Warden
Hazel.
It is a name I have heard before, and a beautiful one at that. One which should belong to my pretty lady. A lady who has gone very pale and limp in my arms.
I get out of the water before the damned Shellycoat comes back. Beal will pay for my mate’s injury, but until she wakes, he will have to wait.
Then I will find out if the ancient sea god has any form of mortality. If not, I will chop him into even smaller pieces until he has no immortality left.
The Shellycoat loves his immortality. He wears it along with his cloak of shells, like a trophy of all the creatures he has killed.
It will be interesting to add him to my list.
There are few places which will afford any safe haven for me or my mate on Beal’s coastline, but I thunder my way inland to the one I know I can get something other than driven away with torches and pitchforks or the occasional well-timed spell.
A castle now all but a ruin, but one where we will be safe, once we get off the death path which leads us there.
As my hooves drive me ever onwards, my mate stirs in my arms, her brilliant eyes opening and staring at me for a moment before they cloud with pain.
My desire to return to the sea and wreak all the pain of the land on the Shellycoat for hurting her is incredible, but it doesn’t outweigh the overwhelming need to make her better.
I do not have the power to anymore, and I release a stream of curses at the foul creature who made me this way. My Hazel is fading in my arms and I cannot lose her.
I cannot lose her.
“Hold on to me, my sweet mare,” I croon, even as the wind whips my words away and the track gets rougher. “It’s not much further, I promise.”
I double my speed as her head lolls and her breathing becomes shallow. Hazel is mine and no one, not even the Reaper, will take her from me.
No one.
Nothing.
My hooves ring out on the stone flags leading to the tumbled gatehouse of the castle.
“Who goes there?” a voice calls.
“Warden, jailer of the Shadow Keep. I wish to see your mistress,” I respond. “And I will not be stopped.”
Indeed, I do not slow my pace as I gallop up the ramp to the gateway. The old portcullis has not worked forever, and I doubt very much it will work now. I hear a rattle of ancient chains, but I’m through into the bailey where the grass is long under my feet.
“Meg!” I call out her name. “Meg! Meg!”
“Goodness, Brag.” The old witch is beside me. “Such a lot of fuss.”
“My female…” I pant. “My mate. She is injured. She won’t wake.”
I proffer Hazel, her form now barely warm.
“Will you and your friends never learn?” Meg of Maldon, the most powerful witch in all of the Yeavering, shakes her head. “These humans are fragile.”
“Human?” I look down at the pale face of my sweet mate. “She is not human. She is the landlady of the Dark Gibbet, one of the most notorious taverns in the Night Lands. She cannot be human.”
“Did the fact she had no magic not alert you to what she was?” Meg huffs as she places her bony hand on the chest of my mate and inspects her face.
I want to pull the body away from her. I don’t want anyone but me to even touch my Hazel.
“She had others with her. They had no magic either,” I respond.
“They thought they had no magic. That is how the Night Lands work, Warden. You know it as I do.”
“I didn’t sense any there, and when I asked my Duegar to assist, their magic opened a portal to the Underhill. It was escaping that place which resulted in my mate being injured.”
Meg tuts at me, shaking her head. “Bring her inside.” She walks away, beckoning me with a skeletal finger. “I will see what I can do for the human, but it won’t be easy.”
“Whatever you need me to do, I’ll do it.” I follow her closely, changing my form in order to be able to fit inside the darkened keep at the centre of her domain. “I don’t care what it may be. Hazel has to live.”
“And she will, Warden, she will, but you’re going to have to tell her the whole truth when she wakes.”
“The whole truth? She already knows I am immortal.”
“But she doesn’t know why, does she?”
“She knows what she needs to know.” I place Hazel on the pallet of straw where Meg indicates.
The room is filled with the fragrant scent of woodsmoke from the open hearth.
Drying herbs are hung in huge bunches from the rafters of the great hall.
Tables range along one wall, covered in the detritus of preparations.
Along another, where I kneel next to Hazel, are a number of soft pallets, each one covered with a pristine white cloth.
Fortunately for anyone else, we are entirely alone with Meg.
“If she is truly your mate, Warden, she needs to know all. Because it’s only through you she can find out who she is.”
“The landlady…”
Meg holds up her hand to stop me. “That’s what the Yeavering wanted her to be. She is not, and you know who she is.”
“Hazel,” I say, staring down at her face as I brush a lock of her pretty hair away from her skin. “She is mine.”
“She belongs to the Yeavering, Warden. Until you win her from it.”