The Arrows of the Heart

by Jeffe Kennedy

  I might’ve said something to set him back on his heels, but the tension of desire obviously rode him, his body tense with it, his cock hard and ready, clearly delineated by his pants. “Thank you for stopping,” I said.

  He held out a hand and, after a moment of hesitation, I put mine in his. Sitting up, he turned our hands and laced our fingers together, intently holding my gaze. “I keep my promises,” he said softly. “Will you trust me now?”

  I laughed a little, uneven, revealing how shaken I was. “More than I trust myself, I think.” No wonder they’d hemmed me in with so many rules. One taste of this forbidden fruit and I’d been ready to throw everything away, just to keep feeding that insatiable craving.

  He brushed a wayward spiraling lock of hair from my forehead, tucking it behind my ear, then traced his fingers down my cheek. “I think you have to know yourself to trust yourself.”

  I frowned. “What does that even mean?”

  “Trusting yourself is about knowing what you want, what you need, and staying true to that. You’ve been following what other people say you want and need.”

  Oh.

  He smiled at my bemusement. “When you decide you want more from me, be sure to let me know as soon as possible.”

  When. “You’re so sure I will.”

  “Gréine…” He stopped and shook his head. “No, any words I could put to this wouldn’t sound right. I can be patient.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked archly. “Patient is not a word I’d use to describe you.”

  “No? Tell me—what words would you use to describe me?”

  “I have no intention of telling you that. You’re proud of yourself enough as it is.” Too late, I caught myself.

  “Aha! Then they’re all good words.” He grinned at how neatly he’d trapped and flustered me. “Maybe you could toss one or two my way, now and then, like crusts of bread thrown to a starving man.”

  I rolled my eyes at him, tying off my braid. “Impatient. There’s one.”

  He laughed. “I shall prove myself to you, fair maiden. You’ll see how patient I can be. Now tell me, what did you discover?”

  “I can’t believe I forgot!” I scowled at him. “You distracted me.”

  “You distracted me,” he countered. “I was lying there, resting my poor exhausted body, and you had to come over, looking like another sun in the sky, and fondle me.”

  I gasped, sputtering, and he managed to look wounded and put upon. Deciding he’d only best me if I tried to deny it, I instead smoothed out the ground, laying the mapsticks in a row. “Look at this.”

  ~ 15 ~

  I wanted to strike out across the water, going at a diagonal, to locate the coastline the mapsticks revealed, but Zyr overruled me.

  “It’s faster,” I protested. “If it’s n’Andana, the sooner we find it, the sooner you can get back to Annfwn for the Gathering.”

  “First of all,” he replied, chewing on the dried meat we’d brought along, “we don’t know what landmass that mapstick represents. It could be a big island unrelated to n’Andana. Second, each mapstick doesn’t always represent the same distance. Especially where the coastline has fewer features, one mapstick might cover twice the distance that another does.”

  “I didn’t realize,” I said, chagrined. Though I should have. I thought maybe I just got bored sometimes, the way some stretches seemed longer than others.

  He shrugged, helping himself to some fruit. “How could you? It’s not something you notice unless you’re the one flying. But that means I want to fly to this point.” He tapped the mapstick with the landmark notch that fit into the spread of the next few that led to my island. “We’ll rest there, then strike out across the water.”

  “But we won’t get there until tomorrow most likely,” I pointed out with dismay. That notched mapstick was three up from our current location.

  “Probably. But we can get there early in the day, get plenty of sleep, and I can hunt for more food.” He frowned at the several blank mapsticks representing open water, dragging a finger over their smooth surfaces. “I’d be a lot happier if these showed some stops along the way. That could be a long way to fly. I’d like to be at my top strength, just in case.”

  That didn’t sound comforting. “I thought you said you could heal from shapeshifting back and forth.”

  He raised a brow at me. “I can, but recovering strength is different. Only food and rest cures that.”

  “Why?”

  He cocked his head, brow falling into a quirked frown. “I don’t know. It just is.”

  “The way of things?” I nodded sagely.

  “Clever minx.” He took another piece of fruit. “I’ll hunt tonight, too. Fresh meat will help. I just need to build up my endurance again.”

  “Maybe you should leave me behind.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “I’ve outlived my usefulness,” I pointed out. “You don’t need me to read the mapsticks anymore. You’ll have a long way to fly across water and I’ll just be dead weight.”

  He winced. “That sounds worse than I meant it to. I said you’d be dead weight if you didn’t help fight if we get attacked.”

  “I still might not be able to fight.”

  “Regardless, I wouldn’t abandon you in the wilderness, even if Queen Andromeda hadn’t made it very clear you needed to come along. I trust her advice, even if you don’t.”

  My turn to wince. “I didn’t mean it like that. You just seemed worn out before and I don’t want to make this journey more difficult for you.”

  “You aren’t. You’re making it more fun.” He finished the fruit and stood. “Let’s get going. I’d like to make it another stick and a half at least today if we can.” He surveyed the blue sky, pausing on the low clouds scudding over the sea in the distance. “Storm is coming. We’ll need shelter tonight.”

  “How can you tell?” I began putting the mapsticks away in their pouches.

  He cast me a preoccupied glance. “Experience?”

  “Hmm.”

  “All right, I don’t know. I can just…feel it.”

  “Maybe you should rest more now,” I said, not liking the idea of flying through a storm. “We could camp here.”

  “I feel totally restored, thanks to you, gréine.” He grinned when I gave him a jaundiced look. “Nothing like a shot of sexual frustration to fuel a long flight,” he added.

  “Good to know. Then I shall have to make sure you stay that way for the long trip across the water.”

  He laughed at my sally. “I chased my tail right into that one,” he admitted. “Ready?”

  “Yes,” I replied, waiting for him to shift. This time I’d made a pad of one of my shifts to put between us. No sense creating more temptation, for either of us.

  Now that I’d solved the puzzle of the mapsticks, time passed slowly as Zyr flew. And I kept watching the gathering clouds, worrying about the impending storm. Not that my fretting changed anything.

  It would be good if I could practice aiming around his wings in flight, but I’d have to loose my arrows—which would mean losing them entirely—and I had nothing in particular to aim at.

  Occasionally we passed flocks of birds, but it seemed wrong to knock them out of the sky just for practice, not to mention losing arrows, and they could be shapeshifters for all I knew. I played with the empty bow some, finding better angles to shoot from a sitting position. Really, this size of bow was best used standing, and once again I wished for a smaller, lighter recurve to use from Zyr’s back.

  Or a lovely, compact crossbow like my brothers used and let me try a few times in secret. My father had declared it a weapon for killing people and thus unsuitable for me. But, oh, how those arrows flew!

  Pretending to have arrows doesn’t do much, but I tried, sighting in on various gulls and other seabirds and songbirds we flew past, learning the timing of Zyr’s wings. Over a long distance like this, he kept the beat steady and predictable. I imagined sighting, wait
for the downstroke, draw and release. Upstroke, notch an arrow, wait for a target. Downstroke. Sight, draw, release.

  It worked well enough in smooth air—in theory, at least—but gusting winds arrived ahead of the storm. Chill and tumultuous, they buffeted us, forcing Zyr to vary his flight to compensate, sometimes gliding through a sudden drop, then pumping his wings furiously to regain altitude or cut through a blustery patch.

  Being in the sky like this as a storm arrived felt like nothing I’d experienced. I’d always rather liked storms. Or, rather, I’d liked to watch their wild fury from safely behind the tower windows in the Hardie manse. Probably a metaphor for my whole life, right there.

  So, though the twisting, rollicking flight made my stomach flip and roil, I tried to find the joy in being part of the storm, as I had in observing them from behind glass and stone. The chill wind whipped my hair against my cheeks, and occasional raindrops stung still more. But there was an exhilaration to it.

  And Zyr’s erratic wing patterns presented a new challenge to distract myself with. It might be like this in a pitched fight, where he’d have to dip and dive, wheel and turn to avoid an enemy. I practiced trying to feel his adjustments before he made them, anticipating changes in the wing amplitude and frequency.

  I had my eye on a flock of birds arrowing out of the thunderheads, picturing picking them off one by one with imaginary arrows, when something about them scraped across my nerves. They headed straight for us with an unnatural determination, ignoring the encroaching storm with a singlemindedness I’d only seen in the creatures of Deyrr.

  “Zyr!” I shouted. He couldn’t hear me over that blasted wind, head down as he concentrated on keeping us in the air. I thumped a fist on his shoulder near my leg and his head jerked up. I leaned forward into his field of vision and pointed at the birds.

  He caught on immediately, handing the mapstick back to me. I tucked it safe in its pouch, just as Zyr took us in a steep dive that would’ve unseated me the day before. As it was I had to cling to the straps holding our packs to his back, squinting against the wind of our rapid descent that ripped tears from my eyes. Zyr reversed into a spiral and pumped up beneath the flock.

  As if he shouted instructions in my head, I understood his intent. With an overhead field clear of his wings, I nocked an arrow and loosed it at the nearest bird. Not a great hit, as I didn’t compensate entirely for the wind and my pitching seat, but I hit it. And with enough force to hamper the bird. It still gamely flew toward us, but lost altitude as it did, weighted down by the arrow piercing it clean through its body.

  No time to see if it hit the sea. Zyr would watch to see if it came back upon us from below. He’d dropped and turned again, remarkably agile in the air, positioning me for another shot. Better this time. I got the next bird through the head, exploding it in a burst of oily black fluid. The body went on, still flapping its wings, but without direction.

  Zyr roared, catching an undead bird in his curved beak, slicing it in half. As wicked sharp as I’d guessed. Two more birds dove for his head, and Zyr snapped his wings, jerking us backward and him into a rearing position that made me grab for the harness again—sending my next shot wild. He snatched one of the birds in his claws, ripping it to pieces, but the other made it past, piercing my shoulder with its beak and grappling my arm with its talons. I screamed, more in surprise at the sudden injury than actual pain, and Zyr’s tail snapped past my cheek, decapitating the bird and taking off one of its wings. So fast I heard the crack of sound from it a moment later.

  The talons still dug into my arm muscle, scrabbling and tearing at me. Hooking my other arm through my bow so I wouldn’t drop it, I drew a dagger and sawed at the skinny, scaled legs. The body fell away in a one-winged bobbling flight, spiraling to its doom all unawares. The talons embedded in my arm still flexed, but without muscles to power them, they couldn’t do more damage.

  Doing my best to ignore the monstrous things, and gritting my teeth against the fiery pain, I nocked another arrow and looked for my next target. And realized we’d dropped so low we skimmed the white-capped waves. Spray dashed me, even colder against my face and exposed skin than the rain.

  And Zyr labored beneath me, sides heaving and wings barely keeping us above water. Something caught my hair and I flailed in a panic, knocking it aside with my bow. Should’ve had my dagger, but I didn’t know how to grapple both at once. Rocks loomed ahead and I realized Zyr headed straight for a patch of beach.

  I held on, praying to any god or goddess who would listen. Moranu, Zyr’s goddess. I prayed to Her to help Her favored son. Just let him live through this.

  We hit the beach at high speed, Zyr folding his wings and tumbling across the small patch of gravelly sand. I hit the ground with a thud that knocked the wind out of me and made my vision whorl with black and silver stars. Dimly I heard the strange avian-feline roar of gríobhth as I tried to suck air into my lungs. It would come back in a moment, if I relaxed.

  When I was a little girl, I fell out of a tree—well, my little brother pushed me, but I never told—and I lay there on the ground, panicked that I couldn’t breathe. After an endless space of time, my lungs moved, grabbed at the air, and I breathed it in with desperation. I needed to get up, to help Zyr.

  My head spun with sickening nausea, but I forced myself up, the wounded arm buckling. Zyr, still in gríobhth form, reared between me and the flock of birds. With talon, beak and whipping tail, he held them off, though one wing hung limply broken and he bled bright blood from numerous wounds.

  I had to help him. Scrabbling for my bow and reaching for an arrow, I found the bow snapped in half and the quiver empty, the last of my arrows no doubt scattered across beach and sea. Growling in impotent fury, I flung the useless bow aside, and drew my dagger. Charging up on the broken-wing side, I slashed at a bird coming at Zyr.

  And missed entirely.

  Fiercely, I wished for some of Jepp’s skill with daggers. Tays had a point about my miserable hand-to-hand skills. But I never thought I’d be in a place like this, on a lonely beach with only a shapeshifted gríobhth and rocks for company. Rocks. Shifting the dagger to my nearly useless left hand, I picked up a fist-sized rock, sighted, and hurled it.

  The power fell sadly short of what I could do with a bow, but my marksmanship remained deadly accurate. The bird dropped to the beach, flopping toward Zyr’s paw. Grimly, I dropped to my hands and knees and pounded it to a useless pulp. It kept pulsating, but at least it couldn’t harm us.

  Zyr swatted a bird toward me, and I caught on, pouncing on the thing before it could rise again, taking savage satisfaction in pounding it with the rock. Rain fell, washing the ooze into the gravel. Another bird flung my way—this one I had to grapple with both hands, barely jerking my face back from its snapping beak, putting my foot on its neck to hold the flapping thing immobile while I pounded its undead brain into useless mush.

  A wave dashed over me, startlingly cold, dragging me off balance, and I clutched at the slippery rocks with both hands, gasping at the shock. Nearby, a bird dragged itself along the gravel toward Zyr and I lunged, snarling, pinning it with the dagger and dispatching its unnatural life with a rock.

  I looked wildly about for more targets, and saw Zyr grab the last one from the sky with both front paws, stretching it between his claws and biting it in half. He threw the two halves in opposite directions, fell to all fours, and spun in a circle, wing dragging, scanning for his next victim.

  “That’s all,” I said, my voice coming out a harsh croak from the scour of salt water and my shrieking. Zyr couldn’t hear me, I thought, over the crash of the surf. But his head swiveled to me, his crest dripping with rain and black blood. He came to me, shifting as he did. In that in-between moment, I almost saw him as both at once. Man and gríobhth, two faces of a spinning coin.

  He seized me, eyes still the wild blaze of the gríobhth. “Are you hurt?”

  Mutely, I thrust my arm at him, the writhing talons embedded there a horro
r I could no longer bear. “Get them out,” I demanded.

  With a snarl, he grabbed one set, his fingers becoming sharp claws that sliced the talons into pieces separate from each other. He did the same to the other set, while I tried to focus. Maybe the blow to my head made me think he had the panther’s claws on a man’s hand. That must be it, because when I blinked, clearing the muck from my vision, he had human fingers again, plucking the talons out one by one. Then he dashed seawater over the wounds, sluicing them until they ran only red with my own blood.

  Grasping my head in both hands, he stared at me. “Where else?”

  I pointed to my shoulder, feeling too weak to articulate. He cursed, ripping my gown away from the shoulder wound, batting at my hand when I tried to cover my breast. “Be still,” he growled, sluicing more seawater over the deep puncture wound. The salt burrowed into me and I screamed, but faintly, aware that meant I’d lost the last of my endurance.

  The blackness rolled up and dragged me under.

  I opened my eyes to dimness and a roaring, pounding sound. A shrouded, low ceiling, the shadows dancing with firelight, the scent of smoke, and under it, things damp and musty, old tidepools and rotting sea creatures. Turning my head, I saw Zyr on the other side of the fire, asleep sitting up, head bent to the side and chin nearly to his chest, as if he’d succumbed to sleep without meaning to. He looked utterly unkempt, hair loose and snarled with rain and wind, his shirt torn open, mud on the skin beneath.

  Something had happened to keep him from shifting back and forth to his usual impeccable presentation. I shivered violently, chilled, though Zyr had put two blankets on me and I was coated in sweat. The smoke stung my eyes and burned my throat, still wretchedly sore and tasting of salt. I coughed against the dryness, and my shoulder bloomed with a fiery, spreading pain that it shouldn’t have been possible to miss before this moment.