by Eva Brandt
His shaking voice wouldn’t have reassured anyone, but Thrandur seemed to take comfort in it regardless. “What happened?” he asked, color already returning to his cheeks. “I feel like I’ve been run over by a horde of rampaging berserkers.”
“Nothing like that, Thrand,” Halvar answered with a wet laugh, “but close enough.”
“We’re just paying the price for breaking the laws of magic,” I whispered. “It seems Mathias’s aunt might have been right about breaking the curse. The side effects are starting to show, but this time, you’re the one suffering.”
A single tear flowed down my cheek. It burned my skin as fiercely as my guilt was burning my heart. “I’m so sorry, Thrandur. If I’d known this was going to happen, I would’ve never pulled you into my mess.”
Thrandur shook his head. “Don’t be ridiculous. As messy as this whole thing is, I won’t ever regret what we have.”
He sounded honest, but in my heart, I knew he would’ve been better off if I’d just stayed out of his life and let him find happiness with Halvar. I hadn’t, and now it was too late to take it back.
But recriminations and self-pity were useless and I couldn’t allow myself to dwell on them. Yes, the aftermath of breaking the curse was hurting Thrandur, but I could still fix it. I was Princess Dahud of Kerys. I had been born to be a queen—not just of my homeland, but of the world. I could save my husband from the dark magic that was trying to take him from me.
“You’re right, of course,” I said. “I don’t know what I was thinking. This spell is serious and we need to be careful, but it’s not something impossible to defeat.”
My change in mood seemed to help Halvar too. The feral intensity in his gaze faded into something more sedate. “There’s nothing we can’t defeat as long as we’re together.”
Mathias nodded but said nothing. The pendant around Thrandur’s neck glowed even more brightly than before, and so did Mathias’s eyes.
Not for the first time, I wondered what Mathias saw when he looked at me. Did he see a woman? A queen? A monster? A witch? He’d called me a goddess, but was that what he truly believed about me?
I was too afraid to ask him, so instead, I pushed away all my uncertainties. I shut down the part of me that felt fear and focused on my goal, eradicating the dark spell before it could do too much damage to Thrandur. “I can’t stay here, since my magic seems to react strangely to your condition. I’ll go speak to my mother. Until we find out what’s going on, rest and be careful.”
The words felt pathetic and empty of meaning, but Thrandur nodded and smiled as if I’d given him a great piece of advice. “I’ll wait for you, my queen,” he said.
His trust was a direct blow to my heart, but I took it and accepted it like the honor and the burden it was. “I won’t be gone long,” I replied. “We’ll speak again soon. I promise I’ll help you.”
Little did I know that I’d be unable to keep that vow and most of the other vows I’d made. Thrandur was not the only one in danger, but I didn’t realize it until it was much too late.
* * *
Mathias
Since Dahud couldn’t stay with Thrandur, Halvar volunteered to do so in her stead. I went with her, unwilling to leave her to her own devices again. I trusted her, but right now, it wasn’t a good idea for any of us to be alone.
Dahud didn’t protest. She didn’t tell me to leave when she spoke to her mother. My presence seemed to strengthen her and she leaned against me whenever she could. She was obviously having trouble controlling her emotions, and when faced with her mother’s immediate inability to help, she turned to me to anchor her.
“I’ll do what I can, Dahud,” Queen Malgven promised, “but if this is a magical form of the plague, you have to prepare for the worst and consider alternate forms of—”
“I will let all of Kerys die before I end my husband’s life,” Dahud said in a dead tone, interrupting her mother. “If you touch a hair on his head, I will make you regret it.”
Under different circumstances, I would’ve found the threat arousing. Up to a point, I still did. But I knew very well that we weren’t going to pursue anything sexual anytime soon, not with Thrandur so sick. As weird as it might have seemed, I wanted to help him too. I’d become attached to the crazy prince who’d left his homeland for love. I’d never be as close to him as Halvar was, but even so, a bond was forming between us, and not just because of Dahud.
The queen must’ve realized Dahud was serious because a dark shadow swept over her face. “All right, daughter,” she said. Her easy agreement held a clear hint of resentment. She wasn’t going to stay cooperative for much longer, not if Dahud couldn’t keep enforcing her mind control magic.
If Dahud realized this, she didn’t show it. With one last glare, she turned and stalked away from her mother.
“She’s going to be trouble,” I whispered as soon as we were out of earshot.
Dahud nodded. “I know. We need help. If I can’t control my magic, there’s no telling what will happen.”
I intended to reassure her, to tell her everything was going to be all right. The words never came out. All of a sudden, a jolt of biting pain hit me. My leg went unresponsive and I stumbled, falling on the ground in an uncharacteristic display of clumsiness.
I’d never been the most graceful person in the world, but neither did I randomly fall or trip over nothing. Maybe I needed to get more sleep. This whole thing with the curse on Dahud was having an effect on me that I couldn’t afford.
Dahud dropped to her knees next to me, her eyes wide with apprehension. “Mathias? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I replied automatically. “I just had a strange ache.”
“An ache?” Dahud repeated. “What do you mean?”
“I must’ve tripped,” I answered, not mentioning how unusual it was for me. “It’s not important.”
The last thing I wanted was for her to worry about me, when Thrandur’s condition was so serious. Just seeing her look at me with such concern made me want to protect her from anything, including any problems I might cause her.
“I’m fine.” Leaning against the wall, I tried to get up. “See? I’m…”
I trailed off when I realized my leg was completely stiff. I could barely move it and it refused to assist me.
“Mathias? What’s the matter?”
“My leg. Something’s off with my leg. From the knee down.”
I took a deep breath and struggled not to panic. I’d been fine earlier. A leg injury wasn’t that bad. Right?
Dahud wasn’t that optimistic. She took off my boot and lifted my pants, checking up on my wounded calf. Or at least, so it seemed. When she touched me, I couldn’t feel it at all.
She went so pale that for a few seconds she looked like a beautiful marble statue. I couldn’t tell if she was breathing anymore. When she spoke again, she sounded lost and terrified. “Mathias… This… What is this?”
I looked down and reached for my leg. The moment I brushed my fingers over my calf, I knew what had frightened Dahud so much.
Where earlier, there had been skin and muscle, I could find only bone. My flesh seemed to have vanished, turning as hard as my skeleton.
“A dark spell,” Dahud said. “It has to be some kind of dark spell.”
Clearly, but what kind of dark spell could do something like this? I’d never heard of any enchantment turning people into bone. Stone was fairly common, but never bone.
Then again, if someone could give Thrandur the plague, why couldn’t they curse me with another type of unknown magical affliction?
Where did that leave us? What were we supposed to do?
“I’m taking you to the healing wing for now,” Dahud said. “We’ll see if anyone has any insight on what this might be.”
Even with my leg stiff and half-bone, I could walk on my own, but Dahud insisted on helping me anyway. I agreed because I knew she could handle it. She practically carried me to the infirmary, ignoring the fact that
everyone would see how strong she was.
In the end, it didn’t matter, because as soon as we got there, we found chaos. Malgven was outside Thrandur’s healing room. At one point while we’d been distracted by my unexpected injury, she’d come here, probably intending to follow Dahud’s commands. But whatever had happened since then must’ve been bad, because she was bruised and ruffled. “Dahud. Thank the gods you’re here.”
Uh-oh. She’d just started speaking, and I already knew I wouldn’t like what she had to say. People seemed to thank the gods a lot when Dahud showed up to fix their problems. “What now?” my wife asked. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s Hartmut! He’s gone mad. The healer attempted to touch Theuderic. He only wanted to make Theuderic more comfortable, to tend to his wounds, like you instructed him to. But for some reason, Hartmut believed the man was trying to harm Theuderic.”
She swallowed and I realized she was genuinely afraid of what she’d seen. “He… He tried to rip the healer apart. With his bare hands. He would’ve undoubtedly killed the man if I hadn’t managed to immobilize him long enough for all of us to get out of the room.”
I stared at her in disbelief. Halvar had mentioned many times before that he was dangerous. I’d seen him shift into his wolf form to carry a message to Dahud. Earlier, he’d fought Thrandur and he’d been affected by his inner beast.
But when we’d come back, he’d been in control and completely focused on making sure Thrandur had the best of care. What could’ve gone wrong?
Dahud narrowed her eyes at her mother. “He wouldn’t have attacked the healer if there hadn’t been anything suspicious going on. Did you break your promise already, Mother?”
“No, Dahud, of course not. In any case, Theuderic seemed better when I caught a glimpse of him. Hartmut just suddenly lost his mind.”
A dark suspicion niggled at the back of my consciousness. Dahud must’ve realized the same thing I had, because she said, “Help Mathias to a different room. I’ll check up on Hartmut and Theuderic.”
“Dahud, no!” her mother cried. “It’s much too risky, even for you.”
“I’ll be fine,” Dahud said, waving her hand dismissively. “They’d never hurt me.”
In my heart, I wanted to protest too. But at the same time, I knew we couldn’t just let this go. We had to find out what had happened to Halvar. With Thrandur ill, the best person to do that was Dahud.
I wanted to go with her, but in my state, I’d only hinder her. When the healers zeroed in on me and ushered me into another room, I accepted their care.
They gasped over the state of my leg, but I ignored them. Magic had caused this illness. The only thing that could cure it was magic. My aunt would undoubtedly try to help me. But she had warned me to not come to Ys. She’d told me dark magic could hurt me. This time, she might not be able to help me again.
Song of the Damned
Dahud
A few weeks ago, when my husbands and I hadn’t known one another very well, Halvar had sneaked into my bedchambers by using his lupine form. At the time, I’d been fascinated by his skill. But I’d also realized it came at a dire cost, and not just because the transformation wasn’t easy on his body.
A human mind was very different from the mind of a wolf and the shift often caused Halvar to lose himself to the bloodlust of the beast.
I’d never seen it happen, but I’d caught glimpses of it when we’d been together in bed. I’d found it arousing. I’d reveled in the savagery hidden beneath the surface of Halvar’s human mask. I didn’t enjoy it as much today.
When I stepped into Thrandur’s healing room, I wasn’t surprised to find Halvar in his wolf form. He was curled against Thrandur’s side, whining softly and nudging him with his snout.
Thrandur seemed a little out of it, but he had enough strength to occasionally lift his hand and pet Halvar’s fur. “It’s all right,” he said. “We’re going to be all right.”
He didn’t sound like he believed it. Halvar whined again, even louder than before. He must’ve sensed me, because he raised his head and looked straight at me.
His eyes looked just like they always did and much to my relief, I saw recognition in their depths. He jerked slightly, as if he was flinching. Was he afraid of me? Why?
I might not believe things were as wonderful as Thrandur was trying to make them seem, but I couldn’t let Halvar panic either. “Hello, Halvar,” I said calmly. “Can you tell me what happened here?”
Halvar licked his snout and paws, then did the same for Thrandur’s hands. I realized he was trying to clean off lingering traces of blood, wiping the evidence of what he’d done. It was a little too late for that, but it was cute, in a weird way.
“I’m not mad. If someone attacked Thrandur, you did the right thing in fighting them off.”
“I… I don’t think that’s what happened,” Thrandur replied in Halvar’s stead. “Come sit with us.”
I did, although I kept my distance from both of them. I’d have liked to touch them, but I hadn’t forgotten the earlier incident, when the strange magic had reacted so weirdly to mine. I didn’t want to accidentally make things worse.
“Can you shift for me?” I asked Halvar.
Halvar covered his face with his paw. Under different circumstances, it would’ve been funny. But Thrandur coughed, more blood escaping his lips, and any amusement I might’ve felt about the situation vanished. “I don’t think he can, right now,” he told me. “There’s… There’s something very wrong here.”
That was putting it lightly. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t use my magic, since it was unstable and maybe part of why we were in this mess to begin with. Regular healers hadn’t helped much. On the other hand, Mathias’s amulet seemed to work. Was that why he’d been hit so suddenly by his affliction? He’d left it with Thrandur earlier. Maybe that was why he’d gotten sick now and not before.
I didn’t think I’d ever felt so helpless in my life. I had so much power, but it was all for nothing.
What did my mother do when she didn’t turn to her magic? I tried to remember, but I could not. I’d never paid much attention to things that weren’t practical.
“Dahud?” Thrandur asked, snapping me out of my trance. “Would you sing us a song?”
“A song?” I repeated. “I don’t know any songs.”
“None at all?” Thrandur chuckled weakly. “Come now. I’m sure that’s not true.”
It was. I didn’t much care for music. My tastes hadn’t changed since I’d had that epiphany about my lack of emotions at age ten. I still found such activities a trivial waste of time. Whenever my parents summoned entertainers, I ignored them.
But thinking back, I could recall one song that had stuck with me. I’d heard it when I’d been a baby. It was a lullaby, something my mother had repeatedly sung to me before it had become obvious it had no effect.
I hadn’t liked it per se, but just the fact that she’d sung it so many times had imprinted it in my head. And so, I opened my mouth and started to sing.
“Star in the sky,
Sweet as you fall,
Don’t ever cry,
I’m here. I’ll hold you.”
It was a song written by a mother for her child, but somehow, it fit us too. It wasn’t a magical spell, but it worked when nothing else did.
The tension in the room faded. Thrandur continued to pet Halvar’s fur as I sang. Mathias’s pendant glowed against his chest as if it had a life of its own.
As I finished the last stanza of the song, Halvar shifted back into his humanoid form. “That was a lovely song, Dahud,” he said.
His voice sounded rough, a little raspy, still carrying the traces of the animal he’d been. I could see glimpses of his sharp fangs and his fingernails were claw-like. But he was himself once again and recovering more and more with every second that passed.
“Thank you,” I answered, not knowing what else to say. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.
” He stared at his hands and the claws finally vanished altogether. “I’m pretty sure your healer won’t be. I think I might have torn his throat out.”
“You didn’t,” Thrandur told him. “The queen stopped you before you could do too much damage.”
“Well, I’m sure I can fix that.” Halvar’s eyes glinted with something savage and he curled his lip in a feral snarl. “He tried to attack you. I’ll make him pay.”
Thrandur grabbed Halvar’s arm, keeping him from moving away. “He didn’t. Halvar, you need to think. You need to clear your head and stay calm.”
“Thrandur is right. This might be another effect of the dark magic. Mathias has been showing symptoms too.”
My comment drove away some of the insanity in Halvar’s eyes. “What? But… He was fine earlier.”
“So were you and now here we are.”
If what I’d heard so far was true, Halvar was out of control. Maybe the dark magic was finally lashing out against me for what I’d done to my parents. Either way, it was obvious that my husbands were paying the price for having helped me.
This was completely unacceptable.
“I will not allow this,” I said between gritted teeth. “I’ll find out who is responsible for your illness, and I’ll heal you. No matter what.”
“And what do we do in the meantime?” Halvar asked. “They’ll try to attack us. I know it. It’s not safe here.”
The more he spoke, the sharper his words became. The song had only had a temporary effect on him. It wouldn’t hold for long.
“I’ll make arrangements for us to travel to my summer residence,” I answered. “Don’t worry, Halvar. No one is going to harm you, not on my watch.”
It was a lie, since they’d already gotten hurt, and we were two days into our marriage. Halvar didn’t call me out on it. Instead, he smiled and nodded. “I believe you, Dahud. Can you sing to us again?”
Feeling like my heart was breaking, I obeyed. I sang the sole lullaby I knew at least ten times before Thrandur and Halvar fell asleep.
