The Unforgiven

by A. Katie Rose

  No!

  I cried aloud. I shoved, hard, against the healing that spread to the grief in my heart, my soul. It sought to heal me of the pain the deaths of Malik, of Kiera, of Sky Dancer caused me. Don’t you touch it, don’t you dare! It’s my pain, my sorrow. Leave it alone. Leave me to my grief. I need my pain. Heal my hurts if you must, but leave me to grieve for those I lost.

  The heat slipped away, oozing from me as pus drips from an infected wound. My physical pain eased, though the tearing sense of loss remained. Its savagery ripped through my soul, and I half-wished I’d let the bastards take that pain, too. Its fury had abated, somewhat, similar to a binding that supports a broken limb. It doesn’t heal, but it doesn’t hurt – as much.

  I blinked, tears and sweat stinging my eyes and blurring my vision. Iyumi’s face swam in and out of my sight. A cold, wet cloth soothed my burning cheeks, and wiped steamy sweat from my brow and cheeks. I breathed in and out, feeling what a wrung out wash cloth must feel. Empty, drained and limp.

  I must’ve lay on my back, my head pillowed on Iyumi’s lap, for I gazed up into her crystal blue eyes. She smiled sadly down into mine. A sharp rock bit into my left shoulder. No amount of shifting eased that nasty hurt.

  “Huh?” I began, my throat raw as though I’d been screaming. “Pr – Princess?”

  Her fingers stroked my hair from my brow. “It’s all good, Captain,” she murmured, her voice husky. “Your life is in the hands of the gods.”

  “Uh, wait –”

  I struggled to rise, but only fell back into her lap, gasping, swearing. “Let me up, dammit.”

  “They are most pleased with thee,” she said, sliding out from under my shoulders and head. “Rise, First Captain Vanyar. You are the gods’ chosen champion.”

  “Shit,” I gasped, struggling to my knees. Without her strong support, that wasn’t an easy task. “They can kiss my fish-belly white –”

  “Vanyar.”

  “They killed Malik, Kiera – I hate them.”

  “Hate them all you want, but you’ll serve them just the same.”

  “Serve this,” I gasped, before pitching forward onto my face.

  I woke to Iyumi’s slender back as she stood upon a large boulder, facing the east and the rising sun. The dawn’s weak yet warm light spread across the tiny clearing at the cave’s mouth. A blazing fire burned within a ring of stones, warming not just my skin but my prospects. I didn’t remember starting a fire in the pit at the cave’s entrance, but after last night, anything was possible.

  Creeping on hands and knees from the cave’s mouth, I huddled before the fire, roasting my hands and sighing in relief. Dawn lay its’ still hand upon the mountains. No bird cheeped in the thorny bushes, rousing for the day’s territorial squabbles. No rabbit scuttled through the underbrush. No raven or hawk soared on silent wings overhead, amidst the dawn’s rising strength. Listening hard, I found only leaves falling from winter-bared branches to lie, face-down, on the stony heather.

  Iyumi raised her hands high against the sun’s early rays. Her chanting voice rose and fell, in a language my ears didn’t recognize. Her hands and arms wove a silent dance in harmony to her song, perhaps speaking in a holy dialect only the gods comprehended. The grace of her movements mesmerized, as though hypnotizing me, catching me within her spell.

  I blinked, and turned my head aside, my eyes lowered. I felt ashamed, as though I watched a sacred act played between Iyumi and the gods. Something I was excluded from, and would never be invited to partake of. I spied on the holy, me the most sinful of all – a taker of innocent lives, a murderer and an oath-breaker. Surely the gods’ wrath would strike me dead for laying my eyes upon so holy a rite.

  If the gods’ wanted vengeance for it, they chose to pass the opportunity by. Nothing at all happened except the sun rose higher, the shadows from the tall trees lengthened and a small fallow deer ducked away from the sound and scent of us to trot on nearly silent hooves toward a safer place to sleep the day away. As on every other morning since the world was created, the high altitude dawn lit the horizon and the towering peaks. Almost as ordinary as the yawn I couldn’t halt with my hand.

  “Grow up, Van,” Iyumi remarked without turning her head. “You can’t escape them.”

  “Escape whom?”

  Iyumi stood and turned, the silver fall of her hair cascading past her shoulders to her hips. Her eyes burned. “You know of whom I speak.”

  “Oh, please.”

  I scoffed, picking at the bandage around my left arm, trying to ease the annoying itch. “Don’t bore me with your preaching, sister. The gods hate me, and I them.”

  I rubbed the back of my hand across my mouth, craving a stiff drink just then. Hell, I didn’t just crave it – I needed it, damn it. Why didn’t we have any mead, or beer, or any bloody ale on hand? Who the hell traipses into the wild chasing a mystery kid without any medicinal alcohol in their pack? Heavens forefend! Anything would help – outside water, that was.

  Iyumi sighed, annoyed, watching me undo her best nursing. “Here,” she said, striding forward. “Let me.”

  I drew my arm back, suspicious. “Let you what?”

  “Pull your arm from its socket and beat you bloody with it,” she snapped, her fair lips down-turned. “What do you think? Sit down, fool.”

  Shoving me hard with a strong hand to my shoulder, she forced me onto my butt. I missed the rock she intended my ass to hit, but my healthy right arm swept across her lower back and dragged her down onto the twiggy loam with me.

  She had one breath for one royal protest before my lips enveloped hers. My tongue teased her open mouth, danced across her teeth, as I pulled her chest into mine. Her small breasts lay hard against me as my left arm, trailing bloody wraps, trailed up her hip, across her narrow waist to her shoulder before finally cupping her cheek. My body’s heat flared, igniting a desire I’d never before known. No girl I’d ever been with compared to her. Her taste, her sweetness, her innocence brought forth a hunger, a craving that eclipsed mere lust. I didn’t just want her – I wanted all of her.

  Her body stiffened, her palm on my shoulder intended to push me back, into my place both literally and socially. For a moment, the pressure grew – then it abruptly fell away. She leaned into my kiss, our tongues tangling, dancing, entwined. She slipped her hands up my ribs, over my shoulders to wrap her slender arms around my neck. A soft moan eased from beneath her breasts, hard against my chest.

  Damn, damn, damn. She felt so right, so perfect – as though we weren’t two people, but one. One soul, one mind, one body. I felt her breath hitch as upon a soft sob, her arms clinging in desperation to my neck. Beneath my fingers, her small, firm body trembled as though cold. I knew, however, my kiss lit a fire within her that no mere water could quench. I breathed her in, and exhaled myself into her.

  Like man and horse, eagle and lion, man and bull, Iyumi and I completed one another as though melded since the beginning of time. Perhaps, in another lifetime, a saner world, we loved each other. Perhaps the gods felt mercy upon us, and though we died apart then, they granted us a new chance now. A new chance at love, and a lifetime together.

  Or perhaps they merely teased us, and laughed at our expense. With the divine, one never knew what to expect.

  Pulling away reluctantly, Iyumi rested her cheek against mine. Dipping my face, I nuzzled her neck, kissing every inch of her throat I could reach. I felt the moan of denial caught, trapped, deep within her breast. I wasn’t for her, I heard her think. Her father would never permit – his heir apparent and beloved daughter paired with an disgraced Atani Captain and Clan Shifter?

  Not just no, but hell, no.

  Holding her close, I ignored the obvious and followed my gut. I never did like the insufferable royal bitch who demanded obedience at every turn. I hated her air of superiority, and her uptilted nose. But I sure as hell loved the sweet, humorous and fiercely independent creature who not just smelled nice but looked at me with those incredible e
yes as though she might love me back.

  “Kissing a royal without permission is an executable offense,” she murmured, her tone husky.

  I chuckled softly against her parted lips. “You can only execute me once.”

  My fingers on her chin, I tilted her lovely face up to mine and kissed her again, hungrily. She responded with a fierce desire of her own, her warm lips seizing mine, parting under my gentle assault. My passion chained, my body on fire for her, I gasped. My heart reeling, my blood roared in my ears. This is wrong, it’s so wrong. But felt so right.

  With heavy reluctance, I pulled away from her sweet mouth and luscious tongue, but not from her embrace. She leaned her brow against my jaw, her breath coming in short bursts. I ached in places that shouldn’t, and kissed her closed eyelids. I tasted the salt of her tears on my tongue, trying to stem the tide of my runaway desires.

  “If we don’t stop,” I murmured. “We won’t stop.”

  Iyumi’s breathy giggle teased my chest.

  “I mustn’t dishonor you, m’lady,” I muttered against her ear. “As much as I want to.”

  She raised her face and a strange sort of smile. Her fingers brushed a lock of my hair from my eyes. “Not a good thing, I expect,” she replied softly. “Right now.”

  I kissed her uptilted nose. “No. Not right now.”

  “Our country needs saving first. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “Don’t forget the child.”

  “We both need food,” I said, taking her by the shoulders and lifting her up with me. “We’ve a long way to go, yes?”

  Nodding, Iyumi half-crossed her arms over her breasts, as though in protection, and stepped away from me. I needed no magic to feel the solid shield that slammed up between us. As effective as a high stone wall with fire-breathing trolls guarding it, her barrier protected her heart, and her soul, from attack from both within and without. “You’re right, of course,” she said, an odd note clearly present in her voice.

  “Princess,” I began, reaching for her.

  She shook her head and walked, head down, into the cave.

  What did I do? I stared after her, brushing my hand through my hair. Drat it, but women confused the hell out of me. Were I a man of Flynn’s dubious character, I’d be one satisfied male right now. He wouldn’t have stopped for the sake of propriety and a mystery kid. She liked my advances, I know she did. I felt it both her aura and in her fierce kiss. I saw it in her eyes, just as she saw the same in mine.

  So why did she run?

  Women are like stars, my son. Bright, beautiful and as cold and distant as those remote gems. Never forget that.

  Perplexed at her behavior, I shook my head. “I’ll be back shortly,” I said. “Any breakfast requests?”

  Only silence answered me.

  “What do you like? Princess? Pork? Venison? Tell me, what?”

  She kept her answer as close as she kept the mystery child’s location. What happened? First, we kissed. That was all right – all right, it was more than all right. I tasted her on my lips, and hungered for her as I never have any woman before. I lusted to strip her bare and feast on her sweet purity as a bee flourishes on nectar. I knew she wanted me just as badly, for I felt it. I heard her thudding heartbeat against my chest. I scented her need as a horse might scent a pasture of lush green grass. She wanted – me.

  Then I opened my mouth and she vanished.

  Damn me and my idiocy. I don’t know what I did, but I certainly knew I was to blame. I never did understand the female gender, and I reckoned this wasn’t the best time to start. Perhaps one day, after Iyumi and the mystery kid were safely back in Caer Brannog, I might consult the mages that knew those intimate secrets of girls.

  Posting a guarding spell over the cave, so none might find her with eyes or magic, I changed forms into a shape suitable for hunting. A fox. Slipping into the rocks and undergrowth, I put my sensitive nose to work. The previous night’s rain brought scents to sharp life, and I quickly struck the trail of a mountain grouse. Following it for several hundred rods, I found not the grouse, but her nest.

  Five eggs lay hidden in a thicket, protected by nasty thorns and sharp rocks. A fox might have difficulty seizing her offspring, but my human arm wouldn’t. I changed back into Van the Insufferable Dolt. Slowly, thorns grazing my flesh, I plucked each egg from the twig and feather nest and set them beside me. Only then did I notice another predator on the same errand.

  A jekki snake, it’s scales banded yellowish and black, oozed from the rocks to my right, it’s forked tongue flicking nervously. Venomous, but not very quick, it raised its snub nose toward me. Scenting me, it hesitated, no doubt assessing the danger I posed.

  “Sorry, pal,” I said. “You snooze, you lose.”

  My fast grip caught the serpent behind its head. Hissing, struggling, it almost broke free. Large, almost a rod long and a foot around, it was strong and as supple as a whip. But I was hungry.

  I killed it with a swift snap of its neck. Carefully, piling the eggs into my cloak to carry them safely, I tossed the snake’s still-warm carcass over my shoulder. Jekki made a fine meal, once skinned and roasted. My mother used to make a grand stew from a jekki snake, but I hadn’t tried making it myself.

  Whistling aimlessly, I strode quickly back to the cave and the princess. Iyumi sat in front of the cave’s mouth and the fire, inspecting my choice of breakfast. She took in the eggs with pleasure, but eyed the snake dubiously. “Jekki?”

  I hesitated. Did I blunder again? Would she flee into the darkness of the cave and refuse to eat? “Uh, you don’t care for jekki?”

  “Oh, I love it,” she answered. “But it always gives me gas.”

  I stifled a smile. “I reckon I can stand the torment.”

  “Ha ha.”

  Setting the eggs at the fire’s edge to roast as Iyumi combed her fingers through her hair in preparation for braiding, I drew my knife. I strode to the thicket, the jekki still hung from my shoulder. Cutting a thick spike and shaving off the thorns, I stuck it upright in the soil.

  I quickly gutted it and tossed the innards into the brush. As I skinned it, I stuck the carcass onto the sharp point of the branch, adding more and more as I deprived the jekki of its hide. I shot a swift glance toward Iyumi, checking, as ever, for any potential danger to her. The guarding spell hadn’t whispered, or been tested, and its strength stood as defiant as I’d set it.

  Her hair half-braided and falling from her fingers, Iyumi sat ramrod straight, her gaze on the distant hills. Her fair lips thinned into a white line, as her dark brows lowered in abject fury. Iyumi appeared pissed but royally, but at what? I glanced below, into the valley we left far behind, searching for tiny dots amid the forest that might indicate an approaching enemy. I saw nothing.

  Concerned, I walked rapidly toward her. “Princess? What’s wrong?”

  “Flynn.” She all but spat the name. “Spying again. Can’t you feel him?”

  Half-shutting my eyes, I relaxed. Sending out a thin tendril of magic, I searched for the sensation of being watched. As though I stuck my hand into the maggoty remains of a corpse, my skin crawled. I felt his eyes like a heavy, hot weight on my skin. Repelled, I wanted to spit, my own anger rising. That obnoxious weasel. Why can’t he leave us alone? Rolling the hilt of my dagger through my fingers, I glared southward, into Flynn’s magic.

  Iyumi stood up, rage coursing off her in waves. At my side, her right hand rose to hover in mid-air. Again, she displayed the vitriolic knowledge of obscene language a royal princess shouldn’t know. In a gesture, she invited Flynn to perform the anatomically impossible.

  Flynn’s magic abruptly dissipated.

  “I think you upset him, love,” I commented dryly, the title tumbling loose without thought.

  “I bloody hope so,” she gritted. She glanced up at me. “We need to hustle, Van.”

  I returned to my snake. “We won’t get far without food. Turn those eggs, will you?”

  Spitti
ng the jekki over the fire, I conjured a waterskin as Iyumi ignored my abrupt tone and obeyed. Her fingers flinching from the heat, her face perspiring, she turned each egg to cook them evenly. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a Faery buzzed across my nose to rest, eight wings working in frantic harmony to hover just over Iyumi’s shoulder. She clutched a purple blossom in her tiny fist.

  Ze’ana’ta.

  Iyumi’s flushed face bloomed in a swift grin. “Why, there you are, Ze’ana’ta. You’re late, dear.”

  “I couldn’t find you,” Ze’ana’ta piped, darting upward to fix the flower behind Iyumi’s right ear. “Bad men spy.”

  “I know, honey. Now be a good girl and go home.”

  Ze’ana’ta put her tiny hands on her non-existent waist and scowled. “I protect you.”

  As Iyumi raised her hand in invitation, the tiny Faery dropped to land delicately on her palm. Both glanced up as three more Faeries circled low over Iyumi’s head, piping words of warning. “Go, Iyumi, run hard. Run now.”

  “We will, girls,” Iyumi said, lifting Ze’ana’ta to eye level. “These bad men will hurt you, my sweet lovelies. Go home. Ask Queen X’an’ada to send a message to my father. I’m safe, with Captain Vanyar. We’ll have the child in our hands this day. Will you do this, for me?”

  One never ordered a Faery to do anything. But if asked with politeness and respect, a Faery would do just about anything for anybody. “We will, Iyumi.”

  Ze’ana’ta kissed Iyumi on her nose and flew into the air. Taking a moment to hover between my eyes, forcing them to cross, Ze’ana’ta clasped her hands in front of her as though in prayer. As far as I knew, the Faeries never prayed to any god or goddess. “You protect her, Vanyar?”

  “I will, Ze’ana’ta.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  Satisfied, the four Faeries rose into the bright morning sunshine and vanished over the treetops. We watched them go, both of us smiling for who could not encounter a Faery and not smile? Our eyes met. She flushed and I ducked my head away, my belly fluttering like Ze’ana’ta’s busy wings. Damn, but wasn’t she as beautiful as those delicate Faeries?