Chapter 26
JESSAMINE
I wore only a blue cloak with a fur collar and soft hide slippers.
The cloak draped to my ankles. While Redvyr wanted to protest the fact that I would be traipsing through the woods naked beneath the cloak, it was decided—by me and Tessa—that I was right.
This would be the easiest way to use my powers quickly if and when one of the golems showed themselves.
Of course, when Leifkyn smirked and opened his mouth to make a comment about my attire, Redvyr shot him such a murderous death glare that he snapped his mouth shut instantly without a word.
Tessa, Lorelyn, and Shearah had taken every item of clothing and weapon that Redvyr and his warriors planned to wear and use and smudged them in magwort weed before also burning the weed in a tent with all of the items, to ensure the scent of beast fae was fully covered.
Apparently, magwort weed grew in abundance in Wyken Woods and the surrounding woodlands.
The only useful property of the weed was that its dark purple leaves could be boiled and used to dye clothing.
It was more useful to us now because its pungent scent would camouflage the beast fae who had entered the woodland an hour before me.
The plan was for them to go in one at a time well ahead of me.
Stealthily, they would take a position surrounding the old oak at the center of the woods.
Redvyr had given me explicit instructions—thrice—on how to get there.
He was beyond anxious. I soothed him, even though I didn’t feel it.
Especially now as I stood facing the woods with Shearah, Sorka, Lorelyn, and Tessa beside me, staring into the bleak semi-darkness.
It was midday and yet the sky loomed heavy with a thick, gray pall, promising snow soon. Wolf stood sulkily, his head hanging as I prepared to go without him. We knew none of the wolves could go on this quest. The grimlocks would certainly scent them and know that beast fae were nearby.
I exhaled an unsteady breath. “Well, it is time.” I rubbed my palm down Wolf’s neck. “I’ll be back soon,” I told him, hoping it was true.
Tessa reached out and took my hand as I stepped forward. She pulled me into a tight hug. “I know it is selfish to ask this of you, but by the Goddess Elska, I pray you bring my Saralyn back to me and that you return safely as well.”
I hugged her back, feeling her sob against my chest more than hearing it. When we parted, Sorka pulled me into a tight embrace, whispering only a nearly inaudible, “thank you.”
When I reached out a hand to Shearah and to Lorelyn as a goodbye, in case this was indeed a goodbye, they embraced me together.
“I scried with the snow upon the eastern Sister where the first light of dawn kissed its stone face. I melted it in the cup you used at dinner last night.” She lowered her voice into my ear.
“There is danger. There is certain death. But I see bright lights returning from the woods. May Elska be with you.”
I stepped back and looked at the four of them—concern, hope, and fear etched into their solemn faces.
While many of the clan females still snubbed me or gave me a wide berth, these four women had given me something beyond hospitality and kindness. They had given me a sense of belonging. I rallied my courage, but it was more of a pretense than an actuality.
“I will use all the powers the gods have given me to bring the children home safely.”
“May Elska be with you,” Tessa repeated Lorelyn’s blessing.
I smiled with all the confidence I could muster and gave a sharp nod of my head. “She will be.”
Without another moment of hesitation, I turned and marched into Wyken Woods. When I rounded the first corner of the path, my friends no longer in sight behind me, I felt the oppressive air of this place.
It wasn’t simply because it was winter and the trees’ branches reached outward and upward like deformed limbs, rattling in a gust of wind with an eerie sound.
Nor was it that the thick snaking of the branches overhead from tree to bare tree blocked out what little light there was in the sky above. There was magick here—dark magick.
I’d met a number of dark fae with magickal powers over the many months I lived in the Borderlands.
Their birth didn’t make their magick evil.
It was the nature of the individual fae that determined whether their powers were used for good, the way the gods intended, or for more sinister, unholy pursuits.
I realized quickly that my father had been wrong about the dark fae. He preached and taught to not only his children, but his courtiers, his guardsmen, and his people that all dark fae were the enemy. A vile race who must be treated as the villains that they were.
I realized quickly that my father had been wrong. The gods didn’t create a blessed fae race and a cursed one. They simply were borne of different gods—some had gifts of light and healing, while others had the gifts of power, to destroy and control.
Vix, an ancient god of the earth and his Mizrah—his blessed mate who was mortal—bore the children who would become the forefathers of the dark fae.
The scholars’ texts of Morodon stated that these children were the demons of fire, earth, shadow, and beast. Those of fire were the wraith fae, many of whom were fire wielders like King Gollaya.
The shadow and beast demons were of course the fae with the same name.
The earth fae were cursed by Vix’s son Dagdal and banished from the world of the living.
As I continued deeper along the path, stepping over a particularly knotted root that jutted out of the dirt, I wondered at my own gift as a syrenskyn.
It gave me the power to seduce and destroy an enemy.
By all rights, I should be a dark fae, then.
But I was not. I was kissed with a rare magick—so rare that no one among my people contained this power.
Its existence was only known about because of the scholars’ texts.
And even they had been wrong. My power wasn’t only for killing—it was for giving pleasure as well.
I wondered about the goddess Nemia, patron of the sea, who had given me such a gift.
Why would she do so? What was my purpose?
Just as I wondered about these questions, a pulse of magick warmed my blood. It was as if Nemia herself were speaking to me, willing me to summon my power so she could show me what I was meant for.
The forest darkened as I grew closer to the center of the Wyken Woods.
No animal made a sound as if all living creatures had fled this foul place.
I realized why the naiads and dryads had forsaken it.
This was a cursed woodland, and I didn’t have to guess why.
The grimlocks’ presence would have tainted the air.
I had not seen or heard any sign of them, but I could feel their vileness on every gust of the wind.
If they weren’t here now, they were close.
On instinct, I began to hum an old ballad.
One I’d heard my grandmother sing when we sunbathing by the Nemian Sea.
She was the one light in my life next to Draydyn, but she died when I was very young.
I don’t remember much beyond her tender smile, her loving touch, and this song she would sing to me and my sisters on those days at the white sand beach, though I always felt she sang it for me alone.
“Deep fathoms of the sea, whisper a beckoning to me, a longing to return to Nemia, our sweet mistress and queen.”
A gale rattled the bare branches as I came into a clearing. Redvyr had told me that once I reached the clearing, I was nearly there. I simply had to continue on the worn path—a game trail that had been abandoned when all the animals left these loathsome woods. It would take me to the old oak.
I continued singing, noting that my skin had already begun to glow white, my syrenskyn powers awakening to the melody and perhaps the nearness of danger.
“The waves call us home, from this land not our own, singing a sad, sad lament, for her children who roam.”
I walked along the path, thickened with the brush of magwort, its purple leaves darkening the ground. Turning the corner, I stepped out into another clearing, this one wider than the one I’d left. I gasped.
The old black oak was a monstrosity. His thick branches—wider than three beast fae—curved outward and dipped down toward the ground like spider’s legs.
Some of the branches were so thick and heavy that they grew into the earth before reaching back out of the soil toward the sky.
The trunk was massive and knotty, thicker than the one Tylok had built with his family.
No trees grew anywhere near the old oak. That’s why there was a clearing. He had forced the others to back away, likely because his roots extending above the ground and deep underneath devoured all the nutrients in a wide perimeter.
But that wasn’t what sent a frightening chill down my spine.
It was the unnatural, black viscous threads that spread out web-like from the middle of the trunk, oozing from a circular mass.
The webbing wrapped in tendrils around every branch, as if it were strangling the old tree, slowly suffocating it.
What was more, when I approached its center where the mass was thickest, it pulsed with dark magick. I shivered.
I didn’t see any sign of Redvyr or the four others who were somewhere nearby surrounding the great old tree, though I knew they were there. It was a different presence that prickled along my skin, raising gooseflesh.
Forcing myself to remain calm, I strolled in a semicircle in front of the old oak, continuing my song as if I hadn’t a care in the world.
“The sea goddess of the deep, tells the skald fae they must keep, all their promises and vows, or her wrath they will reap.”