Golden Apple, The

by Diener, Michelle

  Then she heard him, his footsteps heavy and without caution as he ran straight towards her.

  And still she could not see him.

  The footsteps were almost on top of her when suddenly he winked into sight, and she could not help her scream of surprise.

  “I forgot. Sorry, I forgot.” He hauled her to her feet, his face tense. He turned back the way he’d come. Listened.

  The gibbering noise had stopped, and the bush rustled.

  Rane did not wait to pick up the bags, he dragged her away, straight into the forest. The sound of branches snapping, of leaves crushed underfoot followed them.

  Something large was after them, and the gibbering noise started up again. This time gleeful, rather than confused.

  “What is it? What is it?” Kayla didn’t dare look back, her focus on the ground before her. On not tripping in the dark.

  Then Rane stopped and she smacked into him, fell to the ground.

  She started scrambling back to her feet when she saw why he’d come to a halt. A ball of purple-green light was just in front of them. It shifted and moved, blocking their path.

  Whatever was following them stopped, too, and at last Kayla turned back to see. For the second time that night she felt bile rise in her throat.

  It was a thing. A creature of stone and soil, dead leaves and wood. But it was human, too. Two sets of eyes, one where a head should have been, the other lower down the abdomen. They gleamed with madness. Eight limbs stuck out of it, a bizarre mixture of arms and legs. One of the hands held a double-sided axe.

  It seemed as interested in the wild magic as it was in them, the eyes shifting from one to the other.

  Beside her, Rane swore, an expletive she’d only ever heard on the knights’ training field.

  “I’m going to disappear again. Try to draw it off.” He vanished even as he spoke, and though she could still feel him standing beside her, she felt deserted and alone.

  Then he moved, not away from the beast but towards it. She heard his fingers scrabbling on the ground.

  Sand. He was going to throw sand in its eyes.

  As the sand struck it, it bellowed, a deep, whistling sound. The sound she imagined the forest would make, if it had a voice.

  Neither of them expected it to move so fast, but it thrashed out at Rane even though it could not see him, and Kayla heard him shout with pain, heard the heavy thud of his landing.

  Without waiting, without any hesitation at all, the thing came for her, screaming as it did, axe raised.

  Kayla turned desperately to the wild magic, willed it to distract what it had made, willed it to move. Then she spun back, saw the monster falter, then stop.

  There was a crackle, a snapping of static in the air, and the wild magic rolled past her and slammed into the Djan-Holt-thing. It exploded in a horrific rain of man and decomposing forest.

  She hunched over, curled up to protect herself against the pieces thrown back towards her.

  Her head spun.

  She had willed the wild magic to stop its monster. And it had.

  Chapter Nine

  The nagging sense of urgency had returned, stronger than before, and Kayla guessed it was because they’d gone back to the camp. The enchantment did not like retreat.

  She looked down at her hands, shaking with nervous energy, and rubbed them against her thighs to still them. Enchantment or no, neither she nor Rane had slept, and they couldn’t go on without rest.

  She sat on her pallet, and tugged off her boots.

  “It’s fortunate the wild magic moved when it did.” Rane was watching her, she could feel his eyes, but she concentrated on her boots, letting her hair swing over her shoulder to shield her face. She didn’t want him to see her confusion.

  Had she directed the wild magic’s behavior?

  “Yes,” she said at last. “Very fortunate.”

  “I didn’t expect that thing to move so fast.” His voice was flat. “I’m sorry I left you in such a vulnerable position.”

  She blinked. Looked at him at last. This was an apology? He was crouched beside the fireplace, and his face was haunted. His fingers traced the handle of the knife he’d disappeared for ten minutes to find, the movement distracted, as if he thought he’d have to draw it at a moment’s notice.

  “You could hardly help it. You ran right at it to draw it off.” Despite how she felt about him, about how he’d lied to her, the moment he’d turned invisible and ran at the thing to throw sand in its eyes, she’d known he was a man of honor. He could have slipped, invisible, into the dark of the forest and left her to her fate too many times for her to believe anything else.

  It made what he’d done both harder and easier to accept.

  At last, he turned to the small pile of sticks they’d collected and coaxed the flames to life. The crackle of the fire had never been so welcome.

  She lay down and closed her eyes, felt the heat of the fire dance across her eyelids. “How does Eric not know about you?”

  “Know about me?”

  She was too tired to open her eyes and read his expression.

  “He didn’t sense any magic in you. But you can disappear.”

  There was silence, and Kayla almost drifted off to sleep waiting for his answer.

  “I’m no sorcerer. But I have access to magical objects.”

  “Mmm?”

  “I find magical objects. I sell them.”

  “That’s how you make your living?” She finally opened her eyes, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was busy with the fire again.

  “I trained as a knight for Jasper, but we…couldn’t see eye to eye, and I went back to my family’s business. I’m a woodsman.”

  “And you find magical objects while you’re cutting down trees?” She could not help the disbelief in her voice.

  “You saw what wild magic can do.” He looked across at her. “It can make beautiful things as well as terrible. Imbue them with the most amazing powers.”

  “So you hunt for these things in the woods?” She sat up, looking at him over the flames.

  He nodded and her heart picked up its pace. She didn’t feel as tired any more.

  “You find them, and some you sell?”

  He lifted his head. “Most I sell.”

  He was warning her. Reminding her he was a working man. No prince. And one with a strange employment, at that.

  “So what is it that turns you invisible?”

  He put his hand in his pouch and drew out a shimmering moonstone, flat on one side, rounded on the other. It glowed like moonlight on his palm.

  “If I close my hand over it, and rub it with my thumb, I disappear.” He made a fist and she saw his thumb move and suddenly he wasn’t there. Then he was back, stone sitting once more on his open palm. “It comes in useful.”

  “So you’re not a knight of Jasper’s stronghold.” She paused a moment. “Or his secretary. You’re a magic hunter.” It made sense now. “And the magic you were hunting this time was the golden apple.”

  He said nothing, but he looked straight into her eyes.

  She held her breath and everything else fell away. For a moment, it was just him and her, and an ocean of unspoken words between them. Of kisses not yet given, touches not yet felt.

  She blinked, and tried to remember what they were talking about. He had no right to look at her like that. So full of regret and desire.

  “I am sorry.” He lifted an arm, as if to touch her, but dropped it back at his side.

  She wanted to cry, to rage, to accuse, but she refused to do it again. Her father had wearied her of that game when he’d put her up as a prize to be won.

  She found a place of calm within. Found the strength to be steady and unaffected. She had used him, too. Had had her own agenda that night. And although she had been honest in her motives, where he had not, she would not point fingers.

  “How does your brother fit into this?” Her voice came out as she wanted. Cool.

  She would not lay
herself open and vulnerable to him again so easily.

  She saw a look on his face—pain. It should have made her feel better, but it didn’t.

  “Jasper has my brother prisoner. His ransom is the golden apple.”

  “And you are sure Jasper will harm him?”

  He laughed, the laugh of the wind through bare winter trees. “Jasper will kill him with relish if I give him even the slightest excuse.”

  “Why?”

  Rane’s eyes narrowed. “It’s a long story. Believe me, Jasper hates Soren. He hates me, too, just not quite as much. And he knows I won’t work for him any more. The only way he could get me to acquire the apple was to force me.”

  “But why you? Why not use someone else, and still kill your brother, if he wants to so badly?”

  “Because magic is drawn to me. If anyone could have gotten that apple it was me.” He closed his eyes. “Or Soren. Magic comes to him, too.”

  “So you can do this? Get the jewel for Eric?”

  He shrugged. “If the jewel were hidden in the forest, or was part of a challenge, I would definitely get it. But the jewel belongs to someone. I have never stolen before.”

  Ah, but that was not true. She thought of what he’d stolen from her. Her trust. She breathed deep against the sudden pain and flopped onto the pallet, looked up at the clear, star-rich sky. “So Eric’s plan worked perfectly. He’s found a magic hunter to get his jewel.”

  At last, Rane sat on his own pallet. She saw him lie back and fold his arms under his head. “And every day it takes me to get it, my brother dies a little more.”

  “And we go a little more mad,” she whispered back.

  * * *

  “Where are we?”

  Rane pulled up short as Kayla stopped and turned to him. She’d barely spoken since they’d begun their journey into the heart of the forest, and her voice was rough, unused to speech.

  “Heading north. More than that, I don’t know.” He’d felt her agitation for the last hour, maybe more. She was walking slower, looking at where they were. Looking back at him.

  Her looks were cool.

  His attempt to apologize last night had not cleared the air. He hadn’t expected it to, but he preferred the fiery anger he’d seen in her yesterday to this quiet disappointment. That he deserved it made it no less palatable.

  Having her in front of him all day, her hair tied back so he could see the delicate nape of her neck and a hint of the smoothness of her back, had aroused him far more than any woman he’d ever seen naked.

  He had been fantasizing about taking the long stride that would bring him up against her, anchoring her to him around her waist and lowering his head, breathing in the scent of her before kissing that pale golden skin.

  “What?”

  Her voice was like the chop of an axe on stone. He jerked. She had stopped, and was standing facing him with a hand on her hip.

  “What do you mean, what?”

  “What are you thinking?

  He made his face blank. “It’s near sunset. We need a little more haste. I want to find a good clearing to settle in for the night.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “We haven’t passed a single clearing since we started out this morning.”

  “We’ve passed three. One on our right, two on our left.”

  “Oh.” She hunched her shoulders, suddenly wilting, and the packs dropped with a thump. He hoped the golden apple was robust. “Will it come again? The wild magic?”

  “I don’t know.”

  With a sigh, she picked up the packs and looped them back on her shoulders. Turned to the path and continued on, her pace faster.

  The path kinked right, twisting sharply, and she disappeared from sight for a moment. Even this small loss of contact jolted him, made him uneasy, and he took quick, long strides and slammed into the back of her.

  Just as in his fantasy, he was forced to grab her around her waist, but it was to keep her from falling, not to make love to the back of her neck.

  Her eyes were fixed ahead, and he followed her gaze, his heart sinking.

  The weariness, the helplessness that he felt more and more when coming across the cruel jokes of wild magic, settled over him like the dust motes floating in the sunlight in the clearing ahead, swirling and falling, clinging to his skin, his clothes, his whole body.

  A woman sat before them, beautiful beyond anything, placed exactly in a beam of light let in by a gap in the tall trees. She had long blonde hair that spilled over her shoulders, down onto her lap and came to rest just over her knees. Her dress was a pale blue, the back skirt longer than the front, so when she walked it would form a train, although now it draped prettily, perfectly, along the base of the tree stump she was sitting on.

  But there was something wrong.

  Of course there was something wrong.

  A fly, black, grotesque, danced across her cheek, then dipped into her left eye, rubbing its little hands with glee.

  And the woman did not brush it away. Did not blink. She did nothing, her hands serene and calm in her lap.

  But her eyes.

  They snapped and sparked, as alive as the rest of her was dead.

  Kayla made a sound in the back of her throat, a cry and a sob in one. She twisted in his arms, lifting her face to his, and the horror of what she was feeling was in every line.

  Perhaps that is how he looked, once. It must have been.

  “Who is that?” Her whisper was loud in the still air.

  Rane shook his head. “I don’t know. It could once have been a rabbit, or a mouse, a real woman, a stone. There is no way to tell.”

  “We must do something.”

  He had felt that too, long ago. Now he knew better.

  He shook his head, and started walking on. “We can do nothing.”

  Chapter Ten

  She came closer to hating Rane De’Villier, truly hating him, with every step they took away from the clearing. Even though she knew it wasn’t his fault, even though she could suggest nothing to help the woman, his stoic acceptance of their helplessness made her wild with anger.

  The clearing was perfect for their needs, just what they had been looking for, and she wanted to stay. To talk to the woman, perhaps ease her torment a little. Even though the thought of sleeping with those eyes watching, snapping—on the verge of madness or already well over the other side, made her uncomfortable, she would have borne it. To sit suspended, and completely aware, would drive most people insane, and what was a little discomfort compared to that?

  “I used to feel the same.”

  Rane’s words were so unexpected, she stumbled.

  “Did you?” She spoke as if spitting something sour from her mouth.

  He was silent, and she turned to look at him over her shoulder. And stopped dead.

  Pain was etched so deep in his eyes, her heart hurt. His fists were clenched, and shame engulfed her, hot and burning as a shaft of midday sun through the trees. What did she know of him, of what he’d seen and felt?

  He worked this forest. Knew more about wild magic than all her father’s court put together.

  What would that do to someone? Coming across things distorted or changed, and time and again being unable to put it right.

  “I’m sorry. I have no right to be angry with you.” Her apology was soft, and at the sound of her voice he seemed to shake himself free of his torment.

  “I’m sorry, too. I know how hard it is.”

  They faced each other and the moments ticked by, until the swish of the wind through the leaves and the damp, musty scent of wet earth and mushrooms pressed against her senses. She felt as frozen in place as the woman in the clearing; she wanted to move, to turn back to the path, but her feet would not obey.

  He took a step forward, and inwardly she flinched. She could not get lost in him again. She would never find her way back.

  The first time, she’d thought she was in control. The user rather than the used. And even then he’d made her forget t
he reason she’d invited him to her chamber. The means had become an end in itself. She had put aside everything, lived truly in the moment.

  And the next day the moment was exposed as a lie.

  He was going to press his lips against hers, hold her to him—his every step forward told her he would, and she could not allow it. There would be no illusions, no hiding from the feelings he could draw effortlessly from her if she did.

  Her fear at what would happen, what his kiss might confirm, finally gave her the strength to turn away. She would rather not know the truth.

  Rather not know if Rane De’Villier had stolen her heart.

  * * *

  She was not sneaking.

  Sneaking would mean Rane De’Villier held some power over her, and he did not.

  Kayla looked over her shoulder, back towards the camp, and decided her growing unease was the enchantment at work again.

  It had shown before it did not like retreat, and as she walked back down the path the way they’d come, it clung to her like a goblin, with claws dug into her chest and a stranglehold on her throat.

  She fought against it as she made her way back to the woman in the clearing.

  A breeze picked up, fluttering the flame on the burning stick she held for light, and for a moment she was in almost total darkness.

  Her torch flared to life again, and she stopped, breathing hard.

  She could not get the woman out of her mind. The thought of being frozen in a living statue, the hell of that existence, shook her to her core. It ate at her peace of mind, until she could no longer stand it.

  Even the enchantment, making her jittery and panicked, could not stop her. Rane’s orders certainly couldn’t.

  If it were her, she would have died a little to see people draw back from her and walk on without a word. If it were her, she would want some conversation at least, some small diversion.

  If that was all Kayla could do for the woman, then so be it. It was something. More than De’Villier was prepared to do.

  She had left him sleeping, and she was sure if he had heard her moving, taking a stick from the fire, he’d think it was for nothing more than a call of nature.

  A twig snapped nearby, through the undergrowth, and Kayla started. She was still standing on the pathway, and she had a strange feeling more time had passed than she thought. It must be fatigue and the weight of the enchantment.