A Crown of Echoes

by Brindi Quinn

  I imagined how it would have gone in olden times. Windley meeting a maiden in the field and tempting her away into the woods, wooing her with his touch until she gave him her life. If he was a predator, he was a conniving one, sly and unassuming. It was as though he was built to be disarming.

  I knew Windley would never harm me. But maybe that was what I had been conditioned to think. Acknowledging that didn’t make me afraid, though; rather, it set my blood alive, as though I was lucky to have been chosen as his mark. As though being consumed wouldn’t be so bad.

  “Is everything going on in my head your influence?” I hummed.

  “Some of it, I’m sure,” he said, eyes twinkling with dark intent. “Is my hair still violet?”

  I nodded because it was getting harder to speak with waves of tingles passing from his thumb trailing my arm and dispersing through the rest of my blood, muscle, sinew.

  “What color would you like it to be?” he said.

  It was challenging to release even a single word. “Scarlet?” I whispered.

  “Like the wood?” He chuckled softly. “You’re so predictable.”

  I wasn’t capable of comeback, for my blood was coursing like the Crag’s raging sea. My breath was drawing through me like wind through autumn leaves. My chest was filling with warmth that reminded me of everything I loved.

  My knees began to buckle.

  Windley halted. “Too much?”

  “Don’t stop.” I took command of his gaze and refused to release it. My free hand on his shoulder found its way to the side of his warm neck. So his skin was pricked too, same as mine. I pulled him closer over me.

  It was like last time, where I couldn’t resist kneading through his hair. Unlike last time, though, Windley had an adverse reaction.

  With wide eyes, he jerked, and the euphoric feelings abruptly stopped. Like a sudden eclipse, all of the warmth, the calm, the pleasure drained from me, leaving me an empty husk of what I once was. My thudding heart skipped, shadowed by the void of Windley’s influence being sharply pulled.

  “What’s wrong?” I said.

  He swallowed. “You merely startled me. Are you okay?”

  No, being pulled out of it that brusquely was jarring. “I’m… hollow.”

  “Damn it. That’s my fault. Here—” He resumed caressing my skin with the utmost gentleness. “Just, tell me if you want to stop, okay?”

  “Don’t stop.”

  Again, I saw him swallow, this time more so a gulp. “This might be too much for me, lion queen,” he said. His expression was strained, his posture tight. There was a lion in our midst, and it wasn’t me.

  “It’s peculiar,” I said, “like I want you to consume me or something.”

  “Don’t… say things like that.”

  Yet he kept going, extracting a little more of my lifeforce with each pass. I, in turn, massaged the hair at the back of his neck, drinking him in, inviting him closer.

  “I’m going to change it now,” he said, forcing composure. “You may feel a momentary dulling.”

  I didn’t know what he meant until I experienced it. The next time he drew his fingers along my arm, the skin turned numb in their wake. “Did it work?” He glanced upward. In the time it took for that one numbing pass, Windley’s hair had changed from dark purple to scarlet. It suited him to an extent that I was unable to answer.

  “I take your expression to mean yes,” he said, pleased with himself.

  There was something about the scarlet on him. I thought I had chosen that color on impulse, but maybe it was something more. Maybe those were his powers at play. Maybe it was all for the sake of luring me away.

  “I would like to show you something else. Can you manage? You aren’t feeling weak, are you?”

  Weak? No. I felt many things and weak was not one of them.

  “I won’t be able to do it on touch alone,” he said. “I need a more direct line. You may find it inappropriate.” He leaned in close so that his lips were nearly touching my ear. “Tell me to stop at any time. Nod to show you understand.”

  I mustered my strength to give him the nod he requested. Satisfied, he lowered himself into a knight’s kneel, taking my wrist with him. I wasn’t Windley’s queen, so he had never knelt for me before. My royal blood liked it. My stomach dropped, moved by a pose of reverence I was undeserving of.

  Windley glanced to the tent to ensure no movement within before bringing my hand near to his mouth so that I could feel his breath.

  The next moment was one that changed everything.

  Shivers burst within me starting at my chest and shooting outwards in all directions and down my arms and back, as one by one, Windley kissed my fingertips, leaving each icy cold as he stole the life from them.

  He was right. It was inappropriate.

  But there was no piece of me, not even the noblest parts, that wanted him to stop.

  “Everyone has a color, Merrin,” he said as he brushed his lips over my nails. “One that entraps them most. What is your color?”

  “Scarlet?” I said again, barely a word, more like air pushed out from my throat.

  “Wrong.” He blinked, and when his eyes opened, they were the most beautiful green eyes I had ever seen, vast and hued and gleaming like emeralds.”

  Unlike Windley’s ever changing hair, his eye color had always been black.

  “I dull them to keep from being too enticing,” he said, kissing my fingertips once more, though he had already performed the spell. “If I didn’t, I’d have people following me around everywhere we went.”

  I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move. I could only look into his eyes that held the whole world within them. By the light of the fire, Windley had become the most striking person I had ever laid eyes on.

  “You may be tired tomorrow,” he mused, lips yet trailing my fingertips. “I took more than I needed. I couldn’t help myself.” Unabashed, he subjected me to the full weight of his stare, more dark, more dangerous than any I could ever give, and then he said it:

  “I’ve wondered what you taste like for so damn long. You taste better than I ever could have imagined… my queen.”

  He shouldn’t be calling me that. Beau was his queen.

  And I had a problem.

  I wasn’t supposed to feel this way.

  Chapter 16

  The Dreadful Wither

  Under the aurora of morning, I kept close to Ruckus as we made our way through the second half of the Emerald Wood. Windley was wrong. I didn’t feel tired at all. I did feel something, though.

  My queen.

  My. Queen.

  I was stuck in my head, thinking about the way Windley had said those words, not like a title but an endearment. The way he had numbed my fingertips with his lips. The feel of his breath against my skin. Those striking emerald eyes emoting a myriad of desires.

  After, I had been unable to walk on my own, lost to trance, because he was a predator and I was his prey, and in olden times, that was when he would have devoured me. But he hadn’t. He had brought me to bed and stood watch while I slept—a proper guard for a queen.

  The parts of him were at odds. So was I.

  Part of me desired to walk alongside him, playing the way we always had. Part of me wanted to tell him that I was a queen and worth more than some devil’s lunch. And part of me wished to return to last night and let him finish the job.

  And I was very quickly coming to terms with the fact that that night under the willow, when he had held me and uttered similar words, it hadn’t been a dream at all.

  Yeah, I was pretty messy. I guess you could call it my ‘finding myself’ phase.

  During the night, Windley’s eyes had returned to normal. I had already made the mistake of catching them twice, and both times I had swiveled away rapidly, unsure what to say and afraid to see what he was thinking.

  I couldn’t speak for Ruckus, but I was quite content to make the stag my shield as we kept together toward the back of the group. Animals we
re such a comfort. Their souls were quiet and honest, and they listened even when you had nothing to say.

  Rafe and his stag were keeping a distance too, awkward over what I had seen and passed on to Windley. At least my interaction with the Spirite had done as intended, cleansing my palate of the magician. Compared to what had happened with Windley, Rafe was nothing—a spider bite next to a spear’s impalement.

  “You’re quiet today, My Queen. Did something happen?” Leave it to Albie to pick up on my inner distress. To make matters worse, he thought it funny to add, “The hounds haven’t been misbehaving, have they?”

  Both Rafe and Windley stiffened.

  “Just thinking about, Beau,” I lied—though it wasn’t a full lie; she was simply only a portion of what I was thinking about. “It would be nice to get another message. Maybe then we could gauge how far away she is,” I said.

  “Don’t fret, My Queen. The Clearing’s cavalry is sure to be surveying the wilds beyond the forest by now. With any luck, we’ll encounter one of their scouts and be able to join with them before long.”

  True. The cavalry was out there, riding steadfast, drawing closer to Beau with each dawning sun. That was what I should be focusing on.

  Beau.

  Beau would know what to do. Beau had experience breaking that forbidden seal. I needed her. I ached for her, as if she had taken my own heart with her.

  We continued on in silence through the thickening forest, passing stream and rock and bramble bush. Well, it may have been silence to everyone else, but to me, silent no longer meant silence. Distant rumbling served as a reminder of the things lurking in the shadows, terrible many-armed things that could take me at any moment.

  It was thoughts like those that made me want to give it all up and run to Windley.

  The forest was nippy, the air alive with bouts of motion. Windley’s scarlet hair shifted past his point-tipped ears and teased at his neck, aroused by the morning wind. Rafe left a frosty trail behind him as he walked. Ruckus shook his head whenever the breeze disrupted his pelt.

  Albie told us to listen out for waterfalls. According to Delagos, the southern half of the forest was home to glistening pools of water suitable for bathing in and making camp alongside. But though I listened, I could only hear otherworldly clamor, pushing to be acknowledged.

  Eventually, the stags picked up on something. They turned their noses to the east, tails pricked and ears alert.

  “What is it, Ruck?” I held his reins as he wriggled to get around me. “A chipper?”

  “They want to go that way,” Windley said, wrestling to keep his own from venturing. “What’s that way?”

  “According to the map, nothing,” said Albie. Even his stag, who was considerably better behaved than the rest, was keenly looking in the same direction as the others and stomping its hooves. “It’s worth checking,” said Albie. “They might smell water.”

  Yonder, the greenery thickened, rising up to our knees and waists. I was grateful to have packed extra britches. A gown never would have survived. I put my attention into Ruckus, whispering to him and patting his back, though I was astutely aware of Windley’s position relative to mine.

  Was he looking at me?

  It felt like he was looking at me.

  But maybe that was all in my head. Maybe his power lingered in me. I kept my eyes straight.

  After several minutes, we reached a glade, a perfect circle carved out from the forest, wherein nothing grew despite unshrouded light from the sun. Inside, the undergrowth was black and decayed, and the remains of trees that had died excruciating deaths reached from the ground, dry and gnarled. The air tasted different too, of staleness and char.

  “Don’t go in there, Ruck.” I held him back by the reins. “It’s a curse if I’ve ever seen one.”

  I didn’t mean it for real. That was what I said whenever seeing an ominous patch of violet flowers or a perfectly split tree.

  Albie chucked. “I doubt that, My Queen. Maybe lightning struck.”

  Whatever it was, it didn’t belong with the rest of the emerald landscape.

  “Not lightening.” Rafe crouched. “The soil is different here.”

  “See?” I said. “A curse.”

  I thought it might draw input from Windley, but he looked to be concentrating hard on the something. With chin in hand, he was scanning the blackened patch. Maybe this place was familiar to him? When he caught me studying him, he offered a small grin.

  Maybe I should grin back. That felt the most natural. Maybe if I grinned back, we could go back to the way things had always been, before all of that tasting one another business.

  But I wouldn’t get the chance.

  “Ruckus? Whoa! Ruck!” By far, my stag was most unruly, so it was my stag that first broke free and sprang into the cursed circle, though I scolded him not to. Damned stag. Albie was right, he was spoiled.

  I leapt after him, placing my foot into the glade’s dead brush at the exact moment Windley shouted:

  “Merrin, DON’T!”

  Too late.

  My foot that touched the ground began to darken with sludge hidden below the decayed brushwood, starting at the toe and creeping up my leg, and at the same time, I saw one of the dead trees begin to move, rearing up out of the ground and revealing that it wasn’t a tree at all, but rather the antler of a beast that had been lying concealed in the dead undergrowth.

  It looked like a wind stag, only one larger than any stag in the queendoms, with a pelt black as night and with eyes red as blood. The moment Ruck saw it, he skidded to a halt, turning tail and bounding away from the area, but I was stuck, my foot coated in creeping muck from the cursed soil.

  “Shit.” I heard Rafe swear and the sound of his frosty sword becoming unsheathed, but I was dead in my tracks, like the dead of the glade, in fear of the creature I had accidentally awoken. The creature that was now huffing toward me.

  Time unwound as I stared death in the face and was devoid of mind. It was galloping, galloping, galloping…

  Until time re-wound and an arm hooked around my waist. “It’s a fucking blood stag!” Windley shouted. “RUN!” He heaved me back into the green and pushed at the back of my shoulders, prompting me into motion.

  “That’s a blood stag?!” said Albie. Even he had drawn his weapon, a sword called Faylebane that had seen much action in its time.

  “I thought they weren’t real!” I cried. Mother Poppy had a nightmarish tale or two featuring the monsters who had supposedly escaped from hell and feasted on the blood of virgins to keep their eyes gleaming red.

  It seemed the part about virgins was bogus, for the blood stag charged directly toward Rafe. Rafe retaliated with a neat spin of his sword, but instead of making impact, the sword simply passed through the fiend, like cutting through smoke, throwing Rafe off balance. “Wait, it isn’t solid,” said Rafe, lowering his weapon.

  “Don’t let down your guard!” Windley shouted.

  Good advice but a moment delayed. Forming again into solid shape, the beast rammed Rafe, making very real impact, and sending the magician flying backward into the rough bark of a nearby tree.

  “Get the Queen out of here!” Windley pushed me at Albie. “These things are hard as shit to kill!”

  Albie took my wrist and yanked me after him but not before I saw Windley throw himself into the glade, where his legs began to darken from the soil. “Yoohoo! Over here!” he diverted the blood stag’s attention with hatchets spinning.

  “Wait, Albie! Windley’s acting as bait!”

  “As he should!” Albie shouted, tearing me through the waist-high brush while I craned my neck to see what we were leaving behind.

  Windley slashed with one hatchet, making the stag flicker to shadow, and the moment the monster re-formed, Windley slashed it with the other.

  “He got a hit!” I yelped, planting my feet to stop Albie. But the triumph was short-lived. For I watched in horror as a second tree began to rise from the glade’s decay. “T
here’s another one!”

  And the first wasn’t much fazed by Windley’s weapon. By this time, Rafe had recovered himself and was throwing slashes of ice enchants with his blade. These seemed to be slightly more effective against the creatures, making impact even when in shadow form. With both stags’ attention on Rafe, Windley sprinted around the glade to the backside of them, waiting for a moment to strike. He fought with a taunting expression, mouth half-cocked and eyes full of devilish delight. Rafe, on the other hand, was staring them down, eyes lit with Luna’s light, though the moon was far from sight.

  “Come, My Queen!” Albie was stern with me.

  “They should run too!” I said.

  Albie shook his head. “Those creatures crave blood. Walking into their dominion means awakening their scent. They won’t leave us. It’s either kill them or give them what they want.” He looked away, firm, but not before I saw the hint of sadness lining the corners of his wrinkled eyes.

  He had no faith that Rafe and Windley would outlive this battle. He meant for them to sacrifice themselves for our escape!

  “Albie, no,” I said, equally stern. “There must be a way to outwit them!”

  “Aye, but I’ll ne’er allow you to stay and try.” He grabbed me around the middle and hoisted me over his shoulder. “Queens aren’t meant to fight.”

  Queens weren’t meant to fight?

  You had to be fucking kidding me.

  Apologies, captive ones, I forget my civilities when I’m irate.

  “If I wasn’t willing to fight, what kind of queen would I be, Albie?” I struggled to get out of his grasp, but the knight was strong for his age and just as fearsome as ever.

  “Enough, Queen Merrin! You have no plan and a queendom to think of!”

  A good queen is not she who sends others to their deaths. A good queen is she who uses her power even when it seems like she has none.

  Luckily, I may have acquired a smidgen of power in recent days, and although the oracle was meant to parade in gowns and grace the wood with her presence, I would distort that power for my own means, if it meant I could join the fight.