Silver Hollow (45 page)

Amie didn’t recover her senses until he pushed her down into a carpet of spiraling faerie flowers. She barely pressed against his shoulders and he stopped. Amie sought to catch her mind again
while they tried catching their breath
.

What just happened?

Dearg must have felt something similar because his expression was heart
-
melting as well as terrified. What made t
he least amount of sense was,
instead of talking about it, they smiled.

Lying in the snow was generally known to induce hypothermia. Maybe they were going to freeze to death? Maybe they already had? Petals bloomed from the vines now hanging off nearby tree branches and shed their purple blossoms.

And then, as in every woman’s ideal romantic dream, they talked. Amie wanted to laugh at how uncommonly common talking seemed after the experience they had shared. New she m
ight
be to this life, but already she felt another piece of the puzzle fall into place. The mystery was close to being solved.

This
was
how she learned about the woman who had owned the dress Dearg gave Amie. His wife was his closest friend, but they were not passionate. Bonding for them was a necessity of the dark times. “I had not found my true spark yet and neither had she. So many were dying around us, we hadn’t the luxury of choice.”

“How did she die?” Amie wondered if she had gone too far when his face twisted into a reflection of his agony.

Without opening his eyes he answered, “Murder.”

Amie turned to face him, slid a hand to rest over his chest and felt the syncopated rhythms of his twin hearts. He shivered beneath her touch, spoke in a hoarse voice tinged with fear, “We both were born with heavy birthrights
,
Amie. Do nay forget, no matter how they try to dress it up prettily for you. Your choice was taken from you the night you were attacked.”

Chapter 37

Beast & the Beauty

In her dreams he carried her away from the house and into the forest, until their dying screams were only a haunting echo blending with the moaning moor.

“Jessie!” A voice cut through with the winds and sliced deeply into her conscience. She had been exhausted after running for so long and so far. Now she pulled herself upright, pushing down on his shoulders as she searched for the voice in the wind.

“Jessie!” A woman’s voice echoed the man’s and a sob broke through her silence.

He slowed beneath her, this one who was a stranger now to her. Over the past several years he had scarcely visited their home. She wasn’t sure why she trusted him now to bring her to safety. But she was tired of running, tired of people dying to protect her.

“What is it, dear one?” he asked, his eyes shining like emeralds beneath the starlight.

She shivered as the winds cut through her cloak and remembered to tap into her nixy to warm back up. “Did you hear that? They’re calling for me
.
Maybe the Unseelie are gone
.
Maybe we can go home
.
” With every declaration hope flared wildly up in her and she struggled against him. “Let me go! We must go back
.
Can’t you see they’re waiting
?
”

“No!” He grasped her more firmly and she sent a charge of her budding nixy into his skin. He gasped from the shock of it, enough for her to slip to the muck at their feet and try to run back.

Snow was beginning to fall, yet when she breathed it in she realized it was ashes, blown from the fires ravaging the castle. If she concentrated hard enough she could almost see the towers poking their faces from the massive trees in the valley below. She had never been so far from home before and could not help the ache in her chest as it called to her.

“Amie
,
no!” he called out and wrapped himself around her so they both stumbled to the cold earth. She struggled, prepared to charge him again with another zap of her nixy, but his bare fingers reached her cheeks first.

Her lips parted as a warm numbness instantly set into her limbs.

He spoke low against her ear
.
“Forgive me, dear one, for what I am about to do, but if they should find you and look within these memories, they will use anything against you, against us.”

She gasped when her vision went black and rapid blurs of images sped past her mind’s eye. Memories of countless hours roaming the forest, playing in the orchard, learning the truth about her origin, those first few precious lessons she learned about her inner nixy. What terrified her was someone or something was blackening out those memories the instant they passed by them. It was as if they had drawn a veil over her mind, thrown a lock on it and stolen the key. Until she could no longer remember why she had been upset or cold, and gave in to sweet ignorance.

A bright light woke her from the sweetest sleep she had found since coming to the Vale. Blinking back the snow stuck to her lashes, Amie’s eyes popped open to the Unicorn now staring her in the face. Never in equine history did there exist fur white as this. Cloven hooves, pearly opalescent horn and a trailing beard at its chin, this was the stuff of
dreams. As she stared into its
impossibly black eye memories of the night before took time sifting back into her mind. Dreams had filled her sleep, so real she had wondered if
that
was the reality…

Dreams…memories…

Amie gasped as the dream flickered in and out of her waking mind. Tears were halfway down her cheeks and she lifted a hand to brush them aside with wonder.

Insomnia, pills to keep the dreams quiet and Father’s face before he took it all away
…

An arm tightened around her middle and
Amie
bit
back a sob so she wouldn’t wake him. Her eyes flickered once more to the unicorn grazing beside them, watched as its black eyes peered almost knowingly into hers. The unicorn huffed. A cloud of honeysuckle
-
sweet breath washed over her. Amie sucked in a breath, the cold stealing her comfort. And then the unicorn began to whicker nervously in lighter bell tones. If she tuned her ear just right, she could nearly swear it was giving a warning. But when she moved to sit up another arm draped to gather her up and in a flash of light the unicorn was gone.

It had stolen her confusion and sorrow with one look. Now it was gone, she was too afraid to dig deeper, to question what was obviously staring her in the face.

I have to talk to Henry…
now
.

Twisting her head,
she was
ready to give Dearg an earful for ruining number four on her list of childhood fantasies.
Instead her heart filled with tenderness.
His strong features, normally sewn into expressions of concentration or pain
,
were now slack in sleep. Brushing his full lips with her fingers Amie felt the warmth begin tingling in her toes the moment she remembered the way they felt on hers.

Crawling up his chest, Amie realized their legs were also draped together.

I can forget, just for a little bit longer, can’t I?

…

We should never have slept here
,
was the mantra that kept hammering in his conscience when he woke at first light. The frozen moisture made his skin crawl in
a
vain effort to explode into flame. Keeping it under control, especially like this, had never been an easy task. He wondered how Slaine managed to keep his wits about him when the old
bildgedragon
was so obviously
round
the bend.

How any of us have kept our wits after all these ages…
’
tis a wonder we’ve not turned on them clever ones.

Dearg never favored the precious Seelie with their false piety and hatred of their own half-kin. Blood was thicker than any bond ties he had known. Betray himself he might, but never would he betray his own kind.

The unicorns lived off the edge of the world, the end of the borderland between the human world and theirs. Peculiar creatures, Dearg had never much favored the wretched beasts. Yet now he found its draw to the lass in his arms a comforting reminder.

All is nay lost with the light-kin in your presence…

Glancing down to her upturned face, he watched as dreams ravaged her conscience, watched the pain and struggle threaten to overwhelm her. Once more, as only
she
was capable, he felt something stir deep in his chest. A particularly painful twinge as her
nixy
wrapped around his inner flame and kept hold. Long as it kept her tied to him and out of
the
wretched
w
ight’s
influence, he was satisfied.

Rrathgrim daemon!

His thoughts turned darker, to a smoky, black
-
tipped fire as he recalled the very reason he despised Myrrdin Emrys so justly. He had to tell her soon. Waiting this long had only added to his sins. Dearg never had any hope for his own lost soul. But for Amie, he was willing for her to
hate him, if it was what she needed to hear. And all thoughts left his mind completely when she stirred beneath him. His sharp hearing picked up the slight flutter in her chest as her heart sped and then relaxed against him. This too burned his stone heart anew, to know she felt such comfort with him.

You should never have lost your head last night
,
you krathscurr!

To the unicorn watching over the maiden and warily eying him, they must have been a sight. Her fluffy bejeweled skirts had covered them and created a blue halo behind her head when the sun caught its sheen. The moment was too perfect and too precious for him to dare breathe, to do anything but feign sleep and pray this moment would last forever. It was much more than he deserved.

Closing his eyes, he was surprised when she crouched over him and snorted a brief laugh. Twitching to keep his own in, he tried to keep calm whilst sliding his arm further around her waist. When she brushed her lips over his he could nay help himself any longer. For once again, he was reminded that this was the last time she would ever embrace him willingly.

And rightly so.

Immediately he crushed her against him and lost all control. Flames erupted within him and his skin ached, trembled with the need for release. Only her
nixy
kept it under control,
the
string that tied them in
exorably
to one another. Within seconds she was flipped around on her back, his hands pressing her wrists into the earth. She watched him with something akin to shock when he paused and smiled. He couldn’t help it, couldn’t deny this one glory of joy she gave him. She made him
feel
again, and he could never forget this, long as he remained on this earth.

“Amie?” he asked, hating
that
his voice so easily betrayed his heritage, if she could only remember how to listen.

Smiling back at him, the sun in her emerald eyes, she replied, “Good morning
,
sunshine.”

He blinked, released some of the coiled tension in his body. “Thought you were a dream
,
” he mused aloud.

“Nope, and I think I prefer this dream, actually,” she said sadly.

A rumble began in his chest
,
resembling
a growl he forced back down. He couldn’t help tasting her lips. She was so unaware, as pure as the unicorn that still watched them from the safety of the trees. His spark had sent it reeling back into its precious forest.

Blithering creatures, always af
raid I’ll set their home ablaze.

He rested his forehead against her neck and breathed her in. She smelled different than anything in the Vale, of lavender and rain and the moon. Like the sun, he was ever drawn to her cool light, so less severe than his own. Managing not to crush her somehow, he held onto her, listening to the beat of her heart. And he wondered why the thing he loved about her the most was the one thing he most feared? Her humanity separated her from the rest of them, even if she didn’t see as they. But when the time came, as it
would
come, he reminded himself, would it be her greatest strength or weakness?

“Dearg?” Amie laughed when he sighed in reply. “I saw a unicorn.” After another sigh he mumbled to himself in the language of his people. Now there was only Slaine to speak it with and he had had enough of his uncle’s meddlesome predictions.

“Come again?” she asked.

He frowned in the direction the horned devil had fled
,
then stood, holding out a flame
-
wreathed hand. “Unicorns are pests, never one way or the other. Always both and yet not at all present.”

“But they’re so pretty!” she protested, looking helplessly innocent and covered in the flowers and petals
which
tended to sprout from her apparel.