Evening all. Um, long break, and subsequently long part to come. Suffice to say the last six months have been very busy, including but not limited to a bit of credit card fraud and a sick better half. Nonetheless, I am embarrassed and very sorry for the length of time this has taken. Please bear with me while I answer reviews!
Many thanks to my wonderful and patient reviewers – thank you 365 Pages of Awsomeness., untilhellfreezesover, Shang Leopard, goblinishelves, chocolatetree, Sephy, Juv, Ambrosien, terrorofthehighway, Queen of Slayers, Dulce Ambrosia, oreocookiepup101, Pandora's Present, Mandy, Finding Limbo, AnimeLover1215, twiligt crazy micky, Elentiriel and finally, fantastically, ihateee. Thank you so much!
Lyrics from 'Girl With One Eye' by Florence and the Machines. Feedback & criticism loved!
Long Lost Part Ten
I took a knife and cut out her eye
I took it home and watched it wither and die
Well, she's lucky I didn't slip her a smile
That's why she sleeps with one eye open
That's the price she paid...
It was just before dawn by the time Lisa reached Blue's house. The woods were a different place in darkness; the wind over the leaves seemed a slow-stirring sea of shadows, a world of anything and nothing.
What was left of his front door clung to the doorframe in splinters. The lights were on in the windows either side, giving the house the appearance of a predator waiting slack-jawed for its prey.
She could have waited until later. But after a sleepless night, she'd finally given up and decided to rid herself of Alex's blood. Her dislike of owing Blue outweighed any niggles she had about things that went bump in the night.
Lisa went in, soft-footed. The hall was still littered with debris, air permeated by the scent of sawdust.
A door swung open, throwing a rectangle of light over her. Lisa froze.
Aspen Martin's expression of astonishment was almost comical. "You're not Therese," he said in an accusatory tone. "Are you trying to burgle Blue?"
Brazening it out was probably the way forward. "Does he have anything worth taking?"
His mouth twitched into an almost-smile, but did not erase his suspicion. "Depends on your point of view, I guess."
A bony bundle of nerves, the vampire was the closest thing Blue had to a friend. The fact that he was a raging psychotic was probably not coincidence. Chatoya kept trying to tell her that since he'd found his soulmate, Aspen was a reformed character.
The wooden knife in his hand did not support this theory.
"I'm not interested in taking anything," she said in her most soothing voice. "In fact, I'm here to give him something. And unfortunately, it's not the nasty end he deserves."
"Huh. Then why were you sneaking around?"
She shrugged. "I didn't think the buzzer would work. And it's not as if there's a door to knock on."
Aspen cocked his head. "Yeah, I heard you and Blue tangled. But you look pretty healthy." His gaze sharpened, more astute than she liked. "Must be something he wants from you."
"You're correct."
Blue's voice, icy and precise, made them both start.
She half-turned before realising it would expose her back to Aspen and that wicked knife; Lisa settled for edging back against the wall, trying to keep them both in her eyeline.
Blue sauntered towards her, threat in every fluid movement. The narrow hall seemed a cage suddenly; she was pinned between a pair of mercenaries and unarmed.
"If this is a surprise party, the guestlist is somewhat lacking," Blue remarked, contempt ringing on every word. "Martin, what's important enough to drag you from your life of domestic bliss?"
She glanced at Aspen. So he'd dropped in too.
And he looked cagey, scraping fingers through the three blond streaks in his hair. "Um. I heard a bit of news I thought you should know." His eyes slid over to Lisa, and he said hesitantly, "You might want to hear it too."
Blue's eyes narrowed. "So it's to do with my vexatious soulmate or Chusson."
Panic fluttered against her ribs. Chatoya was at home. It had to be Vaje. "What's happened?" she said, throat suddenly raw.
Aspen scuffed a foot on the floor. "Vaje's kind of gone to the twilight lands."
"What are they?" she demanded. The twilight lands. The name sent an involuntary spasm of fear through her, as if she had once known the answer.
"Which way?" Blue said, ignoring her. "Through the stones or through the looking glass?"
"A mirror, apparently," Aspen muttered. He didn't look too happy. "I don't know why. Ross was pretty vague about it all."
She stepped between them, worry a knot in her chest: she stared down Blue, not even realising that she had dismissed Aspen as the lesser danger. "Where is he? What are the twilight lands?"
His eyes were full of malice, scrutinising her, watching her hurt. "Classified."
She didn't even realise she'd raised her arm to punch him until Aspen caught her wrist.
Don't, he warned, surprisingly gentle. It won't end well. Chatoya will kill me if I let Blue mess you up.
He let go before she could reply, but the mere fact Aspen Martin was acting more sensibly was shock enough to stay her hand. A few deep breaths gave her time enough to control her emotions.
"All right," she told Blue, deliberately gentle. "It doesn't matter. I'll just ask Toya."
She had him, surely.
But Blue only gave a one-shouldered shrug and said, "As you will."
He was going to make her wait. She knew hatred then, felt it hot in her bones. If she had been younger, human still, she would have flown at him and damn the consequences.
But she couldn't afford to lose her temper. She didn't want him to decide Alex would make a useful ally. One of them, she could fend off. The combination of Blue and Alex, two leaders of Nighfire, two men with more ambition than heart, would be deadly.
Lisa wrenched out the plastic bag from her pocket and flung it at him. He caught it deftly and held it up to the light. Alex's blood was dark on the tissue, and probably worth more than the building they stood in.
"Take your pound of flesh," she said bitterly.
Then she turned and fled his house, because she had to know what lay in the twilight lands, what it was that made her skin crawl at the thought of those three words.
Vaje, Lisa thought, and his name echoed through her with the force of thunder. Vaje, what have you done?
X - X - X - X - X
The past whirled about them like autumn leaves, a tumble of bright colour. Vaje could catch only glimpses, but even they were enough to awaken unease in his heart.
He saw battle plans made in dark rooms. Witches chanted spells on a hill heavy with mist. Alexandros stood in gleaming gold armour, blood flecking the metal. In a fortress by the sea, a woman in a white dress fell upon a knife and crumpled like paper.
"He didn't love Lisanor, not at first." Nimue sighed, her face wistful. "But she was important. He never told me why, and in time, I grew tired of asking. Then – eventually – something changed."
Lisa served drinks to grim-faced men who never set down their weapons. Battle scythed through Britain like a hurricane, a great unending clash of warriors and horses and metal.
And in a narrow corridor, Alexandros kissed Lisa with a tenderness that was painful to see. When they parted, she only looked at him for a long time, and then she smiled, a sweet fresh smile that had the innocence of youth, of a heart new to love and all its intricacies.
Vaje could not look at them for long. It hurt.
"What?" he asked gruffly.
"I wish I could tell you," Nimue said. "But I'm not sure. Alexandros was always good at keeping his secrets close to his heart. And the more she loved him, the more Lisa became as sly as he was. He changed her, and not for the better, though she refused to see it." A smile touched her mouth. "I can hardly blame her. We're all fools in love."
It was a cold truth, a bitter one.
Nimue took a ragged breath that seemed like it might tear her apart. "I lived in the sunlit lands too, and I loved someone when I knew it madness. Oh, the things I did for him. And the things he did to me."
The landscape shifted. It was a wild evening, the trees bent over like old men under the force of the gale. And he came walking out of it as if the weather couldn't touch him, a young man with a quarterstaff, whistling an eerie tune that carried above the howling of the wind. The gale did not lift the black braid of his hair, strangely. He wore a crown of holly, and a wry smile tipped up his mouth.
"Merlin," she whispered, and the name sizzled on her lips. "He came from the far north, past Hadrian's Wall. He was the missing piece, though none of us knew it at the time. All the players were gathered: Artos and Lisanor, Galahad and Tristan and Guinevere...and Merlin."
Vaje could feel the power that lay on the young man as easily as his skin. It didn't show in his Saxon-blue eyes or his saunter, but he was a bonfire to supernatural senses.
"And you," he remarked.
"I suppose so," she said, and her eyes were sad. "If it wasn't for me..."
She turned away from Merlin, who walked on as if he knew neither fear nor fatigue nor finality.
"He'd seen the rise of Artos, and he'd come to play his part," she said in a voice scraped raw. "As you must."
It took a moment before the words registered.
Vaje stared at her. "What?"
"You wondered why I offered my help." She gave him a small, crooked smile. It was terribly human, as she was then. "And the truth is strange, very strange, but simple."
The stormy night was pierced by lightning; when the afterimage of it had faded, he found himself in a small room which had the look of a bedroom. A narrow desk in one corner held the only source of light: a candle that burned with a pale blue flame. Nimue was bent over a scroll, quill scratching.
She wore a long gown that was filmy and pale, and her hair was black beneath the icy light. Elaborate traceries of silver showed on her skin, and seemed to move under the light.
Nimue looked every the faerie sorceress, only splotches of ink on her slender hands betraying a hint of normality.
A knock came at the door moments before it opened and a man strode in, rain aglitter on his cloak and boots, the night a swirl of gusting wind and rain behind him. He drew down his hood: Alexandros.
"Governor," Nimue said, rising to sketch a perfunctory curtsy.
"No need for the act, Nimue," he said, waving away her formality. "I'm alone. No one knows I'm here."
"Then you're a fool. The Saxons are only a few miles away and if they catch you-"
He bared his teeth, feral, carefree, fearless. "If they catch me, they will find out why Rome worships the Furies as gods."
"That's exactly what I'm afraid of," she said softly. "We have both have seen what happens when humans make idols of us. Morgan paid dearly for it."
His ferocity faded away. There was sympathy in his eyes as Alexandros said, "They will not catch me, Nimue. I may be young, but I lead Nightfire by more than brute force."
Her lips turned up. "And I am glad of it. How can I help, Alexandros?"
"There is faerie magic over Stonehenge. Too far out for most to sense it, but it is like a shadow on my thoughts." His voice was bleak. "The last thing I need is the Fey interfering in my work here. I would send someone else, but..."
"If it is the Fey, you will not see your emissary again," she finished, and her smile gleamed like breaking ice. "Unless, of course, she was half-Fey herself, in which case they might merely torture her a little before sending her back to you."
It seemed something close to pain swirled black in his eyes. "Do not think I ask lightly."
She laughed, and the sound had the echo of faerie bells in it, sweet and high and seductive. "You don't ask at all, Alexandros, though you're clever enough to make it seem like a choice. I'll go. And if I should find Fey, what would you have me do?"
"Live," he commanded, and his face was stern and cold. "Live, and keep them from Britain any way you can."
"They will want blood."
"Tell them I will give them blood enough for a century if they will have a little patience," he said. "War will come. There will be plenty of suffering to feed them then."
She touched her fingers to her heart, and bowed. Vaje recognised the gesture from the archives: she had sworn blood oath to Alexandros, sworn to obey him unto death if necessary. No wonder she had not refused his request. She could not.
"As you will," she murmured. "Best return to Aquae Sulis, Alexandros. It will be dawn soon, and I hear Tristan is displeased with your battle plan."
"You hear entirely too much for a woman in the middle of nowhere," he remarked, but he returned the gesture: fingers to his heart, and then – to Vaje's surprise – he added, "Thank you, Nimue."
The door banged on his absence: the walls dissolved, leaving only a night suffocated by clouds and relentless rain. In the flash of lightning, the landscape was revealed – vast and bare, except for the ring of stones that towered in front of her like a circle of arches. Dark and shining, the stones were several times her height. She looked like a child before them.
Nimue was drenched by then, but it did not seem to bother her. She went barefoot through the storm, unarmed, but unhesitating.
Lightning stuck again: this time, down onto the tallest archway. Once, twice – and at the third blinding flash, the space between the stones flared gold, and a great high sheet of fire rippled there.
And then a shape appeared – a silhouette, a man who walked through the flames as if they were nothing but an ordinary door. The moment he was through, the flames fell into a thin line of red that simmered low, and vanished.
"As I said," Nimue remarked beside him. "Strange, but simple."
Vaje squinted at the figure, bemused, as his night vision recovered. As it came into focus, he felt a cold wave of shock. Because he knew that man, that face.
He saw it every morning in the mirror. It was him.
"Wait! Hey, wait!" Footsteps rattling behind her like a machine gun – and the voice, breathy and anxious, was familiar. Aspen.
Lisa whipped around. "What do you want?"
They had never got on. What little contact they'd had, at school, in town, had been fractious, mostly because he was a jerk. Before he'd met Tam Slone, Aspen had been a living incarnation of chaos theory. Even now he was still unpredictable and touchy.
But he looked very meek in the dim light, hands held out as if to show he was harmless. "The twilight lands," he said in a great rush. "They're Fey territory. The faeries seceded from the Night World centuries ago because they were being hunted by humans. That's where Vaje's gone."
Faeries. Of course. Now she knew where she'd heard the term – Nimue, saying I could leave if I wanted, and go back to the twilight lands, but they're not what you'd call hospitable there.
"Why are you telling me this?" she asked. "Blue won't like it."
His eyes met hers, and only in the darkness did they match, black as ink. "Blue doesn't own me," he said shortly. "And Vaje helped me when I needed it. He didn't ask for anything in return. He just helped. I guess if I had friends, he'd be a friend. So – I thought he'd want you to know."
"Thank you," she whispered. "How long before he comes back?"
Aspen grimaced. "There's two ways into the twilight lands. One way, they play by our rules. The other – the looking glass – we play by theirs. They feed on pain and Vaje, he's got plenty of that." He cocked his head, swallowing nervously. "Less since he met you, though. Seems like you make him happy."
His words were a knife in her heart: she missed Vaje with an intensity that frightened her, that made her wanted to fold around the fact of his absence and shed stupid futile tears over him.
"What can I do?" she said, voice husky with heartache. "Can I go after him?"
"You'd die," he said simply. "When we go in there, we never use mirrors. The other entrances are all miles away. 'Sides, he's been there at least a day now. If he's not dead, he'll come back." Aspen paused, then reached out and gingerly patted her on the arm before offering what he apparently thought were words of comfort. "Vaje's a Fury, you know. He knows how to kill."
She swallowed hard. Oddly, she felt a little better. "Thanks."
His smile was sudden, and rather sweet. "Hey, no problem. Listen, I have to go. If I'm not back soon, I'll miss breakfast and Tam's mom will ask me some really uncomfortable questions. But, um, don't worry about Vaje. He's survived for eight hundred years. I'm sure he can manage another couple of days."
"I don't understand why he even went," she said. "It sounds like madness."
Aspen shrugged. "Ross said he was asking about the Furies in the way back when. He mentioned a name, come to think of it. Nina...Nadine..."
Her stomach sank. And she spoke a name that had not passed her lips in a thousand years. "Nimue Fairchild."
"Yeah..." His eyes widened. "How'd you know?"
She didn't answer. Nimue. Nimue who had gone as mad as her sister when Merlin died – whose smile had flashed as crookedly and briefly as a lightning bolt, who'd gone through the battlefield with nothing in her hands but fistfuls of magic, the ground freezing in her wake. Lisa had thought her dead.
And Vaje had gone to the twilight lands to find her because Lisa had been foolish enough to say two words to him, because he was a good man so very like that other good man that she and Nimue had known: Merlin.
And just like him, she had said help me and Vaje had listened.
They were so alike, with only one difference. Vaje was alive. Merlin had died trying to help her.
X - X - X - X - X
"It's me," Vaje said. Slowly, his mind absorbed details. "And I'm wearing the same clothes. Which means..."
He couldn't say it. It was ludicrous.
"Time travel," Nimue supplied. There was no mockery in her expression. "Yes. It's real. An unexpected side effect of the Fey's secession from the Night World. We demanded you create us a world of our own, a place safe from humanity. And so they made the twilight lands – an eternal moment of winter, outside time. It wasn't until later that Titania discovered just what that meant."
"How does that even work?" he said, flabberghasted.
She took off the simple necklace she wore. It was a thin chain with a round pendant hung upon it. Nimue stretched it between her fingers, a gleaming silver line. "Imagine this is time. You move from one end to the other. Everything links together. But when our world was made, it was created separate, beyond. Like the pendant."
She tilted the chain. The pendant slid down it with a hiss.
"The twilight lands are anchored to your world, but not to time," she said. "We can move along time just as the pendant moves along the chain."
"I get the feeling it isn't that simple," he remarked. He felt light-headed, but there could be no mistake.
Nimue gave him a half-smile. "The spells are complex. But I can cast them – if you agree to go."
He looked at the memory of himself stepping through Stonehenge. "Interesting paradox."
"You can refuse," she said softly.
"Why do you need me to go back in time?" he said. "What can I do that you can't?"
She sighed. "I need your help. Lisa is in danger – a danger I was unable to see a thousand years ago, but which has become crystal clear in hindsight. Several attempts were made on her life. And only your intervention kept them from succeeding."
"Me?" he said, incredulous. "I think Lisa would remember."
She shook her head. "Ask me for a glamour. I'll disguise you. I would not expose you to more danger than is necessary. If I am right – and I hope I am not – her foe is still alive, and extremely dangerous. Where Alexandros is, she will follow."
"Who are we talking about?" he demanded.
"The legends got it wrong." She shivered. "There was a love triangle, yes, but not the one people believed. There was no Lancelot, no noble knight. There was only Lisanor, Alexandros, and the other woman who loved him, who would kill to have him. She was beautiful as the sun and every man in Britain wanted her. Every man except the one who made her his queen. Lisanor, Alexandros – and Guinevere."
X - X - X - X - X
Interesting times, these.
Guinevere wondered why Lisanor had been visiting Malefici. She needed Lisanor dead, and dead in a way that had no links to her. It would not do to have Alexandros suspect: no, she had nearly fallen into that trap last time. It must seem mere mischance, a natural progression of sorts.
That was why Cern Akafren was so valuable.
She slipped out of the shadows. The air had the stillness of a graveyard. Malefici's house was small and insignificant. It reminded her of the hovels in Britain, poky, dark places that stank of smoke and mud.
Guinevere eyed the front door, or what remained of it.
If the boy did run Nightfire, they had fallen far indeed. Its ruin had been more successful than she could ever have imagined.
Though there were rumours that the Furies had returned to Hades, this boy among them. When this was over, she would put a stop to that. No need for anyone to know what lay at its end. No need at all.
Her feet were a silent whisper over the ground, her eyes shining silver and her lips red as freshly-spilt blood.
Before she was halfway to the house, he saw her. The boy strolled down the hallway as if she was no threat at all and his arrogance amused her.
"Did you want something?" he said coolly.
"Bane Malefici, I assume," she said.
"Do you? How presumptuous." He held no weapons. Maybe he thought he didn't need them. He was right, if only because they would be useless. "And you are?"
"Oh, I don't think that's important."
His smile had a cold slant to it, frosty as his eyes. "I disagree."
She was surprised at the strength of the power he threw at her like a javelin, black and jagged and toxic. But she only reached down to the piece of her that belonged to the Lethe, and when it hit her, she let herself forget how to feel pain, and all his might simply rolled off her like water.
"You're quite a precocious child," she told him softly. "But a child all the same. And you can kick and scream as much as you want, but you will give me what I want."
She gave him no time to protest – she sent a wave of forgetting at him. It hit his mental shields like a stormy sea. His resilience was startling, but it was in vain. She admired him for that. Very few people could have held on so long, fighting her even as his own mind convinced him she was not there.
His shields buckled, and vanished. Guinevere stepped inside his mind, careful as she would be in any enemy land.
Interesting. For all his youth, his mind was a veritable fortress. It was not so unlike treading through the icy ravine in Hades, full of strange lights and traps. He had promise, and plenty of power with it.
And he had the answers she wanted.
"There is a certain spell," she said. "It raises the dead. Where is it?"
He struggled, but as futilely as a fly cocooned by webbing. At last the answer was drawn from him, every word sharp as broken glass.
"Upstairs."
She sighed. So he wanted to be difficult. "I require you to give me the exact location of the spell, and complete, honest and clear information about any defences you may have arranged around it."
His fury simmered all around her, but Guinevere brushed it away with a touch.
"In the loft. There's a wooden beam which bisects the room. A third of the way along, there is a flaw in the grain. Press it, and a panel will open up beneath the window in the west wall. Five wards protect it. The first has a keyword – shimmer. The second is a nursery rhyme – oranges and lemons. The third requires you to tap out the name of my first kill in Morse code. Carinna. The fourth will test that you have drunk the waters of the Styx."
A tricky combination. She could make him fetch it, but that was risky. Erasing memories completely had a high price: the Lethe conferred only a finite amount of power, and any permanent change to someone's mind meant a little more drained away.
And she had already used so much of it in that dark shed where Lisanor screamed and Alexandros faced down Hades.
No. She might yet need her power.
Guinevere meant go then, but curiosity spurred her on. "Why was Lisanor here?"
"She had a promise to keep."
"What promise? I want an exact, honest and full account," she added with some exasperation. The boy was slippery as a lawyer.
Silence as he fought. She flooded his mind with forgetting until the icy cavern was shrouded in fog and his fury was nothing but a dim buzz.
"She wanted some of his DNA to make talismans for her friends so Alexandros could not play parlour tricks with their memories." Something like a snarl erupted around her; she quelled him. "I gave her the fur I had on the condition she would replace it."
So Alex did not know Lisa had taken his blood. That held promise: great promise. Excitement grew in her.
Maybe a little power then. She stretched into his memories and gave them a little twist, a little tweak. He would act, and think it his own scheming. And all the while, he would serve her, as so many had before him.
And then she eased from his mind, and left him in the dark as she went upstairs to fetch the spell. It was as he had said: a beam, a knot, a panel that slid open without a sound to reveal the scroll, spells that she broke one by one.
A slight smile curved her mouth as she reached in, cupping the fragile parchment as gently as if it were a wounded bird. She had the tool she needed to ensure Lisanor would die at last, as she should have fifteen hundred years ago.
Of all Merlin's magic, this was surely the greatest. A prize fit for a queen. Fit for her.
X - X - X - X - X
After Aspen left her, Lisa didn't want to go home. There was too much emotion boiling in her veins. So instead, she called in a promise.
The Blood Rose Café was quiet: few people wanted to brave the snow for a coffee. The waitress greeted her with the ease of long familiarity, and brought her usual order. Lisa settled into the couches in the corner and watched the world go by, swept along on flakes of snow.
For a few moments, she managed to forget everything but the scent of fresh-brewed coffee, and the careless ceaseless snow outside the glass.
Then a hand waved in front of her eyes.
She started: Cern was failing to hide a grin as he peeled off a hat and gloves.
"I've been calling your name for the last minute," he said. "You were off with the fairies."
With a sickening lurch, reality crashed back in on her. It was Vaje who was with the faeries, lost in the twilight lands.
He frowned. "Did I say something wrong?"
"No," she said quietly. "It's just been a long day."
"Huh." He sat down opposite her, eyes narrowed. She'd forgotten that look: that of a healer searching his patient for wounds. "I'm not buying it. Yesterday Malefici was kicking the crap out of you. Today I walk in to find you looking like...gods, like someone just died."
There was a pause as the waitress came over, smiling shyly at Cern. She was a junior, and she looked at him like a lot of girls did. It wasn't hard to see why: it hadn't been so long ago that Lisa had looked at him that way.
He wasn't handsome, but his smile had an easy charm. His hair was mussed and wavy, his jaw covered in stubble that might have been called designer in someone more image-conscious. And he always gave his full attention to a conversation, whether it was an order for coffee, or – as it was about to be – a heartfelt confession.
"No one's died," she said. "Yet. Cern, I have some things to tell you. About me."
So she talked, soft-voiced, and he listened. Their mugs slowly emptied as she told him about a human girl who'd fallen head over heels in love with a king, and who had eventually found out that he'd lied to her. She told him about a great war, and about that king's promise, thrown over her like a net.
"Now he's here. He's found me. And I'm scared that he'll use you as leverage."
She could not look at him. It was an incredible tale: and it was harder telling him than it had been all the others. Perhaps because she knew that they'd had their own lies, their own moments of folly. Cern's only crime had been his bloodline.
"Lise." His hand closed over hers: his voice was gentle. "It's okay. I'll run a mile if I see him."
"You can't," she said. "It's Alex."
His fingers tightened on hers. "The werewolf? Flick's friend?"
"The same."
"Shit. Does she know?"
She shook her head. "Not unless he's told her. Which is unlikely. Alex only tells the truth when it's more useful than a lie. And he's very, very good at lying."
"He can't be that good," Cern pointed out. "You caught him out."
She looked up. He wore a faint smile, not quite enough to drive the shadows out of his eyes. "No. I didn't. I'd never have known if it hadn't been for his queen. She was a Briton, and she married him for political reasons, but she knew him better than I did. And she was always fair. That was why she told me – she didn't like lying for Alex. So she broke her silence, and sometimes I wish she hadn't, but mostly...mostly I'm grateful to her. If it hadn't been for Guinevere, I'd be nothing but his toy."
"Guinevere?" he echoed, sounding startled. "She helped you?"
"I know. The legends got it all wrong. Arthur gets to be the wronged husband, Guinevere's the tart who ran off with his best friend."
"Yeah." He looked at her, gaze direct. "This is kind of mind-blowing, Lise."
"I know. I'm sorry – for all of it."
His grin surprised her; it was exultant, and fearless, and everything she had missed about him. "I'm not. You never know, Lise, this might wind up being the best thing that could have happened."
"That's not how I'd describe my nutjob soulmate showing up," she volunteered.
"No?" He raised his eyebrows. "It ends here, doesn't it? Come on, we've done this before. We fight, we kick ass, we do the impossible, and Crazy McStalker goes away."
Optimism wasn't exactly what she'd expected from Cern, considering what had happened when he encountered his soulmate and a big bad something: they'd been the same person.
"That's the aim," she admitted cautiously. "But it's a bit more complicated than that."
"Since when do you believe in giving up?" he demanded.
Since when did you stop believing in giving up? she felt like asking, but another part of her had missed this too much to question it. It felt like she had her friend back. "I don't."
"Then why are we even arguing? C'mon, we can find better things to disagree about. Like exactly how long it's going to be before Jepar realises that disco is a recognised crime against humanity."
She snorted. "Never. And when the day comes that we take down the forces of evil with a dance-off, we'll be glad we've got him."
It was a long time since she'd heard Cern laugh. And as the day dissolved under a slew of caffeine and good-natured contention, she began to hope again.
X - X - X - X - X
Eventually, they left the café, slipping and sliding through the icy streets. They clung onto each other for balance, and Lisa was surprised to find that all her old feelings for him had melted away like week-old snow. Before Vaje, she'd pined for Cern, wanted him, and never quite dared reveal herself.
What remained was better than infatuation, better than unrequited longing: a deep, abiding affection that warmed her as the pair of them went back to the woods.
"I'm not saying you're wrong," he continued, tiptoeing over the slush as gingerly as a cat, "...well, actually, I am, but-"
He grabbed for her as his feet went and Lisa giggled as he very nearly did the splits in the midst of the woods.
"Instant karma," she said cheerfully.
Cern shot her a mock-glare. "As proof goes, that's a pretty lame argument against a higher power. It's just about a contradiction. Karma suggests design..."
"No, it suggests a pattern," she said, the dignity of her point destroyed as she slid forward a couple of feet, arms windmilling. "Evolution has a pattern too. That doesn't mean someone's sitting up there with an ethereal Etch-a-Sketch. Honestly, Cern, after everything we've seen, how do you still believe in gods?"
"The fact I keep calling on them to do spells might have something to do with it," he pointed out. "And last time I checked, my magic worked. In fact..."
His eyes narrowed, and a spiral of fire the same deep violet of his eyes twisted from his palms to melt the snow before them with a hiss.
"Yep. Still works." He grinned, but it had a crooked twist. "Besides, if you don't believe in the great whatever, how do you explain soulmates? It's someone's idea of a joke, that's for sure."
It was the closest they had come to speaking about Jal, about it all, without anger.
"Then it needs a better punchline," she said quietly. "Look at us. Look at what they've brought us to. These people, these soulmates, they hold your heart hostage. I want to choose who to love. I don't want the choice made for me. I don't want to be told that here's my future, all wrapped up, here's my heart tied up with a bow for some stranger to have because, hey, that's destiny, it's their sacred right to poke through my thoughts and my feelings and my secrets."
Her voice was rising: she stamped through the slush as if it offended her.
"Because here's the thing, Cern, here's the thing I hate about it all. It might not be fate. It might just be DNA or pheromones or some huge, tricky, thoughtless spell. But whatever it is, it's made me into someone's other half. I'm not even whole: I'm just this broken, divided thing waiting for my happy ending."
"Lise..." Cern sounded utterly bemused, as well he might. He'd loved his soulmate.
She didn't slow – she didn't stop, the words pouring out of her like nuclear wind with all the poison of the long years.
"But I want my own ending. I want to learn to love, not have it thrown at me. I want to spend hours and hours talking and taking it all on trust, because I can't just dip into someone's soul and pull out the truth. I want to look into his eyes and have no idea what he's thinking, what's he's feeling, and god, to touch him and feel lightning that doesn't come from some stupid link. I want to be amazed again and again by a touch, by the way he says my name, by the sight of sunrise on his face. I want to fall in love, and keep on falling, keep on deciding that I love that man, that stupid stubborn selfish man, that I choose him every day, every night, every - single – time!"
Her voice was a crack of thunder on the snow-scoured sky. It felt good to speak, to feel all the anger slewing out of her, as if she'd rinsed some lingering scummy residue from her heart.
Cern was staring at her, agape. Then he cracked a rueful smile, the shadows back in his eyes, and said, "That's a hell of an argument. But...one question, Lise?"
Chest heaving, she waited.
"Why haven't you said this to Alex?" he said. And then he left her, and went back to his Pack without waiting for an answer.
He knew her well enough to realise that she didn't have one.
X - X - X - X - X
"Is there anything else I should know?" Vaje asked.
"The less you know, the better," Nimue said quietly. "Too many strange thoughts in your mind, and Artos or Guinevere might think to look closer. They are king and queen in a troubled land – even a hint of treachery might see you dead. I've given you all the help I dare. There is nothing more to do but send you back, and hope."
He could feel her glamour tingling on his skin, like fading pins and needles. That had solved the language barrier: she had passed him some of her gift of tongues.
"Is it far?" he asked.
"Far enough," she said with a grimace. "You cannot tarry here much longer, or Titania will hear a mortal is in the twilight lands."
"She's heard," Vaje said. "She invited me to dinner. As the main course."
Nimue's breath hissed between her teeth. "Then we must go. Now. She doesn't take rejection well." Her movements were brisk – she threw on a cloak which seemed thin as gossamer, hardly fit protection against the cold. "We are safe until we leave my lands-"
She opened the door. A thick wall of mist greeted them.
Nimue gasped: the door slammed shut, but tendrils of mist crept through the cracks.
"The Queen's Breath," she muttered, grim. "She is eager indeed to have you."
He backed away from the mist, which spread slowly over the floor in a thin haze. "What is that?"
"A spell. A very powerful one." She seized his hand. Warmth spread through him, the soft dull glow of sunshine on skin. "I can protect you from it, but whatever you do, don't let go of me."
"What happens if I do?"
"One breath of that and your body will be convinced you're in the middle of a blizzard. You can look forward to frostbite, lung-rot, delerium, and a quite incredible amount of pain."
He grimaced. "Lovely. How long will that last?"
She glanced at him, a sudden surge of pity in her eyes. "The rest of your life. Which is likely to be much shorter."
He heard the disbelief stark in his words. "Because of that – a bit of mist?"
"You defied Titania. She has no mercy."
"She wanted to kill me. What was I supposed to do? Let her?"
Nimue's laugh was breathy and bitter. "Yes."
He had heard legends of the Fey. Now he saw the truth behind the cotton-candy fairytales, beautiful and brutal and so alien he could not see past the bright cold skies that stretched through her eyes.
Then her face softened, humanity creeping past her faery cold. Her grip on his hand tightened.
"You would have seemed a fine prize to her when you came walking down the mirror roads, fresh from the sunlit lands and flush with love and need and hope," she said slowly. "Titania hungers for such things – such feelings – and you would have fed her well. From the moment, you chose to enter our world by our rules, you put yourself in her hands. And if she cannot own you, she will kill you."
"Sounds like someone else we know," he said.
"Yes," she said, dreamy and startled. "I suppose they are of a kind."
The mist was curling about his ankles; it hovered only inches from him and every now and then, a wisp stretched out to prod at him, only to recoil from Nimue's magic.
"We must run all the way," she said. "I don't know how long I can hold off Titania. Remember – don't let go. No matter what you see or hear."
Vaje nodded: they went to the door, and saw her hand shaking as she drew back the latch. Thn the mist curled above them like a vast wave and crashed down: it broke into a multitude of wisps that flowed back into the whole. And they ran into it, he trusting her magic to protect them.
The fog drew back like curtains, and the thorns loomed forth from it like nightmare creations, dark and twisting. They too parted for Nimue, and the pair of them ran down the narrow path, the mist soaking up their footsteps.
He could not say how long they ran: when they left the thorns, the road became more treacherous, slick with ice, ever-shifting. His breath burned in his lungs, but he was used to running under the moon, used to the shadowy amorphous shapes of twilight.
Then the ice before them moved – it rose up into a shining fanged beast that lunged at Nimue. Its teeth sank into her leg – there was a terrible gristly sound of bone and flesh crunching, and she shrieked. Her grip never loosened, but she could not fight it.
Vaje didn't break his stride: his next step became a savage kick, all his momentum behind it. It connected with its muzzle - it shattered into splinters of ice.
He caught Nimue before she fell, and she clung to him briefly, hair a red mesh over her eyes, teeth bared in pain. Blood oozed from the wound, and he could see how mangled her flesh was.
"Can you heal that?" he said.
"No time," she said in a voice thick with pain, and began to limp on.
"Don't be ridiculous," he told her. "I can carry you. It'll be quicker."
She hesitated, then slowly, grudgingly, nodded. He swept her up – she was light as autumn leaves, as though her bones were hollow, as though she had no more substance than the sky. Vaje ran on, watching the road carefully.
He leapt monsters that rose up from the ice. He dodged the dark shapes that peeled out of the mist with wings and claws. All were silent as winter, appearing with no more warning than a hint of shadow on the ground, in the mist.
For the first time, he thanked the Furies for their brutal training, for the reflexes they had beaten into him.
He was so immersed in watching the way ahead that he didn't hear it at first. He only felt Nimue tense.
"No, oh no..." she whispered, the sound moving no further than the two of them.
Bemused, he paused - then he heard it. A soft, high sound that carried on the still air. Bells.
"Titania's riders," Nimue whispered, fingers tightening on his neck. "She's coming for us."
He ran then like he was racing the North Wind. Pain began to burn in his muscles, a dull warning. Soon the bells were joined by a low thunder – hoofbeats, far off, but coming ever closer. He ruthlessly suppressed the tinge of panic.
Then two new shapes loomed forth from the mist, and did not move. A pair of narrow black spires, barely a metre apart.
"There," she said, and he skidded to a halt between them, setting her down carefully. "Keep hold of me. I'll open the gateway, but I'll need to call you back almost as soon as I have sent you. Moments will have passed for me – but it will be months for you. Remember to come back armed, a year hence on Samhain. Bring iron."
"A year?" He swallowed. Too late to think about it now. "I'll remember."
She placed her hands on the spire, grimacing while he supported her, and whispered to the stones as softly as if they were living. Although he understood the words, later he could not recall them – they were fluid as oil, sliding away on the croon of her voice.
Her hands tightened: above the stones, clouds gathered like some vast whirlpool centred on the spires. The cold thickened, tinged with the scent of ozone.
Lightning flickered in the thunderheads, white and knifelike, and Nimue trembled between the stones. When she threw back her head, her eyes had rolled back to show only white. Her lips moved in one last word, a long hoarse gasp, and lightning lanced down between the stones.
The sheet of fire he had seen in her memories flared up.
"Go," she gasped, crumpling onto him. Vaje set her down carefully, and she kept contact with him to the last as he went into the curtain of flames: before the heat leapt over him, the last thing he felt in this world, this time, was the press of her fingers.
For one moment, he burned: but he had endured the Phelgethon, the river of fire, and survived, and so he walked on. There was pain and nothing but more pain beyond it, but he walked on, and then it was gone.
He stood on a hill, and the rain felt like balm upon his skin. Vaje looked into the face of Nimue Fairchild again, a thousand years in the past.
X - X - X - X - X
Lisanor hadn't changed.
Guinevere's heart sped at the sight of her old enemy. Take away the modern clothes, and she was still the same girl, forever a teenager, forever on the brink of maturity, and never quite able to reach it.
The jealousy welled up in her. That Lisanor lived and was loved and didn't even appreciate her luck was obscene. Unfair. Intolerable.
Her fingers felt the spell, caressed it as her saving grace. If it played out as she planned, it would be enough. But there was no harm in a little insurance, was there?
No harm in shaving the odds before the game began. All was fair in love, and war – and this was both.
X - X - X - X - X
It was turning into a beautiful day. The sun gleamed like a medallion above, melting away the clouds. The crisp ice crunched underfoot: everything smelt fresh and clean. It seemed unfair that nature should put on such a show when she just couldn't appreciate it.
At least when she got home, Toya might be up. She needed to talk her to her, find out about the twilight lands and test out her Alex-proofing.
And-
A splintery creak was the only warning she got – something dark rushed at her from above, and Lisa dived sideways, hands scraping on the hard ground. An almighty crash reverberated in her ears – something slammed into her foot, leaving a trail of white-hot pain, and then there was only a frantic rustling.
Gasping, she turned to examine the damage – and froze.
A huge branch lay before her, its leaves still quivering with the impact. Her foot was beneath it, caught under spiky twigs. Slowly, wincing, she extricated it. Flashes of pain shot through her leg as she dragged herself back.
It could have killed her. If she hadn't moved, it probably would have done.
Then Lisa saw the end of the branch. It was ragged, the flesh of the wood white and healthy. It hadn't just fallen. Someone had torn it from the tree as easily as if peeling an orange.
The back of her neck prickled with the weight of unseen eyes. There was no one in sight, but that just meant they could be anywhere.
Panic hit her – she reached out instinctively, her mind flying for the one person she knew would protect her without a thought...
But Vaje wasn't there. Shaken, she sent out a call to the others: there was Jepar, a sleepy green bundle who shot upright at the shrillness of her voice.
Lise? What's happened?
A...a tree fell on me. Not an accident.
Alex?
She gathered her troubled thoughts. No. This wasn't his style. He'd try persuasion before power. Someone else. I don't know.
She had to get out of here. Lisa wobbled upright, staggering as she tried to put weight on her foot. Her sneakers hid any damage, but it didn't feel good. Slowly, she began to limp back to town, fear in every step.
You're hurt! Anger quickly replaced Jepar's alarm. We'll come and get you.
Hurry up. I'm in no state to fight them off if they come back for more.
An empty laugh rolled out behind her, and a voice came rolling over the air like a crow's call, distorted and rasping and cruel. It's not me who'll come back, darling, not me at all...
There was something familiar in that voice, something that sent fear coursing down her spine, and made her think of smoke and heat and a terrible black place full of teeth and anguish. She could not remember – she could not quite forget...
She threw a glance over her shoulder. Nothing but the trees and the shadows, lining her way like prison bars. Lisa went faster, ignoring the pain, memories chasing her down like hounds.
And in the darkness, Guinevere smiled at her fear, and felt the first thrill of victory.
I said, hey, girl with one eye
Get your filthy fingers out of my pie
I said, hey, girl with one eye
I'll cut your little heart out 'cause you made me cry
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