The hands on her back stilled. “He will not interrupt again. Not here. Although, his connection to you is stronger. You must stop taking his blood or you will never be free of him. The more you drink from him, the more you will want it. And it is the same for him. With each exchange he will crave you more and more until he devours you. But now that you are here I can protect you.”
The meaning of his words slipped off of her as she stepped into the water and stepped deeper. The cold murky water licked up her body, almost parting for her, caressing her as she swam to the little island.
It didn’t take very long, twenty strokes, maybe a few more, and then she could touch the bottom near the island. The ground squished unpleasantly, mud and sharp rocks poking at her. One of the stones embedded in her foot and she yelped, hobbling to the shore. She sat down on the bank, cradling her foot in her hands. A small white rock protruded from her heel.
She pulled it out, blood dripping all around her and studied the rock. It was odd. A brilliant white, tiny sharp ends on one side. Her hands trembled. It wasn’t a rock. It was a human tooth. Val dropped it and scrambled onto the island, her feet sliding in the mud.
Why would there be a tooth on the bottom of the water? What else had she stepped on? All those hard sharp things, which she’d assumed were sticks…what if they were bones? Her toe had slipped inside a shell and she’d ignored it, but…what if it had been a skull? What if the thing she’d stepped on that had cracked had been a jaw bone?
She wanted to throw up, felt bile rise in her throat as she thought about the slippery things that had touched her. Not seaweed. She had an image of skins, wet and slick sliding past her in the water.
Who had died in this water? No, that wasn’t the right question. How
many
had died in that water?
Her stomach heaved and she gagged, but her stomach was empty, dry spasms wracking her body. She almost wished she had eaten something, just to blunt her body’s clenching as it tried harder and harder to purge itself of nothing.
She collapsed on the ground, hugging her knees and looking out at the brown water. Brown and bloody. The only way out was back. Through that clinging stew of water, the bottom filled with jagged bones and a muddy layer of death. She couldn’t do it. She just couldn’t.
There is no other way.
She looked at the shore and Cerdewellyn who stood there, watching her.
Waiting for her. He stood proud and tall, his hands clasped behind his back as though he were patient. A gentleman with all the time in the world. But there was more to it than that. An intensity and a focus was in his gaze that made her hesitate. He didn’t gesture to her or call out, but she expected him to urge her on, or ask her why she was waiting, even tilt his head in inquiry, but he remained motionless.
Pick the flower and get back to shore. This can all be over in a moment.
Val picked the flower, the bloom detaching easily. The stalk shriveled and died, like a salted snail, decaying before her eyes.
Her heart sped up. She turned back to the water and waded in a few feet.
I don’t want to go back in there.
She was being ridiculous. It wasn’t a human tooth. She had no reason to think that. There was nothing at the bottom of that pond except sticks and mud.
But her body was clammy with revulsion. She had goose bumps on her skin and dreaded each step in the cold, dark water. It swirled around her waist and she dove in, swimming as fast as she could to shore, lunging forward before she could think better of it and change her mind.
If you hesitate, you shall never go in.
Water licked at her lips, went into her nose and her eyes. She wanted to scream and give in to the horror but if she could just keep it together for a little longer—five, four, three more strokes she’d be there.
Her foot touched down on the bottom, standing and wading to shore.
Run
. Her feet touched and scraped things, some of them warm, a few of them viscous and one terrible thing that was round and small. When her weight shifted forward it exploded.
It wasn’t an eye
.
She emerged from the water on the verge of panic. Cerdewellyn’s hand was extended, waiting for her to put the flower in to his waiting palm.
It was bright and beautiful, a perfect juxtaposition to what she had just swum through. She looked at his outstretched hand. Elegant fingers, smooth palms that looked like he’d never done a day’s worth of manual labor.
Too perfect.
She blinked. A feeling of tightness surrounded her, like she was in a summer storm, the ozone heavy. The breeze caught her hair, lifting strands towards him, reminding her of snakes writhing.
“
Just take it,” she said on a hunch, her hand poised above his.
He shook his head. “I cannot. You must give it to me.”
“
And then what? What do I collect next?”
“
Nothing. This is the final piece. I ask nothing else of you.” There was a smile on his face. Gentle, and yet for some reason she thought of little red riding hood. She suspected that with the outdated outfit he was rocking, making a joke about sharp teeth or big eyes would be lost on him.
“
But you must give it to me.” The words were not forceful, nor were they begging but there was a hint of urgency in them. As though he wasn’t sure he could convey how important it was— and didn’t know if he wanted to.
“
What will happen? When you have it?”
“
I do not know. I have things I would like to do, but am unsure if I have the means to accomplish them.”
She nodded, the reason somehow good enough and put the flower in his hand, the tips of her fingers touching his warm palm. The sky went dark and the wind picked up upon contact. Val had a desperate urge to take the flower back.
Too late
.
Bits of leaves and twigs began to swirl around her, pelting her, like she was close to the center of a tornado but had just missed the calm center.
His dark hair blew in the breeze, an eager smile making fine lines appear at the corner of each eye. His response reminded her of Lucas. He knew things, didn’t plan on telling her anything and had a stock reaction—a smile. It was unreadable and she had no idea if it was sincere or not.
Cerdewellyn wore the smile like armor.
But Lucas didn’t smile. His response to surprises, bad information, or questions was a perfect blankness. Impenetrable because she never knew what was important and what was trivial. Everything got the same response.
But they both had reactions they’d cultivated over the centuries.
They are both so damned old.
He looked at her palm, tilting his head to the side a little, brows furrowed. “The bloom harmed your fair skin.” She looked at her hand, at the blood dripping to the ground.
The sky turned black, so dark that it was like an eclipse was slicing through the land. He took a step closer, his hand cupping her face, and he tilted her face up so she looked into his grave-dark eyes.
“
Do you want to see?” he asked her.
“
Yes.”
She’d always been too curious for her own good.
Chapter
31
Valerie changed, felt like she evolved and lost corporeal form. She was above the land and part of everything. From the trees to the air. From the twigs flying around to the water in the pond.
Her consciousness flew upwards as though she was watching a movie play out below her. She was no longer part of the earth but as insubstantial, and uninvolved with the world below as the clouds that surrounded her.
Cerdwellyn was beneath her, walking through the meadow filled only with perfect blooms. But the color was gone and the flowers were black. The grass chrome gray. Darkness was everywhere, roiling towards him, the ground buckling upwards.
The end of the world
.
Thunder boomed, lightning slashing through the sky as far as she could see. Twenty, thirty strikes at a time. Veins of fiery illumination brightening the sudden gloom.
There was a breath, as though everything in nature was expectant and ready for this moment. Pressure. The energy from the lightning and the sound from the thunder built. The sky lit up, bright lightning slamming to the earth, twelve huge bolts of it across the land that sizzled and flared, leaving fire in their wake.
This is hell
.
The places where lightning struck continued to glow and burn. The vortex descended upon Cerdwellyn, consuming him, As if the world had devoured him.
Lightning struck, slamming into the vacant space Cerdewellyn had left behind. Then the storm was gone. The fires died and there was nothing but charred earth.
Slowly, the darkness wandered away like fog before a rising sun.
Cerdewellyn was back.
Cer was pleased that she looked at him without fear. As though he resembled himself. He still had enough glamour to trick a half-mortal. If she saw him as he really was, she would run away screaming, perhaps even die from fright. He looked down at his nude form and the pieces of himself that he had been able to force together.
She had brought him his arms and his legs, his torso, his head, even his manhood. A dozen pieces the Queen had cut him into. This mortal had picked them all up, believing them to be flowers and returning them to him without hesitation.
He knew he looked akin to a ghoul. One of the misshapen creatures who had previously walked the earth and been under his dominion. Blood leaked from his wounds, all the pieces stacked on top of each other, held together by will alone.
One more piece. His heart. Then he would be whole. Able to fuse himself back together and start the long process of regaining his strength.
She swam back to shore and he wanted to scream at her to hurry but he waited. Regal dignity. Unending patience. A vendetta that could keep a moment longer.
She came out of the water, water and blood streaming down her form. She still believed it to be an ordinary pond—
good
. He did not want to deal with the theatrics she would have if she knew just what things clung to her hair and dripped from her skin.
The pond was a graveyard for creatures both fantastical and common. All of them moldering away in the deep.
His heart at the very center of it all.
Give it to me,
he wanted to shout at her. So he smiled, instead.
Patience
. It meant he knew every contingency of his revenge. After all, he had plotted it out for centuries. This woman held his heart in her hands and gave it to him gladly. Her own hand was bleeding and he was pleased with the way her blood joined with his, absorbing the essence of her vitality like a midnight fiend.
As soon as she handed him his heart, he began to heal. Power rushed to him, flowing from the land, through the air and the water, coalescing inside him and remaking him.
Whole
.
Free.
Virginia.
Cerdewellyn knew,
knew
, she was dead. That he’d been away for a small eternity and that she was lost to him. But he had to look for her. Couldn’t help himself. He ran towards the water, where her body had been discarded so cruelly and waded into it, looking for her. He screamed her name and dove under the water. And all the time he wondered why he did it.
To help him grieve?
Because he had imagined doing it, even as he lay in a dreamlike comatose state, for so long that he could not imagine doing anything else?
He didn’t know how long he looked for her but when he’d awakened the sun had been high and now there were long shadows everywhere. The sky was pink and orange with the setting sun and it was time to go.
Virginia was gone. Slaughtered. And for what purpose? What did his Queen think she could accomplish with him out of the way? He was King.
He
was what mattered. She had been nothing but a glorified brood mare. All her power and glory had been a gift he had bestowed upon her. She was nothing.
And to try to kill
him
?
His castle was in the distance and he walked towards it, his boots squishing with pond water and his breeches cold and soaked. He pushed his black hair back from his eyes and walked up the hill, using a touch of power to force the water from him, feeling the muck and water slide away, leaving a dark trail behind him. He was dry within steps.
He would kill her. The faux-Queen bitch. Walk up to her, put a hand upon her chest and take all the life he had given her back into himself. Put an end to her and whoever defended her. Every guard and subject who had been loyal.
Even his people. If they were not happy to see him he would take them too. Nothing but blathering apology after apology would assuage his murderous rage. Then he would fix things—
if
he could.
Virginia Dare was dead. The girl they had all needed. The one who held the magic. Let him see what his witch thought could be done this time. He could not fathom a solution.