Veil of Thorns

by Gwen Mitchell

  This was the hard part. Not being able to hear her or speak to her alone was—in his opinion—only a slight disadvantage. But acting as if he didn’t care, ignoring her need of him, turned his food sour in his stomach.

  “You made a wager with the wolf and didn’t include me, Blossom? I’m hurt.”

  “You always find a way to cheat,” Hedvika quipped.

  Ryder shrugged. “What’s the bet, love? Whether the old hound has what it takes to keep his nearly beloved alive and whole?”

  Hedvika tapped her fingers in answer.

  Ryder disappeared and reappeared above them, perched in the chandelier. It didn’t move an inch, not even the flames were disturbed by his presence. “He did get her this far. Though he had a teeny bit of help.”

  Lucas pushed his plate away and leaned back to pick his teeth. He would not let the wraith’s jabs rouse him. He was on duty.

  “Don’t you think I should have been consulted about this?” Bri asked Hedvika. Though some emotion bled into her tone, she did a marvelous job of making the question respectful.

  “Well, you have not claimed him yet, Bri. Isn’t that right?”

  Lucas couldn’t stop himself from studying everything about Briana in that moment. The unearthly light on her skin, the flinch at the corners of her eyes, her clenched jaw, the pause before she exhaled, eyes downcast as she nodded.

  Inside Lucas, his wolf began to pace.

  “Then he shall prove himself worthy—or unworthy—with a set of trials. As in the days of old.”

  Bri’s cool green gaze cut to him, and he couldn’t look away. “You agreed to this?”

  He nodded and saw the unspoken question in her eyes. Why?

  He grit his teeth and bowed his head to Hedvika. “It was my lady’s idea.”

  The pearl goddess beamed at him.

  “Well, that is all they’re good for,” Ryder said, appearing between them. “And a bit of sport should make things interesting.” He plucked some berries from Hedvika’s plate and popped one into his mouth in a very human gesture. “I like the bear, by the way. Much quieter than that pompous feather brain you used to keep around. Whatever did happen to Maxxim, Blossom?”

  Lucas’s ears perked up, but he kept his face carefully blank. Bri concentrated on her food, but he could tell she was also listening intently.

  Hedvika’s expression turned cold as she stared straight ahead. “We do not speak his name. Emil is a fine guardian. But know this, Bri, if he is unworthy, there are other ways.”

  Bri’s heartbeat kicked up in a thunderous fury, pounding at his sensitive hearing, but she was perfectly poised. Calm.

  The hair on the back of Lucas’s neck stood up. He wondered what had frightened her so–the idea of losing him? He regretted the stone against his chest for the twentieth time.

  “Well, I certainly won’t miss the git. He loved the sound of his own voice too much, and I hate it when people talk over me.”

  Bri laughed, and something in Lucas eased to see her smiling up at Ryder. Though he hated that it was the wraith comforting her, he was relieved she had any comfort.

  Her bravery struck him in that moment. Her resilience. She had lost nearly everyone, was so far from home, in so far over her head, yet so fearless.

  It’s all for him.

  He clenched his jaw and shook his self-pity away. Mission first.

  If Hedvika’s game actually worked, Bri would be in his arms soon enough. And if completing the ritual brought her around to her true feelings—what he hoped were her true feelings—it would be worth the heartache he caused shutting her out for now.

  Bri looked at him again, pointedly, like he just wasn’t getting something. But he could read it plain enough on her face.

  Why, why, she wanted to know.

  He shrugged one shoulder and shook his head, wishing she could understand the answer. The only answer that mattered now.

  I must keep you safe.

  ***

  After dinner, Vika insisted on games. Bri was tired from her day of lessons, lectures, and tests. If magic was a muscle, she’d had one hell of a workout. And it was only her first day under Hedvika’s tutelage.

  At first, she thought she couldn’t reach Lucas telepathically because her magic was tapped out.

  Emil finally answered her when she was in the middle of her mental tirade.

  He cannot hear you.

  Why not? Am I not focusing right?

  He is shielded.

  Why?

  I do not know.

  She spent the rest of the evening going through the motions of social engagement–she had years of practice at that game–while internally stewing over why Lucas would block her out.

  He’d been so pleased when she first made contact. Could he be punishing her for how they’d left things?

  Bri hadn’t considered it before, but maybe he had not forgiven her.

  She was definitely going to ignore the butterflies taking wing in her ribcage at that thought.

  He’d claimed to have feelings for her, feelings he didn’t want to hide. Called her his clever mate. Said he loved her.

  In answer, she had been callous and cold and…and nothing.

  It was hard to be angry with him for getting attached, even though she’d continuously warned him and tried to set boundaries. She couldn’t help the attraction either, and the danger of their situation didn’t help. The predicament of their entangled souls was a trial, for both of them, but it was important to remember it wasn’t Lucas’s fault. If anything, Vivianne was the instigator, which meant it was her fault more than his.

  When Vika declared that she would be retiring, Bri accosted Ryder in the hall before he could follow.

  “Did you give Lucas my message?”

  “Sorry, love, must have slipped my mind,” he said with his signature unapologetic shrug. His expression as he stared down the hall was hungry. Stars winked in his onyx eyes.

  She scowled. “What’s gotten into you?”

  He turned a secretive smile on her. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

  She opened her mouth to reply, but he had already disappeared. A wisp of black smoke curled in the air where he’d just been.

  What the hell?

  This was ridiculous. She wanted some answers. Maybe Lucas could ignore her in his head, but he couldn’t ignore her face to face.

  But by the time she got back to the dining hall, he’d gone. Emil escorted her back to her room, and despite her frustration, sleep took her swiftly.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  A week went by, and Bri’s daily routine never changed. Wake up coiled in vines, tea in the library, lessons in the garden. Followed by dinner—where Lucas avoided her, except as necessary to perform daring feats of self-sacrifice on her behalf.

  Bri wondered what sort of threat Vika had made to rope him into her sick game. She’d attempted to stab, impale, crush, drop, strangle, and poison Bri.

  All in good fun.

  Once, a crystal stalactite broke loose from the ceiling and would have crushed her, but Lucas tackled her to the ground and rolled them both out of the way. She found herself blinking up at him, and the tenderness in his eyes—she knew from her regressions—was real. But he helped her to her feet and let her go without a word. As if they were passing strangers.

  Another time, she’d been walking across the courtyard, and the ground beneath her feet had literally crumbled away. She’d barely begun to fall into a steaming chasm before Lucas was there, his iron grip locked around her wrist as he set her back on solid ground.

  But the ground hadn’t felt solid at all. It had felt like the floor was tilting, gravity pulling her toward him.

  Hedvika had clapped and said something to Lucas in another language, but he ignored her, holding on to Bri’s waist a heartbeat longer than his usual briskness. A look of pain had crossed his face, and Bri gripped his forearm, not wanting to let go. Longing to see that other look, the one where he gazed at her like she was a
treasure. A miracle.

  She realized in that brief touch, that fleeting moment of connection, how much she… missed him.

  She let go first that time.

  She dreamt of him every night at the palace and woke up every morning with a surge of primal desire carving out a hole deep in her belly. She would close her eyes and try to picture Kean, try to remember his lopsided smile, the firelight dancing across his features, the way his hands felt, the few times they’d made love… But whenever she got close to climax, the vision in her head would morph. Lucas above her, Lucas beneath her, Lucas thrusting inside of her. And she would come apart with tears of relief and guilt in sticky on her cheeks.

  Now she was lying on her side, twisted in vines. She didn’t fight them anymore, and as they continued to bud, their thorns retracted. She’d grown accustomed to their gentle slithering tickle. It was almost affectionate. Their scent was strongest at night, and Bri suspected there might be a mild sedative in their perfume, making it hard to muster the motivation to get out of bed at all.

  Or maybe you’re just depressed.

  It was the little things that faded first, when you lost someone. She couldn’t remember Kean’s laugh. She’d heard it a million times! She remembered his tempers but had forgotten how he smelled. The lines of his body were going fuzzy. All the little quips and barbs and inside jokes from their childhood she recalled. She remembered the boy. But her catalog of memories of Kean, the man, was wearing thin.

  She wanted to hold on to all those tiny moments, when emotion would surge up and flood her chest to bursting, making it hard to breathe. Imprints, she called them, and they were fading. While the imprints of Lucas were getting clearer and clearer. They weren’t even her moments, but they were still there, and she didn’t know what to do about it. Even if she embraced those memories and the feelings that went with them, he apparently wanted nothing to do with her now.

  If only she could get through to him, find out what he was thinking, why he’d agreed to Vika’s stupid game, what he stood to lose, if he’d been forced into it…where he went at night when she heard his mournful howling and imagined he was calling out for her.

  “Oh, Lucas,” she whispered, rolling to her back.

  A crackle of magic split open her reverie, and a flash of light filled the room. The vines around her pulled back, and when the light dimmed, her family’s mirror was sitting on her chest. The runed edges of the flat black disk glowed faintly as its familiar hum filled her head.

  Oh…fuck.

  The mirror was supposed to be tucked away in some magical in-between place. She and Geri had banished it there with a spell.

  What was the spell, again?

  Dammit–it had been complicated. A full ritual, a circle set, incantations, and a password. Bri cupped her face in her hands and groaned. She had chosen Lucas as the password. It was supposed to be something vivid but wholly secret. She’d had to focus intently on him to banish the mirror away. That must have been what pulled it out of hiding.

  But she had no idea how to put it back.

  As if in answer, the mirror pulsed, tiny lightning bolts at the edges glowing as the hum she felt in her bones intensified.

  She sat up without touching it, letting it tumble into her lap.

  Fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck.

  Where could she put it?

  The mirror pulsed harder, an incessant pressure in the center of her forehead. She tossed a blanket over it and began to pace, but the pressure didn’t ease.

  What if Hedvika could sense it too?

  Though she didn’t know exactly what Vika’s plans were, Bri knew she could not let her anywhere near the mirror. Generations of her family had died to protect it. The Soul Eater had tried to punch a whole into their world–through Bri’s soul–for it. Vika already dabbled in demon magic, and a lack of the sight was her greatest weakness. There was no saying what she would do to obtain such a powerful relic, or what plot she would hatch once she had it.

  Vika was everywhere. There was literally nowhere in the palace or grounds to hide it safely. And no way, she thought, gripping her splitting skull, that she could keep it on her person for long.

  Lucas was the only option.

  He could hold the mirror in his cache until Bri found a spell to hide it again herself.

  The mirror buzzed like a nest of angry hornets, and her scalp felt covered with a million tiny stings.

  “Aargh!” she screamed.

  Pulse. Pulse. Pulse.

  The mirror had seemed possessed before, as if it had a mind of its own, but it had only scratched at her last time–this was a full-on attack.

  She tossed the furs aside and yelled, “What do you want?”

  In response, the hornets retreated, and the mirror resumed its soft, pulsing glow and seductive hum.

  She glared at it, but when she turned to walk onto the patio, the hornets came back. Sighing, she sat back down on the bed.

  “You want me to see something,” she said aloud.

  Talking to inanimate objects—you’ve hit a new level of crazy.

  But it answered.

  Pulse. Glow. Pulse. Glow.

  It was a horrible idea–taking orders from an ancient magical mirror.

  But.

  The mirror had only shown her truth before. No matter what she’d done to change that vision, it had all happened, exactly as the mirror had shown.

  Some certainty would be nice.

  Pulse. Glow. Pulse. Glow.

  Her Oracle powers were the sole magical advantage she had over Vika, and so far they hadn’t helped her at all. Though she used whatever free time she had to practice scrying in the dark, smooth water of the fountain, she could still only see a few minutes into the future before being drawn backwards into the past.

  She stared at the mirror’s glossy black surface.

  It’s only a tool.

  A very, very powerful tool. Maybe now that she had some control of her magic, she could wield it better, steer it to the answers she needed. Geri had said it would show anything past, present, or future. She could look into the past to see where Vika had hidden the divan or maybe even use it to spy in the present. The future…

  Do you really want to know the future, if you can’t change it?

  Pulse. Pulse. Pulse. Glow.

  She exhaled slowly and closed her eyes. Her palm hovered over the surface, reaching out with her magic, just like with the statues. She emptied her mind and tried to focus on a single question as she did when scrying.

  How do I free Kean?

  Repeating that question silently, Bri picked up the mirror in both hands and gazed into it.

  The lightning bolts flashed and collided in the center of the black disk in a ball of white light.

  How do I free Kean? How do I free Kean? How do I free Kean?

  Light flashed, filling the room like a strobe. When it faded, there was an image on the mirror’s shiny surface. A reflection, but not. A young girl, maybe twelve years old, watched Bri from the other side. There was something so familiar about her dark, inquisitive eyes and thick, arching brows. Yet she moved like a reflection. She blinked when Bri blinked, moved when she moved. They both reached out to touch the surface of the mirror and they both frowned and looked at their fingers, in perfect sync.

  The mirror flashed again, and this time Bri saw the girl from afar. She was older, a young woman, walking through the forest. She stumbled into a clearing and happened upon a giant bronze wolf with a mantle of black across his shoulders. Bri would recognize Lucas’s wolf anywhere. The girl and the wolf stared at each other for a beat, and then the girl marched up to him and stroked her hand down the bridge of his snout.

  No, Bri thought, fighting the vision. This is the past. How do I free Kean?

  The mirror flashed, and Bri’s forehead broke out in a sweat. She released her hold on her magic and was sucked into what the mirror wanted to show her.

  Flash.

  Lucas, as a man, and she was marching up
to him again.

  “Hello, my wolf.”

  Flash.

  She was straddling him on a red cape and bed of fallen leaves, her athame raised to the full moon.

  Flash.

  Passing Marguerite up to him and watching them ride away.

  Flash.

  The executioner’s torch lowering.

  Flash.

  A torch lifting to light Lucas’s face in the Arcanum vault.

  Flash.

  Bri and Lucas riding down the highway on his motorcycle.

  Flash.

  The wolf, broken and wrapped in thorns.

  Flash.

  Lucas naked beneath her on a bed of crimson roses as rain sluiced down around them.

  Flash.

  Her arms stained to the elbow and dripping with blood. In one hand, she was holding a large, meaty heart. In the other, Lucas’s wavy blade.

  Bri dropped the mirror and barely made it to the corner before she was sick.

  Trust the mirror—another great idea. Right up there with follow the bear.

  She splashed some cold water on her face and picked up the disk, wrapping it in a t-shirt. At least it had stopped buzzing at her.

  “Thanks for nothing,” she muttered.

  It pulsed faintly.

  Not only had it not answered her question, it left her with another, more urgent one. If the mirror showed only certainty… whose heart was she going to carve out?

  ***

  Lucas had been given yard rights for his good behavior. Though he still had to spend the night in the forest as the wolf, he was free to roam about the palace during the day, as long as he avoided Bri.

  Despite being up most of the night, he was often still restless when he returned, so he’d taken to practicing his sword in the garden in the morning, before Bri emerged for her daily lessons.

  He’d spent eight sunrises living with Hedvika’s rules, and his faith in her plan was waning. It felt much longer, and not just because he was anxious to return to Bri. Time moved differently here. Only eight dawns had passed, but the moon, which had been barely waning when they left North Wake, was already near full again, and the seasons in the White Wood had slid through winter and spring and were cresting into summer. He couldn’t get any of his clocks or devices to work inside Vika’s wards, but he knew the nights were far too long.