by Brindi Quinn
Beau had been right to warn me.
“The one pursuing you caused pain, yes?” I said. “To you and others? Then his death will be worth any defilement it will cause my soul.”
“Admirable, Merr, but as I’ve mentioned, if Ascian gets his hands on you, he’ll try to steal your power for his own.”
Why was he protesting so hard?
There was something else. Something he wasn’t saying.
Sometimes, in the absence of understanding, we create stories.
Dramatic of me, maybe, but—
“Windley, have your feelings for me lessened since regaining your memories?”
“W-what?! Don’t start with that.” He gathered my hand and placed it to his chest so that I could feel the warmth behind his ribcage. “If anything, they’ve…” He shook his head. “Never mind.” Then he frowned, unimpressed. “No, lion queen, this isn’t some crude attempt to ditch you if that’s what you’re asking.”
Then why did it feel like once he left, he would never return?
Reading my thoughts, Windley offered his most impish smirk. “Do you really think I’d give you up after all that?”
But ‘all that’ had been before regaining his memories. Would he have stayed near me, professed his love to me, if he had remembered there was ‘something unfavorable’ after him?
The pit. That was the pit of my stomach sinking at the idea that he might do something rash to keep me from his dark, forgotten past—even if it meant removing himself from my life.
“The other option is to take her back by force,” Rafe proposed.
Windley dropped his smirk. “No. Never again. I understand your job is to keep her safe, mate. But mine is to keep her happy. While I agree it’s best she return with you, that’s her choice to make. So—” His sharp eyes pierced my concerned ones. “What’s your choice, Merrin?”
Did you know? Answering a question with a question can be an effective way of making someone realize they’re wrong.
“Can you honestly tell me you have a better way to defeat Ascian than using my power?” I asked.
“Yes.” Windley let out a thin breath through his teeth. “No. Damn it. Rafe—” He wafted his hand dismissively. “Go over there. Give us a moment, would you?”
Rafe stared without smile an uncomfortably long time before turning away, half-assed.
Windley leaned in. “Listen, Merrin. It isn’t easy to say this because, truthfully, I’d like to steal you from your world and take you somewhere no one will find you, but—I know that in order for me to keep you, you need to go back with Rafe. There’s a good reason I took that elixir. I’ve done bad things, and I’m not sure a queen who fights injustice will be able to forgive them. If you continue down this path with me, your opinion of me will change.”
So it wasn’t about ditching me, sparing me the guilt of taking another life, or keeping me away from Ascian. Not really. It was about preserving my image of him. And the feelings that went along with it.
“As I’ve said many times, what makes you think I have a good opinion of you now?”
“I’m serious, Queen Merrin.”
“Don’t call me that.” That was me buying time.
‘I wasn’t well-suited for life where I was raised, so I set off in search of a new way of living.’
When Windley came to the Clearing, he was an adolescent. Whatever he had done before that, he had made a decision to change, traveled a great distance to get away from his past.
That was something admirable.
“I’m resolved in my feelings, Windley. I’ll return with Rafe only if you feel there’s a better way to defeat Ascian than the echoes.”
He groaned. “Leave it to you to play that card. While it’s true your power may be the only thing great enough to kill the being Ascian has become…” He looked at me as though I might disappear with the setting sun, only this time, it wasn’t a treasuring look; it was fearful. “We’ll have to be strategic about it. I need to explain what makes him so dangerous. Can I have a few more days with you before I do?”
His dark eyes lingered over mine.
A look more weighted than I could have known.
But before I could answer, Rafe came sprinting at us fast enough to disgruntle the widowbird resting on my shoulder. Windley, ever distrusting of the breed, shot it a foul look before stiffening, detecting the reason for Rafe’s unsheathed sword.
Something was coming through the forest toward the ruins, large enough to cause the cracking of branches in its wake.
“Damn!” Rafe cursed. “I thought I got away from it!”
“IT?” said Windley.
“Something’s been following me, off and on. I heard it moving in the distance.”
“And you led it right to the Queen?!”
“I wouldn’t have had to come find the Queen if you hadn’t stolen her!” charged Rafe, annoyed. “Besides, I thought I lost it. It went quiet more than two hours ago.”
“Waiting for you to let your guard down, no doubt!”
Rafe lunged forward. “Don’t blame me that the south is home to barbariacy unknown to the northern forests! Need I remind you this is your homeland, Windley?”
“Whatever is large enough to fell whole trees is not something native to this forest, Rafe. If it’s following you, then you’re why it’s here.”
“Enough!” I commanded, noting the breaking trees were closing in. “We don’t have time for contention!”
“Sorry, love. You’re right.”
Windley took my wrist and pulled me into a crouch, and as he and Rafe began communicating in guard-like gestures, I noticed that Rafe’s sword lacked its usual frosty glow. Apparently, exiling Luna from our realm meant no more enchants for him.
Maybe that was why the pair of them thought it best for Windley to take front of the formation. With hatchets exposed, he gave me a whispered, “Listen to Rafe,” before slipping around our shelter and into the courtyard so that he could find better vantage of whatever was coming.
Likewise, “Stay here, Your Majesty,” instructed Rafe. Then he, too, slipped around the debris, settling a short distance away behind the base of a fallen spire, concentrating in the direction of the cracking.
I also strained my ears, but unlike them, I wasn’t listening in the physical realm.
“Ones without merit! Let us eat them! Let us scald them! Let us melt them!”
The darkness sloshed me like a boat caught in a storm.
“How many without merit?” I whispered.
“Hundreds!” the echoes seethed. “Hundreds crawling, swarming, flying!”
“H-hundreds?!”
“Coming for the conjurer!”
“For Rafe! Why?”
But at my question, the darkness swelled against itself, buzzing in search of an answer, until, like last time, the discord parted, allowing in the one voice I longed to avoid.
“A pactless conjurer is as ripe as the fertile grounds of spring,” said the eerie voice of Exitium. “Until the conjurer pacts with a new celestial being, all manner of putrid things will come for him. One is near now: a crow. Defeat it, or it will eat his heart.”
“A crow?”
No sooner had I spoken the word when Windley let out a cry from somewhere in the distance.
“Defeat it NOW!” shouted Exitium, turning ferocious. “Or it will eat BOTH their hearts!”
Disobeying Rafe’s protests, and with Exitium’s warning ringing in my head, I sprang from my hiding place and sprinted to where Windley had taken up a battle stance between the sun-bathed ruins.
“What is THAT?”
“Lion queen?! I told you to stay back and behave!”
I had expected a regular crow, but the fiend opposite Windley was far from it.
It was a man-like being, taller than any normal man, with gray flesh and pitch-black feathers sticking sharply from his arms and neck. The creature was draped in folds of gray plumage that dripped to the ground and dragged behind him like a fow
l’s pelt. His hair was long and fine and black as coal, and his eyes were nothing but pearly orbs lacking both pupil and iris.
It was the eyes that were the worst, though I would call his overall appearance terrifying.
“Stay back and state your business,” Windley ordered, hopping between the crow and me.
“Awful cavalier of you,” said the crow in a voice that was like the hush of autumn wind. “I come for the conjurer. Where is he? I hear his heart beating nearby, unchained.”
“It’s after Rafe,” I whispered to Windley. “The echoes told me it wants to eat his heart. Yours too.”
“Mine?” Windley showed his pointed eyeteeth to the creature in a wide smile. “Now that’s odd. You do know what I am, don’t you, wraith?”
“I do. I’ll settle for your liver.” The crow set its pale eyes on me. “What I’m unclear on is what she is. She smells… unique.”
“Just a human,” lied Windley. “I can’t imagine their hearts are up to your palate.”
“Something tells me this one’s is,” said the crow. “Why else would you be guarding her so? Your kind isn’t known for companionship.”
“Come now, something as ancient as you must know better than to pigeonhole. She is indeed a companion, and the only way you’re getting her heart is over my corpse.”
“Fine by me. I’ll take you first, then the conjurer, then the sweet-smelling girl for dessert.” The crow stretched out his arms and the drapes of plumage followed, spreading out around him like a feathery shroud.
He was becoming taller, fiercer, arching his back in preparation of something. And as he did, it was as if all the shadows in the forest came rushing beneath him.
“Wait!” I shouted—to Windley’s displeasure. “You won’t leave us? You insist on fighting?”
“Fighting?” said the crow. “My dear, this will hardly be a fight.”
“Are you sure? There’s no reason for me to end you if you’ll leave us be.”
The crow halted its growth. “You? End me? Amusing yet presumptuous. For that, I shall eat you firstly and slowest.”
Like runoff through a collapsing dam, the creature resumed spreading out at an accelerating pace, filling the clearing and blocking out the light from above until the ruins were coated in his shadow.
Did I say ‘terrifying’ before? That was nothing compared to his amped up form, built up on shade stolen from all corners of the wood.
I needed to summon the echoes, and I needed to do it fast!
But something wasn’t right—with the crow’s milky eyes craning down at me from above, it felt like I could no longer close my own.
The stare of the creature was gorgonizing.
“Merrin?” Windley whispered through his teeth. “Now would be a good time to use that crown of yours!”
“I-I’m trying! But my eyes are stuck!”
“What?” He whirled around. “Stuck?”
“I need to close my eyes into the darkness, but I can’t with him looking at me!”
Windley put his hand over my eyes. “Does that help? No? Shit. We need a distraction.”
But it wouldn’t come from Windley. As the crow continued to stretch over us, it suddenly released a sharp line of quills from somewhere within its folds and sent them shooting straight at us. Windley lunged, axe raised, using the side of the head as a shield. The force of the feathers pelting against the metal was great enough that Windley had to plant himself and push both hands against the opposite side.
Now he was the one getting distracted.
But there was another ally in our midst, and he had heard Windley’s call to arms.
“Hey!” The voice of a pactless conjurer cut through the space, halting the onslaught of feathers. “The one you came for is here!”
The crow let out a hiss-like laugh as Rafe came charging into the shadowy area brandishing his enchantless sword. “When one’s dinner throws itself onto one’s plate,” said the creature. “Plucky.”
But it had done as intended. The crow’s concentration was shifted from me to Rafe, allowing my eyes to close and my head to tip into the throng of echoes waiting beyond.
“Do it now,” I told them, “end the one without merit!”
“Speak my name,” said the viper in my ear.
“No! The echoes can take care of it.”
“They cannot do it alone. Your foe is too great. Speak my name if you do not wish to see the conjurer’s demise.”
Was this a trick? It felt like a trick. But I had little in the way of choice.
“EXITIUM!” I spoke the cursed word I had sworn never to speak again, and as I did, a disgorging of sticky, thick darkness spewed out of the depths of my throat and encased the creature, ruins, and guards until my eyes were filmed with the dark rage of the echoes fronted by snake-voiced Exitium.
When it cleared, the crow was gone, Rafe was ducked with his hands over his head, and Windley had me in a tight embrace.
“A bit close for my liking,” he panted. “Maybe as a general rule don’t ever look into the eyes of anyone we encounter ever again?”
“You said ‘ever’ twice.”
“Intended.”
I took the opportunity to push my ear into him.
I was searching for a beat, you see.
“Windley… you do have a heart, don’t you? Before, you made it seem like—”
He pressed his mouth to my forehead. “Of course I do. Just not the sort he was after.”
“Oh.”
He smelled good. His chest through his shirt felt good. I gripped the back of it, and he stiffened. “Merr…”
“Thank Luna,” Rafe interrupted, kicking at the pile of feathers where the crow had once stood.
“Luna?” Windley said over my shoulder. “Still going with that, eh?”
By now, they knew the truth of what had happened with Luna at the mountain. I had recapped it the previous night around the fire.
Everything but the baby. That part was Beau’s to tell.
“Habit,” grumbled Rafe. “I suppose I should really be thanking the Queen.”
“Don’t thank me yet, Rafe. The echoes told me it was after your heart, and they said that unless you form a new pact with a ‘celestial being,’ more will come for you—hundreds.”
“Yet another creature after us on your account. Nothing is ever easy with you, is it,” poked Windley, now resting his chin atop my head.
Rafe offered only a flattened brow in return.
“Looks like you’re stuck with us for a while, Rafe. I’m afraid we can’t let you return to Beau with hundreds of—whatever that was—after you.”
“A wraith,” said Windley, releasing me. “They’re called wraiths.”
“What are they?” I said.
“Nothing we want to be involved with. They’re dead things that have managed to siphon a bit of a goddess’s power—not enough to become goddesses themselves, but enough to exist as something between realms.”
“Why do they want Rafe?”
“Consuming the heart of someone able to harness a goddess’s power would only help their own power grow, I suppose.”
Rafe stared down at his non-enchanted sword. “You’re saying I need to pact with a new goddess or more will come for me? But my clan is loyal to Luna; I was promised to her from birth; I don’t know how to pact with any others.” A thought occurred to him. “If my pact is broken, what of the rest of my clan? Will these wraith things be coming for them too?”
“Not likely,” said Windley. “Goddesses are powerful enough for their theurgy to transcend realms. She may not be able to produce minions without a physical body, but that doesn’t mean all her pacts have been broken. More likely, you’re being punished by having yours cut off. She had to have known things would come for you once she did.”
Rafe raised a brow. “You’re an expert on goddesses now?”
“I’ve remembered a thing or two.”
“That steward back at Sestilia’s was a magician too,
wasn’t he, Rafe? I saw a glow coming from his belt, but it looked different from yours. Maybe you could pact with whoever he’s pacted with?” I suggested.
“His was Soleil,” said Rafe. “The sun goddess. I don’t know much about her, though.”
“Soleil, you say?” Windley held his chin in his hand. “In that case, we may be able to kill at least a few birds with one stone.”
“Windley, no!” I hopped in front of the widowbird defensively.
“No, that’s—southern expression, I guess.” Yet he looked distrustfully at the bird now nested in my hair. “What I mean is, we have several issues in need of resolve. I might have a way to knock out a few of them.”
Issues. A new goddess for Rafe. Quelling Ascian and his lackeys. Concealing the darkest parts of his past.
Those were the ones he was thinking of, but there were others.
Exitium and its louder growing whisper. The Crown’s ‘true purpose’ Luna had mentioned. And…
‘Sorry to tell you, cupcake, it’s not in our nature to love humans. Even if he told you so.’
‘Your kind isn’t known for companionship.’
“You okay, lion queen?”
Both guards were staring at me as if waiting for me to respond to whatever they had been discussing. Luckily, I had daydreamed during many a royal conference. The trick was to act as though you’d been weighing a decision.
“Very well. Rafe, we’ll send the widowbird back to Beau, letting her know that we’ve gone to find you a new goddess and that I’ve taken temporary charge of Windley so that he can tie up personal matters in the south. She and the others should return home. With a different force pursuing each of you, we must separate ourselves as far from her as possible. Windley, you are free to enact this ‘multiple birds and one stone’ plan.”
“Multiple birds, one stone?” He shook his head, a smile playing at his lips. “You heard the lady, Rafe. I assume you have a parchment in your pack?” Then he lowered his voice for me. “You’ll be protecting us, then? With your dark forces? I always knew you’d make one hell of a guard, but…” His teeth were suddenly at my ear. “What exactly do you mean you’ll be taking charge of me?” His hand was suddenly at my waist. “I’m not easily tamed, though you may try…”
