Stranger

by Zoë Archer

  “And I take what I say very seriously, as well.” He released his hold on her arms. An echo of warmth remained, but he held himself at a remove. He bowed to her—actually bowed—and turned away to resume their journey.

  Oh, hell, now he’d retreated behind genteel politeness, his spine perfectly straight, his demeanor irreproachable and unreachable.

  “Damn it.” She grabbed his arm before he could move away. She pulled him around to face her, though she suspected he allowed her to turn him. He was bigger than her, and stronger, so very strong. “I’m trying to say that I—”

  A whistling overhead caused them both to look up. Then spring apart. A thick, pointed icicle slammed into the ground, narrowly missing them. Sprawled on her back, Gemma raised herself up on her elbows to stare at the icicle—a lance of ice as long as her outstretched arms, sharper than an iron spike. Catullus, crouched on the other side, also gaped. If either she or Catullus had been a little bit slower, they would’ve been impaled.

  They looked at each other, shock widening their eyes, before glancing up again. Branches stretched overhead, only instead of leaves hanging from the boughs, now wicked spears of ice hung down and shuddered in the wind. All of the trees surrounding them were suddenly encrusted with rime, their bark hidden behind coatings of frost. Moments earlier, the trees appeared at the height of summer abundance. Now harpoonlike icicles shivered, ready to drop down and skewer Gemma and Catullus.

  Another hard gust of wind shook the trees. The icicles shook ominously, rattling like bones. Gemma scrambled to her feet as Catullus appeared beside her, gripping her wrist and helping her to stand. Neither spoke. There was only time to flee. They ran, more shrill whistling sounding overhead.

  Icicles rained down all around them, shrieking through the air before ramming into the ground. Gemma and Catullus ran serpentine as heavy, sharp spears of ice plunged down, blocking any direct path. The atmosphere chilled. Everywhere around them became a forest of ice, blue and white and slick. She felt the frigid air as icicles continued to fall from the branches, barely missing her and Catullus.

  “What kind of Otherworld magic is this?” she shouted above the din.

  “Bryn!” Catullus bellowed.

  The pixie appeared beside them, fluttering to dodge shards of ice.

  “You led us into a goddamned ice forest,” Catullus growled.

  Bryn shook his head. “’Tisn’t the way of this place. There are other woods, eternally winter, but not here! I do not know why—” He darted to one side as an ice barb nearly took off one of his wings.

  Gemma chanced a look over her shoulder, seeking answers. “There,” she said grimly.

  Following her lead, Catullus also glanced behind him. “Son of a buggering bitch.”

  A group of men pursued. They all held firearms, but one gestured intricate patterns in the air, gelid blue light forming between his hands whilst he chanted. None of the icicles were falling around the men, and Gemma realized that the man wielding the magic controlled where and when the ice dropped. She and Catullus were the targets.

  Gemma recognized the men as the Heirs that had shot at them just before jumping into the well. Clearly, they’d followed, though she had no idea how the Heirs had opened the portal. Likely using some of their stolen magic.

  A loud bang punctuated the falling icicles, followed by another and another. Ice exploded around Gemma and Catullus.

  “Goddamn it,” Catullus growled. “They’re shooting at us. Can’t stop to return fire. We’ll be skewered before we fire a single round.” A spear of ice plowed into the ground inches away, punctuating his words.

  “Those bastards won’t give up,” she muttered. She glanced at a skittish Bryn. “Do something!”

  “Such as what?” the pixie shrieked.

  “You say you know everyone in this sodding forest.” Catullus glared at Bryn. “Call them.”

  “Who?” Bryn cried.

  “Anyone,” snapped Gemma.

  The pixie looked momentarily mystified; then epiphany lit his tiny face. He grinned, and suddenly winked out like an extinguished lamp.

  “Little deserter,” she muttered. But she couldn’t blame Bryn. If she had the power to simply vanish herself and Catullus out of the path of danger, she’d do it without a please and thank you.

  Catullus kept his steel grip on her wrist, and when a particularly large icicle plummeted down, he threw himself at Gemma. She felt herself pushed aside moments before the icicle would have gutted her. She and Catullus tumbled on the ground until he stopped their roll, blocking her with his body. His arms came up to cradle her to him as smaller spikes of ice clattered down. They bounced off his shoulders and back. She felt the hiss of his indrawn breath and knew that some of the spikes had broken through his heavy coat, wounding him.

  He’d tear himself to tatters to protect her.

  Shoving at his shoulders, Gemma pushed him back and leapt to her feet. She hauled him up with her, staggering a little at his weight, and pulled at him to keep running. Something wet gleamed in spots on his coat. His eyes glinted. He fought a grimace of pain, but did not slow in his step. They ducked and dodged. Bullets and ice, everywhere they turned.

  She grit her teeth, moving onward, one arm wrapped around Catullus. They hadn’t even reached the dangers of the Night Forest yet! And they might not reach it, not without some kind of help.

  Yells of outraged shock sounded behind them. Gemma threw another fast glance over her shoulder. A tiny smile inched up the corners of her mouth.

  Heirs scattered beneath an onslaught of wickedly sharp icicles. Huge spears of ice broke from their boughs, hurtling to earth and sending the pursuers running for cover.

  “I thought you controlled the bloody ice!” one Heir shouted.

  “This isn’t me,” yelped the magic-wielding Heir. He frantically waved his hands. “I can’t make it stop!”

  The other Heir’s angry retort was lost beneath the crash of more falling ice. Thoughts of pursuit vanished as Heirs sought only to save their hides from impaling.

  A strange quiet, though, descended where Catullus and Gemma continued to run. She glanced around. “It’s stopped.”

  Catullus, jaw tight, also took stock. Though ice, and icicles, still covered the surrounding trees, none of it was falling down around Gemma and Catullus. The ice cast an eerie hush around them, punctuated by the distant sounds of crashing icicles and cursing Heirs.

  Bryn winked back into existence. He hovered in front of Gemma and Catullus, wearing a smug grin. “This way.”

  They followed the pixie for some time, until they reached a secluded dell. Satisfied that they were safe, everyone stopped to catch their breath.

  “The ice falling on the Heirs was your doing?” Gemma asked.

  “Me, and my friends,” the pixie answered. Catullus frowned. “Don’t see anybody.” “All around us.” Bryn waved his minuscule hands. “The trees,” said Gemma.

  Again, the pixie looked pleased with himself. “Everything is alive in Otherworld.” He sent a scornful sneer back toward where the Heirs were presumably shielding themselves from the ice storm. “Their mage thinks he controls magic, but not here. Feeble little mortal.” The idea of a creature as tiny as a pixie calling a human man “little” seemed ridiculous, but it only showed how appearances belied truth in this contrary, magic-imbued world.

  “Thank you,” said Catullus.

  Bryn looked at Catullus sharply, hearing the note of suppressed pain in his voice. He fluttered around to inspect Catullus’s injuries and made a sound of displeasure. Gemma made an even louder sound when she finally got a good look at the damage, peeling away the coat and jacket to reveal Catullus’s bloodstained waistcoat. Several wounds dotted his back in a red constellation.

  “Goddamn it, Catullus.” Anger at the Heirs heated her face. She hoped those bastards were all skewered like suckling pigs. “We have to bind these wounds.”

  “’Sfine,” but the slur in his words revealed that it wasn’t fin
e. “No time for doctoring. Have to get to the Night Forest whilst the Heirs are distracted.” He shrugged on his jacket and coat, sucking in his breath at the painful movement.

  A hurried glance showed that the Heirs still fought to avoid the falling icicles, but the men hadn’t stopped their advance. The closer the Heirs got, the greater likelihood that they’d start shooting again, and bring the falling ice spears—and the possibility that Gemma and Catullus would be impaled by the icicles—with them.

  Catullus was right. He and Gemma did have to keep moving. And it infuriated her. She wanted to tend to him, care for him as he had protected her.

  “Give me your flask,” said Bryn.

  “It’s empty,” Gemma bit out. She didn’t have patience for the pixie’s fondness for spirits. “You drank everything.”

  “Give it to me.”

  Muttering about tippling faeries, Gemma pulled the flask from one of Catullus’s pockets. She handed it to Bryn, and felt an uncharitable glee when the pixie staggered under its weight. Bryn held the flask in his arms, shutting his eyes. He didn’t attempt to take a drink. After a moment, he opened his eyes. “Doff your waistcoat and shirt.”

  Gemma hurried to help Catullus remove the garments. Under normal circumstances, she would have appreciated the sight of Catullus’s bare torso, the planes and ridges of muscle shifting as he moved, but all she could see were the wounds scattered across his flesh. Each had a depth of about half an inch, and dark blood pooled and ran down the length of Catullus’s back. She ground her teeth together to keep from crying out at the sight.

  Though the injuries weren’t of themselves life-threatening, they had to hurt like the devil, and the possibility of infection loomed, especially so far from mortal civilization and medicine.

  Bryn offered the flask to Gemma.

  She opened the flask and was surprised to find liquid inside. She sniffed it, frowning. “What is this?” Worry tightened her voice.

  “Something he needs,” came the answer.

  “Neither of us can eat or drink anything in Otherworld,” she objected.

  “Not to drink,” corrected Bryn. “Pour this over his wounds.”

  Still, she hesitated. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “It’s all right, Gemma,” Catullus said.

  Drawing a deep breath, Gemma poured the liquid green contents of the flask across Catullus’s back. It smelled of musty cabbage. As the liquid hit his skin, sizzling and hissing around the wounds, he gave an involuntary grunt of pain. She immediately stopped pouring.

  “It is hurting you.”

  “No, no. Keep going.”

  Reluctantly, she did, continuing to douse his flesh. Acrid bubbles foamed over the wounds. The smell was punitive. She gasped. The punctures along his back … “Catullus,” she breathed.

  He tried to look at his back and only succeeded in turning in circles.

  As he spun around, Gemma did see his back, and gasped again. “The wounds … they’re closing.” Minuscule bits of fabric, embedded in the wounds, came bubbling up before dissolving. The injuries shrunk to pinpricks, then smaller, until nothing but smooth, unbroken skin covered his back. “How do you feel?”

  “Fine. Good. Marvelous, actually. My thanks,” he said to Bryn. “You’re help has been invaluable. All the Blades will hear of your generosity.”

  “I can’t thank you enough,” added Gemma.

  The pixie looked bashful. “’Tis only a bit of magic. And your cause is just.”

  Catullus smiled, a sight that blossomed inside Gemma. He picked up his coat and stuck a finger through one of the holes torn in the fabric. “But I’m afraid this Ulster is now truly a lost cause.”

  “I don’t care about the damned coat.” She threw her arms around him, feeling him whole and solid and perfect. “It’s you I care about. It’s you I love.”

  He jolted, dropping the coat, and she realized that the words had jumped from her mouth without any preamble.

  “That’s what I was trying to say,” Gemma confessed, leaning back a little so she could look into his handsome, shocked face, “before the Heirs and their ice showed up. I’m a writer, so I have to pick my words carefully.”

  He watched her, eyes dark and bright, saying nothing.

  “I wanted,” she pressed on, “I really wanted, to say exactly the right thing at exactly the right time.” Her laugh was rueful. “Guess I didn’t get that chance. Just blabbed it out, and at a not very convenient moment.” She shook her head. “So much for getting it right.”

  Catullus continued to stare at her, his expression so surprised as to be almost funny, if it didn’t mean everything. Astonishment slowly left his face, replaced by cautious wonder. “Do you really mean that? That you … you …”

  “Love you,” she finished. “Yes. I love you, Catullus Graves.” The words made her giddy, buoyant. It amazed her that a simple combination of consonants and vowels could contain the whole of human happiness. She cupped the back of his head, feeling the sleek muscles along his neck. The words she had been carefully piecing together at last emerged.

  “I’ve never met anyone like you,” she said, “and I never will again. I love your brain and your body. I love that you’re just as strange as I am, that you accept me as I am. Just as I accept you as you are. All of our idiosyncrasies. Our quest to discover the world’s secrets and stories.”

  She drew a breath, now finding words to be hollow substitutes for what she felt. After Richard, there had been other men in her life, in her bed. She thrived on excitement and enjoyed sex. Some of the men were a night’s enjoyment and nothing more. They sneered at her afterward, calling her a whore for having their same desires. Gemma sat and smoked and gazed at them with boredom until they left.

  Richard had said “I love you,” but he had meant, “I want to own you.”

  She wanted to love and be loved, but the cost had been too high. She refused compromise. And that is what Richard had wanted: to stay the same while changing her to suit his definition of who he wanted her to be.

  Catullus—he made Richard and the men she knew after resemble wind-up toys, repetitive in their actions, shrilling nonsense. Catullus saw her as she was. Not a tabula rasa to be molded and possessed. Not a prodigal to redeem. A woman. Complete and whole. He gave her room to use her own mind, her own will. And with every ounce of that will, she loved him. This bespectacled eccentric who thought like a scholar, fought like a warrior, and made love like a pagan.

  “It makes a strange sense, to say this here.” She waved at the ice-encrusted forest, the crystalline glade where they sheltered now. “A place of magic. You and I, we made our own magic.” She let heat and intent steal into her eyes. “If there wasn’t a passel of Heirs on our behinds, I’d show you exactly how much I love you.”

  Ferocious exultation sharpened him to gleaming brilliance. His eyes darkened, his arms enfolding her as his long, strapping body pressed close. God, she loved the feel of him. Vitally male. Solid and fit. Yet with the mind of a towering intellect.

  Nothing intellectual in his look now. “Gemma,” he rasped, lowering his head. She closed her eyes, waiting, wanting his kiss, his claim.

  Something tugged him backward.

  “Not now,” Bryn piped, gripping Catullus’s ear. “Must leave, must flee. Before the trees grow tired of their game.”

  Indeed, from within their sheltered glade, they could distantly hear the fall of icicles slowing. The tree branches began to quiet. The pursuers would gather themselves.

  Catullus snarled something that would have been entirely unprintable in the Trib. He stepped away from Gemma and quickly threw on his shirt, waistcoat, jacket, and coat, all of the garments grimy and stained. But he did not seem to notice the condition of his clothes, which startled her. He was a changed man from the one who had been so fastidious in his wardrobe.

  Once he dressed, he interlaced their hands. Their palms pressed together—the only flesh-on-flesh contact it seemed they would get for a while.
A torment and solace.

  “Lead on,” he growled to Bryn. When the pixie flitted ahead, Catullus turned to Gemma. “Some time, some day,” he said, low and fierce, “you and I are going to have a proper declaration of love. Hours and hours in bed.”

  “Hours?” Gemma repeated, an eyebrow raised. If what they had done in the cottage’s bed was any indicator, those would be unforgettable hours.

  “Days,” he amended. “Weeks. I won’t let either one of us leave that room, wherever it is, until we’ve both nearly perished from exhaustion and starvation.”

  “I’m starving right now.” She pressed a hand to her empty stomach.

  “So am I, love.” His eyes gleamed wickedly. “And only you will sate me. I cannot wait to taste all of you again.”

  She flushed to hear her elegant scholar say such things to her, and flushed even deeper to realize how much she loved hearing him speak this way. And making good on his plans … that would be even better.

  “Come on,” Bryn shrilled.

  At that moment, a bullet whizzed past Gemma and Catullus. Out of time.

  Hand in hand, they ran deeper into the forest.

  They left behind the Heirs, the ice-encrusted forest, heading deeper into the woods. The atmosphere shifted. Instead of lush summer, an autumnal cast descended, the trees growing thicker, more twisted, as gusts of chill air tossed dead leaves in eddies. Whispering sounded from darkened crevices. Creatures scuttled in the underbrush and overhead. A permanent dusk lengthened shadows, deepened by the close-set trees.

  Gemma shivered, more from the sinister undercurrent than the cold. She stuck close to Catullus as they pushed onward, and even Bryn kept nearby instead of flying on ahead.

  “This place could use some brightening up,” she whispered. “A cheerful lamp, maybe a few colorful rugs.”

  “A box of lucifer matches.” Catullus remained vigilant, attentive to everything around him, but his hand was warm and steady.

  Bryn pulled up short, hovering. “There, ahead. The Night Forest.”

  All quips died as Gemma and Catullus had their first glimpse of eternal night.