Odym’s brow furrowed, but he seemed to think better than to speak his mind. Instead, the old wyne stood, pulling her furs over her legs. “You have improved so greatly since you let him in again, Vynasha.” He patted her hand, hesitated, and then nodded, resolute. “A word of advice, from a man who chose duty over love?”
He seemed to look past her to a time and memory she could not comprehend, but she had heard his stories. His voice faded, more distant than before. “Power cannot bring you happiness, and no power in this world is absolute. The greatest of all majiks is love. It shall move mountains, overturn kingdoms, and is the only enchantment that will last, even beyond death.”
Vynasha held her breath. Though they were not bonded in the same visceral way as she was with his master, Vynasha recognized his pain.
Odym blinked slowly, trembling as though coming back to himself as he turned, lifted the lid to her food tray, and began to serve her. Vynasha ate in silence and did not fight when her friend insisted on feeding her. Only after she drank her fill, as the wyne gathered the remnants and prepared to leave, did she gather her courage. “I don’t regret what I said to him.”
Odym’s mouth quirked up to one side. “I did not suggest you should, milady.”
Vynasha sucked in a shuddering breath. “I haven’t forgiven him for what he did to bring me here. I—I hate it, what he did.” She reached up and pulled at the thick braid he had trapped her curls in. “After he forced me to leave, my brother found me. Ceddrych had been with the Wolvs.” She leveled a hard look at the wyne. “He is one of them.”
Odym opened his mouth, shock and caution at war on his wrinkled features. “And your nephew?”
Vynasha drew her shoulders in as she remembered Ceddrych confronting her, Wyll, and Resha in the cave. The reunion that should have been happy had been ruined by her brother shifting into a wolf and attacking her.
It shouldn’t have happened the way it had. Crafter knew, she would do anything now to undo her mistakes. To tell the truth? the shadow taunted at the back of her mind.
“Wyll is with Ceddrych now,” she continued. “I—it wasn’t safe for him to stay with me once the beasts started turning up in the village.” She caught the tension in the wyne, the slight narrowing of his gaze. She hoped this wasn’t a mistake. He wasn’t so loyal to Grendall as to betray her trust. She had to believe that.
“The curse was not completely unbound,” Odym finally said as he settled back in his chair. “Fool boy, Grendall should have known they would seek you out, no matter the distance or danger to those around you.”
Vynasha turned to the tapestry beside her bed, unable to face the wyne as she continued her confession. “I made friends with some of the people in the village.” She dug her claws into the sheets but could not completely remove the steel in her tone. “I know what the wyne tried to do to them. And for months I trained, tried to learn how to control my majik. I promised the others I would free them, not just the Wolvs but the mirror folk and the beasts that found me. But—I didn’t belong with them, not really. I wanted to.” The last came out more harshly than she had intended.
“A leader’s path is never easy.” Odym covered her hand with his. “You are not the first gatekeeper to find their loyalties torn.”
She was unprepared for the sympathy she found in his sad smile. “Gatekeeper? I thought that was Grendall’s job.”
Odym’s smile fell. “Remember, he shared his power with you. The beasts recognize one of their own and would follow the one who can free them rather than the one who imprisoned them.”
Vynasha sucked in a sharp breath. Her chest was suddenly too tight. “I can’t be what you want me to be.”
“You were born to this, although you could not have known it,” Odym argued, a growing surety to his words she wished she felt. “This is why he loves you, Vynasha. This is why you are the one to mend what was broken and become queen.”
THE SHADOW APPEARED in her dream like moonlight spilling through black smoke. One moment, all Vynasha knew was peaceful black, and then the Changeling stood before her. Her visage blurred about the edges, features dimmed by uncertainty in this corner of Vynasha’s mind.
“Eliajaqlyn.” Vynasha spoke the name aloud. Names held power, so her mother Wynyth had claimed.
The Changeling shuddered and then shone a bit more brightly. Her voice came in a rasping whisper. “I see he has not stolen your light yet.”
“Says the woman who tried to do just the same.”
Eliajaqlyn drew closer. “My boon has kept you well.”
Vynasha laughed. “You mean your curse? What do your runes even mean?”
“Protection.” The Changeling’s lips spread in a wide, uneven grin. “Once upon a time, my kind and yours were much the same. I, too, was born to mixed blood. I, too, was betrayed.”
A distantly growing roar rippled behind the Changeling’s words, and with it came a harsh torrent. Vynasha dug her claws into her thighs as Eliajaqlyn’s words grew, her voice merging with the wind.
“They are all alike, those who were made after us. We once remade and shaped the world, but they have stolen our light. If you spend enough time in the dark, darkness becomes you. Never forget that.”
“No one is stealing my light,” Vynasha managed before the smaller woman grasped her arm. While her blood warred against this creature’s majik, burning like the heart of the sun, the runes cooled and washed over her with the Changeling’s touch.
The shadows drifted over the Changeling, swallowing her features until only her hand at Vynasha’s wrist remained, the rasping voice a fading whisper. “Accept my gift and keep a part of yourself free, little sparrow.”
Vynasha swallowed back her rage at the childhood nickname so carelessly flung from this stranger’s lips. Before she could scream, the howling wind pulled her back in, pushing her through into a room too cold and too small. Cool breath fell over her skin, punctuated by pained words.
“—left us with little choice. All I have done has been to protect you and now the mistress,” Odym was saying. “You never understood the danger nor the purpose of having a gatekeeper. If I may, you have already wasted too much time, keeping her closeted in the dark.” Another heavy pause and then, softly, “You know they will come for her.”
“They will try,” the prince growled back. “I have done all I can to protect her, and now you say it is pointless? How can you believe that when you know what you condemn her to. Tell me, did I do wrong in trying to give her what I failed to give Luanor?”
Odym let his master’s words linger in silence as Vynasha struggled to keep her breathing even, her features placid. But the name Luanor recalled the silver beast that had attacked her and Wolfsbane’s betrayal after.
“Didn’t mean to deceive you, beasty.”
Vynasha pricked her lower lip with sharp teeth, desperate to banish this most recent and worst betrayal. She was not being carried back to her prison by the man she had trusted. She was covered in blankets, a cloth pressed then to her cheek.
Odym finally answered their master in a low, fevered voice. “You say I do not carry the blame for what befell this kingdom. Yet I blame myself for every life faded, every girl lost. You should not carry the burden of Luanor’s fate as your own, boy. She was simply not the one.”
“How can you be certain?” Grendall hissed back.
“I believe you already know the answer to that, boy.” Odym gently smoothed a cool hand over her head as he replied, “Do not ruin this third chance you have for redemption. If not for yourself, then for what is left of us. We cannot survive unless she cleanses the mirror.”
“Enough. We shall speak of this later.”
Odym left with only the faintest audible click of the door.
Alone with Grendall, the man she had once thought to love, the true prince she loathed, Vynasha didn’t want to wake up. Let her sleep for a thousand years like the cursed princess her brother had once told her about. Let these walls crumble, the rose garden
spread throughout the keep with thorns and vines to keep the world out forever.
“I know you are awake, Ashes.”
Vynasha opened her eyes. The prince stood before the hearth, his back to her. He hadn’t changed clothes since she had last seen him. His skin had dimmed from bronze, closer to the gray she remembered.
Grendall’s shoulders hunched as he hung his head. “I should not have come, I know this. I—” he twisted to face her. “Forgive me, Ashes, but I cannot stay away from you any longer.”
Vynasha should have been frightened, but she was coming to accept the fact that their—alliance—had little to do with logic. She could not deny the way his words danced about her mind and breathed life back into her limbs.
“You were right about me when you corrected me before the servants. I wish I could tell you I was different… before Soraya cursed me. But the truth is what I have said before: I was always a monster.” Grendall drew his shoulders back and lifted his chin, pushing away from the fireplace mantel. He shook his head and held his hands before him, palms upturned. “I never wanted to be my father. I shall not make his mistakes, and so I will be honest with you, Ashes. No more secrets.”
He paused, clenching his fists as he steeled himself. “I owe you everything, so much more than you know. When you willingly accepted the curse, you took some of the monster into you. I have not been forced to shift ever since. It has given me time to remember myself in your absence, who I was and who I hope to be.”
Vynasha ground her sharp teeth. She had taken part of his beast? That they were forced to share something she had learned to take pride in made her ill.
Whatever he saw in her face must have pained him, enough for him to turn away. “Forgive me. I shall go. I should have never hoped…” He shook his head, dispelling whatever he might have said as he took two more steps to the door.
She traced the tip of her tongue on her lip, tasting the blood she spilled to forget. His hand was on the doorknob when she said, “Wait.” The strength behind her command surprised her and caused the prince to freeze in place.
Vynasha lifted her hand with surprising ease. “Stay?”
Hope surged through their bond as his graying skin illuminated in a burnished gold. He quickly crossed the room to her bedside and, taking her hand, pressed it to his chest. “Always.”
At his touch, the promise behind a single word, Vynasha released the breath she didn’t know she had been holding. Even then, a small corner of her mind railed against her actions, at the feelings she couldn’t seem to control.
This is wrong.
Still, she couldn’t deny how the persistent itch beneath her skin abated with him beside her, holding her hand. It shouldn’t have mattered. Truly, she hated how easily she gave in to these feelings. She could never tell him. Grendall had bound her life to his. Even if she were to leave, to beg the Iceveins to take her back into their home, she would never be rid of him. And the longer she remained in the prince’s castle, the less she wanted to be free.
If she had found Grendall accommodating before, he was almost too pleasing after her chastisement. The alteration of his manner was baffling enough that she had asked Odym if the change extended beyond her company.
Odym had only hidden a smile as he replied, “I told you the boy craved discipline.”
Vynasha had laughed away his jest, of course. Still, she speculated. Grendall, for as long as she had known him, had been a creature of harsh edges and cold as the foundations of the castle. She hadn’t believed such a gentle manner existed within the surly prince. Yet now he was kind to Odym, even to Lyttia and Myrel whenever either maid appeared with a meal tray or clothing. Over the following four days, he continued to help her rebuild her strength. He read her to sleep from dusty tomes, legends and histories he had grown up with. Hour by hour, the harsh layers of him sloughed away, leaving something new in their place. With each passing day, he seemed brighter and the other wyne more solid.
But Vynasha had spent most of her life out of doors and, as the Changeling’s runes hadn’t troubled her in days, grew belligerent. “Why can’t I go to the gardens? I haven’t seen Hvalla since I’ve been back.”
“I have already told you, it is too dangerous to leave these halls.” Grendall’s temper was clearly pushing against the seams as frustration leaked through his words.
“Dangerous for you, perhaps.”
He shut the book in his hands with a snap. “My strength can only hold them back here because we are so near the castle’s foundations. If we go to the gardens, there is a chance I will not be able to protect you.”
“Or you just don’t want me to leave my pretty cage,” Vynasha scoffed. She barely caught the warning gleam in the prince’s eye before he was leaning over her, his fist pressed tightly beside her arm on the bed. Close enough, she caught the scent of dusty books, cinnamon, and sunlight on his skin.
“You seem to forget, Ashes, so allow me to remind you. This has been my cage for six hundred years. And for the past five hundred, I have tended the creatures broken by my mother’s curse. I was their jailor, and they have not forgotten me.” He sneered at the last, though his self-disgust bled through their bond.
“But if they only hate you, why have you ordered the others to stay away from the beasts?” she asked on bated breath. He had not leaned away, and in truth, she needed to breathe something in besides his scent.
The prince scowled as his gaze trailed over her features. “It is not safe.”
Vynasha rolled her eyes. “Nothing about this world is safe. I have not known a safe life since my mother died and my father abandoned us.” She thought of her father as one of Grendall’s beasts, a pawn to lure her here. Old Ced might have given his life to save hers over the falls, but she had not forgiven him.
Grendall drew her chin back with gentle yet insistent fingers. “I cannot allow anything to happen to you, Ashes. I would never forgive myself.”
She sucked in a sharp breath through her teeth. “I took care of myself and Wyll long before I learned I had majik.”
At his grimace, Vynasha didn’t bother hiding her smile. She knew she had won.
“Only a short visit,” he conceded, his mouth twisting into a reluctant grin as she pulled him closer and kissed his cheek.
Touch had always been difficult for her. Grendall had been the first person she had willingly touched besides Wyll. And now she found herself craving contact. She pretended the innocent kiss didn’t matter and that she wasn’t flustered as he helped her dress.
If she thought she caught traces of longing through their bond, she ignored it. Yet her smile did not leave her face even after he led her from the room wearing solid boots and thick velvet and fur-lined clothes.
“I do not catch cold like I used to,” she teased Grendall as she took his arm, out of habit more than necessity of late. Long walks still took much of her energy, but each day spent at his side made her feel stronger.
The prince arched a brow and looked down his nose at her as they traced a new path. “You are still recovering.”
“Prince of bones. Son of death,” the walls whispered.
Vynasha stiffened and glanced down either side of the long hall. The tapestries watched, shifted and pointed at them as Grendall half aided, half carried her down a narrow set of steps leading to the grounds below. She watched the telltale clench of his jaw and wondered if he could hear the walls whisper, too.
“Why do they call you prince of bones?” she asked.
“Have you not guessed, Ashes?”
“I would rather hear it from you. Didn’t you say you wanted no more secrets between us?” Vynasha winced as she put pressure on her bad leg. The runes on her thigh rippled faintly. She had not been pleased to discover the Changeling’s mark had spread over her body in curling, vine-like trails. Both Grendall and Odym had seen the change but made no remark.
Grendall’s step faltered, and his grip at her waist tightened a moment, though he would not look at her. “I
have—grown accustomed—to keeping secrets. But I meant what I said, if you will allow me, of course.”
“That’s settled then.” She nudged him with her elbow. “So are you going to tell me why they call you prince of bones?”
Grendall turned a scowl to the darkened walls, so different from the golden hall they had left behind. “For some who linger, it is meant as an insult, a judgment for my part in the downfall of this kingdom. Others have tried to warn me of what will happen should I fail. All of them have been good at reminding me of my faults.” He added, with a wry twist of his lips, “Sending you away did not please them.”
“Why did you compel me to leave?” Vynasha ducked her head and hated that she had allowed him to braid her hair again. She’d never been good at hiding her emotions from her face, much as she had loathed the way the villagers had stared at her scars in pity. “All of this might have been over if I had stayed.”
He inhaled sharply. “I already told you the answer.”
“No,” Vynasha growled, “you gave me pretty words and half truths. You forget we’re bonded, prince, and I know there was more to it.”
Grendall’s gaze brightened a moment, his skin flickering between luminous gold and pale gray. She hadn’t noticed the tiny floating wisps of light following them until then and struggled to pull her attention away.
He paused on the landing and pressed a palm to her cheek, drawing her back. “I was not lying. I have stolen so many choices from you, I wanted to give you a chance. I was willing to pay the price.”
She batted his hand away, standing on her own unsteady feet. “By dying, you mean?” He flinched as she pressed on, emboldened. “You think I haven’t figured it out yet? I know you were content to sign your death sentence by sending me away, but did you consider how selfish you were being? Did you even once consider how it would affect Odym or Hvalla and the others? And what about the beasts? They feel, Grendall. I’ve been helping them remember. I could undo the curse if you allowed me.”
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