Catching Pathways

by Danielle Berggren

  They held each other, and the warm water seeped into her bones and warmed her to the core. When she awoke, she had been so cold she held the fleeting impression she would never be warm again.

  Rodan was subdued. He said little as he helped her bathe and took care of his own ablutions. He cleansed the water so it was no longer pink, and when they stepped from the tub, he wrapped her in a sheet and dried her, his eyes traveling every piece of her body as though he memorized her. He was quick to dress and summoned for her the favored soft trousers, boots, loose shirt, and bodice.

  As she dressed, she kept brushing and bumping into him until, as she was lacing up her bodice and her elbow hit him in the chest she snapped, “Can you give me a little space?”

  A sense of being wounded shot through her, and she swayed a little on her feet. Overwhelming grief flooded through her on its heels from that place that was not quite right—not quite her—and she stared at him.

  “Did I just feel what you were feeling through the bond?”

  He nodded, his eyes showing more white than usual. “I apologize. I’ve heard the exchange of emotions subsides, over time, unless you deliberately look for it.”

  She straightened and frowned at him, taking a step closer, “Why is it you feel grief? What happened?”

  His lips parted, and his eyes searched her face. “I do not know how to tell you.”

  “Tell me,” she whispered. “Please. I hate not knowing.”

  He glanced away for a moment before his gaze swung back to her. He licked his lips, grasped her hand—and how odd it was, his bare skin on hers—and pulled her into the other room. They passed through it, a room not unlike Alexis’s but with paler colors and more sedans and poufs instead of only floor cushions. They took the stairs up, and up, Maeve’s breath coming hard by the time they entered a library with walls lined with shelves and books and scrolls. A basin of reddish water lay on the floor next to a reading table. He stopped at that table, his hand convulsing around hers.

  Through the bond waves of sorrow and relief radiated from him. And resignation.

  He bowed his head, his wet hair sliding forward to cover half his face, and then shook himself and flung it back over his shoulders. “You were here for four days,” he said, his voice so quiet she barely heard him. “On that table there. I knelt by your side for four days, hoping for some sign of revival. I hoped, against hope, the bond took hold before you succumbed to the poison. It was supposed to cure anything, no matter how severe.” He swallowed his eyes flicked over her face. “I was too late.”

  Maeve’s voice shook, “What do you mean you were too late? The bond must have worked.”

  Rodan shook his head and clasped her hands in his. “It did not. It sealed a heartbeat before you—before you were pulled away from me.”

  Her heart started to knock a faster rhythm against her ribs. “I didn’t die...did I?”

  Rodan told her everything.

  He was hesitant, at first, and his fear run cold in her mouth. She sensed his need to be understood, and laced through it was a hollow ache that reverberated through her chest and made her clutch at the fabric over her heart.

  Maeve sat down on the floor, and Rodan knelt next to her. He did not stop touching her, and she wondered if it was because he needed that reassurance she was still alive. Still breathing. She tried to reverse the situation in her mind, to imagine what it might be like if Rodan died, and she were left behind.

  Then he told her what he did to reach her.

  Her stomach roiled. Rodan was glossing over the details, yet the fact remained—he killed to get to her. He slaughtered an entire family.

  She interrupted his story. “What of his grandchildren? What’s going to happen to them?”

  Rodan’s lips drew down into a tight line. “I’ll make sure they’re taken care of. The reign of the Basu family is over. Something else will have to take its place. I’ll ensure those of his family who remain will be looked after.”

  A sense of loss clouded her thoughts, and she grasped how much Rodan struggled with the decision he made. For all that Bairam betrayed them, he used to be a loyal follower. A friend. What Rodan did cost him much.

  At the same time, Maeve recoiled a little from the thought of it. He wanted to find to her, she understood, yet might there have been another way? Bairam and Alexis would have probably died for their treachery regardless of her own mortal outcome, yet the rest of the family? They said nothing, sure, but they remained under the grip of their head of household. Power radiated from that role, she knew. She met enough patriarchs in her time in foster care to sense when one had an iron grip on his family. She would not blame them for staying silent.

  She swallowed her doubts and squeezed Rodan’s hand, urging him to continue the story. She still could not believe she died—had been actually, certifiably dead—for four days. She realized time passed because the suns had risen since her last memories, but she remembered nothing after the poisoning. All was blank.

  She shuddered.

  Perhaps, not blank. Something else moved in the darkness of her memories.

  Rodan told her of his journey into the underworld. Of the cyclone of colors and sound, the white room, and the tree that contained a multitude of worlds. He spoke of the spirits, of the twisting earthen pathways leading him down into a throne room half-carved out of a natural cave. Of what he found.

  Which was where his story stopped.

  Maeve waited for more, but Rodan was not forthcoming. He stared at her hand curled up inside of his own, as though he memorized every line of her fingerprint. The silence stretched between them, and Maeve trembled once more. He looked up at her, and she tried to smile, but everything was too new, too raw. The bond was a vibrating, pulsating string stretched between them. She could almost see it. She definitely felt it. But through it, she sensed nothing from him. No emotional surge she might use to navigate toward a conclusion on what happened next.

  She flipped her hand around in his and clasped his wrist, his skin hot beneath her fingertips. “I’m Fae, then. Is that what you found out?”

  He shook his head, and a dart of sorrow pierced her heart.

  She frowned. “Human? But why did my eyes change colors? Why is my skin glowing like yours?” Though, now that she checked again, the glowing stopped. Her frown deepened. “I don’t understand.”

  He rubbed at the scar over his heart and turned his head away from her, his hair falling to cover his face. “What I discovered about your lineage came at great cost. I do not know how to tell you. I do not know how you might react.”

  “Are you afraid I’ll leave you?” she asked, voice hesitant.

  He closed his eyes. “Yes.”

  “We’re not—related, are we?”

  His eyes flew open, and he glanced at her. “No! No, we’re not.”

  She did manage a smile then. “Well, that’s one insurmountable hurdle out of the way. What could be worse than that?”

  He stared at her, gold and black eyes intense, and said in a voice so quiet it was almost unintelligible. “I met your father.”

  “My father?” Her stomach gave a little lurch, and she sat up straighter. “He’s dead, then? You found him among the dead?”

  “Among the dead, yes, but he was not. He was—he is a part of the underworld.” Rodan took a deep breath, held it, and let it out in a gusty sigh. “He wanted to keep you there. He wants a successor.”

  Her eyes widened. “Wait, what are you saying? Who is he?”

  “He is death. He said I could call him Ankou, the god of death. He knew of you, and of me.” Rodan took another deep breath, which hitched a little halfway through. “He knew some of our future, if you were to be returned to the living.”

  Cold flowed through her, and she went still. “Rodan. If a god wanted to keep me there, why am I back? How am I alive? What did you do?” Why don’t I remember anything? she thought.

  He squeezed his eyes shut and a single tear dropped down his cheek. His han
ds went limp, and they lost contact for one of the first times since she woke up. She leaned back as he composed his thoughts. Through the bond she sensed his reluctance, like a string of taffy pulling and stretching between them.

  “Tell me,” she whispered.

  He did not open his eyes. “Ankou told me we were going to have three children.”

  Her heart skipped a beat and raced faster.

  “He demanded the third. In exchange for your life.”

  Maeve pulled back, her fingers trembling.

  “I’m sorry,” he said in a strained voice, his eyes open once more and wet with tears. “I told you what happens when a bond-mate dies. The madness was coming. It would not be kept at bay. It was either bring you back or remain in the underworld with you—and Ankou told me he would take away your memories of me if we remained. I could not abide that. I could not bear it.”

  Maeve rose on legs that shuddered beneath her, leaning on a table for support, then jerking away when she realized it was the table she had lain on while she was dead. She turned away from it and from Rodan, her eyes burning with unshed tears.

  She never thought of having a family. Not until recently. She could not help it, being with Rodan. She wondered if he’d want children, and if she did as well. She pictured what they might look like. How they might raise them.

  Her own past had been so difficult that she wanted nothing more than a smooth, happy life for any children she might bear. That had been the reason she was reticent to start a family back in her own world. She had been financially secure but alone, and every male prospect who came along had been disappointing in some way or another. Rodan was in a class of his own. Still, the thought only flitted across her mind. Especially as this was so new, and so many things were unknown.

  The thought of parting with one of her own children? Of giving them to some god of death? She shook her head and hugged herself. “I don’t care if he is my father, I’m not giving up a child of mine. It’s not going to happen.”

  Rodan was silent for a heartbeat before speaking. She had her back to him, and while she did not see his face, hopelessness surged through her at his next words, making her taste bile at the back of her throat. “Ankou said if we tried to go back on the deal, he’d bring you back to the underworld. You, and all three of the children.”

  Hot and sour bile coated her tongue. She coughed and stepped closer to the shelves, staring at the sea of titles on all those spines but not seeing them.

  “Without you, there would be nothing,” Rodan said, and the sound of his voice indicated he got off the floor and was closer to her now. “We have time. Years and years. He said you were not all Fae, so you must be both. You are going to live for a long time, as will I, and so will our children. We will have many years before that day will come.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Maeve said, and turned to face him, her tears falling. “Don’t you realize it’s just going to get harder with each passing moment?” She let out a choked sob and covered her eyes with her hands. “I love you,” she gasped. “I’m scared, and I’m angry as hell, but I love you. I don’t know if I want children, but I know if I do have them, I want them to be yours. Don’t you see?”

  She lowered her hands and stared up at him, almost as though daring him to look away. “I already feel too much for you. It’s too big. But it’s going to get bigger, and isn’t having children going to be even worse? I can barely stand this feeling now—but when it’s more I’m going to fall apart. This is going to tear me apart.”

  He reached for her, and she flinched away, curling in on herself and hitting her back against some shelves along the wall. A book fell down, Sand Worms: a Study written across the leather cover in gilt text. She jumped again when it hit the floor.

  “I can’t,” she shook her head. “I can’t.”

  “Maeve, please,” he pleaded, his hand suspended in the air between them. The aching of his heart mirrored in her own, as they both broke at once.

  She shook her head harder. “I need space. Where is Pike? I want to go home.”

  “Home?” The word was sharp, “Maeve, be careful, you can’t say things like—”

  “I want to go home,” she repeated, clutching the shirt over her chest. Remembering the tranquility of her mountain home. The breeze in the trees. The solitude. The peace to do nothing but what she pleased. “Please, I want to be home.”

  The third time she said it, she was overcome with a familiar tilting sensation and a sense of vertigo. Before she had a chance for more than a flash of regret, she was falling.

  Falling back into her world.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Maeve

  MAEVE WOKE ON HER KITCHEN FLOOR, the kettle still sitting above her on the stove top. She struggled to sit up, the familiar dysphoria that came whenever she slid between one world and the next sliding over her. Her heart was beating out a heavy rhythm against her ribs, and her breathing came short.

  Did I come through?

  Maeve looked around and the familiar-yet-strange surroundings of her house in the Sierras greeted her. The brown tile was cold under her fingertips, and as she stood on shaking legs, her eyes caught on the blown up covers of her books on the walls, and the little desk in the corner looking out over the woods in the back yard.

  “Rodan?” she called, looking around. He was nowhere in evidence, and a sinking sensation permeated her chest. Rushing to the hall bathroom, she checked her eyes in the mirror. They remained the same, the black and the gold, as they had in the Realms. Yet when she reached through the part of her was connected to him now through the bond, she did not sense him. Not immediately.

  There was something. A faint echo, a feather-light touch of something missing but not gone. The bond was strained but not broken. Not missing.

  She glanced down at her clothes, at the bodice and loose shirt, trousers and knee-high boots, the look incongruous against the brushed steel fixtures and granite counter tops. She closed her eyes and pulled at the part of herself that sensed the living things around her. The part of her she called upon to work spells and potions.

  A flicker, like a match unstruck, and it bloomed in her mind. She felt the squirrels in the trees outside her home, the insects boring through the bark of pine trees, and the birds flitting through the branches. A treasure trove of life ebbing and flowing around her. She plucked at the string of one and the creature paused and looked up from its gathering of nuts, and she could see it like a movie playing behind her closed eyes.

  Maeve started to laugh. Soft at first, and then louder. She had never been able to sense or conduct her magic in her own world. She thought it was impossible, yet—

  She stared down at her hands and noted a glow beneath her skin like in the bath at Bairam’s palace.

  “So, the bond did change me,” she said aloud, flipping her hands over and back, watching the play of light beneath her skin.

  Maeve walked back out to the living room, playing with the magic like a cat batting at a ball of string, pushing it out and running after it to jerk it back inside of her. She knew the properties of the creatures and the plants outside of her home, of what it would be like to harness them and what she might create.

  She pushed through her sliding glass door and stood on the balcony overlooking the mountain as it swept down into a valley and a clear, crystalline blue lake.

  “A world without magic,” Maeve wondered aloud, “and yet—” She pulled on some of those elements and fire blossomed in the palm of one hand, tickling her with heat but not burning. She grinned, snuffed it out, and set both hands on the railing, leaning into it.

  She never knew such power before. In the Realms, where her magic first came to call, there were pressing limitations. Yet here, there was so much more she might grasp at and control. So much more she could do and manipulate, with no competition from other magic wielders.

  Maeve’s thoughts flashed to Rodan, and she glanced behind her, as though he might materialize in her living room
as he had that long ago day. A tickling grew inside of her, and she realized he tried to reach out to her. To use the bond to pull himself back into her world.

  Maeve could not face him. Not yet. Not after everything that happened.

  As she had fallen through, she had felt the shape of the Realms. Felt the force which linked it to her world and to thousands of others. She knew that the Realms were, in a way, sentient. That they focused on her desires, and that in pushing her back into her world, it thought it was fulfilling those desires. Maeve used what she had learned, in those few moments she had been able to study the machinations through the shock of recent events.

  She pressed into the world around her. Pressed past the living things living on the skin of this planet and delving far below and above, casting her senses as deep as she could. As she did, the tight weaving of the world made itself known to her. She sensed its buoyancy and malleable nature.

  She hardened it.

  The effort staggered her, but she kept at it until the world closed off, tucked into itself instead of open to all the other worlds. There was the brush of those worlds, too. Infinite and beyond measure. She blocked hers off from them and wondered at her ability to do so. She stood alone and knew herself to be the most powerful thing which walked this earth.

  She smiled and inhaled a deep breath of clean mountain air.

  What can’t I do now?

  To Be Continued

  In Book Two

  of

  The Five Realms

  Catching Embers

  Coming Spring of 2020

  About the Author

  Danielle Berggren is a writer residing in Kansas City, Missouri. Born and mostly raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, Danielle has lived in three different states and moved more than thirty times in her life.