by Bast, Anya
He threw the ball to the floor with force. Magick popped and Jessa gasped. Her mind torqued a little—that was the only way to describe the sensation—and Sam transformed. In his place beat the dark wings of a raven. The bird fluttered for a moment in the air, then took off through the open window. His clothes lay in a heap on the floor where he’d stood only a moment earlier.
Jessa leapt from her chair and lunged for the opening, watching him soar off. For a moment, the sky was clear of everything except heavy gray clouds. Then the raven returned, aiming for the window.
She stepped back, allowing the bird through. It landed not far from her and Sam shifted back to human form in a brilliant flash that made her mind bend to the side a little once more. “Holy—”
“Shit,” he finished for her with a slow, lazy grin.
Her gaze flicked down. He was naked, his skin glistening wet from the rain. She raised her eyes to his face, her cheeks reddening. “Do you always lose your clothes when you shift?”
He took a step toward her, his lopsided grin hitching up a little at one corner. “No. It’s a choice.” His eyes glinted mischievously.
Aha.
Sam reached out and touched two fingers to the center of her chest. “Witches have more power than shamans, but shamans can shift. Although select few witches can shift, too. All of them, by the way, have come from your bloodline.”
Her eyes opened wide. “Seriously?”
Sam grinned, a dimple popping out on one cheek. “Seriously. Want to see if you’re one of them?”
And fly into the heavens as a bird? Just as Jessa was about to open her mouth with an enthusiastic yes, Thorgest burst into the room. “Sam, we’ve a security breach.”
Sam took a step back. “Blight?”
Thorgest snarled inarticulately. “Worse.”
Commotion in the hallway. Raised voices. Scuffling feet. A fistfight. Bodies slamming against the walls of the corridor. Then Broder strode through the doorway, looking as grim and pissed as she’d ever seen him.
TWENTY-FOUR
“Broder!” she yelled. A surge of joy and relief pushed her feet toward him. She ran, meaning to leap right into his arms and ask for his forgiveness. All of a sudden her head was clear of everything but him. She never should have left him. She hadn’t been thinking straight.
Sam reached out to snag her and hold her back as she passed, but just missed her. Thorgest intercepted her instead, wrapping his arms around her midsection and swinging her away with wiry strength.
Rage rushed through her veins. She wrenched herself from Thorgest’s arms, shooting him a look to kill, and ran the rest of the way to Broder, but the look on his face stopped her dead in her tracks a few paces from him.
His expression held a riot of emotion like she’d never seen on him before. He wore black from head to toe and his wet hair had been slicked back over his skull, throwing the sculpted bones of his face into sharp relief. His gaze took her in like a starving animal confronted with a meal, hot and hungry, but they grew cool when he looked over her head and focused on her great-grandfather.
Behind her she heard a low, menacing growl that made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end, and she looked behind her to find a huge gray wolf standing where Sam had been a moment ago. Sam’s teeth were pulled back away from his lips, his sleek wolf head lowered so the whites of his eyes showed and his ears were laid back.
“I tried to stop him,” said Roan from the doorway. He was out of breath, his lip bloody, and his shirt was ripped. “Bastard found the enclave and cut right through our wards.”
“Maybe that’s a good thing. Leave him alone … for now,” said Thorgest. His voice held a note of satisfaction that Jessa didn’t understand. “Broder Calderson, so nice to see ye again after all these years, but I can’t say I’m happy you’re here, considering yer history with us.”
Jessa turned and stared hard at her great-grandfather, who had an irritating smirk on his face. Suddenly she was certain she’d been caught in the middle of a tug-of-war and she didn’t know the rules.
Thorgest’s gaze flicked to her, then back to Broder. “Now that ye’re here, ye can tell Jessa what ye did to her people.”
Jessa clenched her hands at her sides against her confusion and the rising animosity in the room. Broder stared at Thorgest as though he wanted to leap across the room and kill him with his bare hands.
“What is going on?” she asked. “Please, someone talk to me.”
“Broder?” Her great-grandfather raised his eyebrows. “She’s asking for an explanation. Dinna ye want to give her one? If ye love her, ye will.”
Broder’s gaze dropped to hers and locked. Pain flashed through his eyes so brilliantly that for a moment it gave her chest pains.
“Tell me,” she whispered.
But still, he didn’t. The emotions that swirled inside her became a storm, making her light-headed. She’d known that Broder had committed some terrible crime in his past. And she’d known the seidhr had no great love for him … but she’d never put the two together. Now she realized she should have.
As Broder, mute, his eyes full of guilt, held her gaze, the swirling emotions solidified … into anger.
“Broder ne’er told ye the crime that brought him to Loki’s untender mercy, did he, Jessa?”
Her gaze still locked with Broder’s, she shook her head. She raised her chin. “I think I deserve to know.”
“Broder?” Thorgest goaded.
He moved his gaze to holds hers. There was coldness in his eyes that she’d never seen before—never had wanted to see. Coldness and violence. Were they memories? “Do you want to know, Jessa?”
She nodded, her eyes filling with tears. Actually, she wasn’t sure if she did. Perhaps ignorance would preserve her memory of the man she loved when Loki had removed him from her life.
Sam gave another low growl.
“I slaughtered them.” Broder’s voice came out hoarse with barely restrained rage. The muscles in his throat stood out and his body seemed to shake from his effort to hold himself back from attacking Roan, Sam, and Thorgest all at once. “I killed every one of them I could get my hands on. Almost a whole enclave, men and women alike.” Brutal, chilling intensity made every word he spoke a dagger point through her chest.
Jessa took a step backward. For the first time since she’d met him, she was afraid of him.
Broder took a step toward her, not allowing her to retreat. “I cleaved their heads from their necks, their arms from their shoulders. I cut them all down. I bathed in their blood and I reveled in it. With sword and ax, I killed them all. Nearly wiped them out of existence in one blood-drenched afternoon.”
“Who?” Jessa’s voice came out on a weak puff of breath. It was as if all the warm emotion she’d ever had for Broder was ebbing away. It left her cold; it left an empty place where her heart had been. She knew who he was speaking of, of course she did, but she needed to hear the words from his lips. “Who did you kill?”
“You know.” His voice was rough and empty sounding at the same time. “The seidhr. Witches and shamans alike.”
Silence filled the room like a living thing, sucking out all the air. Jessa stood, staring at Broder, at a loss for words.
Thorgest didn’t have any trouble finding something to say. “He killed yer great-great-grandfather, Jessa—my father. He killed my mother. He nearly wiped out our entire genetic line.” His gaze swung to Broder. “It must be strange to understand how close ye came to ensuring that Jessa was ne’er born. How many other witches and shamans ne’er saw the light of day because of ye?”
Jessa was still stunned speechless. What had been revealed was like a punch to the gut. She would rather have had a fist to the stomach in place of this. It was as if she didn’t know Broder at all.
He was a stranger to her.
She’d known his original crime was bad, but she hadn’t known it had been anything close to this. The remorseless slaughter of an entire enclave of her peo
ple—her blood kin? “Why did you come here?” she finally managed to ask through a constricted throat. Her voice came out sounding as cold as the center of her chest.
Broder jerked as if she’d slapped him. “I came … for you.”
“Seems a bad idea now, doesn’t it?” spat Thorgest.
TWENTY-FIVE
Broder hardly heard Thorgest’s words. He knew the old shaman was doing his best to twist the knife in the wound, but it was impossible to make things worse. He saw the truth in Jessa’s eyes—she was lost to him in every way.
Now she saw the monster he was. Now she knew his darkest secret.
Of all the women he could have fallen in love with it had to be a witch….
There was more to the story, but it didn’t make a difference if she knew it or not. Right now he might as well have been standing in front of her with a bloody sword in one hand and an ax in the other, the carnage he’d wrought in that ancient seidhr enclave all around him. It was as if he truly was back on that day, his side a bleeding, meaty mess and his life leaking out onto the floor.
It hadn’t mattered then and it didn’t matter now. Without Jessa’s love nothing mattered.
“I have no idea who you are,” Jessa whispered, ignoring her great-grandfather completely. Broder saw frosty hurt in her eyes, laced with the emotion he never wanted to see on her face when she looked at him—fear, revulsion.
The icy black hole in the center of his chest that had been threatening to engulf him since she’d left suddenly swallowed him whole.
“I’ll leave,” he said, his voice low and rough sounding—broken. He didn’t move, though. Instead he lingered, hoping for one last impossible reprieve, for Jessa to realize he wasn’t that man anymore, for her to realize she loved him no matter what. A thousand years had passed. He’d paid for his crimes. If he could take it all back, he would. Couldn’t she see how much he’d risked by coming here?
Couldn’t she feel how much he loved her?
Optimistic to the bitter end. He never would have guessed he possessed that trait. It had taken Jessa to bring it out of him.
Framed in the doorway, he turned to her and ignored Thorgest’s body language that said he wanted to whup his ass. He could try. Broder wouldn’t mind doing a little whupping of his own and was pretty sure he could take even the master shaman in a fight. He wouldn’t give in to the temptation, for Jessa’s sake. A final gift to her.
Pushing past Roan, he made his way to the front door.
He wanted to look over his shoulder for one last glimpse of the only woman he’d loved in a thousand years, but he couldn’t do it … not when she was looking at him that way.
“This can’t be happening.” Jessa put a hand to her forehead and took a step back. Thorgest and Roan were there in a heartbeat, helping her to ease into a chair.
Sam padded out of the room on huge wolf feet, following Broder, assuring he left the premises, she was certain.
She shivered, unsure about how she felt about Broder leaving.
Everything was a jumble in her mind; her emotions were like tangled balls of yarn and she couldn’t separate the skeins. Something about this was off. Something was wrong. She wanted to go after Broder, and yet, what he’d done had been so terrible … and oddly personal even though it had happened so long before her birth. What he’d done had been unforgivable, even if it had been a thousand years ago and he’d endured a living hell since then to pay for it.
“There, there, lass, let it go,” Thorgest said, kneeling beside her. “He’s not worth another thought. Loki is making sure he suffers for what he did.”
“I’m caught in a nightmare,” she murmured.
“Ye’ve yer studies here,” Thorgest continued. “Ye have us, yer family. Maybe one day ye’ll find another man, a better man. Dinna worry yer pretty head over Broder Calderson.”
Another man. She grimaced. She didn’t want another man.
“A man like Sam, perhaps.”
Her grimace deepened.
“Then one day, when ye’re ready, ye’ll take the reins of this place.”
She blinked and looked at her great-grandfather. “What?”
“Thorgest hasn’t told you yet.” Roan wiped at his lip where Broder had punched him. There was a note of emotion in his voice, something she couldn’t identify. “We weren’t going to do that until later.”
Thorgest seemed to realize he’d said something he shouldn’t have, which raised every one of Jessa’s red flags. Apparently Roan’s comment had warned him he’d trod into dangerous territory. “Tell me what?” Her tone brooked no denial of a straight answer.
“In the seidhr, leadership passes through the bloodline, lass,” said Thorgest. “Through our family. Ye’re like a princess about to become a queen.”
She frowned. “And if I don’t want to be queen?”
“It’s what you were born to be.” Thorgest’s voice held a hint of steel that made her bristle. Who was he to dictate the shape of her future? He’d already made it clear he wanted her with Sam. Now this?
She shivered. Wait a minute. Of course she wanted to be queen! Who wouldn’t want to be a queen? Sam was a different matter, but she could cope with that later. She settled back against the chair. “We’ll need to talk a lot more about this.”
Yes, queen.
Thorgest smiled. “’Course we will, lass.”
Roan glared at Thorgest. “You need to make sure Broder has left the enclave.” He paused. “As the current leader it’s your responsibility,” he added.
Thorgest hesitated a moment, the lines around his mouth deepening. Clearly he didn’t like the note of demand in Roan’s voice. But he stood all the same. “Duty calls. I’ll be back soon, me lass.”
Once Thorgest was gone, Roan knelt before her, his hands on her upper arms, his eyes serious. “You asked the wrong question.”
“What?” She looked into his intense face, feeling a little drugged. It had to be the stress. She blinked, trying to clear the cloud hanging around her head.
“You asked Broder the wrong question. You asked him why he came here when you should have asked him why he did it.”
“You’re confusing me.” She shivered and twitched at the same time. What was wrong with her?
“You know why he came here, Jessa, even though Loki will flay the skin from his bones for stepping foot inside the enclave. He did it for you. He did it because he loves you and he can’t let you go, no matter the cost.”
She bit her lower lip. “I know that, but what he did—”
“Was inconceivable to any normal human brain. He was a berserker of old, Jessa, slaughtering all he saw.”
“Exactly. I feel like I don’t even know who he is.”
“You need to ask yourself why he did it. I’m not saying it excuses it; I’m saying there are things you don’t know.”
“Like what?”
“Go after him. Ask him.”
She thought about that for a moment. Then she shivered. “No. I should stay here.”
Roan made a frustrated sound and shook her. “You are a new witch, Jessa, but you’re not weak. Find the thread and cut it. Find your strength.”
She frowned at him, trying to figure out what he meant.
Thorgest reentered the room, a wide smile on his face. “He’s gone, past the wards. Good riddance to ’im, too.”
Despair welled up in Jessa’s chest. He was gone. Likely she would never see him again. But, maybe, if she got up right now and ran …
But no.
She looked up at Roan, to find him staring down at her with disappointment on his face. Find the thread and cut it, he’d said. Find the thread of what? She parsed the thoughts and emotions crowding her and found a faint one, dying in the back, that she had a feeling should be more prominent. She focused on it.
“I need to see him.” Jessa stood.
Thorgest looked at her like she’d grown a second head. “He’s gone, lass. Best ye let him go. He’s a bad man. Got no place h
ere.”
Jessa started to agree with him, then stopped herself. Find it and cut it. “I need closure. I need to know why he did it, Thorgest.” She walked toward the door, mostly just to see if she could. It was a little like walking through molasses … a little like walking through the wards around the enclave.
Did that mean there were wards of some kind between her and Broder? Was there magick affecting her now, keeping her from exercising her free will?
