Chapter 25 Servitude
Gasping and coughing as if she were drowning, Lizzie rolled onto her side and sighed in relief to find herself back in Glennloch’s kitchen. She was lying on the floor next to the pantry’s door.
“What in the bloody hell happened?”
Squinting to ease her blurry vision, she searched for her glasses, finding them discarded in an awkward fold next to a toppled chair.
Hopefully, I didn’t break the bloody thing this time!
She hooked them behind her ears. The frame was definitely worse for wear, but at least the lenses were still intact.
Well, mostly.
“Brun?” she called, pushing herself to her feet. She felt like she had been in a wrestling match with a bear.
The sight of his body sprawled on the floor nearly made her heart stop.
“Brun!” she screeched, rushing to his side and grabbing his head.
Slowly his eyelids fluttered opened. Then his eyes widened into a pair of saucers, but he was staring into nothing as if he could not yet see.
Rage settled on his face and he jumped to his feet, grabbing her by the shoulders, his strong fingers digging into her muscles painfully. In the next breath, he reached for the biggest knife in the rack and pushed Lizzie behind his body.
“Where is he?” he growled.
At first Lizzie could not find her words, her heart thundering in her chest. Brun’s gaze was focussed on every detail surrounding them and the expression on his face left no doubt he would use that knife with lethal precision if needed. His whole body was tense, his muscles felt like rocks beneath her fingers.
“Brun,” she said slowly, afraid to startle him, “Who are you talking about?
“The Dreams Thief! I saw him. By the lake!”
You and Brun are connected, little niece, just as the Dreams Thief is connected to the Endellys Clan. The path of his destiny has always been intertwined with our bloodline. That is why he felt infatuated by Triarell.
The whole conversation with Aranna flooded back into her head, and Lizzie fell the contents of her stomach sour. Slowly she stepped around him, holding his arm and trying to get him to lower the knife.
“Lizzie…” he growled in warning, but she stood her ground.
“It was not real, Brun… There’s no one here. I… I saw… I spoke to Aranna.”
Brun blinked and stared into Lizzie’s eyes. An unsettling expression was etched on her face: it was a mixture of horror and disbelief, and suddenly he felt truly afraid. He scanned the room once more and extended his senses throughout the manor, touching each of the wards with his power. Nothing was out of place and yet, whatever had happened to him had felt plenty real.
He put down the knife and returned his eyes to Lizzie.
“Aranna? Are you sure? How?”
She shivered and he tried to reach for her hands, but Lizzie recoiled from his touch.
“No!” she cried, the shrill sound of her voice made his heart beat even faster.
“What is the matter? What happened?”
“Mrs Clisham’s pendant is a key to a portal to the Spiritual World… Aranna even made it look like Chapel Porth Beach…” then she fixed her gaze on him. She was deathly pale, “Brun, this was the trap… Everything… There’s nothing else… No weapon…”
With that, Lizzie lowered her face to her hands and began to sob. The sound tore deeply at his heart, like no other wound he had suffered before.
He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close, and this time she allowed herself to be embraced.
“Lizzie,” he whispered against her hair, “You’re safe now. I will not allow anything to happen to you.”
It was, of course, an empty promise. What power did he have to stop the Dreams Thief from taking her life if he wanted to? The monster had just broken through his shields and invaded his mind! And that golden hair…
He shivered. All he could do was to give his own life to make his last stand and hope it would be worth something.
“It’s not that…” she muttered, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, “It’s…”
Brun steered her a chair and poured a glass of water, helping her drink. Her hands were ice cold.
“Why don’t you start from the beginning?” he suggested calmly, “Take your time.”
Lizzie drained two cups of water before being able to speak, but little by little she narrated her encounter with Aranna in the Spiritual World. Most of that story was already known to him, but he still paid careful attention, trying to pinpoint what had upset her that much.
“Brun,” she said finally in a small voice, her nails digging into the skin of his arm, “The Dreams Thief is trapped in our world. When the Fae crossed here, the Endellys Sisters sealed the gateway.”
He blinked at her, “They sealed it? But I thought…”
“Their plan was to take the Dreams Thief away from the Otherworld and save the Fae there.”
Brun stood up, combing his hair with his fingers, “Are you saying that coming here was a suicide mission? That they had no hope of surviving?”
This was the trap.
Her words took meaning in his head and he felt his blood congeal. Their plan of finding a weapon, something that could help them defeat the monster was only a fool’s hope.
Lizzie stood in front of him, “But that’s not all…” she said slowly, “The Changelings… The children… they were not kidnapped at random…”
His guts twisted into knots, “I do not understand… What do you… what do you mean by that?”
“Fae had been crossing into this world for millennia, and occasionally they had children with humans. The Changelings, all of them were descendants of Fae. Your rings were more than a way to keep you shackled to the Fae: the bond also muzzled your own magic.”
He felt the bile rise to his throat and for a terrifying moment he thought he was going to be sick.
“Brun,” she held him by both arms, her eyes trained on his, “You are the descendant of a Conjurer. Well, of the Conjurer who featured on top of the most wanted list of the Otherworld for a long time…”
Time stopped. His hearted stopped.
He could not breathe.
“No, no, no,” he began to back away until he hit the sink, “No, it cannot be…” Brun stared at her, but there was no other answer on her face, “Why have they never told me? How could they do this to me? To all of us? Why?”
His whole life had been a lie. All five hundred years of it.
He had fought and killed for naught.
Only his sense of purpose had kept him from descending into madness. Knowing that he had a mission, a role to play in this war had helped him keep focus, instead he had been nothing but a hostage, taken away from his real family because of his blood.
All a lie.
A lie.
Her heart squeezed at the sight of the confusion on Brun’s face, because she was painfully aware that he had not yet heard the worst of it all.
“The prophecy, Brun… It is not just about me… It’s about us.”
He stared at her, the crease between his brows easing slowly and his lips parting as understanding dawned on him.
“Thirteen fathers will be in their graves after the gate is opened. Nine mothers will be born before the second comes,” he muttered, combing his hair convulsively with his fingers and for a moment she thought he was going to tear his hair from his scalp.
“The Dreams Thief and the Endellys’ bloodlines are connected,” she explained, “That’s why you had…” she swallowed hard, “that’s why you had feelings for Triarell. That’s why–”
She cut herself, unable to complete that sentence, feeling like she had just stabbed him on the heart with the same blade that had pierced hers, but from the way Brun’s blue eyes widened, she would not need to say aloud what was torturing her.
The silence stretched while Lizzie helplessly witnessed Brun’s heart break, this time most likely beyond repair. She could see him replaying his whole life before his eyes and he was not happy with what he was watching.
It was one thing to know you had your life and even your right to die taken away from you, that you have been made into a soldier, a pawn to be sacrificed into someone else’s war, but to learn that not even your feelings were your own was unthinkable.
“Brun…” she tried weakly, unsure of what to say. Lizzie had never been particularly good at discussing feelings with people, but the outlandishness of his situation was beyond anything she could have ever imagined.
He turned his gaze away from her and walked towards the window. The afternoon was waning away. The orange hues of the sunset slowly replaced the blue of the day.
Lizzie took a tentative step towards him feeling her legs heavy as lead.
“Brun…” she touched his shoulder with her fingertips.
He sprang and stepped away. Lizzie understood why, but it still hurt.
When he finally met her eyes, his face was devoid of expression.
“I need a minute,” his strained voice filled the silence, “You will be safe in the house. I shall not be long.”
Before Lizzie could protest, Brun pushed past her towards the kitchen’s backdoor, flung it open as if he were trying to pull it out of its hinges and ran outside.
The cool air of the evening was a welcome balm to soothe the fever consuming him. His body was aching, yet that discomfort was nothing compared to the burning pain in his heart.
Brun jogged around the manor and when he reached the driveway he broke into a sprint towards the loch, caring nothing for the looming darkness, knowing his footing through rocks and brambles on memory alone. He had spent four centuries in those cursed grounds, he knew every yard as well as the back of his hand.
Four centuries!
He ran, his legs pumping as fast as they could, his feet barely hitting the ground, his heart beating like war drums inside his chest.
For four hundred years he had mourned an unrequited love that had not even been real. He had given his heart, when his heart had not been his to give, to a feeling that was nothing more than an illusion, a side effect of his magic connection to the Endellys bloodline. Was he nothing but an automaton to be tossed from side to side at the will of the Fae?
That’s why you had feelings for Triarell.
Which meant that his feelings for Lizzie were also not real. Whatever there was between them was only a by-product of that ancient connection. Only a mindless instinct.
Brun could barely breathe when he reached the loch. He wanted to keep running, he wanted to put as much distance between his physical body and Glennloch as possible, but Lizzie was there. She was the last Endellys and the leash placed on him by the Fae could be stretched thin but never severed. Every time he had tried to leave, to vanish forever, he had been dragged back.
His fetters would never be broken.
Never.
Only with his death.
He looked down at the dark waters of the loch. He wished he could just do it. Finally end all that. It would be simple to walk in and never return. The magic in his ring would fight, would prevent him from dying like a normal human, but if he stayed there long enough… It would be his true act of defiance, his final chance to assert himself as a free man.
A free human.
It is mentalthat your family has been shackled to mine for centuries.
Shackled.
Shackled for centuries. A blinded slave. Nothing better than carrion for crows.
Suddenly it became too much and all the anger he had bottled for five centuries bubbled to the surface and exploded out of him.
Brun roared. As loud as his lungs allowed.
His rage felt limitless. He had been torn away from his family and moulded at the will of the Fae. He had fought, killed and nearly died for them countless of times.
And for five hundred years he had been lied to, even by the people who he had considered his friends, the people who he had trusted the most.
Ryul must have known the truth too. He must have thought Brun’s love for Triarell pathetic.
Brun’s bellow spread across the loch and reverberated on the surrounding hills, hitting him back like the poppers of the whip he had felt on his flesh one too many times. Still he roared, rebelliously, wishing that he could claw out his aching heart and be done with that agony.
He roared until his throat felt raw and he fell on his knees coughing and panting.
Spent.
Brun gasped for air and his exhale was a sob. A cry that nigh on burst his chest open and for a moment he could not suck the air back in. He thought that grief was finally going to give him the release he had longed for centuries, because no human could endure such pain.
Hot tears rolled down his face. He pounded the ground like an unhappy child throwing a tantrum, until he made a hole big enough to fit his whole head inside and his fists were bleeding.
There was nothing left inside him when Brun lowered his face on the ground and his body collapsed with exhaustion.
It took a moment for Lizzie to recover her wits. After Brun burst through of the door, she was frozen in shock for a good full minute. He was always so calm she did not think it was possible to see him lose control like that.
She ran after him circling the property twice, but he was nowhere to be seen. Finding a small relief in seeing all the cars safely parked, she had returned to the manor and paced in the kitchen trying to order her own thoughts after the disturbing encounter with Aranna.
An hour passed. Then two. After pacing till her legs burned, Lizzie finally gave up. She found a bottle of whiskey and went to the library, sitting on the floor in front of the cold fireplace and drank a big swig.
She coughed when the spirit burned her throat.
Undeterred, she sipped it again.
“Do you think that is wise?”
Lizzie lifted her eyes and was surprised to find Brun standing in front of her. She did not hear him walking in.
He was ragged and sweaty. His hair was dishevelled and half of the buttons of his usually pristine shirt were open. There was dirt on his knees and cuffs and scrapes on his hands.
It was as if he were a different man.
She swallowed hard, wondering what was left of him.
“Sod wisdom!” she replied grumpily.
To her surprise, he sat on the floor beside her, hugging his knees with his arms. She could smell the sweat on his skin and for a moment the strength of his scent made her forget everything else.
“Take a swig,” she pushed the bottle against his arm.
“On no, I do not drink whiskey,” Brun replied cryptically.
She stared at him surprised by his tone, “Why not?”
He sighed, “Because on the last time I drank that, I destroyed a village.”
Lizzie gaped, “I beg your pardon?”
“I told you I reacted badly when Fayla told me that I was actually human.”
Yes, and she imagined that he had broken a few plates in the kitchen, not destroyed a whole village.
“Did you… did you kill anyone?” she asked slowly, unsure whether she wanted to hear the answer to that question. She knew that he had killed before, but to know he had harmed innocents…
He shook his head, “Thankfully no. I hurt a lot of people though, which I still regret… deeply. I completely lost control of myself.”
Lizzie took another swig of the spirit and this time it went down better.
“Well, I don’t think anyone can blame you, Brun. Your reaction was… well, human.”
Brun stared at Lizzie for a long moment. Her cheeks were slightly flushed from the alcohol and her glasses were askew, as usual hanging on the tip of her nose.
Despite everything else going on in his head, when he looked at her all he could think was that Lizzie was beautiful, sexy, and right now more than anything he wanted to push her down on the rug and bury himself completely inside her, hoping he could still find himself in her.
Lizzie was life itself. She was kind and warm-hearted and was everything he had always aspired to be. She was everything he had dreamed of having and, knowing that this maddening desire for her was not his own but the result of the magic connecting them was killing him.
He had to keep his distance from her. He had to hold on to what was left of his sanity.
“Did Aranna say anything else about the Dreams Thief? How can we defeat him, for example?” He tried to keep the frustration from his voice, but from the way Lizzie frowned, he knew he was not successful at all.
She shook her head, “Nope, Auntie Aranna told me only that to find out the truth, you and I must go to the place where their spirits rest. That we will find the missing piece of the puzzle there.”
“Auntie Aranna?”
She shrugged, “I have a few other choice epithets for her, but I am trying to keep the conversation polite.”
He understood the sentiment.
“To find the missing piece of the puzzle…” he repeated slowly, seeking to extract any hidden meaning from those inane cliché words.
“I know, it sounds very unimaginative coming from someone who was so fond of riddles,” Lizzie guessed his thoughts, “And considering she had three hundred years to think about it, it’s quite lame.”
He bobbed his head, not disagreeing with her assessment, “Anything else?”
“Only another riddle: she said that spoken words, even written words can be lost, that the only safe knowledge is the one coming from inside of us, and that you hold the solution.”
“I hold the solution? The solution to what?”
She turned her face at him, studying him as if he were another of Aranna’s contraptions to be opened. Then she shrugged, “I wish I knew…” after a pause, she added, “At least we have a pretty good idea of where the missing piece of the puzzle is hidden…”
“The place where their spirit rest…” he recited, “You’re thinking about the Endellys crypt?”
Lizzie drank another sip and he wondered whether he should abandon his no whiskey rule and down a tumbler or two of it. He doubted it would erase the pain, but it could help numb it for a couple of hours.
On the other hand, considering that today’s revelations were several levels worse than finding out he was actually human, Brun decided against it, in the interest of Perthshire’s safety.
“This one at least seems straightforward,” she said, “My bet is that she hid something in Gweyir’s tomb.”
“I agree,” he rubbed his face to dispel the tiredness and stood up, “We can go tomorrow at first light. Now if you do not mind, I am going to sleep.”
Lizzie bobbed her head weakly, and stood up too, taking a tentative step in his direction.
“Brun, shouldn’t we talk about this… about us, I mean,” she uttered the words he had feared the most.
“What is there to talk about?” he snapped.
Hurt flickered across her face, and her lips parted in shock. Tightening his jaws, he regretted his angry tone. Lizzie was as much a victim of all that as he was, “Forgive me, I’m just tired… We can talk tomorrow.”
And with this words he ran away like a coward.