Chapter 41 #2
Bryn’s eyes shifted to her. ‘She was so fast. I didn’t realise she’d sunk her fangs into me until one of Marsh’s men threw her off me.
She gutted him like a fish, then Marsh shot her.
’ Bryn closed his eyes and bit his lip as his whole body twitched again.
‘She was both wolf and woman, slithering from one form to the other, and her teeth…’
‘Can it, whatever it is, be undone?’ Jenyfer whispered to Ordes.
‘No. At the moment, he’s caught somewhere between his human self and the creature he’s slowly becoming,’ Ordes explained.
‘The bite of the fey wolf doesn’t kill but their teeth carry a poison that slowly sinks inside their victims and changes them from the inside out.
Another turn of the moon and there will be nothing human left of him. ’
Jenyfer’s eyes shot back to Bryn as she thought of the boy she’d once known, the boy who had been her friend, her shoulder to cry on. She should be pleased, but she wasn’t.
Bryn laughed. ‘I thought you’d be happy, Jen.’
‘Happy?’ she echoed. ‘I’m not happy, Bryn. Is this what you deserve? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But I’m not happy about it.’
‘Mordred sent me to bring back Arthur and kill the rest of you,’ Bryn confessed. ‘But considering you’re not surprised to see me, I’ve got the feeling you already knew that.’ He paused, and Jenyfer’s heart stood still. ‘I won’t tell him. I don’t know how she did it, but I won’t tell him.’
Jenyfer blinked at him. ‘Why not?’
‘Because he deserves it,’ Bryn said viciously. ‘He owns me, Jenyfer. I can’t refuse anything he demands. Some ritual… he cut me, took my blood, and now I’m bound to him until I die.’
Jenyfer and Ordes exchanged a glance.
‘What will he do when you return empty-handed?’ she asked.
Bryn laughed again. ‘He won’t kill me, because that is what I want him to do.’
‘If we let you go—’
‘I have to go back,’ Bryn interjected. ‘I don’t have a choice.’ He paused, then, ‘Unless you do what he won’t.’
Jenyfer’s insides turned to ice. ‘What?’
‘Kill me, Jenyfer. You can’t tell me you haven’t thought about it,’ Bryn said, as a wave of revulsion swept through her. ‘Sing me into the ground. Slit my throat. Please,’ he added pitifully. For a moment, he was Bryn again, the creature that he was becoming sliding away like a shedding skin.
‘It’s your choice, Jen,’ Ordes said. ‘If you want to let him go, I’ll let him go.’
Bryn shook his head. ‘The minute you release me, I’ll try and kill you. Don’t you understand? It doesn’t matter if I don’t want to do it. I have to.’
Jenyfer said nothing.
‘If you won’t do it, let him,’ Bryn said from between clenched teeth. A muscle ticked in his jaw, the strain evident even in the darkness. His voice was fractured when he spoke again. ‘Jenyfer, please. I’m begging you.’
Jenyfer shook her head. Tears blurred her vision and she blinked them away furiously. Bryn did not look away from her. ‘No,’ she ground out. ‘You can live with what you are, Bryn. Why should you get an easy way out of the mess you have made for yourself?’
‘Jen—’
‘You ruined my life!’ The Singing Stone around her throat roared its song of fury, heating her blood and burning the back of her throat.
Magic sat on her tongue, ready to be unleashed.
‘You betrayed me. You defiled me. You tried to break me, only you didn’t, not in the way you thought anyway.
I’m not going to kill you. Neither is Ordes. I won’t have your blood on his hands.’
Bryn’s expression broke, and for a moment, he was the boy she’d once known. Then his face changed again – not quite human, not quite animal. He turned back to Ordes, jaw tight, spine rigid, eyes silently pleading.
‘If it were up to me, you’d have stopped breathing a long time ago,’ Ordes said, voice dripping with a malice Jenyfer had never heard from him.
‘But I can hurt you, and if you try to hurt her, I’ll remove your eyes so you never get to look at her again, then your hands, so you can never touch her again. ’
Jenyfer swallowed tightly. ‘Goodbye, Bryn.’ She stepped closer to Ordes.
His arms went around her, magic slithering over her skin.
She caught a glimpse of Bryn’s face before they vanished.
He was in dreadful pain. Jenyfer told herself she didn’t care, kept hold of her anger.
Back in the tent, she lay down and stared unblinking at the canopy.
Ordes’ face appeared in her vision. He stroked her cheek. ‘Are you alright?’
‘Fine.’
‘If you’ve changed your mind, it wouldn’t take me long to find him.’
‘I thought killing people wasn’t something you did,’ Jenyfer said, then, ‘Sorry. I know what happened with the Witchfinders wasn’t something you wanted to do.’
‘I told you a long time ago, I’d be willing to make an exception, if you wanted it,’ Ordes answered. ‘I love you and if killing him would take away some of the hurt, I’ll do it gladly.’
‘I don’t want him dead,’ Jenyfer said after a moment.
‘I want him to suffer, and this is too perfect. He gets to become the thing he hates more than anything in the world.’ She rolled onto her side, her spare hand stroking the pouch around her neck, the Stone thrumming at her touch.
‘The day he was proud he’d pulled a mermaid from the sea was the day I realised he’d changed, that the Bryn I had known my whole life had become a different man.
I didn’t listen to my instincts that day, and I should have. I didn’t listen to Lamorna either.’
‘Lamorna?’ Ordes frowned.
‘She knew that Bryn… had feelings for me. She told me, but I didn’t believe her because what would she know?’ Jenyfer laughed, dark and bitter. ‘She knew a lot more than I did. Lamorna saw the things I didn’t.’
‘And you saw what she didn’t,’ Ordes reminded her, kissing her forehead.
‘We didn’t try hard enough to understand one another,’ Jenyfer said regretfully. ‘And now I’m worried it’s too late.’
Ordes shook his head. ‘She warned you about Bryn,’ he pointed out.
‘Because she feels guilty about the role she played in my marriage,’ Jenyfer said.
‘You don’t believe that’s all it is.’
Jenyfer sighed. ‘No. I don’t. Not truly. I don’t know my sister, or, at least, I don’t know who she’s become. If we’re all still here at the end of this, I want to change that.’