Baalor flashed a sharp-toothed smile at her. “Where would the fun in that be?” His eyes were entirely too warm and inviting.
She took a careful step back and clenched her hands. “Have you had word from my brother?”
Baalor inclined his head. “Still playing human with his woman and their pups on Mount Grimm. No sign of Wolfsbane, or so he claims.” He added the last with a sneer.
Vynasha tamped down her smirk. She had seen the mad hunter only the last moon, but she hadn’t told the others. Few felt inclined to forgive the man his faults, but Vynasha had offered him sanctuary, as he had given her. Without him, she might have never come back to the castle. She could admit this much now.
And without reconciling with Grendall, I wouldn’t have this chance.
The crunch of snow alerted Vynasha to Baalor’s approach. “So, my queen,” he began with a mocking bow, “how may I serve you today? I trust you didn’t send for me only to ask after matters you can learn with a wish.”
That he knew how her power worked so well had been unnerving in years past, but Vynasha was determined not to let him distract her this time. “It would please me greatly if you would join me for dinner.”
Whatever Baalor had expected her to say, this was clearly not it judging from his blank expression. She had never invited him into the palace before. Always, they had met at the gate, the border between what she pretended was her domain and his. They both knew otherwise, as he often liked to tease. Still, she had expected him to say something.
Vynasha had begun to prick her palms with her claws when he blurted, “You’re asking me to dinner?”
She nodded while inwardly cursing her lack of eloquence and the embarrassment heating her skin. Ceddrych had always had the gift for words. Even Wyll was better spoken, and yet she was somehow the bloody queen.
Baalor drew in a sharp breath then replied in a rush, “As you wish, Beauty.”
Contrary to form, they rarely spoke on the walk back to the palace. True, Vynasha could have easily used her majik to whisk them back with a thought. But he’d need to touch her for that, and Vynasha didn’t know how much more she could handle of this.
So they walked instead. She watched Baalor take in the renovations to the city, the people walking along the main street and smiling, bowing as they passed. Some looked on the pair with curiosity. It was well known their queen didn’t always get along with the leader of Wylderland’s guardians.
“How is Thea doing?” she broke the silence as the castle doors came into view. The sun was beginning to set to their right, casting a wealth of colors over Bitterhelm.
Baalor startled and cleared his throat before replying, “She has enjoyed learning from Vedmak and the others. Pup has been begging me for a visit through the mirror to see Luanor.”
Vynasha bit her lip as she nodded. Thea had wanted Vynasha to teach her. But this was something Ilya Iceveins would have wanted, and Vynasha hadn’t quite forgiven the faded woman for her part in Thea’s play at blood majik. Still, Vynasha had done her best to mend her friendship with Thea.
“How does Wyll fare?” Baalor asked as the doors opened before them.
Vynasha winced and forced a smile. “Remember how you tried to tell me majik comes with a price? Well, Grendall’s gift could only do so much. We weren’t certain until we tested it last season, and if Wyll leaves the castle, he’ll die.”
She didn’t know she’d reached for his hand until he was suddenly there, not speaking but waiting patiently, as he had been waiting the last ten years. “Perhaps you’d like to see him yourself, after dinner?”
“Of course,” he replied.
“You never had much of a chance to know him before, but—I’d like that.” Vynasha glanced up, and her breath caught at the intensity of his gaze.
“I don’t believe any of us are truly immortal, but everyone dies eventually, Beauty. You gave Wyll a second chance, which is more than most of us deserve.” Another squeeze of her hand and then he stepped away.
“Your grace! Thank goodness you have returned” Odym had a knack for rushing while moving effortlessly across a room, as he demonstrated now. “I am afraid we have been quite overwhelmed. The beasts have not been able to…”
“Thank you, Odym, but I believe the matter can wait until after dinner?” Vynasha interrupted and turned a thought to the source of her first knight’s nerves.
Later, she promised then spoke aloud, “Wyll could see to helping the beasts, perhaps?”
Odym eyed her and Grolthox curiously before bowing and leading the way. “We have prepared everything as you requested, my queen.”
They ate alone together in the same dining hall they had so often before, the queen and the guardian. This time, Vynasha sat at the head of the table, with Baalor to her right. She asked after the twins and the rest of the pack and how relations with the humans and mirror folk went. Some beasts and other forgotten beings yet roamed the Silverblud forests, after all.
“It will never be completely safe, but we are free,” he replied.
Vynasha smiled. She knew all of this, of course. Her sight stretched from the very edge of Whistleande village to the south to their border along the Eirwens at the west. But to truly look was painful. To tap into the mirror’s majik brought the echo of Grendall and the others. And the more she used, the more she felt the pressing weight of power and its attempt to drag her into the stone.
Her hand trembled as she set her fork on her plate.
“It weighs on you.” Baalor’s voice was grim.
Vynasha met his worried gaze. “Some days are worse than others. But I’m managing it.”
He sighed and ran a hand over his face. “This is what I didn’t want for you. I tried to warn you of the mirror’s evils, Beauty.”
Vynasha clenched her fists. “The mirror was never evil, just like your daughter isn’t for using blood majik. It’s our choices that define us, Baalor.” She looked up at his sharp inhalation and then froze at the look on his face, at her obvious mistake. She had not called him by his name in ten years.
It wasn’t safe, the broken girl inside her muttered furiously.
Baalor stood so abruptly that Vynasha rose with him and gasped as he closed the distance between them. He pressed her palm to his lips as he bowed low.
Her skin turned a brighter hue of violet at his touch, her breath coming in short gasps as he moved to kiss her pulse.
“Vynasha.” He spoke her name like a caress.
She touched a free hand to the back of his head. “Baalor.” She tested his name again on her tongue and shook her head, gathering her courage before it could wilt. “I wonder if you’d permit me to ask you a question.”
He lifted his chin, confusion and barely disguised hope flashing across his features. “A question,” he echoed.
Vynasha stole another breath then said, “You asked me so many times and in so many ways, I hardly know how to begin.”
The door opened with a bang, and Baalor surged up instantly, a deep growl at the back of his throat as he pulled free his bejeweled blade. Vynasha had given it back once she finally understood the meaning behind guardian courting customs.
“Wait.” She caught his wrist and pulled at his arm until he was looming over her instead.
“Mother! I knew you were back. Why didn’t you come? Uncle Wyll says you were meeting a friend, but Eirwen says your only friends live here, besides Uncle Ceddrych, and…oh.” Nymwe came to a stop before them, bright emerald eyes wide as she looked between them. “Mother, who is this?”
Vynasha held her breath as Baalor sheathed his blade and stared at her daughter. “This is the friend I went to meet. Nymwe, I’d like for you to meet Baalor.”
Her daughter’s hair was a mass of unruly black curls, loose from their careful plait of braids Myrel had attempted that morning, of course. The girl’s slightly olive skin tone and impish features reminded Vynasha much of herself as a child, but the eyes…
Nymwe Bitterhelm was a wi
ld thing despite all their combined efforts. Growing up in a castle of beasts would do as much to a child, Vynasha supposed. Now her daughter approached the giant of a man before her without fear.
“Are you human? No, you look too wild for that… ooh, Mother, is he a guardian?” Nymwe flashed her cheeky grin Vynasha’s way.
“Yes, little pup,” she replied.
Baalor met Vynasha’s gaze over the girl’s head. For a moment, she expected hatred, anger at the very least, or hurt. He could not look at the girl and not see. As Nymwe grew, it had become obvious who her father was.
“Nymwe?” Instead of loathing, Baalor looked curiously between Vynasha and the girl as a slow smile transformed his features. He had always been ruggedly handsome to her, for all his bark and scars. Perhaps it had been his scars that drew her to him in the first place.
Baalor crouched low to greet his daughter and smiled softly, with wonder. “That is a lovely name. Were you named for anyone special?”
Nymwe grinned and proudly lifted her chin. “Mother says I’m named for the enchantress who dared to end the war between the guardians and the humans. She was very brave and powerful, just like me.”
Baalor chuckled. “Yes, I believe the name suits you.”
Vynasha grasped the amulet at her neck, the one binding her and her daughter together, and thought of Grendall. She had often wondered if he’d known about Nymwe, and if he’d been prepared to claim the babe should she ask it.
We can’t change the past, but we can make a better future, she thought. It was the least she could do for those who had gone before and those who would go ahead. None of them were truly immortal, this was true. All the more reason to keep the ones she loved nearby while she still could.
As the three of them finished dinner together, when Nymwe gave Baalor the chance, that is, Vynasha decided not to ask her question tonight. Perhaps she would ask him tomorrow, or the day after that. They had nothing but time now, and she was queen after all. And weren’t queens allowed to find their own happily ever afters?
Thanks for reading Bound Beauty! Turn the page to read an exclusive chapter from Silver Hollow, first in the Borderlands Saga, a contemporary fantasy companion series to Wylder Tales.
Tall, Dark, & Annoying
AMIE WAS TWENTY-SEVEN years old and had not done anything significant in her life.
True, she’d turned her love of words into a career in the past ten years, but she hadn’t written anything profound. A best-selling series of cheesy paranormal romances coupled with her inheritance had allowed her to live in her own studio apartment. The fact she couldn’t get near a computer made her career choice interesting. It was the reason she typed all her manuscripts on a typewriter, why she drove a beat-up seventies truck, and, currently, why she was mailing her latest notes to her editor, Allison.
Early-morning Texas heat fell over her like a wet second skin the moment she set foot outside the post office and back into the sleepy town. Cars mixed and splashed the aftermath of summer rain onto the pavement downtown, barely missing her sneakers when she turned onto Main Street. The town center looked the same as it had for the last hundred years or so. Shops lined the sleepy square, and the old courthouse marked the grassy island in between. The jail above the courthouse had been turned into a museum fifty years before. Old men played dominoes nearby at the shaded benches like they did every Saturday. While most shops in the historic city square now catered to tourism, the atmosphere of the small East Texas town remained the same.
Amie appreciated the consistency, one of her biggest reasons for choosing to live in Hicksville and not a big city like Houston after college. She rushed past, sparing a nod to the usual folks, letters wrapped tight in her arms. Humidity and raw heat made her feel like she was breathing in a sauna or through a snorkel mask underwater.
It was half past nine, and she had to make it home in the next thirty minutes for Jo’s weekly visit, or best-friend hell would rain down on her. She picked up her pace and wished she exercised more than once a week. In fact, she wished she was as skinny as she had been in high school. She was only twenty-seven, but time was gradually starting to show in little ways.
Time to start that diet again, she vowed, cursing the cinnamon roll she’d scarfed down for breakfast. Lord knew how Jo handled running in this every morning.
Clouds were gathering overhead, ready to break. The world was silent against the pounding of her heart in her ears.
“Oof!” She collided with a very tall wall that hadn’t been there two seconds before.
“Oi!” the wall shouted.
Her mail flew from her hands as she fell on her ass and—oh, yes—the pages fluttered to soak up the rain coating the concrete. “Oh, no!” She scrambled off her sore bottom and began to snatch up her assorted bills and junk magazines. In her hysteria, she almost forgot about the man she’d collided with until a pair of hands joined her fishing.
“Here,” said a rough masculine voice. “So sorry, miss. I’m generally much better at avoiding mad women,” he said with sarcasm bordering on rudeness. She didn’t miss his British accent or the way it both made her angry and made her miss her dad so much she couldn’t breathe.
She kept her head down and snatched the sodden pile from his hands. “Well, you could have moved out of my way when you saw me coming down the street.”
“Pardon? Sorry, I was distracted by the rubbish coming from your mouth,” the Englishman said as he held up an exceptionally worthless piece of paper. “What is all this gibberish?”
Amie gaped, pausing to decide whether he was insulting her or not. Her people skills were a tad rusty. In fact, this was the first new person she had spoken with, to her recollection, in months. There was something in his tone she decidedly did not like, almost as if he was toying with her. Yet the opportunity to further scrutinize his motives was dashed.
“Look out!” He grabbed her arm and pulled her off the street and onto the curb. Another car sped by, spraying them both afresh with water. Jerked out of her reverie, she looked up, only to bump foreheads with her new best friend.
She saw stars and held a dirty palm to her forehead. Her skin prickled with goose bumps as the man steadied her by the arm with a gentle, “Easy, love…”
“Don’t you know anything about personal space?”
“Forgive my clumsiness. I thought I was saving your life,” he grumbled as he released her.
Forced to look at the man at last, Amie was struck by a strong sense of déjà vu. The first thing she noticed was the fact that his head never stopped swiveling to take in their surroundings.
“My hero,” she deadpanned.
He paused long enough to arch a single eyebrow at her then grinned. “Much better.” His eyes were so dark the pupils blended within their irises’ shadows. Yet the longer she stared the more she saw hints and gleams of every color at their center.
“Must have hit my head harder than I thought,” she muttered under her breath and held a hand to her head.
He stood with a flourish and offered her a gallant hand. “Not every day I have the chance to rescue damsels.”
She chose to ignore his thinly veiled amusement long enough to let him help her up. Again, her skin prickled. It didn’t ease her nerves or smooth her temper when the top of her head did not quite meet his chin. “Well, you sure don’t look like any knight I ever saw.” She held her mail closer to her chest and began to walk past him.
“Aren’t you going to thank me for saving your life?”
“No,” she called without turning back. She groaned when he took a few quick strides to catch up to her.
“Did you drop this?” he asked, dangling a very familiar golden symbol from its chain.
Amie reluctantly turned back to the tall stranger. His eyes flickered back and forth from the gleaming metal to her, and a ghost of a grin shadowed his face. “Interesting,” he said as he held it up higher. “Looks like an antique.”
Amie clenched her jaw. “It’s just a
piece of junk,” she said as she reached up. He lifted the chain out of her reach and squinted at the necklace against the rain.
“Give it back.” Amie tried not to panic as her eyes traced the antiquated Celtic metal. Her father’s family crest was anything but a piece of junk. It was the only possession Drustan had managed to bring from home. There was a reason she kept it around her neck. How had the stranger managed to take it? The chain wasn’t broken. Her frustration turned to suspicion.
“Could you please give me back my necklace?” Behind her struggle to remain civil, she seethed.
He smirked at her before lowering the metal into her waiting palm. “Try not to lose this again. It could be more valuable than you realize.”
“Thanks.” By this point, she had quite forgotten the oncoming rainstorm and the fact Jo would no doubt murder her when she arrived.
The Brit didn’t seem to hear her, however, as he gathered his trench coat more tightly around his velvet-vested chest and took to watching the town square once more. The man hardly looked like a gentleman, with his sturdy working boots and dusty trench coat. Amie had had more than enough of his sarcasm and strange clothes and strange looks…and that messy black hair! Didn’t the man own a comb?
When he looked down at her, his eyes widened. “What, you’re still here? Don’t you have somewhere you should be rushing off to? Another bloke to bash into, perchance?” He reached over and tapped her wristwatch.
She followed his direction and shrieked, “Shite, it’s already ten! Jo is gonna kill me!” This time she didn’t hesitate to run away. Before she turned down the alley leading to her building, Amie snuck a peek down the square to find the stranger gone. Disappointment struck her, along with a latent fear that she’d imagined the whole encounter. What were the chances of a tall, dark, and annoying Brit finding his way into her little corner of the world?
By the time Amie turned down the corner alley leading to her apartment, she was winded and spitting curses like a drowned cat. She grabbed hold of the metal stair rail leading to her loft and slipped on the first step. Fresh tears fell as her knees took the brunt of the impact, and she tilted her head to glare at the gray clouds.
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