Vynasha gaped. “Grendall is a monster,” she said, and she meant it. “He used my father to snare me into coming here. He lied to me so I would break his mother’s curse.”
Vedmak pursed his full lips. “Yes. Desperation has led men to do all manner of unspeakable acts. Still, you should remember, nothing in the borderlands is what it seems.”
Vynasha flinched at the implication, the thought Vedmak seemed to will into her mind, the truth she had long avoided since her last sordid encounter with her beast. She couldn’t begin to think of him as anything less than her enemy. Not with the pack whispering of war, not with beasts haunting their borders, mindless in their need to reach her.
A surprisingly warm hand covered hers. Vedmak’s gaze was apologetic, though his smile had returned. “Your blood led you to this land to save more than your nephew. The gate between our realm and the realm beyond the Veil needs its guardians restored, Vynasha. And yes, you have been asked to sacrifice much. But think of the family you found, and do not despair as our queen did. Become more than what you are.”
Her breath caught in her throat, and she squeezed her eyes shut to hide her tears. When she opened her eyes, Vedmak was gone.
The amulet weighed heavily upon her neck as Vynasha made her way back to the village. She couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched as she left the trees behind. After her encounter with Vedmak, she would never feel alone in the forest again.
She rested a hand on the cabin nearest to her and watched the bonfires and dyed streamers children waved in the air. She listened to the laughter and jeers as the pack played games and the elders gossiped. If she listened closely enough, she could hear Baalor’s joyful laughter amid teasing growls from his friends. And she wondered how she had avoided feeling like an outsider these past three moons and how, with his return, Vynasha hadn’t felt more confused or alone.
“There you are!” Siam caught hold of her arm in a decidedly brave move.
She was so startled by his easy manner that Vynasha allowed the brazen twin to pull her into the throng, Rian closing in at her other side. Horns of strong ale swayed in their free hands.
“Baalor almost bit our throats for not keeping an eye on you,” Siam confessed.
“Shut up!” Rian growled.
Vynasha frowned and was forced to help them right their steps to keep them all from tumbling to the ground. “I wasn’t gone that long.” But a quick glance up at the starlit sky told her otherwise.
How long did I speak with Vedmak?
On the opposite side of the bonfire, members of the pack stood on either side of a line, fighting over a long rope. Vynasha had the fleeting thought of her brother, or Wanderer as they knew him, and wondered if he had joined such games. She smiled as Baalor slipped in the snow upon catching her eye. His side of the rope slackened in his distraction, allowing the other team to pull his side off their feet.
Siam and Rian giggled at the sight, then sobered as Baalor rose to meet them. His green eyes narrowed on the twins, but Vynasha saw the smirk tugging at his mouth. “See something amusing, pups?”
The twins shook their heads and replied in unison, “No, Baalor.”
“I see you’ve found her, then.” He eyed their horns of ale then added, “Much later than I had hoped you would.”
Rian promptly threw his horn down, and both released Vynasha to stand on wobbly legs. “Sorry, milord.”
Siam sniffed. “They haven’t ever let us drink before.” Rian elbowed his brother, and Siam hiccoughed.
Baalor kept a steel-eyed demeanor a moment longer, then snarled, “Off with you, then. We’ll discuss your new night patrols on the morrow.”
The twins hung their heads but obeyed, turning around as they fled with winks in Vynasha’s direction. “Good luck with the ceremony!” Rian called. Siam slapped his hand over his twin’s mouth and hauled him into the crowd before Baalor could catch them.
Vynasha touched the amulet beneath her furs and wondered why her skin didn’t glow as before. Baalor returned his attentions to her just as she lowered her hand. She fought back the urge to stiffen, keeping her posture loose.
His arms came around her waist easily, and he lifted her, before all the village, until his lips pressed against her ear. “I was worried. Thea said you were right behind them.”
“I’m sorry…” She hesitated, and his embrace tightened. “I just needed a moment.” Vynasha caught the curious glances of the pack, flinched at the jeers and calls from others.
He set her back on her feet but didn’t remove his arms. Yet his smile was easier and his joy sincere. Vynasha could never grow used to seeing such genuine care in his gaze, from anyone, truly.
“Now that the curse breaker has arrived, we can begin the ceremony!” Paevel, one of the elders, announced.
Vynasha grimaced. She had learned a bit of this festival, this way of ushering in the land’s brief spring. Or in the case of the cursed Wylder Mountains, the wishful prayers of spring. Ilya had warned she might have to partake in the ceremonies, though she had never specified how.
“Aye,” Baalor chuckled along with the crowd, “though if I might have a word with my mate first?”
Mate? A sudden flush of blood rushed to her head at the word.
Paevel bowed his head with a kind smile. “As you wish.”
The crowd gathered closer, and her heart seemed to sink into her belly.
What in seven hells is this?
Baalor’s calloused hands cupped her face and drew her attention to his loving gaze.
“You said mate…” She gasped as realization settled upon her. “But Thea said Wolvs only mate once.”
“And sometimes, we must wait for the one.” Baalor’s smile scrubbed years from his scarred but handsome face. “I have been waiting for you all my life.”
Any other time, Vynasha would have felt the stirrings of longing for him. Instead she only felt unease as he lowered his voice for her ears alone.
“I wanted to ask you sooner,” he added, sheepishly then with resolve, “but I cannot wait any longer. Beauty, will you be my wife? Will you marry me now?”
Vynasha opened her mouth, but no words formed.
“Say yes!” someone called from the gathering crowd.
Others chuckled at the youth’s audacity.
Vynasha closed her eyes as her vision grew faint. She tried to focus on Baalor’s breathing, but his pulse was racing too. She could taste his hope and his fear on her tongue.
You can’t say no.
“Say yes,” he breathed against her cheek. “Say yes and I promise you anything your heart desires.”
You would be a fool to say no. He loves you. He can give you a family, a home.
“Beauty?”
She opened her eyes and forced a smile upon her face as she replied, “Yes.”
THERE WAS NOISE, a great chorus of joy and music and dancing. There were Erythea’s arms tightly wound about her midsection, the girl’s laughter and happiness incandescent in her eyes. There was Baalor’s kisses on her face, her lips, uncaring who saw them.
And yet…
There was a steadily growing voice inside Vynasha’s mind, screaming. She blinked back tears and hoped everyone thought them tears of joy. The moon was full overhead, the perfect time for bonding ceremonies, Ilya Iceveins had explained three nights ago.
As Baalor led her to the podium of smiling elders and her gaze found his mother’s, she wondered if Ilya had known. Judging by the ancient woman’s smile, Vynasha could easily guess.
Baalor stood before her, and then, before she knew fully what was happening, he bared his palm to her.
No!
The dim protest was foreign, invasive in her thoughts, but so pained that Vynasha nearly repeated the word aloud.
“The joining of souls is represented by the bonding of blood.” Ilya’s voice rang clear over the silent village. Even the stars seemed to hold their breath, to listen.
“I knew from the moment you crossed our thre
shold you were special,” Grendall said to her in the deep dark beneath the castle. “I did not mean to form a bond with you at first, Vynasha, you have to believe me. But from the moment my claw first grazed you and I truly saw you, I knew I could not fight it for long.”
Baalor allowed his mother to cut his palm open while reciting the words, “I give of myself wholly to you, my heart, my body, my soul.”
The bloodied dagger Ilya then brought to Vynasha’s hand was the same one that the false prince had once given her. How had the female come by it?
Vynasha looked to Baalor with alarm, and his brow furrowed, a flicker of apprehension in his wolfish gaze. She sucked air through her bared teeth and released Baalor’s hold on her hand.
“What is the matter, girl? Come back here,” Ilya growled.
“Vynasha?” Baalor took a step forward, bloody palm extended. His blood was dark, so deep a red as to appear black.
They can’t understand. They won’t.
“I—I’m sorry. I can’t.” She stumbled backward and turned to run off the platform. She forced her way through a confused and indignant crowd. She ignored Erythea’s calls and ran as fast as her legs could carry her. The Wolvs were fast, but Vynasha was something more. It did not take her long to outrun Baalor.
She pushed open the door to the Iceveins’ home and flinched at the lingering heady majik wafting from Nymwe’s blue roses.
Vynasha’s skin was on fire. The amulet glowed through her furs, yet she ignored it as she raced to her travel pack and then to gather what food Ilya had left out. She was halfway done wrapping a loaf of bread and goat’s cheese when Baalor found her.
“You’re still here,” he sighed, then paused, as frozen as the snowflakes spilling over the threshold. “Beauty, won’t you look at me? What is it? What’s wrong?” His voice trembled, but not with anger as she had half expected. She couldn’t meet his eye as she continued to pack.
“I already told you before. I cannot… I can’t form a blood bond with you when I’m already bound.” For a moment, there was nothing but her labored breathing and struggle to shove as much into her pack as she could fit. She needed a knife.
Damn it, Ilya.
She snatched a kitchen knife from its cutting board. Fair was fair, and she hadn’t time to ponder how she already felt naked without the false prince’s gift.
“Here.” Baalor’s tone belied his hand as he passed the bejeweled dagger back to her, hilt first. The blade was still dark with his blood.
Vynasha sucked in a breath and dropped her pack to take it. Their eyes briefly met. “I’m sorry.” He didn’t release the blade immediately, and so they stood there, connected in the only way she would allow.
He took a shuddering breath. “I hadn’t forgotten—about the bond.”
This shocked her enough to meet his gaze—a mistake, she found, for his eyes were wet and his cheeks stained with tears. “Then why?”
Why didn’t you warn me? Why didn’t you ask me in private instead of before all those people, where I couldn’t possibly deny you?
She took a step closer to him. “I was happy with you as we were.”
Baalor flinched. “I thought you loved me. I thought you felt as sure of our bond as I did.” His fist flexed over the blade, cutting him afresh. “I thought the sealed mating bond would be enough to break his.”
Vynasha bit her lip, and Baalor lowered his gaze to where they were still joined. He should have raged at her or flaunted his superiority, as he often had in the beginning. She would have readily fought with that Baalor. Anything but accept his pain. She was doing this to him, just like she had hurt Ceddrych.
Just like I have hurt everyone I’ve ever loved.
Vynasha shook her head. “It’s too dangerous. We don’t know what it would do. Even if I wanted to, I can’t let you be hurt.”
Her last words brought him back to her. He took another step, until the point of the dagger pricked through his tunic. “What harm is there in trying?”
She took a fluttering breath as she watched his pulse tic beneath his neck. He still hadn’t shaved since he’d been back. She loved him for it. “You could die.” Her voice cracked on the forbidden word.
His smile didn’t reach his eyes. “There are worse fates than dying. Not meeting you…” His fingers grazed her clenched jaw and slid into her curls. “That would have been a tragedy.”
Vynasha closed her eyes, savoring his touch, and knew she didn’t deserve him. “I have to go.”
Baalor sucked in a sharp breath, and she opened her eyes to see panic reflected back at her. “You cannot leave.”
She took a step back, pulling her dagger with her. Baalor clenched his fist tighter over the blade. “Stop it!” She choked back a sob. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
His chest rose and fell too quickly, yet he didn’t let go. And she understood, as he finally released her to cradle his bloody hand, she already had.
She was hurting him as she quickly walked past him and said, “Tell them I’m going to visit my brother.” She thought he would grab her before she made it out the door. She didn’t think he’d let her walk away, and perhaps a small part of her wanted him to beg her to stay. But all Vynasha felt as she escaped into the night was relief.
She hadn’t bothered refilling the shallow hole where Erythea had buried her father’s rucksack. Vynasha crouched to pick up the snow-dusted sack again, this time to add to her burden. As she stood, she felt a familiar presence at her back and twisted to meet his cool pale gaze.
Vedmak waited, moonlight gleaming off his pearlescent horns, just at the edge of the clearing, where Vynasha and Thea had spent hours practicing majik. The male didn’t bridge the distance between them, only smiled and said, “You are taking my advice, I see, sister.”
Vynasha laughed so she wouldn’t cry. “I hadn’t planned on it.” Her grip tightened on the rough burlap. “I never wanted any of this.”
Only to see Wyll healthy and alive and for Ceddrych to smile at me again.
Vedmak gestured with a graceful sweep of his palm. “Just so, and yet you are here, against all odds. You survived the fire that claimed your family and saved your nephew. You tamed the beast and sacrificed yourself to save countless others. Now you go to Wolfsbane, for he alone can show you the way, just as you have given him renewed purpose.”
Gooseflesh rose to the surface of her skin, and Vynasha clenched her jaw. “Are all your kind so gifted with the sight?”
Vedmak’s surprised laughter was like crashing waves and new-fallen snow at once. “Not all, thank Crafter.” He regarded her with a smile warmer than any he’d graced her with thus far, then closed the distance with a step. One moment he stood on the opposite end of the clearing, the next, his hand captured hers between his palms. “Forgive me. We have so long awaited your coming, when you finally appeared we could not help but watch closely.”
Vynasha snorted. “Could have used your help when I was starving or running for my life or almost drowning in the river.”
Vedmak chuckled, and she couldn’t help but smile back. “You were not ready. Had you met the Wolvs sooner and found Wanderer first, you would have never gone to the Lost City. And had your father not saved you from the falls, you would have never opened your heart to a new family.”
Vynasha bit back a growl. “I hope you know how unnerving this makes people, when you look into their private thoughts.”
“As you say. Majik does not come without its price. Mine is to walk this world alone until the gate is restored. Yours remains to be seen, but I do not think you shall suffer for long.” He removed his hand, and she stared at the small pendant he left behind.
Vynasha gasped. “I lost this a moon ago, when we were training. How did you…”
Vedmak smiled from the other side of the clearing once more. “Nothing is lost forever.”
She traced the wolf head and gaped as the shape transformed into a wilting rose. Vynasha knew Vedmak was already gone before she lifted her head
. She shook her head and closed her fist over the pendant. After her failure to heal Wyll, she had found the silver object outside the human cabin, a thing of beauty left in the wake of a vanished people. It had felt like a sign. It had changed shapes many times since she’d first discovered it. Vynasha didn’t want to think too closely about what the enchanted metal meant now. Still, she felt closer to her mother than she had in a long time.
Upon adding her father’s rucksack to her pack and pocketing the pendant, Vynasha pulled the fur-lined hood over her hair and entered the Silverblud Forest.
“Where will you go, wolf child?
When the blood calls you home.
What will you do, seeker?
When all hope is gone.
Go North,
To the Castle Bitterhelm.
Find the Source,
Wherein you may taste peace
Before the long sleep.”
Song of the Silverblud
vs. 13–17
ANOTHER MOON HAD passed since Vynasha had fled the Forgotten Village and abandoned her last chance for happiness.
Wolfsbane had been waiting for her, just as Vedmak had said. Yet the human’s surprise at her arrival was easily overcome by his madness. “Seven hells, am I glad you came, beasty! Not surprised you could not stay away. After all, what is life without the hunt?” he had said.
Vynasha told herself this was what she wanted.
Cold wet nights, watching as winter melted into a frozen yet somehow wet spring, until the river flowing through the valley roared. Days spent trapping and learning to navigate the changing terrain with Wolfsbane at her side.
“Test the ground, beasty, or you’ll fall all the way down into the bloody river,” he had warned after a close call.
Bound Beauty Page 4
