19. Tamsyn
19
Tamsyn
T HERE WAS SOMETHING DIFFERENT IN THE AIR WHEN I woke. A quality that had not been there before. A crisp newness. Except that was wrong. This world, this wild country teeming with life and magic had been here long before I was born, long before my parents—whoever they were—drew breath. There was nothing new about any of it. It was ancient, primeval, still humming with the echo of dragon wings and spells cast into the ether.
I was the new . A stranger entering the cool, mist-shrouded morning with eyes blinking like an infant against an unfamiliar world.
I was alone in the furs, my body warm, muscles relaxed. A boneless, sinking weight.
I had slept hard. A dreamless slumber. Fell was gone, but he had stayed most of the night with me. I knew that without owning the memory. His scent remained, clinging, wrapped up in the bedding, in me. I felt him still, that big body folded around mine, his warmth lingering, the echo of his black opal a nourishing stamp on my skin.
I gazed up at the canvas of the tent, the sifting shadows. The faint stirrings of the world outside alerted me to the fact that I was not the only one awake and that I needed to rejoin the land of the living—the party of warriors who thought me weak and in need of coddling, who looked at me as though I were a ghost among them, someone already gone. They did not expect me to endure.
Shaking my head, I moved briskly, reapplying the salve to my skin, although I hardly felt a need for it anymore. Thora had instructed me to do so, and I felt compelled to oblige her. Dressed, hair braided once again, I emerged from the tent, revitalized, to face the day.
Warriors were packing up in the predawn. As soon as I stepped outside, they moved in and started working to disassemble the tent.
Mari appeared, waving me to one of the few remaining fires with her usual efficient manner. "Come. Eat."
I motioned to the tree line. "I need a moment first."
She nodded. "Don't stray far." Rotating back around, she returned to the fire and tea brewing there.
Another quick scan failed to reveal Fell. He must be with the horses, watering them for the day's ride.
I felt eyes on me, smug and knowing, and was glad to escape them as I slipped inside the cover of the woods. Embarrassment slithered through me. While everyone slept out here on their bedrolls on the hard ground, we'd enjoyed the comfort and privacy of our tent.
I moved into the crush of soaring trees. My head fell back, looking up, searching for where they finished. The branches came together in the sky, tangling into a high canopy that blocked out the rising sun. Only patches of soft gray reached the forest floor.
The only time I'd departed the palace was in the company of a full retinue, and only then was it to travel to the most civilized of places, taking the smoothest, most well-traveled paths. This was a strange and mysterious place. Ageless. Magic hummed and throbbed in its bones. The dragons were long gone, but the land had not forgotten them.
I felt my solitude keenly as I walked through knee-high ferns and grass, dragging fingertips over the scratchy bark of a tree five times the width of me. I thought of Mari's warning not to stray far, but I could not stop my legs from carrying me into the lush morning, through the dewy air, which pulsed and enveloped me like a second skin.
All of this had been kept from me while I had been cloistered away in lifeless stone walls. While I had lived overlooking a crowded city, miles away from land this wild, this free, where magic hid from those who sought to destroy it.
I felt alive.
I lifted my face to the mist, my faithful companion of late, inhaling the clean sweetness of it, tasting the new day in its fold. Birds shrilled, and I peered into the high branches, discerning a white bird, stark against so much green. I wondered how it survived, standing out so dramatically against its surroundings.
It cocked its head, turning an inquisitive pale blue eye on me, studying me unblinkingly for a long time. I wondered what it saw in me.
At last it turned, presenting a profusion of tail feathers. There, amid the abundant plumage, a needlelike stinger vibrated a warning. I blinked at that danger swathed in so much beauty.
The wild creature pushed off the branch into flight. I admired the span of its stretched wings gliding on the wind... envying such freedom as it disappeared from sight. The display reinforced how little I knew of this world beyond the safe, tidy corner of Penterra I'd left behind.
An eerie trill sounded from the distant woods. It was something different, unknown. Vaguely... human. I turned in that direction. Who knew what manner of beasts lurked in this forest? I thought of the huldras and jerked to a stop, listening for it again.
I knew I should return to camp, but when the cry did not come again, I threaded my way between the towering trees as the gray morning slid into a soft pink. Muted ribbons of light filtered down, dappling my skin as I went deeper into the forest.
Long drapes of moss sagged from lofty branches. It was a wondrous thing. Otherworldly. I passed in and out of the curtains of green, smiling to myself, imagining I was as free as that bird.
My fingers closed around one skein of moss, pulling the gossamer-soft length aside so that I could step ahead—only to reveal the man waiting there for me.
"Oh! You startled me." I staggered back and flattened a hand over my suddenly pounding heart. I willed it to slow and steady.
He was no brigand. No foe. Arkin was one of my husband's most trusted men. And yet I could not feel at ease before him, this warrior whose eyes looked upon me with such coldness. Such hate.
"Oh," he echoed, the word full of mockery.
"I was just heading back to camp." I motioned vaguely behind me.
"You're going in the wrong direction."
I nodded nervously and turned in the correct direction, suddenly eager for the protection of Fell and Mari and the other warriors, but then he was there again, moving to block me, not letting me pass.
He angled his head sharply. "I warned you. The crossing isn't for the weak." He swept his gaze around us then, at the dense green pressing in so thickly. "You should not have strayed this far."
I met his mean little eyes with a lift of my chin. "I am not weak."
"So brave, eh?" he mused, scratching the pale skin above his beard in long, curling strokes. "But I know what you really are."
"And what is that?"
"There is nothing brave about you." His gaze flicked over me in contempt. "Once a whipping girl... always. You're not fit to be Lady of the Borderlands."
Holding his stare, my stomach soured. A telling nerve twitched at my temple, and I resisted rubbing it into submission. I knew when a blow was coming. The lord chamberlain had trained me well. It was my gift. My curse. I could read the hunger for violence in a man's expression.
My wide eyes ached in my face, unblinking, anticipating. "You think Lord Dryhten will approve if you harm me?" It was a gamble. I didn't know my husband that well yet. He was cold and stoic, but I felt safe with him. I didn't think he would want this. I didn't think he would do this.
"Who says he will ever know?" He smiled then, a chilling, humorless grin that cut through his grizzly beard and filled me with dread. "There are many dangerous things in these woods."
I clung to bravado. It was all I had. "Fell does not strike me as a man easily fooled."
"Oh, I don't know about that. You seem to have made quite the fool of him."
I shook my head, insisting, "He will know. And he will make you pay." I wanted to believe this was true, but more important, I needed for this man to believe it true.
"This is what is best. For him. For all of us. Now." He clapped his hands together jarringly, and his smile faded. "I will give you a head start."
I gulped, panic swelling, rising up in my throat to choke me.
"Go on," he prompted. "Run."
That look in his eyes. I knew it. Knew his foul intent.
Arkin had followed me into the woods to do more than harm me. He was here to make certain I never came back out.
"I'm a sporting man," he continued. "I'll count to three. One—"
With a swift breath, I spun and fled, darting through the trees. Blood rushed to every limb as my fingers clawed, ripping through sheets of moss.
He gave chase, his breath crashing on the air after me. Not from exertion. It was the thrill of the hunt taking him. He was older, twice my age, but strong, his warrior body well honed and accustomed to this kind of sport.
He was the predator and I his quarry.
Fear flooded me as my legs pumped, carrying me deeper into the woods. I was too loud, panting, tearing through the brush like a wild animal. Desperate. There was no hope of losing him. I knew it. Knew how this game would end.
My chest tightened, the pressure building there, coiling, hurting. I gasped at the pain of it, but there was no time for pain. My head whipped from side to side, trying to decide where to go. What to do.
Fire blazed through my veins. My skin snapped, heated. A fever rushed to my face, reaching the tops of my ears. Tears blurred my vision. I had no idea which direction to turn, which way to the camp. I was lost.
Fell.
The thought of him burned through me. I willed him to appear, to help me. Perhaps Arkin was right. Maybe Fell would be glad to be rid of the wife forced on him through lies and trickery. Just as soon as the thought entered my mind, I rejected it with a fresh sob. No. If Fell wished to be rid of me, it wouldn't be like this. It wouldn't be through my execution. He wouldn't have sicced his man on me.
It didn't matter, though. He was not coming. No one was.
The only person who could help me... was me.
Arkin tackled me. I screamed as I was flipped over onto my back. He pinned me beneath his suffocating weight, glaring down at me, triumph gleaming in his eyes. My chest pulled and clenched. I fought through the pain of it, slapping and clawing and punching at the hateful face above me. I fought as I never had. As the whipping girl never could. And still it was not enough. I could not break free. Could not escape him.
He overpowered my efforts, forcing my arms to my sides, jamming them down and trapping them with his knees. His hands went for my neck, hard fingers circling, squeezing. My throat ached for air beneath his crushing grip. Awful sputtering sounds spit from my lips. Spots filled my vision, distorting his terrible face.
No. No. No. No. I was not ready to die. Not yet. Not like this.
The heat continued to course through me. My head throbbed, and a buzzing pealed in my ears. Deep vibrations started in my chest. Tears filled my eyes, rolling freely down my hot face, hissing on my suddenly sizzling cheeks. Steam rose from me... and I didn't understand it. Somehow there was smoke coming off me.
My once muddled vision cleared. Focused.
I could see as I never had before. Colors were brighter. Sharper. Every nuance improved, refined. I could count his pores, the fine hairs on his bulbous nose, minuscule crumbs from his breakfast in his coarse beard.
My core purred, simmered, flared through me in a wave of wildfire impossible to contain.
Arkin swore and yanked back his hands, gaping at his bubbling, blistered palms. "What did you do to me, you little bitch?" He fell off me and staggered to his feet, looking from his scalded hands to me in fury.
I shook my head, bewildered, as a seething vapor ate up my throat... as my bones pulled, my muscles stretched, my back tingled.
I continued to burn, to smoke.
Arkin unsheathed his sword. "What the fuck are you?"
I held up a hand as though to ward him off and gasped at the sight of my skin. My hand rippled and winked red-gold.
His eyes widened, and he lifted the sword higher with a battle cry.
"No!" I shouted, but it wasn't my voice anymore. The word was thick, garbled by smolder and ash in my mouth. I shook my head, watching in horror as he charged me, his blade glinting.
My body burst. Ripped free of my clothes in a blinding flash of light.
Shock crossed his face as he brought his sword down, descending toward me for a deathblow.
I inhaled deep from within my contracting lungs and blew out a river of flame.
Arkin was right. There were many dangerous things in these woods.
I just never realized that I could be one of them.