by Grace Draven
Ballard flexed his fingers. His knuckles began to swell and he’d split the thin skin deep enough to bleed. “Blood or no, Gavin is mine,” he said. “I’ll not murder my son. Find another way.”
Ambrose sighed. “I knew you’d say that, but I wanted you to know there was a choice.”
“That’s no choice. What’s your solution?”
“I can’t break the curse, but I can manipulate it.” He shook his head as Ballard’s eyes widened. “Words are power, especially in curses. They bind their victims in several ways. You and Gavin are intertwined in Isabeau’s words. I can redirect the curse’s effects from Gavin to you. You won’t be able to withstand them forever, but you’re a man grown and stronger than Gavin in every way. You can resist more. However, when it breaks you—and you will break—the curse will snap back like sinew stretched too taut.”
Ballard’s gut roiled. The image of Gavin, feral and inhuman, rose in his mind’s eye. Would he turn into the same thing? Something worse? A creature of such insensate violence that Ambrose—or someone else—would have to put him down like a diseased dog? “You’ll need to do a lot more than just tie me to a bed.”
“Yes.”
“Will such a measure give you enough time to find a way to break the curse?”
Ambrose shrugged. “I hope so, but I can’t guarantee success.” His hard gaze turned pitying. “You are my liege and my friend, Ballard, as was your father before you. My actions won’t be those of a friend. The spell I’d use to redirect the curse’s effects is permanent. Once I cast it, I can’t reverse or revoke.”
Ballard stared at his boots. He’d always been a man of implacable purpose and deep pride. Those traits had gained him power, prestige and wealth. They also blinded him to the wants of others, especially his wife. She’d exacted her revenge, and her son now suffered for Ballard’s hubris.
He clapped Ambrose on the shoulder. “Do it, my friend. If we can’t break the curse—if Gavin and I both turn—then you kill us.”
----------*****------------
Three days had passed since the flux faded, and while he’d regained most of his lucidity, he’d lost the ability to see in color. The world became shades of gray. The fire dancing in the hearth gave off heat, but the flames were no more colorful than the ash they produced.
Long years and the continuous transformations to his body after each flux had built within him a kind of numb acceptance. A colorless world was the least of his problems now. Ballard raised an arm to study the patch of skin from elbow to wrist. His claws skated across the ridges and crevices of hardened flesh resembling the bark of an old gnarled oak. He sported a similar patch on his right side, riding along his lower ribs and down to his hip.
A day after the flux, he’d discovered the bony protrusions erupting from his scalp—a single pair peeking above his mop of hair like the brow tines on a young stag. He’d laughed aloud at that—Isabeau mocked her cuckolded husband from the grave. He laughed even harder when his fingers tangled in a mat, not of hair but of thread-like vines as delicate as tendrils of bittersweet nightshade. He plucked one, feeling a hard pinch. The tendril, crowned by a leaf, coiled around his finger.
The curse had changed him in many ways; these were new and different. Like Gavin, he bore an animalistic appearance with his reptilian eyes, claws and fangs. Unlike Gavin, he also wore the mark of the forest. Bark for skin, vines for hair—as if Nature laid claim to him, turning him into an amalgam of the very land for which he’d sacrificed his wife and ultimately his son.
A hard banging at the solar’s door interrupted his thoughts. He ignored it, as he had the past dozen times.
“Ballard, you whiteliver! Open this damn door!”
He remembered a time when he would have ripped the door off its frame to reach and kill the person who dared call him a coward. Now he simply shifted on the pallet near the hearth and stared up at the ceiling, listening to Louvaen rail at him for the fifth time today.
“Ballard, I know you can hear me!”
He’d wager half the countryside heard her. He could never boast he loved a shy, retiring woman.
He waited through another round of pounding on the wood before it stopped. Despite his lethargy, the sudden quiet piqued his curiosity. He sat up and listened. Only the fire’s crackle teased his ears. He’d known her just a few months but learned early that Louvaen Duenda didn’t give up easily when she had a purpose. She tenaciously stood outside his door for three days, at first cajoling him with a soft voice to let her in, then in firmer tones that grew increasingly frustrated and angry when he refused to acknowledge her or the food tray she or Magda brought him twice a day.
Ballard missed her. He saw her face each time he closed his eyes to sleep, and his arms ached to hold her slender body against his. As loving as she was shrewish, she offered him succor unmatched in her boundless affection for him. She was blind as a mole to his disfigurement, but he’d seen the faintest shadow of aversion in her gaze when she discovered him testing the chain in the well room’s cell. Even she couldn’t ignore the worst of the changes, and he’d bled inside despite her lighthearted banter and her continued willingness to embrace him.
The particular rhythm of her gait alerted him she’d returned. He waited for the next round of insults she’d hurl at him. Instead, a loud thwack sounded, and the door vibrated. It continued to shake while Louvaen muttered words guaranteed to make a sailor blush. Another hard thwack followed the first, and he rose, drawn to the door despite his resolve to ignore everyone and everything on the other side. More baleful mutterings and a third thwack made the planks quiver under Ballard’s palm.
“What are you doing?” Ambrose’s voice, heavy with disapproval, halted her cursing.
“What does it look like? I’m opening the door.”
Ballard’s lips twitched at the sarcasm in her tone.
“Give me the axe, mistress.”
His eyebrows shot up. He could picture the scene in the hall. Louvaen’s temporary retreat had been anything but retreat; she’d gone for a weapon. If he wouldn’t come to her, then by gods she’d come to him. He shook his head and allowed himself a brief smile. Blood-thirsty termagant.
Ambrose repeated his demand. “Give it to me, Louvaen.”
“No. Since his all-mightiness has gone deaf and chosen to starve, I’m opening this door even if I have to hack my way through it.”
“Hand the axe to me right now or you and I will have another profound discussion on the merits of toads. Do you take my meaning?”
The silence that followed seethed through the slivered cracks between door and walls. Ballard eavesdropped, captivated by the exchange between his quarrelsome lover and his equally contentious sorcerer.
“I’m going down to get his dinner,” she warned. “If the door is still barred by the time I return, I will drag Plowfoot up here and tear the thing out of the wall.”
Ballard listened to the furious snap of her skirts as she marched away.
“I know you heard that argument, dominus,” Ambrose said. “You might as well give up and open the door. If anyone can shove a harnessed draught horse up a flight of stairs, it’s that stubborn fishwife you had the odd notion to take to your bed.”
Ballard slid the bar free to let Ambrose in. He eyed the damage Louvaen had inflicted, noting the gouges she’d cleaved into the wood with the axe blade and the sharp splinters littering the floor. He closed the door but left the bar raised.
Ambrose handed him the axe. “I suggest you hide this. I wouldn’t put it past her to try and split your skull if you refuse to eat.”
Ballard limped to a shadowed corner of the room and set the axe against the wall. The flux’s residual agony coursed through his body, pooling in his joints so that his shoulders cracked every time he raised his arms. His pelvis throbbed as if Magnus had trampled him not once but several times.
Ambrose nudged one of the chairs toward him. “Are you still in much pain?”
He sat down gingerly, f
eeling every one of the four hundred and ten years he had lived. “Aye. The flux did a good job of crippling me this time.”
“I can brew you a simple. It might help.”
Nothing would help, not even Ambrose’s strongest concoctions. He’d only end up sleepy or worse, delirious. “No. I’ve just recovered my wits. I’ll gladly suffer an ache or two to keep them intact.”
“I’d say you’re suffering from more than an ache or bruise.”
Ballard waved him off. “Stop hovering. How’s Gavin?”
Ambrose clasped his hands behind his back and took up a short run of pacing. “Worried about you.”
A cold lump of dread settled in Ballard’s gut. After so many years his son had once again fallen to the curse’s full effect, only now he was a man grown and made demonically strong by his mother’s bane. And he’d turned on Louvaen. Were it not for Ambrose wrenching the curse out of Gavin and slamming it into Ballard with all the magic he could muster, she’d be dead—ripped apart by claws and teeth.
“Forget me,” he said. “Has he recovered?”
Ambrose ceased his pacing and took the chair opposite Ballard. “Except for his eyes, he’s once more the Gavin we know. You should talk to him, dominus.” He indicated the solar door with a thrust of his chin. “I doubt he’ll turn the door into kindling like some people, but he needs to see you. You’re his father, and he has news.”
Ballard stiffened and bit back a pained groan. “What news?”
“He’s marrying Cinnia. Today.”
Ballard dragged his hand over his face. “I didn’t think I’d raised a stupid child. What was he thinking to pledge his troth? Especially after what happened?”
Ambrose smiled wryly. “He didn’t pledge. Cinnia did, and he accepted.”
Even knowing he’d pay for it with more pain, Ballard chuckled. “Boldness must skip generations in the Hallis line. Mercer Hallis’s daughters inherited all that he lacks.
“The elder sister certainly got more than her fair share.”
Ballard lifted himself stiffly out of the chair. “Today you say?”
Ambrose nodded. “I’ll marry them this afternoon. Gavin wants you there, as does Cinnia. And I’m certain I don’t need to remark on Mistress Duenda’s wishes where you’re concerned.” He stared at Ballard for a moment. “I can always marry two couples...”
Ballard held up a hand to interrupt him. He wouldn’t dwell on the impossible. “Bad enough that Gavin will make a widow of his new bride within a week. I won’t widow Louvaen a second time, nor will I tie her to Ketach Tor. Even with no heir to inherit and no army to defend that inheritance, she’ll try to hold onto the thing she considers my legacy. When we die, Ketach Tor must die with us.” He closed his eyes for a moment, fighting despair. “Tell Gavin I’ll be there, but I want to speak with him first.”
Ambrose bowed and strode to the door. He paused to stare at a point beyond Ballard’s shoulder, expression severe. “I ask your forgiveness, dominus. I could think of no other way to stop Gavin from killing Louvaen. I almost killed you in the process.”
Ballard gripped the other man’s shoulder. “I’d demand your apology if you hadn’t done what you did. You saved them both. There’s nothing to forgive.” Ambrose shuddered under his hand, and his eyes closed. “Don’t break on me now, friend,” Ballard said. “You’ve a harder task to carry out soon enough. I’m counting on you.”
The sorcerer gave a mournful sigh. “I regret making such a pact with you. You ask too much of me.”
He pulled away and left the room. The door closed behind him with a quiet click.
Ballard stared at the expanse of wood, as if he could see Ambrose through the boards. “I know,” he said.
Ambrose, who had been instrumental in lessening the curse’s effects on Gavin, would have to kill him in the end—and Ballard as well. He had reason to balk at this last, murderous duty, but Ballard refused to rescind his order to his most trusted retainer.
The enormity of what he’d force Ambrose to do—the absolute failure of every desperate endeavor to save Gavin—made him stagger. He sank to the floor and leaned against the wall, defeated.
Louvaen found him that way a few minutes later. The clatter of dishware sounded behind him as she set his dinner down nearby. He refused to look at her and chastised himself for not throwing on his cloak before she returned with the food. Except for the breeches, he sat bare before her, his latest metamorphosis testament to the curse’s triumph.
He stiffened as she drew closer and sat down behind him. Her skirts dragged across the floor as she pressed against the curve of his back, legs spread so that her knees bent on either side of him. Her cheek was cool and soft on his skin, her slender arms gentle against his sides.
“I’m not at all sorry about your door,” she said, her breath tickling his spine. “In fact, I consider its current state your fault.”
Despite the hopelessness that threatened to drown him, he managed a small smile. “I’ll shoulder the blame,” he said. “I should have hidden the weapons.”
“No, you should have opened the door when I asked so nicely the first time.” She nuzzled her face into his back.
He wondered how she overcame the revulsion she must surely suffer at feeling the serpentine vines under his skin writhe against her cheek. The idea sickened him.
“I don’t want you seeing me this way.”
She grumbled under her breath, and her arms tightened on his ribs hard enough to make him wince. “You are either vain, or stubborn or both. Or you think me the worst sort of shallow fizgig.”
Ballard could list a number of terms that applied to Louvaen; shallow and frivolous weren’t on the list. “Vanity has never been one of my shortcomings nor shallowness one of yours, woman.”
“Then give me your faith, my lord. I haven’t turned away yet.”
“I don’t want your pity, Louvaen.”
“And you won’t be getting it, though you’re seriously tempting me to use that axe on your head. You should have hidden it when you had the chance.”
This time Ballard chuckled. “Ambrose said the same thing before he left.”
A puff of warm air gusted across his shoulder as she huffed. “Well he’s right. And if you tell him I said so, I’ll strangle you.”
She let him go and scrambled to her feet. “Up with you. You haven’t eaten in at least three days, and Magda worked hard to make sure the food stayed hot.”
He shook his head. “I’ve no appetite.” As if to make a liar of him, his belly issued a gurgling squeal. He heard the grin in her voice.
“Tell that to your stomach.” She tapped him on the shoulder. “You can’t sit there all day holding up the wall.”
She maneuvered around his legs until she stood between his feet and filled his vision with the hem of her dress and shoes. He kept his head lowered. He couldn’t hide the horns or vines woven through his hair, but he’d shield her from the greater devastation of his face.
“Let me see you,” she said.
“No.”
One foot set to tapping an impatient beat. “Did Ambrose tell you Gavin will marry Cinnia today?” He nodded. “Good. Then I’ll be back with the tub and soap.”
She was starting to fray his temper. “I don’t want a bath,” he half snarled. He glanced up to catch her glare.
“I don’t care,” she said in a flat voice. “My only sister, whom I adore, is marrying a man who turns into a bat-faced cur when she tells him she loves him.” Ballard flinched, but she was relentless. “Afford her the courtesy of appearing at her wedding bathed and dressed in your best finery.”
Why had he ever feared he’d earn her pity?
Louvaen crouched before him and reached out to touch his face. Ballard caught her wrist, his claws clicking together as they closed around the fragile bones. He met her eyes then, as gray as the rest of his world had become but far more compassionate. “Gavin almost killed you,” he said gruffly.
She tilted her head, scr
utinizing him with a gaze that saw past his features. “No, a curse almost killed me. And you make too much of it.” Undeterred by his disbelieving snort, she continued. “All I have to show for my brush with death are two bruised elbows and a stubbed toe. I’ve more to fear from your fish pond.”
He freed her arm to scrub at his face. “You make light of dangerous things, Louvaen.”
“If I didn’t, I’d weep for us all, and I wouldn’t stop.” Her solemn expression softened, and she reached for him a second time, fingers gliding along his jaw, up to his temple and into his matted hair. “You’ve flowers in your hair,” she said. Tender amusement, instead of distaste, threaded her voice.
“That’s because they’re growing out of my head. Along with a pair of horns.”
“At least they aren’t roses. Her smile wilted as her fingers continued their trek through his hair, back down to his face, over the bridge of his nose and across one cheekbone. “Do these hurt?”
He shook his head. “No.” The scars had throbbed and burned so badly during the flux, he was lucky he didn’t try and tear his face off his skull. Now they were the only things on him that didn’t ache.
Louvaen leaned forward and replaced her hand with her mouth. She might not offer him a drop of pity, but she gave unstintingly of her devotion, even now when he was more forest creature than man.
She pressed a last kiss to the corner of his mouth before rising. His hands delved into the folds of her skirts in an unconscious bid to keep her there. “I’ll be back with everything you need for a bath.” Ballard blinked at the speed in which her tender look turned severe. She pointed a threatening finger at him. “Don’t even think about barring the door again.”
Ballard watched her go, the memory of her touch lingering on his face. He wondered how altered his life might have been if it were Louvaen instead of Isabeau he was betrothed to centuries earlier. He grinned as he clambered to his feet. One thing was certain; Gavin wouldn’t be blond.
