Pulse thudding sickly in his skull, he spread his hands in a “no harm, no foul” gesture. “Look, I just want to go home. If you’ll just let me—”
The wolfyn closest to him shimmered and stretched to his human form to reveal Janus, a thick-necked soldier who followed his alpha’s orders unquestioning and knew tradition better than he knew his siblings’ names. “You won the challenge,” he growled. “But we don’t intend to be led by a filthy bloodsucker.”
“I don’t want to lead you. I just want—”
“I claim the Right of Challenge.”
“Damn it, Janus, just listen for a minute. I don’t want to fight you.”
“Too bad.” The other male blurred and retook his wolfyn form, baring his teeth in a feral snarl.
Dayn cursed under his breath, all too aware that he only had so much time before the vortex started to die back down. Hell, the thing could collapse at any moment. Taking a deep breath, he called on his other magic, and—
“Hold, damn you!” a woman’s voice called.
Every eye swung to the source, and a murmur of yips and growls rose up at the sight of Keely in human form, pushing through the crowd with a man at her side. Easily twice her mass, he had silver hair despite appearing to be only a few years older than her. He wore the heavy furs and sigil of the Bite-Tail pack, and sent Dayn a steely look as they joined him in the fight circle that had cleared at Janus’s challenge.
“Who the hell are you?” Dayn blurted, but even as he said it, the Bite-Tail connection clicked and he put it together. “Roloff?”
“Aye.” The big man’s low growl carried enough force to quell the pack instantly. He swept the wolfyn with a look. “Keely’s father promised her to me, but Kenar broke that bond and outcast me. I claim her by right of the original promise.”
And to Dayn’s utter shock, Keely blushed.
Not a loner, then, Dayn realized. It had been Roloff, coming around during each moon time, making himself visible and seeing if Keely was ready to go against her brother. And finally, this year, getting what he wanted.
Gods, he would never understand wolfyn politics. But at least someone had gotten what he wanted.
Dayn glanced at the vortex. Ah, Reda.
“Do any deny me this mate?” Roloff demanded.
Dayn met his eyes. He didn’t embarrass Keely by shaking his head. But he didn’t say anything, either.
Keely and Roloff didn’t embrace or kiss, but the look they exchanged said that making her an outcast had been the best thing Kenar had ever done for her.
Now, looking entirely in her element, Keely faced the pack. “By right and descent, the leadership of this pack should have come to me, not Kenar. He took control outside of tradition, which means that the challenge was not a true challenge, and this male—” she indicated Dayn “—is not your leader. I am.” She swept the pack with a piercing look. “Do any challenge me on this?”
There was dead silence. Janus even looked a little relieved.
After a minute, she nodded. “Good. Then hear me. This man goes with safe passage. None shall touch him.” She turned to Dayn, taking his hands and squeezing them in probably the only spontaneously friendly touch between them in two decades. “Go home, Prince Dayn of Elden. Go with my friendship, and the hope that this could be the beginning of a new era of peaceful sharing between our realms.”
“You… Wow. Okay.” Dayn faltered as he found himself nailed with an ambassadorship before he’d even regained his kingdom. “Yeah. That’s ambitious.”
“It was what Candida wanted, why she befriended you. So if you don’t do it for me, do it for her.”
He swallowed hard. “For both of you, then. And for the betterment of our realms, I hope.”
“Good. Then go. Get the hell out of here.” She kissed him on the cheek, shoved his rucksack, crossbow and sword into his hands and waved for the pack to let him through.
Roloff gave him a cuff on the shoulder that held a good measure of “and don’t come back,” and the rest of the pack watched him with unblinking amber eyes that said “good riddance.” It would take more than Keely’s goodwill to convince them—and the other packs—to give the blood drinkers a chance, but the benefits could be huge. Which was just another reason why he needed to get his ass through that vortex and get this brand-new era started.
Still, an empty hollow opened up inside Dayn as he jogged up the trail to the archway. Not because he was sad to leave the wolfyn realm, or because of the changes—and deaths—that had come because of him, or not entirely. No, the ache had curly red hair and blue eyes, and the hollowness came from knowing that the best three days of his life were over.
And the rest of it was about to begin.
His feet weighed him down as he headed out along the narrow causeway, following the line of Reda’s footprints in the thin layer of grit. He stopped where she had stopped, stood where she had stood and closed his eyes for a second, trying to mindspeak her and failing yet again. Still, though, he sent his message toward the swirling realm magic, hoping against hope that it might reach her, just as a book of fairy tales once had: Be well, sweet Reda. Be brave. Live your life.
Then, without looking down, he stepped off the edge. And plummeted home.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
WITH DAYN’S VOICE RINGING in her ears, Reda blinked awake to find herself hanging weightless, surrounded by strange, shifting fog that was white in some places, while in others it sparkled with rainbows, lit from above with shafts of light that seemed random, yet not. She was wearing her bow over her shoulder and clutching three sad-looking arrows.
“Hello?” she called. “Dayn?” Her pulse thrummed in her ears. Part of her wanted it to be him, another part not. Maybe someday she would be able to think about him without hearing the sickening crunch of flesh and bone, the shivering howl. Not yet, though. Not by a long shot.
She had thought distance would help, time home alone.
But this definitely wasn’t home.
What was going on?
Nerves prickled beneath her skin, not freezing her, but warning her that this wasn’t good. She hadn’t been conscious for the trip to the wolfyn realm, but based on Dayn’s description this wasn’t the way the vortex was supposed to work. It was supposed to suck her up and spit her out, no detours. This was most definitely a detour.
Stay calm. You can handle this. Making herself breathe evenly, she pictured her apartment kitchen in minute detail, right down to the dishes in the sink and the book on the counter. Then she said her mother’s spell. But instead of her kitchen, she got a man’s voice.
Your work is not yet done.
It sounded in her head, but it came from the fog, from nowhere and everywhere. It chilled her to her marrow, though not because it was scary; it was deep and well modulated, with an abundance of that formal, faintly stiff tone that crept into Dayn’s—
No. She wasn’t going there. Not when it made her eyes well and her stomach heave, and filled her mind with the squish-crack of a broken neck, the howl of a vicious beast that was part predator, part murderer.
Aware that the voice seemed to be waiting for something, she said softly, “Please let me be done. This isn’t my work. It’s not my fight.”
Are you so certain?
Her mind filled suddenly with horrifying images of stone walls destroyed by dozens of club-wielding ettins, armored guards cut to pieces by giant scorpions with razor-tipped tails and claws, a woman carrying a baby, racing across a flagstone floor only to be snatched up from above by a giant spider.
You are a guardswoman of the blood. You would let this happen?
“What blood? Who are you?” When there was no answer, her voice sharpened. “For God’s sake, what do you want from me? I got him to the arch.” She tried to spin in place, but failed. Her heart was hammered with a mix of fear and frustration. “Will you answer a direct question already, damn it! What do you want me to do?”
Help him reach the castle by tomorrow night. A
nd help him remember his true self or all is lost.
Her stomach twisted at the dread and dismay that came with the thought of following Dayn to Elden. “And then what?”
Go home.
She flashed on the image of a rounded hill very like the one near Dayn’s cottage, though without the stones. The spires of a castle were visible in the near distance beyond some trees, and there was a small shrine off to one side. And damned if it wasn’t carved with a simplified version of the cover of Rutakoppchen: a girl traipsing through the woods while eyes watched from the darkness.
“Do I have a choice?” Her voice cracked miserably and she didn’t care. She was crashing off the wolfsbene, beat-up, brokenhearted, and didn’t want to have to do this.
There is always a choice, even when there seems not to be.
“Great. A frigging fortune cookie,” she said.
Then she stopped, hearing her own words echo in the fog, realizing that she was snarking off at a spirit voice she strongly suspected was at least the essence of Dayn’s father, the vampire king. More, she was thinking, planning, reacting, having an opinion. She wasn’t paralyzed, wasn’t leaning back into Dayn’s reassuring presence as she had done too many times over the past few days when the going got tough.
She wasn’t freezing. She was dealing. New strength flowed into her at the realization and, with it, came a fierce sort of joy.
You are stronger than you know, Alfreda.
A shiver ran through her. “How did you know my real name?”
Will you help him?
A few days ago, it would have seemed ludicrous for her to think she could help a man like Dayn. Even a few hours ago, blinded by her enthrallment, she wouldn’t have thought he needed her help with anything save for mutual pleasure. Now, though, she was seeing things more clearly. She supposed shock could do that—either numb her out or wake her up. And now she was awake.
With clearer eyes, she realized that Dayn wasn’t as evolved as he wanted to think. He had spent two decades beating himself up for having been distracted by a woman when he should have been focused on his duties the morning of the Blood Sorcerer’s attack, only to fall right back into the same pattern with her. Their…relationship? flameout?—she wasn’t sure what to call it—had been a distraction, a way to keep himself from focusing on the harder things. She didn’t think he had been entirely dishonest with her, either…more that he had lied to himself.
She saw herself differently, too. In the rainbow fog, she suddenly saw a woman who too often waited for other people to take care of things. Granted, her childhood had shaped that, as her father and the therapists had—well meaning or not—blocked off her imagination, her initiative. But that was then and this was now, and she needed to quit being afraid, not just of danger, but of making a mistake, making a choice. Back home, she had stopped moving forward, and her soul had begun to wither. In the wolfyn realm, however, she had started doing, thinking, moving, deciding.
Maybe she had made a huge mistake falling for Dayn, had almost made an even bigger one by blindly following him to Elden as his lover. But the first mistake had burned her but not killed her, and the second one wasn’t going to happen. If she followed him to Elden, it would be by her own choice, and not as his lover. And if that brought a stab to fresh wounds, heartbreak wasn’t fatal, after all.
“Okay,” she said to the waiting voice. “I’ll do it.”
Good.
The fog rose up around her, curled toward her and touched her here and there, tingling where it landed. And then it started moving with more purpose, sluggishly at first and then faster and faster, she found herself hoping to hell that this wasn’t going to go into the “mistake” column. She drew breath, but before she could say anything—or even really decide what she wanted to say—the world lurched around her, the fog turned dark and ominous, and whoomp! She suddenly found herself standing on a grass-covered hill in the middle of a dense, ominous forest.
Dayn wasn’t there. In fact, she was completely and utterly alone. And in realizing that, she became aware that it was the first time she had been alone in days.
She stood for a moment, testing for signs of panic. But while she was tense and most certainly on alert, she wasn’t terrified, didn’t want to stand still and wait for something to happen.
Let’s get moving, her instincts said. Daylight’s wasting.
Overhead, she glimpsed a sky that was a far deeper blue than that in the wolfyn realm, making her blink at the difference. The trees, too, were strange; they were twisted and stunted-looking, though they stretched high overhead to knit their branches into a high canopy of dull brown leaves. The sunlight that filtered through those leaves was a dingy brown color, making her feel oddly dirty.
“Welcome to Elden,” she said under her breath. “Doesn’t look much like I expected.” Both her mother and Dayn had made the kingdoms sound like lush and fertile paradises, like something out of a fantasy movie. But maybe it would get better once she was out of these woods.
Given that realm travel wasn’t known in the kingdoms, it stood to reason that the access points would be hidden away, forgotten.
Thinking she’d do best with a good defense, she unslung her bow. And stared.
What before had been a plain but serviceable hand-carved bow was now a slick, high-tech compound bow of the type she had favored in the human realm, but made of a springy, unfamiliar wood and strung with a natural-looking fiber of the proper tensile strength. Her arrows, too, had transformed; she was wearing a sleek quiver that contained a dozen perfectly balanced shafts and offered hooks where she could secure the bow fully strung.
“Upgrades,” she said to herself. “Nice.” Better yet was the small purse of gold she found in her pocket.
Feeling more optimistic than she had moments before, she struck out in the direction where the light seemed brightest up ahead. She would find herself a village, get her bearings and go from there. If nothing else, she knew where Dayn would be tomorrow night: Castle Island.
DAYN AWOKE IN A DARKNESS so complete that he might have thought he was still unconscious except for the ammoniac smell of guano. It burned his eyes and sinuses and had him holding his breath as he pawed in his rucksack for one of the small wolfyn hand lamps.
It lit, but only partway, emitting a bare and fitful glow even after he dialed it to full power. Too much science and not enough magic in the gadget, he thought, not daring to say the words and risk inhaling.
A quick scan showed that the vortex had dumped him in the dead end of a cave. He thought there might have been paintings on the walls, but the smears of guano and the tears blurring his vision made it tough to tell for sure. With only one way out, he didn’t have to debate his escape route; shouldering his rucksack, he beat it for thinner air.
The cave curved and curved again before he saw reflected daylight up ahead. He paused short of the last bend and tucked the light away. And then he stood a moment longer, because after twenty years, the next step was a big one.
“Elden,” he said softly.
He was finally home. He could finally make things right. And if there was a deep ache within him because he was stepping out of the cave alone, there was nothing he could do about that now. He had made his bargain and his sacrifice. The spirit realm had let him save Reda and send her to safety, and in exchange he had given up any chance for them to have a future. And maybe, probably, that was the way it was supposed to have worked all along.
He took a deep breath and borrowed a particularly fitting human idiom: “Here goes nothing.” If he was lucky and the spell had his back, he would find himself relatively near Castle Island. Better yet would be to find Nicolai, Breena and Micah camped out waiting for him. Gods, Micah would be grown now.
Trying not to lock too hard on that hope, tempting though it might be, Dayn shrugged the rucksack higher on his shoulder and set out, rounding the corner and striding out of the cave into the daylight. And stopped dead.
“Damnation.” Another
fitting human saying, and one that was unfortunately all too apt.
The sight that greeted him wasn’t anything like what he’d been expecting, and was nothing he’d been prepared for. The forest that stretched out before him wasn’t green and lush, wasn’t chockful of hiding places for the forest creatures. It was brown and thin, with no groundcover and only sparse, yellowed leafy patches that hardly seemed sufficient to sustain life.
Worse, he couldn’t even pretend he was at the edge of one of the southern kingdoms, near a stretch of badlands or desert. Because as his eyes adjusted to the painful sight, he recognized the downslope in front of him, the rise of rocky hill behind him. He even knew the cave now, though he had never before been all the way to its end due to the foulness of the air.
He was in Elden, less than a day’s march to the castle. But gods and the Abyss, what had happened to his land? His forest?
Unfortunately, the answer was an easy one: the Blood Sorcerer had happened. This was what two decades of dark sorcery had done to his once-gorgeous kingdom, two decades of neglect. It had killed the land.
“No.” Heart sinking so hard his stomach hurt, Dayn took two stumbling steps, then went down on his knees beside a waist-high boulder, where there was a tiny scrap of green struggling to grow in the shade. It was an Elden glory—or it should have been. But instead of producing brilliant blue flowers the exact shade of Reda’s eyes, this one had only a single weak bloom in a pale, sad hue.
“I’m sorry.” He didn’t even realize he was crying until a drop hit the dirt. It dried quickly, sucked into the parched earth so suddenly that he might have thought he imagined it, save that he found moisture on his cheeks and felt the tears in his soul.
He didn’t stay there long; he couldn’t. But part of him wanted to.
Any faint hope he might’ve had that this was a localized blight withered as he reached the edge of the forest and saw rolling hills of dusty brown leading to a yellow-hazed horizon, and his last few shreds of optimism died utterly when he hiked himself up into a nearby tree, climbing into the high, swaying branches to get a longer view.
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