The artenu did not charge. It shook its head and roared back, but it looked more bewildered than anything. And when the flames roared again, the creature gave in to its confusion, turned, and ran from the clearing, leaving only the smell of smoke and charred footprints behind.
Alexei let go the flames and fell to his knees, exhausted and exhilarated at the same time. Until he realized that Zara was still not moving.
Pushing himself up, forcing himself to walk, he reached her side before falling again. The moonlight was dim, and did not show any injuries, until he placed a tentative hand on her shoulder and rolled her onto her back. Her eyes were tightly shut, but she made a hoarse sound of pain and held her left arm close to her chest.
It was burned. Something was clutched in her hand—a stick, he thought—but it was charred, and the flesh around it was blistered and blackened from what must have been an all-too-close encounter with the flames of the artenu. Zara must have attempted to defend herself with the only weapon she could find.
“I…” Her voice cracked and she groaned before trying again. “I almost had it.” The ghost of a smile twisted her lips. “I thought I smelled a campfire. I didn’t know…” She began to cough, a harsh sound that ended in a whimper of pain. “I’m sorry. I had to find him. I had to know.”
“Shhh.” Whatever anger he might have harbored had been burned clean by the flames. They had survived, and that was enough. “You can tell me later. We need to get you back to Gulver.”
“What…” she coughed again. “Gulver? Isn’t he a… a tavern keeper?”
“Gulver can help you.” He laid a hand on her good arm and tried to prevent her from sitting up. “No, don’t go anywhere yet. Rest, until you’re sure you’re able to move without injuring yourself.”
Her eyes opened and he could feel her watching him.
“Why aren’t you yelling at me?”
“Why would I yell at you?”
“Don’t be an ass, Alexei.”
He chuckled, for the moment glad to be alive, glad she was alive to call him whatever she chose. But she deserved an explanation.
“We were both manipulated, Zara. You were right about Athven all along. I shouldn’t have assumed that I knew her. She knew what would happen when she opened the doors, and she did it anyway, whether to show me she knew best, or to throw us together. Either way, I have learned something important and I’m grateful.”
Zara sat up then, with a low, pained sound as her injured arm moved. “You’ve got to take me back,” she muttered hoarsely. “I think I’ve finally lost my mind.”
“Well, don’t get used to it. I’m sure we’ll be fighting again before we get very far.”
She snorted, and winced when the motion jarred her arm.
Rising wearily to his feet, Alexei offered her his hand. She hesitated, but only for a moment before accepting his help. Her hand was strong and callused in his, but cold and trembling with the aftermath of her ordeal. He gripped it gently until she was steady enough to stand on her own.
“Before we go, Zara, you should know that your father is not here. Not in the valley. I would have felt him, or Athven would.”
Her head bent. “I know,” she whispered. “Athven would never tell me one way or another, but I knew. I just… I had to be sure.”
Alexei felt an irresistible impulse to comfort her as she had comforted Malichai. “I’m sure he waited. I’m sure he tried to find you.”
She made a sound that was trying to be a laugh, but ended up more of a sob. “You don’t know him like I do.” She scrubbed at her face with the back of her good hand. “He had to be terrified, and he’s never been good with anything frightening or stressful. Why do you think I was always the first one in? It was my job to check for danger, not his. The moment the door closed on his heels, I promise you he ran like a rabbit, with Geb and Finch right behind.”
“So why risk your life to find him?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because coward or not, he’s all I have.” Zara was pleading with him to understand. “If I stop looking, the only alternative is to admit that he didn’t care enough to overcome his fear. Or that he simply went looking for more treasure and forgot about me altogether. Somehow… that seems worse.”
Yes. It did. False hope was far better than admitting that you never had any hope at all. He ought to know. He’d been limping along on false hope ever since he first learned that Porfiry was still alive.
But now he had to find a way to return Zara to the castle. Her pain had to be bad, or she would never have admitted vulnerability. Not in front of him.
And though he was anxious to get her back to Athven, where Gulver could soothe her burns and help her sleep, Alexei was grateful for the new understanding between them. A part of him could have gone on forever feeling nothing—except perhaps a sense of responsibility towards her—and rejecting any warmer emotions out of the depths of his own disappointment and guilt.
But his fear seemed to have stripped away some of the calluses on his heart, and enabled him to be a little more honest with himself. Ever since meeting her, he had seen Zara as little more than the death of every hope he had never dared admit to himself during the long years of his exile. He had recognized that the fault was not hers, but in his bitterness, he had not been able to feel it. Now, for the first time since meeting her, for the first time since Porfiry re-entered his life, he felt the stirrings of compassion.
He had no right to despise her. No right to continue to treat her as a thief, when it was her own life that had been stolen. The woman who held his people’s future in her hands was deeply hurt and deeply human, yet she was also tenacious enough to cling to hope when everything appeared hopeless. It was more than he had managed, and Alexei wondered whether perhaps Beatra herself might not have entirely disapproved of her unlikely successor.
Before he could discuss their return with Zara, the sound of footsteps crashing through the brush brought Alexei’s head around with a jerk. More than one set of feet, he realized. Large ones. Not human. He reached out, trying to sense what could be approaching and then he laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“Malichai,” he answered her cryptically.
“That’s not Malichai.” Her words were slurred slightly.
“No,” he answered, putting as much cheer into his voice as he could manage. “But it is the love of his life. And she’s here just in time to get you back to the castle. I realize as your noble rescuer, I’m supposed to carry you back in my arms, but frankly, that just wouldn’t work. I’m out of practice and you’re…”
“Too big?” Zara mumbled disgustedly.
“Too uncooperative.”
She laughed. “Never doubt it. If I am nothing else, you can always count on me to be uncooperative.”
Chapter 9
Zara awakened from dreams of fire with the smell of smoke in her nostrils. She jerked out of her blankets, coughing, and wondered dimly why there was no pain. There should have been pain.
“Easy,” a soothing voice said just behind her ear, and a hand came to rest gently on her shoulder. “You’re all right. You’re safe.”
Awareness trickled back. The doors had opened. And she had… raced into the night like a woman possessed. Why? She knew she couldn’t get away. And she knew her father had left her. Why had she gone looking for him?
A memory of fire flared, along with a thrill of fear. The bear. Or rather, the bear-shaped thing that had appeared in front of her. She had fallen, tried to scramble away, then swiped at it with a branch and it had… it had burned her. She remembered the sickening smell of her charred skin.
Zara held out her left arm and turned it over, twice. There were patches where her skin was too shiny. A place along her wrist where a scar marred the surface. And there was no hair below her elbow. But neither were there any burns.
She twisted her head to stare uncomprehendingly at Silvay. “What happened? Did I dream it all? How did I get here?”
&nbs
p; “What do you remember?” Silvay asked in a low voice.
“I remember… I remember feeling suddenly like my father was the only thing in the world that mattered. I ran… I wasn’t even thinking. I just ran. Then there was the clearing. And the thing that smelled of smoke. It burned me, and I thought I was going to die. But Alexei came.” Her voice faltered. Alexei had come. He had followed her into the night and saved her life with a terrifying display of power. And then he had brought her back. “He set himself on fire and drove away… whatever it was. I didn’t know he could do that. Can all of you do that?”
Silvay’s laugh was a bright sound in the low-ceilinged kitchen. “Oh no, I’m afraid not. Alexei’s gift is far different from mine, or Wilder’s.”
Different? That wasn’t quite the word. There had been something almost other-worldly about him as he stood in the clearing, wreathed in flames, confronting the bear-like creature that had burned her.
“Who is he?” Zara asked in a small voice.
“As to that…” Silvay was clearly hesitant to say, but a new voice interrupted her silence.
“My cousin, Beatra Nar, was the last queen of Erath,” Alexei said quietly, standing just inside the kitchen door, looking at his boots. “She had one brother, who is dead. My own brother, Andrei, is in exile in Andar and has chosen to stay. Which means that Porfiry and I may very well be the last of the House of Nar.”
Nar? As in Athven Nar? Zara sucked in a horrified breath. “Then… Athven is yours. She was always supposed to be yours.” It explained so much. All of his anger and frustration. That strange comment about his house and his birthright. He had been meant to be a king! And it had been stolen from him by a trespassing treasure hunter without any respect for the past.
“No,” Alexei said, moving farther into the kitchen and sitting near the fire with a weary slump to his shoulders. “Athven was meant to go to Beatra’s brother, who was meant to marry and have children of his own. My cousins and I were meant to go on peacefully using our gifts for the benefit of our people. It was never my plan or my desire to be king.”
“But if you’re the last…”
“I never wanted it, Zara. Not even when Beatra suggested it could be mine. Not until I came back and saw how things stood, how desolate my land had become. Then I thought perhaps I could do some good. Perhaps I could save some small piece of what was, so that children like Wilder would someday be proud to be Erathi.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, looking into the flames with tears starting in her eyes. “I wish I could give it back.”
“I’m no longer certain that I agree,” Alexei said.
Both Zara and Silvay turned to stare at him.
“Zara, can you explain why you ran? What you were thinking when you saw the open door?” Strangely, he didn’t sound like he was angry or judgmental, just curious.
“I don’t know,” she said, desperately hoping they would believe her. “It’s as though I wasn’t thinking at all. I knew he wasn’t out there. Silvay already told me you saw no one in the valley. And I know my father. He is quick to begin a new venture, but also quick to admit defeat. He also claims not to believe in magic, so I’m sure he was terrified. I cannot imagine him choosing to stay here, in a place that scared him so badly, with no better motivation than hope.”
“So you had no thoughts of leaving before the door opened?” Alexei was looking for something, clearly, but Zara had no idea what it might be.
“I have never stopped wishing that I could leave these walls, even if only long enough to feel the sun and the wind on my face. And I want to believe my father is out there somewhere. I have to. But I also believed you when you said that I would die if I leave. And that if I died too soon, Athven might not survive the severing of the bond. I wouldn’t have done that to anyone, no matter how angry she makes me.”
Alexei seemed to stare into the fire for a while, thoughtful and still, before he glanced back at her, his face pensive. “I have been thinking. About my cousin, Beatra. About what I remember of her, and about what happened with you. And I believe that running may not have been your idea at all.”
Zara shivered, despite the heat of the fire. A chill enveloped her arms and her chest, and her hands began to shake minutely. “Athven,” she whispered.
Alexei nodded. “My cousin was always distant, but there were times, the last few years I knew her, that she seemed to grow less compassionate. Less able to feel. She was never cruel, but she didn’t always seem to understand. I assumed it was part of the burden of being queen, but…”
“Alexei, there is no need to frighten her half to death with your theories. You could wait until she’s eaten some luncheon, at least.” Silvay had risen to her feet and was glaring at Alexei rather fiercely.
“No.” Zara pushed back her blankets and rose to her knees. “Silvay, I need to know. How can I make reasonable decisions unless I know the truth? Yes, I am afraid, but I cannot hide from this. It’s a part of me now. If I can’t go back, I have to go forward.” She offered Silvay a placatory smile. “Unless you want to tell us how all of this turns out so I don’t have to decide anything.”
“Not how it works,” Silvay grumbled. Her fierceness seemed to have subsided. “I can’t tell you anything that particular, as Alexei very well knows. We are warned to be very cautious about mentioning anything specific until it has already come to pass. But”—she smiled warmly—“you are meant to be here, if that helps. There are no paths forward where you are not a part of the journey.”
Strangely, Zara’s heart felt lighter. “It does help,” she replied. “Thank you.”
With a nod of acknowledgement, Silvay glanced at Alexei. “I believe I will go find Wilder,” she said, and left the kitchen.
As soon as she was gone, Zara sank back onto her blankets. “Tell me the rest of it,” she demanded.
“I think Athven convinced you to run.”
Zara nodded. “That does not feel impossible,” she allowed. “And it would not have taken much, after all. The impulse was already there, all she had to do was encourage it. And if she is powerful enough to cause me to do that, strong enough to override my conscious decision, what else can she do?”
Alexei’s hands clenched on his knees. He clearly didn’t want to say the next part. “At her strongest, Athven protected all of Erath. She used the magic of the land and the enchantment of the Rose in order to do so, but she is complex and vast even without them, and I would not care to underestimate her.” He glanced at Zara, forehead creased with worry. “It’s possible she roused the artenu.”
“The what?”
“The creature you faced. The artenu. They are ancient and magical and no one really knows what they are or how they came to be. Erath has always been their home, but they generally reside in deep forest, several days’ ride from here.”
“It could have just wandered here. Gotten lost.”
“Yes,” Alexei conceded. “But I don’t know if I want to count on that being the case. Athven sent you out there for a reason. She cares nothing for your father, but she does seem to have a single-minded desire to throw us together. What if she was trying to further her cause by forcing me to rescue you?”
Zara felt the flush of embarrassment spread from her face to her neck and down her chest. If it were true… how utterly humiliating.
“Zara, I don’t blame you,” Alexei said quickly. “In fact, I feel as though I owe you an apology. If I am correct, it was Athven who endangered us and it forces me to question many things I have long held as fact.” He fell silent, leaning forward in his chair, no longer meeting Zara’s eyes. “I have always believed that Athven existed to protect us. That she could not deviate from the purpose for which she was brought into being. What if that is no longer true? What if the years of pouring our lives and magic into her stones has awakened something new, and she is now pursuing her own agenda, for her own reasons? Does she even have our interests at heart anymore, or her own?”
His voice w
as bleak. Like a man cast adrift without a rudder.
“Even if she does”—Zara tried to reassure him—“she still needs us. If we weren’t here, or if anything happened to me, she would be an empty, dormant shell again, at best. She’s not going to risk that.”
“But she already has,” Alexei argued. “If I am correct, she gambled on me being able to stop the artenu before it killed you. Granted, once, I could have done it as easily as thought, but I am not what I once was. She did not stop to speculate on our human weaknesses, and it could have killed us both.”
“So what can I do?” Zara asked, trying not to sound too plaintive. “If she is influencing me without speaking, how can I protect myself? How do I know which thoughts are even my own?”
“My hope,” Alexei theorized, “is that now you are aware of her meddling, she will be less able to influence you. And remember, she did not invent the thought, merely hastened the execution.” He shook his head and stared at his hands. “I wish I could find a reliable way to speak with her directly. I don’t know what she is thinking or planning, but I must convince her that what she has done—what she is doing— to you is wrong. It is a terrible misuse of her power and cannot be allowed to continue.”
“Alexei…”
He looked at her and for the first time, Zara did not see the face of an enemy. She could read his concern and it warmed her, as much as the idea of Athven’s betrayal had chilled.
“What if…” She heard the tremor in her voice and paused to steady it. “What’s to stop her from getting rid of me? I know you don’t think she’s strong enough to survive that yet, but she’s getting stronger every day.” Alexei held up a hand as if to interrupt but Zara forged ahead. “She survived your cousin’s death, and the death of every guardian before her, so that day will come eventually. What happens when she decides she doesn’t want me anymore? I know she’d rather have you. Couldn’t she just…”
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