Page 52 of WarBride

“Zylnala!Stop!” Taar’s voice bellows behind me. His unicorn’s massive hooves vibrate the ground under my feet as his body crashes through the trees. “You don’t know where you’re going! The Wood is dangerous, it will devour you!”

I hear him. But I don’t believe him, or rather, I don’t want to believe him. All I care about now is getting away from him, of getting back to my sister. Of setting right everything that has gone so horribly, horribly wrong.

A grove of alders appears before me, all pale gray bark and dense greenery. They seem to open up, a road appearing through their midst. I turn my feet that way, desperate for an easier path to pursue. Taar’s warnings ring in my head, but I plunge forward, heedless, and stagger into the shadows of those trees.

Immediately they close in behind me. And suddenly I know this is no forest of the mortal realm. It is like something from the fairy tales I heard as a child. The trees seem to shift before me, assuming vaguely humanoid shape. They reach for me, lewd fingers prodding at my body, ripping at my skirts. I yank free only to stagger into the waiting arm-branches behindme. They grasp me, fondling my breasts, clinging to my neck. Other trees close in, and I hear the rip of cloth, feel more dry fingers creeping up my thigh. Empty-hollow eyes and cavernous mouths leer before me, so many of them. A scream bursts from my lips.

Light erupts in my eyes, an explosion of heat and brilliance. The trees screech, their hollow throats uttering unholy sounds unlike anything in my experience. Rippling roots burst forth from the soil as the alders fall back. My confused vision takes in random flashes—images of the red unicorn, slashing with its great horn, hewing branches and skewering trunks. Fire snorts from his flared nostrils and sparks in his wild eyes. Terrified of that fire, the trees crowd into each other, desperate to flee both flame and horn.

My knees buckle. I sink to the forest floor in what is no longer an alder grove but a little clearing in a patch of sunlight. Lungs heaving, I struggle to draw a complete breath.

A shadow falls across me. I look up at the dark silhouette of my warlord husband, standing with sword drawn before me. Blood trickles down his arm from the cut I gave him. Only then do I realize that I dropped my knife sometime during my struggle with the alders. It lies at his feet. He picks it up, turns it over.

Then he kneels and offers the knife to me.

I stare at that beautiful blade, the citrine jewel winking in the handle. For a long moment it seems to take up the whole of my vision.

Then, with a sharp intake of breath, I take hold of the hilt and slash, aiming the point of that blade straight for his eye. He blocks the blow. As though he expected it. Perhaps he did. And he does not take the weapon from me, but merely draws me to him, pressing my head against his shoulder as great, tearing sobs wrench from my throat, from my soul.

“There, there, little songbird,” he croons, his voice rough and yet somehow gentle. “Rage if you must. Weep if you must. Break if you must. But do so in my arms. Let me hold you as you fall to pieces. You are safe to break with me.”

I don’t know when his words cease to be words and become song: wordless sound full of meaning, rich and deep as a secret well, springing from the depths of his soul. At some point, his unicorn joins him. Its voice is a multitudinous resonance, like the very voice of the soil from which this forest grows. Their song, joined in harmony, washes over me, painful and yet cleansing.

Slowly, slowly, guilt releases its hold on my heart. Guilt that fate should contrive to keep me alive while not protecting my sister. Guilt born, not of sin, but of circumstance. As it recedes, however, sorrow sweeps in to replace it. But this is worse still . . . for while guilt offered me a handhold of rage with which to steady myself, this sorrow is deep, a turmoil of dark water that will drown me if I fall into its depths. I close my eyes, pressing into Taar’s chest, shivering as that wave of sorrow overwhelms me.

Only I find I’m not alone here. It’s dark, it’s horrible . . . but the song remains. The song of Taar and his unicorn, wrapping me up tight, preventing me from being entirely swept away. So the sorrow washes me, cleanses me, but does not drown me as I feared. Because I’m not alone.

He’s here with me. This stranger. My gods-damned husband.

I lean into his strength and sob until no tears remain.

18

TAAR

It is always strange, stepping in and out of the between-worlds space in which the Forest of Wanfriel grows.

The fae use Wanfriel to navigate safely across realms, traveling via secret gates to appear in the human world and disappear back into Eledria at need. Most of the gates are ancient things, established long ages past by fae kings and queens of tremendous power. But Ruvaen has used the magic channeled by the Grimspire to open numerous temporary gates into the mortal realm, allowing him to conduct his raids and escape again undetected back into the mysterious depths of the Between.

One such gate lies before me now—the gate Lurodos and I used just two days ago in our ill-fated attack on Ashryn Shrine. I can feel the magic weakening. A gate between worlds is a dangerous spell, and these temporary portals are chaotic at best. I would not use it again if I had another choice.

But I vowed to carry my warbride back to her people. And this is the shortest route.

I signal silently to Elydark, and he comes to a stop a few paces from the gate. This appears like nothing more than two whisper-thin pine trees, straight as arrows, growing so close together, their branches are hopelessly entwined. In the narrow space between their trunks, the air moves strangely, that unsettling twisting, churning of the atmosphere that betrays a thinness in the veils of reality. Beyond that churning, a hazy landscape swims before my straining vision. The human world.

“We’re here,zylnala,” I say softly. She stirs at the sound of my voice, as though waking from deep sleep. She gives her head a little shake and lifts it from where it’s been resting against my shoulder for these last several hours. I point to the gate before us. “Through there lies your world. The town of Cramaer sits between those two hills, no more than a few short miles. I will take you there if that is your wish. It is the nearest human settlement, not far from the temple. Unless there is somewhere else you would rather go?”

She does not answer. In the short time that I’ve known her, she’s been nothing but defiance and fire contained in this small, human frame. Now she is limp in my arms, as though all the strength has simply gone out from her body.

Uncertain that she heard me, I repeat my question. When she continues to offer no response, I urge Elydark forward. Passing through the gate is an unpleasant experience, even with a licorneir companion. Beings like Elydark are created to exist in many layers of reality, often simultaneously, but my body is merely flesh and blood. To send it through the veils is like feeling a layer of skin peeled away, and what’s left underneath is soft and vulnerable to exposure. Both seconds and years pass over me in a whorling storm as time shifts and moves in the wake of our passage.

Then we stagger through, out into that magic-depleted air. Elydark tosses his head, displeased by our return to this realm, which is so unsuited to his very being. The girl shudders violently. I’m only just in time to help her lean out and vomit up everything in her stomach, missing my leg by inches. Humans are even less suited to world-traveling than my kind.

But it’s done now. She lifts her head, wipes her lips with the back of her hand, and looks dully around at the landscape. It is winter in this part of her world—the trees are bare and gray, the fields fallow, the road before us empty save for sharp-whistlingwinds that send ripples across muddy puddles collected in the furrows.

“Is this where you leave me then?” she asks, her voice low and hoarse. It’s the first she’s spoken in many hours, since I saved her from the hungry arms of the alder trees.

“I shall carry you to within sight of the town,” I say. “Do you have people there who can help you?”

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