Chapter 30
All I needed was a half decent sleep to push through this next bit of adventure.
And in Veyyr’s arms, I was as safe as I was going to be on these islands. I let the fog roll over me, crashing into oblivion as Veyyr stepped off the bridge and fully onto Zane’s island.
There were no nightmares, no drifting through the past, no memories stirring underneath the rest I so desperately needed. I slept with Sorrow in my arms, Veyyr watching over me, the bond there, quiet, content.
Woke to the two men talking about me. Woke to the realization that my clothes, skin, and hair were clean, blessedly clean.
Whatever magic had done that, I was beyond grateful. If I was going to die, it would be nice not to do it smelling like thryx intestines and wearing several types of blood.
“You cannot believe she will heal that quickly, Veyyr,” Zane said with that drawl of his. “Even a witch who had taken Lianne’s brew would be a week or better to bounce back.”
“What do you remember of your childhood, Zane?”
Veyyr’s question went straight to the heart of it—Zane’s past and mine were intertwined.
“What has that got to do with the girl’s ability to…” He trailed off and there was a clink of something being dropped—like a cup to a table. I stay curled around Sorrow, the bird’s wings acting like a blanket spread out across me. I kept my eyes closed and my breathing slow.
Hands drifted close and I thought Sorrow would have stabbed him with his beak, but he let Zane touch my face. “It’s not…” he said a name, but it was static in my ears.
“No. Her daughter.”
The hands softened, brushing my hair back, even as Sorrow clucked and chuckled as if…as if he liked Zane. “Impossible. She died…I felt her disappear, felt her shatter across the Veil.”
Was I dead? I’d fucking died? Holding still took everything I had, because I had little doubt these two would clam up when they realized that I was awake.
“Well despite the obvious, she did not die,” Veyyr said.
“It’s a long story but she isn’t…it’s like whatever happened, when she crawled out of the Rift, she got a chance to start over.
Skills intact somehow. That ring on her finger.
No memory. So yes, I suppose in a way she did die. Her former self gone.”
Zane’s hand went to mine and he picked up my left hand with the ring. He spun it slowly, looking at the numbers etched into it no doubt. “No memory at all?”
“Here and there, something will pop up, but she’s gotten very little in the time she’s been with me.
More emotions than anything else, and whatever was done to her, you could speak her mother’s name and she’d hear nothing.
Same with her own. The only reason she will be able to hang onto who you are now is that you are no longer just a memory. You are current.”
Zane didn’t let go of my hand, his fingers pressing the tips of his, into the tips of mine, as if counting each one before trailing across my palm to my wrist. “I was very young when I was taken for training. I always thought I’d go back to them.”
Veyyr sighed, the sound heavy and sorrow filled. “We all thought that, Zane.”
“Does she understand who she is?” Zane asked, his touch warm, an easy thing to focus on.
“You can let go of her now.”
Zane snorted, but he did not let go. “And what happens when she finds out that Thorn is the one who did this to her? Her magic is deep in the ring, you know that.”
“She knows Thorn did this. That is one of her few memories, when she was attacked by her, the ground opened and Mallory fell in. Now let her go.”
Sorrow pecked at my head and I agreed. It was time to ‘wake up.’
“You two could give a saint a headache with your grumping.” I yawned, my jaw cracking.
Two sets of blue eyes turned on me. One ice, one ocean. “Faker.” Zane laughed. “How much did you hear?”
Veyyr’s eyes narrowed.
“Around abouts the argument of how long it would take for me to heal.” I yawned again and took in the room.
Stone walls and wood beams above my head, stained glass window that had no characters in them, just scenery. Mountains in one, the ocean in another, a desert land in a third and the fourth looked like a night scene with stars scattered throughout.
All around the room had a feel of comfort, despite the stone walls. Thick cushions, long wall curtains in some places, so many candles the place would have burned down if not for being mostly stone.
A fireplace across from us crackling, throwing heat and sparks across the stone.
Like the whole place had been pulled out of the past, and plunked down here, on an island surrounded by Undines and witches. It made me wonder for just a moment, if Zane was a prince trapped, or cursed.
I pulled the thick blanket around me, not because I was cold, but the smell tugged at my nose and drew me to it.
Tucking my face into the thick folds, I realized it was Zane I was scenting.
How did one smell like the heat on your tongue, the burn of something sweet and fiery? I held it in the back of my throat; let it settle into me. So different than the ice that rolled between Veyyr and I.
I realized what I was doing when I flicked my eyes up to see both men watching me, their eyebrows raised as I fucking huffed the blanket up my nose.
I flushed, pulled the blanket away from my face and sniffed the air instead, anything to change the moment to one less…intimate.
What reached me was nothing short of heaven.
Bread, fresh fucking bread and a roasted chicken sat across from me on a long table. The feast—at least a feast to my eyes—was tucked behind Zane where he sat on a long bench.
Pity for him, I was moving before Zane fully got out of the way and all but climbed over him to get to the food.
Zane grunted and laughed as he slid out of my way, down the bench. “Well, this is not any different than what I remember.”
In my head I understood the hunger had to do with my father’s bloodline—the wolf in me would survive and heal, but I had to feed my body.
Now.
I slathered the slice of bread in butter and stuffed the whole piece into my mouth. My mouth flooded with saliva and I groaned. “Did you bake this?” Is what I tried to say around the mouthful.
“If you mean me, no.” Zane stood and moved so that he sat across from me at the large table. With the cloak off I thought I might see his face and remember who he was, like I’d remembered my father.
Zane shook his head. “You don’t look—”
I held up the ring. “Spellbound. Apparently. If I could get it off, maybe I’d look like me, but I don’t know what that would even be.”
Black hair with red streaks, I did suspect that much.
“Perhaps this is an improvement.” He drawled.
My jaw dropped and I threw the cup closest to me at his head on reflex. He caught it, laughing. “See, doesn’t matter what you look like, nothing has changed.”
“What you were always a dick to me?” I stuffed another bite of butter slathered bread into my mouth and went for a slice of roast chicken next—or what I assumed was beef, it could have been camel for all I knew. I sliced a hunk off and stuffed it into my mouth.
He grinned, his smile easy, open, his eyes watchful. There was depth in him, but he hid it behind the openness. How did I know that?
“Maybe not always.”
My belly growled and I kept eating, focused on refueling.
“You know your father was a shifter?” Zane asked.
I swallowed hard. “Yes.”
“I don’t believe you can shift, unless that changed somewhere after I left.
But some of the same rules apply—fast healing, needing fuel more than others after an injury.
You’re stronger, faster, the usual.” Zane leaned back in his chair, his face somewhat hidden in the shadows.
He scratched at one ear, his eyes thoughtful.
“She really is the best one you could have brought with you, Veyyr. I’m just surprised you didn’t kill her outright. ”
“Didn’t recognize her for the first twenty-four hours,” Veyyr took a drink from a goblet. “Otherwise, I likely would have.”
Then the two fuckers laughed. Like old chums. Like Veyyr hadn’t just said he’d have killed me if he’d known who I was.
“Tried,” I said and they both looked at me. I popped a piece of cheese in my mouth and spoke around it. “You would have tried.”
Zane grinned, a wide smile across his face, flashing white teeth. “That’s a good point she makes, Veyyr.” His nose had been broken at one point and set a bit crooked and that made me wonder because it tickled at the back of my head…. “Did I break your nose?”
He burst out laughing. “No, no you did not. But lovely that your first thought of me was that you might have broken my nose.”
I shrugged. “I’ve been ignoring the fact that I have no past, it’s been easier until now.
You showing up, at a juncture where death waits on one side, and slavery on the other, and a slim chance of success as the beacon of hope…
is not lost on me. I am trying to understand where I fit in this. Where you fit.”
Zane’s eyes softened, understanding flickering through them. “You are not the same, Mallory. I do not think you should be trying to fit anyone or anything.”
The moment stretched, almost as if there was nothing else but he and I, and this candlelit room.
Veyyr spoke, breaking whatever spell had begun to spin. “I broke his nose. We trained together for a few years.”
That was more than I expected to get from him, closed off as he was about his own past. “You both trained with…her?”
I didn’t think using Thorn’s name was smart when she was supposedly getting close to finding us. Maybe I was being paranoid, but I’d rather be paranoid and alive, than cocky and facing Thorn.
Zane and Veyyr shared a long look, and it was Zane who answered with whatever unspoken agreement they came to. “For a short time, we both trained with her, though my decision to train with her was a choice that I very nearly died for—Veyyr…had less choice than I in who he mentored with.”
My eyes widened. “You chose to train with her?”