Authors: Quinn Loftis
“So it’s a battlefield or someplace where lots of people died and their bodies stayed there until the land took them. But why would the second line say greatness, along with treachery and demise?”
“Greatness does not always equate to good,” Ainsel said as he once again came walking out of the woods. Only two other pixies were with him this time. “This is Sully and Dorri. They are the holders of the memories of our history.”
“How do we get the memories out of them?” Costin asked looking at the two female pixies curiously.
“You don’t shake them if that’s what you’re thinking,” Peri snapped.
Costin blushed slightly, revealing that it had indeed crossed his mind.
“They must choose to give them to you, and you have to ask the right question to get the memory. They don’t just give out memories like fae bread.”
Costin frowned, “Is that supposed to be significant?”
Peri groaned, “Bloody hell man, fae bread to pixies is like beer to humans. It makes them very happy little people.”
Costin nodded as he made an ‘ah’ sound in understanding.
Peri took a seat on the ground and looked at Ainsel waiting for him to give the okay to the two girls.
“It’s important that you ask specific questions. That will make it easier on them to narrow it down,” Ainsel explained.
Peri nodded, “Got it, specific. Great, I only have thousands of years to sift through.” She closed her eyes and thought about the first two lines of the riddle and how they had decided that they felt it was a battleground of some sort.
Her eyes opened and she looked at Sully. “What battlegrounds in supernatural history bore the most death?”
“Good one,” Wadim muttered his approval.
Sully walked over to Peri, her small stature barely reaching the fae’s knee. She placed her tiny hand on the skin of Peri’s hand and looked directly into the fae’s eyes.
Peri’s breath caught as images swam in her mind, first they moved so fast she could barely make any sense of them and then gradually they began to slow down until they were moving at a pace that she was able to discern what she saw.
So much blood shed, so many battles and all for what
, she thought to herself as the images continued to run through her mind like a movie. Gradually they slowed again until there were two that seemed to repeat themselves over and over. Then suddenly a third image showed up but it was distorted so much that she could not make out what it was. The three images repeated over and over and she repeated in her mind,
the most death
, hoping it would cause one of them to finally be singled out among them. And then they stopped and the only image left in her mind was of a picture that looked as though the lens of the camera had been severely out of focus when it was taken.
“Dammit!” She blew out a breath and the pixie stepped back. “Thank you,” Peri told Sully gently.
“I take it that to the fae the word dammit also means that something severely sucks.” Costin said.
Peri looked up at him with a single brow raised. “If you mean severely sucks as in the one image that seems to hold the most deaths is so blurry that all I can tell is that there might have been something resembling a place at one time, then yes the dammit holds true.”
“Why would something in your history look like that in their minds?” Wadim asked Ainsel.
“Usually when there is some sort of tampering with a memory. It’s either something someone has done to one of the holders, or there has been some sort-of spell cast over that specific memory so that though you might have been there when it happened, but you would not remember that it even occurred.”
“Why would someone try to wipe out an entire battle?” Costin thought out loud. “Part of surviving as long as we do is from learning from our past, our mistakes.”
Peri stood up and brushed off her clothes and gathered herself. “Haven’t you ever heard the saying that some things are better left forgotten?”
“Yeah, and the idiot who said it died because he forgot not to walk through the forest of his enemy where some of his friends were killed,” Wadim told her.
Peri paused and looked back at the historian. “That’s not true,” she challenged him.
He grinned. “No, but you have to admit it would be a fitting end for someone who would say something so very ignorant.”
Peri gave a noncommittal shrug but didn’t disagree, for once.
“Can you lift your magic just long enough for me to flash back, so I don’t have to wait for nerd boy and sex toy to keep up with me?”
The two wolves behind her coughed on their surprised laughter at her description of them.
Ainsel waved his hand absently. “Done,” he took a step forward when he spoke his next words, “I wish I could help more Peri,” Ainsel told her.
“Ouch,” Wadim muttered.
“Yeah, that was not a wise thing for him to say to this fae.” Costin agreed.
Peri gave the king a curious look and then a slow smile spread across her too beautiful face, “I think you can king. What would you say to action, intrigue, sword fights, pirates, betrayal, and true love?” She nodded at him as if it were the best idea she had ever come up with. “Come on, it will be just like The Princess Bride only better because I’ll be there.”
The last thing Costin and Wadim heard as Peri and the king flashed was Ainsel’s voice. “What’s The Princess Bride?”
Costin and Wadim laughed, but their laughter was cut short when suddenly Peri appeared, grabbed both their hands, and then they were gone.
“If I never see you again, at least I can say that you were mine. At one time, you belonged only to me. I hold onto that as I feel the link between us slipping away. I hold onto the knowledge that there was a time when the bond between us completed our souls, leaving no space between us. There was a time when I did not question how long our lives together would be, because where you went, I went. And now, somehow, we went different directions, and I am so much weaker without you.” ~Alina
“Do you think we will ever have children?” Jacque asked Fane as they lay on their backs on a blanket in the floor of their room. Fane had surprised her with a midnight picnic, complete with chocolate covered strawberries and the little finger sandwiches that she always thought were ridiculous. It had made her laugh, and that had been his goal.
“Most definitely,” he told her.
“How can you be so sure?”
“I don’t believe you could have been brought into this world and not be given the chance to pass on your love, compassion, intelligence, and loyalty to a child who could then be a light in this dark world. How will good remain in the world if those who are good do not raise up the next generation?”
Jacque smiled at him. “Thought about this much?”
Fane chuckled. “If you mean about procreating with you, well, what man doesn’t think about that with his wife?”
She smacked his arm and then broke into uncontrollable giggles as he tickled her. Though he never tickled her long, because there was only one thing he liked more than her laughter, at least that is what he had told her, and that was kissing her.
He braced himself above her on his arms and looked down into her flushed face. Her chest rose and fell rapidly as she tried to catch her breath. Jacque looked up into those amazing blue eyes and thought that if she could go to bed every night staring into those eyes, then she would be happy.
“One day, my love, we will have a child and that child will be more loved than any child in history.” He leaned down and kissed her gently, but had to stop because of her laughter. “What is funny?”
“Fane every parent feels that way about their child.”
“Maybe so, but then those parents aren’t Canis lupus. We love on a whole different level.”
“Don’t I know it,” she said breathlessly at the mischievous flash in his eyes.
He leaned down to kiss her again and as Jacque waited for their lips to touch, she felt his weight growing lighter on her, the heat of his body was leaving hers. She opened her eyes and saw that he was fading. “Fane,” she called his name, reaching for him desperately. His eyes were sad, as his lips moved, she read the words, “I love you.”
Jacque woke with a start as she sat up. Dirt was stuck to her sweaty cheek from where her face had been pressed to the hard ground. She looked around her and remembered where she was—the dark forest-not in her bedroom, not with chocolate strawberries, and not with her mate. Her heart pounded painfully in her chest and she pressed her hand to her chest as if that could take the pain away.
“How are you?” she heard Alina’s soft voice a few feet from her. Her mother-in-law looked utterly exhausted. She had been trying not to sleep, worried that the white wolf would return. Jacque hadn’t decided if Alina was worried she would miss seeing him because she wanted to see him, or if she was afraid she wouldn’t be awake to protect them. Most likely the Alpha was torn between the two emotions.
“The pain is getting worse,” Jacque admitted.
Alina’s lips tightened into a grim line. “And it will only continue to do so.”
Jacque let out a huff of laughter and grimaced from the pain it inflicted. “That’s what I love about you; you don’t sugar coat it. You simply tell it like it is.”
Alina smiled. “I could lie, but then I think you will handle the pain better if you are prepared for it.”
“Are you scared of him?” Jacque asked not bothering to point out the
him
she was talking about.
“Yes and no. Seeing him was such a shock, but then there was hope only to be quickly followed by despair. He has been trapped in this place for so very long, Jacque. For him to have been surrounded in this, breathing in the black magic every day, without light in his life, breaks my heart. I don’t know how much of him is left.”
“You mean how much is salvageable,” Jacque said for her. “You think he will have to be killed.”
“Yes.”
They sat quietly, staring off into the dark woods, watching shadows move that shouldn’t be moving, and hearing noises that caused goose bumps to rise on their skin. Gradually, the other women began to wake up and the groans and whimpers from the mated females was just another reminder of their dire situation.
“Any more visitations by Vasile’s long lost brother who is probably completely evil and wants to eat us?” Jen asked.
“Jen, really?” Sally said as she cut her eyes to Alina.
“I am not offended, Sally,” Alina said. “Jen’s evaluation of the situation is correct and I won’t delude myself into thinking anything else.”
“See,” Jen motioned to the Alpha, “at least one of us isn’t trying to dance around like some bat sniz crazy woman singing
I Will Survive
, when we all know that the last thing we are going to do is survive.”
“Bloody hell who crapped in your dream?” Jacque growled.
Everyone stopped moving and looked at Jacque who shrugged. “What?”
Jen laughed and then grabbed her stomach as cramps doubled her over. “I like that one wolf-princess,” her voice came out strained as she held her stomach. Cynthia knelt down beside her, instructing her to take slow deep breaths. Slowly, the cramps subsided, like they had before, only now they were happing more often.
“To answer your question, Jen,” Alina said. “He has not shown himself, but he is watching.”
“Okay that sort of creeps me out,” Crina said.
“I have to go with the Romanian on this one,” Jen agreed, “wolf form or not, I really don’t like an audience when I pee, having you all in my bathroom is bad enough.”
“I don’t know how much of the human is left, if any,” Alina told them. “If he has been in his wolf skin all this time, there is little chance that anything human in him remains.”
“So, anyone have any good news for the day, or night, or whatever the hell time it is?” Lilly asked. Surprised looks were cast her way as Lilly had been their perpetual positive force. “Hey, don’t look at me like that. I still have hope; I’m just going to be pissy while still having hope.”
“Pissy hopefulness,” Sally said. “I can see that catching on.”
“You Americans are so weird,” Crina told them as she stood and stretched out her limbs, groaning just as much as the others as the pain pulsed in her muscles.
“So what’s the plan?” Jacque asked. “Are we going to sit and stare at the forest on the left side, or are we going to stare at the right side?”
“Well, Jacque, it’s a difficult decision because they look so different,” Elle joked.
“Yes well, being a captive is hard work, but someone’s got to do it.”
“Yeah, well could we bloody hell get someone else to volunteer next time?” Jen quipped.
“Shh,” Cynthia suddenly said as she waved the others to be quiet. She pointed off to her left and they all turned in slow motion to find the white wolf lying very still, watching them.
Alina stood and walked to the furthest edge of the clearing as she dared. She knelt down and bared her neck to the wolf. When she heard a low rumbled, she sat down and then looked at him.
“Do you remember who you are Lucian?” Alina asked.
“I take it that’s his name,” Jen whispered.
Sally shushed her as she pulled Jen down to sit next to her. The others followed suit and listened as Alina spoke to the wolf.
“You are a man, not just a wolf. You have family, a brother who has mourned for you. Lucian, blink if you understand me.”
They waited with baited breath. When he blinked, there was a collective sigh and then gasps passed through the group.
“Okay, that’s a start,” she said. “Do you remember who you are?” Blink. “Do you remember your brother, Vasile?” Nothing. “Can you still take your human form?” Blink. Another round of gasps.
“Okay that’s a whole ‘nother freaking ball game Alina,” Cynthia spoke up. Alina held up a finger to silence them.
“Do you mean us harm?” Nothing. “Okay, that’s good,” she said as relief flooded her voice and body. “Will you talk to us?” Nothing.