Scarred Beauty

by Jennifer Silverwood

  Her voice still trembled slightly, yet she managed to reply. “The storm was a warning. The curse doesn’t want me straying too far from the castle. More beasts will come looking for me. Wyll is safer with you. Just… please don’t disappear.”

  “You’re my sister and I could never abandon you, Ashes. I promise one of us will always be near this mountain should you need us.”

  Vynasha closed her eyes and buried her face in his chest and tried her best to believe in him. She needed this comfort, this acceptance from him after everything when all she wanted was to howl at the moon.

  VYNASHA WAITED UNTIL everyone was once more safely ensconced in the abandoned cabin before creeping up the hill. Sharing a small space with four people was a bit much for her. After all this time, she still wasn’t comfortable with so many people, especially when two of those people had a serious issue with her majik.

  She waited until the sounds of slowed hearts and even breaths met her ears. The stench of majik and all she’d tried and failed waited at her back. Alone, she could finally admit she was a little afraid of Resha’s accusation and Baalor’s… whatever this friendship with the pack master was.

  Only solitude could offer solace, a moment of silence.

  So she climbed the hill crest overlooking the cabin and searched the gaps between broken clouds for answers in the stars. They winked at her, frozen fireflies in the cold blackness, and she wondered if the stories about them were true. She wanted desperately to believe they had the power to grant wishes. Looking at the stars and wishing for Wynyth to not die from her illness, wishing for Ceddrych to come home again… wishing had brought her nothing but pain.

  “I could bring a dead child back to life,” she said with bated breath. She didn’t want to wake anyone by screaming or howling after the moon.

  A gap between clouds expanded and seemed to hover directly overhead, giving her a clearer picture, and the wind dimmed to a soft hush.

  “I could stop time to save the person I—care about, but I can’t heal a sick child. What is the point?” Her voice cracked with the full weight of her bitterness, the anger she was struggling and failing to repress. It was so much easier to be angry with herself, at Grendall and the skin-changers for directing her life, at majik for stealing her freedom to choose.

  “If I’m supposed to save everyone, become this all-powerful curse breaker, how is it fair to keep me from saving the person I came here for?”

  The stars did not answer, and she did not ask for any wishes to be granted. Truthfully, she didn’t believe they had the power to save her Wyll. “All this power is useless…” She turned east, where the castle loomed over the land and her heart darkened.

  A deep voice called to her from the shadows, “Dangerous for a young girl to be out alone near the slopes of Mount Grimm.”

  Vynasha crouched, claws out and teeth bared as she turned toward the hulking shadow waiting for her. “You may not find me so helpless,” she called back, unafraid.

  The man stepped into a pocket of moonlight, arms buried in the folds of his fur cloak, with an uneven grin pulling at his bearded face. “I met a little girl who passed through this territory a season ago, who insisted I guide her to the Lost City, in search of the Source.”

  “Wolfsbane?” Vynasha straightened and lowered her claws. “Where have you been?” The wind stirred her hair, tugging at her eastwards, pulling toward the inevitable.

  Wolfsbane followed her line of sight and pulled one of his long-bladed daggers from his cloak. “Hunting wolves and beasts and the forgotten things that lurk in this forest.” His dagger spun quick as light in his hand, then stilled to reflect the moon before he twisted its handle so her face appeared on the metal blade. “And watching over you, of course, little beasty! Now tell me, did you find what you were looking for?”

  Death clung to him like a cloak, permeating her senses. He was still a powerful man, all corded, coiled muscle, with a mad glint to his blue eyes. She understood the reason behind that madness a bit better now, but there was much she didn’t. Like why he thought of her brother and the other Wolvs as animals, or why the villagers both feared and hated humans. Any other day she might have asked him, had she not already pushed too hard, lost too much.

  She stared at her reflection in the blade. “If you’ve been watching me so closely, you know we could have used your help recently.”

  “Ah! Indeed, you might have, could have and very likely would have still learned your potential, had I interfered. However, I prefer to allow events to unfold as they will. And I confess, I was curious to see just how the Lost City had altered you.” He appraised her with a soft chuckle that set her teeth on edge.

  “And what do you see?”

  Wolfsbane tilted his head as the winds joined the howling of Wolvs. “I warned you, did I not, Vynasha, about the evil you would waken there.” He looked to the abandoned dwellings on Mount Grimm and sheathed his dagger. “My people fled this place because they were tired of watching their daughters compelled to walk to the Lost City. A fate worse than death, wouldn’t you agree, little beasty?”

  “I thought they left because of your feud with the Wolv pack.”

  Wolfsbane hunched his shoulders and surveyed the land with a grunt. “My hunt is another matter.” With this said, he turned fully to face her, blue eyes bright. “You have set things in motion that cannot be undone. Had I known what you truly were from the beginning, I would have told Resha to leave you in the Silver River to die.”

  Vynasha recoiled. “You hate anyone but your own kind, don’t you? I truly pitied you both when I met you, for being the last humans in these mountains, but maybe that’s a good thing.”

  His smile altered, eyes narrowed as he stroked his beard with a gloved hand. “I am not as barbaric as you think, little girl. Our world is not governed by right and wrong like the one you came from. Here it is a matter of survival, and the measure of a man is made by what he is willing to do, rather than what he should do. I see much darkness in you, but there is also light, and that is why I do not count you my enemy, Vynasha.”

  “So why now? You said you’ve been watching to see what I was capable of.” She held her incandescent claws up to him.

  Wolfsbane pulled a piece of wet leather from his belt and she covered her mouth as the overwhelming stench hit her. “While you were busy dealing with your rogue beast in the wolves’ den, I put down this stray closer to the border. More will come before the end.”

  Vynasha nodded but couldn’t look away from Wolfsbane’s trophy, wondered what the beast had looked like before the curse and if it had been a human girl from this mountain. Now they would never know. A wild, mad idea took hold of her then as she looked to Wolfsbane’s trophy, then thought of the silver-eyed creature she’d destroyed.

  “I’ve been such a fool, thinking they would let me leave…” She lifted her chin, tore her gaze from the wrapped beast claw and focused on the hunter. “My brother and Resha will keep Wyll safe here, but I’m going back to the village. You’re right, more are coming and we can’t do this alone. We need your help guarding the borders.”

  “You are proposing an alliance with me, little beasty?” Wolfsbane’s mouth quirked in an uncanny grin.

  “I am telling you if the feuding doesn’t stop now, there will be no one to face the threat at our borders. I can’t take on the majik and creatures guarding the castle borders, not alone.”

  “I shall not hunt with the wolves, but if they are agreeable my daughter and I will hunt the cursed ones only.” He held out his other hand, spat on the palm and offered it to her.

  Vynasha did the same, hesitated only a moment before closing her clawed hand over his.

  He laughed, and she was reminded of why she’d liked him so easily in the first place. “I will help you, curse breaker. Let them send the most vile, fearsome monsters they may, we shall meet them together!”

  Wolvs on the prowl continued to howl in the distance and the clouds parted further to blanket the
earth with wishful stars.

  Vynasha laughed with the grizzled hunter as he lifted their joined hands in the air and cried, “I am Wolfsbane, dreaded through the wylderland. I will not draw my last breath until the hunt is done. So send your best. Even hunters have claws!”

  I will learn control after this, Mother, she thought as Wolfsbane continued his mad rambling.

  He turned to her and urged her, “Go on, then, let them see your teeth!”

  Vynasha shook her head and laughed as she lifted her head to the bright silvery moon and released a wyldcat’s shriek into the night.

  “Come on, you can do better than that! You are a witch with claws and it is time you learn how to use them, beasty. Let them hear you all the way in their blasted towers!”

  No more the half-starved coward who walked into a demon’s lair.

  She didn’t care anymore that her brother and Resha and Baalor had likely been shaken from slumber by their crowing. Her inner light grew brighter as Wolfsbane’s madness infected her with eagerness.

  I am a witch with claws, she thought with a grin as she let go of the last of her fear. Too long she’d led her life in fear of what the dead might say or think. No longer was she a creature of both bloodlines, infected with Grendall’s majik or Soraya’s curse. In her heart Wolfsbane’s words beat strongly as her own power rose with a fierce roar that made beasts cower and mountains quake.

  The power behind her cry was greater than she had been prepared for, bellowing and guttural as a banshee and evidence of her deeper transformation.

  Wolfsbane urged her on, madness in his eyes as he thrust his fist at the sky and spat his own slew of words. “Wake, oh mighty Queen of Wylderland! Here is one daughter you could not steal from us!”

  Vynasha laughed and covered her lips with trembling fingers. She could hear it, the way the land fell utterly silent following her howl. What was more, she could feel the power uncurling through her limbs as they waited and listened from the mountain cleft. A definite hush, a pause of bated breath built upon the air, thick as the snow beneath their feet.

  The tension built to a dull roar in her ears, until with a pop and rush of noise, distant howls of wolves and strange baying and hissing of other beasts erupted as one throughout the forest. Vynasha clenched her teeth as a primal urge to cull them to her will arose, fierce as a queen to her pride.

  Hear me and know me, she longed to cry, without words but with raw and scattered thought.

  Wolfsbane whispered to her, breaking her focus and pointing with one of his long-bladed knives to the eastern northerly high peaks. “Do you hear, curse breaker? Do you hear how the forgotten creatures quake in the wake of your call? They know you could command them to rise against the old queen’s dark majik.”

  Vynasha shivered and some of her exhilaration died at the hunter’s words. She too whispered in turn, afraid to break the veil of silence. “I wasn’t trying to call them to war.” Her voice was hoarse and strange after using such deeper animal tones.

  Wolfsbane brought the tip of his blade in a swift arcing slice through the air to his lips. “Perhaps not, but they know you are here now. You called and they will remember when the time comes.”

  More questions on the tip of her tongue fell aside when she caught a glimpse of white fur in her periphery.

  Baalor?

  She twisted to search the bordering trees more fully but found only shadow and snow.

  Wolfsbane turned as the first howl sang through the air, followed by half a dozen others. The hunter placed a hand on her arm, a warning. “The Wolvs will not approve of your stirring up the forgotten creatures of the forest. Not even my father, were he still alive, could say what your call awoke in the deep places.”

  The Wolv’s song spread further across the land, stretching toward the northernmost edge, eventually melding with the wind. She looked for Baalor in the forest and regretted her moment of freedom. “A warning would have been nice before we woke every monster in the valley.”

  Great puffs of air escaped the hunter’s mouth as he chuckled. “But you angered the Wolvs and gained an ally in Wolfsbane! A fair trade, I think you will find.”

  “Ashes? What in seven hells is happening?”

  Vynasha froze at the sound of her brother’s voice and pushed Wolfsbane’s hand away with a silent warning.

  “Resha heard it first and woke me. Your pallet was empty. I feared you came here to challenge the beast who… ah, I see.” Ceddrych paused a few paces below them, moonlight bright on his wide eyes. “Wolfsbane.” He nodded stiffly to the hunter by way of greeting.

  “Wanderer,” came Wolfsbane’s frigid reply.

  Vynasha glanced back to find the old man’s blue eyes glinting with some unspoken fury. “I see you’ve already met my brother, then.”

  Wolfsbane’s smile was unsettling. “Indeed we have. Care to tell your sister how we met, Wanderer? Imagine my surprise to find my daughter was keeping company with a Wolv.”

  Ceddrych clenched his fists. “Care to tell me what you’re doing with my sister, alone?”

  “Ceddrych,” Vynasha hissed.

  He shook his head and climbed until he closed the space between them. “That man is a monster, Ashes. He’d sooner murder you than speak to you, unless you’re human. Or haven’t you told her?”

  “He didn’t need to.” She took his hand between hers, drawing his focus. “I figured it out for myself.” Lowering her voice, she added, “And you are being awfully rude to the father of the woman you love.”

  Ceddrych’s mouth fell open and his words stalled at the tip of his tongue.

  Wolfsbane laughed. “See how craven you are, Wanderer, before your sister? Cursed you both may be, but she is far more cunning. It is for the curse breaker’s sake I won’t spill any more blood this night.”

  Ceddrych moved as though to push past Vynasha, but she pressed her clawed hand to his chest. Whatever might have been said in reply was torn asunder by the arrival of Resha in all her wyld glory, her dark eyes furious and fingers cutting angry shapes through the air.

  Wolfsbane crossed his arms over his stout chest and looked down his beard at her with amusement. It was an odd conversation to witness, Resha’s quick gestures and her father’s grumbling reply. “Well, of course I knew what I was doing! You think I should fear the child because she is a monster?”

  Resha stilled a moment but shook her head, then tilted up her chin as she slid her hands up over her throat and into the air to point at the moon. She ducked her head so the fur cowl exposed the flattened face of the poor Wolv she had slain. The swipe of her daggers moved like the swipe of wolf paws. At last she ripped the hood of her cloak back and glared at her father.

  Vynasha glanced at Ceddrych, who was watching the huntress’ soundless dance. He watched her as though entranced and even in her fury, Resha was something to behold. She would have been considered too strange to be called beautiful in their home village, Vynasha reckoned. Not the sort of creature Wynyth might have envisioned for her son. Still, Vynasha watched her brother watching the woman he loved and saw how it might have happened. The wolf had been ensnared by the hooded girl in the forest. Two lost and wandering souls finding one another was a very old story, after all.

  “Bah!” Wolfsbane’s outburst shook her from her thoughts. “Nonsense! The Wolvs know better than to come here on my mountain.”

  Vynasha sucked in a breath and wondered if the hunter was aware of Baalor. She scanned the trees just below their perch overlooking the valley and wondered why he had not come running after her brother.

  Ceddrych laughed then and Wolfsbane’s lip curled in a sneer as he interrupted. “Guess your human nose can’t catch everything, or maybe you were too busy luring my sister away. Because I’m not the only Wolv on this mountain.”

  “Ced…” Vynasha hissed and despite the warning in Resha’s dark eye she came to stand between them.

  Resha observed her with a brief lift of her pointed chin and, though she was much shorter,
seemed to look down on Vynasha. The urge to share in Resha’s obvious dislike was palpable. What was more, the unspoken challenge had Vynasha’s inner beast hissing. “Did you leave Wyll alone?” she managed between halting, snarling breaths. “Is he safe?”

  At last the huntress nodded in affirmation and Vynasha pushed the nastier part of her personality to a dark corner of her mind.

  “Girl won’t listen worth a whip,” Wolfsbane muttered. “Should have been stricter with her, Nephthys.”

  Resha pulled the cowl of her cloak back over her tangled black hair and threw a glare, first at Ceddrych, then her father before stalking past them down the hill. The sharp tang of majik still clung to the girl’s skin, pricking Vynasha’s conscience.

  As she departed, Wolfsbane called, “I shall come by your way soon, daughter. The little wyldcat wants us to join her on the hunt. Must not keep her waiting.” He turned his manic grin to Vynasha.

  Vynasha wondered what Wolfsbane would say if Resha had had a voice to tell him what had transpired the night before. He might not be so willing to bury the old dagger if he knew she’d used majik to stop his daughter from killing their enemy.

  Ceddrych watched Wolfsbane warily, never taking his gaze from the burly man as he urged her follow him off the hillcrest. “Time to go, little bird.” His voice came gentle and Vynasha wondered if he wasn’t warier of what she might do.

  “Don’t forget our bargain,” she called. Ceddrych’s hand squeezed too tightly on her shoulder, as if afraid she would fly away.

  Wolfsbane only smiled and said, “I shall meet you on the old road when you are ready. Listen to them, curse breaker!” A deep guttural chuckle added to the madness of his words. “Listen how they answer your call!”

  “Ashes,” Ceddrych practically growled at her ear and this time she let him lead her back down the edge of the mountain. Wolfsbane faced the valley again and released a strangled human wail that went straight to her bones. And as she turned back to the cottage, a flash of white fur moved between the trees and she knew Baalor had been watching all along.