by Zoë Archer
All around him was black. Had he gone blind? No—forms emerged from the gloom. Tall shapes stretched upward, and at their tops ... branches. Wind rustled through foliage. Beneath his feet, twigs snapped and fallen leaves rustled. Above arched the night sky smeared with clouds. Cold air bit at his cheeks.
Whit stood in a forest. He could not remember where he was nor how he got there. Images and sounds danced through his mind. He had gone into the woods. The ghost had appeared and fashioned some kind of spell to find the geminus. Then Zora—
Good God ... Zora. Where is she?
Primal need and panic roared through him. He had to find her. She could be in danger. Hurt. Damn him, he’d vowed to protect her.
He moved to draw his saber. Yet it was already in his hand. The forest’s darkness hid whether or not the blade was wet. He touched his fingers to the metal. At the least, they came away dry. Didn’t mean he had not used it, though.
His fear ratcheted higher. Everything that had happened between Livia’s appearance and this moment was a confusing tangle of images he could not decipher. Had he gone mad? There had been times when he had been deep in his gambling mania when the world surrounding him fell away. He had been aware of the cards or dice and nothing else. During those times, he forgot to eat, to drink. Ignored his body’s need to rest. Yet that was not madness.
A swath of his memory didn’t exist. He had fleeting impressions, but these were insubstantial, destabilizing. What if he had done something awful to Zora? The thought that he might have hurt her in his madness scoured him.
Something ahead of him ran through the forest. The woods filled with the sounds of someone plunging through the branches and shrubbery. As though the person was being chased and sought only escape, not concealment.
Pursue, or keep his distance?
His decision was made in the next instant.
“Whit!” Zora, frightened and desperate.
A moment’s relief. She was alive. He had not hurt her. As he charged toward the sound of her voice, he bellowed her name.
There was silence, and then ... “Whit?” Her voice was tentative, so very unlike her.
“Do not move.” He pushed his way through low-lying branches. “I’m coming for you.”
At last, he neared what had to be her. Shadows encompassed everything, and she wore a cloak, but he instinctively recognized her shape, her presence, there in the forest. An unseen but deeply felt resonance surrounding her. Both of them were panting with mingled fear and exertion.
“Zora?”
“Stop there.” Her voice was hard, even as it wavered.
Light flared, dazzling him. He squinted in the glare until he could see her—thank God—standing in front of him. Flames traced over her hand, and she warily held it closer to him. Scratches ran across her face and her cloak and skirt sported tears. Her flight had been a reckless one born of fear. Cautiously, her gaze searched his face, and though he needed to go to her, he held himself still under her examination. If she was wary, there had to be good reason for it. She stared into his eyes, peering closely, searching for something.
He sheathed his saber, waiting.
Without warning, she launched herself at him. The flames covering her hand vanished. Her arms wrapped around his shoulders, her hands pressed against his back, and she buried her face in the crook of his neck. His own arms came up instinctively. He pulled her tightly against him, feeling her slim body tremble. He shook, too.
For a moment, neither spoke. They simply allowed themselves the pleasure of holding one another, reassuring themselves that they were both whole and well. He stroked her night-cold hair, soothing them both.
“You were gone.” Her breath puffed warmly against his neck. “It was you, but it wasn’t you, and I didn’t know where you were.”
“Here. I’m here now.” He wanted to draw this moment out for as long as possible. His heart pounded and he sensed the answering throb from Zora’s chest pressed against his. It stunned him how good it felt simply to embrace her like this, wanting only to have the proof of her, safe and complete. What he experienced was not desire, nor the need to take and possess. Solely to have her here, in his arms. She fit him perfectly, as if he had been fashioned for this alone—to hold her.
Too many unanswered questions hung in the air. Gently, he held her away from him. “Tell me what happened.”
She took a few deep, steadying breaths. Her trembling subsided as she drew upon the courage he admired. “After you collapsed, the geminus took your place. It wanted to know where my magic came from, but I wouldn’t say. Then . . .” She fought a shudder.
“Then?”
“It tried to kill me.”
Rage the color of blood poured through him. He had sworn to protect her, and when a threat had arisen, he was nowhere to be found. Where had he been? More images flitted into his mind: an overcrowded room, young men laughing, a vast chamber with stone walls. When he tried to reach toward these impressions, they retreated.
“You fought back,” he said to assure himself.
“I tried. But I stopped.” He felt her fingers at his sleeve, and he hissed when she brushed against a wound on his arm. The injury pulsed hotly. A burn.
“It’s not like you to halt an attack.”
“And hurt you if I went on?” She gripped his shoulder. “The geminus said that as long as it has your soul, any damage inflicted on it hurts you, too. So, we can’t do anything to it. Can’t hurt the damned creature. Can’t kill it. Our hands are bound.”
He cursed. There had to be something they could do to strike out against the geminus. The geminus might have been lying, but that was a gamble he was not willing to take. Yet something Zora just said troubled him. He struggled to grasp at it. What?
“You said that as long as the geminus had my soul, if we harm it, I am harmed, too.”
“If we can believe it.”
His fingers threaded with hers. This, too, felt wondrous, the press of palm to palm. Incredibly, despite her scare, she no longer trembled. Instead, she was warm and steady.
“We need your light to guide us back to the horses. Our path leads northward. To Oxford.”
As they picked their way carefully through the forest, Whit’s deep voice and the feel of his hand steadied Zora.
“I was myself, but I was the geminus, as well. Living inside it. Thinking its thoughts, sharing its feelings.”
She shuddered. “Awful.”
“It wasn’t.” The firelight from her hand sharpened his frown. “It felt ... incredible.”
“A trick, some kind of enchantment. Making you feel something that wasn’t true.”
“Power. That’s what I felt. The hunger for it, the sources of it all around me.” His jaw tightened at the memory. “I was in an alehouse in Oxford, a place I’d gone to countless times when I’d been at university but too young to sit in the senior common room.”
“You revisited a memory?”
“I was there. Nothing had changed. The tables, the stains. There were students everywhere. And all I could think was how they were perfect victims, how easy it would be to steal from them.”
“Steal money.”
“Steal souls. Feed upon them. Each of them belonging to me.” He narrowed his eyes as he recalled the sensation. “A greed unlike anything I’d ever experienced, yet I recognized it, too.”
She stared at him, aghast.
“I’d known it at the gaming tables. In my need for more.” His footsteps slowed. “Zora, the geminus is me. It couldn’t exist unless that darkness and greed was already within me. And what it offers, what it seeks ... it tempts me. Stronger than words could say.”
She heard the struggle in his voice and wondered what that must be like, to inhabit the dark side of oneself, and feel those dark feelings without reserve. He was not far from that. Only a few days ago, his darker self had kept her imprisoned in his home. Her captor hadn’t been the geminus, but Whit.
The divide between him and the gemin
us was no thinner than a playing card. Was it the same for everyone? Were their own darker selves just a whisper away? She thought of her own wicked impulses, the deeds she had done, the desire to hurt those who hurt her, and sometimes worse.
She had to believe everyone felt those things. The trick lay in not giving in.
“Whatever the geminus offered,” she noted, “it wasn’t enough. You came back.”
He stopped in his tracks, holding her gaze with his own. In the shadowed forest, with only her fire magic illuminating him, his sinner’s face was beautiful. “Because of you.”
Her mouth dried. She had reached out to him, called his name, and somehow she had breached the distance between them. This was another kind of magic existing only between her and Whit. A kind of magic for which she wasn’t fully prepared.
Once, Whit had been her jailer, the man who had dragged her into a sinister world of demons and stolen souls. Now, nothing was as simple as captor and captive, as hate and affection. She knew only one moment from the next, a series of small steps that led in a mysterious direction.
They must move forward. That much she understood. She tugged on his hand, and they resumed walking. “If the geminus was in Oxford, likely it’s moved on by now. Especially if it’s aware that we know where to find it.”
If he wanted more from her, he did not press for it. “Perhaps. Something did happen when Livia cast that spell, something other than the geminus and I changing places.” He was silent for a moment, then spoke again. “Mariners employ a thing called a bearing compass to find their way at sea. It uses magnets to locate direction.”
She did not know anything of devices called bearing compasses, nor of magnets. It sounded like magic to her. “You have some kind of bearing compass that shows where the geminus is.”
He rubbed a knuckle between his ribs. “Here. I can feel where the geminus is, as if we were magnetized, and I am drawn to where it is.”
“So that mad ghost’s spell worked,” she murmured to herself. The initial result of that spell had been terrifying. Never would she forget the icy determination in the geminus’s gaze as it stared at her, nor its resolve to crush her like a bark beetle. The fact that it had Whit’s face, his eyes and voice had been the worst part. Even in his darkest moments, he had never looked at her like she was a worthless object.
“What we’re seeking isn’t the geminus.”
“That was the point of the spell.”
“Perhaps originally. Yet I saw something when the geminus and I traded places. I took—rather, the geminus took—a soul into a room in the alehouse. It was a vault, not a room. Impenetrable stone walls. Shelves reaching as far as I could see, and some of the shelves held more souls. Including mine.”
Her heart began to pound. After what felt like a lifetime of being chased and being at a continual disadvantage, here at last could be their chance of taking the lead against Wafodu guero.
“If we can reach that alehouse and find that room—”
“We can reclaim my soul.”
Chapter 11
The Rom seldom traveled at night. Their caravans were too cumbersome—dozens of wagons, scores of tents, horses and donkeys, families with children. It was easier to move during daylight hours, when no one might accidentally get left behind, and the hazards of poor roads could be navigated. There was another reason, too, more than the coordination of transporting a large band of people and animals.
Evil wandered freely after dark.
Zora had long ago dismissed Romani superstitions. There were so many, they cluttered up one’s life like dusty bottles rattling on a shelf. Menstruating women were mochardi, unclean, and forbidden to cook or touch food intended for a man. To see a dead crow in the road presaged bad tidings, and the traveler would have to turn back. Countless others.
As she rode beside Whit through the night, she thought of all the cautions against being abroad after sunset.
Passing through a grove of willows, she hunched her shoulders protectively.
Whit sensed her unease. He raised up in the saddle, his hand straying toward the hilt of his sword. “What do you see?”
“Shadows.” She pulled her cloak closer. “Stories.”
“Fireside tales.”
“At night, willows uproot themselves and walk the countryside. Frighten the unwary.” She glanced cautiously at the branches. “I heard many warnings about swarms of evil creatures roaming the dark, searching for victims, for the incautious.”
He, too, looked up at the swaying trees, his gaze assessing. “Any truth to those stories?”
“Once, I thought baba’s reprimands were only to keep me stuck beside the campfire. Now ... I wonder how much might be real.” A shiver ran through her.
She thought of her fire magic and took strength from it. Should anything happen, she was not defenseless. Even before she had been given her magic, she had power. Perhaps not physical power, but her mind was its own weapon, as sharp as a blade. Still ... she liked knowing that she could summon fire when necessary.
“The world has changed,” she murmured.
“We have changed,” he said.
Whit’s hunting coat bore marks of battle: tears, bloodstains, the singe on his sleeve. His snug doeskin breeches were not new, his boots scuffed. Yet the set of his shoulders, his upright confidence as he rode, even the tilt of his jaw revealed him to be a born nobleman. This was her traveling companion, the man she knew would battle beside her when more danger inevitably arose.
She was Romani. Her mother gave birth to her in a tent. She owned almost nothing, save for the gold around her neck and on her fingers. Under normal circumstances, she and Whit might meet once, briefly, before continuing on in the arcs of their lives.
These were not normal circumstances. Something was loose upon the world, something evil, and instead of running from it, she ran toward it.
“Everything has gone mad,” she said, “and we have gone mad, too.”
“Merely a different kind of madness.”
“Maybe you were mad before,” she answered, “but I wasn’t.”
He slanted her a considering gaze. “I saw how you looked at me when I rode into your encampment.”
It felt a thousand years ago, yet her face heated as the memory returned with vivid clarity. Whit on horseback, with his dashing friends beside him, all of them full of barely restrained energy, dangerous, alluring. He, most of all. She had not been able to take her eyes from him the moment he had emerged from the darkness.
“I can’t deny I thought you handsome.”
“You saw into me, but I saw into you, as well. Admit it, you were on the verge of going mad from boredom until I showed up.”
His insight alarmed her. She was the one who read faces, who saw what people tried to hide. This ... unsettled her. “Rich gorgios don’t need any more flattery.”
“You think of me as more than a rich gorgio. Just as I think more of you than a Gypsy girl.”
The heat and intensity of his words ran like a dark caress down her spine. “I don’t need flattery, either.”
Miles had passed. The horses’ energy was flagging.
“Damn,” Whit muttered. “The horses need resting.” He surveyed the land around them. A few farm outbuildings hunched at the crest of a nearby hill, but beyond that, the signs of habitation were scarce. “By the time we reach a coaching inn that might have horses, we’ll be dragging these animals behind us.”
Clearly, he burned with impatience to reach Oxford, but Zora knew horses well. The animals would run until they were dead unless someone told them to stop. Given how the horses’ flecked sides heaved, another hour at a punishing speed meant they very likely would die.
He pointed to a lane leading off the road. “We can follow the lane to that structure on the hill. If we’re lucky, we might find a farmer and some willing hands to help cool the horses.”
“The odds are yours to control,” she noted.
He gave a humorless laugh. “I’ve disco
vered limits to my gift.”
At the top of the lane, she discovered this, as well. Not a house, nor a farm. Its conical roof revealed it to be an oast house. She and Whit dismounted and, after they discovered the wide double doors to be unlocked, peered inside. Zora summoned her fire magic to investigate further.
“I don’t know when I will get accustomed to that,” Whit said. A corner of his mouth turned up, softening the hard edges of his face. Stubble darkened his jaw, and hours in the saddle had pulled strands of dark hair loose from his queue. He looked part aristocrat, part highwayman. A lethal combination.
“Always be on guard around me,” she said.
“Love, when I’m around you, there is no danger of complacency.”
She did not like how easily he called her “love,” nor did she like the spike in her pulse to hear him call her that. To regroup her thoughts, she held her hand aloft like a torch and appraised the structure.
No one was within. Light weakly filtered in, revealing enough room for them to bring the horses in from the cold.
The air inside smelled of bitter hops. A few dried blossoms crunched underfoot.
Zora doused the flames around her hand. Wordlessly, she and Whit removed their horses’ blankets and saddles. The animals steamed, their hides glistening with sweat. She swallowed her groan of frustration. They would have to wait until the horses dried before putting the tack on again. Knowing that Whit’s soul awaited them, less than thirty miles away, tried her patience strongly. It had to be a thousand times worse for Whit.
He made a tense, shadowed shape in the darkness. Though he said nothing, she felt his restlessness, his need to move forward, like an invisible flame giving off heat. Zora watched his swift, efficient movements, unable to look away.
The burning brand, Livia called him. A perfect name, for he blazed, and he scarred. However long Zora walked this earth, she would always bear the unseen marks of his touch upon her innermost self.
He stilled, and though darkness filled the oast house, Zora knew he stared back at her. She felt his gaze on her, that burning brand, and she turned away. She busied herself with removing her horse’s bridle, then patted the animal’s velvety nose as it eagerly released the bit.