Lord of the Wolfyn and Twin Targets (16 page)

But he couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t. He couldn’t leave another lie between them.

“There was no enthrallment,” he said, pressing his hand to his chest where she had liked to lay her palm and feel his heartbeat. “I swear it on my soul.”

Her eyes narrowed. “There must have been.”

“There wasn’t.” He didn’t repeat the oath. She would either believe him or not.
Have faith,
he urged her inwardly.
You know me.
But did she know him enough to believe?

For a moment she didn’t say anything; he could almost see the inner battle written on her face. She wanted to believe, but didn’t trust him or herself anymore, didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t—not out in the realms, but inside herself.

He knew her. He understood her. And by the gods he wanted her to trust him. Abyss, he just damn well
wanted
her. This was a mess,
he
was a mess.

Finally, she said, “Could you have enthralled me without knowing, without meaning to?” She looked forlornly hopeful, as though she, too, knew it would be easier if they were at odds.

Or maybe he was just seeing what he wanted to see.

“I chewed the wolfsleep gum to block the wolfyn magic.” Using Keely had helped, too, staving off his urges, but he didn’t think it hurt anyone to keep that to himself. “What you saw was only my second change. I kept the urges strictly contained, so I would never forget who I was and what I was waiting for.”

“And now?” She swept the tree line on either side of the road. “I don’t see any wolfsleep trees.”

“The magic functions differently in the kingdoms. I’ll have to work hard to change here. And I don’t intend to. All of the messages I’ve received from the spirit realm say that I need to be entirely true to myself if I’m going to have a chance against the sorcerer. Which means staying the hell away from the wolfyn magic.”

“Yet you changed back at the archway.”

He couldn’t read her expression, didn’t know what she wanted him to say. His better sense said to leave it alone, but he went with the gods’ honest truth instead. “You were in danger and I didn’t see another option.”

“You…” She trailed off, then shook her head. “Never mind. And thank you. For saving my life.”

He nodded, but didn’t say anything. They both knew he had nearly sacrificed the hopes of an entire kingdom in the process. And what kind of a prince did that make him?

Exhaling, she nodded as if they had reached an agreement. “Right. Okay, then. We should get moving before the villagers get their torches and pitchforks and come after us.” She kicked her foot free of the stirrup and shifted forward in the saddle to give him room to climb on behind her. “I’d let you drive, but I don’t think MacEvoy likes you.”

“He must be able to sense the wolfyn magic.” Which was damned depressing, because one of the things he had looked forward to doing in Elden was once more riding a beast-chaser.

She didn’t say anything, but her eyes went sympathetic as she tightened her reins in one hand and held out the other.

He hesitated momentarily, wishing he could say something that would unravel the tangle they had wound up in together, connected yet not, and with so much confusion around them. The perfect words didn’t come to him, though. They probably didn’t even exist.

Exhaling, he took her hand and swung up behind her, but stayed well back on the saddle skirt and held on to the cantle for balance rather than tucking himself right against her as he longed to do. And, as they rode into the first reddening of dusk, there was only silence between them. They had said what needed to be said, after all. Now they had jobs to do.

Which seriously sucks,
he thought. But all of a sudden the human words didn’t come as easily as they had before, as if the past twenty years were being canceled out now that he was back in his home realm.

The idea was damned disconcerting. Worse, the past three days suddenly seemed a little distant and indistinct, too, as if they had happened to someone else, in another lifetime. It was as if Reda was already gone, like he was already forgetting what they’d had together, when she was sitting only inches away.

“W
E’RE COMING UP
in the world,” Reda commented later that night as she poked at the folding bowl she had suspended on a tripod over the small, sputtering fire. “This cave is much nicer than the last one. It even came with utensils.”

“Tonight a cave, tomorrow a castle, gods willing,” Dayn said from the rear of the space, where he was cobbling together a small horse enclosure from the remains of a large corral.

The huge cavern, which had been the hideout of an outlaw band that Dayn and a detachment of guardsmen had tracked and arrested just prior to the sorcerer’s attack, offered a small stream, a scattering of useful items that had somehow escaped the looters, three exits that let out at various points in the forest and accommodations for the bay horse, who she was still calling MacEvoy after the shop owner, even though the stoner-quiet personality he’d originally shown her had gone right out of his furry head the second he saw Dayn.

The horse was too tired and hungry to be in full-on panic mode anymore, and had gotten somewhat used to carrying a wolfyn, but even as he hoovered down the travel cakes his seller had thrown in along with the tack and clothes, he kept a white-ringed eye on Dayn.

No wonder there weren’t any normal horses in the wolfyn realm. They had probably all died of fright, or else been eaten. Or both.

Shuddering at the thought and the echoing
slurp-crunch
noise it put in her head, she glanced over at Dayn, and caught him looking at her.

They both shied away and went back to their tasks, but the already tense air between them strung itself a little tighter, as it had been doing, degree by degree, ever since he’d boosted himself up behind her and done his damnedest not to let their bodies touch.

Was it possible to simultaneously exist in both heaven and hell, or whatever this realm called them? She thought so, because she was there right now.

Part of her, idiot that it was, was basking in the glow of having rescued him so grandly, and having him right at hand now. That part of her kept reminding her that they had spent the past two nights alternately making sweet love and screwing each other blind, both equally satisfying, and it relentlessly dredged up increasingly erotic memories as the night wore on. The sensory replays tortured her, turning her insides to molten heat and putting a longing tug between her legs each time she looked at him and thought that it was nearly time for them to hit their bedrolls.

Another part of her, though, said she’d be better off sleeping outside in the cool, foggy night. That part of her was all too aware of MacEvoy’s ringed eyes and flattened ears, and knew she should take a cue from the horse—prey animal that it was—and keep her distance.

“Stew’s almost ready.” She poked at a lump of rehydrated meat floating in a brown slick that looked entirely unappetizing, but smelled great.

“Just let me get these last three rails up.”

She snuck a peek, and this time caught him turned away, which gave her a few seconds to stare at his broad shoulders as he fitted the last rails into place and lashed them with the worn rope he had salvaged. The plaid shirt she had taken off of him a dozen times in a dozen different places curved lovingly around his muscles, poignantly reminding her of how it felt to run her hands over him, how his skin tasted and how he seemed to know instinctively how to touch her, as if he really could read her mind, though he claimed he couldn’t.

She wanted to believe him, just as she wanted to believe that he was telling the truth about her not being enthralled…but at the same time, without that excuse she would have to admit that she had done it all of her own free will, falling hard and fast for a fairy-tale prince who turned out to be far more complicated than she had thought.

Finished, he gave the enclosure a last check while MacEvoy tracked his every move. Then, satisfied, Dayn ducked through the fence and headed for the fire.

Reda looked quickly away and concentrated on stirring a stew that wasn’t going to get better or worse with more stirring. Her hands were trembling, her insides alight with warmth and need. She didn’t want to be with a wolfyn, a liar or a manipulator, but she wanted to be with Dayn. And she couldn’t have it all. Maman,
what am I supposed to do?
The question came unbidden; it had been a long time since she stopped asking her mother’s spirit for advice. But even as she told herself not to be ridiculous, she still listened inwardly for a few seconds, wondering. Because if she had truly been some part magic, maybe, just maybe…?

There was no answer, though. And as Dayn leaned too close to her and tipped half the stew into a big tin cup he had scavenged and scoured out in the river, her breath went thin and her insides tugged longingly. But at the same time, unexpected tears threatened, making her blink so hard the fire seemed to waver as a new reality solidified within her.

She had lost her
maman
and Benz. And tomorrow, one way or the other, she was going to lose Dayn. Which would she regret more, being with him tonight…or not?

“Reda,” he said, voice choked, “for gods’ sake, talk to me.” His ragged tone brought her head up and the emerald green of his irises caught her, sucked her in.

She wanted to lose herself in his eyes, in his kiss, in the warm strength of his arms.
But then what?
logic asked, unfortunately making sense. Because if she made love with him tonight, knowing what he was and that he had lied to her, she would always know that she had caved, that she had let herself be seduced without even the excuse of enthrallment.

“I can’t,” she said on a shuddering breath, turning down not just a conversation but all of it, all of him.

His eyes dulled but he didn’t push. He just nodded, rose and took his stew back over to the edge of the corral, where he sat with his back against the wall and his eyes on the main entrance, not on her. But he was aware of her, she knew, just as she was entirely focused on him as the night dragged on.

She was acutely conscious of him eating, then pulling a few swallows from the waterskin he’d left over there while working. She knew when he set his cup aside and when he stretched his legs, shifted his big body with the soft sigh that meant he was settling in to sleep yet staying on his guard, ready to react in an instant. He closed his eyes but didn’t immediately fall asleep. She knew he was awake because she caught his faint responses when she banked the fire and curled herself into a bedroll marked with his family crest, saw a reflected glitter when he cracked an eye to watch.

Her heart told her to go to him, but her head said she needed to stand her ground and resist the temptation, or she would regret it going forward. She didn’t want to go forward, though; she wanted to relive the past few nights with one more. In the end, though, she closed her eyes and listened to the
hiss-pop
of the fire because she didn’t have the guts to take what she wanted when everything else was so unclear.

She might have ridden to his rescue today, but she was still a coward when it came to this.

T
HE
R
OYAL
C
ASTLE OF
E
LDEN
had been beautiful once, Reda saw through the small spyglass Dayn had found in an inner compartment of MacEvoy’s saddlebag. From where they stood on the shores of Blood Lake far from the heavily guarded causeway, hidden in a scrubby patch of middle growth near the edge of the Dead Forest, she could see the classic elegance in the castle’s turrets and crenellations, in the huge stone sweeps of the battlements and the gracefully engineered causeway that connected the island to the shore. Similar details made the smaller buildings beyond the castle blend in to look like part of the whole.

But although the bones of the royal seat suggested a heritage of loveliness, its current incarnation was dark and dismal, and carried a psychic stink that made her want to recoil.

“Gods and the Abyss,” Dayn growled under his breath. “He’ll pay for this.” She saw stark pain in his eyes as he surveyed the filthy brown, polluted lake.

Here and there, swirls suggested submerged movement, though of what creature she didn’t want to know. The island itself looked gray and rotten, and the castle was smog-shrouded and badly run-down, and looked somehow beaten, though she wasn’t sure how that was possible. Dark figures moved here and there, some small and human, others huge and hulking, with the silhouettes of creatures she had hoped never to see outside the storybooks—or her own nightmares. Giant, razor-clawed scorpions guarded the causeway, huge crablike creatures scuttled along the battlements and ettins worked on the curtain wall, heaving huge chunks of stone like they were pebbles, though it wasn’t clear if they were building it up or tearing it down.

Movement stirred near the base of the castle; squinting, she could just make out human figures walking in chains, linked together and being whipped on by a smaller man in a red-and-black uniform. All six of the prisoners were wearing royal colors and boots, but they were bent and dragging, their body language screaming of pain. Rebel prisoners, no doubt.

“Oh,” Reda whispered, and then bit her lip.

“Let me see.”

So she handed over the spyglass and pointed. Then she reached over, took his free hand and twined her fingers through his. He tensed and went still for a moment—she wasn’t sure if it was from her touch or because he had seen the rebels. But then he exhaled and his shoulders dropped, and he gripped her hand and hung on hard.

And though there was nothing decided between them, when he lowered the spyglass and turned toward her, she went into his arms without hesitation. He clamped around her, just holding her, with his face pressed into her hair as the spyglass clunked to the ground.

MacEvoy snorted and dropped his head to graze, making the bit clink and tugging the reins from her fingers, but those inputs were so much less important than the fine shivers racing through Dayn’s body and the fierceness of his grip, which made her feel as if for a change she was the one anchoring him, the one letting him lean.

“We can do this,” she said against his throat. “Have faith.” They still had nearly half a day to rent or steal a boat, then planned to make the crossing after nightfall.

His laugh was hollow and brittle. “I can’t feel Nicolai or the others. I don’t think they’re here.” He pressed his cheek to her temple. “I think that maybe I’m the only one left.”

She closed her eyes, heart hurting for him. “You don’t know that. And even so, someone has to stop the sorcerer. Things can’t stay like this.”

He drew away from her, looked down at her so tenderly she almost closed her eyes to capture the moment before it passed. “You’re not afraid anymore, my warrior?”

She shook her head, and said, “Honestly, I’m so scared I want to curl up and hide my face in my knees. But I’ve decided that you were right. Being brave isn’t about not being afraid. It’s about continuing to function, anyway.”

That was the truth she had awakened with that morning, after a long, restless night’s sleep. It was a simple concept, really, and utterly logical. And she knew she’d heard it before—not just from him, but also from friends, family, coworkers, the department shrink—but for the first time she really believed it. More, she believed in herself, and knew that she wasn’t going to freeze this time. Not tonight, when so much was riding on the outcome.

He framed her face in his hands and leaned in to say against her lips, “Ah, sweet Reda. My precious warrior.”

As his mouth covered hers, she knew he was a wolfyn. As his tongue touched her lips, she was fully aware that he had made love to her without telling her the worst of his secrets. And as she parted her lips and let him inside, she did it knowingly. Willingly. Greedily.

There was no enthrallment. There was just the two of them, and the connection that existed despite everything else going on around them.

She wrapped her arms around his waist and held on for a kiss that was less about arousal than about saying,
Yes, I’m here for you. We’re in this together.
Because that was the other certainty she had awakened with—it wasn’t about following the orders of a voice in the fog anymore; she was determined to see this through at Dayn’s side. Not just because of what might or might not be between them but because it was the right thing to do. This was bigger than the two of them, bigger than anything she’d ever dealt with before. She could do it, though. And she would. She could, in her own way, help save the world. Or at least a kingdom.

Putting that certainty into her kiss, she slid her hands up his back and spread her fingers wide, covering as much of him as she could.
I’ve got your back,
she thought.
Let’s go get this bastard.

As if he’d heard her, he eased back with a last, lingering press of his lips to her cheek, her temple. Then he turned her so they were both facing away from Blood Lake, and pointed. “See that tall pine there with the three-way split at the top?”

It was maybe a half, three-quarters of a mile away, and looked like a trident. She nodded. “I see it. You want to use it as an emergency meet-up point?”

“No. Your shrine is at the base of that tree.”

“My…what?” She turned on him, sure she’d heard wrong.

But his eyes, which had only moments earlier been entirely focused on her, slid past her to the island before flicking back to her face. “I know who I am and what I need to do, Reda. I’m a prince of Elden, first and foremost, and I can’t let anything distract me from that.”

Her head spun on an inner groan of,
Nooooo.
This wasn’t happening, couldn’t be happening. “You can’t go in there alone. They’ll kill you.” Her voice cracked on it, her heart bled from it. “If you’re trying to protect me, don’t. I can take care of myself.”

Instead of answering right away, he caught her hand and lifted it to press her palm to his chest, sandwiching it there so she felt the steady beat of his heart. “We each need to live the lives we were born into.” He folded their hands together, pressed a kiss to her knuckles and then let her go and stepped back. “Go home, Reda. It’s where you belong.”

“I…” She just stood there for a second, vapor locked, not from fear but from shock, dismay and a sudden churn of anger. “You son of a bitch. Keely was right, wasn’t she? You’re a user.”

He didn’t say anything, just stood there. And she didn’t see anything that said he wanted her to stay. In fact, she didn’t see anything at all.

Whatever fragile trust they had begun to rebuild—or rather, that
she
had begun to rebuild—shredded in that instant, and disappeared.
Poof.
Gone.

Done. Game over.

When something nudged the small of her back, she jolted hard and spun, which sent MacEvoy skittering back several steps, where he stood, blowing through his nose as if to say,
What’s your problem?

Her startled laugh choked to a sob as she gathered his dragging reins. She didn’t look at Dayn, couldn’t look at him or she would lose it. “Come on.” She sighted on the trident-shaped treetop and gave Mac Evoy a tug. “Let’s see if there are any decent farms between here and there.” If not, she would strip off his tack and set him loose to fend for himself.

She stopped at the edge of the scrub, where it turned to a narrow track that led to the road, and turned back. Dayn stood against a backdrop of the polluted lake and the run-down castle, looking determined, distant and alone. The lone wolfyn.
Oh, God.
Her heart clutched in sudden foreboding, but what more could she say?

So in the end, she lifted a hand. “Good luck, Dayn.”

A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “Same to you, sweet Reda.” Then, moving with smooth, predatory grace, he slipped from the copse without looking back.

And she was left alone, save for a bald-faced horse and a heavy heart.

D
AYN DIDN’T LET HIMSELF
turn back, though he badly wanted to. And he didn’t let himself fold inward and curl around the tearing pain that filled the place where his heart had been, though he badly wanted to do that, too. Because for a change he was doing the noble and honorable thing when it came to her: he was sending her away.

The sight of Castle Island had only confirmed the prickle of instinct that had been growing ever since they had set out that morning, the one that had said it was going to take a miracle for him to even reach the island, another for him to get inside the castle. And the odds of him surviving a fight with a sorcerer capable of wreaking so much damage, with twenty years’ worth of magic and spells rooted in the castle, were brutally bad with or without his siblings, unless the decades had given them powers that far outstripped his own.

There was a damn good chance that he was going over there to die. And if that was the case he wanted her far away from the island, safely hating him in her own realm. For once, he knew he was doing the right thing when it came to her, the unselfish thing.

So instead of going after her and doing whatever it took to get that shattered look out of her eyes and put her once more back in his arms where the man in him wanted to believe she belonged, he pushed onward toward the section of the Dead Forest known as the Thieves’ Woods, in search of a boat.

But as he ghosted along the edge of the Dead Forest, the sense of impending doom he’d awoken with only grew stronger, sending cold chills down his spine and causing him to look over his shoulder time and again.

Then, one of those times he caught a glimpse of movement and his gut fisted. There was something out there. Something big and nasty. And it reeked of dark magic.

Heart pounding, acting on his hunter’s instincts, which suddenly screamed loud and clear, he unshipped his crossbow, hesitated and then opened the small, tightly stoppered container at his belt. Carefully—oh, so carefully—he dipped the tips of his last six bolts into the thick black liquid, coating the barbs to an oily shine.

He returned five to their spots on his belt, points hidden. He loaded the sixth onto his crossbow and started walking again, though far more stealthily than before, intensely aware of his surroundings, straining to sense a footstep or breath. Something was out there, but where?

A cloud passed over the sun, shadowing the scene momentarily and then moving on. Wind whispered overhead, sounding strange in the leaves of the dying trees. There was an open spot overhead, letting through sunlight that was dappled with another passing cloud shadow, this one moving unnaturally fast in an unseen current high overhead.

Then it curved back around and went the other way. And grew bigger.

Dayn stopped dead and stared for a split second of disbelief as the shadow grew wings. There weren’t any winged creatures that big in Elden. Not unless you counted the legend of the…
No. Impossible.
He heard it in Reda’s voice, and suddenly understood the wrenching disconnect of having a childhood bogeyman come to life, even before he ripped himself from his paralysis and yanked his attention to the sky.

“Gods!” The word burst from him at the sight that confronted him.

The huge dark snakelike beast undulated through the sky as if swimming. Then it screeched, swiveled, and folded its wings to plummet toward the earth with its bloodred eyes locked on him. It had small forelimbs with clawed hands, powerfully muscled hindquarters and the head of a scaled stallion. Covered entirely in black scales that gleamed dully in the sunlight, it was gorgeous and terrifying, in the way that only the worst of monsters could be.

Dayn’s pulse hammered. It was a dragon. And not just any dragon; it was the Feiynd itself, the assassin of the old magi.

Moragh had summoned it to kill him.

Gods help him.

The Feiynd’s mouth split in a silent gape that made it look, for a terrible instant, like it was smiling at him. Wind whistled through its wingsails, sounding like a thousand arrows in flight. And then it folded them fully and hurtled toward him, a living weapon locked on its target.

“Gods and the Abyss,” Dayn whispered as his every power and instinct came together inside him at once. There was no point in running when the witch had targeted it on him, no point in hiding. He could only stand his ground and pray as he lifted his crossbow and sighted on one violent red eye.

The eyes could see. They could communicate. They were a route to the head, and from there to the heart.

Candida, I hope you knew what you were doing. And if this doesn’t work, bless you for trying.

He waited a beat. Had his mark. Saw the Feiynd’s mouth open wide.

And fired.

The bolt sped true, but a wing current knocked the projectile off line and it flew into the dragon’s mouth, which snapped shut and then opened wide in a thin shriek of pain and anger that lifted beyond the limits of his hearing, hard and high, and so dissonant that it scraped along his nerve endings and made him want to flee like nothing in his life had done before.