by Lisa Rector
Meuric edged closer to Rhianu, his protective instinct strong for his sister, but Siana grabbed his shoulder and whispered, “Wait, Meuric. Just wait.”
“I can get her out of here—take her somewhere safe.”
“No, Meuric. She needs to see Einion. Rhianu needs to know what he did to save her.”
Meuric clenched his jaw but heeded his mother’s words. He didn’t like this one bit. Einion was unstable. A sick feeling spread through Meuric’s gut.
Einion glared at Rhianu. “Woman, you have failed me.” Meuric recognized the vehemence in the Dark Master’s voice as he spoke through Einion. “I’m disappointed. My chosen one should understand where her allegiance lies.”
Blondie shoved her way between Meuric and Rhianu. “You’re not getting any closer, mutt.”
Meuric rammed her shoulder with his. Blondie crossed her leg in front of his and locked him in an infuriating wrestle.
“Step away,” he hissed.
The richly dressed emrys who had cautioned Rhianu interjected. “Catrin, ease off.”
“I’m keeping this scum away from Rhianu. She’s not escaping,” Catrin grunted.
Irritation flooded Meuric as he shoved Catrin off balance. He caught only part of the words Rhianu exchanged with Einion, but Meuric sensed emotion seeping off her.
“Einion, my soul is yours. I give it to you. You’ve already had it for longer than I’ve known.” Rhianu blurted out, “I love you, Einion. I love you! Fight his power. You’re strong. Don’t let him take ahold of you. Your light is stronger than any darkness you ever carried. Oh please, come back to me.”
Meuric assumed wrong. Rhianu had chosen love over her power.
“You betrayed me.” Einion spat his words.
“Please, Einion,” Rhianu begged. “Fight.”
Einion gnashed his teeth. Veins pulsed across his temples. His muscles expanded against the restraints and the emerging power. If he didn’t complete the transition soon, his body would give out, and he’d die, but the emrys held him bound and prevented Einion from attacking and taking the single life that would trigger the change.
Meuric couldn’t imagine the internal struggle Einion had to overcome. Rhianu truly loved him. Perhaps Meuric could mollify his urge to pulverize Einion. Surely being torn asunder was punishment enough.
After terrible tension, compounded by an immense silence that had fallen across the desert, a change happened suddenly. Einion said in his own composed voice, “I forgive you.” He pitched forward, unable to support himself anymore.
The silence stretched on.
Meuric didn’t believe his ears. Three simple words had enacted the law of forgiveness—the Dark Master wouldn’t be able to abide the law…
An unholy scream pierced the quiet as the Dark Master’s essence was ripped from Einion.
Meuric’s eyes bulged. The essence would have to go somewhere else.
“Rhianu!” Meuric lunged toward her—he was merely three feet away. He needed just a handful of her hair or tunic, only a single touch, and he could have transported her to safety, but Meuric was too late.
Devastating repercussions indeed.
CHAPTER TWO
STRANDED
A thunderous crack rang out before a wave of pressure rippled through the sky, coming from Einion’s body. The resulting sequence of events happened faster than an eye blink, yet Meuric heard and saw them as though measured heartbeat by heartbeat.
The pressure wave threw Rhianu away from Einion, away from Meuric’s fingers. The vibration of air barreled Catrin into Meuric, knocking the breath out of his lungs. He barely registered the heaviness of his body and the ache in his ears as the two of them tripped backward.
The familiar darkness that accompanied traveling through space blinded Meuric. He knew he’d made a jump—unintentionally. Rhianu! He’d left her behind. Rhianu! He failed. His one task. Rescue Rhianu. Prevent further harm from coming to her.
Light returned, and Meuric found his arms clutching Catrin’s narrow waist, bruising her in his anguish. Wind rushed past them as they fell… through the sky? Where in all of Bryn were they? Time altered the perception of the drop and slowed them to a feather drift, but Meuric knew the reality of the fall amounted to mere seconds. An ocean glimmering from the morning sun rose to catch them.
The plunge was colder than Meuric expected. He stiffened, and his grip slackened on the thrashing figure in his arms. Heavy leather battle gear dragged him steadily into the depths. A bright light blinded him, as Catrin—apparently an emrys skilled with the light—disintegrated her water-sodden tunic, leaving her in her much lighter underclothes. She shoved him in the chest and swam to the surface, unburdened from her cumbersome attire.
Struggling with the weight of his gear, Meuric unhooked his belt and chest strap and watched his sword sink before he kicked away.
His face broke through the water, and he sucked fresh air into his lungs. “Rhianu!” Where is she? Where’s the battle, the desert?
Catrin immediately attacked him, pummeling his chest, and yelling in his face. “Where have you taken me? Take me back right now!”
Oh, Meuric had enough of her. He still felt her bony shoulder from when she rammed his chest during the battle. He tried to fight her off, but his arms seemed disconnected from their sockets. From battle over an arid desert to ocean. Dazed, he shook his head. An ocean? He’d never been in open water. He couldn’t have moved through the ether to here.
Catrin pushed Meuric’s head under water. He already struggled with the encumbrance of his battle armor, and his hands were rapidly becoming numb in the frigid liquid. As seawater filled his mouth, Meuric rose to the surface, coughing.
“Control yourself or you’ll drown us both!” Meuric grabbed her wrist and twisted her arm.
“Let go of me!” She kicked him in the chest with her feet, and he submerged.
Meuric used the same trick the emrys did, or rather nearly the same. She had used her light to burn away her heavy gear, but Meuric didn’t practice the light. He focused on the darkness rising in his core and unleashed it in a powerful blast that blew apart the leather war tunic, gauntlets, and spaulders covering his body. Meuric rose in the water, this time, prepared to meet the vexed woman.
Before she attacked him again, he wrapped a tight energy bond firmly around her by picturing long tentacles restraining her arms. They bobbed in the water, gaping at each other with murderous eyes.
Catrin became motionless, no longer fighting. “Half-breed, you better tell me where you’ve taken me.” Her long hair was plaited, with loose strands plastered to her face and chest, giving her the look of a perturbed sea-maiden.
“This is beyond my understanding, emrys.”
Her pale face and her brilliant green eyes filled with fire. She was typical of the immortals, as if the Master of Light had cast them from a mold.
“Don’t accuse me.” Catrin lurched against the invisible bindings. “You just appeared on the battlefield with Einion. You have an ability to cut through the ether. Take me back!”
True, but this ocean indicated a new junction, one previously undiscovered. He couldn’t possibly have a connection that brought them here.
Meuric wiped water out of his eyes. “Believe me; I wasn’t going to accuse you. I doubt an emrys of your youth could manage such a feat.” The numbness in his toes matched that in his fingers. If he didn’t get out of the water, he’d lose blood flow in his extremities, become unable to swim, and drown. Meuric had seen it before, as a punishment given to a war criminal. “As for taking you back, I can’t.”
“An emrys with my youth? Oh, you suppose your age makes you wise. We’ll see how long you last.” She seared his hold away with her light, and the bind dispersed. The emrys swam away from him.
Fighting the impulse to shiver, Meuric called after her. “Where do you think you’re going?”
She stopped and glared at him. “Anywhere but here. Stay away from me, mongrel.”
�
�Curse you, woman!” He mentally called out to his dragon. Derog, where are you? Get me away from this infernal virago. Silence. No gravelly dragon voice. He should have been able to hear Derog anywhere with their bond. His situation was dire, more than he originally suspected. If Derog couldn’t hear him…
Meuric glanced around. His vision confirmed endless water. The edge of the sea blended with the horizon. Nothing and no one loomed in sight except for his newly acquired companion. No dragons and no sign of the former chaotic battle scene they had left.
Exasperated, he groaned but swam after the vixen. Catrin moved with steady, smooth strokes. Meuric caught up to her quickly, grabbed her ankle, and yanked her back through the water.
“Get your hands off me!” A searing light flared in her outstretched hand, and she released it into his face.
Meuric yowled, letting go. He rubbed his scorched cheek. “Look, I don’t know if you realize this, but we’re floating in the middle of a freezing ocean with no way back. Do you think you’re swimming across the whole expanse?”
“What choice do I have? Do you see help? It’s either this or drown. I cannot hear my dragon or Einion’s. No one’s here to save us.”
Meuric glanced at the two smooth stones worn around her neck, one teal and the other orange and gold. Two dragon stones. One belonging to Einion—the stone Rhianu had torn from his neck long before the battle.
“You wear the scoundrel’s stone? Why?” Meuric asked.
“Einion is no such man. He’s noble and valiant, with far more redeeming qualities than you, I’m sure.”
“He took advantage of my sister, destroyed her virtue!”
“Your sister? That brazen, red-haired savage is your sister? Any virtue Rhianu possessed shriveled to a husk long ago. Einion would never touch her. She seduced him.” An angry pout distorted her mouth, and her eyes echoed the sentiment.
Fury burned inside Meuric, though it did nothing to warm his body. He resisted the urge to reach out and smack the pursed lips off her face. “Ah, you’ve met Rhianu. She failed to mention your charismatic presence during her stay in Terrin. Do give me the courtesy of a formal introduction.”
“We can skip the pleasantries.”
“I w-won’t take you home unless you tell me your name.” Though he knew her name from the battle, Meuric enjoyed this spiteful exchange. He filled his mouth with water, briefly considered spewing it in her face, but instead he turned his head, spitting it to the side. “W-well, what is it?”
Her almond-shaped eyes narrowed. “Catrin.”
“P-Pretty name for such a curt lass.”
“Are you going to get me out of here?” she asked.
Hurt because she hadn’t asked for his name in return, Meuric seized her slender wrist. For once, she didn’t fight him. He turned his power in on himself, building the pressure that would release and send him through the ether. His head felt as though it might split in two. He thought of his sister, his mother, his dragon—anyone who’d pull him back. Nothing happened. Meuric yelped and dropped the emrys’s arm.
“I can’t make a connection to anything!” Not a single connection to any place or any person on the planet. He smacked his hand angrily against the surface of the water, making a loud clap and stinging his fingers.
“I don’t understand,” Catrin said.
“I had to either have touched the person or have stood in the spot I wish to travel to. I don’t know how it works. Something about the essence of the person or the place.”
“Reason has abandoned you. Use your dark energy. Think of your whoring sister.”
Meuric scowled at her. If he could bend his fingers, he’d grab her by the hair… “L-Let this soak into y-your p-pretty g-golden head. I cannot d-dis-c-cern a link, wh-which means w-we’re stuck here.” He shuddered with a convulsion and didn’t stop.
Dumbfounded, Catrin stared at him. “What in the name of the Master is wrong with you?”
“I a-a-am c-c-cold.” Meuric couldn’t control his shaking. His legs slowed. Tread faster. Must move… He was shutting down. He had minutes left.
“Why aren’t you heating your core?”
“W-Why’d ya th-think, p-p-princess? P-P-Presence of… da-dark l-l-lord… gra-graces you.” He tried to tap his chest, indicating himself, but his arms flailed uselessly in the water.
“You never transitioned to a Dark Emrys. I see light in you. Use it or die.”
Call on the light? This power he denied for eons. He had become complacent with the dark energy. Ever since the powers of light failed him, he refused to call upon them, and he did his best to forget the abilities associated with light. Even when injured in battle, he allowed another half-emrys to heal him. Meuric relied so much on his dark power that he blocked the fact he still carried an annoying spark of light in his heart-center.
The woman flicked water in his face, and Meuric held up a trembling hand with blue fingers. “W-W-What was that f-f-for?”
“You better learn to harness what meager light you have. Remember when you were younger and harnessed both powers?”
She was treading water easily, but Meuric moved through a tar pit.
“S-So l-long ago.” Meuric choked on a mouthful of water. Over two thousand long years ago if he was remembering correctly. He didn’t care anymore. He was about to take a nice long nap. It would feel so good. He couldn’t even remember why they were there. He closed his eyes.
“Is your brain addled?” Catrin exhaled a voluminous sigh.
The lass was a pretty one. His head rolled back. I wouldn’t mind taking her to—
Catrin slapped her hand onto his shoulder with such force Meuric’s chin dipped under the water—again.
His eyes shot open.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she muttered.
A burning sensation pierced his shoulder and raced down his arm.
Meuric tensed. “Woman!”
His body rapidly warmed, and the convulsing stopped. Meuric resisted the urge to throw her grip off, despite the torment that accompanied the heat coursing through him. He relaxed enough to resume treading at a normal pace. Right. That’s what they were figuring out—how to escape this accursed ocean.
“Was that hard? Learn to control light yourself. I refuse to hold your hand.” Catrin broke contact and swam away from him.
Meuric called after her. “You’re childish. Were you born just last century?” He was a tad grateful she’d saved his worthless hide, but he wasn’t sharing this with her.
The woman turned in the water. She stared at him, and a glow condensed in front of her. He ducked underwater before she sent the blast at him. Childish. He smirked to himself. Only the Masters of all creation knew how he’d have to stick with her for warmth.
It was going to be a long day.
CHAPTER THREE
HELPLESS
Throughout the morning, Meuric swam for hourly intervals before he started shivering.
Catrin clamped her hand to his shoulder, sent light into him, and swam away.
Over and over again.
Why didn’t she let him drown if she hated him with such passion? They had equal reasons to despise each other, given their opposing sides in the battle and given the fact—she was a Daughter of Light and he, a Son of Darkness. Meuric grudgingly accepted that they needed each other, or rather, he was the one needing her. The fiery woman seemed to be capable of handling this affair on her own.
It would have been a simple ordeal to heat his own core, but Meuric hesitated to call on his light. His body was so well acquainted with the weighty darkness that when his spirited companion sent light into him, he felt discomfort. If he focused on the fraction of light, which cowered in his heart-center, and expanded it, how much agony would this cause him until he became used to the light again?
Meuric stopped to tread water. They had worked relentlessly for hours. The midday sun gave the illusion of added warmth, but the biting air clamped through Meuric’s head and shoulders. What wo
uld happen when night fell? The water spelled doom—foretold death in a salty, unquenchable soup. As a half-emrys, Meuric had the strength and stamina of many men. He’d last several days longer than any mortal marooned in open water, yet exhaustion was inevitable. If he swam through the night, his strength would dwindle without food and drink to replenish him. Meuric hated to admit it, but without help, he and Catrin would swim until they died.
“Woman!”
Her lithe body cut through the water with ease.
“Stop!” Meuric thought she might continue until nightfall, but she halted and whipped her head in his direction.
“Are you a barbarian? Use my name.” She had fire, holding on to her icy demeanor no matter how awful their predicament.
Meuric matched her attitude with equal zeal as he swam through the water toward her. “Very well, Catrin. We should rest. You’re working too hard, and you’re going to fatigue yourself.”
“Oh, you’re so good to be concerned. What an upstanding gentleman. Why don’t you whisk me out of the water like I asked?”
He growled at her. “You can blame your hero of a lover for this.”
“I told you to watch your tongue. Speak no word of Einion.” Catrin resumed her strokes.
Dragon’s fire!
Agitation seethed off her. Meuric sensed it as though experiencing it himself. Emrys had difficulty hiding what they felt. The Master of Light gave them this trait—the ability to perceive emotions of others. Though Meuric possessed scant amounts of light, it was enough to discern the raw feelings coming off the young woman. Older emrys learned greater control, and Meuric masked his emotions with skill. He saw, from looking into the depths of Catrin’s eyes and assessing her uncontrolled response, she was young indeed.
Why was she distressed? Other than from being stranded in the ocean? Meuric knew why. He had hit a chord with the word lover. The clear evidence screamed to Meuric. She loved Einion, and he had scorched her. Ha!
