Epilogue
TORGRIN
Last winter
‘This looks like the place Tor.’ Atlas pulled on his horse’s reins, and I did the same.
We had safely brought Lord Warwick and his family to Murus a fortnight ago. After ensuring the fortress was secure, Atlas suggested looking for the woman we kept dreaming about.
In the years since pushing that girl into the river, I had felt a pull to find her. To see that she was alive with my own eyes. Atlas had dreamed of the woman riding a fierce black mare along the banks of the Red River. At the same time, I dreamed of her in a forge, hammering a glowing blade.
Once we arrived in Murus, finding out if a blacksmith had a forge on the Red River was easy. There was only one forge, and it was two days ride from Murus.
So here we were.
‘What if she’s not here? What if she never made it out of the river alive?’ I asked Atlas.
‘She is here. We are meant to find her just as we were meant to find each other. I can feel it in my bones. Fate will bring us together, whether we like it or not.’
‘Do you really believe all that?’ Despite the dreams, I still found it hard to believe.
‘Yes,’ Atlas said firmly.
I dismounted and walked towards the forge, where a white-haired man was sharpening a sword on a spinning stone wheel.
‘What are you going to say to him?’ Atlas asked, matching his strides with mine. ‘Maybe, “Is the girl we pushed in the river ten years ago living here?”’ He chuckled. ‘Or, “Have you seen our dream girl?”’
The scraping sound of stone against metal halted as the white-haired man abruptly stood.
‘What are you doing here?’ he snarled, coming out of the forge with a sword in his grip.
Fuck. I flung out a hand to halt Atlas. This could turn bad.
‘I know why you’re here, and you can tell King Hared he can’t have her!’
‘We aren’t royal soldiers. See?’ Atlas turned slightly so the man could see there was no royal emblem on his red cape.
‘Don’t lie!’ The white-haired man lunged at us, only to trip and almost fall on the sword he had been working on.
Springing forward, I caught him by the upper arm before he impaled himself.
He scowled as he regained his footing, then a moment later his face smoothed as if nothing had happened.
‘Can I help you?’ He smiled.
Atlas and I exchanged a look. This man was unwell.
‘You are the Red River blacksmith?’ I asked him.
‘Yes.’ He smiled again, holding up the sword for me to inspect. ‘See this?’ The white-haired man pointed to the hilt of the blade. ‘There are two Little Worms.’
Two ridged lines entwined to form the base of the hilt.
‘It’s a well-made sword,’ I told him.
He lowered the sword with a frown. ‘This sword is not for sale. I made this for Little Worm, so she knows she is not alone when I’m gone,’ he said firmly.
‘Is she here?’ I asked, wondering if this Little Worm was the woman we had come here to meet.
‘She’s down by the river,’ he murmured, walking back to the forge and returning to his seat at the stone wheel. His foot tapped the stone grinder’s pedal, and the sound of scraping metal began again.
‘Little Worm?’ Atlas raised a brow.
I shrugged. It was an odd nickname.
‘He’s short a few coins, isn’t he?’ Atlas murmured.
‘Let’s see if she’s at the river.’ We left our horses hitched to a post and walked towards the riverbank. The sound of rushing water reached us first.
‘There!’ Atlas pointed upstream where a black mare stood almost eighteen hands high. I turned in that direction, searching the bank for the woman.
‘Hellfire!’ Atlas hissed before dragging me behind a large boulder. ‘It’s her, and she’s in the water.’
In the water? I peered around the rock and looked to the water where the large black mare stood sentinel.
She was bathing alone in the river. I felt a tingle in my fingers as I watched her run a bar of soap along her pale, muscular arms.
It was her.
She had golden hair and a sprinkling of freckles on her nose – just like in my dreams. Her long lashes lifted, revealing a hint of sadness in her grey eyes.
‘Tor.’ Atlas pulled at my arm.
The water only reached her waist, and rosy-tipped nipples peeked between the golden strands of her long hair. I shouldn’t have been watching her bathe, but I had yearned to see her for so long that I couldn’t bring myself to look away.
‘Torgrin …’ Atlas hissed, trying not to be heard.
Frowning, she tipped her head upwards. Where there had been blue sky and the scorching Pedion sun, now dark clouds gathered ominously above her.
Did she dream about us? Was the confused blacksmith her father?
‘Torgrin, your hands!’
I looked at my hands and saw flickers of light sparking between my fingers.
‘Hellfire! Your eyes are glowing,’ Atlas gasped out when I looked up at him.
Fuck. It was happening again. Seeing her unlocked my feelings and, with them, my power.
Atlas reached out to the light coming from my fingertips as if enthralled.
‘Don’t touch me!’ A clap of thunder punctuated my words, and rain poured down on us.
‘We should go,’ Atlas shouted over the rain.
We ran to where we had left our horses. The old, white-haired blacksmith was no longer at the wheel, perhaps taking refuge from the deluge in the cottage behind the forge.
‘Can you ride?’ Atlas’s concerned face peered at me through the rain.
‘Give me a minute.’ I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, reaching for the numbness I used to keep myself in check. I opened my eyes and looked at my hands.
They were back to normal.
Not waiting a second longer, I mounted my horse and galloped away from the river, away from the sight of the woman who had caused me to lose control for the first time since I was a boy living in Ephemeros.
‘What in damnation was that, Tor?’
If fate was going to keep drawing me to her, I was fucked.
‘Atlas, if that ever happens again, you must hit me. You need to hit me hard enough to stop me,’ I yelled over the rain.
‘Stop you? Stop you from doing what?’ he shouted back, trying to keep up with me as I put as much distance as I could between the woman and myself.
‘Stop me from killing her.’