She would be fine, Vynasha decided. Wyll was right. She could still fix this, and she was done allowing others to direct her fate. If only she could fix the broken thing inside of her, the thing Thea had snapped apart with blood majik.
They stopped far enough inside the system of caves so the roar of the falls wasn’t quite so deafening. Precious gems glinted off Resha’s torchlight, and the shadows ahead of them shifted, moving like liquid smoke. Vynasha growled as the shadows materialized into a small, familiar form, abundant dark hair framing a puckish face and golden eyes.
“What are you doing here?”
Eliajaqlyn the Changeling pushed back her hood and stepped forward so her golden skin glowed like her smile. “I’m here to repay a debt, curse breaker. Or has no one taught you the old law yet?” She narrowed her gaze at Vedmak and pointed. “That should have been your job, you old goat.”
Vedmak’s husky laughter warmed the cavern, and he favored the Changeling with a broad smile. “I had little time to do much good, yet she is still here, as you see, whole and hale as promised.”
Vynasha frowned between the two, disliking the knowing gleam in the mirror-folks’ mutual grins. “Why do I get the feeling you planned more than tonight’s escape?”
Eliajaqlyn snorted then giggled and seemed to brighten the shadows around them. “Vedmak was the one who told me about you, of course. I came looking to see if you were truly kin or not. I had scarcely hoped he was right.”
“So little faith in me, my dear.” Vedmak affected a wounded pout, which the Changeling ignored.
“I wish I could fix this,” Eliajaqlyn continued, placing a hand over Vynasha’s, “but I wasn’t strong enough to fight Soraya before. I barely managed to help Wynyth escape before the spell was invoked.”
Vynasha took a step back and absently reached for her nephew. “How did you know my mother?”
“Haven’t you guessed?” Eliajaqlyn’s playful demeanor shifted as she reached to pull at her unruly hair in an oddly familiar gesture. “Wynyth was my kin, as are you, little one.”
“How? You… you tried to kill me.” Vynasha gripped Wyll’s arm too tightly if his quiet gasp was any measure.
The Changeling’s arms fell to her sides, and she ducked her head, exposing the slightly flared-tipped ears. “I lost much of myself in the curse. But once, my soul sang the same song as your mother’s, the song that called you to this place. As Phuries, we were meant to bring light to this world, but I changed. You’ll learn soon enough that the longer our kind dwell in darkness, the more like it we become.”
“My mother died,” Vynasha nearly spat back, unable to temper her bitterness. “If our kind are supposed to be powerful immortals, how do you explain her sickness?”
Eliajaqlyn’s stricken expression was full of such remorse that Vynasha forgot her anger. “Wynyth had been sick before we came through the gate. It was only a matter of time before it took her. We had hoped—”
An unearthly shriek interrupted the Changeling.
Resha crouched and doused her light immediately. The hall still glowed from the light emanating from Eliajaqlyn. Vynasha did not gleam as she had before the blood spell. She couldn’t bear to think about what that might mean now as Wyll pulled her behind Vedmak and Eliajaqlyn.
“Stay close to me,” the Changeling hissed before pulling two jagged daggers from the belt at her hips.
“What is it?” Wyll’s youth betrayed him in his obvious fear.
Vynasha squeezed his hand, but her attempt to bolster his confidence was shattered as the Changeling replied, “Soraya’s shades have caught our scent. They will not stop hunting us until they drain our light.”
A second shriek, closer this time, carried through the tunnels, and Vynasha recognized the sound with impending dread. This time, there would be no golden prince to save her from the shades. “We won’t fall to them, I swear it, Wyll. I won’t break another promise to you again.”
Wyll smiled back at her, and in the shadows, he seemed to glow with a soft light of his own. “I know you won’t, Aunty. I trust you.”
Vynasha would die for that trust. This vow she made quietly to herself as their group crept slowly forward into the bowels of the castle.
DANK CAVERNS GAVE way to stone walls as they climbed higher. The journey was spent on silent-as-a-whisper steps following the faint glow of the Changeling’s skin. Vynasha kept Wyll’s hand tightly grasped within hers. If her claws dug a bit into his palm, her nephew didn’t complain, not with the steady shrieks approaching.
We should be running away from them, not toward them, Vynasha thought. It did them no good to speak aloud, not while they were being hunted. Her nostrils flared as she picked up the familiar stench of death.
An unnatural pale light flashed in the shadows ahead, accompanied by a low hiss and click of claws on stone.
Eliajaqlyn twisted to face Vynasha and pushed a thought into the young Phurie’s mind, “Whatever they did has not broken you, little one. You stole power from the prince. Open the gate and claim it, then no one can take anything from you ever again.”
“How did you know…” Vynasha began to push back, only to pause as the Changeling gave her an unsettling grin then rose with a burst of light. The undercroft illuminated with the light of a summer sun, like the flare of a newly cast flame in the night.
A strangled hiss and screech followed.
“Run!” the Changeling pushed into Vynasha’s mind.
Sunlight poured from Eliajaqlyn’s body, and then she was moving faster than Vynasha could follow. As the light filled the cavern, so the Changeling danced about the sickly pack of unveiled shades. A short, slightly curved sword moved as an extension of the Changeling’s arm as she avoided clawing hands and pierced their bone-thin bodies.
Vynasha lurched forward as Resha suddenly pulled Wyll’s other hand, insistent. Then Vedmak’s hand was at her back, pushing Vynasha on. “We must move while they are distracted,” he said over the din.
“But there are too many! We can’t just leave her!” she protested. It was difficult to tear her gaze from the Changeling who had once been a Phurie like Wynyth, like her. Alone, there was no chance for Eliajaqlyn to survive.
“I suppose, since you asked so nicely, curse breaker…” Vedmak flashed his teeth in a grimace then reached over his shoulder for two jagged weapons fashioned from bone. They were coated in runes the same as those on his spiraling horns.
Vynasha grabbed his arm, but words only caught in her throat. Whatever the male found in her pleading gaze was enough for him to incline his head with a serene smile. “Remember, nothing is what it seems in the borderlands.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, ignoring another insistent tug at her arm.
Vedmak smiled. “It has been an honor, my queen.”
Vynasha allowed Wyll to drag her along and watched Vedmak enter the fray with ease. The male moved with expert precision, the bone daggers following his movements with grace.
“Asha, please,” Wyll hissed. Only then did Vynasha turn her back to their friends. Whatever else Vedmak and Eliajaqlyn’s intentions had been, she would choose to think of their actions now.
Resha set a relentless pace as they pushed up the stairs until they left the formerly abandoned undercroft of the castle. It was with a shuddering relief that they left the screams of the shades behind. Until Vynasha recognized where they were.
“The dungeons,” she whispered as she eyed the broken cages. She bit her lip as she recalled Grendall’s last edict before her first escape.
If I’d claimed the power then, would it have gone differently?
“Asha.” Wyll’s voice pulled her back to his youthful face. He bore lines about him that hadn’t been there before, the side of his face that was unburnt.
Vynasha reached to smooth the curls back from his forehead and smiled. “Your hair’s grown long.”
Wyll’s hand steadied her as she swayed, and he glanced back at Resha, who paced anxiously ahead of them. “
We’ve never been inside the castle before. Do you remember the way from here?”
Vynasha cupped the burnt side of his face and smiled. “I’m so glad you’re with me, Wyll, just as it should have been all along.”
“I’m here, Asha,” he returned, soothingly, as though she were the child.
Why does he sound so worried?
Vynasha pushed the concern from her mind. They had more pressing matters to worry about, like what else waited for them between here and Grendall’s tower chamber.
Mother, how will we make it?
But then Wyll’s fingers slipped through hers once more, engulfing her hand. He had grown so much in so little time. Or had it been longer than she realized? His blue eyes met hers in the shadow. It was not so dark as before. A faint violet light filled the room, and when she blinked, Vynasha caught glimpses of tiny wisps hovering nearby, watching.
“Follow me,” she whispered with what she hoped sounded like determination.
It was only a little painful to pass the cells in which she and Grendall had been imprisoned. The broken wall about hers had never been repaired.
“You let them break you,” the walls taunted as they climbed up the winding stair leading from the dungeons to the first floor.
“I’m not broken,” Vynasha hissed back under her breath and focused on each step. The violet light illuminated their path through the rubble and ruin that had become the ground floor. Evidence of her beasts’ fury was everywhere, and her heart sank as she thought of her people. They were still hers, weren’t they?
“They could have been yours to command if only you were stronger,” the walls replied.
“I’ve always been strong,” Vynasha growled.
The candelabra lining the corridors, illuminating tapestries, flared to life as they approached. Behind Vynasha, Resha and Wyll’s steps faltered, but she coaxed them onward. “Don’t be afraid. They’re welcoming us home.”
They passed the dining hall with its great table and hearth, where she had claimed her beasts and dined with Grolthox. She didn’t want to think about how long it had been since she last ate.
“I can’t even see the roof,” Wyll said. He arched his neck to take in the floors above the grand stair to their right. “It’s like it never ends.”
Vynasha smiled as she followed his line of sight. “I thought the same, once. To tell the truth, I’m not sure how big it is,” she began as they climbed the first steps. “Some days the halls seemed to twist unendingly, and on others, my path was short and clear.”
“Majik,” Wyll breathed, his breath escaping in warm puffs in the frigid air. She hadn’t felt cold, not truly, in a long time.
“Beast’s blood, more monster than human,” the walls laughed.
“Yes,” Vynasha agreed as they avoided a broken statue. The gargoyle looked like one of her beasts, and Vynasha forced her gaze ahead. “I left some of my beasts behind. They may be waiting for us ahead.”
No sooner had she spoken the words than Resha leapt several steps ahead of them, daggers drawn. Vynasha rested a moment on the railing and sighed as the woman rushed ahead of them. “She should stay close.”
Wyll snorted. “Resha’s been avoiding Baalor’s pack for years, Aunty. I think she can handle herself.”
Vynasha winced at the reminder of all her nephew had experienced without her. “Yes, I should trust you both more, shouldn’t I?”
Wyll squeezed her hand. “I can’t stay a boy forever,” he teased.
A breathless laugh escaped her, and Vynasha covered her lips with her clawed fingers before it turned to a sob. She shook her head. “No, you couldn’t.” She hesitated. “Wyll, all those years we spent alone, after… I could have done better by you. I should have brought you to live at cousin Stye’s when he offered us a place.”
“No, Aunty,” Wyll insisted, pleading and anger aggravating the rasp in his voice. “You did better than anyone ever could have. You gave us freedom. The villagers were cruel.” Vynasha opened her mouth to argue, but Wyll interrupted, “I was young when it happened, but I remember the way they treated us. You were kinder to them than I would have been, I think.”
“Never. Wyll, you have such a good heart,” she began, then stuttered as her nephew laughed.
“I think you had us confused. I tried to be good because of you. You worked so hard to provide and protect us without complaint, and I never got better. Not until you brought me here. It was worth it, Asha, all of it. You gave us a chance to live. Don’t ever regret it.”
Tears blurred her vision, and it was difficult to breathe.
Wyll twisted his head to look back up the staircase as Resha appeared, looking haggard and wild eyed. She held both daggers in one hand to motion with the other, and Wyll was up instantly. “Come on, Aunty. She says the way is clear for now.”
For now. Vynasha eyed the way the human took short, heavy breaths and peered into the darkness above them. She reached inside herself for the connection with her beasts. The pain was almost immediate, and she winced, even as she tried to lead the way again.
No sooner had they passed the second-floor landing than the rumbling growls began to echo, along with crashes in the distance. Vynasha and Wyll’s grip tightened as they crouched and turned back.
“They’re getting closer,” Wyll whispered.
Resha dropped low against the stair behind them then glanced up at Wyll with a resigned grimace. He nodded back, and then she was retreating behind them, melding into the shadows. Vynasha had seen Wolfsbane use the same trick when they were hunting together. For all that the man protested against their use of majik, there were times Vynasha had wondered. His sister, Nymwe, Baalor’s wife, had been a witch. Perhaps there was more to them than even Wolfsbane’s daughter knew.
“We shouldn’t wait for her.” Wyll spoke low against her ear, startling her. This time, her nephew led the way up.
Up and still up. The path had seemed so clear to Vynasha when she had first set out from the dungeons. They had been walking for an age, since Wyll woke her from a nightmare in the Forgotten Village.
“You shall never reach the mirror, curse breaker,” the walls taunted.
“I’m a queen,” Vynasha replied, remembering her prince’s promise and Vedmak’s farewell.
“You always will be,” Wyll said between labored breaths.
Vynasha gasped as the shadows seemed to lessen with her nephew’s words, and the dark stair filled with violet light. Wyll made no comment on the change, only squeezed her hand. A nightmare’s chorus rose from the floor below as they finally overcame the third landing.
WITH DEATH HOWLING at their heels, Vynasha and Wyll did not stop once they climbed onto the landing. They half ran, half hobbled, leaning against one another past the first corridor.
The hall was blessedly empty, clear of all but the finest layer of rubble, and lined with rows of candelabra. A dusty velvet liner ran from the top of the stairs all the way down to the tall double doors waiting at the opposite end.
“Almost there,” Vynasha whispered. Her heart quickened as she thought of what waited on the other side of those doors.
I’ll make it right, she thought, however she had to. They had come so far together since her return to the castle, and Grendall understood her like no one ever had. Her prince could help her open the mirror, and then she would finally have enough power to end this war and heal Wyll.
A great weight pulled them to a sudden, jerking halt. She barely managed to turn around before they fell to the floor in a tangle of limbs. As the dust settled around them, Vynasha waited for the tear of claws and teeth on flesh, certain one of her beasts had caught up with them. Another, more horrifying thought of Baalor in his guise as Grolthox passed her mind. But the howls they had run away from still echoed from farther down.
Rather than snarls and growls, a rasping cough came from beside her. Vynasha groaned as she pushed onto her hands and knees and helped turn her nephew’s crumpled form over. Candlelight spilled over his
drawn features, and Vynasha gasped. He had seemed larger than life when he pulled her free from Thea’s spell, strong and capable and nearly a man grown.
His father abandoned Tamyra and Wyll, but his son came back for me.
As though someone had pulled a veil from her eyes, Vynasha saw what she had ignored before. There was bruising about his eyes, and he was little more than skin and bones. His chest rattled as he coughed and blood spattered onto his lips.
“Wyll…” she moaned as she shifted and helped pull his head onto her lap. Vynasha used her skirt to wipe the blood from his mouth.
His beautiful blue eyes, Tamyra’s eyes, were grave as he caught her wrist. “It’s fine.”
Vynasha shook her head. “Wyll, you need to let me try again. We’re almost to the mirror. I can—”
“No, Asha.” His grip on her wrist tightened. “Vedmak says the curse was keeping me alive when I should have died the winter you brought me here. It’s been over a year since we came.”
A year?
She had held her suspicions close, afraid to ask.
“But you already knew,” the walls taunted, and Vynasha knew it was true. She had wondered if time moved differently in Bitterhelm. The proof was in her nephew’s growth as much as the curse’s determination to keep the land and its people frozen in time. As the curse breaker, Vynasha felt the truth of this, as if she knew she was killing him by merit of what she had become.
“Wyll…” Vynasha swallowed the lump in her throat and the words she couldn’t say. The good half of her nephew’s mouth twisted into a grin. His skin was much too pale, almost gray in this light, like the wyne.
“You can’t fix everything with majik,” he said.
“We don’t know that,” she growled, pulling free from his grasp only to tangle her fingers with his. “When I took Grendall’s power, I grew stronger. I can do it with the mirror. It’ll be enough this time, I promise.” Vynasha’s heart burned with her promise to herself, to Tamyra and the family she hadn’t saved.
Bound Beauty Page 18