creek, and then another. He strode beside her and the rising sun glinted in the onyx of his eyes, revealing the hard sheen of anger within.
She knew he would be angry, should have counted on it, and every moment of silence thickened and strengthened his anger.
“You ran,” he said, breaking the silence. He didn’t hide his fury.
Her shoulders stiffened. “It had to be done. Sources are at risk.”
“You weren’t running toward the totems,” he countered. “You ran from me. Scared.” He clenched his jaw. “What I said about you to the tribe—it’s true. True and you know it. You accept me as I am. When I am with you, I’m whole.”
Astrid whirled to face him. Her cheeks burned as her heart sped at his words. They reverberated within her like a deep bell, a sound and a feeling. Yet she clung to the few tatters of her self-defense. “You’ve been looking for a place to belong, for people like you. And you found them. You’re meant to be with the Earth Spirits, not risking your life with me to find Sources.”
“I know this mission is important,” he growled, “to me, to you, to the Earth Spirits, even to the damned Heirs of Albion. But you’re hiding behind it.”
A stab. “Rushing into danger is not hiding.” She pressed her lips together until they whitened. “Just as your true home is with the Earth Spirits, my true home is this path, this mission. The Blades of the Rose are my people, their work is where I am meant to be, who I am. I must carry on their objectives.”
“Not alone. From the beginning, it’s been you and me. Together.”
That silenced her. She had no rejoinder, because there was nothing she might say to shield her from such brutal, beautiful honesty.
“You came after me,” she whispered. “Left behind what you did not need to abandon.”
He did not answer, because the answer was in his eyes. She stared at him for a long while, her gaze moving over his face. They saw each other—perhaps more fully than ever before, perhaps more than anyone else had ever done. Who was this fierce man she had met by chance in the middle of the wilderness? He had a planetary force, a gravity, that drew her to him. Within herself she found a mixture of fear and desire and something even stronger, deeper than desire. He was drawn to her just as powerfully. But without fear.
Some daylight bird sang above them in the tree branches. Its mate answered.
“Thank you,” she said, simply, quietly. “For…coming after me.” She glanced up at the birds. “No one did. Before.”
She saw that he understood. She’d held everyone back, even those who loved her most, yet none of them had faced her, challenged her. Except him.
Nathan stepped closer until only a few inches separated them. He took in the details of her face, and she imagined how she must look at that moment. A little weary, soft purple crescents underneath her eyes. The smallest lines at the corners of her eyes, traced by whispers, that showed a life lived fully. She was not a fresh girl. She was a woman, with the years written upon her face.
To him, she saw, she was beautiful. Yet when his hand came up to cup the back of her head, she stood, motionless, wary, and wanting.
He held her like that for a moment. Then they came together, brushing lips in a kiss. Only their mouths contacted, but everything gathered in that small connection.
This is right. This is as it should be.
She pulled away. “You…overwhelmme.”
He whispered, his breath warm and feathering across her face, “I only give what I know you can handle.”
Her rueful laugh. “Such conviction.”
“When it comes to you and me, both alone and together, there is no doubt.”
The smallest smile tilted the corners of her mouth, until it faded with the hard reality they now faced. “But we cannot take
for granted the success of this mission. One of the first things we learn when initiated into the Blades: Complacency leads to failure.”
“Complacent? Me? Never.” He dropped his hand from where he touched her, reluctance in the gesture, and her own disappointment flared at the absence of his touch. “We need to find the totems. The answers are in the legend.”
The fire of purpose flared to life within her. “I’ve been thinking about that since we left the village. To the white lake where the pack hunts. Wolves hunt in packs.”
“The legend specified a lake,” Nathan mused. “Wolves can’t hunt on water. They would want a solid surface, I’d think.”
“Solid…perhaps frozen?” Astrid suggested.
They looked at each other as understanding emerged. “And if water is frozen,” he said, “it would be white.”
“Numerous lakes freeze in winter.” She chewed on her lip in contemplation. “The one we seek could be any of hundreds or thousands in these mountains. And we’re at least a month away from that kind of cold. Unless…” Her words trailed away as she thought.
“Unless…?” he prompted.
“There are ice fields that remain frozen,” she said. “Year round. They never melt.”
“Which would make sense—if they’re in the legend, then they wouldn’t change from season to season, and always remain white.”
Excitement grew as they pieced together the meaning of the legend. They both began to grin like children opening the door to a secret room.
“How many ice fields are there?” Nathan asked.
“Several, but I don’t know how many are within the Earth Spirits’ territory. Nor how we would know if wolves hunt there.”
Nathan would not be deterred. “A hunt of our own.”
She found herself just as eager for the challenge. “It gets colder the farther north we go. The right environment for ice fields.”
“North it is,” he said with a smile. And something gleamed inside her as she answered it, the smile of shared expectation and eagerness.
From her coat pocket, she pulled out and then consulted her Compass. She thought about taking it from the chest in her cabin, the choice she had made. That day seemed a long time ago. Enough time for her to be reawakened. And discover the man she needed beside her. Within her, the rusty gates to her heart groaned as they slowly, slowly began to open.
“You’re truly not cold?” Astrid’s breath formed soft, warm clouds in front of her face. She pulled her heavy coat closer, then glanced down at his bare legs before focusing on the boulders she clambered over. A blush stained her cheeks.
That blush. Far too carnal to be girlish. He loved that he could do that to her, seasoned warrior that she was.
They climbed a rocky slope, nearing the top of a peak, but if Nathan did not see her breath hanging in the air, he wouldn’t have known that the temperature was dropping. He felt insulated within the warmth of the Earth Spirits’ magic, its elemental fire.
“It’s refreshing,” he said. “Cool against my skin.” He didn’t need the shirt he wore, either, but kept it on to prevent the pack from chafing his back. The moccasins, too, were almost unnecessary, but he kept them on. He pulled himself up another rock. The ascent was arduous, but it felt good to lose himself in movement, the simple demands of climbing when he became flesh and motion.
“I suppose making the transformation into an animal is easier,” she said, “with such…scanty garments.” Despite her heavy pack, Astrid moved fluidly over the rocks, taking the mountain as though born to it. “Less to remove.”
“Liberating,” he said. “Try it.”
She chuckled, rueful, as she reached up to grasp the rock above her. “I can just picture me tramping up and down these mountains with icicles on my nose and my bum hanging out.”
“So can I,” he growled, assailed by images of her bare, supple legs, the creamy peach of her ass. As for the icicles on her nose, he’d have all of her warmed up within moments.
Then she cursed, softly, as she glanced up. He followed her gaze and joined her in a little bout of swearing.
A falcon circled high above them. Nathan’s sharp eyesight revealed it to be the same falcon that belonged to the Heirs.
“They’re tracking us,” she muttered.
“Then we keep going forward.”
Nathan and Astrid pushed themselves harder, climbing quickly, until they stood at the crest of the mountain. They gazed down into the valley below.
A plane of thick ice stretched along the bottom of the valley, its surface lined with crevasses. It looked to be about a mile across, bereft of life.
“Looks more gray than white,” he said, surveying the ice’s grimy surface.
“But it doesn’t feel right, either.” She planted her hands on her hips, frowning. “There’s no magic here.”
“How can you tell? A trick learned from the Blades of the Rose?”
“There is no trick to recognizing magic,” she said. “Yet, when you are exposed to magic enough, as Blades are, you begin to get an innate sense of it.”
“The totem could be buried,” he noted. “There’s a great deal of ice here.”
“Do you remember when He Watches Stars said his medicine had been stronger lately? That something had changed?”
“I remember.”
“I’ve felt it, too,” she said, her expression grave. “This strange…rupture. As if all the magic in the world suddenly became amplified. I do not know how or why or even where this feeling comes from, but I know it is real.”
He nodded in acceptance. “And you sense no such magic here,” he said.
She gazed back out at the ice field huddled at the bottom of the valley. “I cannot. I’m not an Earth Spirit, however. The totem’s Source magic is within you. You can find it in yourself.”
Recognition hit him. “So that’s what that was.”
She raised a questioning brow.
“Ever since I arrived at the trading post, I’ve been hearing this voice. A voice that wasn’t a voice. Urging me toward the mountains, saying that it was waiting for me. It grew stronger the closer I came to the Earth Spirits’ territory.”
“Yes,” she said softly. “That is the magic of the Earth Spirits, of the totems. It’s within you. The moment I met you I…felt it. I feel it now.”
They stared at each other for a long moment, golden awareness stretching between them like spiderwebs—finely wrought but incredibly strong. He stepped closer.
Her hands came up to press against his chest. “The question,” she said, “is not whether I can feel magic in you. It’s whether you can sense magic here.”
He took a reluctant step back, but there was a peace within him. She understood who, what, he was, and his connection to magic. He could free himself with her, and that was a gift he never thought to possess.
Nathan turned and contemplated the ice field, trying to open himself and his beast up to whatever energy or power lay within the land. He was a creature of magic, had seen magic with his own eyes, felt the call of the mountains.
He drew in a breath and the beast caught the scent and presence of the ice, the rocks, even the caribou miles away, heading toward a fresh place to graze. Astrid’s warm presence beside him. Magic had its scent as well. The Earth Spirits’ village had been alive with it. A sharp spice. It was more than a fragrance, it was a feeling, bright and shadowed, that drew along his every fiber, every nerve, and deeper.
Opening himself further, he sensed magic pulling him toward it. But not here. Here was its absence. A void as lifeless as ice.
“The totem’s not in this ice field,” he said at last. “We are close, but this is not the place. Farther north.”
She smiled at him. And just kept getting more and more lovely. “There, you see? You did it.” She turned and began to pick her way down the rocky slope, nimble and sure as a tawny cat.
Did she know? Following her down the mountain, Nathan felt it, its gleaming tendrils tugging on him. W
ithin Astrid glowed magic—not the kind of Sources and totems and Earth Spirits, but a magic that was entirely and uniquely hers.
Albert Staunton paced the edge of the Heirs’ encampment. He hated that the farther north they went, the less daylight they had for travel. Just ahead of them was Astrid Bramfield and the shape changer. Almost within his grasp. So the falcon had revealed to Bracebridge, who had translated the bird’s shrieks. If the Heirs traveled all night, the Blade and Indian would be his by tomorrow.
“We shouldn’t be stopping,” he snapped to one of the guides.
The mountain man didn’t look up from cleaning his rifle. “Can’t travel at night,” he said, then spit out some tobacco juice dangerously close to Staunton’s boots. “Too dangerous.”
“But you know this country!”
“And that’s why I know only a damn fool goes stomping around at night. Sure way to get a man killed.”
Staunton, irritated, looked toward the two other men he’d hired as guides. Maybe one of them could be persuaded to lead the Heirs after sundown. But all of them shook their heads and muttered about Englishmen who hadn’t got a lick of sense when it came to mountain life.
Aggravated, Staunton paced over to Bracebridge. The mage had built his own, smaller fire a small distance from the larger campfire, where Halling and Milbourne now sat. The mage tossed handfuls of herbs and vials of powders into the flames, mumbling incantations. Duchess, Bracebridge’s nasty-tempered falcon, perched nearby on a fallen tree, and her master’s spellcasting made her shake out her wings and dance from foot to foot. Staunton made sure to stay clear of the falcon. She enjoyed biting.
Bracebridge threw what looked like toenails pulled from a dog’s paw into the fire. Thicker smoke poured forth, black and acrid, swirling into the shape of a wolf. The mage smiled as his falcon gave a shriek. But when the smoke broke apart, Bracebridge cursed. He scowled when he saw Staunton watching him.
“I’ve almost got it,” the mage said.