Chapter 2 - Tears of Eternity
Daigen slowly helped me to my feet, even though my muscles shook and the cold wind blew around me.
He flicked his wrist and the snowflakes above my head melted away. “If you want to get your former husband back, Litlnadr, we have to get out of this cold first.”
The hell did he just call me?
He took note of my quirked eyebrow. “Means ‘little serpent’ in Old Tongue.”
Serpent? I could think of worse names for him. “The barbarian language?”
Daigen sneered. “Barbarian? If that is what you call those who were here before the invaders from the south showed up, fine.”
I wrinkled my nose. Alastar the Conqueror had founded the Dukedom of Lycaster more than four-hundred and fifty years ago, that would make Daigen…
“Yes, I am quite old,” he said.
I jerked my hand out of his. “I told you to get out of my head.”
He crossed his arms and smirked. “I didn’t need magic for that one. Part of the fun of being ancient is that I know what most people are going to say before they even open their mouths. Humans are much more predictable than you want to think.”
I scoffed and knelt in the snow to retrieve the Hyton dagger. The frost creeping across the bronze bull’s-head hilt bit my palm as I picked it up.
“You’re a sorceress who wields a power stronger than steel or silver,” Daigen said, “and yet you still reach for that ugly thing.”
I glared at Daigen as I rose. Derrick had given me the dagger supposedly as a symbol of his love and protection. I had strung him along a fabricated romance for seven years, but maybe I held some sentimental value for a weapon from a starry-eyed friend.
I tied the dagger to my belt of linen scraps. Friend. Derrick was not my husband like I had planned nor my lover like I had wanted…he was just a friend.
Maybe even less than that since he was still a Hyton.
“Although,” Daigen said with a fanged smile, “seems that you and I have a similar attachment to weapons.”
With a flick of his crimson claws, his curved blade appeared in his hands. I turned my head to the spot where his blood still stained the snow. How had he retrieved his knife from all the way over there?
“ Se-ra! ”
I whipped my head around. I could barely make out the outline of two ravens against the night sky. The birds soared over the tall boulders and dove in the air toward me.
“ Se-ra! Se-ra! ” The birds croaked.
I huffed out a breath that swirled in the frigid air. Of course those ravens had to come back.
The last time the ravens showed up, poison like black fire had raged through my body. I had no idea how a bird could have poisoned me, but ravens were not a good omen. Even though they were my family’s symbol, the rest of Lycaster saw them as bringers of Death and misfortune.
Daigen wrapped his claw around my left hand. “Not the opportune time for a reunion. Shall we take our leave?”
Before I could even nod in response, the air became heavy—no, the air was moving, like thousands of tiny beads trembled around us.
The ravens’ great black wings flapped harder as they flew closer. “ Se-ra! ”
Suddenly, a memory of fragrant tea on a winter night entered my mind as the wind tickled my ears.
Before I could indulge in the memory, or even question where it had come from, the invisible beads in the air swirled around us. Sparkles of white and purple flashed in my vision.
I blinked and the swirling stopped. We were no longer near the tall rock formation, but instead at the glowing healing spring.
Daigen had transported us through the air.
He released my hand and walked toward the cerulean glow of the healing spring. “Feel any different?”
I held my cape closed. I hated that I knew exactly what he was asking. I was just at the healing spring with Riyan mere hours ago, but I felt like I was somewhere new.
Just like when I had poked my head into Erik’s and Endre’s empty bedrooms after they died, the surroundings might have been familiar, but the place was completely different.
The warmth and safety I had felt with Riyan in that spring was gone.
I bit down my sadness. If I had any hope of getting that warmth and safety back, I needed to focus. “So how the hell are Ganora and Fraleigh sisters—?”
Daigen grabbed my cheeks and silenced me. “First rule of our partnership—no direct questions. You have to gain knowledge at the right times.”
He had just dropped world-shattering information into my lap and would not even give me the satisfaction of an explanation. Fraleigh had sold herself to the Hytons and Ganora was angry about it. How was I expected to trust him if those were the only clues he was going to give me?
Though the logical side of my mind screamed that I should not just quietly accept what Daigen told me, I had no other way to win Riyan’s freedom. I was still unsure if I ever loved him, but he did not deserve whatever the Queen of the Giants wanted him for.
So I held my tongue and obeyed.
Satisfied with my silence, he released my face without so much as another word. He turned and walked to the healing spring, whistling a bouncing tune as his hooves clacked against the smooth rocks.
Although I wished I could have asked him why the hell he had started whistling, I recognized the melody—the song of the Man of the Mountain and how he lost his love. Despite the upbeat tune, the song was damn depressing.
“Stop that.” I squeezed my arms—the request had come out much harsher than I had meant.
Daigen sat on the edge of the spring and dipped his furry legs into the steaming water. He did not need the spring to heal, but he looked ragged enough that a bath was a logical choice.
“So curious a moment ago,” he said with a smirk, “yet you don’t want to know the source of your magic?”
My hand pressed against the center of my chest. “I know where my magic comes from. The Man of the—”
“Wrong.” Daigen splashed the water with his hoof. “He is the arbiter of magic and the judge of when and how we can alter reality, but he’s not the source. She is.”
The little white flame in the center of my chest sparked. She?
Daigen looked up, his golden eyes reflecting the cerulean glow of the spring. “The lost bride from the song. She was the first sorceress.”
The first sorceress?
“Not much is known about her, sadly.” Daigen rested on his elbows and looked up at the dancing bands of green light in the sky. “Over time, at least through the centuries I’ve been alive in, the legend has shifted to center around the poor man who lost his bride and how he grieves her.”
I stepped closer to him, though my eyes traced the small stream that led into the mouth of the cave. “And the clever monster of the mountain certainly knows the real story…”
“The real story starts out the same as you know it.” He shot me a smile. “Man falls in love with the sorceress who lives in his village. They run to the top of Nordingaard so they can bind together under an enchantment.”
“Then she dies before they get there, I know.”
“No,” Daigen said. “ He does.”
That made no sense. The Man of the Mountain had taken me to the place West of the Moon and East of the Sun and held me in his arms.
“He was dead as could be, but the heartbroken sorceress dragged him to the top of the mountain anyway.” Daigen’s voice grew softer. “Used every scrap of her power to bind herself to him, hoping it would bring him back.”
I flipped my left hand to reveal the faint pink scar across my palm. “She blood-bonded with him. Just like I did with Riyan, and like every noble man and woman in Lycaster has done for centuries.”
He scoffed. “What she did was much bigger than Fraleigh’s bond that lets you fuck whomever you want without consequences. The first sorceress’s bond was so powerful that she summoned Death herself.”
A chill ran through my arms and I closed my palm. “I suppose Death was not too happy to be summoned…”
Daigen’s eyes met mine as he pushed himself deeper into the water. “Death is never happy, not really. She demands balance, as is the law of life and nature. The sorceress obliged Death’s rules and made the first sacrifice…her life for his.”
A bitterness coated my tongue. Riyan had done that for me.
I had felt a shift in the air and my magic had quieted when it happened. I could not fight against it. Riyan’s agreement with Ganora to give his life for mine was seemingly unbreakable.
I walked around the healing spring and stood in the mouth of the cave. The trickling of the thin stream echoed around the rock as I took in the beauty of hundreds of Nordingaard crystals casting their cerulean glow in the cave’s walls.
Just hours ago, I slept on top of Riyan’s chest. He had guarded me for two days while my mind was with the Man of the Mountain. When I woke up, I felt so wonderful that I wanted to…
I bit my lip as heat flooded my cheeks. I could not believe I had tried to be intimate with him. Riyan was over fifteen feet tall, he would have hurt me, but that damn blood bond must have made me abandon my sense of self-preservation.
Daigen was right, Fraleigh’s blood bond had manipulated me.
I moved my eyes to the spot where Riyan had pressed his arms into the cave floor rather than touch me. If the blood bond had pushed me toward him, what stopped him from responding the same way?
My mind pushed me to a memory of Riyan holding me in a shattered bed after our first attempt to be intimate had failed. He said his definition of love was putting someone else’s life and happiness over one’s own.
If the blood bond enchantment had pulsed pure desire through both of us but he never gave in, his legendary strength was not all that held him back…
“…he really loved me,” I whispered.
“Of course he did, he got to choose you,” Daigen said, his soft voice reverberating off the crystals around me. “That little bargain he just made with Ganora? A life for a life given in love—that is the most powerful magical bargain in existence. Nothing can stop it, not even Death.”
I slammed my eyes shut to stop bitter tears from falling. Riyan had made an act of selflessness stronger than Death itself, and there I stood, hollow and confused.
Riyan had said I was his sun, but I was the coldest sun the world had ever seen.
“That is how our Man of the Mountain is still alive,” Daigen said, “but do not think he was happy with that sacrifice. He escaped his fate to find his beloved dead next to him. He dug her a grave in the snow, just like the song…”
“ My tears did fall, my blood did flow… ” I mumbled flatly, keeping my eyes shut and my arms folded.
“…and I became Death’s greatest foe,” Daigen finished. “When the sorceress blood-bonded to him, she gave him all of her power. Every inch of him was filled with magic and he ascended the constraints of his own mortality.”
Daigen let out a long breath. “He could have done anything with his new life and his nearly limitless power. He could have taken over kingdoms or be worshiped as a god, but instead…”
His claws splashed the spring. “He jumped into his beloved’s grave and cried. And he never stopped.”
I opened my eyes. The hundreds of crystals were now luminescent with a soft white light. I had never seen them do that before.
My eyes moved from crystal to crystal, trying to find the cause of their new glow, while Daigen’s low voice filled the cave. “For more than a thousand years, he cried. He grieved his bride so passionately that the grave itself got deeper and deeper, until it became a place between worlds. The laws of our world could not reach him. Time. Morality. Everything but love and fear and truth.”
The place West of the Moon and East of the Sun.
“But all graves have a bottom, don’t they, Litlnadr? ”
My eyes wandered up the tiny stream that bisected the cave. It, too, was glowing with the same soft light as the crystals. The stream thinned like a thread into the darkness of the cave until I could not tell if it ended or not.
If that stream fed into the healing spring, where had the magic of the healing spring come from?
If the Man of the Mountain was still at the top of Nordingaard, weeping for hundreds of years, and his body was filled with his sorceress’s magic…
No. It could not be.
Even though I did not want to believe it, I knelt on the cave floor, my fingertips gently dipping into the cold, glowing water.
Little sparkles that I could not see pricked my skin. A melancholic essence traced my fingers in a languid dance, flowing with the gentle pull of the stream.
“Tears,” I said in a breath. The magic of the spring was the Man of the Mountain’s tears.
Daigen’s smile brightened his voice. “The grave filled with millions of tears until it spilled over into this world. Bet you hated slurping on them during your marriage ritual! Disgusting, isn’t it?”
My stomach turned, but eyes followed the flow of the tiny glowing stream until my feet caught up, leading me to the mouth of the cave. I leaned against the rough stone at the cave’s opening as Daigen lounged in the spring, which was glowing a bright white.
Daigen swirled his claws in the water. “The tears of the mountain are complex. They are tangible bits of magic created from the most intense emotions a human can experience, but they’re still water, so they act like water does. Flow into rivers, nourish plants, or even…”
He pointed into the mouth of the cave. “…crystallize into solid form.”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the gem Riyan had given me. It radiated warmth and soft white light in my hand. If the crystals were made of pure magic, then they must glow because magic is activated.
I certainly was not using my magic. Maybe Daigen was not merely taking a bath after all. “So, you are making the crystals glow.”
A statement, not a question. His damn rule forced me to get creative.
Daigen canted his head. “I’m communicating with a friend. Many souls are trapped in the place West of the Moon and East of the Sun, and this spring is a direct channel to it. They get so lonely that sometimes I pop in for a visit, just like this. I might not be the best company, but being with me is better than swirling around in endless darkness.”
I watched as the stream from the cave entered the pool of the healing spring. That was how the Man of the Mountain had taken my mind before. He reached out and dragged me all the way up to…
I swallowed. He took me to his grave.
Though…was it merely a grave, or was it also a perfect place to keep a prisoner?
I pocketed my still-glowing gem and dropped to my knees near the edge of the spring. I could not swim, so I certainly was not going to submerge myself like Daigen had, but if I just reached out—
“What are you doing?” Daigen asked with a smirk.
I dipped my hand into the warm water. “Trying to find Riyan. If he is trapped in the grave like others are, maybe I can reach him and figure out…”
The words failed on my lips as the magic swirled around my fingers. What would I figure out? Figure out where he was? Figure out how I really felt about him?
“Careful, you likely aren’t powerful enough yet to find him,” Daigen said as he leaned on the rocks. “Although something else could find you…”
I glared at him. “Watch me.”
I called on the diamond in my heart and my white flame awoke. A slow heat that matched the hot spring filled my arms. I closed my eyes, focusing on the memory of the man with the golden hair and eyes like a twilight sky.
Even though my knees stayed firmly in the pebbles, my mind was being tugged down…or maybe up…but I was traveling.
Yes, it was working! My magic was working!
I kept focusing on that mental image of handsome Riyan. I pictured him sharing elskaberry jam with me in the field of red lilies and dancing with me under the moonlight.
Even though I still was not sure if anything we felt that day was even real.
The building heat in my body disappeared and a cold frost spread across the back of my mind. A wicked voice pricked my ears.
“ Looking for something, sorceress? ”
My breath froze in my lungs. The Queen of the Giants had found me.
“The bargain was sealed. His life is mine and he drifts in the place West of the Moon and East of the Sun. If you want him back, we must make an exchange…”
My free hand trembled as it wrapped around the pebbles below.
“ Unshackle my sister from the Hytons and he’s yours. But if you don’t do it by the next full moon, I will make my own blood bond and take full control over him… ”
My teeth chattered as the chill of each word bled through my body.
“ …and his spirit will remain in the place between worlds forever. ”