Chapter Twelve #4
He hesitated, but only for a second longer. A smirk stretched his lips. “If you need a reminder...” His clothes were torn off in a blink. “I’m more than happy to oblige.”
Alisdair pounced on me. Snaking around my body, he held me close to him and dropped kisses on my shoulder. The burning trail continued along my neck, behind my ear, and to a soft, sensitive lobe that received a playful nip.
Turning my head, I captured his lips—kissing him deeply, passionately, thoroughly—pouring everything I felt for him.
Alisdair tangled in my hair, drawing me closer still. Our tongues tangled—caught in our never-ending battle for dominance. I surrendered easily—letting him plunder my mouth like he plundered every part of me—taking everything, leaving no survivors behind.
He broke away, coughing.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
Growling, he snatched me back, smashing our lips together.
Just as quickly as the kiss started, it was over again. Alisdair doubled over, besieged by another coughing fit. Clutching his chest, he dropped—tumbling off the bed wheezing and hacking.
Slowly I rose up, my sweet, seductive smile bleeding away. “You really should’ve insisted that I give you the rest of those petals, dear husband.” My voice was flat. Dead.
“Wha— What did... you do?”
I gazed down at him, burning with rage even while another emotion toyed with my heart—still! Even now, after all he’d done and said, it hurt to see him this way.
“My mistake was trying to be clever. Use my mind to outwit you.” I stepped over to him and grabbed my clothes. “It was only ever my body you cared about. My body was always meant to be the trap.”
“Ana!” he shouted and paid for it immediately—hacking as the scant amount of air in his lungs fled.
“I crushed the petals, smeared it on my lips, and coated my mouth in the rest.” Before my eyes, he changed. Clutching his throat, his fangs receded, his horns shrunk, and his claws began to shrink. The larger-than-life, all-powerful beast of Lumenfell... was nothing but a man.
“You’re never going to love me,” I said softly, “and that’s okay. But you don’t get to keep me either. I’m going home, and you’re not going to stop me.”
“A-A-A... na—”
I seized his wrists, and pulled. “Goodbye, Alisdair. I wish it didn’t have to come to this, but you can take one thing for comfort during your trip.
” I dragged him to the edge of the room with three walls.
“Even after everything you’ve done to me, I’ll still spend the rest of my life regretting that this will be our last and final kiss. ”
“Wait!”
I kicked him off the cliff.
“Ahhhhhh!”
His shouts faded down the canyon.
I didn’t waste another second. There were too many faeriken in and out of the castle with superior hearing.
One or more of them would’ve heard the scream and would be along to check on their beloved king.
I needed to be gone before then. Racing to my wardrobe, I grabbed the warmest coat I could find, then bolted out the door.
Riordan was long gone. He left for Lumenfell with a cart full of vegetables, and a sack full of jewels. He wouldn’t be able to carry me home.
There was only one way, and one person I could go to. I just had to get there quickly.
Escaping the castle, I crashed through the snow blanketing the garden—running a path so familiar to the one I ran that fateful night when Alisdair made me his true mate in every way.
Darkness claimed me. Bare branches ripped, tore, and appeared out of the gloom to meet me head-on. Was I running because I feared Alisdair was dead, and my own friends would hunt me down and kill me? Or was I running because I was afraid... he wasn’t?
I didn’t know, and I didn’t slow down.
Bursting through the shadows, I ran full speed, and my foot came down on nothing.
“Ahh!” I tumbled off the edge.
“Whoa.” A hand snatched and pulled me back. “Not again. You really must watch where you’re going, my queen.” Meallan spun me around, grinning into my eyes. “It’s dangerous in these woods.”
“I’ve done it,” I blurted. “Alisdair’s done, but maybe not for good. And now that you have your scent on me.” I flicked to the grip on my wrist. “He’ll be after you too. We need to leave now.”
Meallan’s smile morphed in an instant. “Not for good? What are you talking about? We talked about this last night when you blundered into my territory, weeping and wailing for your doomed love. You were supposed to kill him,” he gritted. “Only then would I help you get back to your kingdom.”
“I poisoned him and threw him off a cliff,” I snapped. “That’s enough killing for anyone else, but I can’t be sure with him. He only got traces of the poison in his system. I don’t know if it was enough to—”
“ARGGGH!”
The roar ripped through Lumenfell and punched me in the gut, cannoning bile into my throat. There was only one person that could be.
Meallan swore foully. “This is the path we walk now. The good news is any amount of that flower within him will dampen his strength, senses, and magic. We can still get you away, but we have to go now.”
“Let’s go.”
“This way.”
We hurried through the brush—not pausing to cover our scent or worry about noise. We had one focus and one focus only—getting away.
I scurried behind him in silence, staying close enough that I could follow his tall, fur-covered outline in the dark. Meya help me, it was so dark. This never-ending night was a scourge on this beautiful land, and the kind, caring people living within it.
No one but me would ever know how much I came to love Lumenfell, or its people.
Walking the square with Eadaoin. Chatting with villagers about their plants, flowers, and crops.
Being fussed over by Aeris. Watching Bradach woo Aeris, and watching Aeris pretend she didn’t love it.
Studying runes with Alisdair. Holding court with Alisdair.
Practicing archery with Alisdair. Tumbling Alisdair. Alisdair, Alisdair, Alisdair.
Wind and Wild had taken a piece of my heart while I was looking. Alisdair had taken a piece of my heart while I wasn’t, but he didn’t want it. He didn’t want a queen, he wanted a war, a coup, and a throne. All things that Emiana gave him, but me... I had nothing for him, and he wanted exactly that.
Nothing.
“What has happened?”
I jumped at the sudden voice penetrating my thoughts. “What? What do you mean?”
“You’re crying,” Meallan stated.
My hand flew to my cheek, confirming the truth.
“Why? Have you lost your nerve?”
“That’s a pointless question,” I replied, voice dull. “Nerve or no, I have to do this. I have to leave.”
“You fell in love with him, didn’t you.” It sounded like a question, but it wasn’t.
“I didn’t, but—” A twig snapped, drawing my eye to the right. I swept the gloom but saw nothing. “But I could’ve,” I continued. “If I’d been given the chance.”
“Hmm.”
We lapsed into silence, traveling deeper into the dark wood. I knew Meallan was right in front of me. I reached out every other minute and touched his back to be sure of it, but I could barely see him and he was directly in front of me.
“Maybe we should stop and look for some starflowers. Something to light our way.”
“We do not need them. I am a wolf. My vision is excellent,” he replied. “My people were made for this land.”
We lapsed into another silence. I didn’t know the conversations Meallan was having in his head to fill the quiet, but the conversations in mine were loud and circular—bringing me further down the moral spiral of what I’d done— No.
What Emiana had done.
It was me who ran crying from the tower, but her who carried our feet to the starflower meadow where we hid the rest of the stolen purple flower.
It was her who made a deal with Meallan to get us out of here, in exchange for killing Alisdair, and settling whatever long-standing feud existed between them.
It was her who did it all, and then she disappeared from my head as I entered the stables, leaving me to decide whether to go on as I was, or go through with her ghastly plan and finally return to my family.
In the end, there wasn’t really a choice to be made. I had to keep my promise and return home to my faywens, and Alisdair would have to keep his, by letting me go once daybreak crested the horizon.
“What do you know of the Taken?”
Meallan surprised me again with the sudden question.
“The Taken?” I shivered thinking of them and drew my coat tighter. “I don’t know anything about them. Seems that no one does.”
“That is true and untrue. There is something about the creatures that we can’t know, can’t understand, and can’t talk about. They don’t seem to be born, and they cannot die.”
Another sound turned my head. I frowned, squinting through the dark but seeing nothing. Not even shadows.
“Of course they can be killed,” Meallan amended. “But they don’t die. Not of natural causes or old age. Not by sickness or disease. They just are until they aren’t anymore.”
“Fascinating,” I replied, not the least bit interested. “Why are we talking about them? I’d rather not. Something about those creatures...” I shuddered. “They frighten me.”
“They frighten everyone. It’s what they were made to do.” Meallan stopped. Hands grabbed and lifted me around the waist, helping me over an obstruction I couldn’t see. “Beings of pure fear. The wolves have always been curious about them. Where they came from, why they haunt this land.”
“Because of the curse,” I said.
“That’s the obvious conclusion, but I don’t believe so.” I felt his eyes on me in the dark. “The change is good and right. It brings the fae to the pinnacle of their speed, intelligence, strength, and power. Nothing as foul as the Taken could come from the change.”
I eyed the faint impression of him. “Good and right? Do you really feel that way?”
“I do.”
“Even though the last stage of the curse is losing your speed, intelligence, strength, and power, and becoming a mindless beast that tries to eat people and live in a tree?”