02 Summer Moon

by Jan Delima

  Except her hand shimmered through his head and she screamed again in frustration. “You despicable half human. How dare you come here through me?”

  “Hello, Aeron. How are you?” He stood in a forest of pink trees, on a path of purple thyme that led to a pale skyline. There was no scent of veracity, or the rustle of creatures, just the emptiness of a fabricated illusion.

  “How am I? How am I, he asks,” she ranted. “How do I look?” She shoved her fist through his jaw just to prove she had no substance. “There was a time when all I needed to do was smile at a man to bring him to pleasure, and now when one comes near me all he wants to . . . do . . . is . . . die!”

  The last resonated like a scream.

  And she wasn’t quite done.

  “So,” Aeron huffed. “I am contained in this circle of raindrops while my spirit wanders in the Vale without contact or comfort.” Desperate outrage whispered through her mind to his. “I have not tasted a single drop of wine or felt another’s touch in over three hundred years because of you!” She lunged for him again but dissipated in the air. “You are such an arsehole.”

  That makes two women in one week to call him one, and possibly one more if Ceridwen deemed to accept his call. “I need a word with my mother.”

  Aeron reappeared by his side, sullen. “Ceri is meditating. She closed her garden as soon as you shifted and took flight. She needs to keep her mind free of painful memories.”

  “Nice to know my memory still causes her pain,” he said bitterly.

  Aeron hissed. “Poisonous greetings will not bring you what you seek.” Dread thickened her delicate voice. “You have not learned from your mistakes.”

  He laughed, because if souls could scream, his just might. “I am the mistake!” He was the bastard who roamed the earth while his mother lived with her ethereal family, the result of a misbegotten affair after a long, long chase.

  Leaves blackened and fell in the fake pink forest wrought by his mother’s mind.

  “Stop. Please . . . You mustn’t say such things. It makes her despair.” Eyes wide with panic, Aeron pleaded, “Control your emotions, Taliesin. Or more humans will die and forests will be laid waste.”

  Guilt tangled in the midst of her warning—more from her than him—and Aeron rarely exhibited such a selfless emotion.

  It made Taliesin pause. “It was you, wasn’t it? It was you who convinced my mother to come to earth and see me?”

  Aeron lifted her ghostly hands, and let them fall back to her sides like a repentant apparition. “I was at a loss of what to do with you. You and your bumbling ways, and your pretty verses, singing tales that are not meant to be told. You were destroying yourself. The Isle of Mighty has changed. The Fairbryn of later times is not our medieval Cymru. Humans are advancing. What you say is no longer passed from the mouths of bards and twisted with each song—or scrolled into pretty pictures by cloistered monks. Communication among the humans has become too dangerous for your drunken ways and slurred prophecies.”

  “I’m well aware,” he reminded her. “I’m the one who lives among them.”

  Aeron tilted her head, regarding him with translucent resonance. “You almost speak as if you care. Is it possible that you have seen the error of your ways?”

  “I’ve always cared.” Too much. It was the reason why his vodka-scented siren sang such a sweet, sweet song.

  “Only when it suited you,” Aeron continued with her tirade. “You would not listen to us. We are your mother’s messengers and you would not even give us an audience. Ceri risked everything to come and see you—and how did you greet such a sacrifice?” She paced on ground that didn’t hold her tread. “Drunken beyond comprehension, that is how. You told your mother to bugger off.”

  Actually, I believe I told her to fuck off. And she left every human in Fairbryn ill because of it.

  The last was meant to be a thought, but in the Vale, potent thoughts became words.

  Aeron fisted her hands in frustration. “When the Mother of Darkness and Light weeps—things die! The death of the humans devastated Ceri. She cannot even look at me anymore without the memory causing sorrow—because I am her messenger. Because I was the one who brought her there! I am no longer allowed to walk between worlds because the risk is too great. None of us are. You have cursed us all, Taliesin, with your depravity and unforgiving ways.”

  “I’m not unforgiving.” He would accept the former but not the latter.

  “For a Seer, you are sometimes blind.”

  “On that, we agree,” he said, reminded of the purpose for this visit. “You knew me as a child, Aeron. You saw the people my mother created to raise me. Look at what they have become. Look at what they do to preserve something they should never have been given.”

  “It is unfortunate,” she concurred with an elusive frown. “Your Guardians could not handle the power of the Fae in their veins. It tainted their minds, twisted it into malevolence instead of good. It is another one of your mother’s laments. Another betrayal of her family for you.”

  “There are some who can handle it,” he defended. “I’ve come here for them. My foresight is gone. The prophecies I once foretold are no longer clear to me. All I See are faded reflections, like the Vale.” He exhaled, and while his breath had no substance, his shoulders caved with the weight of his concern. “I’ve come to ask for guidance.”

  Aeron turned thoughtful. “If you have lost your Sight, then there is something that Ceri does not want you to See. I wonder . . .” A smile widened her face then. “A Tree of Hope must have grown among these people you seek guidance for.” She opened her arms wide and spun around in a giddy circle. “A Tree of Hope may just set us free.”

  Her shadow stumbled to a halt in front of him. “You must not interfere, Taliesin.” Her chin lowered in a stern warning. “It is why your Sight has been taken. I am sure of it. Ceri does not trust you with something this precious.”

  A cloud appeared to darken the dusky pink forest. His mind turned murky. He was being kicked out of this realm, having stayed beyond his welcome. Not even fit for a council with his darling darkest mother, or even trusted with something as promising as hope.

  Soon, his senses saturated with sight and sound and the musk of the tomb. He awoke to the pressure of stiffened lips and the dankness of his life.

  “Yes, a Tree of Hope might set you free,” he whispered to Aeron’s unresponsive shell. “Or doom us if it dies.”

  If it was true, not even he could fault his mother for assuming he might kill it.

  It was what he did to everything good in his life.

  Koko’s Journal

  —

  January 12, 1942

  The room is spinning and my heart is aching. I think I have had too much of Enid’s special mead. It makes me bold, as if I wield a mighty sword and not a simple pen, bold enough to write what I will not speak aloud. Come morning I will find the courage to remove this page. Or maybe my courage has become as fleeting as my final days.

  Remember me.

  When I pass and you live on,

  Remember me.

  When you lie with another woman,

  Remember me.

  When you wed again,

  Keep my image close to your heart.

  Remember me.

  And if this woman can run like a wolf,

  Let her run alone with the wind.

  Remember me.

  That is all I ask.

  ~Koko

  Nineteen

  Luc began to hunger for her. He began to crave her touch, to listen for her voice when she walked the halls. Four days had passed since he’d left Rosa in their bedroom holding her new sneakers, four days of chaste nights and cold mornings and torturous indecisions.

  Like Avon’s broken bridge, they had come to an impasse and neither of them was willing to jump over the t
urbulent waters.

  Worse, it was his error to fix. And he was losing control, torn between honor and need, and need was winning this faithless battle to preserve Koko’s only request.

  Agitated, he searched Castell Avon. The afternoon sun heated the inner bailey. He nodded to the guards as he passed and scanned the yard, taking note of the building that held the generators.

  A clanging of swords echoed over the soft hum and he followed the sound to a clearing in the broken woods. Rosa circled Cadan, wearing her jeans and sneakers—and a feral grin.

  His blood rose to stimulate a baser organ as he watched his warrior queen.

  Cadan wielded her mother’s sword, and Rosa held the one Luc had given her, gaining confidence with each stroke. Griffith, one of Isabeau’s men, leered from the side, along with Cormack; both men held a look of intense longing but Griffith’s was directed solely toward Rosa, while Cormack’s was for a skill he didn’t possess.

  Gritting his teeth, Luc tasted iron on the back of his throat.

  Mine, mine . . . mine! echoed through his thoughts with livid impatience.

  “Halt,” Rosa announced, holding up her hand and lowering her weapon. She turned to Luc with a questioning gaze. “Is there something you need?”

  Yes, my mate.

  “Leave us.” He glared at all three men. Only Cadan hesitated.

  “I’m fine,” Rosa assured her cousin, not hiding her annoyance as the area cleared.

  Slowly, he approached her, ignoring her frown as he made a motion for her to lift her sword. Her scent had deepened from exertion and it taunted his wolf. “You’re skirting away too soon,” he instructed, searching for a neutral topic. “Size can be as much a disadvantage as it is an advantage. Would you like me to show you some countermoves?”

  She lifted wary eyes the color of violets. “Yes.”

  It was her first concession of closeness since he’d refused to run with her—and he intended to take full advantage. “You can use momentum against your attacker.” He showed her how to wait and pull, then shift to counter his move. She was a quick study, but he was older and more skilled. He taught her a pivot strike. Predictably, she fell forward as all students did on their first try, and he followed her to the ground, turning her so he took the weight of her fall.

  She laughed—and the air between them suddenly emptied of resentment and grew in desire. “You planned that.”

  “Maybe.” He rolled her beneath him, positioning himself between her thighs, allowing the harsh evidence of his need to press against her through the confinement of their clothes. He knew she felt it by her hitched breathing. “How long are you going to avoid me?”

  “Run with me,” she taunted in a husky voice. Her lips trailed down his neck to rest by his ear. “Run with me and I’ll accept your offer.”

  “Rosa—”

  “Before you say no,” she interrupted, “understand that this is not an easy submission for me to make, and what I’m asking for is so little for what I’m offering.” Her tone suggested she’d made a concession, and that she’d wanted more but would settle for a union of their wolves in a flight through Avon’s forest. “Afterward, we’ll try to conceive.”

  Flooded by pleasure and pain, he groaned. “My brother is mated to a human. And they don’t run together.”

  “I’m not just human.” A simple truth that refused argument. “We must answer to our wolves.”

  “I can’t—” His beast shredded his chest with his denial. Not that it mattered; his heart was already torn.

  A feminine growl greeted his ears and prompted his darker half to attack outright in complete accordance with her frustration. She rolled out from under him, grabbed her sword and stormed away without another word. He let her go, certain that sharing his promise to Koko wouldn’t help his cause—or ease her anger.

  And his wolf . . .

  His wolf didn’t care about a mortal long dead; it wanted to claim its very alive mate and seal their bond.

  When he knew the area was clear, he spit out the blood that had crawled up his throat from his shredded innards. Consumed with hunger and lust, he watched it soak into the barren ground; blood into dust when he could have life. To deny Rosa a run was to deny the very nature of their wolves.

  Rising to a standing position, he kept his head bent in shame. “I want her,” he whispered to the woman who’d taught him how to love. “I’m sorry, Koko . . . I’ll never forget you. Never. But I ache for another and I don’t know how much longer I’ll last.”

  The anguished plea eased his beast, knowing its master’s resolve was weakening to an instinct more powerful than honor.

  * * *

  On the eighth night of abstinence, Luc broke like tinder ready to catch flame. Rosa would hear his promise to Koko and know his dilemma. It was well past the waking hours, she had yet to come to bed, and he refused to spend another evening of proper conversations about Avon’s defenses, antics of their precocious Wulfling and the training of their guards and staff.

  Their battlements were secure and he needed his wife. Humbling, how he could go almost seventy years without the physical comfort of a woman and now he couldn’t even last a fortnight.

  An open staircase wrapped around the south turret, and he ascended the stairs, having learned over the last weeks the places she liked to visit most. The banners of Math’s house had been replaced with ones that touted a wreath of thorny rose canes around a silhouette of a black wolf. At least the residents of Avon welcomed their union, enough to herald it from their home, although Rosa must have approved the new crest.

  He found her standing on the parapets, a somber silhouette against a midnight sky. An emerald cloak whipped about her shoulders while her hair danced in the wind, golden strands teasing the night.

  She stole his breath.

  “Summer approaches,” she said as he drew near. “I can taste its scent on the breeze. It’s as if I can hear the Council’s whispers and they are calling my name.” Her shoulders rose and fell on a heavy sigh, preparing him for her next revelation. “Just so you know . . . I’ve spoken with Mae. She’s agreed to make more of my potion after I told her you wouldn’t run with me.”

  Mates ran together; to deny one was to deny the other. It was why Mae had agreed to Rosa’s request, and why he contemplated his argument before making demands he had no right to make. Did Koko know this when she wrote her last drunken and desperate plea of him?

  “It will be ready in the morning,” Rosa continued in his silence. “She’s teaching Elen the recipe.”

  He fisted his hands by his sides, trying to calm an anger she didn’t deserve. Before he implored her not to take it, he shared, “It was the only request from a woman I loved. I won’t apologize for that, but I will for the pain it’s caused you, and for the distance it’s created between us.”

  “I think I hate her.” Her words were hardly audible, even to his ears. “And I hate that I do.”

  He could think of no adequate response, other than an offer he once gave. “Ask anything else of me, Rosa, anything, and it’s yours.”

  “You have already fulfilled the terms of our arrangement, above and beyond my expectations.” Disenchantment weaved a heavy line through her voice, tainting her praise. “But I would have the one thing from you that I didn’t have the foresight to request.”

  She turned to leave but he snagged her arm. Her cloak whipped back to reveal a long nightshirt underneath, molding against her curves by the wind.

  “Lie with me.” Luc dropped his lips by the sensitive skin just under her ear, while the hood of her cloak feathered against his cheek. He resisted the urge to nip the column of her neck, to brand her as he should. “Give me a chance to foil this prophecy before you take that potion.”

  “Run with me,” she returned, “and I will. Our staff has invited you to our place beyond the river.” She leaned back,
her expression fierce and demanding. “It’s an hour away. Join me.” Her eyes flashed with challenge. “Join me if your wolf has the bollocks.”

  Twisting her arm out of his grasp, she fled toward the south turret. Her cloak billowed behind her hasty retreat as she disappeared down the spiral staircase after her fiery proposition.

  He hissed. Bloody hell . . . Yes, his wolf had the balls, and so did he as a man.

  Lifting his face to the crescent moon, he howled in the wake of her glorious exit.

  You are a wicked one, are you not, my wife—to issue such a challenge and then run?

  Wicked and defiant with the knowledge of their wolves, knowing that he could do naught but give chase—promises be damned.

  Blinded by instinct, he hunted her trail, followed the scent of vanilla to the river beyond the wall, where the shallow waters broke over open rocks. He crossed the currents to find her waiting for him in a field surrounded by evergreen trees.

  Kissed by moonlight, she beamed an invitation like a beacon for a starved warrior. The air carried her siren’s call and lightning bugs danced in the wavering weeds. Slowly, while he watched, she let the cloak drop from her shoulders and pile around her feet.

  “Leave now,” she warned. By the naughty glint that entered her gaze, and the smirk that turned her lips, her notice was issued with the purpose to tease. “If you don’t want to see my wolf, turn around and return to Avon.”

  Her grin became a triumphant smile as he remained frozen in place. She tugged the ties of her nightshirt, letting the thin material caress her skin as it glided to the ground, a mere whisper in the night that could fell even the mightiest beast.

  With her hair loose about her shoulders, she stood naked, daring him to pursue or turn, but forcing him to make a decision as she widened her arms and called the elements of the forest. The potency of the approaching summer rolled off the mountains. Even the air stilled in that moment of sacrifice, as it gave its very life force to a magical being. The scents of pine and earth hovered like a cloying fog, waiting to be consumed. She manipulated its energy with the ease of an alpha and fed it to her waiting wolf.