Warden
The moment I see the open door, I know I never should have left her. Inside there is no light left. The dying embers of a fire and a soaking dress without my mate inside it. I roar through the dwelling, slamming items of furniture left and right, but Hazel is not here.
She is gone.
I return to the hearth and light a candle from the remains of the fire. Whoever took her also took her sword, and as I scan the floor, I see drops of a black liquid.
As I go to touch one, it heaves itself away from me.
There’s only one thing which wouldn’t want to be near a Brag.
“Dunnie.” I growl deep in my throat as the liquid flows as quickly as it can towards the stone wall, where it disappears into a crack.
How can there be a Dunnie here? I killed them all in the Night Lands. The foul creatures are servants of the Faerie, to the very last one of them.
Or perhaps not the last one.
Because there was one here. One who took my mate.
“Warden?”
I spin on the spot with a snarl at the sound of my name. A door has opened in the floor and there are a pair of beautiful eyes peering out.
“Hazel?”
The door is pushed upwards, and there is a flash of her multi-coloured hair as I grab at the latch, wrenching the door open so she can climb out of the depths beneath.
I gather her to me, drinking in her scent, making sure she is real and not some figment of my imagination or of the Yeavering.
My mate is definitely here, real.
“What happened?” I query when I finally have the ability to speak.
“There was something outside, something which wasn’t you,” Hazel says, pulling back and studying my face. “Then I met the owners of this place.” She nods towards the trap door where I see, and unfortunately growl at, a witch and warlock who are staring at me.
“My name is John,” the warlock says. “This is my wife, Joan.” The witch does a small curtsey. “We are privileged to have you in our home.”
“I doubt it,” I growl. “Not if I bring a Dunnie to your door.”
The warlock blanches. “A Dunnie?”
“What’s a Dunnie?” Hazel queries.
“The risen dead,” the witch whispers, looking at her husband, who pulls her close.
Hazel searches my face.
“The Dunnie were once Brag, but they made a pact with the Beneath to gain power and glory. They did not fulfil their side of the bargain, and they were twisted, turned into the living dead,” I explain. “I thought they were all destroyed during the wars for the Night Lands.”
“They are attracted by untimely death.” John speaks up as he helps Joan up and closes the trap door behind him. “I don’t know what it is doing here. There have been no recent deaths of any sort.”
“They can also be set up on a path of destruction,” I reply. “You were lucky.”
“I fought in the Night Lands,” John says.
I pull Hazel away from him.
“The Faerie didn’t just take monsters to do their dirty work,” John says, moving over to the fire as Joan picks up Hazel’s dress and shakes it out, water streaming from it. “They used us too.”
“I saw no warlocks.”
“You wouldn’t. We were sent, wave after wave, to be slaughtered,” John says, swinging a black kettle over the fire and stoking it up. “That’s how I know what a Dunnie is. I saw plenty on the battlefield.”
He turns to face me, and I tuck Hazel behind my back.
“I know what they did to you and the others. You were never meant to see what they did to us,” John says.
I growl deep in my throat. First the Dunnie. Now this.
There is a hand on my arm. It grips at me. It grounds me.
“John and Joan saved me,” Hazel says quietly. “They saved me from having to use the sword.”
I am caught in the beauty of her eyes. They draw me to a good place. A place I once inhabited before all the war.
“Ah, yes,” Joan says as she hangs Hazel’s dress over a rack, which she pulls up to the ceiling. “The sword.”
“Joan also fought,” Hazel says quietly. “She was a weapons maker too.”
“Come,” Joan says. “Sit your mate by the fire before she catches cold.”
She pulls a couple of chairs away from the table and places them on either side of the fire. Hazel sinks into one, and Joan puts a brightly coloured blanket around her. I want to growl again as I have blankets in my saddle bags, but also I want Hazel to be warm.
She looks warm.
“Sit, sit,” John says.
I sit, eyeing the witch and warlock warily.
“It is a formidable weapon,” Joan says as she watches John make a pot of tea. “The sword you carry. How did you come by it?”
“I don’t know,” Hazel replies. “My memory of getting to the Yeavering is…patchy.”
The pain in her voice is evident. It pulls at my heart, and unable to help myself, I growl under my breath. Joan gives me an indulgent look.
“Being brought to the Yeavering can do that,” John says.
“No…” Joan fixes Hazel with a piercing gaze. “This is different. This human has been deliberately tampered with. She should not be able to wield this sword. But she can.”
“I don’t want to,” Hazel says. “It has shed too much blood.”
“Not wanting to wield something with so much power is a good thing,” Joan says kindly as John pours out a cup of tea and hands it to my mate.
I take it from him first, sniffing at it, and take a sip.
“It’s just tea, Brag,” John says. “We have seen enough death and destruction to ever want to see any more.”
I pass the tea to Hazel, not taking my eyes from him.
“What more can you tell me about the sword?” Hazel asks Joan, taking the cup and curling her hands around the vessel.
Joan studies her as John hands a cup of tea to his wife before pouring one for me.
“It was forged a millennia ago. Passed from warrior to warrior, only choosing the worthiest. So much blood was spilt by its blade,” Joan says, her eyes slightly misty. “Those who gave it to you didn’t expect you to be chosen.”
“What did they expect?” Hazel says, her voice small.
“They expected it to consume you.”