Page 7 of Lich's Bride

Lorias beams, his smile as bright as the shaft of sunlight he's standing in. "Splendid! Come then, let me show you the marvels of my sylvan home."

He sets off into the trees and I follow, a giddy lightness in my chest. As we walk, he regales me with stories and anecdotes, his voice painting vivid pictures in the air. He speaks of the secret places of the forest, the glens where the wildflowers bloom in a riot of impossible colors, the caves that echo with the songs of underground rivers. Of the strange and wondrous creatures that make their homes in the shadow of the boughs - the wise old turtles with shells of precious jade, the silver-furred foxes who can speak the tongues of men, the birds whose feathers shine with all the hues of the rainbow.

I find myself relaxing, the tenseness bleeding out of my spine, my earlier fears fading to a distant memory. There's a strange magic to Lorias's voice, a cadence that lulls and beguiles. Walking beside him, listening to his tales, it's easy to forget the darkness of my predicament, easy to imagine that I'm just a girl on a woodland ramble with a new friend.

We emerge suddenly into a glade that steals the very breath from my lungs. It's a place of impossible beauty, the grass a carpet of emerald velvet starred with jewel-bright flowers. A waterfall spills down the moss-covered rock face at the far side, feeding into a pool as clear as glass. The air is alive with the dart and glimmer of hummingbirds, the chime of birdsong, the heady perfume of a thousand blooms. "Oh," I breathe, turning a slow circle. "It's magical."

"It's like something out of a dream," I whisper, my voice hushed with awe.

"It is, isn't it?" Lorias agrees, but there's an odd note in his voice that makes me glance over. There's something different about his face, a sharpness to his features that wasn't there before. His cheekbones are higher, more angular, and his skin seems to hold an inner luminescence, as if he's been carved from moonstone. When he smiles, I catch a glimpse of teeth a little too pointed to be entirely human. And there are so many teeth, crowding his mouth in glittering, pearlescent rows.

The longer I look, the more unsettling details I notice woven into the enchanting scene. The chiming melody takes on a discordant edge, the notes clashing and jangling like shards of broken glass. The colors of the flowers seem to pulse and swirl, hypnotic and dizzying. And there, in the shadowed depths of the glade, I catch a flicker of movement - sinuous and serpentine, a glimpse of something ancient and hungry.

A chill runs through me, a cold finger of dread tracing the length of my spine. "Lorias," I say slowly, taking a cautious step back. "What is this place?"

He tilts his head, the movement sudden and birdlike, and I see that his eyes have changed. The warm summer blue has been leached away, replaced by an opalescent swirl of colors - flickering gold and pulsing violet, shimmering green and glowing crimson. They're mesmerizing, those eyes, but there's a coldness to them, a predatory gleam that sends my pulse racing.

"This? This is my home, sweet Kira. My true home." His smile widens, stretching past the point of naturalness, a slash of too-bright teeth in a face that's become a mask of alien beauty. "And soon, very soon, it will be your home as well."

He takes a step towards me, his movements fluid and graceful, but there's something off about them, a sinuous wrongness that makes my skin crawl. The glade seems to darken around us, the shadows lengthening and deepening, reaching out with grasping tendrils.

I stumble back, my heart a wild drum in my chest, but there's nowhere to run. The trees have closed in around us, their branches twisting and twining into a living cage. And all the while, Lorias advances, his eyes burning with a fevered intensity, his hands outstretched in a mockery of welcome.

Terror crashes over me like a frigid wave as the veil of enchantment falls away, revealing the true nature of this place. The colors are too vivid, painful to look at. The birdsong warps and distorts, resolving into mocking, chittering laughter. The very air feels thick and cloying, clotted with a miasma of cruelty and madness. And Lorias...

Gone is the amiable young man, replaced by a thing of nightmare. His skin is bark-rough and green-tinged, his hair a writhing mass of vines and briars. Antlers sprout from his brow, wickedly sharp, and his eyes... Dear God, his eyes are black pits, fathomless and cruel, promising an eternity of torment.

I scream, high and shrill, and turn to run. But the glade is changed, the trees pressing close in an impenetrable wall of grasping branches. Lorias laughs, a sound like the cracking of rotted wood, and stalks towards me, his movements sinuous and inhuman.

"Did you really think you could escape, little field mouse?" he hisses, his voice a choking rasp. "Did you think I would simply let you fly back to your dark sorcerer, like a little bird to its cage? No, no, that will never do. You will stay with me, be one with me, forever and always."

I back away, my heart a wild drum in my chest, until my shoulders hit unyielding bark. There's nowhere to run, no way out. Lorias looms over me, a horror beyond imagining, his hands reaching for me with a terrible hunger.

I close my eyes, a sob knotting in my throat. I think of my family, my friends, all the dreams I'll never get to chase. I think of Malachar and feel a bitter stab of regret. He warned me, didn't he? Warned me of the dangers that lurked beyond the castle walls. And I, fool that I am, blundered right into their clutches.

As Lorias's grasping hands close around my arms, as his fetid breath washes over my face, I send up a desperate prayer. Not for salvation, for I know it will not come. But for forgiveness, for the chance to tell Malachar how sorry I am.

And then I am swept away into a maelstrom of agony and terror, my screams swallowed by the pitiless green gloom of the forest.

6

MALACHAR

Iwake with a start, a nameless unease writhing in my gut like a nest of serpents. For a moment I lie still, staring up at the velvet canopy above my bed, trying to pinpoint the source of my disquiet. The castle is quiet, the predawn hush lying heavy over the ancient stones. No sound disturbs the stillness save the hiss and pop of the dying embers in the hearth.

And yet... something is amiss. Some subtlety in the air, a disturbance in the delicate web of power that permeates my domain. I reach out with my arcane senses, probing, seeking...

Kira.

Her presence, usually a bright flare of untapped potential at the edge of my awareness, is conspicuously absent. I sit up abruptly, my unease sharpening to a keen edge of alarm. Surely the girl would not be so foolish as to attempt an escape? I made it abundantly clear that such efforts would be futile, if not outright suicidal.

I close my eyes, focusing my will, and cast my consciousness out like a net, searching for that telltale glimmer of her magical signature. But there is... nothing. No trace of her within the castle walls. It's as if she has simply winked out of existence.

A growl of frustration rumbles in my throat as I rise from the bed, conjuring my robes with a thought. This is impossible. The very stones of the Nightfort are attuned to me, saturated with my power. Nothing moves within these walls without my knowledge.

And yet the chit has somehow slipped my net, evaded my all-seeing gaze. A feat that should be well beyond the capabilities of an untrained mortal barely past her majority.

I pace to the window, staring out over the courtyard below, my mind racing. If Kira has truly fled... A spike of some unfamiliar emotion lances through me at the thought. Not anger, though there is that too. No, this is something else, something I haven't felt in centuries.

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