Chapter Sixteen Vina
Chapter Sixteen
Vina
Incarnate tales linger over the power of kisses.
A parent kissing their child good night, or a sibling placing a kiss-wrought blessing on their kin’s brow, are familiar tale-matter.
A kiss to the cheek can break a spell just as well as any ardor-fueled kiss to the lips between lovers.
But the kisses of true love, of desire—these kisses are the ones with the greatest tale-born strength.
None of us, after all, can resist the allure of a love story.
Source: Transcription of lecture by Mr. Cillian Ferrers, Corpus Christi College, Oxford
Archivist’s Ruling: Preserve. Publication permitted. No further action required.
She’d been in a haze of yearning. Loving Tristesse had been all-consuming.
Everything in her had yearned for the fae maiden, for her approval and her touch.
The fact that Tristesse had barely touched her had only made the desire sharper.
She had seen nothing but Tristesse, and thought of nothing but Tristesse.
When the fae had told her to kill Simran, it had been so easy to agree.
Necessary even. Tristesse’s wants had been far more important to her than her own.
Loving Tristesse had been false.
Kissing Simran was sharply, achingly real.
Simran was warm in her arms, her lips soft.
Her hair under Vina’s hands was silk. She smelled of smoke and sweat and of herself—of skin, heat, the promise of velvet under Vina’s mouth.
Simran gasped against her mouth as their lips parted for a brief heartbeat.
They met again like the tide touching the shore.
Vina wrenched herself back with a ragged gasp of her own. They both stepped back. Stared at one another.
“I’m me,” Vina blurted out. “And—I am sorry.”
All she wanted was to lean forward, press their mouths together again, to kiss Simran and taste Simran and kiss her some more until time was worn smooth, obliterated.
The want was vast, but it had no place here.
Simran had drawn on their shared tale. That had been their first fated meeting, the first steps of their story.
And now Vina felt like herself again. Tired, and furious, her head clear and her thoughts a swarm.
Inside her chest, the blood-ink tale of The Knight and the Witch held steady.
Vina was the knight again, and the woman in front of her was her destined other half, the only one she’d love and the only one she’d kill.
Tristesse’s thrall on her was broken. The tale of the Merciless Maiden was shattered once more. In Simran’s arms, Vina had been the knight, and she had kissed Simran as the knight.
As Simran had kissed her as the witch.
Vina resisted the urge to touch a hand to her own mouth. Her lips were sore. Simran had turned a little, face in profile. She had a hand over her lower face, knuckles against her own mouth.
“You’re free,” said Simran. “You’re free.”
Those weren’t questions, but Vina still felt compelled to reassure her.
“I am,” she said. “You saved me.”
“We need to get away from here.” Simran’s face was half concealed by her own hand, but Vina could see her guarded eyes and the wings of her black hair.
A dizzy fondness rushed through her at the sight, bigger than she had any right to feel.
“I can hear the witches coming. If any of them catch us we don’t stand a chance. ”
“I don’t know,” said Vina. “I certainly wouldn’t bet against you. Thank you for helping me, Simran. I won’t forget it.”
Simran’s eyes flashed, meeting Vina’s. “I wish you would,” she said.
“Witch,” a voice whispered. “Witch, come here!”
Simran was turning, looking for the source of that voice.
Vina had been in the ancient forest often enough to know how voices could come from all directions, impossible to follow.
You couldn’t easily hunt through these woods by sight and sound alone.
On early quests, when she’d still been a stripling girl, she’d been taught to navigate the woods, to ignore the illusory and focus on the real.
She’d been using those skills to hunt down Simran, only moments ago. She shuddered at the realization. It was blessedly lucky that Simran had found a way to break the fae’s hold on her.
“I know that voice,” Simran said. Her eyes had brightened. “I gave some of your fellow prisoners limni ink. I gave one of them a deer so he’d have the fleet-footedness and stealth to get himself and the others free. I think he’s here.”
“Call to him, then,” urged Vina.
Simran hesitated. “I never learned his name.”
Vina stared at her.
“You tattooed him with magical ink in a prison,” she said slowly. “But you didn’t learn his name?”
“Survival and escape first, niceties second,” said Simran with a scowl—which, at least, did explain why she’d insisted on calling Vina nothing but knight for so long.
There was no chance to say anything more.
A figure appeared from the shadows to the right of them.
The boy was ruddy-faced, brown-haired, and wide-eyed.
The boy also had nascent antlers growing from his skull.
Going by Simran’s expression, giving him the “fleet-footedness and stealth” of a deer had changed him in ways she hadn’t expected.
But she’d been right to say there was little time for niceties.
“I’m no threat,” Vina said quickly. “I was thralled, just like you.”
“I know,” he said, staring at a particularly fascinating tree over Vina’s shoulder, instead of meeting her eyes. “We arrived just in time to see you kissing.” He gestured at the trees behind him, and Vina saw the other freed prisoners huddled in the shadows.
Vina heard a strangled sound come from Simran. Despite herself, she grinned.
“Oh good,” Vina said brightly. “My name is Vina. And yours, friend?”
“Vaughan,” said the boy.
“You were made for the ink I gave you,” Simran said approvingly. The boy gave her a startled look, face lighting with tentative pleasure at her words.
“I’ll try and be worthy of it,” he said earnestly. “Shall we go?”
“Yes,” said Vina. “Let’s go. Fast.”
They ran. Raced, feet pounding the soil, but utterly silent. Vaughan was wielding the gift the limni ink had given him to cloak them in a prey animal’s learned stealth.
The footsteps behind them were growing louder. Vina couldn’t see the ghosts, but she could hear them drawing in, cold voices rending the air.
“She’s determined to find us,” gasped out one of the freed prisoners. “We’ve been going—so long—but there are still more ghosts and more witches, and always the strange sound of that damn horse!”
“She won’t catch us,” Vina said, her breath faintly ragged.
If she was feeling the strain, trained as she was, the people around her were certainly on their last nerve.
She tried to make sense of the landscape, to remember where she’d been before she was snapped up.
“There’s a brook near here,” she said to Vaughan. “Can you lead us to it?”
He veered, and they followed, an arc through woodland.
They were wheezing, stumbling around her.
Their energy was running short. But there was the brook, broader here, but still a paltry stream of silvery water.
They waded through it, slipping and crawling through silt, and then heaved themselves onto the other side.
“Summon the wodwos,” Vina said to Simran.
Simran stared at her, breath heaving, face aglow with sweat.
“How do you expect me to do that?” Simran demanded.
“You have magic, don’t you?”
“Witchcraft doesn’t mean I can do anything magical at any time! If it did I bloody promise you we wouldn’t have been trapped with that rotted fae!”
“Witches can summon spirit familiars, can’t they? Isn’t that why you were looking for a cat when you went home?”
“My cat is not an imp,” Simran said, sounding enraged. “And that witching skill isn’t one I have. My magic relies on physical things that belong to me—ideally of my own body. Blood, carvings by my own hand, hair…”
She stopped. Her gaze went focused and still.
“The deer came from Bess’s woods,” Simran said, more to herself than Vina. “Those woods knew me. I left my blood and magic in them.”
“So it may be possible?”
“It may. But the wodwos called you to its side, remember. Not me.”
“Be that as it may, my first job is to distract the fae maiden,” said Vina. “We’ll see what comes after that.”
She urged the others to get back and hide in the tree cover if they could. None of them had strength left to run. They crawled under cover, terror in their eyes.
Vina stood steady at the thin water’s edge.
Four or five witches emerged, panting. The white horse followed them, Tristesse on its back. Her long black hair was no longer sleek, but in wild tendrils around her. Her eyes were blacker still, her face coldly furious.
“I feel a wound in me, knight,” said Tristesse.
“My tale is broken once more. Your love for me is gone. You have betrayed the debt to my kin. You have stolen knowledge from the fae. They will hate you forevermore; no fae shall welcome you, no matter where you go.” She held out a pale hand.
“Unless you serve me once more, and make things right. My tale agrees; we wait for your answer.”
Vina had wondered if any part of the geas on her remained. She could feel the frayed gold in her blood, and the wound where Tristesse’s enthrallment had once entangled her like a strangling vine. The pain would be with her for a lifetime, and the consequences too.
“I’m afraid I can’t,” said Vina. “As I told you, I already have a tale I belong to.”
Tristesse cantered forward. Paused, lovely mouth thinning.
“You think one of my ilk cannot cross water?”
“There are many beings of tale who can’t,” said Vina. “I hoped you were one of them. Alack, I am mistaken!” She held her arms wide, her fae-wrought armor glittering in the fractured moonlight. “Come and take me, Lady.”