Bound Beauty

by Jennifer Silverwood

  Understanding passed through the bond as he hummed low. “I had suspected it might.”

  Vynasha hesitated then dared ask the question that had been forming since she had fallen asleep in his arms the night before. “The bond feels different.”

  “You chose to accept it.” He shifted onto his side, until they faced one another. So often Grendall appeared ancient and grim. Now his smile reached his eyes, so he almost looked young as he said, “You accepted me.”

  A true smile tugged at her cheeks. “You didn’t push me away this time.”

  “Yes,” he sighed as she ran her fingers through his disheveled black hair.

  “Will you tell me about the Veil?” she pressed, unable to contain her eagerness. What she had come to think of as their bond had shifted, resewn into the fabric of her being with their joining. “Tell me about my mother’s people,” she added, “and how you knew what I was.”

  His trepidation and reluctance were but echoes of her own. Still, she knew he would not deny her, not anymore. His accent thickened as he reached for deeper memories and began, “The Phuries were the first people, created before man or the Fayere like my mother, before the Wolvs and other forgotten. Beings of immense power, source of the legends of old gods of the mountain and forest and river. Their lives knew no end unless they gave in to despair and darkness. Across the Veil, their kind are most rare. Few have survived so many ages of warfare and violence.”

  He hesitated then pressed a thumb to her lower lip, revealing the tips of her teeth. “Those who remain are shadows of their former glory, Changelings.”

  “Like the one who attacked me in the forest,” Vynasha whispered. “The Changeling claimed we were akin, but I wonder why my brother never told me the truth about Wynyth. They always spoke of her meeting my father during his travels, but how could Wynyth have passed over the Wylder Mountains?”

  “I do not know how your mother managed to cross over into man’s world. She might have crossed before my mother’s curse created the boundary to repel human-kind. Could have been later, too.”

  Vynasha shook her head. She wished she could have asked Wynyth, had she known the right questions to ask. Had her mother suspected where fate would eventually lead her only child? “I wish…”

  “I know, Ashes,” he whispered, pressing a kiss to her lips. He was sorry, and so full of love for her that Vynasha couldn’t help returning his affection by flipping him over and straddling his waist.

  Bond mate.

  A bond had already formed by majik across vast distance and blood. This is why she had not been able to accept Baalor, as grateful as she had been to him and his family, as much as she had cared for him. She could not become the Wolv’s mate when she had been so intrinsically tied to the prince.

  It was all too easy to lose her fears, to mend her sorrow through him, with him. Together, they banished one another’s demons.

  A knock at the door woke them some time later. Vynasha giggled from beneath the covers and stretched as Grendall rose with a sigh and crossed the room. She covered her head with a fur blanket and listened.

  “My prince,” Odym’s happy greeting came.

  “You had better have a good reason for interrupting, old man,” Grendall replied, for once without his usual bite. He was enjoying the old wyne’s underlying discomfort.

  Odym cleared his throat with a husky rasp and said, “We felt the, ah—bond, cement. We wanted to pass along our happiness to you both.”

  Vynasha covered her face with her hands to muffle her giggle. That she had room for laughter still, after everything, was wondrous.

  Grendall gave a long-suffering sigh. “I trust you to leave the tray beside the door with a simple knock next time.”

  “O-of course, your grace,” Odym stammered before the door clicked shut.

  Vynasha shivered at the implication of more hours in bed. More time. In this Wylderland, where curses stretched across centuries and majik reshaped the people, how long would they have together? More and more questions.

  The aroma of freshly baked delicacies assaulted her nose, and Vynasha forgot her embarrassment once Grendall set the silver tray before her.

  “A feast for my princess.” He bowed with a smirk.

  Vynasha grabbed the first cake she could get her hands on.

  Grendall settled opposite the tray, bare chest handsomely displayed in blue firelight. “I see I have worked you into quite the appetite.”

  Vynasha rolled her eyes and accepted the wine goblet Grendall proffered. Upon swallowing, she asked, “Is that what I am now, your princess, simple as that?” She snorted. “Who knew all I had to do was bed a prince.”

  Grendall grunted a retort. “Not quite. Our blood needed to be bonded before our spirits and hearts.”

  She looked up from their feast at this, at the gentle squeezing in her chest. “Oh.”

  Grendall brushed a lock of hair behind her ear. “Yes, you needed to be my equal in power as well as in strength. That’s no meager feat with a bloodline such as mine.”

  Vynasha sank back, shrinking from his electric touch. “Why, though? Why did you need a partner? Why must I become your princess?”

  Grendall pushed food about his corner of the tray and grimaced. “Long ago, the powers that be created a law to avoid abuse of power. Always two must rule each of the seven gates between this world and the world across the Veil.” His gaze flickered up to meet hers, softening. “Not every gate is so lucky, to be ruled by a love match.”

  Her lips parted, words forming, but she could not find the voice for them. Words had often tied her up in the past as she avoided her father’s and sisters’ abuse. And then especially after their deaths, as she grew used to silences with little Wyll. Coming into her majik and power had altered her in many ways. Vynasha no longer feared her voice. In the face of Grendall’s honesty, however…

  Love match.

  Grendall chewed on a gooseberry and drank from the same goblet he had offered her. His gaze did not stray from hers, only growing with purpose.

  Vynasha spoke in a rush before he could say another word. “I want to try again with the beasts. If I’m truly your princess, if I am a gatekeeper now, like you, we must try again. I want to turn the ones who want their first skins, like Luanor.”

  Grendall twisted and stood from the bed, cold fury and heat teasing their shared bond. “Not yet…”

  “Why not? Haven’t they suffered enough?” Her anger rose like an answering fire in her heart.

  “And you nearly died trying to protect me!” His words echoed against the stones, stirring the walls to whisper, “Too little, too late, prince of bones…”

  Vynasha sucked in a breath as his face crumpled with the words of the faded. Grendall sank to one knee beside her, clasping her hand in his. “Ashes, please, give me one more day? There is a place I wanted to show you before anything else. Give me this gift, my love.”

  Vynasha resisted the urge to pull away. She didn’t bother hiding her ire from him, but something in his grief, his wish played at her curiosity. “All right.” His smile was quick and punctuated by insistent yet gentle kisses over her claws. Her heart shuddered in her breast at the trusting gesture, a sweet torture.

  Together they dressed with only minimal distractions, stolen kisses and lingering touches. Grendall managed to provide everything she would need, including surprisingly practical furs and leggings accompanying sturdy boots.

  “Are we going outside so soon? I thought you wanted to keep me hidden in your tower, prince,” she teased.

  Grendall kissed the tip of her nose. “Do not tempt me, Ashes. Luckily for you, I am not that sort of prince.”

  As they entered the long hall and began their journey into the heart of the castle, Vynasha pressed for more. “Tell me about the seven gates. Do all of them possess majik? Why do you call it the Veil?”

  Grendall laughed, his fingers squeezing her hand. “I can honestly say no one has bothered to ask such questions of me before.�
� His smile faded, and she knew he was thinking of the other maidens, the ones he had failed to bond with. “The seven gates have existed as long as we can remember, before our records tell. Pictures can be found beneath the castle, in the caves I led you to. The gate was originally there before my family moved it higher up the mountain.”

  “And your family has always kept this gate?”

  “As far back as our records tell. We are long lived so near the gate. Majik bleeds through this other world into ours. We call this the Borderlands, the places between the gate and the mortal lands.”

  Vynasha caught her breath at the name. “I know this somehow. Like I read it in one of Ceddrych’s books.”

  “Or heard it from your mother?”

  Vynasha blinked as she tried to recall her mother; soft touches and songs sung in a foreign tongue, songs of the earth and for making things grow. Had Wynyth tried telling her, preparing her daughter in these small ways?

  “When my mother cast her curse, the land changed as much as we did. Wylderland has been locked in a cycle of near-endless winters and very brief, wet springs. Yet we have always had enough to endure.” Grendall led her through a passage and down an unfamiliar staircase.

  Vynasha drank in new tapestries of males with curling horns dancing with maidens with flowers trailing their locks as they frolicked together. “And how do the guardians fit into this?” Grendall’s hand on her arm stiffened, tightening imperceptibly, but she pushed aside his discomfort. “The Wolvs told me they were denied their true forms, that they were cursed as well.”

  Grendall paused before a shadowed door, the only light emanating from his golden hand resting over a chipped, gilded handle. His shoulders hunched, and for a brief moment the bond was silent. Still, she could feel the echo of his regret and whispers of a nameless fury.

  Vynasha took in the door before them in his silence. It was larger than she would have expected in the servants’ halls, much like the high-arched door to the prince’s bedchamber she had once stumbled upon. The night her beast had caught her and she woke to Grendall and the dungeons for the first time. To think of it now, with the truth so clear in her mind, was almost laughable. A child like Thea might have puzzled it out sooner. Vynasha had never been a scholar or as intuitive as her sister Tamyra or even as clever as Ceddrych. That she stood here now, on the cusp of everything she had run from, should feel stranger.

  “I know you have little reason to trust me,” Grendall finally replied, hiding his expression and lowering his voice, “but if you could give me this one day, Ashes. Let me show you this, and then, tomorrow, I promise I shall answer all your questions.” He lifted his head and glanced back at her from the corner of his eye.

  Vynasha stole a steadying breath. “One more day.”

  Grendall pushed open the gilded door, releasing a gust of dusty, leathery air. It fell over Vynasha like a second skin as the prince led her inside. Motes of dust sparked against high windows, and shadows clung thickly to the room.

  The door shut on its own behind them with a gentle creak. Grendall laced his fingers with Vynasha’s, and she wondered at the indiscernible brush of his emotions against hers. His voice echoed as he turned to face her and said, “A gift for you, my love.”

  Vynasha shuddered as she felt the power behind his words. The very air seemed to quiver, and then the room illuminated with a sea of stars. The lights danced and hovered around them and sang with a hundred thousand voices. Her breath quickened through her lungs until she was forced to lean on Grendall for support. She looked up into his golden face and forgot the song or the wisps floating about the room like dreams. All that mattered was Grendall’s smile and his hands upon her shoulders as he gently turned her back to watch the rest of the dance.

  Vynasha sighed, leaning back into his frame. “They’re beautiful. It was a good gift,” she conceded.

  “Just wait,” he teased against her ear, and the stars burst then scattered across the room. They fell into the onyx floor, some stopping to form constellations she had never seen before. Other wisps created lines that trailed up high shelves and brightened the room.

  Vynasha covered her mouth as she took in rows of endless books and scrolls. The shelves had been fashioned by some strange violet metal that nearly matched the tone of her skin.

  “Violet ice,” Grendall supplied, his voice a thrum matching her leaping pulse. “My mother brought it over from the mirror land. Very rare and very sensitive to majik.”

  Vynasha shook her head as she walked over the sky pictured beneath her feet. “And the stars?” She knelt to touch one and smiled as the light brightened, burning with cool fire.

  Grendall’s breath hitched in his chest, and his wonder surrounded her as surely as his love, pulling her gaze. “Also from the mirror land. This was her favorite retreat.” He grimaced and turned to walk among the shelves. “She wanted to create a place of learning for all peoples. It was her dream to lift humankind from the ashes of their own ignorance.”

  Vynasha watched his touch linger over the shelves, pushing his power into the runes—runes that looked too like those the Changeling had hexed into her arms. “I suppose to a goddess we seemed very little to her.”

  Grendall’s laugh was brief and bitter. “A goddess. How she would have loved your description of her. Before the end, she thought quite highly of herself. She was of royal blood herself, you know. And for all her noble efforts, she thought more highly of those who wielded majik than not.”

  Vynasha followed his voice until she found him standing before a marble statue. It looked like the sculptures Old Ced had described from his travels, creations from antiquity, from empires lost. Even had she not seen the wings first, Vynasha would have known it was Soraya from the rigidity in Grendall’s stance and the graying of his golden skin.

  Vynasha took a trembling fist between her hands and pressed her cheek to his shoulder. “She cared more than most. And she tried. Not all of us can claim that much.”

  Grendall glanced down at her in surprise, chuckling, “I forget you read her letters. Should have burned the blood-letting things when I had the chance. Then the old man hid her room from me.” He growled at her snort.

  “Odym hid something from you, gatekeeper?”

  He muttered something unintelligible under his breath then groaned as she prodded his side. “Careful with your tone, wench, or I shall be forced to remind you I am a prince.”

  Vynasha narrowed her eyes at him then flashed a grin before jabbing him with her claws. Grendall caught her wrists, laughing, and she quite forgot they were standing before a statue of his mother. Not until their teasing had twisted into his hands lifting her waist so she sat upon the statue’s platform. And then she could see the whole of the library before her, stars twinkling and endless knowledge before her feet.

  Her laughter faded into a breathless whisper. “You’re giving all of this to me.”

  He hummed as he kissed her throat. “I had thought that much obvious.”

  Vynasha shook her head and pushed his shoulders back. The question bled through their bond before she could ask, “Why?”

  Grendall glowed like the sun as he replied, “I want to make you my queen, Vynasha.”

  “QUEEN!” VYNASHA LEAPT off the enchantress’s statue with ease, only to wince as she landed on sore legs.

  “Careful, Ashes, you are still healing.” Grendall’s alarm and attempts to right her faltering steps only made her agitation worse.

  “I’ve rested long enough.” Vynasha shook her head to clear her muddled thoughts and pressed a steadying palm to his chest. “Grendall, you can’t be serious about making me queen.”

  He smiled. “You realize I am a prince, and once we break the curse and restore this kingdom, we will rule together?”

  “Must you chain me to a throne? Why can’t I serve as your bodyguard or—gardener or something?”

  Grendall laughed as he tugged her into a tender embrace. “My love, you are welcome to do those things and mo
re in your free time should you wish it. But you cannot escape your fate, any more than I could.”

  Vynasha was fully aware that if she met his pleading gaze, if she accepted the fullness of his emotions cresting against her thin emotional barrier, she would be lost.

  “Why not make you my queen?” A single calloused finger drew her chin back up. She closed her eyes as he pressed his forehead against hers. “Ashes, you are my better half. The missing piece of my soul. We are alike, two children of both worlds. Making you queen was never what my mother intended, certainly.”

  She glared at him. “Wasn’t it?”

  “No,” he replied, a hint of the devil in his smirk. “She wanted me to die in misery and my father’s kingdom to crumble to pieces. I promise she never bet on you, one of the Phuries’ daughters living on this side of the Veil.”

  Something twisted, tightening in her chest at his words, at the way Grendall traced her features with a smile. His love and nervousness flushed unbound through their bond as he whispered, “Say something, my love.”

  “What about the gate?” she began, “You still haven’t told me about it, or even explained what it is…”

  His kiss stilted her train of thought. “Then I shall show you.”

  The path Grendall led her through was familiar this time. Vynasha could never forget the night she had tried to escape her prison. She had dug through the wardrobe of antiquated fine dresses, donning what would keep her alive in the winter forest. Until she had discovered the prince’s chambers.

  Until Grendall in his cursed form had found her standing before a strange mirror for the first time.

  The room was just as she remembered, only now her senses were so heightened that she perceived each layer of dust and every crackle of debris beneath her feet as the prince led her across the royal suite. A different silence had settled over them since they had left the library and the wisps behind. Even the walls no longer whispered.