by Brea Viragh
They had given him and Odessa time alone...but where had they gone?
Golden rays of light filtered through their limbs, and one by one, the humans transformed. Sparks of magic flew and popped.
If she leaves the lake, she dies.
Odessa caught his gaze one final time, caught and held it with her own luminous eyes as the sun fell across her shoulders minutes later. Her hand raised in a brief farewell. She stood with the water up to her breasts, letting his shirt float away from her, hair spreading in every direction. A siren, luring him closer with a single glance.
One moment, the perfect being he knew and loved, the woman he would do anything to protect. The next her head was thrown back on a cry, her neck lengthening until the shrill piercing tones of her form shrank and compacted, and a white swan floated in her place.
The swan took one look at the shirt before lunging to bite the fabric. Content that whatever it was posed no threat, it floated gently toward the rest of the pack of birds with a flap of pure-white feathers, webbed feet kicking beneath the surface.
And Calen found he had tears in his eyes. He wiped them away, ashamed and grateful that there was no one to see him, no one to witness how his heart broke at the sight of Odessa. Her magnificent eyes dark, no understanding, no recognition of anything beyond basic animal instincts of safety versus danger.
So different from the instincts that made her integrally her.
Fuck, what was he going to do about this?
He shook his head, drawing a proverbial line through his mind. A line of protection from the thoughts ravaging his insides. A mental shield. He didn’t know what kind of man or woman had done this, who controlled magic and air and physical form. He didn’t care. Once he found the person responsible, he was going to tear them apart with his own two hands.
“Odessa,” he groaned, pushing a hand against his heart. She couldn’t hear him. But the plea in his voice cracked open something inside of him, chipped away at that mental blockade.
If he stepped over that line, he’d go mad at the chaos, at the danger, at the sheer desire to lash out and hurt. He couldn’t stop trembling like a little pup. The rage...he’d never felt anything like it before.
His own instincts kicked into hyperdrive as he watched the birds. So many delicious meals to choose from, his inner wolf argued. The wolf he’d never been able to manifest on the outside now wanted to kill whatever fowl and duck it could lay its claws into. Sustenance to get him back home when his own supplies had run dangerously low. He hadn’t accounted for being gone this many days, had overestimated his human senses when it came to catching game and other forest creatures.
Here they floated. Ready to be consumed...
He thought of Odessa and shook his head. Just as she, the birds were people. Trapped here by a barbarian magician for whatever reason.
One of many things Calen intended to find out.
Standing on shaky legs, he pressed through the water to where his shirt floated closer, the one he’d let Odessa borrow to cover her nakedness. “I’m going to find a way to help you,” he whispered across the lake. His voice carrying like ripples to where she rested, her neck tucked behind her, beak hidden beneath her wing. “Mark my words.”
She didn’t understand him, wouldn’t, until the moon rose once again and set her free.
If she left, she would die.
Her words circled on repeat in his head. A dire warning he couldn’t afford to ignore.
He refused to let her die. Which meant he had only one source of information to exploit once he returned to the Taunway pack mansion. The one source he didn’t have the status or the access to explore.
Alex Darrow’s personal library.
ODESSA’S BLOOD SANG when she stood the following evening, the rapidly retreating thunder and lightning overhead a sign that the moon had come to bless her with independence. Treading water, she shifted her attention toward the shoreline.
Hoping to see Calen, her heart pounded in anticipation.
“He’s gone home,” Jean said, cutting water to move closer. Red hair clung to the sides of her cheeks like a banner. “To get help.”
She tried to pay no mind to the quick flash of disappointment. “I’m not sure what kind of help he hopes to find,” Odessa admitted, “but I hope he brings the damn cavalry.”
He’d gone through enough, coming to find her. Whatever he intended to do, she couldn’t ask him about, couldn’t ask him to risk himself when it wasn’t his problem. It wasn’t his business. He’d stepped up, anyway.
“Someone must know a way to fix what’s happened to us. It can’t be impossible.” She cast a glance behind them to the group of men and women they had only met when the sun descended below the horizon. “Some of them have been here for years.”
“Which means whatever, whoever, has trapped us knows how to do it well and get away with it,” Jean argued.
“We need to do something.”
“You’ve done enough.”
It was a strange verbal echo of her inner thoughts, but Odessa certainly didn’t feel like she’d done enough. Although, perhaps Jean was right. Perhaps she had nothing to give. She glanced over her shoulder as they swam to the shore, the rest of their motley crew making for the opposite bank and the temporary shelters they’d erected amidst the trees and stone nearby. The last bit of magic crackled crimson in the air behind them. And as those embers faded from view, she thought they looked a lot like blood.
“You coming?” Jean prompted.
The two of them swam in tandem toward the land, their clothes long gone since the night of their first transformation. Neither one of them could form a complete memory of it. Their minds had pushed the recollections aside, keeping them locked down tight where neither one could access.
Odessa recalled nothing more than pieces of the kidnapping. She remembered the cold steel, the hand over her mouth, the sharp metallic stench of magic filling the stage around them. She remembered terror that made her skin grow cold, and power so dark, so sharp, she could taste blood on her tongue.
Then, nothing. Nothing until she woke up in the middle of a lake surrounded by strangers, her days passing in a blur.
She and Jean reached the shore and strode along the sandy bottom past the reeds and grasses. Thank God she had Jean with her. Without the familiar face, she may have gone entirely mad.
You’re made of sterner stuff, her subconscious argued, but there was no heat to the words.
“You have to trust that Calen will know what to do,” Odessa began, needing to convince Jean where to place her trust and faith. At least, needing to hear it from herself, as though saying it out loud made it real.
Jean scoffed and wrung out her hair. “He can’t even find his way out of a paper bag.”
“He found us, didn’t he?” Odessa cut off any further comments with a sharp look. “It took him days to follow the trail, but he did it. And all without the benefit of shifting form.”
Jean had her hands on her hips, fiery red hair flinging to her cheek. An impressive stance given her lack of clothing. “The question remains—will he be able to find his way back?”
Odessa hoped so. As much as she’d like to have seen his comforting smile on this night’s wakening, she knew he had to leave. To tell the pack of their plight.
She didn’t need a protector, had never needed one. Even on the night she’d spent alone when she was cold and hard and joyless at the loss of her future to the arranged marriage. She didn’t need anyone to stand up and fight her battles for her...or did she? Truth be told, she didn’t have the nerve to even wonder what she needed now. Who she had become.
“Oh? Was someone here, Miss Darrow? Or should I say, Princess Odessa?”
The distinctly male voice cut through the silent night to their left.
A hooded man stalked toward them through the misty evening, and her blood ran cold. Before she had a chance to duck, to dive, a hand shot out and took hold of her hair, dragging her forward.
>
Her heels kicked against the sand and found no purchase, the pain bright. Agonizing.
“What have you been doing in my absence?” the man asked as he tugged at her. “Please tell me you haven’t been trying to find a way to leave me. Is that what you’re doing?”
She didn’t recognize the tone. Felt no familiarity in the body lifting her off the ground.
The man who’d taken her from the party.
A growl cut through the open air. She opened her eyes, the hair on her arms rising, and the face staring down at her went cold. Alien in its foreignness, the angles were out of place, the chin too sharp and the eyes too close.
She reached up to take hold of his wrist and try to steady herself before he ripped out her hair. “All we’ve done is try to survive the maze you put us in.” She forced her gaze to linger on him and take in every detail.
“Only survive?” The stranger dropped her with a roar of laughter. “Wonderful. Adorable.”
Odessa landed hard on her knees, ignoring the pain and scrambling as far away from the magician as she could. The terrible sensation of power rolled off of him. An immense pressure that caused gravity to shift and change.
“You’re the one who cursed us.” Jean demanded an affirmative.
The man reached higher to remove his hood, a shock of light brown hair bursting forward in twin peaks near both ears. “I’d think it obvious.”
He extended a hand toward Odessa.
Whatever he wanted, she refused to have a part in it.
Pure rage welled up inside of her, and she twisted away from him. Urged her instincts to rise, to fight back. “How dare you keep us here,” she hissed, her scalp stinging.
“All the better to keep you contained. Lashing out like this, like some enraged beast.” His chuckle turned bitter. The moonlight reflected off his eyes, turning the color to moss in shadow. A dark shade of green that shifted based on his mood. “A female of noble birth reduced to this...”
The fury at his words hit her hard, low and deep in the gut. Rage that he mocked her title, mocked the people she cared about.
Utterly unfamiliar in his façade, the mage removed his cloak, standing with a hip cocked, dark jeans fading to boots.
“What do you know about caring for people? What it feels like to be responsible for people, for lands? How to feel what they feel through good days and bad?”
He did nothing but smile down at her, face contorted in a sneer.
“You think to talk back to me?” he growled. His eyes burned as they bored into her.
Odessa groaned as he shoved at her. One thought and she could have her claws out, her forearm shifting into that of a wolf. She was close enough to gut him with a stroke if she could just make that change.
Nothing.
“I should have expected as much from you. Nothing but a reckless, fickle creature who bends to her whims, gives in to the anger just as quickly as anything. And the rest of your ladies in waiting bowed to you.” He cut a glance at Jean. The magician’s face had become a mask of calm as quickly as the ire came and went. He stared down at them. “If it came down to a fight between you and I, on your terms, I am not sure who would come out the victor. Yet on my terms...” He turned to fully face the other woman. “We can see where the real control lies.”
“You shut your mouth.” Odessa cut her glance to his face. “If you are such a big man, then let’s see how you are in a fight. Release the binding on my wolf and see how you feel with my teeth at your throat.”
The mage assessed her as she bared her teeth.
The moonlight didn’t gleam off of him, as it should have on normal skin. It seemed to balk at the darkness pulsing from him. The pulse of power.
Odessa spat at his feet and shoved at him. The change might not come, but she could still fight back. She could still protect Jean from this monster.
The magician’s venom-coated smile grew until it reached both cheeks. “Try that again, dear lady, and you will find out how quickly I can make those you care about bleed. Especially this little one here.” A snap of his finger had Jean rising in the air without a hand to touch her. Her legs kicked at nothing.
Is that why he’d killed the others but left Jean alive? To use her as a bargaining chip?
Color leached from Odessa’s face, but she held her ground. It was Jean who answered. “Put me down. Now.”
The demand was soft and unyielding.
An eye roved the length of her body. “I knew you had fire inside of you, but I didn’t realize you were stupid enough to throw it at whomever you please. Learn some manners and we’ll see what to do with you.”
Head burning, Odessa launched herself, scratching at the man holding them. Only to find the rest of her in equal pain when he lunged forward to meet her movement with his own, kicking her square in the stomach and sending her to the ground moments later. Jean was trembling—with fear or anger, Odessa couldn’t tell. The other woman dropped in seconds, and despite her own pain, the breath leaving her, she pulled Jean to her chest and held on tightly.
The mage brushed them both aside as though they were cobwebs. A gust of magic hurled Odessa several feet in the opposite direction, the air sharp and cold.
Jean made her way to Odessa’s side and grabbed onto her for support.
“Enough of your ridiculous posturing,” the man continued, sizing them up and deciding their snarling had no place here. “It’s tiring and I didn’t come here to have you threaten me.”
“Who are you?” Jean asked.
The mage frowned at her. Odessa debated barking something derogatory at him, something to let him know that she would not be brushed aside easily, but knew the ensuing argument would require more strength, more fire than she had. It would have required the wolf she could no longer access.
“No one of importance, I guess you could say. A sorcerer who’s made his home in these woods. Who has very different ideas of how things should be done. Oh, for fuck’s sake, cover yourself.” He tossed his cloak at Odessa. “It’s impossible to have a conversation with your breasts out.”
She did as he asked, unflinching when the corner of the material whipped across her face. It landed heavy and starched across her lap. Different, very different, from the jacket offered to her the previous day.
“At least give me a name so I know who to curse at night,” she spat out.
“If you knew my name, it would do you no good, anyway,” he said to her. “And if you were wise, you would keep your mouth shut. It’s a wonder you are able to fight me at all.”
Her heart stopped dead when he bent to stare at her, Odessa using her body to keep Jean separated. Out of sight. Her confusion must have been written across her face, for he laughed. Loudly. One eyebrow raised. “You thought I would give you a name, just because you asked it of me?” His fingers darted out to stroke across her cheek before he rose again. “No, no names. Nothing more than this meeting tonight.”
Her trembling worsened before she could stop herself. Unable to find the words, the courage, to make the shaking stop. “You curse us, trap us, and leave us no room to maneuver.”
“The swan form just happens to be the method of imprisonment I used on you.” He stepped around them as though they were an inconvenience, misplaced pieces of furniture, and stared at the lake. “You are not trapped. Technically, you are free to go wherever you want, although the spell transforms you into a swan by day. If, at night, you wish to become human, you must sit on the lake when the moonlight touches your wings. Only then will you be restored. Until sunrise. Try to leave as a human, and you will find that things do not go smoothly for you. Try to leave as a swan and you may find it an entirely different story.”
She pressed a hand to her stomach, remembering the aches that had started a few miles from the lake when she’d tried to run with Calen. Remembered the way her body had systematically shut down the further they’d gone, until she’d walked hand in hand with Death.
“You not only cursed us to ta
ke away our humanity, but bound us to this place during the night. For what?” Odessa pushed to her feet, her words lacking the bite. She refused to bow before a man she didn’t know, leering down at her with satisfaction evident in every line of his body. “What end do you hope to gain from this? My father will never hand our pack over to you just because you’ve taken me prisoner. He’s not that kind of man.”
The stranger tilted his head back and laughed uproariously.
“I’m not after your pack. Just as I was not after their packs.” He pointed across the water to where the other trapped humans made their way from the lake to solid ground. “I don’t need them.”
“There has to be something you want.” She allowed the jacket to slip a little lower. Not exactly an invitation, no, but perhaps a weapon in her arsenal to exploit.
“Keep your clothes on. There is nothing from you that I want.”
“Then tell us how to break the curse.”
“What would you say if I told you it was the kiss of true love?”
There was a note of pause in her words. “I’d say you’re a liar, because there is no such thing as true love. It’s a bullshit crock that is the crumbling foundation for fairy tales.”
“Then you and I would be on the same page,” he said dryly. “Your torment remains, Princess, until you learn your lesson, or I free you.”
His shrug broke her. The casual and easy way his shoulders rose and fell. As though her plight meant nothing. The plight of the others trapped there against their will.
“You will not tell me the lesson.”
“Search for your own way out if you feel the need. Or search for your weakness and overcome it. The choice is yours.”
She did not feel the hand that fell on the top of her head. The hand of the man who had damned her with the tremendous, terrible power he possessed. One who would not give her a name. The magician who did not care for those he cursed, did not care how they suffered.
