Chapter Fourteen Vina #2
“The wild hunt’s power will help me use you,” the fae maiden confided, smiling again, the knife blade of her desperation tucked away.
She swirled the wine in her glass with her fingertip.
“I’ve gathered spirits and ghosts and witches to my service—forced them to bloodlust and hunger, without even the solstice to compel them.
The wild hunt is an old ritual and an old tale—it will feed the witches who have served me very well indeed, and feed my strength also.
When I am glutted, I will consume you—all your glistening lust, your carefully cultivated desire.
And you will perish—lovelorn, for my sake.
You will have played your role in my tale, and the Merciless Maiden will continue.
” She leaned closer. “It does not matter what ink runs in your heart,” she murmured, “if I have stolen your heart with magic.”
“I won’t agree to this,” said Vina. “I cannot agree to this.”
“You will, darling,” said Tristesse. She reached a hand out, and touched a fingertip to Vina’s lower lip.
Vina tried to wrench away—but found some kind of magic was holding her still.
“Remember what you promised Alder?” asked Tristesse. “Tell it to me.”
“I promised a debt to their blood,” Vina gritted out against the taste of ink, cold skin, understanding already filtering coldly through her.
“I am calling in my debt,” said Tristesse. Her eyes glowed golden, and in response, the geas in Vina’s blood flared to horrible life. “Love me. Adore me. Yearn for me. Be my lovelorn knight.”
The words were like hammer blows to Vina’s skull. They were already beginning to reshape her.
Vina could barely breathe. She strained against the fire, but she could not resist. She’d made a vow, after all, a fae contract. She’d made her own noose. Fool, always a fool—
Something bloodied, ink-deep, flared in her chest. She saw Simran, hood falling back, motes of fire haloing her forehead.
Blond-haired, laughing Isadora, smiling as hands—Vina’s hands—turned an arrow toward her chest. Rowan, the witch who came before Isadora, with his braid like golden autumn unraveling at his bloodied throat, his mouth twisting into a smile.
Kill me now, my love. Let’s end it again. I’ve done all I can.
In her pounding skull, Vina turned wildly to her tale—to the ink flowing through her veins, her spirit, her nature.
Help me escape, she begged it. You want to live, don’t you? You want me to love and kill for your sake, don’t you? Then help me!
It gave her the strength to wrench up from her seat, her chair falling back. She bolted.
She heard Tristesse shriek her name behind her, but it wasn’t enough to stop her.
She ran across the valley, the silvery tread of nymphs behind her, the spirits wailing in her ears.
She ran into the trees and ran straight as an arrow, her heart roaring in her chest. Turn back, turn back, you love her, beautiful Tristesse, turn back.
She pushed the voice away. Her knees buckled, and she dropped to the ground. The forest was silent now, the trees looming large. Even the birds were not singing, hushed and expectant. It was as if everything was waiting for her to yield.
She was resisting with all she had. Her stomach was roiling. But it was only a matter of time before the compulsion Tristesse had set on her won.
“It would have been quicker if you’d drunk the wine,” a voice said. “Painless, even. You’d already doomed yourself at the Queen’s ball, when you bargained with that fae. What good does it do you, knight, fighting now?”
She knew that voice.
“Assassin,” she said.
“That is only my title, not my name,” he said. “Your witch hasn’t found my answers yet, I take it.”
She turned to look at him. He was as silver as the sea.
In his right hand, he held an axe. It was similar to the one Vina had hefted in the woods at Gore, cutting through trees to escape the impact of tale-death.
Lichen edged its hilt. But the blade was the same color as moonlight, and sharp as Simran’s temper.
But Vina wasn’t afraid. His footsteps had made no sound. He had no shadow.
“You’re not really here again,” Vina observed, breathing coming short. Either she’d run faster than she was used to—unlikely—or the geas was testing her limits. “Did you bury a lock of hair in every corner of the forest, in the hope you’d be able to find incarnates?”
“I often find incarnates,” said the stranger. “But there is only one I actively hunt.”
She looked again at his axe. “I’m flattered,” she said. “I didn’t know we had that kind of relationship.”
“Not you,” he said. “You are only of consequence because you belong to her tale.”
He kneeled down. His blade moved with him, solid and menacing.
“A shame you’ve only found me, then. Simran will be so furious that she missed you,” said Vina. She was losing focus—it was growing harder to taunt him, to prod information from his unsmiling mouth.
“The witch is often furious,” said the assassin. “And her heart is more fracture than flesh.”
“You know her,” Vina guessed, leaning toward him, curiosity cutting through her pain.
“I’ve known many versions of her.”
“How many times have you met her? Have you tried to murder her before?”
“So many questions.” His lips quirked. “You always begin with a gentle, curious heart. But it hardens—calcifies. The worst of you becomes diamond hard in its brilliance: your morality, your idealism. Your belief that she cannot be enough, and you are worse for loving her. Better to die, than live so broken. Isn’t that so, knight? ”
“Well—that isn’t going to matter in a moment,” Vina forced out. “It seems as if I’m going to belong to a different tale soon enough.”
“I could release you from the fae’s grasp. Save you. For a price.” He straightened fluidly, then began to walk around her. The axe sang where it touched the ground; a slow, whining cry as the pale assassin circled her. It should have made no noise. It wasn’t here. He wasn’t here.
Vina blinked, and blinked again. Her head felt a little clearer. The pain was a muffled roar. Somehow, the sound of the axe was disrupting it.
“How kind,” Vina said, smiling—well, grimacing—through her pain. “But you’re not here. You’re a shadow. There’s little you can do.”
“Is your clear mind not proof enough of my power?”
“It’s a very fine trick,” Vina said politely. “Thank you.”
The assassin sighed. If Vina had felt a little better, she would have laughed. She could really irritate anyone if she tried.
“The fae maiden’s ritual has made the forest stranger than it is by nature,” the assassin said finally.
“It is not the solstice, but the forest behaves as if it is. It has opened a door for the living and the dead—and the ever-living, like myself—to walk without barriers. Already, the forest stretches across the Isle. With the fae’s hunt feeding more power into it, I can move wherever the forest grows. I can do as I have offered.”
“And what would I need to pay for your help, my ever-living, murderous friend?”
“I want the witch,” the pale assassin said simply. “I want her placed in my grasp. Vow to bring her to me, on your honor as a knight, and I will help you escape the geas you chose to bind yourself into.”
“Impossible.”
“All tales—and all laws of the Isle—can be broken.”
“No. That isn’t why it’s impossible.” Anger was a fine knife in Vina’s belly, stirring her. She looked the assassin square in the eyes. “There is no world where I betray her to you. None.”
“You love her already?”
“Of course not,” said Vina, even as her heart tugged at the thought of Simran’s frown, her dark hair, her bared arms. What she felt—that small ember of affection that, carefully tended, with hot breath and tender hands, could bloom miraculously into love—wasn’t yet love.
So her words were not a lie. “I barely know her. But it would be wrong to betray her to you. She has a good heart. She deserves better. Even if she were coldhearted, she’d deserve her life. ”
“Such idealism,” said the assassin. “What an excellent rock to break yourself against. Fine. I will leave you to your fate, knight.”
“Stop,” Vina said forcefully. She grabbed for his leg as he moved away, and watched her fingers pass through skin and bone as if nothing were before her at all. Still, the assassin stopped, staring down at her with his pale eyes.
“Speak,” he said.
“Is her friend, Hari, alive?”
“I made a vow,” said the assassin. “So he is.”
“Is he well?” Vina asked. Simran would want to know. When—if—Vina was able to tell her.
The assassin… paused.
“Well enough,” he said finally, a strange note to his voice. “He misses her. He misses London.”
Relief rushed through her, quickly put to rest when he said, “But my axe is sharp, knight. And it is hungry. Her friend, however beloved of her, is not my beloved. Tell her to move swiftly, if you can. Though I am not sure how much of your free will shall survive the pact you’ve made.”
He gave her a contemplative look.
“My great hope is that Lady Tristesse will accomplish what she desires to. If you become her knight, then the tale of The Knight and the Witch is dead. And my work will be done.”
She’d known he had no real desire to help her. She’d been right.
“You were testing me.”
A thin smile was his response.
“What do you gain by killing incarnates?” Vina asked, as the geas began clamoring and clanging in her head once more. “What can you possibly achieve by it?”
“The Isle must fall, knight,” said the pale assassin. “And your tale ending will lead it closer to its death.” He drew back, the night turning his moonlit form to gossamer. “Goodbye, knight. I do not wish you well; only what you deserve.”
Vina watched him go, breathing through her nose, her jaw clenched.
Two tales warred inside her. She saw Simran; felt Simran’s fingers beneath her chin, and Simran’s magic at her wrists.
She saw Tristesse, grief and fae strangeness turning her eyes to liquid pools of hunger.
Love me, love me, love. How could she not love Tristesse?
Loving the maiden was all she had ever known, and all she had ever been.
The pain—had she been in pain?—was quite gone.
She straightened up, standing, and brushed the dirt from her trousers.
She could hear her love calling for her from the valley.
Her voice was like the song of the wind through trees, more beautiful than any music.
Vina would have crawled to her on broken glass, if the maiden had asked it of her.
She’d known the minute, nay, the very second she saw her.
“Tristesse,” she called into the night. “I am coming!”
As she walked, a small voice clamored angrily at the back of her skull. But her skull and her whole body were full of a song in gold, a fae thing—and she could hear nothing beyond it. Why would she want to?