The Danger of Destiny (44 page)

I could sense the old wizard's presence.

He'd only just realized that he'd attacked a fellow eagle, not a mouse.

I spoke to him as I worked. “Every record of your explorations into magic has been destroyed. No one will ever read it; no one will ever know how far you went. Your apprentice is dead, and with him, the recollection of your best spells. Your name—if it is ever spoken again—will be forever linked to a terrible moment in the Royal Court's history.”

I bent my head sideways to consider the seam between my brother's soul and his. I could see the difference between them now. I don't know how I didn't before.

Their souls had not fully joined.

“You fear that you will be forgotten.” I pulled the vellum of his soul-ball taut. “But you were already forgotten, long before you ever attempted to steal our souls. Your importance was dismissed the moment you were sentenced to the Sleep of Forever. Life went on without you.” I chose a spot above the seam. “As my life shall. I will forbid your name from ever being spoken in my presence. I will enjoy whatever fate brings me, living among my wolves with my brother, and the only memory I'll allow myself to dwell on concerning you will be this one.”

Holding the fabric of his soul tight as a canvas, I stabbed it with my nail.

I tore a hole right through it.

 

Chapter Twenty-nine

I watched, for once well satisfied to be a witness, as a thin lance of purple ugliness poured from the tear of his cyreath. Then, the skin split and the rest of his foul soul escaped—in a rush—like a two-buck bottle-rocket.

I waited until his soul had spiraled into nothingness before I dispatched what was left of his soul-ball's sheath. Then I bent over my brother's cyreath, focused on the more important task of cleaning all traces of the foulness from it. When I was finished, I ran a gentle palm over it. Patches of his outer shell were thinner than others, where the old man's cyreath had rested hardest, but overall his soul-ball was intact.

“I think you're good, twin,” I whispered. “A little dented, but good.”

CROSSING FINAL ITEMS OFF THE LIST

Side by side, Mad-one and I slowly flew back to the place where the mage's trees once hulked on the edge of oblivion, the clearing rutted with stumps and bordered by a straggling hawthorn hedge. As we glided over the latter, soul-balls glowered from within its thorny branches.

As I kept Mad-one company, I felt the tickle of Trowbridge's call.

Soon, my mate.

The Mystwalker of Threall's speed slowed as she drifted toward the fence made from branches that had been cut or broken and long stripped of their leaves. They'd been pile-driven into the mossy soil at a forty-five-degree angle, then layered, stick upon stick, until they formed a high, circular wooden fence around an ancient beech.

Mad-one waved her arm, and the branches pulled back, chittering like tiny teeth. She didn't immediately welcome me into her private space, instead hovering by the doorway with an indecision that didn't sit well on her. “None will ever know what wars were fought in this realm,” she whispered. “The names of those chosen to defend the Royal Court have already been forgotten.” She stole a strangely timid glance at me. “We are the last of our kind. There are no wizards to train those born with the ability to dream-walk.”

“Given what I know, I'd say that was a bonus.”

“Who will protect these souls?”

“Souls are better left alone to make their own errors and to learn from them.”

She crossed her arms, staring at the old tree. “I'm not sure I will return to Merenwyn.”

“I'm not coming back, Mad-one. If I leave without you, you'll stay here forever. Alone.”

A tendril of blue myst wreathed through a crevasse in the wall of branches. As sinuous as smoke, it undulated past me. My eyes followed its progress as it slipped into the heavy foliage of the tree inside her fence.

It was ancient. Gnarled limbs. Twisted roots.

Was she old? Was that her deal? Was everyone she loved gone?

“Is that your citadel?” I probed.

For a moment I thought she wasn't going to answer. Then, I saw her throat move and she surprised me by shaking her head. “Not mine. But one who is infinitely precious to me.”

Confused, I studied the tree and then the silk damask divan that was placed close to its trunk. I thought of her lying on it, touching the bark of that old elm.

“That's the citadel of your One True Thing.”

Her nod was slow and solemn. “Five hundred and more winters have passed since I have stood beside Simeon. And during all those days, he has guarded my body. Fed it nourishment. Bathed it. Protected it as I have protected his citadel from harm.” She fingered the belt around her waist. “This body is how I remember being, but I do not know if it is what I still am. My true shape may be as withered as his citadel has become gnarled. I may be—”

“Beautiful. Or ugly. Does it matter?”

“It may.”

“If you have aged, then so has your lover. Does the thought of seeing Simeon with thin hair and a stoop disgust you? Would you turn from him?”

“Never.”

“Then it's time to go home.”

She wet her lip. “I don't remember how.”

It was really tempting to tell her to click her heels three times together, but I refrained. She'd become a friend, this woman of the haughty expression, the girl of the tragic past. She was what I could have become. I chose my words carefully. “For me, my mate is my anchor. He's my piece of reality that kept me connected to my real life. So when I need to go home—and Tyrean, we
need
to go home—I think of him; I listen for his voice. He's been calling me for a few minutes. His voice is faint, but I can hear him. And if I block out all the noise around, and all the fears, and the what-ifs—if I search for it and cling to it, I can follow it all the way back home.”

She shook her head. “A thousand times I have spoken to Simeon. When he wakes at dawn in Merenwyn, I bid him good morning. And when he tells me that the light has fallen and the stars shine, I wish him sweet dreams and tell him that I will protect him. But none of those conversations has ever brought me home. Thoughts do not take you home.”

“Have you tried to follow his voice home?”

“No. I could not. If the mages followed me, they would—”

“The days they could hurt you or those you love are over. Touch his soul, Mad-one. Tell him it's time to bring you home.”

She stared at me, chewing her lip.

“Don't trade one master for another. Don't let fear rule you. Let's be brave for the rest of our lives, okay? All the way to the end.”

She laid her hand on the rough bark. She closed her eyes. Her communion with her love was silent, but the light in the cyreath that hung from a crooked limb near the top of the tree suddenly brightened.

The Mystwalker of Threall's face softened. She opened her eyes and looked at me, and then her mouth broke into a tremulous smile. She was Tyrean, young and hopeful. “Good-bye,” she whispered as her body began to shimmer.

“Safe travels,” I replied.

 

Chapter Thirty

Trowbridge's breath was warm on my mouth. I could taste the essence of him. Courage. Honor. Wolf. Inside my mouth, on my lips.
Am I dreaming? No.
Because his scent surrounded me, cocooning me in its possessive embrace.

Woods and the wild.

And something else.

“Wake up, Hedi!” My One True Thing shouted hoarsely in my ear. And then the ungrateful sod slammed his fist in the center of my chest. Hard. Really hard. “Breathe on your own!”

It damn well hurt. I struck out blindly, the side of my hand meeting hard bone, and then I gasped and curled in pain. My ribs were broken.

I'm back in real time and things hurt just as badly here as they do in Threall.

Reality sucks.

“I'd say she's breathing on her own now,” Mouse said.

Yeah?
Well, breathing suddenly got incrementally harder, because on the heels of that pronouncement I was dragged onto a pair of hard thighs and I found myself being held tightly—way
too
tightly—and rather violently rocked.

“Ribs,” I croaked.

His grip eased.

Trowbridge was alive and strong and now making an effort to cradle me gently in his arms. This was a good thing. I squeezed open an eye. I saw this—my mate's corded throat splattered with Fae blood, and the shadowed walls of the mage's room.

Some of my jubilation dimmed.

Well, Hedi, you're still in Merenwyn.

Gone were the battle sounds—the grunts, the growls, the high-pitched cries. However, the land of the Fae wasn't silent, at least not in the wizard's lair. I could hear Trowbridge's harsh breathing and beyond that the oddest hum.

I pushed slightly against Trowbridge's chest, and he eased me away with acute care, like I was broken or fragile. Which I'm not—recent events having proven that I'm nearly indestructible.

A ring of faces looked down on me. Mouse, with Gwennie peeking over his shoulder. Danen, with his expression set to grave. Brutus and Lily wearing Super Bowl smiles.

I tested my voice. “Did we win?”

“We won.”

Gwennie shrank back as a wolf—dark snout, bushy tail—thrust himself into our midst. Lolling tongue. Blood on muzzle. Battle-gleam in his amber eyes.

I did not know him. “Who's this?”

“My son, Tenu,” said Danen proudly. “One of our best hunters.”

Uh-huh.

The wolf had a wide face and a scent far more pungently lupine than any Creemore wolf I'd ever spent some time with. Tenu stretched his neck to sniff at Varens's moccasin, then darted back when Trowbridge rumbled a warning.

This is my life now. I will be sniffed; I will have no privacy.

I looked up at the man who held me.

Blue eyes glared down at me, the comets in them as bright as the stars.

It could be worse.

“You wouldn't wake up,” Trowbridge growled. “Your heart was beating so slow I couldn't hear it until I put my ear to your chest.” His fingers dug into me. “Is that the end of it? No more going to Threall? Because if—”

“I'll never go back,” I whispered. “I shut that place down.”

Which was more or less the truth. For centuries, the mages had searched for those born with a gift to mystwalk. Now there were no more mages left and, for at least a generation or two, none to step into the Old Mage's empty shoes. Plus, given the scary stories and attrition rates associated with being a mystwalker, I couldn't imagine a lot of people voluntarily going there. From infancy they would have heard and believed the tales spun on their mothers' knees: Threall was a terrible place, with curved tentacle hooks that never let go.

Home to women who were lost and slightly mad.

My gaze moved from Trowbridge's, taking in the disaster left in the wake of the explosion. Broken bottles, cracked crockery, strewn straw, a dead mage, and an overturned pine table.

Then suddenly I remembered taking Merry from my neck. Placing her down on the window ledge, turning from her, preparing the blast.

Goddess.

“Where's Merry?” I whispered.

That's when
she
spoke, and my thudding heart forgot how to beat all over again.

“I am here,” she said.

*   *   *

Imagine hearing an angel speak. A voice like a crystal bell quivering in the gentle wind.

My gaze had flown, searching for the source of that sweet voice, and had found her.

“You're so small,” I said.

“Shut up,” she sang.

“You're like the size of a Barbie.”

Absolute truth. Like the pose-able doll, Merry was all long hair, small waist, tits, and ass, but that's where the similarities ended. For despite her lilting speech, my bestie had attitude written all over her. And instead of being Malibu blonde she was the burning shades of maple leaves in fall, brown skinned, her rippling curtain of dark hair streaked with vibrant oranges, searing yellows, and fiery reds. She wore a scowl and a simple long gray-taupe dress.

Lovely. Merry was utterly lovely.

I blinked, then searched for Lexi and found him slumped against the wall, his legs spread out. Soot on his jaw. A scorch-mark on his shoulder. His wound had stopped bleeding. His wolf was healing him.

“Hey,” I said.

Lexi looked at me for a long moment. “It's so quiet,” he said with an air of discovery.

“That's how it should be,” I told him. “Can you walk?”

“Of course I can,” he replied, a Stronghold through and through.

I turned back to Merry.

“I want to get this over with.”

Two tiny perfect eyebrows raised in query. “Ready?”

For what?

She rolled her shoulders forward; then with a grimace, she snapped them back.

My mouth dropped open. “You have—”

Her finger lifted in warning. “Not. One. Word.”

I said two.

“Angel wings!” I crowed. “You're like every myth come to life. You're the real Tinker Bell, complete with the—”

I jerked back in alarm as the appendages in question blurred in indignation, hummingbird fast. She zoomed upward until we were more or less nose to nose and eye to eye. She had soft brown irises and large pupils.

“Snap out of it, Peacock,” she said, dead serious. “You have a window open, but it will close soon. Do you hear me? It will
close
soon.”

Automatically, I glanced to the mage's window. Night had fallen; the stars were shining. “How long was I gone?”

“Too long,” said Trowbridge. “At least a half hour.”

It had been minutes in Threall. None of the time lines synched.