Veil of Thorns

by Gwen Mitchell

  She snorted and shook her head.

  He squeezed her hand and gazed into her eyes. “I mean that I need you.”

  Her heartbeat kicked up to a furious pace.

  He went still, as if afraid of spooking her. “There is a tremor inside of me, an ache that punctuates everything I do. I thought it was the threat to your life making me so on edge, but now that you are safe, the need has only grown. I believe holding you in my arms is the only thing that will quell it.”

  Heat flooded her cheeks as her answer almost burst from her lips. “I feel it too.”

  Lucas sighed in relief, smiling at her with something akin to wonder.

  A little embarrassed, she went on. “I’m not sure if it’s time passing or this place–all the magic–but it feels like it’s getting stronger, that pull between us.”

  He slid off the ledge and took her with him, into the deepest part of the pool, where he could touch bottom, but she could not quite. She had to hold onto him to stay afloat. The shadows were deeper there too, making his eyes glow like tiny bonfires.

  Bri’s heart fluttered as she drifted closer and put her hand on his bare shoulder.

  His smile down-shifted to wolfish.

  “Don’t you dare lure me into this vulnerable position just to take advantage of me, Lucas Moncrieff. I trust that you will be a perfect gentleman.”

  His tone was playful as he coiled his arms around her. “You finally trust me, then?”

  “Yes.” Deep down, she always had. From the moment they met. She hadn’t trusted herself. She laid her head against his neck and sighed. Just as he’d described, a tension inside–a vibrating thread ready to snap–hummed when their bodies touched and then went smooth and calm. Every muscle in her body felt languid.

  “You’ve trapped me well, my clever mate,” he said against her ear.

  “Don’t call me that.”

  He drew back to see her face. “Why not? It’s only the truth. You are mine and you are very clever.”

  Bri sighed and loosened her hold on him, letting more space between their bodies. “I am not yours.”

  Lucas went stock-still. “Because you are his?”

  “No. Because I don’t belong to anyone.”

  His eyes were laughing at her as he cupped the side of her face. “Ah, mon coeur. I do not call you mine because you belong to me. You are mine because you are a part of me.”

  The golden rings in his irises flared, and she trembled.

  He took one of her hands and placed it on the side of his head, “These are my ears.”

  He traced her fingers down his forehead, over his strong brow, stroking over his long water-spiked lashes. “These are my eyes.” Down to his mouth. “These are my lips.”

  Her breath caught, and one side of those silken lips curled enticingly.

  He guided her touch down his neck to the center of his chest. “This is my heart.”

  Finally, he placed her hand over her own heaving chest and covered it with his larger one. “This is my mate.”

  Bri’s heart pounded under her palm, as if those words had rung a gong inside her and the ripples would be vibrating in her soul for eternity. She stared at the flames dancing in Lucas’s eyes, caught in a web of memories and emotions that she would never untangle.

  “And I am your wolf. You said so.”

  She nodded and cleared her throat. “I know. But my heart still longs for someone else.”

  Didn’t it? Lucas had invaded her thoughts, her dreams, her fantasies. And when he was there in front of her, she had a hard time focusing on anything else. She spent most of her energy trying not to surrender to that magnetic force between them.

  As if reading her mind, he said, “You can’t run away from what we are to each other forever.”

  Bri eased back to the ledge, away from him.

  He let her go, tracking her movements like a predator, leisurely drifting after her. “Why must you torture us both so? Have I not earned your trust? Have I not proven my loyalty? My worthiness?”

  “Stop that–I’m not the one who agreed to that stupid game. You know you have proven yourself. You’ve done more than I ever could have asked. You have my gratitude–”

  “I don’t want your gratitude,” he said, voice edging towards a growl. Then, softer, “Do you not care for me at all?”

  “Of course.” She swallowed. “You’re my friend.”

  “Whom you’re also insanely attracted to.”

  He did not even phrase it as a question.

  She didn’t bother denying it.

  Lucas glided up beside her, close enough that she felt the heat pouring off him through the tepid water. A tickle of magic licked off his skin, a current wanting to arc toward her. His fingers slid into her hair, thumb brushing softly over her cheek. His voice was a low rumble that stirred butterflies from the bottom of her belly. “Do you not also feel something deeper?”

  She swallowed hard.

  There was that pang in her chest when he looked at her like this, a noose around her heart that caught and pulled taut. It was more than lust or physical desire. More than one of Vivianne’s imprints. It was an aching part of her soul that wanted to leap into Lucas’s arms and melt into him. Maybe it was demon magic. But it was quite possibly the deepest thing she’d ever felt. She glanced away with a curt nod.

  “Then why can’t you accept me? What is so wrong with me?” Bri opened her mouth to reply, and he held up his hand before she could speak. “Besides the fact that I am not Kean.”

  She froze in shock at hearing Lucas say Kean’s name. They had danced around this for so long–the unavoidable tragedy woven into her Fate, thanks to choices that weren’t even hers. Now he’d thrown the word out like a gauntlet, breaking an unspoken agreement between them. It stung, but he was right. She couldn’t run from the truth.

  She was bound to Lucas. He was never going to give up on her. Her feelings towards him were…evolving. But she still loved Kean, and she owed him. She could not abandon him.

  “Why don’t you tell me,” she said, dipping her head back in the water and pretending to study the sparkling gemstone ceiling. “If Vivianne could come back, whole and well, and you could have either one of us, who would you choose?”

  Lucas crossed his arms. “There’s no way to answer that question. You are the same person.”

  “No, we’re not. And I don’t mean a different body or separated by four centuries of history and culture. We have lived different lives, been shaped by different experiences, have wholly different views of the world. Different values. I may be the same soul, the same magic, but she and I are not the same person. Not even close. So, who would you choose?”

  He frowned, and her cheeks burned with a mixture of nerves and guilt. She really had trapped him this time. If he chose Vivianne, he made Bri’s point. If he chose her, he was unfaithful to a woman he’d supposedly pined after for centuries. She almost felt sorry for him, but he was the one who’d started them down this precarious road.

  Lucas stared at her through the swirling steam for several heartbeats, nostrils flaring. Finally, he blinked, a bemused half-smile curling his lips. “When you live as long as I have, you learn not to look back and question the path you took, or it will drive you mad. Vivianne’s choices were her own. She never listened to me. I don’t know if she would regret any of them, but being here now, looking at you…I cannot say that I do.”

  “But doesn’t it make you mad? That I’m not the one you chose?” she blurted.

  It’s so unfair!

  Kean had been her first and only true love. He’d saved her life more than once. He’d died for her. He’d given up a turn on the wheel for her. Astrid needed him. His family needed him. Evergreen Cove needed him. Bri had lost everyone–she could not lose Kean. Kean and Astrid were her family. If she let them go, she would lose the last pieces of herself. She would cease to be Briana and become something else, something wild and broken and lost.

  Maybe that’s exactly wh
at he’s hoping for.

  Lucas waved his hands gently through the water, the ripples caressing her neck and shoulders as he eased closer. “Sometimes the Fates choose better for us than we would for ourselves. Vivianne saw the future. She knew the cost.” He pressed his lips in thought. “I choose to believe she loved me truly and made the sacrifice willingly.”

  “She did.” Bri’s throat tightened. In Vivianne’s heart, she loved Lucas into eternity. A flash of scalding guilt washed over her, as if she was somehow betraying her own honor by not delivering on that promise. Lucas had kept all of his promises to her. He’d gotten Vivianne’s daughter to safety, protected the mirror, survived the Synod, found her again…

  Bri blinked away tears to find his face mere inches away.

  “Kiss me.”

  “Don’t.” Her gaze flitted to his and met a storm of crackling emotion.

  “Just once.” His lips seemed so soft and pillowy as he spoke, cushioning the demand behind his words. “You want to.”

  She had no answer to that.

  “Please, Briana.” His hands slid up her back, and he closed the distance between them. “Let me in.”

  She froze, unable to look away from the storm–so familiar–that turbulent, dangerous grey, the swells breaking with lust. With love? With a longing that echoed the one wrapped around her bones.

  Blood thundered in her ears. She felt lightheaded.

  It was so tempting to surrender to that pull of desire. To lean on Lucas. Share her darkest fears and secret worries. To hand over the fragmented pieces of her heart and let him forge them into something new and unbreakable. She couldn’t blame all that temptation on Vivianne, either. But she–Briana Celene Spurrier, daughter of Danielle and Aldric–had made promises too. To her coven, to Kean, and to herself.

  She took Lucas’s face in her hands, and kissed him on both cheeks, letting her tears spill over. “You are my wolf, and I am bound to you, but I cannot be your mate. Not truly. I can’t turn my back on this life or the people in it. I’m sorry–I know it’s unfair–but if I have to choose between them and you, I will choose them.”

  Please, please don’t make me choose.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Over the next two days, the palace reached a new peak of vibrance. The garden was a lush jungle, covered with a thick canopy of green and decorated with bushels of flowers in every shade of red, pink, and yellow. Jewel-ripe fruit hung heavy from the branches. Bumblebees the size of hummingbirds buzzed lazily through the warm, humid air, and the sun felt miles closer. Even inside the caves, buds burst from the stone walls, carrying the intoxicating perfumes of summer, and a carpet of soft moss covered every stone floor.

  This day proceeded like any other, and Bri found herself relaxing into the routine of it. She and Vika spoke of spell theory and history as Bri tried to penetrate the mysterious link between the statues. The link that she hoped was the divan, though she never got a glimpse of it in any of her visions when she touched one of Vika’s stone-cursed victims.

  She’d gotten better at lowering the wall she used to hold her magic back but could still only see a brief flash of memory when she reached out to the trapped souls. Usually the last few heartbeats before they died, sometimes Vika’s face as she cursed them. If she fought to hold on to the memory or push deeper, the statues would shudder in response and her concentration would snap. The power would rebound, flinging her back on her ass, leaving her with a splitting headache.

  Vika found this ceaselessly entertaining, her laughter ringing through the forest and echoed with the sharp sniggers of the ever-watchful crows. She seemed in high spirits in general, as if the bloodbath and Bri’s running off afterward had never happened. But, even though Emil seemed healed and had resumed his guard duties and serving them at meals, Bri could not forget. Or forgive.

  Her talk with Lucas still troubled her too–the raw hope in his face withering to desolation as she’d kissed his cheeks. How he’d watched her go, his gaze and touch cold and lifeless, his arms leaden. He had not approached her since, and she sincerely hoped it was male pride and not despair that kept him away.

  She did not want another ruined heart laid at her feet.

  It’s not like you didn’t warn him.

  He knew why they were here, what she was willing to pay. He could not expect a couple of weeks in an enchanted castle and a few charged moments to make her forget about the love of her life.

  They’d both had to face hard truths that night in the pools.

  By dinner time on her tenth day as Vika’s guest, Bri was exhausted and grumpy. She’d made no more progress with her scrying for the divan or her search for a spell to conceal the mirror. She’d redoubled her efforts on both, a gnawing sense of impending doom making her almost manic.

  Things were becoming too calm, too predictable. In a word, boring. Each uneventful moment spent playing music or cards or picnicking in the garden was like a ticking bomb, counting down to when Vika would want to blow things up again.

  After Bri had changed into her dinner attire that night–Vika tolerated her modern clothes during the day but insisted she dress in a gown and wear glamour in the evening–Emil was waiting for her in the hall. He sat across from her door in his bear form.

  Bri took one look at his clean white fur and sad, black eyes and burst into tears. She threw her arms around his neck and cried openly, hugging him tight.

  I’m so sorry, she said silently.

  No, mistress, it is I who am sorry. I did not want to hurt you. I do not ever wish to hurt you. I had hoped you would find this form less frightening. I do not want you to fear me.

  “Oh, Emil.” Bri let go of him and stepped back. Change back.

  Are you certain?

  She nodded.

  He shifted into his hulking Viking form, staring straight ahead with his electric blue gaze.

  Could you…kneel? Please?

  Emil gazed down at her, then knelt, his head on a level with her shoulder.

  I couldn’t reach you up there, she said, taking his face in her hands. I forgive you. I do not fear you. And I do not blame you.

  He closed his eyes and bent his head to her chest. Bri kissed his forehead and wrapped him in a hug. His giant arms–large enough to squeeze the life out of her–circled her gently. Reverently. As if she was a holy icon he both cherished and clung to for strength.

  Thank you, mistress.

  Bri nodded and released him, placing her hands on his shoulders. You must promise me one more thing.

  He hesitated for a beat, nodded.

  Never call me mistress again. You may only call me Bri.

  …yes, Bri.

  She smiled and squeezed his shoulders.

  Emil shifted back to bear form. My mistress has something special planned for dinner tonight. Deep in the woods. I am to carry you.

  Oh. Oh…kay.

  Tick…tick…tick…tick.

  Emil stooped down, and Bri hiked up her long skirt of crow feathers and climbed onto his back. He carried her out the rear of the palace and through the darkening forest at a fast clip. They headed toward the thickest part of the woods, nestled against the feet of the crescent mountain range. The vines undulated like black waves in the moonlight, parting for them as they passed. Eventually, they came to a clearing. Four giant braziers lit the corners, and a large bonfire blazed in the center.

  Vika sat in a sculpted bronze chair at one end of a wooden banquet table draped in black silk. She too, was wearing black. Her bodice was studded with a million chips of black crystal, woven into a lacework pattern of whorls over her plunging neckline and down to the tips of her fingers, giving the impression of a sparkly tattoo. The skirt of her gown shimmered in a tiny scale pattern with an aura of rainbow iridescence like salamander skin. Her hair was a mass of oil-black braids curled and looped into a knotwork crown. Her skin shimmered gold, and her eyes were framed with long slanting wings of black, reminding Bri of an Egyptian queen.

  Vika clapped whe
n she saw Bri, long gold talons glinting in the firelight. “Ah, the guest of honor. Welcome to the summer court, sister!”

  Lucas poked his head around his own chair to watch her dismount from Emil’s back. Bri gave them an awkward wave as she crossed the clearing. The grass was decadently soft against her bare feet, the air heavy with the scents of rich soil and woodsmoke.

  She took her usual seat at Vika’s right and reached for her wine. She swallowed half a sip and nearly spilled the glass as she tried to hack it back out. It burned like acid and tasted like…cinnamon?

  Lucas laughed at her, and when her gaze cut to him, he gave her a lopsided grin, his eyes glassy. “Demon ale,” he said, tipping his brass goblet at her before emptying it.

  Emil came forward to refill his cup, and Lucas looked up at him, his expression oddly vacant. “Sit, brother. Share a drink with me!”

  “Loverboy’s on a mission to get under the table tonight,” Ryder said, appearing in the chair on Bri’s other side.

  Lucas did a good impersonation of Ryder’s shrug and took another drink.

  Vika sipped from her own goblet and smiled at Bri silkily. “It has quite a bite, but the intoxication is…”

  “Intoxicating?” Ryder said drily.

  Vika giggled. “You’re just jealous you can’t feel it.”

  Bri looked at Ryder, and he sighed. “You’ve got some catching up to do, love.”

  “Yes!” Vika grinned. “Try it again, Bri. You weren’t expecting it the first time.”

  She lifted the glass to her nose, eyeing the blackish-blue contents. Then, with a smile of mock enthusiasm, she said, “Bottoms up!”

  It wasn’t bad. Like undiluted absinthe, with a cinnamon flavor instead of licorice.

  Will I see little red fairies? she mused, a giggle bubbling out of her mouth unintentionally. The others laughed too, far too long and far too loud, and that was when Bri realized she was in trouble.

  The evening passed in a blur of raucous laughter and clinking glasses and endless courses of cakes and glistening ripe berries decorated with sugared flower petals. There was a white bear in a top hat and monocle, and he could talk in her head, and a man with glowing silver wolf ears and hungry flames in his eyes. Hundreds of beady gazes watched them from the forest, and tiny, giggling voices zoomed past her ears like dragonflies.