“Good morning, beast,” he growled against her ear.
Vynasha shivered and squeezed his arm, whispering, “They’ll hear us.”
Baalor huffed a silent laugh. “Too late for that. Wolv senses, remember, love?”
“Shush, you,” she hissed then bit back a yelp as he tickled her side.
His chuckle vibrated through his chest and melded with hers.
The front door opened with a faint howl of wind then shut firmly behind Erythea.
Vynasha froze, biting her lip in the silent aftermath.
Ilya’s voice came suddenly, sharply. “If you’re quite done, you should come down to breakfast before the lass returns!”
Baalor snorted and pressed his lips to her shoulder to muffle his laughter. “At least Mother likes you.”
Vynasha rolled to face him. “I’m not so sure about that.” He didn’t see the way his mother eyed her at times, as if she expected Vynasha might turn feral any second. He didn’t know the expectations Ilya Iceveins had for their curse breaker. Baalor laughed it away, and she stared, marveling at the light within him, the ease of his manner.
“Trust me, if she did not like you, she would have interrupted the moment we woke her last night.”
Vynasha raked her claws at his chest. “Baalor! You said they couldn’t hear.”
“Wolv hearing, love, remember? It cannot be helped, I’m afraid. At least we live far enough from the village so as not to hear the rest of the pack.”
Vynasha shook her head as she pushed off his chest and climbed out of his bed. She glanced down at her lack of layers with another violet blush. Her arms glowed happily with majik. It occurred to her that the sight was no longer strange, and she was suddenly afraid.
TO SAY BREAKFAST was an awkward affair could hardly be an understatement. Between Baalor’s open teasing and constant touch at the table, to Ilya’s knowing smirk, Vynasha could hardly speak. Distant and hazy dreamlike memories lingered of her parents sharing smiles and touching hands. Yet open affection was not a public affair in Whistleande Valley. And after the fire, Vynasha had only felt comfortable with her nephew, Wyll. Unlike these bold Wolvs with their sharp tongues and wicked eyes.
Baalor’s amusement at her discomfort seemed to grow upon her glare and chance to dig her claws into his thigh beneath the table.
Back off.
He slipped his arm over her shoulder in reply, arching a single silver eyebrow.
Ilya cackled and declared, “Son, you should come home more often. She is too subdued without your company.”
Vynasha gaped at the old female and wondered what her family would have thought of the Iceveins.
Ceddrych is fond of Ilya at least.
“Is that so?” Baalor’s lips quirked into a crooked smile. “Perhaps I shall send Omalia out with the pack to patrol the territory this time. We wouldn’t want any beasties sneaking into the village again.” His tone was obviously grave. Again she saw that lightness in his emerald eyes and hated the thrill his warmth incited.
Vynasha was saved from any reply when the door flew open with a bang. Erythea darted inside, followed closely by the twins, Siam and Rian.
“Grandmother! Did you know Father has already—” She stumbled over her words then squealed. “Father!”
She flinched as the girl threw herself into Baalor’s lap, knocking against Vynasha in the process. Baalor laughed and kissed his daughter’s cheeks then buried his face in her platinum curls. The open love between them was both enthralling and painful to watch.
“Vynasha!” Siam crowed, practically bouncing on the balls of his feet before her.
Rian elbowed his brother. “Shut up! She’s obviously busy.”
Siam’s open enthusiasm turned to growing mortification. “Oh, right. Sorry, Vynasha.”
Rian rolled his eyes. “Siam thinks you hung the moon.”
“Shut up, Rian,” Siam growled.
“It’s all right, lads.” Vynasha stood, thankful for the excuse to greet the twins, and forced her arms around the boys’ necks. Rian stiffened while Siam melted into the embrace. As she pulled back, Vynasha offered them a closed-lip smile. “I’m glad you’re home and safe again.”
“Enough of that,” Baalor grunted, pushing the boys away. Erythea hung from his neck, her legs tucked around his waist, though she was far too big. Baalor didn’t seem to notice anything but the young Wolvs touching Vynasha.
The twins jumped away, cowed, and inclined their heads. Only Vynasha caught Baalor’s amused twitch of the lips.
“Come and eat, boys. You’re much too thin,” Ilya chose to interrupt. The promise of food drew the twins to the table. As they settled in with their bowls, Ilya began to quiz them on village matters. “And has Gerralt chosen to go through with the bloody ceremony this year?”
“Onya says so,” Siam answered with a not-so-subtle glance Vynasha’s way, “and she heard it from Elder Paevel.”
Ilya snorted. “Of course she did. That bitch rules through him, mark me.”
“Mother, do not start this again.” Baalor led Vynasha back to join the others. “You gave up your seat on the council for a reason, remember?”
Erythea hopped from her father’s back and snatched Vynasha’s hand from him. “I need to steal her a moment.” There was something in her pale eyes that made Vynasha hesitate. The girl was too gifted with majik, and Vynasha smelled it on the air now.
Baalor only smiled. “We are expected to help with the festival, pup.”
“Be right back!” Thea promised, tugging Vynasha up the stairs and into her bedroom.
Vynasha waited until the door was shut and latched into place before hissing, “What do you think you’re doing?”
Using majik on your father?
Thea giggled and shrugged as she passed Vynasha for her mother’s grimoire. “But I didn’t put much into the suggestion, only enough to sway him from you. He likes you so very much.” Snow-white hands turned the inscribed vellum pages.
Vynasha clenched and unclenched her fists. “It is wrong to make people do something they do not want to do.”
The girl turned a curious eye to Vynasha through her curls. “Like how you froze the mob that wanted to kill me?”
“No,” Vynasha sighed, “that is not the same.” She crossed the room and sat on the opposite side of the bed. “I stopped them to save your life. You used majik on your father when you didn’t need to. You should not rely on it to get what you want, Thea. It will only bring you trouble.”
Thea paused at the page she had been searching for. “Here! This is what I wanted to show you this morning. I found it before bed, but you fell asleep so early. Grandmother said you needed your rest after using so much majik. But Vynasha, look.” She turned the book around, revealing the page.
Vynasha’s blood curdled, and her breath seized in her chest at the familiar image. “This isn’t your mother’s grimoire.”
Thea waved her hand. “Oh, no, I made a glamour. See?” The book gleamed at the edges with a dimly blue light. “I thought you would see right through it. But never mind. Do you see this?”
Vynasha swallowed against the dryness in her throat. Her voice came out hoarser than usual, but she refused to look too closely or to touch the illustration Soraya the Enchantress had drawn of her amulet. “What of it?”
Thea sighed and pulled the book back to her. She began to read the witch’s words aloud in her high, sweet tone. “I have the guardians in place and all is prepared as it can ever be. I wonder if the king shall know his most prized possession shall be his downfall? The talisman is the key to bridging the bond betwixt my son and I. No matter what happens to me, my son shall remain tied to this. My legacy will keep, long after I am faded from this world. And so he too shall fade, until another of the first blood comes.”
The girl lifted her chin with triumph in her wizened gaze. No child should have looked or sounded so old. Erythea should have been running about the village with the other children, not studying blood ma
jik with a witch.
Vynasha couldn’t help her glance at the illustration of the amulet and pressed her fist to her racing heart. “You shouldn’t believe a word from those pages. Soraya was a manipulator and a murderer.”
“She was a queen,” Erythea argued, pursing her bow lips together in thought. “Don’t you see what this means? She wrote about guardians, just like we have in the village, and a bond with the talisman. Grandmother told me about the amulet. You never told me how you got it or the queen’s journal.” Her gaze was piercing, beseeching.
Vynasha hid her panic behind tousled black curls. “I—I can’t tell you, Thea. Please, don’t make me.”
The room was silent but for Grandmother’s cackle below and the twins’ bickering. Vynasha couldn’t bear to look at the amulet. She didn’t want to know. She had read every page of Soraya’s journal before and learned nothing but sorrow.
That amulet would only bind me closer to him.
Thea shut the book with a resounding thud then gently set it down on the bed. She slowly walked around the bed until Vynasha was forced to meet the girl’s gaze. “You haven’t used your full strength during practice. Don’t lie, I know you haven’t, and I know why.”
“Do you?” Vynasha didn’t mean to laugh or allow bitterness to frost her words. Her skin itched as voices whispered just on the fringe of her consciousness.
“The prince gave you his mother’s amulet, didn’t he? Why won’t you wear it?”
Vynasha stood. “Because it could lead him right to us! You don’t understand, Thea, it wasn’t only the amulet…”
Erythea caught her hand, oblivious of Vynasha’s claws. “You were scared because of the majik. But it’s okay. We’re both stronger now. We can be safe together.”
“I don’t need it,” Vynasha said.
The apology was in the girl’s gaze. Erythea sucked in a breath then continued, determined. “It’s not enough anymore. Grandmother’s right. The beasts won’t stop coming just because we master a little blood majik. We need more. We need to bring the fight to them, and the prince already gave you the perfect weapon.”
“Enough!” Vynasha snatched her hand away from the girl’s touch. “You can’t manipulate me like them, not anymore.”
“I wasn’t trying to.” Hurt creased the girl’s brow, and her voice trembled, just enough that Vynasha felt like a monster.
Vynasha pushed her curls back from her face. “I know everyone expects me to fix all this somehow. Just—let me figure this out on my own first, please? I need you to trust me.”
Thea bit her lip but nodded. Her shoulders drew inward, an echo of the bullied child Vynasha had first come across moons ago.
Vynasha glared at Soraya’s journal. The key hidden beneath her shift burned hotter at the sight of its mistress’s belongings. “Where did you find that?”
Thea jerked, startled and suddenly fearful. “Wh-what do you mean?”
Vynasha clenched her jaw. “I hid that bag so no one would find it. Where did you put it, Thea?” When the girl refused to answer, Vynasha grasped her by the arm and hissed, “You’ll think you can control it, but you can’t, no one can. It’s just like the witch said: the amulet is tied to him, and if we wear it, we risk bringing the beasts to our doorstep.”
Erythea jerked out of Vynasha’s grasp. “You’re afraid! Afraid of Soraya and the prince, but I’m not. I already died once, and you brought me back.” The girl blinked back tears, and Vynasha flinched at the way Thea held her arm closer to her chest. “And they already know we’re here, Vynasha. Why else have the beasts come to our borders? Why won’t you help them, really help them?”
Below, the kitchen had fallen silent. The walls were too thin, especially in a house of wolves.
Vynasha glanced at Thea’s arm and felt nothing but regret. “Is your arm okay?”
The girl pasted a brave smile on her face, the same face that had been bruised on their first meeting. “I’ll be fine.”
Vynasha bit her lip and closed the gap between them. She cursed the way Thea initially stiffened at her embrace before relaxing. “I’m sorry I hurt you. Please hex me if I do that again.”
A wet, muffled laugh came from the girl. “Promise.”
Vynasha sighed and, not for the first time, hated what she had become. True, the sudden power in her limbs after years of weakness had seemed a blessing. Until she realized how strong she could be, until she used majik to reverse death and influence the minds of beasts.
How am I any better than the monsters at our borders?
A knock sounded on the bedroom door, and then Ilya’s voice came in a rasping whisper through the cracks. “I sent the boys on to the village before your argument grew too heated.”
Vynasha released Thea and crossed the room to undo the latch and jerk open the door. Ilya’s black eyes gleamed as she quickly took in the scene, lingering briefly on the grimoire on the bed, then returned to meet Vynasha’s gaze.
“So she told you, then, curse breaker?” Ilya offered Vynasha a crooked smile, the echo of her son strong in the elder’s look.
Vynasha gripped the door until the wood began to groan. “You warned me against using the amulet before. You told me it was evil. Why are you trying to get me to wear it now?” She waited for the elder to deny it. She had heard the way she whispered in Erythea’s ear once it became clear Vynasha wouldn’t fall blindly in line with the council’s plans to retake the kingdom.
Ilya cocked her hip and pursed her lips as though reading Vynasha’s thoughts on her face. “Perhaps you were not ready to wield it before.”
Vynasha barked a laugh. “Before? I can barely hold the mind of one beast.”
“Aye, and yet you kept the village from murdering us. You brought Erythea back from beyond the Veil and culled her murderer.”
“I didn’t think when I did those things. I can’t summon it at will. Before I came to these mountains, I didn’t even believe in majik.”
Ilya cocked her head in a wolfish manner, appraising. “Says the girl who carried her nephew into the heart of Winter to find the Source.”
Vynasha released the door and turned to Erythea. “I don’t care what you think you read or what anyone says. And I won’t ask you again. Where is it?”
Erythea traded glances with Ilya and swallowed before saying, “Our secret place.”
Vynasha nodded once. “I’ll meet you both at the festival.”
Don’t follow me, she said with a parting look.
She pretended not to hear their whispers through the walls as she dressed in the dead Luanor’s furs.
VYNASHA RAN FROM the sounds of laughter and instruments tuned for the festivities ahead. A part of her wanted to run until she found the cove her brother, Wyll, and Resha had retreated to. She wanted to grab her family and keep running until they were safe from the Wylder Mountains.
It said something of the nature of majik that Vynasha found Grendall’s amulet so easily. She clawed at the snow until she reached a hole in the dirt and uncovered Erythea’s hiding place. The sight of Old Ced’s towsack wrenched a dry sob from her chest.
“Nothing is as it seems…” Father had said before he died. Before she had killed him.
She tore a hole in the sack in her haste to retrieve the amulet and snarled at the damned amethyst in her hands. Her hands shook as she fell back into the snow at her feet and gripped the talisman. Grandmother had once called this a key and a burden. Thea saw it as a weapon. Vynasha yearned to welcome the security of the bond, longed to feel in control of her majik again. She wanted to throw it as far as east is from west.
“No matter how far you cast it, the key will find its way back to you,” a smooth deep voice whispered.
Vynasha stumbled to her feet as if she were still human. A tall male with ebony skin, white eyes, and spiraling horns on his head greeted her. His smile was strangely human, and while she felt prickles of instinct telling her to run, something in his eyes bade her wait. Listen.
“Who are y
ou?” she blurted, colored, and shook her head. “Sorry, I—I’ve seen you before, around the village.” She bit her lip and couldn’t help but take in his finely tailored colorful clothes, like something the traveling merchants wore in Whistleande.
The male’s smile grew. “I have used many names. You may call me Vedmak, curse breaker.”
She shivered and brought the amulet closer to her chest. “Please, call me Vynasha.”
Vedmak inclined his antlered head, white eyes falling to the jewel in her hand. “It calls to you, its missing half. Why do you fight it so?”
Vynasha struggled to measure her breathing. She wasn’t afraid of the mirror folk. Thea was friends with some of them, wasn’t she? They had never sought to harm her.
Yet why now, as I hold the amulet, does one of them choose to speak to me?
Aloud she said, “If I wear this…” She swallowed. “I share his dreams.”
Vedmak nodded. His sigh was the wind whispering through the winter forest. “Blood majik is how she captured him as well. It is what haunts his dreams.”
Vynasha glanced at the amulet, the way it flashed the same color as her blood. She hated the pity she felt for Grendall, the wyne who had betrayed her. The beast who was truly the prince. “I should throw it away, where no one will find it.”
“And yet it has returned to you,” Vedmak replied, closer than he had been before. She glanced up to find him only three paces nearer, so near that she marveled at the delicate carvings in his ivory horns. “None of us can fight fate, least of all you, dear sister.”
Sister?
She met his enigmatic gaze and wondered at the slow smile creeping up her face. “Sister. I suppose I have more in common with your folk than with anyone else, don’t I?”
Vedmak inclined his head. His silent appraisal made her skin begin to crawl until he spoke again. “Our queen was one of us as well until she turned to dark majik. She tried to change her fate, with disastrous consequences. But the prince was born of both worlds, like you. Perhaps, if you both embraced all you were, together, you might restore the balance?”
Bound Beauty Page 3
