Scarred Beauty

by Jennifer Silverwood

  “No one knows, though we did our best to force them out.”

  She shivered and adjusted the strap to her pack on her shoulder. “I don’t want to know what kind of force you used.”

  “You’re right, you don’t,” he replied as he turned away from her.

  Thunder crackled over their heads and her skin crawled as she looked up and saw the black clouds carried to them by sharp gusts of icy wind.

  “Come on inside!” Ceddrych waved them over from the cabin as hard sleet descended.

  Baalor took her hand and helped her trudge through ankle-deep drift, then released his hold on her once they found the shelter. Ceddrych was bent before a low fireplace at the far wall. Embers lit his profile as he worked on starting a fire.

  Though the storm raged outside, in the dark, her skin offered a definite and ethereal glow over her surroundings.

  “Ashes, could you come and stand next to me? A little extra light might help.”

  “Very funny,” she said as she let her sack fall to the ground and stood beside him anyway.

  Ceddrych flashed a grin her way before returning his concentration to sparking the tinder. “Shame you don’t know enough majik to light fires.”

  “Oh, now you want me to become some enchantress, do you?”

  He shrugged and tilted his head in an attempt to hide his reaction with shadow. She knew better than to ask, but he was trying to shine a little humor her way. Ceddrych had always tried to lighten the bleaker aspects of their lives, and good thing, too. She never was talented at seeing anything but the worst in every situation.

  The door slammed behind them as Baalor shut out the storm. When he turned to them, everything was masked except for the glow of his green eyes. “That storm is not right.” He spoke low, almost a whisper.

  Vynasha shivered as he echoed her thoughts, the certainty this storm was not natural but the work of majik.

  At last an ember caught and her brother bent over to coax it to burn. Ceddrych went to work adding more to the tiny flame with small bits of wood until it was big enough to feed larger logs. Most people would find comfort with fire on cold and stormy nights like this one.

  The healing burns on her face and body itched at the sight, so she was grateful to leave the fireplace now that the fire was burning steadily. The rest of the cabin was old, the single bed covered in faded furs and quilts. Cooking utensils sat in a pile nearby the fire and the more she looked, the more she found evidence of lives lived here. Wooden toys and spindles and piles of wool and a carefully carved trunk made her feel like an intruder.

  Baalor was taking apart the contents of her sack at the center of the cabin, readying a pallet and setting aside Grandmother’s food reserves.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” She knelt on the pallet across from him and grabbed the smaller leather pouch of bandages he held in his hand.

  “Believe it or not, I know a bit about medicine.” Baalor arched an eyebrow at her and did not release the pouch, instead tugged and pulled her in closer.

  Vynasha growled as she tried to pull back. “I can take care of myself.”

  The corner of his mouth quirked up and he wrapped her wrist with his fingers. “I know, but being in a pack means you shouldn’t have to all the time.”

  Ceddrych coughed and mumbled something under his breath from the fireside.

  Vynasha ignored her brother, too focused on the man across from her. “I’m not part of your pack.”

  Baalor only smiled as he took the pouch from her relaxed hand and patted the pallet beside him. “Come, let me look at those dressings.”

  “It’s fine,” Vynasha grumbled, but her resolve weakened. She was tired, sore and hungry and damn the shifter if he was right.

  “I can smell your blood from here. Stop being difficult.”

  “Oh, for the love of…” Ceddrych marched over to them and took the pouch out of Baalor’s hand. “She’s my sister and I’m not comfortable with whatever this is, let alone you touching her.”

  Baalor’s expression darkened the moment Ceddrych came between them. “I’m not comfortable sharing a roof with a traitor.”

  “Enough,” she interrupted with a warning glare for Baalor. “I am not lifting my skirts for anyone, thank you. I patched myself up for years. I think I can do it again.”

  Ceddrych’s eyebrows rose as a smile worked its way on his face. “Now that is the sister I remember.”

  Baalor took Grandmother’s wrapped food and walked over to the fireside without another word, but she felt his gaze on her as she pulled off her outer cloak.

  Vynasha winced and hung her head. “Ceddrych, I might need a little help after all.”

  “Also the way I remember it usually going,” her brother replied as he helped her peel back her tunic in a way that might preserve some dignity. He had seen her naked before, when he found her by the river, so she relaxed enough to let him help with the claw marks on her abdomen. The scabs had broken and dark purple blood stained the dressings he cast aside.

  She turned and hissed as her brother applied a fresh bandage to her chest, twisting her head only to find Baalor watching them with horror. He clenched his fists until the bone of his knuckles gleamed white. Not for the first time that almost animal attraction tugged at her gut and a sixth sense pushed at the corners of her mind, pulling her to him. A deep traitorous part of her wished it was his hands tending to her now after all, a part she shoved aside.

  Majik pulsed in her ears as she laid her head down and the storm crackled over the roof, ice pelting in vain effort to reach them.

  “Once this storm passes, I’ll go ahead to their winter camp,” Ceddrych said as he pushed her tunic back over her chest.

  “You are not going anywhere alone, Wanderer.” Baalor chuckled darkly. “How could I possibly trust you after what you’ve done?”

  “No, but I don’t trust you either. The only reason I’ll leave you behind with my sister is because I’ve seen her best you in a fight.”

  Vynasha smiled as Baalor grumbled something in return, but his words didn’t make sense to her ears. The darkness was comforting, after all, much better than the unnatural storm outside. She was so weary and tired of pretending she wasn’t. Dreamless sleep stole her last thought.

  “WHAT DO YOU mean you aren’t certain where the camp is?” Baalor’s growling voice woke her the following morning. The fire still burned in the hearth and outside the winds continued to howl with the unearthly storm. She kept quiet, her breathing even as she waited to see what they would say.

  “Wolfsbane’s daughter will find me and they won’t come near me if you are anywhere close by.” Ceddrych practically spat his reply.

  Vynasha watched the dim outline of his shape as Ceddrych lifted his pack onto his shoulder. She shut her eyes just as he turned her direction.

  Baalor grumbled from her other side, near the door. “Tread carefully, Wanderer. If you wish me ill, I will know of it. I can smell an ambush a league away.”

  Ceddrych paused and glanced down to her as he replied, “I would not leave my only sister in your care if I wished you ill.”

  Baalor chuckled as Ceddrych walked past her and attempted to pass through the door. “You have an odd way of hiding your fear of her behind affection. Do not think for a moment I missed the mark of your claws on her. Nor will I forget when the day finally comes and I repay you for what you did to my pack… and to her.”

  Ceddrych stilled. “Try touching my sister again and I will gladly welcome that day.”

  A deep rumbling filled the cabin as the enemies parted. Vynasha couldn’t wipe away the memory of her brother’s blind hatred after he’d learned her secret. It should not matter what Baalor said, only it echoed the truth she reckoned down in her bones.

  “Shall I pretend you are still asleep, then? Or are you hungry for my mother’s elderberry cakes?” Baalor finally said.

  Vynasha stared at the fire. “I’m afraid to get up.”

  “Is my company r
eally so terrible?” he asked her with a lighter note, as though the idea delighted him.

  “Barely tolerable,” she groaned as she pushed up with her hands and waited for the room to stop swaying. “If you must know, I was waiting to see whether or not every bone in my body aches today.” She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes until she saw stars.

  “And?” Baalor knelt on the ground before her, his fingers circling her shaking wrists, and pulled them down.

  She blinked past dotted vision and marveled at the concern in his eye. “Not that you care.”

  His face seemed to collect the shadows then, a spark of something hard glinting in his eye and the tick in his jaw. “Why do you think so foul of me? Tell me honestly, Vynasha, have I given you reason or cause to hate me?”

  “I don’t hate you,” she blurted out and his jaw slackened at her admission. She shivered and the distant pounding of drums echoed in her ears as she added, “You… confuse me.”

  “And why is that?”

  “You—you aren’t afraid of me.” She looked down to their joined hands.

  “Why should I fear you?”

  There was a present darkness behind his question, an edge that made her want to shrink into herself. He wouldn’t let her pull away, however, and so she confessed, “Because I have sharp claws and teeth.” She glanced up, surprised to find his smile.

  “So do I.” True to his word, she could see the faintly tipped points of his teeth, a mirror to hers.

  “But I’m a witch…” Thunder crackled overhead and the thrumming in her ears grew in volume. She looked past the rafters to the howling beyond and leaned in closer to the light and, though she was only dimly aware, into him.

  “I am familiar with witches, in case you had forgotten,” he replied, closer than he was a moment before.

  Vynasha wanted to dispel his notions, she wanted him to fear her.

  Because you are afraid of yourself.

  “You’re shaking,” Baalor said as he began to rub her hands between his, careless of her claws. “Are you cold?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Come and sit with me by the fire.” He slipped an arm around her waist to help guide her closer. Instead of moving away, Baalor sat behind her and settled her between his long legs so his chest was a wall of warmth against her back. Still, she shivered and leaned into him, a preferable alternative to flames any day.

  “Are you hungry? I swear these taste even better served cold.”

  She shook her head at the food he offered, the smell foul to her nose, the air far too sweet to be palatable. She turned her nose to his shoulder and inhaled that comforting blend of evergreen and wild things.

  “You are not well…”

  “I’m fine,” she said through clenched teeth as a sickness swept over her.

  “You forget I’m familiar with majik. You’re suffering withdrawals, if I had to guess. Don’t seize up if you can help it.” Baalor’s arms tightened around hers, trapping her against him, keeping the jerk of her arms and legs under control. “Breathe,” he insisted.

  She shut her eyes, tried to fall in with the rise and fall of the broad chest behind her.

  “Good, keep breathing. It will pass soon, lass.”

  The sounds of the storm howled outside and as the worst of the shakes subsided, she imagined her foolish brother. Wanderer was an apt name for him. He had been running most of his life; she’d just never imagined he would run from her. “Ceddrych?”

  “He’ll be back soon.”

  Baalor’s voice kept her further away from the storm of majik the lost city had sent to find her. She shuddered as it scoured the land for her. “The storm,” she whispered, “it’s my fault.”

  “A lot of things are your fault, as you like to claim. I do not think it means what you think.”

  “The Prince sent it for me.”

  Baalor sucked in a sharp breath. “He’ll have to go through me before he gets you.”

  She smiled at his vehemence. “I believe you.”

  “Finally a show of faith.” His effort to keep up their conversation was not lost on her.

  “Keep t-talking, please,” she begged.

  “I—what else would you have me say?”

  “Anything to make me forget.”

  Anything to drown out the pounding in my head.

  He pressed his chin to the hard point of her shoulder, took another deep, calming breath as he confessed. “I do not like this place.”

  “Because of—what you did to them?” She turned her cheek to his scruff.

  “There is little I regret about what I’ve done. Whatever Wanderer has told you, believe me when I say the humans deserved their punishment. But there have been moments we could almost put aside our hatred for one another. Erythea’s mother was human and this mountainside was her home, you see. Her people saw us as animals without souls and made a sport of hunting us down, made trophies of our wolf skins.”

  Vynasha shuddered to think of the black wolfskin on Resha’s shoulders and wondered what face had lived beneath it. She wondered if Ceddrych would hunt her one day the same way.

  “I knew Nymwe could never see me as anything but a monster. Still, I was drawn to her. She refused to say why she chose me. She was alone and frightened and I was there when no one else was, I suppose. We were never true mates, not that she would have wanted that. I had waited so long for my mate by then, I decided to stop waiting. Sometimes I wonder if her majik made me love her. Either way, she bewitched me body and soul. I truly believed our union would be enough to end all of this suffering, but in the end her majik was too wild to control. She asked her brother to end her life. I cannot forgive him for this.”

  “D—did you kill him?”

  “No.” Baalor lifted his gaze to the fire and she watched the flame reflected in his irises as he answered. “She begged me not to the day I learned who she truly was. Still, he and I have hunted one another ever since, and now your brother is bringing his daughter to this place.”

  “Resha,” she gasped and turned her head further, to catch the glimmer in his emerald eye. “Wolfsbane was your brother-in-law?”

  He lifted his chin in a subtle nod.

  Vynasha lifted a trembling hand to his face and turned in his arms to better face him. “Who else knows?”

  Baalor leaned into her. “We were all enchanted by Nymwe, not just by her majik. For a time not even I knew who her family was. My mother has a sharper nose than I. She knew almost from the beginning what Wolfsbane was to her. The others only know he took her life and that’s all that matters to them. He drew first blood. For a long time, it was all that mattered to me.”

  Vynasha pulled her hand away as the shaking in her limbs eased enough for her to turn from him. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “You did ask me to talk.” He was laughing at her again, but something in the way he tensed against her told her he was lying. He was telling her something important, maybe the most important thing about Erythea and his family, but why?

  “You trust me,” she answered with rare certainty.

  “You are the one we’ve been looking for,” he simply said.

  “S-seven hells!” Vynasha broke contact first, crawled around to face him, her back nearer to the fire. “I’m not an enchantress or your bleeding savior!” She ignored the way her teeth chattered and made her words sound stilted, pressed her claws into her palms to keep from digging into her legs and ripping bandaging. Majik was pushing its way through her skin, running down her fingers, dripping violet splotches on the ground.

  Baalor’s nose flared and an eyebrow arched, but he pressed his hands to his legs and waited for her to continue.

  “If only your people knew the truth about me.” She laughed bitterly. “I didn’t just escape the castle. They treated me well there, fed and clothed me like a doll, and I hated myself because I loved it. There was—this prince, more like a beast pretending to be a prince. He was—kind—to me and wanted to m
arry me. But there were others. Not everyone in that place is evil like you think. They became my—friends, and there was one I trusted above the others, above the pretender prince. He used blood majik to bond with me, didn’t ask, just did it because he could. He haunted my dreams and then he gave me these.” She ripped at the bandage on her cheek until the burn was exposed.

  Baalor took the bandage from her hand, then held her hand with a gentleness that made her blink back tears. His touch was too much, bringing all the secrets she was afraid to tell her brother spilling past her lips.

  “I should have left that place sooner, gone to find my nephew, but then they made me care enough about them I had to try to help them first. So I let the curse take me. Everyone believes I’m the one who can undo Soraya’s curse, but you see what it did to me. With every passing moment I feel like I’ll lose my mind completely, either to the beast or to the majik pounding in my head.” She pressed a hand to her temple and squeezed her eyes shut as another crack of lightning split the air and moaned, “It hurts.”

  Baalor’s hand clutched hers, pulling her back into his arms so her face pressed to his chest.

  “Please make it stop!”

  “Listen to my voice, love. We’ll find a way to control it.” He rocked with her, hummed low against her ear until the pain faded enough she heard his words. “I won’t let it burn you up, Vynasha, I promise.”

  She clung to him, thankful for something to hold onto, even if it was the man banishing her brother. For now, she could admit, in spite of whatever crimes he committed in the past, Baalor had been nothing but transparent with her.

  Not everything in this valley is evil.

  Thunder rumbled high above, trailing back to its source and the howling storm billowing against the cottage walls stilled. As the pounding in her head eased, Vynasha told him one last confession, another she scarcely considered herself. “Sometimes I wonder if I had just accepted the prince’s proposal…”

  Baalor’s relaxed muscles tensed as she pressed her clawed fingers to his chest and pushed away to look into his wary gaze. “Yes?”