A hot bath, meat for supper, and then the attentions of her primal lover—what more could a girl ask for?
It felt amazing to be clean, and I’d managed to find some fresh clothes, slightly too big, but a tuck here and cinch there and I had a pair of trousers and a baggy tunic to my name. The socks went up to my knees, but that was all right. Tucking my damp hair behind my ears, I tugged on my boots. It was probably early afternoon now, but here, in this mountain retreat, it felt as if it was much later.
There was no telling how much longer the hunting party would be gone, and sitting around by myself in the room was getting boring. Maybe I could find a book, or someone to converse with. The bone dagger winked at me from the mattress. Grendel had mentioned the lack of female attention in this place, and even though Fenn and his men didn’t seem like the type to force themselves on a woman, I’d feel better with it tucked into my belt.
The corridor outside the room was lit with low crystal light, and I headed back the way Grendel had led us. It took me onto the balcony that led to the stairs, but for some reason, my feet took me all the way across, past the stairwell and into the opposite wing of the keep.
The lights were even dimmer here, and then the sound of tinkling music drifted toward me. A piano? I followed the sound past several closed doors and came to a standstill by an ajar one.
The music ebbed and swelled and flowed, the chords familiar, the melody a song I may have once known but misplaced the words to. My hand was on the door frame, torn between walking in and leaving. The melody decided for me, wrapping around me and filling my mind until there was no other option but pushing the door open and walking deep into the music. My fingers trembled as they grazed the door and then I was doing just that. Fenn sat at a baby piano, his back to me. His hands flew across the keys as the song reached its climax, and as the final note echoed around the room, the breath I’d been holding exploded from my lips.
Fenn’s shoulders tensed.
“What can I do for you, Wynter?”
I walked into the room and around the piano to face him. His hair was open, falling in waves past his shoulders. It framed his face, softening his cut-glass features.
“What was that song?”
He inhaled and exhaled sharply. “I don’t know. I discovered this piano after I woke with no memory, and it wasn’t long after that I discovered I could play it, but this is the only song that comes to mind every time I put fingers to keys.”
“A memory?”
He nodded. “I believe so. I’m sorry if the noise disturbed you.”
Disturbed? “Goodness, no. It’s beautiful.”
He looked at me then, really looked at me, studying me from beneath his thick, dark lashes. “Your presence prods at my mind also.” His eyes narrowed. “Like a memory out of reach.”
Dagda had intimated that Morrigan and Alaron had been close … Intimately close, and I was born from a sliver of her soul. Could he be picking up on that? His attention was suddenly shrewd.
“Did the winter king … I mean, did I have a relationship with Morrigan?”
I traced a finger across the smooth wood of the instrument. “I think you may have. I’m not sure of the details.”
He ducked his head with a smile. “Well, that would make two of us.” He shuffled over and patted the piano seat. “Would you like to play?”
A soft laugh escaped my lips. “I don’t know how.”
He shrugged. “Neither did I until I placed my hands on the keys.” There was a strange glint in his eyes, almost anticipatory.
I slipped onto the seat beside him, and my shoulder grazed his bicep. He was a tall man, broad-shouldered and powerful. Nowhere near as large in stature as Veles, but there was a sense of power about him, an aura that made him seem larger than he was.
“Place your fingers on the keys, Wynter.”
I obliged, my fingers brushing over the cool ivory keys. A tingle rushed over my mind.
Fenn began to play the chords to the melody, but they were empty, there was something missing, something. And then my fingers began to move across the keys, and the chords were no longer alone, they were finally complete. Shock and exhilaration shot through me, but my hands kept playing as if they’d played a thousand times before, as if I was merely an unnecessary and defunct appendage. Our bodies pressed together side by side, we brought the melody to its crescendo and then sat, fingers poised over the keys, chests heaving.
“I thought you couldn’t play,” he said softly.
“I can’t.”
He turned his head to look down at me. “Do you think Alaron and Morrigan were lovers?”
My throat was suddenly tight because his mouth was too close. “I … I believe they may have been.”
He inhaled and closed his eyes. “I think … I think you may be right.”
He leaned in toward me, and I backed away and scrambled off the seat. “I’m not her. I may be born of her soul, but I’m Wynter.”
His smile was wry. “And I’m Fenn, and yet here we are playing a melody neither one of us consciously recalls.”
The room was suddenly too small for the both of us. “I should go and check on the others, see if Veles is back.” I skirted the piano and headed for the door.
“I look forward to the return of my memories, Wynter.”
The music started up again, and I broke into a jog, eager to get away from its pull, because when I’d played it, I had no longer been in the small room sitting at a baby piano, I’d been in a ballroom seated at a grand piano and laughter had filled the room, not mine but his. Alaron’s.
I made it back to my room, needing a moment to just decompress and gather my wits. This was normal. It was perfectly normal to have a connection, to maybe even remember things … Like how to fight and kill, and how to play the piano. It was normal to burn with violent desires because it was in my soul, the soul that had once been hers. But it was mine now, and there was more to me than the lust for blood and sex. There was compassion and understanding and the desire to protect my loved ones. That was me. That was who I wanted to be. The rest were borrowed traits in a world that wasn’t truly mine, a world that I was navigating simply to protect my mortal world. To protect Finn, to bring him back to me, to go home.
Home.
Veles and the Raven were home too.
I sat on the edge of the bed with my head in my hands. It was all getting too complicated.
There was a soft knock at my door.
I padded across the carpeted floor and pulled it open to find Bertram standing there in his furs.
I gave him a questioning look.
He sighed. “I was wondering if you wanted to get some air?” He jerked his head to the left. “Fenn suggested it may do you good. We can head to the coop and take a breath or two.” He studied his nails as if the whole concept bored him.
But the idea of getting out sounded perfect. “Let me grab my furs.”
Ten minutes later, we were standing on a wide, flat ledge that jutted out over nothing. He’d led me out a door and up a set of stone steps that had led to a tunnel which had brought us out here. The air was fresh but thin, telling me that we were high up.
Bertram strode ahead and stood in the center of the ledge and stretched out his arms. “Now, isn’t that better?”
I leaned against the rock face and closed my eyes. “Yes, much.”
Something brushed my cheek, and I opened my eyes and bit back a yelp because he was right in my face, too close. How had he moved that fast?
“Back up.” I shoved his chest, but he was immovable.
His lips stretched in a smile that was impossibly wide, and my pulse began to hammer in my throat. This was wrong. All wrong. He was all wrong.
I pressed myself back into the rock face. “What … What are you?”
He blinked, and his eyes bled to black. “The question is, what are you?” His hand gripped my throat as his skin bloomed into a network of black veins. His mouth fell open and a new voice ca
me out, the same voice that had spilled from Rayne’s mouth. “I saw you at the winter keep, and here you are. Here you are again with a tale. A true tale, and I need to know. I need to know if I have found you.”
My hand went to my belt, but the bone dagger was gone. Shit, I’d taken it off back in my room and forgotten to put it back on. No bone dagger; fine, I’d have to improvise. I brought my knee up to kick him in the crotch. He jerked his hips out of the way, and then both his hands were on my throat. I pummeled his shoulders with my fists, shoving and clawing, but he was immoveable, and the world started to fade to black.
“Let’s see. Let’s see inside …” Oblivion said.
Darkness bled across my vision, and then I was falling into nothingness to land on hard-packed earth in a circle of light which was surrounded by darkness that pressed to get in.
“Yesss, yesss, I see now. Mmmm.”
The voice was all around me.
“Show yourself.” I stood tall, ignoring the quiver in my belly and clutching onto the heat of my outrage at being duped. “Show yourself, you coward. You hide behind other faces, but where is your face? What is your face.”
“Anything and everything and all.” A figure stepped out of the darkness but hovered on the edge of the light. It was shapeless, mutable, moving and shifting. “But right now, I want to be you.”
A shudder ripped through me and pain gripped my chest.
“The final piece. You are it. You are it. Yess, yesss, all this time and now it makes sense. So much sense.”
The pain was expanding like needles through my veins. No. No, no. It was trying to claim me.
Fight.
Berstuk.
Fight.
I’m trying.
“Who? Who’s there? No. This is my space.”
Berstuk growled. Hold on, Wynter, hold …
Oblivion had pushed him out, ripped him away, and rage rose up to blind me.
“Fuck you.” The power surged forth, and the pain eased as the light surrounding me flared.
Oblivion screamed in fury, but in the next moment it was laughing, a dry cackling sound that sent shiver after shiver over my skin. No, this wasn’t my skin. This wasn’t me. This wasn’t real. I had to wake up. I had to expel it.
“I can see it now,” Oblivion said. “Shimmering, shimmering so bright. Let’s touch it. Let’s touch it together.” My hand came up, index finger out, and the space in front of me began to waver and glow, golden and silver. The wall. The shimmer. No.
“Touch it with me.”
“NO.”
But its grip was too tight, and my finger grazed the shield. The structure pulsed.
Oblivion sighed. “Yesss. More. More.”
This part was real. This part where it attacked the shimmer was real. It was using me, using what was inside me.
“Touch it,” Oblivion demanded.
I had to stop it. The light … It hated the light, and there was light gathered around me, pressing into my skin like a security blanket. I gathered it close.
“No!” I expelled the light outward. It smashed into the dark form in the shadows, and the contact sent a shockwave through me, and then my mind was rushing upward, away from Oblivion, up into the sky, rushing across the winter lands and into a twisted, dark place of decay and death, toward a giant tree that moaned and wept blood and puss. Through its branches, I went down through a gnarled window where a figure was pinned to the wall by black vines and crimson branches. No, not pinned, melded. It was melded, but its head, her head, was free. She raised it now, her navy-blue eyes dull and dying. They widened at the sight of me, and her pale lips twisted in horror.
“No. Not you.” Her words were a solitary whisper.
I reached for her, needing to be close, needing to touch her.
“No. No, don’t. You must go. You have to …” She arched in pain. “Run!”
I was propelled backward. The phantom world blurred past me, and then I was slamming back to the ground. My eyes snapped open, and Bertram’s slack-jawed face filled my vision. His eyes gleamed with life, though, as Oblivion pushed at my mind, trying to get back in. Inky smoke hovered above us. Had that been inside me?
Yes, and it wants to go back in. Don’t let it.
My mind went completely calm, the world completely still, and then my body took over, arms coming up to snap his hold, palm shooting out to slam into his chest and send him flying back. He teetered at the lip of the ledge, and I ducked my head and charged, a scream of rage tearing from my lips. A split second before my hand made contact with him, the veins on his skin retreated, and the darkness left his eyes. His face contorted in shock. He was back, but it was too late; my fists punched his chest, and he was falling.
His fingers snagged my furs as he went over, tugging me off balance, and as his scream was swallowed by the mist, my boot slipped and I was tumbling forward.
I was going to go over the edge.
A shadow fell over me, accompanied by the flap of wings.
My scream turned to a yelp as hands grabbed me and yanked me away from the ledge.
“You do know you can’t fly, Wynter, don’t you? Hmmm?” The Raven’s breath was warm on the side of my face, his arms secure around me.
I spun in his embrace and wrapped my arms around his neck, squeezing him tight. “You saved me. You saved me.”
He hugged me back and stroked my hair. “I felt it, Wynter. I felt it.”
Shouts and exclamations erupted behind us, and then Veles and Fenn were skidding to a halt on the ledge. Veles’s gaze went from me to the Raven and then to the ledge.
My body began to tremble. “It knows who I am. It knows we’re here. We have to go. We have to go now.”
DAGDA
The tower shudders, and outside my window the shimmer ripples as if struck by an unseen force.
“Dagda, did you feel that?” Roxy runs into the room.
“Yes. I felt it.”
“What is it? What does it mean?”
My heart sinks as I watch the slender cracks form in the soul shield and radiate outward, creeping over the barrier that seals in the threat.
“Dagda, what does it mean?” Roxy asks again.
“It means I may have made a grievous error. It means I may have been wrong.”
FINN
Wynter places her famous meatloaf on the table.
I inhale in appreciation. “It smells delicious.”
“Thank you.”
Meatloaf … Why aren’t I as excited about meatloaf as usual?
Déjà vu assaults me, and Wynter smiles; she always smiles and takes her seat opposite me, but this time she freezes in place, and her body ripples.
“Wynter?” I reach for her, but then the room ripples and she vanishes.
I push back my chair and stand to stare at the spot where Wynter was a moment ago, but something in the back of my mind tells me this is how it is meant to be. That Wynter was never here. That here isn’t really here.
Memories wriggle like worms in the back of my mind, pushing their way forward. And then cracks begin to form on the walls, golden and silver cracks that radiate outward.
Something opens up in my mind, and then memories flood me. The riders, the dark forest, and the man with the horns. These things are real, but this … This is a dream.
Wynter … Wynter is out there, and I need to get to her. I need to wake up.
Light lances into the room and spears me with heat, and the dream world melts away.
Chapter Twenty-One
Bertram was gone. We didn’t find his body; we didn’t find any remains. After what had happened, staying at the keep was out of the question. Fenn and Grendel said goodbye to their men, and the keep was locked up tight, and then we were diving out into winter’s embrace.
Less than thirty minutes, that’s all it took to gather provisions and abandon the keep. Thirty minutes to leave it all behind. How quickly a life could be abandoned if it meant survival.
Veles and the Rav
en trudged on either side of me, bracketing me in their warmth and security, and Berstuk hummed in my mind, tethering me, because I’d faced the beast. I’d looked into its eyes, and it had crawled into my mind. We’d connected, and I’d seen the truth. I’d seen her. Morrigan. And somehow, some way, she was still alive.
So, what did that make me?
What in the hell did that make me?
To be continued…
Wynter’s journey continues in Fate’s Destiny, Summer 2019.
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Other books by Debbie Cassidy
The Gatekeeper Chronicles
Coauthored with Jasmine Walt
Marked by Sin
Hunted by Sin
Claimed by Sin
The Witch Blood Chronicles
(Spin-off to the Gatekeeper Chronicles)
Binding Magick
Defying Magick
Embracing Magick
Unleashing Magick
The Fearless Destiny Series
Beyond Everlight
Into Evernight
Under Twilight
The Chronicles of Midnight
Protector of Midnight
Champion of Midnight
Secrets of Midnight
Shades of Midnight
Savior of Midnight
Chronicles of Arcana
City of Demons
City of the Lost
City of the Everdark
City of War
For the Blood
For the Blood
For the Power
For the Reign
Heart of Darkness
Captive of Darkness
Bane of Winter Page 13
