For Your Heart (Hill Dweller Retellings) (39 page)

    
Hundreds of them by the sound and mark of them.  The vanguard of the Summer Queen’s procession.  Macabre flower girls.

    
And I can’t see them because I don’t have the second sight.

    
Despite everything I’ve been through, nothing has been more true than this moment – this realization that there are things unseen…even in this world.  And I’m about to throw myself into the middle of it, literally jump into the crossroads of fact and fiction.

    
This is it.

    
I force my eyes open and crouch low.  I’ve memorized the distance between me and the crossroads, I know how to navigate it.

    
The
Aos Si
come into view.  First their rainbow lanterns and then their ornate lances, then their heads.  Gorgeous people – like all the world’s top models out for a midnight ride. 

    
Two black horses, snorting and high stepping with riders holding poles that explode into a thousand and twelve lanterns – lighting the world in colors that don’t exist.

    
Two more black horses, eyes glowing red, rose-braided manes and tails dragging in the dirt, a rider with a drum, a rider with a long whirling horn that looks like it’s from Doctor Seuss.

    
Another pair of black horses, slender and bejeweled, with two lovely women dressed all in black.  One with black hair one with brown.  The one with black hair wears a crown encrusted with diamonds and blood-red rubies.  Roxel.

    
More black horses, each carrying assorted lords and ladies of the Summer Court.       All glow iridescent, painted and tattooed with strange symbols.  All are inhumanly beautiful…gods and goddesses…wingless angels.

    
For a long time, I’m struck dumb with awe at these strange people from another world.  No wonder there are so many tales of men falling in love with beings from beyond the veil.

    
The brown horses come next.  Shades of glossy bay, rich chestnut, and black-pointed dun.  These are larger, more stern looking horses.  And they should be.  These horses carry the Knights of Summer.

    
Clad in black mail that looks chiseled from obsidian, each with an enameled burst of color across his chest that ring similar to the markings the lords and ladies wear on their skin.  Family crests?

    
At the very center is the white steed.  On top of the ghostly creature sits a knight in white mail that glows like a star among smoldering embers.

    
He is beautiful, even riding to his death.

    
My breath hitches in my chest.

    
Before I can think, before I can talk myself into being afraid, I let go of the tree and spring down the hill.  Two steps.  I swerve around a sapling.  Three steps.  I hurtle the rock.  I land badly and tumble roll the rest of the way, but I find my feet again.

    
They’ve noticed me.

    
How many more steps?  Half a dozen?

    
Hands reach out to grab.  I duck them, crouching low.

    
A horse whinnies and rears up, throwing the rider.  His fingers grab as he falls, snatching my hair.  I wrench forward, hearing the
snap, snap, snap
as my hair tears from the roots.  I feel heat and blood.

    
Step. Step.

    
There’s screaming and panic.  The faeries wail, their animalistic cries carried to me like death threats thrown into the typhoon surrounding us.

    
Step.

    
Tamrin sees.  He reaches out to me.

    
Shmp.
  An arrow. 
Thuck
.  Hits the dirt.

    
Run harder. 
Shmp.  Shmp
.  The twang of bows.

    
Adrenaline pumping, I leap up.

    
It’s a flurry of limbs, of cold metal.  The white horse screams as we tumble off.  My breath leaves me, chest burning, body shaking.  Metal.  Metal all around.  The arrows clatter as they ricochet off of Tamrin’s armor.  We hit and roll.  Hooves stamp around, making the ground rumble.  Tamrin’s body is over me –shielding me.

    
No.  No.  This can’t be.  I have to be on top.

    
I grab his neck

    
“Stop them!”  The voice is the queen’s.  She’s here now, galloping at us.  She reaches out and I feel the shifting air, the heated kiss of her power.

    
I shriek and try to roll – to cover Tamrin from her – but he’s too heavy.

    
Her attack hits him full on, making him grunt and crumble atop me.  “No!”  I wrench away the helmet.  Only he’s not inside.  It’s hollow.  “Tam!” Confused and frightened, I shove the armor away.  Holt shit, she disintegrated him!

    
Roxel’s laugh echoes through the woods.  High and sweet.  Evil.

    
Tears come and I scream at her.  “What have you done?!”  I reach out to the armor, the only thing remaining of Tamrin.  “What have you done?!”

    
Something grabs my arm.  Hisses.  Startled I look down.  A massive black snake has lashed out of the armor and has me in its undulating clutches.  I pull away, trying to escape, but it’s coiling tight and all I do is drag its heavy body into the open so its scales shine like liquid promise in the faerie light.  The momentum throws me off balance and I land on my back with it on top of me.

    
His muscular body writhes around me.

    
Panic makes me roll, makes me kick and scream.  He won’t let go, he circles tighter, squeezing the air out of me.  His head lashes at me and his teeth find a home on my upper arm.  Screaming in pain, I raise my free hand to punch him free, but then something stops me.  The world reels in slow motion.

    
I look back down at the snake, see his strange grey eyes.  Grey eyes…

    
The witch warned me about this.  She warned me of Roxel’s magic and what she’d do to try and keep Tamrin away from me.

    
“Tamrin,” I whimper.  Gingerly, I reach over and grip him behind his jaws, still buried and burning in my flesh.  I close my eyes.  God, I hope I’m right.  “You’re the father of my child,” I whisper.  I open my eyes.  “You are my lover.”

    
The air shifts, making me look to Roxel who has dismounted, face contorted with rage. 

    
Tamrin’s body bucks and twists.  His skin splits and oozes.  My instinct is to drop him.  It’s horrid.  His bones reach out and crackle, muscles sliding in the open.  But I keep my grip on him.  Even as his neck widens and thickens.  Even as his weight shifts and wrenches me off my feet.  Even as fur rises hot and itchy between my fingers.

    
At first he shakes, trying to throw me.  But when the lion he has become finds I will not let go, he roars in agitation and rolls, trying to shove me off with gigantic clawed paws.  I hold my breath and grit my teeth against cries of pain, as my arm is crushed, claws cutting deep.

    
I bite my lip to bleeding and squint away tears.  “No!” I scream at him, trying to wrestle him on the ground.  “No.  You’re Tamrin!”  I growl at him, shaking.  “You don’t want to hurt me!”

    
He rolls me onto my back, moves to bite at me, but at the last moment, his lion’s body explodes into something I cannot grasp.

    
Fire.

    
Hot and hungry, a fireball whooshes out, eating the earth, running from me.  I roll, grab at him.  I can’t catch him. 

    
I must, I have to hold him.

    
I can’t.

    
Tears burn my already stinging eyes.  I’m going to lose him.  I touch my stomach.  No.  I won’t let this terrible Summer Queen win.  I can’t.

    
Hoping I’m doing the right thing, I whisper a silent prayer to God, clench my jaw and use the last of my strength to bound to my feet and throw myself to the edge of the spreading ring of fire – offering myself.  It consumes me willingly.  I can’t help but scream in agony – his fire-form is worse than the bite of the adder and the claws of the lion.  But I don’t pound out the flames.  I don’t thrash and roll.  I let them eat me.  And in that way, I hold him close and I make him mine.

    
“I am yours,” I think, no longer able to form words.  “I am yours and you are mine, Timothy Rhynn.”  Tamrin.  The man I’ve always loved.  The father of my child.  We’re finally together.  ‘Til death do us part.  I cry.  In loss, in pain, in exasperation, and the beauty I had…If only for a moment. 
For your heart, I’d give my life.

    
…And then it stops.

    
The pain.  The wounds.  The fire.  Gone.  It’s like a miracle.  But now, I don’t know the difference between magic and miracle…Perhaps they’re the same thing.

    
Gasping, I sit up.  It’s just me and Tamrin, his tawny, naked skin dirty and pale in the night.  Body reluctant to move, I gather myself to hands and knees, drag the cloak from my trembling shoulders, and cover him.  Feeling vulnerable in my half-blindness, I find my glasses, bent with one lens cracked, and shove them on.

    
“What have you done?” It’s a whispered command, an ironic repetition of my own words in a voice not accustomed to being denied or disobeyed.  Weary and shaking from fatigue, I look up at Roxel – so angry, yet tears fall from her red eyes.

    
I grip Tamrin’s arm, digging my fingers into the velvet of the cloak, reassuring myself that he’s mine and he’s safe under that cloak.  “He’s mine, Roxel.  You can’t hurt him any longer.” My voice sounds hoarse and broken, but the words feel amazing to say.

    
She scowls and throws a pair of white riding gloves to the ground.  She stamps them into the upturned dirt.  The
Aos Si
around her seem uncertain of what to do.

    
“You don’t understand what you’re doing!” Roxel growls.  “What you’re costing all of us!”

    
I square my shoulders and lift my chin.  “I know I saved a human, you had no business kidnapping in the first place, from certain death.  You want to sacrifice someone to Hell, use your own people.”

    
“Perhaps I shall take you, impertinent girl!”  Roxel rushes forward, her hand reaching for me.

    
The cloak shifts beneath my hand and Tamrin springs between us, his ebony hair fanning out around the green velvet. 

Tamrin

    
I hold out my arms, blocking Jean from Roxel’s attack.  “I wouldn’t do that, Roxel.”  I put all my poison into the words.  I am not afraid to kill her.

    
Curling her fingers into a fist, she takes a step back.  “Tamrin,” she growls.  “How could you do this to me?  How could you smack me in the face after all I have done for you?”

    
Part of me aches for Roxel.  Only a small part.  After what she has done to me – done to Jeanette – I cannot forgive her.

    
I hold in my response because I know she wants me to speak.  She’s hoping for me to be sensitive, to show her I care.  I do not.  I want to kill her.  And if she doesn’t shut up I might.  “Go home, Roxel.  Leave us be.  You have no power here.”  It’s strange to say it.  She’s a Bender, the most powerful of the
Aos Si
, but Jean has trumped Roxel’s magic.  If Roxel were the one in power, then I would have burned Jean and myself to cinders.

    
Roxel’s laugh is bitter.  “Fool,” she spits, “I’m the Summer Queen.  I’m
Aos Si
.  My power is everywhere.”  She turns and holds out her hand to Twyla.  Twyla’s eyes slide down, meet mine in an almost apologetic way, and then she dismounts.  From a bag slung over her shoulder, she pulls out the rose.

    
I tense.  Jean’s fingers touch my shoulder, questioning and uncertain.  She doesn’t know the significance of that rose …but I do.  If Roxel destroys it, I am dead.

    
Jeanette’s voice is a tickle on the back of my neck. “Tam?”

    
I reach back and place my hand on her night-numbed skin.  She’s so cold.  If we get out of this, I’m going to wrap her in my arms and not let her go until her cheeks are flushed with heat.

    
Gentle as she can be, Twyla hands the rose to her queen and then backs away, head hung low.  A wicked smile cracking her face, Roxel lifts the rose to the light.  “You, girl.”  Her eyes flick to Jeanette.  I shift into a more defensive position.  “Let it be known that you’ll never sleep a restful night, never know a peaceful day.  I will ride you to madness if you don’t take your own life first.”