by C. L. Wilson
“The sun has set, and Lily-myerina is not herself,” Talin replied. “I will accompany you.”
Gabriella’s approval of him went up another notch. Protecting the vulnerable was an admirable trait. But he still wasn’t coming with them. “Really Talin, it’s not necessary. With a whole Calbernan army here and the White Guard patrolling the streets, Konumarr is currently the safest city on Mystral.” She smiled to soften her refusal. “Which ship are you on, Talin?”
The young man’s chest puffed out slightly. “I sail aboard the Kracken, Gabriella-myerina.”
Dilys Merimydion’s ship. It figured. Talin was definitely not walking them back to the school.
“I’ll see to it Lily finds you there tomorrow,” she said with a tiny push of Persuasion. “All right? Wonderful. Have a good night, then.” Without giving him time to object or shrug off her subtle command, she wrapped an arm around Lily’s waist and headed for the road.
After a few wrong turns to make sure Talin hadn’t gotten it into his head to follow them, Gabriella steered Lily down one of the side streets that ran parallel to the main road and headed for the school.
“Come on, Lily, let’s get you home.”
Lily blinked at her and smiled drunkenly. “I’m not Lily. You are. See?” She clutched at Gabriella’s pink frock. “You’re wearing her dressh.” She poked Summer in the chest. “You’re Lily. I’m Gabriella.” Her head fell back and she laughed.
Summer sighed. “All right, Gabriella. Let’s get you home. And no more ice wine for you.”
Lily pouted. “But I like eyesh wine.”
“I can see that,” Gabriella said dryly.
“I liked Talin.”
“Yes, he seemed very nice.”
“He liked me, too.”
“It definitely seemed so.”
“You’re such a good friend, Lily.” Lily threw her arms around Summer’s neck, dislodging the headscarf holding back Summer’s hair, and smacked a loud, sloppy kiss on her cheek. “I wish you really were my sister. This was the best night of my life.” Then she laughed, spun out of Summer’s reach and ran up the street towards the school. She whipped off her own headscarf and threw it in the air, twirling in circles. “I love Talin. I love you. I love everybody!” She danced and skipped up the stone steps of the school, disappearing into the shadowy alcove of the recessed door, and began singing off key, “Lily, Lily is my friend. The nicest girl in Winterland.” And she burst into drunken giggles over the rhyme.
Summer sighed and laughed ruefully as she pulled the dislodged scarf off her head and bent to retrieve the one Lily had tossed in the air. Definitely no more ice wine for Lily ever again.
The sky was dark now, and the moon had ducked behind a bank of clouds. Oil lamps burning every block kept the side street well lit, but several of the narrower alleys between buildings were impenetrable. Later, Gabriella would berate herself for not paying more attention as she walked past the darkened alley nearest the school.
The punch to her ribs caught her utterly by surprise.
It slammed into her like a hammer. She heard a crack, felt a searing flash of pain, then she was weightless, flying off her feet.
Her body slammed sideways into the gray stone bricks of the street. If not for her outflung right arm, her head would have slammed into the bricks as well. As it was, she was still left dazed when her arm smacked the stone, and her head slammed hard against her arm. Her unbound hair spilled over her face, blinding her as she lay there, gasping for breath.
“Did you think I wouldn’t find you, you stupid slut?” She heard the crunch of boots on stone, then something hard slammed into her side. The little breath she’d managed to recover whooshed out of her again as a new, even more searing pain tore across her chest. The beast had kicked her!
She wheezed in pain, then gave a strangled scream as a meaty hand reached down to grab the front of her dress and haul her off the pavement.
“You thought you could just run away? You thought I wouldn’t follow?”
The backhand caught her across the jaw. Blood filled her mouth as her teeth snapped together hard. She gasped and coughed on blood. The last blow had knocked most of the hair out of her face, allowing her to see at least the outline of her attacker. A big, hulking man, looming over her, his face cast in shadow. She blinked up at him, squinting against the light from the nearby streetlamp.
The man stiffened. He hauled her closer, pulling her into the spill of lamplight so he could see her face. “Who the fark are you? Where’s my daughter? Why are you wearing her dress?”
And then, from the direction of the school, came Lily’s scream. “Da!”
“Lily!” Gabriella’s attacker released her, delivered one last, brutal kick, and took off in the direction of the school. “You stay right there, you worthless cow!”
Lily screamed again. A few moments later, Gabriella heard a blistering spate of swearing interspersed with the sounds of fists and booted feet battering against a closed door. Thank Helos, even drunk, Lily must’ve had the presence of mind to run into the school and lock the door behind her.
Summer rolled over to her hands and knees. A white-hot poker shot through her chest. She gasped, then doubled back over and coughed up blood. She was having trouble breathing, as if there were a heavy stone pressed down on her chest. He’d broken her ribs with one of those kicks, then must have driven that rib into her lungs with another.
The crash of the school door giving way brought her surging to her feet despite the searing pain. That brute was going for Lily. Pregnant Lily. One punch or kick like the ones he’d slammed into Gabriella, and Lily would lose the baby she’d run away to save.
Summer wrapped an arm around her torso and staggered towards the school. She’d seen the scars on Lily’s back and arms. She knew this monster must have been the one to have made them, and she’d be damned to the frozen fires of Hel before she let him lay another finger on the sweet, shy girl she’d come to care about.
She ran through the splintered doorway into the school. The halls were dark. The lamps were unlit, but she followed the sound of running feet and shrill cries and swearing. Up the stairs. Down the hall past the second-floor classrooms. All of the doors were closed except one towards the back of the hall. It was open, the door’s large glass viewing pane shattered.
Inside the room, desks lay overturned, haphazardly shoved aside like a jumble of child’s blocks. Lily’s father had her pinned by the neck against the stone wall, and his fist—that massive, hammer of a fist—was drawn back, ready to plow into her belly.
The pain of Gabriella’s ribs gave way to a different, familiar pain. The hot, tight stretch of terrible power roaring to life inside her. She hadn’t unleashed her most dreadful magic in almost twenty years. Not since the day she’d done murder.
She unleashed it now.
It roared out of her like a savage, untamed beast bursting from its cage. A violent, hot, incinerating firestorm of a beast. A fury that burned away pity, compassion, mercy.
“Get your hands off her!”
In Konumarr’s plazas, where the music was still playing, and the dancers were still dancing, every Calbernan suddenly stopped in his tracks with a shudder. A split second later, every one of them roared, a sound that tore through the peace of the night, brought the musicians to a shocked halt, and sent the waters of the fjord into a frenzy of wild waves.
Battle claws sprang forth. Battle fangs descended.
As one, they abandoned the dance, their companions—their veneer of civilization—and raced down the street.
In Konumarr Palace, Ari, Ryll and the rest of the fleets’ officers strolled the torch-lit garden paths and danced on the lantern-lit palace terrace, enjoying yet another cool, pleasant evening in the company of the lovely, accomplished gentlewomen who might be their future mates.
Then came the sound. A Shout the likes of which they’d never heard before. It tore through their beings. Pierced them to the core. Ignited a wild, furious
flame that burned beyond all imagining.
As one, to the shock of their companions, they roared. Their voices shattered the night.
The water in the fjord rose up in response, cresting waves slamming against the banks.
Claws out, fangs down, they ran. Some raced across the bridge into Konumarr city. Others dove into the raucous, unsettled waves of the fjord, riding powerful jets of seawater to the other shore.
For she had Called. And they must answer.
Dilys stood on the edge of the dock, trying without success to remember the face of the golden-eyed woman in his visions.
And then his whole world turned on its head.
A Voice slammed into him with the force of a tidal wave. A Shout that emptied the seas, tore the fabric of the universe, exploded the sun. Claws and teeth of white-hot fire clamped tight around his soul.
Inside him, a cold, hard kernel dormant in him since birth erupted into fiery life. A nascent volcano ripping through the mantle of his soul. Spewing heat and flame and burning stone. Transforming.
Awakening.
He’d been asleep his whole life and never knew it.
That Voice. She had Shouted. And all the world fell away, leaving only the need to answer . . . to serve . . . to protect.
The roar ripped out of him, exploding from his throat. Raw. Pained. A thundering cry of bliss and fear and fury. An answering Shout of exultation and of warning.
The waters of the fjord went wild, the surface ragged with crashing, foaming waves. His knees bent. Strength gathered in his thighs. Exploded in a burst that sent him diving into the spout of water that rose up to meet him. The water carried him across the width of the fjord and delivered him onto the village docks within seconds. He hit the ground running.
There was no need to search. No need to wonder where he was going. Earlier today, he’d told Ari he felt like a fish on a hook. But that feeling was nothing compared to this. This felt like he’d been impaled by a whaling harpoon. And the invisible line attached to it was reeling him in faster than his feet could run.
He flew through the streets of Konumarr. Around him, thousands of others were running, too. Every single Calbernan in Konumarr . . . following the same invisible line.
He bared his battle fangs and snarled. He would fight them if he must. To the death—theirs or his. His claws were sharp. His body strong.
They had gathered, his potential rivals, around a tall stone building a block off Konumarr’s main thoroughfare. He barked a Word he’d never known before. It spewed up from that newborn volcano inside him, filled somehow with more than just the vast power his mother had gifted him. His would-be rivals staggered back, clearing a path that led to the stone house.
He took the stairs three at a time. Raced through the splintered doorway. He’d never been in this building before, but he found the stairs without a thought and vaulted up them. There were others inside the stone building already. Crowding the hall between him and her, the one so inexorably drawing him to her side. They had heard her Shout, and they had come, like him, to answer that wordless call. Males hungry to be claimed, ready to prove their strength, their speed, their ferociousness in battle.
The tendons in his neck stood out like steely cords. He roared a challenge. Eyes hot, fangs bared, a few roared back, but the flash of golden fire in his eyes and the terrible Word that he spat from his lips and drove them to their knees made them bare their necks in submission and let him pass.
It was good that they did. He would have shredded their flesh and painted the stone walls with their blood.
At the end of the hall, another shattered door stood ajar. Beyond it, a room with many desks piled against the wall. Calbernans crowded in the space remaining. The ones who had been closest when she Shouted. Unlike the ones in the hall, these parted and let him pass without challenge, though there was rumbling in more than a few chests and more than a few bared fangs.
The acknowledgment of his dominance settled him. The hot rush of his blood calmed, no longer drumming through his veins so loud it deafened him.
Only then did he hear the muffled sound of sobbing. A female. Frightened.
He shouldered past the last line of Calbernans into the small ring of space at the back of the room, where he found a slender young female in a yellow dress sitting on the bloody floor, clutching the prone body of another female, this one clad in torn and bloodstained lilac. Both of the females had come from some Summerlea farm or village, judging by their dark skin, black hair, and the style and quality of their clothing.
Blood covered them both in scarlet spatters. Covered the wall behind them. The floor around them. A thick, wide swath of scarlet led away from them to the opposite wall, where what looked like a pile of butchered meat lay in a heap against the wall.
It took Dilys a moment to realize the pile of meat was the remains of a man. His chest had burst open from the inside out, ribs splayed and bent back, organs liquified. His head and limbs had separated from the torso. Popped off like a cork from a bottle.
Dilys turned back to the weeping female huddled over the lilac-clad one. Was this sobbing Summerlander her? The one who had Shouted with such force she’d ripped a man to bloody shreds and summoned every Calbernan in the city?
How was that possible? No one but the rarest of Calberna’s native-born daughters could have given voice to that particular magic. Dilys should know. His and every other great House in Calberna had been trying to bring that great, long-lost magic back to their land and their bloodlines for millennia.
It couldn’t be this Summerlander. The one who’d Shouted must surely be Calbernan. But what Calbernan parent would ever let her daughter—especially a daughter with that particular gift—leave the protection of the Isles? And how could such a daughter have been born in the first place and not be known?
It was impossible. It simply couldn’t be.
And yet, without a doubt, a woman of great, long-lost Calbernan power had Shouted with a Voice that had not been heard in Mystral in more than two thousand years.
“Who are you?” he asked the crying Summerlander. “Where do you come from? Where is the woman who did this?” He pointed to the pile of meat.
He had not meant to sound threatening, but his reaction to the Voice that had summoned him was still so strong his words came out as a deadly growl. Coupled with his fully extended battle fangs and claws, he must have looked and sounded terrifying.
Certainly he did to the weeping girl in the yellow dress, because in response to his inquiry, she clutched the lilac-clad female’s body more closely to her chest and began tearfully sobbing for him not to hurt them.
Behind him, the rest of his men began to rumble. They’d initially submitted to his dominance and given way, but this girl’s reaction to him—a clear rejection—had just opened the door for challenge.
Dilys was torn. On the one hand, he needed to calm down and retract claws and fangs so he could calm the hysterical girl enough to get some answers. On the other hand, with thousands of Calbernan warriors at his back, all of them riding the killing edge, he needed to remain battle-ready until he put an end to the mystery, determined who had Shouted—and find out where she’d gone if she wasn’t one of these Summerlander farm girls.
Which, surely, she couldn’t be.
Then came a realization that tied his guts in knots. It didn’t matter who the owner of that Voice had been, because he was bound by contract to exclusively court the Seasons of Summerlea for another ten weeks. To break a second contract bound in blood and salt would brand him forever as an oathbreaker and make him unworthy of the woman who wielded that Voice.
Which meant, no matter who she was, he had no right to court her at this time.
No right to be claimed by her, until the Seasons made their choice.
Blessed Numahao.
He was still reeling from that realization, when someone pushed his way forward from the back of the room.
“Lily?”
Dilys whirle
d, aggression rising in instinctive response. He recognized one of his men from the Kracken. A ballista operator named Talin.
“You know these women, Talin?” It was impossible to keep the growl out of his voice.
“Tey, moa Myerielua. Well . . . only a little. I met them tonight. Lily and her sister Gabriella, from Summerlea.” Talin inched forward, watching Dilys carefully as he called, “Lily? It’s me, Talin. Are you hurt?”
The weeping one in the yellow dress looked up with a gasp, but when she caught sight of Talin, she burst into fresh tears and start babbling incoherently in Sun Tongue, the native Summerlea dialect, confirming Dilys’s earlier guess as to the girls’ origins.
Talin started to go to her, but a warning growl from Dilys stopped him in his tracks.
Dilys gave himself a shake and forced the aggression down. He had no rights here. None at all.
“Sorry,” he muttered to the still-frozen Talin. “Go to her.”
Even after granting Talin permission to approach the women, the moment the ballista operator knelt beside them, Dilys’s clawed fingers flexed, aching to rend something. Preferably Talin.
“Lily,” Talin was saying. “Can you tell me what happened? Are you hurt? Does any of this blood belong to you?”
The girl shook her head wildly and said in Eru, the common tongue, “No. I’m not hurt. He tried, but she stopped him.” And then she started babbling in Sun Tongue again.
“Who stopped him? Who did this? Where did she go?” Dilys asked. This time, the sound of his growling voice didn’t make Lily scream. It made her shudder, clam up, and cringe back against Talin, clearly seeking his protection.
Talin shot him a sharp glance which, under the circumstances, was, admittedly, warranted. He’d clearly established enough of a rapport with Lily that she felt comfortable seeking his protection. That gave him the right to provide it, even to protect her from his prince.
