Chapter 11
Morning had begun its slow creep over the mountain peaks while they were talking, and its light filtered through the mist to brighten the valley floor.
Curiously, the valley seemed both less cursed and less magical by day, but Ryn could hardly spare more than a cursory glance at her surroundings, beautiful though they were.
Not when Xaviel had promised to show her the cavern.
Not when she was finally to lay eyes on the truth she’d spent so much of her life pursuing.
“Can we go now?” she insisted.
Her companion was studying the ground, and as he looked up at her, she was struck suddenly by the picture he made—a looming figure in black silhouetted against the light of dawn, framed by mist and shrouded in bitter mystery.
His white hair stirred slightly in an almost imperceptible breeze, and red glimmered faintly in his eyes as he regarded her with a gaze both piercing and unsettling.
He was a painting come to life—a half-forgotten dream made flesh—and she realized with a flash of certainty that she ought to be afraid. This was no friendly animal guide from a child’s nursery tale, nor a simple, devoted guardian with no mind or will of his own.
Xaviel was a wild and dangerous creature, as different from her as a gryphon differed from a sparrow.
An immortal warrior of legend, he’d lived a life she could not begin to comprehend, seen wonders that would leave her speechless, and now dwelt in an unending torment that would break the strongest will.
And while he might play the mysterious forest spirit, he labored under a geas that was capable of enslaving even one as powerful as he.
There was deep magic at work here—both ancient and perilous—and she must never, ever allow herself to forget it.
“Once you enter the cavern,” he said, “there is no knowing whether you will come out again.”
“Make up your mind,” she retorted, both unsettled and a bit annoyed by his hesitancy. “First you would have me be terrified of your perfidy, and now you are reluctant to carry through with your threats.”
He paused. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“Perhaps I am loath to inflict such a curious bride on my king,” he muttered, frustration lending an edge to the words.
“I already met your king,” she countered, feeling rather stung.
“I’ve been seeing your king in my dreams since I was eight years old.
I’ve sacrificed my fortune, my reputation, and eight years of my life to reach this point, so don’t bother being squeamish on my account.
I’m ready to face whatever is lurking in that cavern.
Even if it means my death, I need these answers more than I need to return to the life that was planned for me. ”
He looked as if she’d punched him in the stomach.
“You’ve been dreaming… since you were a child?”
Ryn shut her eyes and stuffed her hands into her skirt pockets with a groan. That information would have been better left inside her own head. Admitting it aloud never went well.
“Yes. Since the first time my father told me of this place and showed me his journal. Now, can we go? I don’t need sympathy, I don’t need breakfast, and I don’t need to think about it.”
Because if she thought about it, she might well be too terrified to proceed.
She’d read enough stories to know that there was more than simple coincidence at work.
More than her own academic curiosity. Some other forces stirred beneath the surface, and there was every chance they would try to drag her under and make her a permanent part of this tale she’d been obsessed with for so long.
She’d also read enough stories to know that she didn’t want to be part of one, and yet, she’d come too far to back down now.
Xaviel was searching her face, his own gone still and calculating.
Wondering, perhaps, just as his king had, whether she might be the one. The fated bride who would bring an end to their torment.
She was not. She refused to be. She was just a scholar—a woman in search of her purpose, driven by dreams and curiosity and a relentless unwillingness to settle for peaceful indifference to the burning questions of life.
But even if she could not marry this cursed king, there were other things that a scholar could do.
“Please,” she said simply, and her companion finally conceded.
“Follow me,” he said, and walked away.
He did not speak again as he set off across the valley floor, making his way towards the edge of the bowl shape, where a massive, near-vertical cliff loomed over the landscape.
Two towering emberwoods grew there—taller than any of the surrounding trees, standing sentinel before what appeared to be a crack in the cliff face.
Shadows obscured the interior—unnatural shadows that moved very like a mist, but one that absorbed light rather than reflected it.
Xaviel paused for a moment to glance at her, but she ignored him resolutely, no matter how much those shadows gave her pause. She would not waver now, and as if satisfied that she was committed, her guide continued on and was soon swallowed up by the sinister crack in the mountainside.
No thinking. No breathing. No considering the consequences. This was it, and if her courage had brought her to this point, surely it could carry her onward.
Right foot, then left, she nearly ran forward, feeling the brief touch of something cold on her face as she passed through the shadowed boundary and found herself fully within the mountain.
The sunlight was instantly cut off as if she’d travelled far from the surface, and when she turned around, the exit had vanished. Instead, there was only a rough stone wall, illuminated by the dim glow of some other light source from within the cave itself.
“What happened?” she breathed. “Where is the entrance?”
A glance over her shoulder revealed Xaviel, standing with his arms folded as if he’d waited for hours rather than moments.
“You said you didn’t want to think about it. That you were ready to face all that this place holds. Did you change your mind, little human?”
She shook her head. “Not at all. But you have to remember that I am exactly as you name me. A human. I know of the existence of magic and acknowledge its power, but I do not live with reminders each and every day. My days are full of books. Ink and paper and words. They have their own kind of magic, but this… This is beyond anything I have experienced or even imagined. Of course I am curious.”
“Then allow me to disappoint you. I do not know where the entrance is, nor do I know how to find it. I enter this place with each human bride, and leave it again when the enchantment is satisfied.”
“You’re saying we’re stuck here until I agree to marry your king.”
He said nothing, and she sighed.
“Or rather, you’re saying you have no idea how it actually works because the curse won’t allow you to consider an alternate path.”
He was under a geas, after all, and they were designed to prevent their victims from finding the way out.
But this much she believed, thanks to every source she’d been able to lay her hands on—magic had rules, just like everything else.
It was really just… sparkling math. There were restrictions.
Balances. Everything had a cost commensurate with its effects, and every curse had its solution.
Even if she didn’t know the origin of this magic, there was a way out.
It would be well-hidden. Perhaps nearly impossible to achieve. But it would exist.
That was, of course, assuming that a lifelong study of myths and legends had provided her with accurate information. And if she were wrong?
Well, her family did keep begging her to get married. Perhaps she would be fulfilling their wishes sooner than she’d anticipated.
“You know what, the entrance doesn’t matter right now. Let’s go.”
She looked up and gave him a decisive nod, and tried not to start at the sight of his eyes. Here in the gloom, his dark irises were far more clearly red, and they glimmered faintly as he glowered at her. As for the rest of the light…
“Where is the light coming from?” she mused aloud, looking around at the walls and the floor.
There was no clear source, and yet she could see well enough to determine that they were in a narrow tunnel.
The walls were rough, but the floor less so, and the path stretched forward along a fairly level route deeper into the mountain.
“There is no light,” Xaviel said, before turning and moving resolutely away from her with long, swift strides.
Wait, what did he mean? “You’re saying,” she panted, as she scrambled to catch up, “that it’s my vision that’s changed. Which is impossible in so short a time. Over centuries, perhaps, the human eye could adapt to lower light conditions, but for it to happen this quickly must mean that…”
“You’ve entered the mountain, human. You have been ensnared by the magic of this enchantment, as surely as every bride before you.”
“So they could all see, too? When you brought them here?”
He did not answer.
“How many have there been, Xaviel? How many brides have come here before me?”
Tension and frustration radiated from his back, but this time he chose to respond.
“I don’t know. As I have told you, my memory is flawed where this enchantment is concerned. Or perhaps time erases all things eventually. There may have been seven, or ten, or thirty.”
She did not think he was obscuring the truth—he simply could not recall. But there were often other ways to arrive at an answer.
“All right then, you don’t remember. But perhaps you remember this—before the enchantment bound you to this valley, were you and your king nocturnal?”
She felt the brief pressure of his gaze. “I am equally comfortable by night or by day. But why do you ask?”
“The night elves we know are the descendants of your people, correct?”
He nodded almost reluctantly. “Yes. The Lycori elves settled here and stayed, even after Kel and I were bound. And they have changed in many ways over the centuries—forgotten who they once were as they acquired new magic and established new traditions.”
“Exactly. They might look the same, but there are a lot of differences.” She should have noticed this sooner.
Honestly, perhaps her professors were right, and she was a disgrace to scholarship.
“You travel and hunt by day, and you slept at night just as I did. So there must be something about this land that your people adapted to in order to live by moonlight. Also, you are immortal, and night elves are not. Those kinds of changes must have taken many generations, so perhaps I could deduce scientifically how much time has passed. And since the legend says there is a bride every hundred years…”
Her guide stopped and turned to face her, lips thinned and frustration flashing in his eyes.
“Do you ever stop?” he asked, a bit harshly.
“From the moment I found you, you have thought of nothing except questions. You hadn’t even the sense to be afraid of a storm cat, and you stopped to draw the gryphon that would have happily devoured your entrails and taken your corpse to feed its kits.
Now you are trapped in a centuries-long curse, walking bright-eyed to the end of everything you’ve ever known, and all you can think of is finding more answers. ”
Well, that was unexpected. For a moment, Ryn paused, unsure why those words still had the power to hurt her. It wasn’t as if they were new.
Stop asking questions, Ryn.
That’s just how things are.
No one needs to know that. It won’t change anything.
Why can’t you just be happy?
“Answers matter,” was all she could manage to say. “I’m sorry it bothers you, but the truth matters. Knowing things matters. If I stop trying to know things, who even am I? It would be like a kind of death. Like forgetting the deepest, truest parts of myself, or losing my very soul.”
And to her surprise, the terrifying warrior with glowing red eyes… flinched.
As if he understood exactly how that felt.
“I begin to think,” he murmured, “that this enchantment is even crueler than I already knew.”