Bound Beauty

by Jennifer Silverwood

  “I can’t stay, Aunty. I’ve had a chance to do what I never hoped for before we came, but I’ll fade or twist into something bad if you keep me here.” Fear colored her nephew’s words, but all Vynasha could see was the smear of blood at the corner of his mouth.

  “I think we’ve rested enough. Come, we’re almost there. I can carry you now that I feel stronger,” she lied as she slipped her arm about his neck and helped him sit.

  Wyll’s good eyebrow rose in doubt until Vynasha stood and gathered him in her arms. His legs, longer than the last time she had tried this, dragged on the floor. He clung to her neck as Vynasha took step after step, keeping the door in her sights.

  “You can’t abandon the rest of them for me,” her nephew whispered against her ear. “You’re a queen now, Aunty.”

  “If that’s true, then I get to decide who to save,” she grunted between labored breaths. Wyll fell silent after this, and Vynasha reached for the frayed remains of majik inside her for strength. It was painful to reach inwardly, but she pushed aside her discomfort and dug deeper.

  The doors opened as they approached, and Odym quickly shut them with quivering hands. “My queen!” The old wyne rushed toward her then startled as he noticed Wyll in her arms. His wrinkled features wrenched at the sight of the boy, some unnamable emotion before his weary gaze settled on hers. “When they broke the boundary gates, I feared the worst.”

  Vynasha released a sigh, and her trembling legs began to give. Odym reached for Wyll before she could speak, helping her support the boy between them.

  “I can stand, Asha,” Wyll protested.

  “You need to rest,” Vynasha growled before shifting her focus back to Odym. The wyne looked more faded than before. He had been more solid and real than ever when she left. Fear laced her determination. “How is he?”

  Glistening silver tears slipped over Odym’s cheeks. “What did they do to you, Mistress? He woke raving mad. When he stopped calling your name, I feared the worst.”

  Vynasha bit her lip and glanced briefly at Wyll before helping her nephew stand. “No time to explain now. Odym, this is my nephew, the one I told you about. Could…please could you stay with him?”

  The old wyne inclined his head in deference. “Of course, my queen.”

  Odym had faded, but he was solid enough to slip his arm about Wyll in support. Vynasha’s skin itched the moment she released him. Wyll had been carrying her for so long that she felt lost on her own two feet.

  Wyll suddenly grinned with the confidence he’d shown back in the village. Even now, his spirit was stronger than hers. “It’ll be all right, Aunty.”

  Vynasha’s lips twisted into a poor semblance of a smile as she reached for the doors. “I’ll be right back,” she promised before going inside.

  A storm had blown in through the open balcony doors, littering the floor with fresh snowdrifts. Grendall’s frozen form lay in a heap before the rock arch bearing the mirror. He wasn’t breathing.

  All the strength Vynasha had willed into her limbs earlier faded the moment she tried to run to his side. Her legs were stone, and the very floor seemed to pull at her feet, slowing her steps. A desperate cry passed her lips, a human’s wail drowned in a wyldcat’s roar.

  “Traitor!” The voices in the walls, the presence she had often felt at the back of her mind, fell over her with a strong gust of wind and ice. “Go back to the valley and be forgotten! You shall never be queen,” the voices hissed as one.

  Vynasha threw up her arms against the wind and ignored the sting in her eyes as she pushed on. “I won’t leave him like you did,” she hissed back and reached for her bond with the prince.

  The presence at the back of her mind cried in outrage, but the voices in the wind began to fade with a promise. “You shall fail. You were always meant to fail.”

  The winds pushed harder until she was forced to crawl forward. Her tears froze to her cheeks as the curse fed on all her doubts. Vynasha had lived her days in fear of not being enough for so long that she wondered if Soraya was right.

  Vynasha glanced at the mirror and remembered Eliajaqlyn’s words. “You stole power from the prince. Open the gate and claim it, then no one can take anything from you ever again.”

  The stone gleamed black as the caves beneath the dungeons and hummed with the promise of untold power. It would be best to seize it now. She could restore everything and banish the darkness, the evil Soraya’s curse had become with light.

  “Power is the only thing that matters, little Phurie,” the voice in the wind crooned as the storm seemed to ease.

  Vynasha licked her lip, bloodied from sharp teeth digging too deeply in determination, in fear. She hesitated. Yet all her fears for Wyll, the pain of her brother, and the Iceveins’ and Wolfsbane’s betrayals faded away as the faint beat of Grendall’s heart echoed in Vynasha’s veins.

  “Power can’t replace love,” Vynasha rasped and used the gap in the storm to scramble forward. She stumbled through one last snowdrift and reached for Grendall’s arm.

  “No!” The curse howled and swirled a tunneling storm about them, lifting the hair off her neck in sharp tugs as ice cut at her bared skin. “Stop!”

  Vynasha groaned as she pulled at his sleeve, using him like a lifeline in the eye of the storm. She crawled over her prince, pushing snow from his chest and face. Grendall’s form was rigid, his skin a deathly gray. Yet the beat of his heart grew louder as she brushed her fingers over his cheek. The blood coursing through her veins glowed, turning her skin a luminous purple.

  Vynasha leaned forward and kissed him.

  For one terrible moment of her warm breath pushing against his frozen lips, Vynasha thought she was too late.

  Then she noticed the wind had ceased, the pressure at the back of her mind was gone, and Grendall’s mouth began to move against hers. Vynasha opened her eyes the moment his lashes fluttered against hers.

  “Ashes,” he whispered as golden light spread from his mouth over his face and farther. A strong hand caught her waist as the other gripped the back of her neck, and then he was surging up into her.

  The curse did not break with a clash of thunder but with light pouring between the prince and the beast. Together, their light spilled in waves from their bodies, over the mirror and the room. It slipped through cracks and over the balcony and spread through the walls and over the land, rippling farther out. The curse was not banished by majik like the power Soraya had used to craft its but with love.

  “Did you feel that?” Vynasha gasped.

  “I feel you,” Grendall replied before claiming her mouth again.

  Love filled the broken bond between them and the scars they had born apart until Vynasha felt herself again, yet somehow more. She laughed as she pushed away at last. “I can’t keep kissing you forever, gatekeeper.”

  His smile was like the sun and held none of the shadows she hadn’t realized were now missing. “I intend to do just that, my queen.”

  “We should check on the others.” She shook her head and stood on legs stronger and more sure than ever, and Grendall followed. His hand wrapped around hers before she could escape.

  “Wait.” He tugged, and Vynasha allowed him to pull her back into his arms. Beneath the unkempt grime on her prince’s face were joy and wonder. “You can feel them too, can you not?”

  Vynasha laughed, “What are you talking about?” Her breath caught as he rested his forehead against hers.

  Haggard lines had worn down his handsome face, and he appeared at once ancient and ageless to her eyes. Relief because they were alive had distracted her enough, and she barely listened to his words. She needed to see to Wyll and Odym, to find her beasts before they harmed Resha…

  “I—I feel them.” Vynasha turned to the doors and somehow knew her nephew and Odym waited on the other side. She glanced to the floor and saw Resha, bloodied and weary but not beaten, hiding in one of the rooms. The other servants, Lyttia and Myrel and Lokyr, were headed this way… “I feel all of t
hem,” she said as she met Grendall’s gaze again.

  He slid a hand through her matted curls. “You came back.”

  Vynasha stole a breath then confessed, “I almost didn’t.”

  Pain flashed and faded so quickly from his clear gaze she might have imagined it. “I know. I felt you, the same way we feel them.” His voice turned hoarse as he pulled her waist against his. “They tried to break our bond. It almost killed you. I wanted to kill them for it.”

  Vynasha pressed a kiss to his lips, quieting the lingering traces of his rage. “It’s over now.”

  “You brought your nephew.” Grendall’s jaw clenched as he added, “He is dying.”

  Vynasha dug her clawed hands into his ruined coat and leaned in. “Now that we’ve mended the bond, I was hoping you could help me heal him?”

  “Majik cannot mend everything,” the prince uttered, stealing her hope with his words. A pause, and then Grendall pushed her back, an indiscernible look on his face. “You could have opened the mirror instead of mending our bond. We will never be free of the curse until we claim the power of the gate, but you did not need me for that.” A quirk of his lips, and he looked pointedly to her chest. “The key found you almost as soon as you arrived, after all.”

  Vynasha’s hand slid for the press of the necklace against her chest, an old habit. She often forgot it was there. Now she felt a tingle where the wooden key lay beneath her hand. “I thought your mother’s amulet…”

  Grendall covered her hand with his. “The amulet belonged to your people once, I believe. Mother found it and stole its power. She used it to bind us together, like I bound you to me, but it was never the key.”

  He removed his hand and took a step back, his shoe crunching against the snow. “I know of one way that might save your nephew. Do you trust me, love?”

  “I do now,” she said, ignoring the lingering doubts that sounded like her family’s voices, like the Iceveins.

  “Love, like trust, is a choice,” Wynyth had once said, after all.

  Vynasha pulled the worn necklace from beneath her dress. She had found the strange key in Soraya’s room what felt like a lifetime ago. Keeping it and the Enchantress’s journal had been a whim, an afterthought. The leather cord she had fashioned in the village was so brittle that Vynasha tugged the white key free with a faint snap. She stared at the wooden object in her palm and then to the sad-eyed golden prince and hesitated. “What will happen if I use this?”

  “Let me show you.” Grendall glowed so brightly that the light seemed to form great wings behind his back. He was too beautiful for her. She had always thought so.

  Vynasha followed her prince to the black arch. The stone hummed as they approached, a song she could barely hear at the edge of her thoughts. She struggled to listen, then startled as Grendall opened her clenched palm. He touched his other hand to a gap in the rock just to the left. It was so small she would have missed it. The humming grew louder around them.

  “What do I do?” She craned her neck to meet his warm gaze.

  He pressed a kiss once, then more slowly again, to her mouth and said. “Use the key, love.”

  Vynasha couldn’t help her smile as he pulled away. “Guess I thought it would be more complicated than that.”

  Grendall said nothing in reply, only pushed her curls back from her face. His fingers caught against the scars at the side of her face then trailed down her neck. “You know, I had given up so long before you came. I knew I did not deserve another chance at happiness. I thought I had dreamed you the first time I sensed you, tucked in your rose garden mountains away. I loved you even then, I believe.”

  Vynasha looked at the key and then at the gap in the stone. She eyed him with a shake of her head. “Who would have known the grumpy gatekeeper was secretly a romantic.”

  He leaned forward, a hand at her waist, his mouth against her ear as he replied, “I will love you long after the stars fade, Ashes.”

  She felt his farewell too late, before the question could pass the tip of her tongue. And the key in her hand was burning hotter, so hot a strained groan escaped her lips instead, before the wood burned into ashes.

  Grendall’s lips pressed to her cheek, his hand squeezing once, twice. Sunlight poured through the gap of the arch, blinding her. For a moment, her gaze found his through the rippling surface of the mirror, and then he vanished.

  “Grendall!” Vynasha stumbled and caught her fall on the stone arch, then cried out as the rock shifted and molded beneath her hand. The image in the mirror shifted, glowing with scattered images of lands and cities she had never seen, a world rife with majik. It poured over the arch, over her, filling her limbs with power.

  When the stone finally released her, an imprint of her hand remained on the rock, with a tattoo of the key on her burnt palm. Vynasha sagged to the floor before the mirror and cradled her hand against her chest.

  WHEN VYNASHA FINALLY opened the bedroom doors, she was unsurprised to find Lyttia and Myrel and even the soft-spoken Lokyr waiting. Each of the wyne glowed a healthy silver and appeared solid as they bowed in unison.

  There should have been more, so many more, she thought. Hvalla’s vacant yet hopeful expression before her end passed through Vynasha’s mind. She and Grendall had stolen too much time together. The power of the mirror pressed against her mind and carried its memories along with its majik through her blood. Vynasha squeezed her burnt palm as she turned to face the newly arrived Vedmak and Eliajaqlyn.

  “The shades are gone,” Vynasha said while surveying their many cuts and bruises, the splattered ichor marring their ethereal beauty. With the power of the mirror gate coursing through her, she truly saw them.

  Vedmak bowed at the waist with a smile and simply intoned, “My queen.”

  “Blighters did not make it easy,” Eliajaqlyn cheerfully added. Despite the levity in her voice, there were tear tracks down her face, and Vynasha didn’t miss the way her mother’s kin looked at her.

  Like she pities me… but why?

  Vynasha stiffened against the scrutiny of her mother’s kin and turned at last to the opposite wall, to Wyll. Resha hovered over her nephew while Odym kept vigil nearby. Wyll was looking at her with something akin to wonder in his sapphire eyes. Contrary to what he had believed, her nephew was still breathing. But it went far deeper than this.

  “I know of one way that might save your nephew,” Grendall had said. Wyll still breathed because her prince had somehow used his power one last time to alter the boy. Indeed, the air about her nephew seemed lighter, and the sickness in him had been erased.

  A broken sob drew Vynasha’s attention to Odym. The old wyne turned back from the empty room and the mirror to face Vynasha. A trembling hand fell to his side as he spoke. “He sacrificed himself.”

  Vynasha glanced back to Wyll, whose skin now glowed with a faint golden light, and understood. “He wanted…” Her words lodged at the back of her throat, refusing to loosen.

  He loved me, and he knew I’d never be happy if Wyll died.

  Odym’s hand cradled hers, startling her attention back to his tired gaze. “We all felt the curse break. They are both gone…it is done.”

  Vynasha bit her lip and squeezed back. The old wyne had loved once, fierce and true. She wasn’t sure how much of Soraya had lingered in the castle with the curse. But did it matter in the end? Odym had lost as much as Vynasha had. More, for Grendall had been like a son to him. It was enough to bring tears to her eyes again.

  You have cried enough.

  It was harder to let Odym go.

  “I need to go to the village,” Vynasha announced, turning to Vedmak and Eliajaqlyn. To Resha, she added, “Stay here with Wyll, at least until I get back.” It was more of a question than a command. Vynasha didn’t view herself as a queen, yet Wolfsbane’s daughter merely inclined her head.

  Vynasha extended her arms and stole a steadying breath. “Time to go.” Vedmak took one of her hands while Eliajaqlyn grasped the other. Her cousin’s li
ght had dimmed, but it brightened as she wrapped an arm about Vynasha’s.

  Eliajaqlyn flashed a sharp smile. “Ever tried this before?”

  “No,” Vynasha replied. “So hold on tight.”

  The Changeling cackled as Vynasha’s light consumed them, Vedmak’s grip tightening like a vise, as Vynasha reached for the village in her mind.

  The air parted for them, and Vynasha took a step forward. Then they were falling through water, or pressing through a tight cavern passage, and squeezing between thick boughs of fir trees. Rather than the cottage she had lived in briefly with her brother or the town lodge, Vynasha thought of home. They appeared before the Iceveins’ two-story cabin in a flash of light.

  Vynasha ground her teeth, biting back the bile roiling in her stomach. They worked together to steady one another on solid ground again. Once she was confident she wouldn’t lose the little remaining contents of her stomach, Vynasha snarled at her kin, “You could have warned me.”

  Eliajaqlyn laughed. “And deprive me of the pleasure?” The Changeling tensed, and one pointed ear twitched slightly before she glanced at the path ahead. “I think we have company.”

  “Thank the Crafter you came!” A deep purr was Vynasha’s only warning before Eirwen pounced. The wyldcat-like beast pressed her paws to Vynasha’s shoulders before falling back to all fours.

  Vynasha choked back a laugh, though her heart raced, and raked her fingers through Eirwen’s velvety fur. “I’m glad to see you, my friend. Are the others nearby?”

  The answer was before Vynasha’s mind before the beast could answer.

  “All battle ceased the moment you claimed the mirror’s power.”

  Vynasha glanced at Vedmak over her shoulder. “Did all of you feel the curse break?”

  Eliajaqlyn snorted. “It was a little difficult to ignore, cousin.”

  Vedmak pretended to inspect one of his bone daggers as he replied, “When you broke the curse, you broke the shades we battled as well.”

  Eirwen pressed another thought to Vynasha’s mind. “The others left for the castle after. I stayed behind to keep an eye on the guardians.”