by Kallysten
“I’m sorry,” he said, holding Aedan’s gaze. “I should have kept her safe. I won’t fail her again.”
Aedan gave a tiny nod, and the anger filtering through their bond mellowed.
“You won’t fail me again?” Vivien snapped, drawing both of their gazes back to her. Her eyes were gleaming with the hurt of betrayal as she looked at Bradan. “I’m not a child. I can take care of myself. If you think I’m going to let the two of you fight my battles and get hurt while I just stay back and simper in fear, you have no idea who I am.”
With that, she turned on her heel and strode back toward the house, her feet striking the ground as though she were wearing heavy shoes rather than being barefoot. Aedan was frowning, and he started to go after her. Bradan caught his arm and held him back.
“Let her be. Let her calm down. We can talk to her later, when she’s ready to listen to us.”
“Will she ever be?” Aedan shot back. “She doesn’t care about her own safety. She doesn’t care about our oath. It means nothing to her.”
Bradan rubbed his temple with two fingers. “It’s not that she doesn’t care about it,” he tried to explain. “It’s just...foreign to her. In the Otherworld, oaths like ours are a thing found in books. And women don’t like men to treat them like fragile things.”
Aedan raised his eyes to the sky. “What does it have to do with her being a woman?” he asked, sounding exasperated. “I’d have been just as mad if the king had rushed to the front of the battle when I was fighting for him.”
The admission startled Bradan enough that he didn’t answer. Had Aedan cared about his guard duty for the false king that much? And why was he still calling him by his title rather than simply his name? It didn’t matter, Bradan told himself forcefully. Aedan was here now for Vivien. They both were. That was enough.
* * * *
Far from abating after a good night’s sleep, Vivien’s annoyance increased as she tossed and turned, finding little rest as her thoughts returned, over and over, to the events of the evening. She ended up listening to her MP3 player for hours to try to calm down.
Her humiliation at the way Aedan had treated her roiled inside her like acid. Was she no more than a child in his eyes? How could she prove to him that she was anything but? And how could she prevent Brad from starting to think like his brother? He had seemed to welcome Vivien’s help during the fight, but after a few words from Aedan, he had been apologizing, of all things, for what had been her decision.
When the first light of morning illuminated her window, she gave up on trying to sleep. She got out of bed, washed up in cold water that did nothing to improve her mood, and dressed in the first outfit that fell under her hand, a skirt and blouse. When she put on her sandals, she only had a vague idea of what she intended to do, but as she opened her door and found Aedan in the hallway, his back to the wall and his arms crossed over his chest, her decision solidified.
“Blessings, Dame Vivien,” he said in a quiet, calm tone that in no way resembled his angry voice from last night.
Without acknowledging him, Vivien strode past him and down the hallway. She couldn’t hear a sound behind her, but she was sure he was following her and refused to turn around to check. She descended to the first floor and went to the kitchen. There, she continued to resolutely ignore Aedan’s presence as she pulled food out of the cupboard and helped herself to breakfast. At the very least, he owed her an apology, and until he stopped treating her like a child she would have nothing to say to him.
Aedan, however, didn’t seem to be familiar with the concept of ‘silent treatment.’ He remained by the wall, but soon broke the silence.
“I understand that you are upset with me,” he said in a slow voice. “But there is something I wish to ask of you.”
A tiny bit of curiosity niggled Vivien, but she pretended it didn’t exist and continued to spread jam over her bread. God, but she missed coffee.
“When we swore the QuickSilver Oath,” he continued, still very slow, “Bradan and I were children, and we had no one to swear to but each other. We meant the words anyway, each and every one of them, but...”
He fell silent when Vivien stood abruptly. She passed by him without so much as a glance and went to the water pump, pouring herself a goblet of water which she took back to the table. She wished she could have stolen a glance at Aedan to see how annoyed he was, but that would have defeated the whole purpose of the exercise. Besides, she could hear his voice growing more and more frustrated.
“I had to swear another oath when I joined the king’s guard and—”
That drew Vivien’s eyes to him, and she stared at him with a sharp gaze. “You what?”
For the first time as far as she could recall, Aedan’s countenance wavered, hesitation flickering over his features. He shifted from foot to foot before stilling again.
“It was all part of our plan,” he started again. “Bradan Passed Through to the Otherworld to stay close to you, and I joined the king’s guard and became a vampire. But that oath... The QuickSilver Oath was always stronger. I only followed the king’s orders as long as you remained safe.”
Vivien’s eyes widened, and she stared harder still. Never mind working for the very person who wanted to hurt her; Aedan had been undercover, she had watched enough cop movies to understand that. But a vampire? They had said that word before, and she had read it in those books, but no one had ever said that Aedan was a vampire. He didn’t have fangs, did he? And she had seen him in the sunlight when she had first met him.
“You are a vampire,” she repeatedly flatly, barely managing not to roll her eyes at him. “Right. That’s totally obvious.”
Aedan ignored her sarcasm and continued right on. “In my heart, I still hold the QuickSilver Oath as true. I would never break it. But if you will, I wish to swear it again, this time to you. Then maybe you will understand that your safety is the most important thing for me. More important than my own life.”
The same anger that had kept Vivien up most of the night flared through her again. Hadn’t she told them she wouldn’t let anyone fight her battles? Why did she have to understand him when he refused to hear her?
She stood, pressing both hands hard against the table so he wouldn’t see she was shaking.
“I don’t want you to die for me,” she said in a low, angry voice. “I don’t want anyone to die for me. That oath you want to swear, it’d just be a leash. On me. Something to hold me in check. Stop me from doing anything you think is too risky because if I do, you might throw yourself in front of me and get hurt on my behalf.”
Walking up to him, she raised herself to all of her height and glowered at him, his gray eyes just inches away.
“You know what?” she hissed. “I don’t want that oath. I don’t want your protection. I don’t want you anywhere near me.”
She’d intended to go for a walk to soothe her nerves—Brad had mentioned a lake—but now she needed to get out of this house and away from Aedan. And if he tried to put a hand on her to get her back inside like he had last night, she would show him she didn’t need a sword to fight. She strode away from him and swung the back door open just as he clasped her shoulder. Sunlight poured in. Behind her, Aedan gasped—was it in pain?—and let go of her.
She whirled around to look at him and saw him move back, out of the path of sunlight. He was cradling his hand to his chest; it looked red, swollen...burned.
Vivien’s world shook, and she froze. One word echoed through her mind again. Vampire? But it didn’t make sense. She had read stories and seen movies in which vampires were unable to step into the sun without burning, but Aedan hadn’t been bothered by the sun back when she had first met him in the park. Why would he be hurt by it now?
She started to step back inside, an apology already coming to her lips, but she changed her mind and stopped. It wasn’t her fault, she told herself forcefully. If he hadn’t tried to grab her, he wouldn’t have been hurt. She had warned him to keep his ha
nds off her, hadn’t she?
Still holding his hand to his chest, he gave her a pleading look. “Please, Dame Vivien, it’s too dangerous for you to go out.”
If anything, his words reinforced her decision. She stepped outside and closed the door behind her. This was her world, Brad had told her. It was time for her to explore it.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Lake
In one of the history books she had read yesterday, Vivien had found the map of a property, a castle built by some ruler or other. She hadn’t realized it at the time, but it had depicted this property, the house and the grounds around it. It had dawned on her last night, when she thought about the beautiful view Brad had showed her over the cliff.
On the map, at the back of the castle, jagged lines and dashes had indicated the edge of a precipice. The castle, it seemed, was built on a plateau in the mountains. One side was inaccessible because of the cliff, which, Vivien supposed, was a desirable thing when your enemies wanted you dead. The other side of the property was bordered by woods and a lake that the map had indicated with small waves drawn over a rough oval shape.
The whole geography seemed off to Vivien, but for all she knew this place didn’t obey the same laws Earth did; or maybe magic had created the whole thing. Regardless, if this was the property from the map, it had to be the lake Brad had mentioned to her, and since he had offered to take her to it, she supposed—she hoped—that the shields extended past it.
After leaving Aedan in the kitchen, Vivien strode straight out toward the shields. They gleamed softly in the morning sun, but were farther away than she had estimated when she had looked outside yesterday. She angled her steps around a strangely shaped extension that was linked to the house by a long corridor—the room where they had Passed Through, Vivien guessed.
As soon as she could see past it, she smiled. The terrain was uneven and descended in a gentle slope, but she could already see the woods, thick branches reaching high and disappearing beyond the shields. If the map held true, the lake would be right on the edge of it.
As she continued toward the woods, Vivien’s pace slowed right along with her heartbeat. It had been beating furiously when she had confronted Aedan in the kitchen, but now her irritation was abating, chased away by crisp, fresh air and the ticking sensation of cool grass against her feet through her sandals.
The closer she came to the woods, the more wildflowers surrounded her in every imaginable shade of the rainbow. The scents were like a symphony, shifting with every gust of wind, sometimes sweet and delicate, sometimes strong enough to make her a little lightheaded. Soon, she found herself smiling at nothing in particular, her fears and confusion from the past couple of days receding as a sense of simple but all-encompassing serenity rose through her.
She walked along the edge of the woods, her fingers reaching down to caress the soft petals of tall flowers. Her eyes turned toward the shade provided by the thick canopy of leaves. She could see the occasional flutter of wings and hear bird songs, none like anything she’d heard before...or had she?
From deep inside her rose the echo of a voice, gentle but firm, telling her to stay out of the woods unless someone was with her. She wasn’t staying on the grass to obey that voice, she told herself; she only wanted to get to the lake. Just the same, a small part of her felt better for not disobeying.
She finally reached the far end of the woods and had to stop, her eyes widening to take in every detail, the breath stolen right out of her. The previous evening, she had thought nothing could compare to the view over the valley, with the sunset casting an almost eerie light over everything. She had been wrong.
The terrain sloped down in front of her, so that she stood a few feet above what looked like a shallow bowl carved in the landscape. In the center, the reflection of the midday, bright-blue sky glittered softly in the water as the breeze created small waves. On the left side, the woods came right to the edges of the lake, some trees with spider-like roots sitting half on land, half in the water. On the right and further away, the vegetation was sparse, with clusters of small trees or shrubs spread out along the waterline. Whatever lay beyond those, Vivien couldn’t tell because the shields came down to the ground maybe twenty or thirty yards from the lake.
Pushing herself into motion again, she started down the slope, and nearly fell when her sandals slipped on the dewy grass. She took them off and kept them hooked on her fingers as she reached the edge of the lake where a few large, smooth boulders advanced into the water. A flash of something that felt like a memory flickered to the surface of her mind, and she knew, as clearly as if she had tasted it already, how fresh the water would be if she cupped her hands in it and drank deep.
She tiptoed onto the boulders, warm from soaking sunlight, and came to the very edge of the water where she looked down. She was almost shocked to see herself as she was, a young woman on the verge of turning twenty; why had she expected a child to look back at her from her reflection?
Feeling a little silly, she sat down, her legs dangling over the rock so that her toes skimmed the surface of the water. She let her gaze drift over the lake and its surroundings while her thoughts drifted over everything that had happened. Had it only been two days ago that she had last talked to Anabel, that she had sat in a coffee shop with her peers, preparing a school project and making a fool out of herself in front of Brad? It felt like a lot longer than that.
And the rest of that day, with Aedan and his knives in the woods, with Brad and his show of magic back at the house, seemed like little more than a bad dream. Some aspects of what was happening certainly felt like a fairytale—she, a princess hidden from enemies in a parallel world with a wizard for a bodyguard—but the deaths that had occurred, Anabel’s kidnapping, even Brad being wounded the previous night were all the stuff of horror stories. As for Aedan...she wasn’t certain in what category he belonged.
When she heard small sounds behind her, she was sure for a moment that Aedan had come after her, and the resentment she felt toward him started to rise again. She quickly remembered how sunlight had hurt him, though; he couldn’t have come. Which meant...
Looking over her shoulder, she met Brad’s eyes and found herself smiling before she was even aware of wanting to do so.
“Sit with me?” she asked.
For a second, maybe not even that long, Brad hesitated, and one word—proper—rang through Vivien’s mind like a warning bell. Soon, though, he was bending down to remove his boots. Her smile widened a little more, and she looked back at the lake to hide it from him.
* * * *
Aedan’s frantic words stayed with Bradan all the way to the lake, urging him onward. “They might be waiting for her behind the shields! If she crosses them on her own...”
As concerned as he was, though, Bradan couldn’t imagine that Vivien would be reckless enough to walk through the shields by herself. She had seen the guards in action, she knew what they could do, and she wasn’t stupid.
It had taken Bradan a little longer than usual to get dressed, both because his healing arm still bothered him and because the remnants of an indistinct dream made him uneasy. By the time he was done, however, and striding downstairs at Aedan’s side, he knew exactly where to look for Vivien. She might claim she didn’t remember, but he was sure she had more memories than she realized. The view from the cliff had touched her, he just knew it. And there was another place that she had loved as a child, as much as the cliff if not more.
When he reached the top of the slope and looked down, he wasn’t surprised to find her seated on a boulder, her feet batting at the water in what looked like an unconscious gesture. He had half a mind to tell her how worried she’d made them, which was as close to a scolding as he could imagine himself giving her, but when she turned that bright smile on him and asked him to join her, all he could do was smile back and obey.
He sat by her side, leaving enough space between them to be proper. This early in the morning the water was cool en
ough that he curled his toes in surprise. It had been a long time since he had swum in the lake.
“The water gets warmer in the afternoon, if you feel like taking a swim.”
“I didn’t bring a swimsuit,” she said, a little wistful. “Maybe we could go back and grab one. And some coffee while we’re at it.” She paused, and when she continued, her voice was lower. “Or we could just stay there.”
Bradan would have liked nothing better than to say yes. It wasn’t that easy, though. On Earth, any shield he put up to protect her would eventually fail; any use of the Quickening there was bound to dissipate sooner rather than later. Here, not only could Bradan accomplish more with the Quickening, he also could count on the channelers that had come before him. Shields had existed over the castle and its grounds for so long that Bradan had only needed to channel at them to reactivate them. Even after decades of disuse, they’d sprung back into place, more complex than he could have hoped to accomplish on his own.
He could have offered to take her home for a little while, but a few hours spent there would mean days in Foh’Ran, and they couldn’t afford to lose that much time.
“When things have calmed down,” he said slowly. “When we’re sure you’re safe—”
“We,” she cut in. “You mean you and Aedan.”
There was heat in her tone when she said Aedan’s name, the same anger seeping through from last night.
“You have to understand, all we want is for you to be safe. Everything we do or say revolves around that.”
If there was one thing Bradan wished he could convince her was true, it was this simple fact. From it was the source of everything he and Aedan had become. If she didn’t trust them, how could they hope to help her?
“That oath you took,” she said with a small nod; maybe she did believe him. She considered the lake for a little while before turning her face toward him and observing him with the same intensity. “Are you going to ask to swear it again in front of me, too?”
