Apologies for taking so long to update: I am made of fail. Christmas is never a good period for those of us who work in retail; throw in a new job and a squillon rewrites of this chapter (which would just not come right, damnit), and you get this delay.
Enormous thanks to the absolutely brilliant people who reviewed last time - I adored hearing what you thought! I'll be replying over the next couple of days, so bear with me. Thank you to: The Cyan Knight, Shang Leopard, Devi Lethe, terrorofthehighway, untilhellfreezesover, Jezebel Montgomery, Hera Night, Queen of Slayers, Clairavance, xox, Anterrabae, Khansa, Teleranaqueen, RebeccaS, 365DaysofAwsomeness and last but by no means least, the fabulous oreocookiepup101.
Feedback is utterly adored. Thank you to 365DaysofAwsomeness for the nudge!
Lyrics from Susan Enan's beautiful 'Bring On The Wonder'.
Long Lost Part Eight
I can't see the stars any more living here
Lets go to the hills where the outlines are clear
The minute Vaje stepped into the twilight lands, the cold hit him. The first breath burned in his mouth and throat, and the icy air was heavy as damp cloth on his skin. He resisted the urge to shiver, knowing it would be a sign of weakness.
The path was thick with silver frost. Spiky trees flanked it, dead and black and bare as the sky. Overhead, the crescent moon hung low, its points sharp as the end of a spindle, the only source of light.
Ice crunched as he followed the Fey. He glanced behind, just once. There was no sign of the mirror that he had stepped through; only the path stretching back to the empty horizon.
He could not say how long they walked. Time became immaterial – he was nothing but the fall of his feet, the clouds that puffed from his lips, and the need to go on. He could not stop. He could not go back.
When his guide paused, Vaje nearly stumbled into it. The cutting remark on his lips withered as he glanced up.
The road forked ahead, and the world divided just as the path did.
One side led on into shadow. The other snaked off into a land as green and bright as summer. A long leafy avenue led to what looked like a vast manor, thick with creepers and lurid flowers of every colour. In the distance, he could hear music playing in a jaunty tune. Sunlight hung like a shining curtain at the place where the road split.
"Our Fey Queen lives there," his guide said, stepping onto the sunlit path.
And then he saw that it – she – was unmistakably female. He wondered how he could have thought her sinister when her smile was so welcoming, her hands held out in entreaty.
"The journey is barely half-done, and you must be tired. There is a place for you there if you pay your respects to the Queen. It's been so long since we had a visitor from the other side – the court will rejoice to see you. We will treat you as a prince among men. There is no hospitality like that of the Fey Court."
"Hospitality?"
"Aye," she said. "The tables are always laden with fruit, and our wine is sweet as nectar. The Fey Court is a place of wonder."
The music faded, and he heard bells begin – a great chorus of them, folding one into another until his feet itched to pick up the rhythm. Scents drifted to him on the wind – roasting meat, alcohol – and he felt his hunger then, gnawing at him, felt his tiredness in his bones.
"That is the bell for dinner," she said. "If we leave now, we will be in time for the main course."
He took a step forward. Her smile widened – and he saw the gleam of triangular teeth.
Vaje stopped on the threshold.
"Me, you mean?" he said softly.
The warmth drained from her eyes. "The Queen is waiting," she said.
"I don't doubt it," answered Vaje. "And I'll bet I know what she's waiting for. But I listened better than you thought. Drink nothing. Eat nothing. Don't dance. I think I'll take your advice."
Her lips skinned back in a snarl. "You are a fool."
"Granted. But not such a fool that I'll make myself a toy for the Fey Queen." It was an effort to step back from that sunlit path as the cold ate away at him. "Take me to Nimue."
The sound that burst from the Fey was thin and ragged, an animal's scream. The enchantments it had woven upon him so effortlessly fractured like spring ice, and he saw what had awaited him.
At the road's end, a gleaming palace loomed that seemed made of ice and metal. He saw dark shapes strung upon its turrets - human shapes – and his skin crawled. Before him, the Fey was thin and grey as an axe, fingers twitching as if they itched to wrap around his throat.
"As you wish, traveller," it spat, and gestured him onwards. "But remember that it was you who spurned the Fairy Queen for a nobody. Remember that when the cold reaches your bones. She offered you mercy, and you refused."
"She offered me death. That ain't mercy."
It only laughed in response, as if he'd made a fine joke, and Vaje thought then that there were worse things than the cold.
X - X - X - X - X
Lisa went back through the woods more slowly than she had come. The plastic bag Blue had tossed her was stuffed in her bra: she was taking no chances of it falling out of a pocket.
Everywhere ached. She felt weary from top to toe, and maybe that was why she didn't hear the footsteps behind her.
"Lisa?"
She turned slowly. Cern was stood in the shadows of the trees, wary as any wild thing. She marked the changes in him: so much thinner, except for the knots of muscle in his shoulders. It seemed to her for a moment that she saw another shape behind him – fuzzy, wavering, but then it was gone and she decided it was nothing but a shadow.
"It is you," he said softly, and frowned. "What are you doing here? This is close to Malefici's territory."
His territory, she noted, a wolf's term if ever there was one. "Passing through."
His eyes took in her dishevelled appearance. "Through what, a brick wall? Have you been fighting?"
"I prefer to think of it as winning," she said dryly. "How have you been?"
His stare dropped away from her, a secretive slant that made her uneasy. She had always liked Cern's directness, his easy charm. "Not so bad."
The silence lingered. Last time they had met, the argument had been bitter. She'd asked him to come back: he'd refused. There had been blame and accusations and shouting. She couldn't look at him: shame mixed with the blood-boiling urge to slap him out of his apathy.
So she didn't see him glance over his shoulder, or the small nod he gave.
"I heard you guys have had...interesting times," he said. "No one said they were still happening. Are you in trouble?"
She looked at him, startled. It was the first sign of interest he had shown in any of them since he left. "Nothing I can't handle."
As long as Alex doesn't try to use you against me. You, I can't protect.
"Toya came to visit a while ago." He shuffled his feet. "We had pretty much the same argument you and I did, and I acted like a jerk, which apparently I've been doing a lot, and she gave me a piece of her mind. But she said the wildest things…"
He trailed off, but there was a hint of curiosity – of life – in his eyes.
She quashed her hope. "What things?"
"About Fireblade, and Ryar and Blue trying to bring back the Burning Times or something crazy-"
"Crazy but true."
His eyes widened – some unidentifiable emotion flashed through them like lightning. "Fireblade?"
"The misogynistic bastard himself," she said pleasantly.
"That I can just about stretch to, but Ryar? Ryar's dead."
A shiver chilled her at the memory. "Not anymore. Fireblade brought her back. It was..." She searched for a word that could capture the awe and the dread she had felt. "Unbelievable. In every sense of the word."
"How?"
Lisa had known the question was coming, and felt pity. She met his eyes squarely: she tried hard to find her friend in this haunted boy, because she was sure he was there still. "A magic spell. Fireblade cut off one of his own horns. Toya said that nothing less would have done it, and even then, it drained almost all his power."
His mouth tightened. Lisa expected him to leave then, now that she had disappointed him again, but there was a curious, waiting silence while his eyes were distant.
And then he said, "What happened to the spell?"
She didn't suppose there was any harm in him knowing. Chatoya had been adamant that he couldn't work the spell – the magic it needs is immense, she said. A powerful witch could, a coven, maybe, but the sacrifice it needs...they wouldn't survive. Cern isn't even close to strong enough.
"Blue took it," she said with a shrug. "It's probably shut in Nightfire's vaults by now, until he feels like the world should end. Again."
His teeth bared at the name. "Figures."
She hesitated, then said in a rush, "Cern...we still miss you."
His face softened: a ghost of his crooked smile appeared. "Lise..."
"I miss you," she said wistfully. "No one else knows how to argue. Cougar just gets annoyed, Jepar gives up as soon as it gets heated and Toya runs Pursang now, so she's all conflicted out."
His smile grew, tentative, but so familiar. "Yeah. Everyone here takes it all so personally. You start throwing words around, eventually someone starts throwing punches. It's not much fun. Look...I don't mind you coming to see me. Just you," he added. "Not the others. And I don't want to discuss – her."
Lisa didn't particularly want to discuss his slaughter-happy soulmate either. "Done."
"Done and won," he said, and she smiled at the old phrase that had always ended their involved debates.
She held out a hand. He looked at her, eyes narrowed, and then with a suddenness that startled her, he crossed the space between them and gave her a hug.
Before she could say anything, he was gone in a blur of shadow.
X - X - X - X - X
Chatoya and Jepar were waiting for her. They looked up as she came in, and the relief in those two sets of green eyes was matching and intense.
"Got it," Lisa told them, and threw the little bag onto the table. "Hair of the dog."
Chatoya was on her feet, headed for the cupboard full of healing supplies. "What did you do, wrestle Blue for it?"
"Pretty much," she said tiredly.
Jepar grinned. "Wow."
The cosy room felt like another world. She sank into a chair with a groan.
Chatoya came bustling over, wet cloth smeared with her salve. "You've got blood all over you," she said tersely. "Your face..."
"He broke my nose."
"I noticed," muttered the witch. She dabbed at the cuts. "Is that gravel?"
"Yes," she admitted. "It got a bit...medieval."
"You're okay though?" Chatoya said, her voice husky. "Blue didn't hurt you."
When she met her eyes, Lisa realised how much that mattered. "Not even close," she said wryly. "I may look like a fragile flower-"
Jepar made a choking noise that might have been laughter or disbelief.
She shot him a look full of mock-indignation. "-as I was saying, a fragile flower of womanhood, but this delicate exterior hides a heart of steel. Besides...my obsessive, psychotic murdering Fury soulmate could totally take yours."
"Let's not play that game," Chatoya said, but she smiled.
Jepar rolled his eyes. "Okay. Apart from being giddy with relief, you're fine. Now what did you bring us?"
Chatoya picked up the bag. She held it up to the light. "Fur. That'll do nicely."
"So you can stop Alexander the Great and Scary from making himself invisible?" Jepar said hopefully.
"Not only that, I should be able to ward all of our houses," Chatoya said. "As long as you don't take off the charms, he can't play any mind-games. It'll take me a little while to make them, but you two can carry on the research while I get to work."
Only then did Lisa notice the papers scattered all over the room, smattered with neon post-it notes. With it, something else infiltrated her thoughts. "Where's Cougar?"
"Sulking," Jepar said, conveying the entire situation in one loaded word and a flick of his eyes at Chatoya.
"Same old," Lisa said, picking up a paper. "Jepar, could you put your incredible tea-making powers to use?"
"I know better than to argue," he said with a martyred sigh, and vanished into the kitchen.
Chaotya threw her a wary look. Please don't ask, it said.
"Tell me about how you Alex-proof us all then," Lisa said, and saw the gratitude in her friend's eyes. "Is that coriander?"
As talk of magic filled the air, it drove away the ghosts of the men who were not there, and she deliberately did not think their names. She left them to their anger and their folly, because what she had here was better – three friends in a room, fighting back.
X - X - X - X - X
The vampire stamped along the streets as if he had a vendetta against them.
The family resemblance was unmistakable; Alex had seen that same scornful mouth on Blue Malefici. Their features were where the similarity ended: Malefici was all control and calculation. This one, the brother, burned with emotion as if it were a disease that consumed him from the bones out.
Alex wandered along behind him, the thread of power almost effortless: forget, he whispered, and Cougar Redfern never even realised he was being followed.
There was leverage here. Alex was not so lost to reason that he could not see the echoes of himself in others. That was why he understood what lay between the brothers.
A girl, a very ordinary girl.
Oh, she might have this power or that power, but Alex had seen Chatoya Irkil gleaming in their thoughts, and it wasn't power that drew either of them. Whatever it was – a certain gleam to her smile, something soft and mysterious in her eyes – he could use it to bargain with.
He wouldn't treat Lisa as a prize. He had no such qualms about Chatoya.
Cougar had stopped. The small park was some way from the town centre. It was deserted in the cold day, and maybe that was what the vampire was after. He sat on a bench, pulled out a packet of cigarettes and lit up. His face was grim and pale, obscured only by the clouds of smoke he exhaled.
"You look like there's something on your mind, cher," Alex remarked lightly, shucking off his camouflage. "Anything I can help with?"
Cougar started: ash fluttered to the ground, but he stood slowly, affecting calm. "Actually, yeah. You could go away and stop hassling Lisa."
"I could," Alex acknowledged. "But I won't."
"She doesn't want you," he snapped.
Alex thought of the flicker he has seen in her eyes – that moment before she refused him when her face was unguarded, though she hadn't known it. "Are you sure? There are very few people who haven't wanted me at one time or another."
"So I read, Casanova. But Lisa knows her own mind."
"Does she know mine?"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"There are things Lisanor never knew about me. I had my secrets. I have them still, but I am tired of them. I would throw them all away for her."
"Uh-huh." Cougar raised his eyebrows; scorn oozed from him. "You ran Nightfire. I know what kind of secrets you have."
"Do you?" Alex said softly, beginning to circle the vampire. "Then you'll know what is to love someone you cannot have. You'll know what it is to break your own heart again and again because you must, cher, because there's no other way."
The vampire turned to follow him, the cherry-red glow of his cigarette the only colour in the bleached landscape. "I know you're a damn liar."
"Sometimes. But not about this. Lisa may hate me, and perhaps I deserve it, if not as much as you may think, but I love her still. I loved her when the winter was cold as death, when she laid a sword to my throat, when she broke a country to try and break me."
He saw her then, as they had met across that final battlefield. She had been beautiful and strong, and wrong about him.
"I could own her if I wanted to," Alex said thoughtfully. "I could dismantle her piece by piece, and leave her nothing but a girl who loves me without question or thought. When I was desperate, I considered it. But that would not have been my Lisanora."
The cigarette dropped from Cougar's fingers; it was no longer the only light of the winter day, because the vampire's eyes were hot with fury. "Do you have any idea how creepy that is?" he sputtered.
"Are you telling me you would not do it, if you could? If it meant Chatoya would be yours and no one else's, yours forever?"
"That's exactly what I'm telling you!" Cougar shouted.
With consummate ease, Alex dipped into the vampire's mind and pulled out an image: a great tumble of black hair, blurring into a dress just as dark and soft. She wasn't dead, but she was a kind of memorial, and so he resurrected Chatoya, who hung in Cougar's mind in such haunting, tender detail.
He threw her memory onto the landscape – she was incongruous in it, a gleaming creation of shadow and wishes, beautiful through Cougar's eyes as Alex knew she was not in reality.
The vampire flinched at the sight of her, but he could not drag his eyes away. His voice was uneven.
"Stop that."
"Are you sure?" Alex said quietly. "This is the smallest piece of my power. Imagine what I could do with more than memory. I'm sure there are things you would have her forget..."
A muscle jumped in his jaw. "I don't need your help. And I won't sell Lisa out for a clever trick."
"I wouldn't want you to. All I want from Lisa is a chance. Do you think she hasn't changed in a thousand years? Well, why can't I change too?"
"Huh. Well, let's think about it. Is it the stalking or the violence or the threats that make me think you are still one weird, intense bastard?"
"I have been nothing but courteous," Alex corrected. "You're the one who's offered me nothing but threats and violence, cher. All I've offered you is your heart's desire."
Colour flared along the vampire's cheeks. "And I've knocked you back. Guess I'm not so different from Lisa."
Alex sighed. "If that's your final word on the subject..."
His answer cracked like a whip on the air.
"It is."
"Then I recommend you keep out of my way. All of you." He let a little power spin out from him; and the image of Chatoya crumpled, blood beading on her throat like a ruby necklace, blooming like poppies on the snow.
Alex let her image fade. Cougar's eyes were fixed on the space where she had been. He did not move.
"I try not to kill unless it's necessary," Alex said into the silence. "Don't make it necessary."
He didn't wait to see the vampire's reaction. He had better things to do.
X - X - X - X - X
"My journey is ended," the Fey announced.
"Here?" Vaje said.
An archway of briars loomed above the path. Tangled as vipers, they stretched as far as he could see, frost glittering on the branches. The distant creak of wood reached him, as if the forest of thorns was merely yawning like a slumbering predator.
The Fey's laughter was gleeful. "I can take you no further. You are on your own now, traveller. You should have taken my Queen's hospitality. It would have been a sweeter end."
"I doubt it."
"Do you?" It reached up and prodded the branches, its voice light and cooing. "Rise up, rise up, my faithful few. Reveal what lies beneath the dew..."
To his astonishment, the creaking intensified; the briars twisted and undulated like a nightmare sea. Pale globes rode the waves, drifting up on the thorns, and he squinted to make them out-
Severed heads.
They hung like baubles from the thorns, lips blue-tinged, their skin mottled and decaying.
"Nimue Fairchild guards herself well," it said, and reached out to stroke one lightly. "The thorns will bleed you dry and spit you out. Man or fey, we are all but flesh under the thorns. I called this one brother once, the Lord of the Weeping Willows. He wept for her, in the end."
It bent and kissed the frost-bitten cheek, and whispered something in its ears.
To Vaje's horror, the severed head blinked, and its lips twisted into a cruel parody of a smile.
"I have told him that when your body is thrown from the barbed way, we will gift it to him that he may walk among us once more."
"That's...that's just plain disturbing, and I say that as someone who knows an inordinate number of psychopaths," Vaje said. "The horrible death was threat enough. Adding the possibility I'll spend eternity shambling round as a disembodied zombie with Mr Frosty stitched onto my damn neck is overkill."
It blinked, apparently puzzled. "Just enough kill, surely?"
It was time to go. Even the thorns had to be less eerie than the Fey, which cupped its brother's head and giggled at its own pun.
He walked quickly, trying not to hear the creaking of the briars. The laughter was soon far behind, but his nerves remained. It seemed the space around him was shrinking, as if the forest was creeping up on him-
He became aware that he was straining to see.
Vaje turned.
The way back was gone. A wall of briars stood in his way. As he watched, they slithered closer, trailing over the rocky ground with the sound of fingernails scraping at rock.
He backed away, and felt the prick of thorns on his calves.
This was not good.
The creaking intensified all around him; in gaps between the briars he saw the pale flash of the severed heads, their eyes fixed upon him.
A briar lashed around his leg, thorns biting deep.
He reacted on instinct, tearing it away, but others crept around his arms and legs, fast as striking snakes. He thrashed in the small space, but the vines piled in on him, relentless. Darts of pain bloomed in his arms and his stomach and his thighs as the thorns sank into his flesh.
But behind the panic, part of him was still a Fury, cool and collected and thinking.
It was a defence system, and a good one. To it, he was only an intruder, and unless he said otherwise it wouldn't know.
"I'm here to see Nimue Fairchild!" he shouted. "My name is Vaje Chusson and I-"
He was choked into silence. Desperate, he shapeshifted; the vines dropped away, long enough for him to change back into human form and gasp in one last lungful of air before the briars surged back over him.
"-I'm not here to hurt you! I want to know about Lisa – Lisanor-"
The last of his air was gone, and the briars tightened like steel about him. He would die here, on the thorns, he supposed, and though he wasn't surprised to be alone, he wished...he wished...
And it seemed to him that he heard a voice among the creaking briars, whispering what do you wish?
And it was of her smile that he thought, brighter than the occluded moon; of this woman who was so far away and yet even now too close, pressed to his heart like an old love letter.
That I had stayed, and told her the truth, he thought, and the darkness closed in.
X - X - X - X - X
The air was heavy with magic. Chatoya sat at the centre of a circle marked out with candles and salt and her power, putting together the binding spell.
Lisa thumbed through the piles of research, conferring with Jepar only in whispers. He didn't seem as nervous as she felt, but he had to feel Chatoya burning like a star on his senses, so much more powerful than she had been a year ago.
"Here," Jepar murmured, pushing a piece of paper over to her. "It's in Latin, but Alex's name is there."
She scanned it, and a word caught her eye. "You might have found something," she said. "This is...weird. If it's true, then I don't understand why he..."
Jepar coughed. "Um. Enlighten me?"
She blinked, dragging her attention away from the faded manuscript. "Cougar was right about the pillow-talk," she said slowly. "This is a record from a werewolf Alex had a fling with in Rome. A senator, at that. Listen: I had heard many strange tales about the Furies, and when I judged him at his gentlest, I asked him if it was true that they went to the underworld. He said it was so, and when I asked him how often he had been there, his answer was a pretty riddle, as he himself is. First, I found despair, he said, then anger, then hate, then fear and after that, I found oblivion and myself with it. But the last time I went to Hades, he found me, and found me worthy."
"Six times," Jepar said, staring at her. "There's five rivers, right? So if that last bit means what I think it means..."
"He spoke to Hades," she whispered. "He went to the Underworld and he spoke to Hades."
"Hades isn't real..." protested Jepar. "He's a myth, and even if he was real, he's dead now."
"Is he?" she said vaguely, her head spinning. "Are you sure?"
There was a long silence, broken only by Chatoya muttering spells in the background. The greenish glow of her magic cast Jepar in an eldritch light, his eyes huge and hollow.
"No," he said. "Then what does that mean – that Hades found Alex worthy? Worthy of what?"
"I don't know. But we need to find out. And I can only think of one person who'd know."
"Do you think he'll tell you?" Jepar said hesitantly. "You've made your feelings pretty clear. Won't he just be suspicious if you start batting your eyelashes at him?"
"I have a reason to see him," she said slowly. "Alex has an unusual talent. Morgan la Fey..."
She stopped, startled at how easily the name slid from her lips. For a second, she had forgotten Morgan was dead.
"Morgan used to say that he carried the dead," she said in a voice that was rough at the edges. "It was a good description. If you let him in your mind, he can bring them back to life again, in a way. It's only an illusion he creates from your memories – you can't touch them or talk to them, but you can see them if you want. If you let him in."
"Who would?" muttered Jepar.
"Felicity Seraphine. Alex asked me to draw her sister. The only catch is that I have to touch him to see the memory of her. Which is undoubtedly why he offered to help her in the first place."
His eyes were troubled. "I don't think it's a good idea."
"I didn't think you would," she answered. "But what other option have we got?"
"There must be something..." he said.
They both glanced up at the click of the front door: when it slammed shut so hard the pictures of the wall rattled, it was obvious who it was.
Cougar came into the room in a predator's slink, white with fury. The glare he turned on Lisa had the intensity of a volcano about to blow. "You had better have got something that will stop that son of a bitch getting into my head!"
She only gestured to Chatoya. His soft snarl might have been triumph or pain. "What did Alex do?"
"Threatened her," he said, the words a promise of revenge. "And us. He wants you, Lisa, enough to kill."
Jepar swore softly.
Lisa felt cold all over. So it had come to this, as she had known it would. "Then I guess we already know his weakness."
"Lisa, no," Jepar said, pleading.
She looked at him. "We have to find out what Hades did to Alex. I already have the excuse. And if I'm convincing enough, he'll leave you alone. What do I have to lose?"
"You're going after him?" Cougar demanded. At her nod, he put himself in her way. "JJ's right. Wait until we have our talismans, at least-"
"I can't wait," she said. "Alex asked me about people I loved. I thought of all of you."
Cougar looked embarrassed. She ignored him.
"And...I thought of Cern," she said. "Alex is with the Pack. If he's already at the point where he's prepared to start hurting people, Cern's first in line. I can't...I can't..."
Her throat closed over. She turned away and began to gather things into her bag. Art supplies, because it had to be a convincing gambit. Tissues, in case she found a way to get the blood she had promised Blue.
When the knife went in, Cougar drew a sharp breath. "Lise..."
She slung the bag over her shoulder. Both were staring at her as if she had stepped out of another time; she supposed she had, in a way.
"Don't follow me," she said. "Not until Toya has finished the spells. You'll only get hurt."
"This is mad," Jepar protested.
From somewhere, she found the courage to smile: the old, fearless, reckless smile of the woman who'd broken Britain and thrown back Arthur, and who had thought freedom more worthy than love.
"No," she said, voice cool and strong although inside she felt like crumbling. "This is war."
X - X - X - X - X
Vaje opened his eyes, very surprised to be doing so.
The ceiling looked as if it were mud, and the air was hazy with smoke that smelled like incense. Wherever he was, it was an improvement on a cage of thorns, and though his throat ached fiercely, he was in one piece. One slightly punctured piece.
"Careful," a woman's voice said. It had a whispery quality that was somehow familiar. "You may feel a little fragile."
He sat up gingerly, and his vision swam. When it cleared, a hand was offering him a cup. He followed it back to its owner.
Her hair was a careless red tangle, haloed about her head, and he thought for a moment he saw autumn leaves. Everything about her was changeable; he saw the bark of a tree with knots and whorls that resembled features, yet then she was quite clearly a woman of indeterminate age. In her gestures, the same duality: nails or shell-shine, knuckles or conkers, her wrist or stone.
"My name is Nimue," she said, "and you've been looking for me."
Half-fey. He hadn't thought about what that might mean before: now he began to understand.
"Yes," he said in a voice as raspy as hers. "Suddenly I can see why the Furies left you alone."
"Oh, they didn't," she said casually. "There's a few of them hung upon the thorns."
He met her eyes, which were clear, cold and blue as the skies of the world he'd left behind. "And am I going to join them?"
Her smile was lopsided. "That all depends."
"On what?"
She didn't deign to answer. Instead, she raised the cup a little. "Drink this. It'll ease some of your aches."
"Permanently?" he said gruffly. "I was told to eat nothing and drink nothing."
"And keep still thy feet when the bells toll," she completed, "lest you find they toll for thee. I know the rules of the Fey Court. I don't play by them, and I won't play with your life, if you were honest with me. It has been a long time since anyone came to me asking of Lisanor. Why do you ask?"
He took a sip. It burned down his throat, alcohol almost drowning the faint taste of cinnamon. "I was told you knew her."
"As do you," she said, and then she bent to cup his face. Her touch quite unnerved him: she was chill and damp as the ground in winter. "What a strange man you are, fresh from the sunlit lands and burning so bright. She fills your head like poetry, doesn't she?"
The words resonated through him, stinging like salt on raw wounds. "This isn't about me. Lisa asked for my help. I need to know what happens to someone when they drink the Lethe."
Nimue released him: the cold shape of her hands lingered on his face. "Artos has found her then," she said, and closed her eyes as if in regret. "Has it come so soon?"
"A thousand years isn't my idea of soon," Vaje said, but could not help the part of him that agreed with her – that hoped with treacherous persistence.
"A thousand years!" she said with slow astonishment. "Merlin-"
She bit off his name as if it was poison to her.
"I will show you what the Lethe makes of us," she said. "Give me your hands."
"Why are you helping me?" he said, the question slipping from him before he had time to think better of it.
Nimue drew a nail across both his palms with quick accuracy; two thin red lines flared and pain followed. She did the same on her own hands, then pressed them to his. A connection surged between them, one of pure power, and he realised just how much of her strength she had concealed from him.
She was a force of nature: in this twilight world, her power spread out in a great dark cloud that darkened all beneath it. She was the tree split by lightning, a river bursting its banks, and yet a woman all at once.
When she spoke, her voice was the one he had heard on the very cusp of death.
"I will show you that too."
That power crashed down upon him like a storm, and swept the world away and him with it into her memories. Only later, much later, did he realise what the strange anguished sound that rang in his ears was: Nimue Fairchild, weeping like a child in the silence of her mind for all that she could not forget.
X - X - X - X - X
Alex walked through the town, head down. He kept seeing that image of Chatoya Irkil, crumpling in a bloody heap. Only her face transformed into Morgan as he had found her, the gash on her throat echoing her dreamy death-smile.
It hadn't been his fault. He knew that. But he couldn't stop replaying the conversation, wondering if he should have dragged her from that ragged bower despite it all and left her in Nimue's care.
"Do you think you'll be safe from the Saxons here?" he'd demanded. "They have no mercy."
She peered out from her rattailed hair, eyes blue and empty. "Then I won't ask for any." She laughed, the sound delicate as bells. "I've never needed it before."
"Morgan, we are leaving this area," he said slowly and patiently. "You can't stay here. There is no one left to fight. We're regrouping north of here, where the lie of the land favours us."
She reached out to him. He took her dirty fingers in his own, looking for some spark of sanity. But that bright, merry girl he'd first met was long gone: she'd been washed away in a thunderstorm, lightning-mazed and half-drowned. Whatever remained of her was Fey, a creature of another, colder world.
"You are the lie of the land," she whispered. "Lies and lies and lies, all across this land."
"I do what I must," he answered.
"More lies," she hissed. "You're trying to build a kingdom on them. Higher and higher and higher you rise, high as the clouds on your beautiful lies, but it'll all come tumbling down like rain."
"Is that a prophecy?" he said sharply.
She licked her cracked lips. "I can hear the thunder already," she said dreamily. "It's closer than you think."
He would get no sense from her. "So are the Saxons," he said. "Nimue wants you safe-"
"Nimue wants Merlin," she said. "He's all sweetness and lightning, nettles and tides. He'll be great or dead, and she doesn't know which and it's breaking her. She's too afraid to leave him in case he vanishes while she's gone – so afraid she sent you to get me."
He smiled. That was part-truth and part-fantasy, and he doubted Morgan knew which. "In a world of change, Morgan, you are as refreshingly peculiar as ever. Perhaps I should have you on my council."
"You wouldn't heed my advice," she said with unexpected lucidity.
"Try me," he said.
She cocked her head to one side. "A dash of honey and a measure of hemlock and a handful of red berries, and it ends," she said. "Or blood for blood, and death for life, and you'll lose your love so the king sleeps on, and the war will swallow us all." She blinked, and a sly smile curled on her mouth. "But you've made that choice already, haven't you?"
His blood ran cold.
"How do you know that?" he said softly.
She gazed back, teeth bared in a ghastly smile. "The trees heard the sky screaming and I heard the trees. The rivers wept in terror, and I drank it down. I looked at the stars, and they were all fixed on you, and I knew what you had done."
Her fingers dug into his. In her eyes, he saw an echo of that dark hot room where he had lost so much, glimmers of turgid red firelight, of blood on the floor, of the shadows reaching out like wasted hands-
"I felt them die," breathed Morgan la Fey, and she drew him down, down, down to her until her breath was warm and rancid on his face. Her face was bright with glee. "It was beautiful."
He jerked back, and she giggled.
He hated her then, hated her knowing eyes and her little harsh breaths as if she could hardly contain her joy at what he had done, what he had lost.
"Are you going to take me away now?" she said sweetly.
She was huddled in her makeshift nest like a wounded bird of prey: hungry, hooked fingers and bony limbs. And those mad, cruel eyes were intent on every nuance of his expression, waiting for a hint of pain.
"War is coming, Morgan," he said. "If you want to escape it, go to Ratae. But I won't take you."
He turned and he left her there, unable to bear the sight of her.
Morgan did not leave her bolthole. She stayed there, and when the Saxons came, they didn't even think her worth enslaving, filthy creature that she was. They thought her an enemy sorceress, and they slit her throat and left her tossed across her ragtag bower like carrion. Alex found her a month later when he went back, stung by guilt.
Nimue never blamed him. You tried, she said, placid. It was her choice.
Yet part of him knew that he had wanted Morgan to die. He had left her, knowing she could not defend herself. He had left her because he had seen the worst pieces of himself echoed in her eyes, and had been repelled.
He walked through Ryars Valley, trying hard not to recall a small stone room where the smoke burned his eyes and he could hear nothing but Lisa whimpering amidst a bloodied bed...
A hand closed on his arm. "Hey!"
Flick's voice drove away the ghosts. She gave him a tentative smile. "I was shouting at you from across the street. You were miles away."
Years away, he thought, and gave her an effortless smile back. "I was. Sorry."
"You looked upset," she said quietly. If she was afraid of him, she hid it well.
He knew what he should have done then: he'd done it thousand times before with hardly a thought. It would have been so easy, to let a hint of vulnerability seep out, to confide supposed secrets and to manufacture intimacy. A small touch on her hand – pretended fear, sidelong glances, hesitation, a handful of tricks that would win her trust and win him a measure of power.
And Alex didn't know why he didn't. She was no different to the other girls he'd used for their connections or their knowledge: no softer, no harder, except that perhaps her grey eyes never wavered from his, steady as the sky.
All he knew was that he flashed another meaningless smile that glanced off her like sunlight, and said, "Not at all. Just thinking. It's hard work, you know."
"So they tell me." She paused. "Have had you had any luck with the picture?"
"Not yet-"
"But only because we haven't finished discussing the details," cut in a new voice. Disbelief in his heart, Alex turned.
And she was there, a cool smile on her face, head high, beautiful in her calm and her courage.
Lisa had come back to him.
Bring on the wonder
Bring on the song
I pushed you down deep in my soul for too long
X - X - X - X - X
Thank you so much for reading! All comments and criticism very much adored.
