Gwyn: Light Chaser Legends (Book 2)

by J B Cantwell

  She was out.

  Out.

  The same two guards waited at the bottom of the spiral staircase. The first one brandished his sword at her, but she took it from him easily and slit his throat with it. The second guard backed away. Whomever it was that he was trying to protect with his service to Torin apparently was not worth his own life.

  “You should run,” she said. “You don’t want to be here.”

  The man nodded, then turned and ran. This gave her more courage, though, at that moment, she was full to the top with it. But her mother’s guard had seen Gwyn for what she was, and she was more powerful than her father. She knew that now.

  She raced through the castle, the sword in one hand. Somewhere within, her father was surely ranting, possibly beating her favored brothers. No one was above his wrath, no matter how pretty they might be.

  Soon, she was out in the courtyard. She’d never been to the beach, never been out of the castle. But she knew the direction, could hear the waves even from inside.

  There was hope. It mingled with her anger, but it was there. She easily escaped the courtyard, running away from the road upon which kings and sorcerers traveled. She turned toward the sea and ran with her sawed-off heels until she was at the rocks.

  “Mother!” she bellowed into the night.

  But there was no answer. She dropped the sword onto the rocks and began to climb over them toward the water. She’d never learned to swim, never learned to do much of anything other than pretend to be something she wasn’t. That, it seemed, was her great talent.

  But as her feet met the water, and she looked out over the frigid ocean, she knew she couldn’t pretend the waves away. She took a couple of steps into the water, but the waves were so violent, she could barely stand. She backed up unwillingly, wishing desperately to move forward and be taken by the water. She stood upon a rock and looked out, searching to find her mother, certain that she must be swimming out to sea right then. Certain that she was leaving her behind.

  She saw nothing.

  She turned back toward the castle, contemplating her options. She wanted to kill him, her father, had threatened to, had dreamed about it in so many of her waking hours. But no. She turned back and made a beeline for the ocean. The moment the water touched her feet, she leaped into it, refusing to be frightened by it.

  It was cold, burning cold. And her dress was heavy around her. But she didn’t stop; she didn’t turn back. This was her chance, the escape she’d been waiting for.

  She breathed in and out, her breath visible above the waves.

  “Mother!”

  Salty water got into her mouth, and for a moment, she thought she might choke. Then, salty water got into her nose, and she realized the pain in her throat was nothing compared to her nose. She snorted the water out, then got hit from behind by a wave.

  Suddenly, she was underwater, rolling beneath the waves. Her eyes were wide, and that stung, too, but not enough to force her to close them. Bubbles came from her mouth and nose without her intention to release them. She breached the surface, her body sucking in air, resulting in a volley of coughs. But then another wave hit, and she was quickly down below again.

  She was going to die; she knew it. But she found she didn’t care. Her mother had left her. Bevyn had left her. And now it was just her alone against Torin.

  Despair filled her.

  She wished for death, and the ocean provided. Down beneath the waves, she watched as the last bubbles escaped from her lungs, and while they were headed up toward the surface, her heavy dress dragged her down toward the bottom. Finally, after what had seemed to be five, ten lifetimes of misery, she closed her eyes and let the ocean take her.

  The Vault

  When she awakened, she was in a strange place, and it didn’t make sense. She was spread out on the floor, stone, and when she sat up to look around, her head throbbed. She gripped it with her hands and realized her hair was wet, and her dress was, too. She shivered.

  What had happened?

  “I bet you’re wondering how you got here,” a dangerous voice said behind her. She turned and found her father, and all at once, she realized where she was.

  The vault.

  “You killed her,” he said. “After a lifetime of love and protection you didn’t deserve, your final gift to her was her death. Don’t deny it.”

  “She… she’s dead?”

  He glared down at her. She wanted to get her feet, to defend herself against an attack she was certain would begin shortly. But she was so, so tired.

  “Of course, she’s dead,” he said. His voice was calm, a bad sign. “You took her from me.”

  “She was never yours,” Gwyn said. “She hated you.”

  “Liar!”

  “I’m not,” she said. “You know it’s true. Do you honestly think you could’ve done this to her children and have her still love you? Were you ever good? Or have you been fooling her all this time?”

  She wondered vaguely if later he might cry over Riona’s death. But for now, he was as deadly as a viper.

  She didn’t care, though. Her days of caring were over. There would be no more pretending.

  Carefully, Gwyn got to her feet and faced him.

  “You dare to look at me,” he said. “You are an abomination. You don’t deserve to live.”

  On the contrary, she suddenly had a great desire to live, the opposite of how she’d felt in the water.

  She wasn’t giving up. She would never give up again.

  She approached him and held out her hands as if she wanted to take his in hers. He looked down at her, confused, and automatically held out his hands as well. She wondered where he’d learned to do this, an automatic and even kind reaction.

  But she had no kindness left in her heart. Not for him. Not for anyone.

  She gripped onto his wrists with everything she had and let her fire burst forth from her fingers, burning his wrists so severely she could feel them shrinking as her hands ate away at the flesh.

  Torin screamed, seemingly unable to help himself. Maybe he’d even still thought that she was without magic. Well, the secret was out.

  He ripped his arms out of her grasp and stared down at them, the bones visible beneath the burns. His face was unbelieving, and she wondered when the last time was he’d been attacked by another. There had been battles, certainly. But she was sure he was always the winner, one way or another.

  She jumped on him while he was still distracted by his damaged arms, and she bit him on the neck, ripping away his flesh with her teeth. Blood filled her mouth, and it gave her great satisfaction to know that he was human after all. Killable. Flesh and blood and bone.

  He gripped onto her arms and grappled with her, trying to throw her off of him, trying to find a way to win.

  But she was tired of losing, and she made sure he knew it. She weaved her fingers into his long white hair and pulled as hard as she could until clumps of it began to give way. He was so surprised that he couldn’t seem to fight back at first. But then, after his blood-soaked hair began falling to the floor, he seemed to awaken.

  Torin reached up for her and grabbed her by the neck, squeezing hard until she was forced to drop his hair and fight his efforts. She gripped his hands, fighting for her life for the second time that night. He lifted her high above his head and threw her across the room, her body crashing into a wall covered in swords. Several of them fell to the floor, and as she regained her composure, she picked up two of them as she stood to meet him again.

  There was a reason, though, that Torin was regarded as one of the most powerful sorcerers in the world. Perhaps the most powerful. It was in his ability to be relentless. Calculating. Hungry.

  He blasted her with a simple wave of his hand, and she hit the back wall again. He was coming to himself again, regardless of his injuries, and the force of his magic hit her body again and again until the back of her head was bloody from the spot on the wall where it had been slammed.

  S
he felt like her brain was mush, and she tried to right herself.

  She would not fail.

  This was her opportunity to keep her promise to him, to prove herself to him and the world that she was more powerful than he could ever be. She went in for the kill, lifting her body up from the floor with little effort, and she approached. With every volley of attacks, she caught them midair and thrust them away. As the magic hit the walls, glass shattered, goblets fell, knives went flying.

  There was no stopping her. Whatever anger Torin had paled beside her own, she was certain. And while she wanted to bring him pain, desperately wanted to, she would settle for death.

  She ran at him, catching one last round of lightning from his hands and turning it back upon him. He fell to the floor, and she fell on top of him, straddling him and wrapping her burning hands around his neck. The skin was sticky now from the blood where she’d bitten him. This fact made her smile, and though he tried to push her off him, her hands held tight. Just like with his wrists, her fingers began to burn into his flesh.

  “What will you do now, Father?” she said. “There’s no healer here anymore.”

  Torin’s eyes grew wide as he recognized the truth of her statement. Gwyn knew that her father’s power knew no bounds, but she herself had never been tested in battle, and it appeared they were evenly matched.

  She didn’t know where Torin’s anger came from, what it was that fueled the fire of his magic. But she had seventeen years of hatred boiling up in her, and it was overflowing now.

  Her hands were so tight around his neck that he couldn’t scream, could barely make any sound at all. But then, just when she wasn’t expecting it, a great thrust of power moved through him, and he removed her hands from around his throat with relative ease. He leaped to his feet and threw her once again across the room. This time, however, he did not further his attack. Instead, he ran to the door and burst through it, slamming it tightly behind him.

  In the walls, she could hear clicking and movement, and she understood that she was trapped.

  She stood up from the floor and spat a mouthful of his blood at the door. Then, her hands reached back and tentatively touched the spot on the back of her head. She was scrambled but not dead. Not yet.

  It was her brothers he sent next. As the doors closed behind them, she smiled, delighted by her father’s cowardice. Both Phalen and Varik looked nervous. Phalen picked up a fallen sword, but Varik, he took nothing.

  “Are you wondering when you’ll see the outside of this room again?” she said. “You won’t.”

  Phalen laughed. “You’re just a little girl,” he said. “You’re new to your magic. You don’t stand a chance.”

  “I find it interesting that Father sent you in his stead,” she said. “What do you think about that?”

  Phalen suddenly looked nervous, shifting his weight from side to side. “Father required our assistance,” he said simply. “There was no decision involved. We fight on the same side.”

  “The same side against your mother, your sister, and your brother?”

  “I don’t need to explain myself to you, you maggot. You are nothing to us.” Phalen said.

  “And mother?” Her voice caught in a way that betrayed her.

  “Are you kidding me?” Varik said. “We haven’t had a mother for years. In fact, since you and your cursed brother Bevyn arrived, we’ve barely seen her at all.”

  She’d never heard a single word out of either of her brothers to indicate they cared about anything other than power. But now, for a very brief moment, she felt sorry for them. It certainly seemed that their father’s hatred of her and Bevyn had resulted in them losing their mother’s love.

  Too bad.

  “Life can be hard sometimes,” she said.

  For a moment, neither of them spoke. In fact, they looked desperate.

  But that wasn’t her concern. It was time for them to pay.

  She picked up two swords from the floor and approached them. She had no training, only anger and untested talent.

  Phalen got ready, sword in hand, crouching, ready to strike.

  Gwyn just struck.

  In a moment, she had him down on the floor, her sword up against his neck. She nicked him with the edge of it, not even needing to think about magic. Just hatred. That was enough.

  But he had tricks up his sleeve, too.

  He pushed her back, the force from his hands so strong that she went rolling across the floor, the swords forgotten.

  Varik got involved next, again leaving weapons behind. He pounced on top of her as if he were a wildcat attacking prey. Not unlike her, he opened his mouth and moved to bite her on the neck. She pushed him away just in time, and she shot his chest full of fire.

  He flew back onto the floor, two spots on his tunic on fire from where she’d touched him with her hands. This only seemed to embolden him, though, and he came at her again.

  This time, she was ready. She held up the sword just before he got to her, and she cut him from shoulder blade to belly.

  He took several steps backward, clearly not understanding what had just happened. Had she, a mortal girl, just gotten by his magical defenses and slit him open?

  Yes.

  She lunged at him, but Phalen got in her way before she ever reached Varik. He shot a bolt of light from both his hands and hit her squarely in the chest.

  She went rolling backward and curled up as she came to a stop. It took her a minute to catch her breath, to get up and head toward them again, but just as she found her feet, she heard the same clicking sound in the walls and looked up.

  They were gone.

  Days went by; she didn’t know how many. There was no food. No water. No sign at all that anyone else existed in the world outside that room.

  She’d lost everything, it seemed. Her mother, gone. Bevyn, gone. She thought about the false king; Derric had been his name. Could he have helped her?

  But no. He was gone, too.

  One thing that wasn’t gone, however, was the pocket full of magical stones she’d stolen weeks before. They’d somehow stayed deep in her pocket during her fight against the waves. She went ahead and took the rest of them from the golden box and pocketed the original gemstones she’d traded as well.

  She stayed awake as much as she could, stayed alert. They could come at any time. She barricaded herself against the far wall, and swords were strategically placed all around her.

  And then, one day, he came.

  Torin.

  “Gwyn?” came his voice through an opening in the wall she couldn’t see.

  He sounded odd to her. Almost sheepish.

  “We’d like to strike a bargain with you,” he said.

  It’s a trick.

  “Will you come out?”

  She frowned. She was exhausted from days with no sleep and a lack of water. She stood up, ready to fight, though even she understood that at that point, she would probably lose.

  “Bring me water,” she croaked. “Then, we’ll talk.”

  Hours more passed with no communication with what remained of her family, and she began to feel her life slipping away.

  They wouldn’t come for her, wouldn’t save her. Wouldn’t even kill her. Instead, death would take her due to neglect, simple and final.

  She passed in and out of consciousness, and as she awoke during one of her wakeful times, she found before her a large goblet of water.

  How had it gotten there? She hadn’t heard anyone come inside.

  She sat up and looked around, but there was no one in the room with her. She regarded the goblet; it could be poison. But she was too exhausted to care. She reached for it and downed the entire thing in moments. Then, she collapsed to the floor again, too tired to even sit up any longer.

  “Gwyn,” someone said sometime later. “They’ve sent me for you.”

  She knew that voice, but she couldn’t put it together in her mind. Her eyes fluttered open, and she found sitting before her was Bevyn. He held
out another goblet of water, this one gold, and a large chunk of bread. Slowly, she pushed herself up, frowning at him.

  “You’re dead,” she said.

  “I don’t know about that,” he said. “Here, take it.” He waved the gold goblet in front of her, and she took it, drinking deeply.

  “What happened to you?” she said. “I thought you were gone.”

  “I was. But I came back for you and Mother.” His gaze fell to the floor, and his chin trembled.

  “Mother’s gone,” she said. She didn’t feel anything about it at that moment. She herself had faced death; she didn’t know how she’d survived. Had somebody saved her?

  Had he?

  “How did I get out of the water?” she asked. “Do you know?”

  “Father found you on the rocks when he was looking for Mother.”

  “Why didn’t he kill me? It would’ve been so easy for him. And now…”

  “Now, he has to face you,” Bevyn said.

  “It doesn’t make any sense, though.” Her hair was sticky from the salt water, and she pushed it away from her face and tucked it behind her ears. “Why would he keep me alive?”

  Bevyn shrugged. “Maybe to prove to himself that he’s more powerful than you are.”

  “Why haven’t they killed you? They know they’re more powerful than you.” She didn’t mean to offend him, but it was simply the truth.

  “That’s true,” he said. “I think they want me to talk you out of here. They want you to join them and me as well.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. If they wanted that, why haven’t they done it from the beginning?”

  “Father is afraid of people without magic,” Bevyn said. “Mother told me that once. I don’t know all of his secrets, but he hates us for not being powerful like he is. Of course, now, it turns out you are. Have you been hiding it all this time?”

  She nodded.

  “You are very talented,” he said. “Regardless of your power, your ability to hide is remarkable.”

  She wasn’t sure whether to thank him. The water goblet was gone now, and all she could think about was wanting more. Where had it gone?