26. Fell

26

Fell

I FELT HER. I FELT THAT THREAD CONNECTING US, PULLING tight on the air, taut as a wire on the verge of snapping, but somehow managing to keep us tethered.

The woods had become nearly impassable, so we walked single file, one after another, like a row of prisoners steadily working toward our fate.

It was late afternoon, the day not faded. And yet the sun could not reach the forest floor. Ribbons of dim light filtered down, allowing only faint illumination. It felt like dusk, solemn and gray, even though that was hours away.

"Fell," Mari whispered hoarsely, as though she was parched, even though she carried a waterskin at her side. It was hard work forging through the endless copse.

"We've gone too far."

Too far.

I had a flash of Tamsyn. Arkin's smoking remains. The dragon.

We had passed the point of "too far" long ago.

Ignoring her, I pressed on through the dense undergrowth. I couldn't explain it. Mari wouldn't understand. I didn't understand it. She and the others would think I had lost my mind. And trying to make them understand would only be a waste of valuable time. Time that should be spent hunting, searching, finding Tamsyn.

The terrain became only more difficult. A wild tangle of trees and brush and foliage with great hanging drapes of moss nearly impossible to penetrate.

The forest crackled and pulsed and breathed, tracking us with watchful eyes. The air that filled my lungs smelled pungent—of ancient trees and decay, of musk and sulfur.

"So this is a bad idea, right?" Magnus muttered between panted breaths, more of a statement than a question.

He was not wrong. We were deep in the skog, deep in a marsh where we never ventured, a place we always avoided, but here I was, my palm alive and buzzing like a bee, guiding me, pulling me on.

I had traveled extensively through Penterra, but never directly into the skog. I had braved the edges before, toed the perimeter, but never the interior. Never had I gone into the belly of the beast.

Protecting the Borderlands was all about risk. No way around it. Every day there was some manner of challenge. Invaders from the north. Brigands from the north, the south. Brigands from the west, the east. The end of the Threshing had not been the end of conflict.

But this? Venturing into the skog was not the kind of risk I ever took. There was nothing needed in these dark, smothering woods. Nothing I needed to protect. Nothing I needed to claim.

Until now.

It was one of the few places left thoroughly untouched. The same as it was hundreds of years ago. A thousand years ago.

A perpetual night wood, deadly and magical, full of sounds that spit and hissed, tormented and beguiled. A living, breathing creature. A monster with fangs and claws that reached out and grabbed anyone who drew too close. Those who were foolish enough, unlucky enough to enter, were never sighted again. At least that was the rumor. And was there not always some fraction of truth to rumors?

But she was mine. My wife. My responsibility.

I still felt her heartbeat in the cup of my hand. In me. I glanced down, as though I could see through the leather of my glove to the vibrating mark there. It was as though she had entered me through that wound as we stood in that chapel. A part of her lived in me now.

And as long as she lived, there was hope.

As long as there was hope, I would not abandon her.

I glanced back at my faithful companions. They didn't have to die. They could still turn around and leave these plagued woods.

Stopping, I turned to face them. "You can go." They should go.

Mari frowned.

Behind her, Magnus blew out a heavy breath. "Oh, thank fuck." He started to turn. "Let's get out of here."

"You misunderstood. I'm staying. You all go on without me." It was fair. The right thing to do. My wife. My fight.

Mari shook her head, eyes wide. "Leave you?"

Magnus faced forward again, his jaw locking hard with determination. "Sorry. We can't do that."

Vidar called from behind Magnus, his voice a loud whisper, as though he feared being overheard. "We don't even know what we're fighting here, but we're not leaving you to it, my lord. Not alone." Vidar thumbed the edge of his sword. "Can't abandon you. This forest isn't a good place."

Magnus sent Vidar an annoyed look. "Really?"

Vidar missed his sarcasm. He was a deadly fighter and the only warrior to stand taller than me, but he didn't possess the keenest mind. "We're in the skog, lure to any huldras living here." He shivered dramatically. "I hear they like to collect cocks and fashion them into ear baubles."

"Stop it," Mari snapped. "You don't know that. Those are just stories."

"No one who comes this far into the skog lives to tell the tale," Vidar insisted, looking around at the forest, which seemed to swell and grow with every passing moment.

"Then how does anyone know anything about a huldra here?" Mari gave a disgusted grunt and an eye roll. "Someone would have had to see one."

I scowled, beyond arguing with them. "You all go. Now."

"We're staying with you." Mari shot the other two warriors quelling glances, daring them to contradict her.

They squared their shoulders and nodded resolutely. They were no cowards. True, this place affected them and got beneath their skin in a way no army of seasoned soldiers ever had, but they were still trained warriors from the Borderlands. As far as I was concerned, that made them better than everyone else.

Magnus cocked his head. "You hear that?"

"I don't hear anything," Mari snapped.

"Exactly," Magnus returned with great satisfaction.

Mari fell still and listened.

So did I. Magnus was not wrong. It was too quiet. I couldn't recall the last time I had heard a magpie or the chitter of an animal chasing through the underbrush. Even the wind was silent, not a rustle through the trees. Not a leaf stirred. The calm was complete, absolute, a dead space where things held themselves still, lying in wait, predators in the grass.

I pushed on, using my sword to hack at the ever-encroaching brush, filling the silence. It was arduous work. As soon as I forged a path, cutting down thicket, more grew in its place.

The three warriors followed me. Trustingly. Into every fray, every abyss. Why would this be any different?

I wondered how trusting they would be if they knew I was led by some inexplicable insight, a knowing. That the fizzing X carved into my flesh compelled and guided me.

I did not leave the City the same man who had arrived at its gates. I had not felt the same since I married Tamsyn. Since I stood at that altar and clasped her bleeding palm to mine. She was another piece, another jagged shape that fit and locked into place against me. Tamsyn.

That's how I knew she was alive. And how I would find her.

I WAS ACCUSTOMED to the fog and mist in the Borderlands. It was part of the territory. Natural. Necessary. As integral as the air itself. There was my skin and blood and bone and... fog.

But this fog? It wasn't right.

It was different.

The forest was bathed in a red miasma. As though a hand had waved over the land and washed it in blood.

"What the fuck is this?" Vidar panted from the back, bringing up the rear. "Is the forest on fire?"

The air was painted with a red vapor. Odorless and silky smooth on my skin as we pushed through the tangle of woods, the red casting our faces in a hellish glow.

"Not fire." I hacked a thick branch out of the way with my sword.

The green world looked almost black within the haze, like blood sliding over everything, slipping inside every crevice and crack.

The trees began to thin away, no longer touching, no longer crowding close. They stood spaced apart like sentries on vigil, keeping in as much as they kept out.

I lowered my sword, less cutting and whacking required. Even though we could finally stand side by side, I led the way, stepping out into a little meadow.

I was the first one to see her.

The first one she spoke to in a molten voice, a caress sliding over my skin, wrapping around my throat, sliding down... taking me by the cock and leading me forward.

"Well, hello. I thought you would never get here."

IT WAS SOMETHING out of a fever dream. A wine-soaked dusk. A blurred, red-infused illusion.

I felt fuzzy-headed, swaddled in cotton. Pleasantly so. My thoughts were muddled, as though I had consumed one too many mugs of ale, which was... different.

Spirits never affected me. I could drink all day, all night, and never feel the least bit intoxicated. It was unusual. I had even put it to the test before, trying to get drunk one of those nights when the ache went deep and the losses were keen and we had suffered the death of one too many and the hunger for oblivion clamored deep within me.

I had watched others become stupid drunk, unstable on their feet, loud and giddy and not themselves as they succeeded in numbing their pain. Not me. Never me.

Until now.

Mari, Magnus, and Vidar stumbled around behind me like silly children, their laughter and voices tinny and distant in my ears.

A figure emerged through the red. A woman. She materialized like smoke... something from nothing, moving slowly, seductively, languorously, weaving like a ribbon threading through the trees—except when she did not. Except when she moved quickly, like a dart launched, an arrow released, flying from one point to the next in a rushing blur, a swift stroke of paint slashing across the crimson-drenched air.

She was an enticement of curves: breasts full and juicy, as tumescent as melons on the vine and visible beneath sheer fabric; her nipples dusky points brushing hypnotically against wafer-thin material.

Blood rushed to my cock.

"I've been waiting for you, my love..."

As tantalizing as the sight of her was... it was her voice that undid me, flowing like sweet wine, dripping thick and syrupy on the air. The sound ran down my throat, settling warm and viscous inside my belly and then winding even lower.

Her face was as hazy as the atmosphere. A watercolor in progress, an unfinished painting, the promise of beauty and euphoria there... shifting, flashing, blurring beneath the red veil that covered everything.

She continued to speak in that captivating voice, her beguiling words wrapping around me. My love. Sweetheart. Come to me. Hold me.

I stepped closer, obeying, and her face snapped into focus... sucking the breath right out of me.

Tamsyn.

Tamsyn as I had never seen her before. Her fiery hair loose, a nimbus of flame around her head, tumbling down her shoulders. Her eyes bigger, brighter. Her lips more luscious... Her body ripe, her skin glowing opalescent in the ruby glow, begging for my hands, my lips, my tongue.

She beckoned for me with slender hands, and I came, most willingly, readily, catching her up in my arms. I buried my face in her hair with a groan.

"My love," she purred, her delicious fingers in my hair, delicate nails scraping down my throat, chest, back, everywhere, all at once.

I felt her against me, all over, impossibly. But I did not stop to consider impossibilities. I did not question the sudden appearance of her here, like this; the crimson air flowing over us like an ocean wave, engulfing me, sweeping me into its endless depths.

There was only this. Now. What I saw. What I felt. What I needed.

Nothing impossible here. Only Tamsyn.

I pulled back, and then I was tasting her, her candied lips on mine, her honey tongue in my mouth.

She moaned into me, her words against me, around me. Near. Far. Everywhere.

The sound of her voice echoed and reverberated all around me. My love. I need you. You need me. You. Need. Me.

Her words started in my ears, and then poured into my blood, burrowing into my bones, pooling in my marrow, my soul.

I was drunk with it. Drunk with her.

You need me you need me you need me you need me you need me you need me you need me you need me you need me you need me you need me you need me you need me you need me you need me you need me.

She was not wrong. I needed her.

I was panting. Reaching for her, desperate to haul her closer and bring her inside me.

She shifted away but did not break contact. Her fingers stroked my cheek, her smile for me alone even as she made room for the others, greeting Mari and Magnus and Vidar as they came at her like ravenous wolves, their eyes glazed, charged, intoxicated by her.

They leaned into her, desperate and starving, taking her with their hands and mouths, and she devoured them right back.

She kept that hand on my face, her fingers a lifeline, a tether, and I watched, too befuddled to do anything except arch into her touch, soaking it in, absorbing everything about her that I could as she kissed Mari, then Magnus... encouraging Vidar to drop to his knees and seize her hips, nuzzling his big face against her belly.

Something dark and hostile stirred beneath the pleasing fog, beneath my buzzing, humming lust, cutting through the fizz in my blood. A growl rumbled up from my chest.

Tamsyn's bright-eyed gaze locked on me, and dimly I thought her eyes were not quite right. The amber not quite the correct shade. There was something black and gleaming beneath the usual fiery glow. Black and deep as a tar pit, something that sucked you in and never let you out.

Her face flickered then, went in and out like a guttering candle flame fighting for air. In that brief struggle... a hint of something else, someone else glimmered beneath her features before her familiar countenance took hold again.

I scrubbed a knuckle against one eye, trying to clear my vision. When I looked again, it was Tamsyn.

Achingly beautiful Tamsyn.

I didn't know what I had seen in that blink of a moment, but it was her again now, tenderly stroking my face, kissing my warriors, letting them touch her everywhere even as she reached for me, pulling me in closer, her hand leaving my face and sliding down my chest, her sweet words both soothing and thrilling. I am yours. You are mine.

Magnus's hand went to her breast, and something revived in me. Growling and snarling, I shoved him away. I shoved them all away. Standing in front of her, chest heaving, I glowered at them as I lifted my sword, murder in my heart.

She made a tsking sound, her hands coming up to my shoulders. "Come now, my love, none of that. There is more than enough of me for everyone." The seductive purr of her voice wrapped me in its fold like a warm blanket, softening me, dousing my wrath and binding me to her will.

Frozen, I could only watch her as she dropped down onto her knees before me, her hands reaching for my belt. Her words breathed ice over my fevered flesh. I am yours. You are mine.