Chapter 28
Jenyfer woke in her aunt’s bed, the covers tucked around her chest and a warm body at her back.
Gentle fingers stroked her hair back from her face.
She could hear birds outside, and a balmy sea breeze skipped through the open window to kiss her exposed skin.
She pressed her eyes closed tightly – all she could see was water.
She could still feel it battering against her flesh, magic pulling through her blood.
The Singing Stone around her neck thrummed.
She touched it gently, feeling it pulsate beneath her fingers.
‘Did I kill anyone?’ she murmured.
Ordes’ lips touched her shoulder. ‘No. Denny got them all out. Come on – I’ll make you some breakfast.’
‘You can’t cook,’ she whispered, rolling over to face Ordes.
‘But I can conjure food from nothing,’ he said, lips quirking. His smile fell when she didn’t smile in return. ‘It’ll be alright, Jen. We’ll work it out.’
They dressed and Jenyfer followed Ordes to the kitchen, where she automatically took her old seat with the view out the window.
The sky was bruised – deep grey clouds with purple undersides were bundled thickly across the horizon.
Jenyfer closed her eyes, listening to the sounds of the world: Ordes, hunting around for plates; the ocean, waves slamming against the shore; the silence, deep and terrified and dripping.
She should be exhausted after what she’d done, but she wasn’t.
Her skin tingled. Jenyfer opened her eyes to watch scales materialise on her hands, creeping up her forearms and flecking her fingers.
She swallowed, willing them away, not wanting to be reminded of what she was, what she was capable of.
Not here in her childhood home, one of the only places in the world she’d ever felt truly safe.
The Singing Stone around her neck pulsed.
She curled her fingers around it and lightning shot across the sky.
In her mind, a wave smashed violently into the sand and water crept higher, sliding over rocks and into the cave at the end of the beach where she had first gone to meet Ordes.
Jenyfer stroked the leather pouch, the Treasure within calling to her, to let it out and hold it against her bare skin.
It couldn’t hurt, could it? What more damage could she do?
She undid the pouch, slipping the Stone free, and her mind was consumed by music, magic pouring through her. She gasped, closing her fist around the Stone as thunder growled in the distance.
‘Jen?’
She ignored the voice – it was coming from a long way away. The music, the pounding of the surf, the feeling of water against her flesh—
Hands closed over hers. Ordes uncurled her fingers. She fought him, but he was stronger, and she had no choice but to let him take the Treasure from her trembling hand.
‘I think we should put this away, don’t you?’ he murmured.
Jenyfer nodded blankly. Ordes, eyes troubled, slipped the Stone back into the pouch, then took her hands and squeezed.
‘Jen?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘For what happened yesterday. For what I did,’ she confirmed.
She didn’t give voice to the other thoughts – to how amazing it had felt to control the ocean like that, to bear witness to the destructive power she’d unleashed.
She didn’t speak of how her magic had felt as she unleashed that wave on Kernou.
It had been incredible and terrifying and inspiring all at once.
And Jenyfer knew, if she could, she’d do it again.
Ordes cupped her cheek. She leant into the blazing heat of his palm. He kissed her forehead gently. ‘I know.’
They stayed that way, breakfast forgotten, until a hesitant knock on the front door echoed through the cottage. Jenyfer jolted, her song rushing up her throat to perch on the end of her tongue as she sucked in a breath in alarm.
Ordes peered out the window. ‘It’s Denny,’ he said.
‘Let him in.’ Jenyfer returned to the window, watching as the clouds slowly peeled back to reveal an achingly blue sky. When Ordes opened the door, she shifted her gaze to the young man standing on her threshold.
Denny was alone. He cleared his throat, nervous, scared – perhaps both. ‘Thank you for the warning,’ he said. Then, ‘I don’t blame you, Jenyfer, not at all.’
She nodded numbly.
‘I don’t.’ He did not move any closer to her, but his eyes were kind. ‘If I could do what you could, I probably would have done it years ago.’
Jenyfer managed a faint smile. ‘Your mother?’
‘Still with us,’ Denny replied. He fidgeted, looking around the cottage. ‘We’re leaving. There is nothing here for any of us now. Even Mother agrees.’
‘Where will you go?’ Ordes asked him.
‘Mordred said we were welcome at—’ Denny began.
‘Denny,’ Ordes cut in. ‘Do not go to Dinas Emrys. Arthur asked you to protect these people. If you take them to Mordred, they… I can’t tell you what to expect.
You should go south, to Port Leore or Arcdon.
There will be work there, a chance for you to make a new life.
Promise you’ll stay away from Camlann Plain, and Mordred. ’
‘But he—’
‘Is not what he claimed to be,’ Ordes interjected. ‘Trust me.’
Denny nodded, his face pale. ‘Alright.’ He mumbled a goodbye and left. Ordes closed the door and returned to the kitchen, leaning against the bench while Jenyfer finished his magical eggs.
She pushed her plate away and fiddled with her teacup. ‘Where will we go?’
‘Anywhere. I don’t care,’ Ordes replied.
‘It needs to be somewhere no one will find us,’ Jenyfer pointed out. She sighed deeply. ‘There is one place, but I’m not sure you’ll like it.’
Lyonesse dripped with water and darkness.
Jenyfer knew Ordes hadn’t wanted to come, but he had because she asked.
She wasn’t sure where else they could go.
But, the moment she suggested that this was to be their refuge, she realised she wanted to come.
She had questions about the Treasure around her neck, about what she did and the feelings that were flowing through her.
She wanted to hurt something, and it was probably better that they were far away from Teyath. She couldn’t do any damage here.
Ordes flew them to the island and led the way across its rocky, windswept face.
As they passed through Melodias’ portal, the magic beneath Jenyfer’s skin surged, stronger and more powerful than she’d ever felt before.
Music slipped inside her, slowly writing its notes on the gleaming white of her bones.
Her father’s music. She knew it, like she knew he’d be waiting for them.
No syhrens appeared to challenge them as they approached the grey-stone fortress. Before they went in, Ordes stopped, taking Jenyfer’s face gently between his hands.
‘We can stay here for as long as you need,’ he said. ‘But, Jen, I’m worried about that Stone around your neck. I’m worried we’re here because that is what the Treasure wants.’
‘You could be right,’ she said after a moment. ‘I’m not going to give it to him.’
‘I didn’t think you were.’
‘It’s mine,’ she whispered.
‘That’s what worries me.’ Ordes turned away before she could say anything.
Unlike the last time she was here, the slick stone floor beneath Jenyfer’s feet pulsed like it was alive – a beating, musical heart.
She needed no guide through the dark halls of her father’s castle.
The Stone thrummed and sang and her magic echoed it.
The halls were empty and dark, but Jenyfer didn’t need light to know where she was going.
Her magic led her straight to her father’s throne room.
Melodias was alone, sitting back casually on his throne of bones, one leg crossed over the other, his black silken hair falling over his shoulders. He didn’t seem surprised to see them. A slow smile curled his mouth.
‘Well, well,’ he purred.
‘Don’t get too excited,’ Jenyfer muttered.
‘Oh? Seems to me, you don’t have many places to go, am I right?’ Jenyfer gave him a foul look and he chuckled. ‘You can stay for as long as you like, daughter. Him too, I suppose.’
‘Thank you,’ Jenyfer said. Her father muttered something about her old room, did she remember where it was, don’t expect to be waited on.
Your old room. Jenyfer wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Yet she was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to bathe and sleep.
‘I watched what you did up there,’ Melodias announced. ‘Well done.’ He smiled, then, to Ordes, ‘You wouldn’t have been able to stop me. For all that power in your veins, you still don’t truly know what to do with it.’
‘I’m learning,’ Ordes shot back, the threat completely unveiled.
Melodias stroked his chin. ‘That you are, faery. Spoken to your mother lately?’
‘Have you?’
Melodias laughed and waved them away.
Jenyfer could feel his eyes burning a hole between her shoulder blades long after they’d left the throne room and she was curled up on the bed, Ordes’ body tucked around hers. He stroked her arm until she fell asleep. When she woke, it was dark and Ordes was gone.
Jenyfer sat up, panicked.
‘I’m here,’ he murmured, clicking his fingers. A ball of light appeared above Jenyfer’s head, its soft, muted glow reaching the corners of the room.
‘Have we done the right thing?’ Ordes asked. He stood by the window, peering out into the darkness of her father’s realm.
‘In coming here?’
‘In everything, Jen.’ Ordes rubbed the back of his neck. ‘I can’t help but feel…’
Jenyfer’s voice trembled. ‘We have done the right thing. We’ve done the right thing for us. At the moment, you and I are what matters.’
‘Jenyfer, we left them.’
She threw back the blanket Ordes had draped over her and joined him at the window, Lyonesse spread before them.
Somewhere in the darkness, the black river snaked across the landscape.
‘All my life, I wanted to be free of that place, Ordes. I wanted to be free of the One God and the rules and the oppressive weight of it all. I wanted to be free of my own secrets. Do you know how hard it was at times to hide what I was? Even though I didn’t know the truth about myself, I still knew I was different, and that difference would get me killed.
’ His hand came to rest on her lower back, stroking her skin.
‘I pushed as far as I could without going too far. And then I met you, and everything changed.’
Ordes’ slid his hand around her waist and edged her closer to him. Jenyfer sighed and tucked her head beneath his chin.
‘You showed me I could have a life,’ she said.
‘Even before we became more, you gave me the courage to dream, to believe that there was something else for me, even though I was more terrified on that ship in those first few months than I think I’ve ever been.
But it was a different sort of terror. In Kernou, I knew what to be scared of.
Out on the ocean, on The Excalibur, everything was unknown.
I was still living in fear, and it was still because of what I was.
’ Her hand involuntarily sought the Singing Stone around her neck.
She squeezed, heard its music, then let go.
‘Prophecy and destiny and… us being here now, running away… it’s more than being afraid of losing you, Ordes.
It’s about my choice, your choice, Arthur’s choice, being taken from us.
In that way, the prophecy and the Old Ones and your father are no different than Ulrian and the Konsel.
’ She pulled back so she could look at him.
His ball of magical light lingered above the bed.
The side of Ordes’ face was splashed with soft light, those silver eyes turned golden.
He didn’t say anything, and Jenyfer wondered if she had spoken at all or if they’d remained thoughts swirling around her head. Ordes’ fingers traced the line of her jaw, curled around her chin. He swept his thumb over her lips.
‘You’ll never lose me,’ he whispered, then kissed her so sweetly she could almost believe him.