Scarred Beauty

by Jennifer Silverwood

  She swallowed. “Only if you help me.”

  “As long as you keep your promise, how can I deny you?”

  Ceddrych gaped at them, a mixture of outrage and disbelief warring over his face. “Using majik almost killed you last time. You could barely walk downstairs!” He paused when she flinched and then dragged a hand over his face. “Look, I know you think Wyll needs saving, little sister, but he’s not as helpless as you think. What you’re proposing is madness.”

  “You should let her try,” Erythea said. “I met Wyll in the cave, Father. He is very weak, as Vynasha says.”

  “You did not tell me you were with Wolfsbane’s daughter! That murdering devil.” Baalor growled at the back of his throat and released Vynasha’s hand as he stood, turning his back to them.

  “Put away your hackles, boy.” Grandmother rose with supple grace despite her age.

  “How can you keep calm when your only grandchild was so close to our enemy?”

  Ilya Iceveins narrowed her black eyes and pointed a finger at Vynasha. “We owe this poor creature a life debt, or have you already forgotten?”

  Baalor’s shoulders slumped as he looked to his daughter. “It is one thing for us to put aside our blood feud with the humans, but I cannot forget all they have taken from us.”

  “And what of all we took from them? This private war has become a nasty habit between our clans. We are as much to blame as they are, or have you forgotten? I was unaware I raised a simpleton.” Ilya’s words cut through the air like a knife. “Now I suggest you sit back down and listen.”

  Baalor clenched his open fists and sank onto the floor without another word. Then there was only the sound of the wood crackling in the hearth and Grandmother moving to feed the fire.

  Ceddrych did not resume his argument, but the look he gave Vynasha made her bristle. That look had put her in place when she was a child desperate to please her big brother. Now she could sense he was more and less of the man she’d believed him to be then.

  Erythea shouldn’t have been the one to speak reason, but she addressed Ceddrych without fear. “Wanderer, I know you fear majik and you should. The curse brings out the worst in everyone, whether we change skins or not. Everyone here is afraid of majik because if it doesn’t turn you into a monster, it will eat you alive. It burned my mother up and it almost took Vynasha too.” The girl sucked in a desperate breath.

  Vynasha took her hand. “I won’t let that happen again, I promise.”

  Erythea shook her head. “You can’t know that. There won’t be any warning, you’ll just burn up from the inside out.”

  “Thea speaks truth, dearie,” Grandmother said from beside the fire. “You are only beginning to learn the extent of your gifts. Majik is unpredictable and requires a steady mind to control, and you, my dear, are allowing your emotions to drive you.”

  Vynasha started to plead with her, then looked to the others with a shake of her head. “I know you all think I’m weak…”

  Baalor’s sudden bark of a laugh startled her. “No one would dare suggest such an impossible thing to your face, little beast.”

  Vynasha glared at him, a spark of annoyance flaring up in her and coating her words. “Why don’t you take your mother’s advice and listen, you brute.”

  Baalor only smiled wickedly back at her. “Yes, dear.”

  Ceddrych coughed into his hand, catching her attention and staring at her with a subtle shake of his head. They might be pressing their luck and she might be a fool, but Vynasha couldn’t shake the feeling this was important, that maybe everything that happened in the future depended on what was decided here at this point in time.

  “Look, we’ve all been through a lot the past few days. But that’s why I have to do this now. Who knows when the next beast will come looking for me? I wish I could bring Wyll here to stay with me, but the truth is he will be safer wherever you go, Ceddrych. It has to be this way, can’t you see?” Vynasha paused, waiting for her brother to jump down her throat with more fears and concerns.

  Instead Ceddrych turned to her expectantly. “So you’re coming with us, then.”

  “Woman,” Baalor said. “I won’t deny your argument. I know you are capable, but the Council will not allow this.”

  Vynasha gave him a pointed glare. “The Council won’t or just you?”

  The alpha male lifted his chin, gaze sparking with her challenge. “Take a wild guess.”

  Grandmother sighed. “Enough. Vynasha is right. The evil we feared has awoken and more will come if she is the one. Let her go with you, son. Maybe she will keep you boys from slitting one another’s throats. Oh, and let me wrap some of these biscuits up for you, dears. It’s a long run to those human nests, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Baalor shook his head and stood with a stretch and pop of shifting bones. “Fine, I’ll just go tell the Council that the Violet Witch is coming with us to make sure I don’t murder her brother.”

  “I should murder you.” Vynasha cursed under her breath and turned to find Baalor’s retreating laughter as he headed once more beyond the warmth of the hearth.

  Ceddrych gathered the leftover dishes and followed Grandmother to her food stores. “Let me help, Ilya.”

  “You certainly are calm for a man who just escaped beheading.”

  Ceddrych rubbed his neck. “Not every day the fates give a man a second chance.”

  “If you believe the fates had anything to do with it, you’re as much of a simpleton as my addlepated son. That witch saved your life today, surely as she snared my son’s soul, isn’t that right, dearie?”

  Erythea giggled and Vynasha was keenly aware of the blood rushing to her cheeks and the way her skin gleamed a deeper shade of violet. To Erythea she smiled and let her curls cover her smile of triumph.

  “YOU HAVE WEAPONS?” Erythea swung her legs back and forth over the edge of the bed.

  Vynasha lifted her skirt high enough for the girl to see the jewel-encrusted dagger strapped to her leg. “If that isn’t enough I always have these,” she said with a wiggle of her claws. She glanced at the sack stuffed underneath her bed and suppressed a shiver. There were other things she could bring, of course. It felt odd to not bring her father’s old burlap sack on a journey.

  “Of course,” the girl said, “who needs weapons when you have claws?”

  Vynasha slipped on sturdy leather boots over her fur slippers, careful of where she placed said claws.

  Erythea twirled her fingers together, releasing soft blue sparks in the air. “I want you to help Wyll, but you do know this is a bad idea?”

  Vynasha paused to look up at the girl. “If I lived through the last few days of hell, I can handle your father and my brother.”

  The girl hopped off the bed and sighed. “I don’t mean that.” She chewed on her lip and rubbed her hands together. “I’ve been reading Mother’s book on blood majik.”

  “Does Grandmother know you’re reading about this?”

  Thea took hold of her sleeve and tugged. “Doesn’t matter. Listen, what I read is bad. Whoever gave you those burns may still have power over you. What if something worse happens while you’re away? What if they call you back to the lost city?”

  “I’m coming back. Remember, I keep my promises.”

  “Promise you’ll protect Father?”

  “Plan to seal my promise with majik again?”

  Erythea smiled with a quick shake of her head. “Nope.”

  “In that case, I will do my best not to kill him.” She looked up as a shadow filled the open doorway and added, “Long as he behaves.”

  “Time to go,” Baalor announced and held out an arm for Erythea. She ran to his side and Vynasha followed them down the stair where Grandmother was preparing Ceddrych’s pack.

  “Ilya, they’ll have supplies, too,” her brother protested.

  “Well, how am I to know that? What if you arrive and they expect you to do your own hunting?”

  “They aren’t barbarians, Ilya.”
/>
  Grandmother muttered something unintelligible under her breath and Vynasha caught Ceddrych’s pleading stare as she passed him.

  “Father, promise you’ll bring Vynasha home?” Erythea clung to her father’s middle, craning her neck to meet his affectionate gaze.

  Baalor smoothed her flaxen curls back from her face. “You know I will.”

  Thea lifted on her tiptoes and cupped the side of her mouth as Baalor bent to meet her whisper. “Remember to ask her.”

  Vynasha turned away when Baalor caught her watching them. He lifted Erythea into his arms and whispered something back that was for the girl’s ears alone.

  Ceddrych was suddenly at her side. “Are you sure about this, Ashes?”

  “I told Wyll I would bring you back.”

  “So this isn’t just about majik, then,” he said as he placed a hand on her shoulder.

  Vynasha touched his hand and smiled when he didn’t flinch. “This has always been about blood.”

  A smile played at her brother’s mouth, smoothing the lines in his face. “Father did like to say blood was thicker than water.”

  His mention of their father struck her with guilt and shame she could never reveal to him. He’d nearly killed her over majik, there was no knowing how he would take learning the cause of Old Ced’s death. Much as she liked to think it was the monster inside of him that had forced him to turn on her, Vynasha wasn’t convinced. No matter what he said, that moment he’d lost control would always be between them. So his next words were even more painful than she cared to admit.

  “I hope you know no matter what I said, or what happens next, you and Wyll are my family. You have and will always come first for me.” He wrapped his arm over her shoulder, took her into his side the way he used to. She was taller now, her shoulder nearly level with his, but she sank against him and pretended otherwise.

  In another life they would have all lived near each other, in Whistleande Valley. Ceddrych and Father would have made enough money on the road to rebuild the ruin that was their ancestral home. Eventually he would have married one of the other girls in the village, maybe brought one home from a distant land as Father once had. Vynasha would have been swimming in nieces and nephews and Father would have gradually softened and become the man she remembered from before losing Mother. It all might have gone that way, that good simple life.

  But there was darkness in them, in the things they had been forced to do here, in the Wylder Mountains. Vynasha smiled at her brother because she knew Ceddrych was trying to reclaim some of what they’d lost, and maybe that was all that mattered in the end.

  Grandmother followed them to the doorway, her hands resting on Erythea’s small shoulders. “Watch over them, my boy. Terrible things will follow should harm come to them.”

  Vynasha edged closer to Ceddrych at the old woman’s words, unease and that familiar deeply rooted thrumming pounding in her ears. She glanced above the doorframe and saw crawling vines bearing rich indigo flowers weep violet blood and wished for the visions, the madness to go away.

  “Hold onto me, Ashes.” Ceddrych spoke low, pressing his chin to her forehead as they slipped from the Iceveins home and past the village in silence, hardening their hearts to match the deadly forest they passed through.

  While winters stretched on through spring in Whistleande, the frost seemed eternal so far at the northern edge of the world. It was impossible to imagine the ground and evergreen forest not coated in lacy patterns and boughs of snow. Vynasha wondered, as she kept a light jog after Ceddrych, if these mountains ever saw summer. Her legs burned from treading through the soft drifts and she wished for spring now, earth and flowers and new life.

  For a time, they followed the distant rush of the Silver River the village bordered, passing into deeper patches of the enchanted wood than Vynasha had been to before. Before, when Wolfsbane had helped guide her to the castle, she had been focused more on getting there than paying attention to her surroundings. With her newfound senses, everything stood out to her, from the eerie silence of the forest to the tracks of animals that had recently passed through. Their scents were strange, affected by the sickly-sweet stench of majik.

  Running was difficult with a heavy pack strapped to her back and her barely mended muscles, but Vynasha kept this to herself. Ceddrych at least wasn’t looking over his shoulder to check on her progress every ten steps like the white wolf running along beside her.

  Baalor didn’t bring any extra burden with him, relying instead on his wolf skin to scout behind and around them for any potential threat. But for the last league or so, he had stuck close to her side, weaving in and out of trees a few paces away.

  “You don’t have to coddle me,” she called over to him, glancing from the corner of her eye. The white wolf turned his head to watch her with his unnatural green gaze, tongue hanging out in what might be a smile. Vynasha shook her head and caught Ceddrych’s amused glance over his shoulder.

  “Couple of nursemaids,” she muttered under her breath. She looked down to make sure she stepped where her brother stepped.

  “Not too much further ahead,” Ceddrych said, soon after they made past the thickest part of the forest.

  Vynasha looked up and saw the trees had thinned considerably, the air a little less sweet as they neared the edge of the valley. The sun was directly overhead, though still dimly masked by gray skies. Dark clouds were building up back to the east, where the castle and its lost city lay. A distant rumble of electric thunder met her ears and made her shiver. She rubbed her hands together against a chill that had little to do with the cold.

  Baalor in his wolf form loped over to her, closer than before. Vynasha tried not to stare at the way his fur gleamed silver in the sunlight, or the fact he still smelled like his human form. He really was massive, larger than the other Wolvs she’d caught glimpses of, his head almost the height of her shoulder. Despite her earlier complaint, she felt better with him near, for reasons she refused to dwell on.

  The snow hit them harder, packed closer together with rough icy patches as the terrain inclined. Now they were against the side of yet another mountain and Vynasha saw the narrow ledge that would serve as a path, marked with trees and slate-gray rock. Her brother hitched his pack up a bit higher on his shoulders as he paused against what looked like a rocky stair. “This way. Watch your footing. The climb can be difficult on a good day.”

  Sweat ran down her neck as she followed Ceddrych up the slippery rocks ahead and wished she felt a little more beastly. They climbed until the sun made its way to the opposite horizon. She bit her lip with sharp teeth and kept a hand on the mountainside to her left. “Is camp at the top of this mountain?”

  Ceddrych grunted and snow spilled down from his feet into her path. “Let’s just say we’re halfway there.”

  Vynasha tried to hold back her groan. Truth was, she needed to rest, but after how much she’d insisted on coming with them, she had no intention of slowing down now. If she showed weakness, they might insist on stopping or worse, going back.

  Her foot gave against wet snow and she threw up her hands to catch her fall as she skidded backwards. A surprised yelp escaped her lips as two warm hands caught her waist and her head fell against a firm chest. She didn’t recall hearing Baalor shift back into his human shape, but now his scent was everywhere, cloying her senses.

  Ceddrych stopped above and to the left. “All right, Ashes?”

  Baalor’s voice coaxed against her ear, teasing. “You are doing well for an invalid.”

  “I’m fine!” Vynasha called back to Ceddrych, more strained than she intended.

  Her brother watched them with concern creasing his brow before he turned back to continue his climb.

  Vynasha turned a mean eye to the smiling wolf as Baalor helped her recover her footing, a hand lingering on her lower back. “I’m fine,” she repeated for his ears.

  “I don’t mind catching you.” He released her but still followed a few steps behind.

/>   She grimaced as her ruined skin itched beneath her layers where he had touched her. For a moment, she envied the others’ ability to shed their human skins. Her skin had been her enemy ever since it had caused people to look away from her face in horror.

  Somehow she managed not to slip again on their way up the mountain, and found relief sooner than expected when, instead of following the incline, they veered off the path. The land leveled somewhat as they approached a sparse wood half a league ahead.

  The skies grew dark as the storm rumbled louder behind them, as her majik thrummed in her ears to the beat of a silent drum. She picked up her pace until she was behind Ceddrych, looking over his shoulder at the log structure ahead.

  “What is that? Is that their camp?”

  Ceddrych didn’t answer her, but picked up his pace to scout ahead.

  Baalor placed a hand on her shoulder. “Wait,” he said, entreating rather than commanding.

  Vynasha’s hands began to glow a deeper shade of violet again. “We shouldn’t let him go alone.”

  “Let him go. I have no plans to walk into an ambush today.”

  She huffed and crossed her arms over her chest. “Maybe you should have gone first.”

  Baalor chuckled deep in his throat, but tensed as Ceddrych crept up to the small cottage. The structure was built up on one side to make it level and not slanted as the steep hill. Not even the forest made it so far up the incline. Up here the land seemed stale, unnatural. Yet when she looked up at the hills facing this one, she saw more cabins dotting the landscape.

  “This place is strange,” she said, “barren…”

  “We’re close to Mount Grimm.” Baalor came to stand below her, but his gaze was now level with hers. “Humans settled here once.”

  “What happened to them? Why are Wolfsbane and his daughter the only ones left?” It was a question she had long wondered, and a stupid one to ask this man in particular. So it came as a surprise when he didn’t lash out at her in anger, merely shrugged as he answered.