The Danger of Destiny (43 page)

No loving heart had I. My thoughts were simple.

The old bastard hates pain, does he? Well, I'm going to whack his soul-ball like it's a pi
ñ
ata holding on to the Earth's last cache of Cherry Blossoms.

And then I'm going to tear his soul to shreds.

*   *   *

We are one tree, Lexi and I.

Two black walnut seeds that had spliced together, producing one taproot and a trunk. But as the citadel of our souls grew toward the sun, the stem of the tree split in half and the heart of one tree turned into two very distinct trees.

My half of the black walnut is stunted in terms of upward growth, though I'm not ashamed of its lack of inches because it's obviously healthier than its twin. Solid limbs, thick curving branches, heavy foliage. Also, my soul-ball is enviably firm; the hues that spun from it are green-gold, with intermittent flickers of brilliant blue.

As a soul-light, I'm stunning.

However, it was obvious that I was never meant to be a mage. For my side of our shared tree had never sought to stretch impatiently for the sky and the colors of my cyreath hadn't been mixed from a royal palette of reds and purples and blues.

On the other hand, my twin's citadel was a sample of what happened when three fairy godmothers named Fate, Karma, and Destiny warred over a man's future. He stretched for what he couldn't reach, and his health suffered. His walnut tree was raddled. Stripped of bark in places, and with broken branches.

It was very, very quiet in the little hollow where our tree grew.

Not even the wind sighed.

*   *   *

“Hello, my name is Hedi of Cremoore,” I murmured. “You tried to kill my brother. Prepare to die.”

I floated, eye level to the soul-balls that hung from Lexi's side of the tree. Mad-one had been right on the money: I'd arrived in Threall not a minute too soon. The old man's sagging cyreath was collapsed over my twin's, turning two distinct shapes into one deformed blob. The interior of the mage's soul-ball emitted a steady throb of a red-tinged purple light.

Ugly.

I couldn't see much of Lexi's soul-ball, except for what meager amount was visible beneath the old man's smothering weight: a half inch of firmer material and a thin wedge of jewel-toned light.

Talking of Mad-one, where was she?

I pulled back, my gaze roving the small clearing, in search of her. A visual sweep of the shadows cast by the trees and the tall grass didn't produce her. I narrowed my search to the ground directly below my hanging feet. There I saw a flash of blue and followed the hem of her gown to the shape of her, kneeling at the base of our tree. Her eyes were closed; her hands were flattened, the palms on our joined lower trunk.

She looked up, her face screwed in pain.

“Hurry,” she gasped. “Complete your task.”

I nodded, returning my attention to the pressing problem of parting the two soul-balls.
Forget going for the pi
ñ
ata stick.
I couldn't beat the old man without harming my brother's soul. I was going to have to get my hands dirty to remove him.

My flesh crept at the thought.

Touching meant intimacy.

Fully anticipating a blast of wizard nastiness, I reached for the old man's cyreath. But instead of hearing the old man nattering in my head, demanding what the hell did I think I was doing, I heard the low hum of distant two male voices. A mental shield had been placed around me.

Thank you, Mad-one.

I scooped up the old man's sagging soul-ball—grimacing at its faint dampness—and raised it carefully. It stretched as I pulled upward, elongating into a teardrop shape. I increased the pressure by increments, hoping for the sweet spot, where his soul-ball would slough off Lexi's easily. And it was working, or I felt it was, until I encountered resistance.

Crap.

“Mystwalker,” groaned Mad-one. “Make. Haste.”

I shoved the limp mass of the old man's cyreath to one side and bent to look at the place where the two souls touched. What I saw at first glance was a lot of mushed-up goo.
Don't be joined.
I ran a finger through the wet stuff and found a faint seam. I followed it, heart dropping. Goddess, the skin on Lexi's cyreath was so thin. If I tore it wrong, the essence of him would come spilling out of his soul-ball.

Suddenly the Mystwalker cried out.

*   *   *

The old man's thoughts had been focused firmly on my twin's sudden inflexibility, but now he turned to inspect me, caught with fingers where they shouldn't be.

He sent a hot poker through my temple. It didn't matter if he didn't actually have a hot poker—that's what it felt like. I couldn't see through the pain, but my hands kept moving. Pleating up the fabric of his soul-ball, following the seam line.

I can endure this. I will endure this.

He switched weapons. “Wolf-loving whore.”

His tone was low, pitched for a dark mutter and at odds with his usual patronizing patter.

So he'd dropped the pretense. He was as he truly was.

“Half-born, half-baked, half nothing,” he continued. “Not worth taking to Merenwyn with your twin.”

My fingers stilled for a second, and the wrinkled weight of his soul rested on them.

“The value of your existence was weighed the night Helzekiel executed your mother. You know that, even though you've told yourself repeatedly that he did not know that you were there, hiding in the cupboard like a little mouse.”

I returned to work, but this time I did it humming “Silent Night.”

“But you knew. He heard you,” the old man continued in that horrible whisper. “Gasping in fright. A little mouse, cowering behind your mother's protection ward. He knew you were there, but he left you to burn. Because you were not worth his trouble. Another half-bred wolf to feed? One with such weak talent? You were not worth his effort. Let her burn.”

That's bullshit. I don't believe any of that.

“You lie to yourself, nalera. I can see into you. Part of you is convinced of our low worth, though you have struggled much to push the thought aside.” He fell silent, then said, “Now you focus on—”

He broke off to laugh. “Your One True Thing?”

“Shut up.”

“The wolf does not love you. Why would he? You trapped him into bonding with you—and you know much a wolf hates a trap.” His tone turned guttural. “But perhaps you really don't, for you're not a full-blooded creature. You are neither this nor that. An embarrassment to the man you call mate. An anchor of Fae iron strapped to his back. He wishes to run, but cannot run. He will never run free again.”

This was how the old man had broken Lexi down. He found the fears, and the little voices a person can't quite smother, and he used them.

Goddess. Lexi.

“No, your brother's will was surprisingly difficult to conquer. Half-truths would not have worked. Only the bare truth would break it.”

I'd found the end of the seam. I needed to concentrate. To pull the old man's stinking carcass off Lexi's gently, taking great care so as to not tear my brother's soul.

Focus on that. Not these lies.

But the voice went on. “When your twin woke in the passage, he demanded answers. He could not understand why he was with a mage—he fears mages—or what was being asked of him. His confusion was not surprising—he was sent into the portal drug raddled and insensible. I informed him that his sister had betrayed him, and had used his affection for her to trick him into a life of sacrifice. I told him how quickly she'd leaped at my offer once she'd realized the scope of her loss of independence.”

Lexi, if you can hear me, it's not the full truth.

“Half-truths, full truths. You are ever adept at rationalization.”

“Go on, talk it up, asshole.” I started peeling him away. “Because I've almost reached the point of separation.”

I shouldn't have gone for the cheap shot.

“Hedi!” cried Mad-one.

I looked down just as the old man materialized at the bottom of the tree. He made a sharp gesture, and Mad-one fell over with a cry of pain.

Instinct bowed my body over my brother's vulnerable cyreath.
Freakin'
instinct. If I'd only had time to think about it, I would have realized the safest thing to do would have been to put those cyreaths in the line of fire.

But my instinct to protect is impossible to deflect.

This time, when the old man's hands curled to shape the ball of his curse I could actually see it form into a sphere of purple light, the interior of which was filled with red-tailed comets.

He uses his soul,
I thought.
And then this—oh, shit.

Unlike a ball of fire, there was no whizzing trail of fire, providing me opportunity to calculate trajectories and likely impact zones. The wizard simply jerked his hands again, and that quick movement released his dark conjure, and suddenly I knew real pain.

“Oh!” I cried.

Then, all was in motion. I was a ball, spewed from the mouth of a cannon, flying fast over the wedge of tall grass that bordered the forest. Unable to stop, I tore into woods, hitting trees, breaking branches, and cracking twigs. And with each shiver of leaves, and snaps of green wood, I tore through the mindscape of slumbering Fae.

My run ended abruptly, eight trees in, when I finally came to rest hanging over the limb of a linden tree. It belonged to a Fae of middling importance to his local village's prosperity. I could taste, as if it were mine, his terror at my sudden intrusion into his sweet dreams.

I was his nightmare.

I pushed myself off the linden branch and fell a foot or more before I remembered how to fly. I heard branches crack to my left. I looked up and saw a torpedo of wizard robes and white hair streaking toward me.

Oh Goddess, he can fly too—

*   *   *

The Old Mage flew as fast as a bird of prey, his talons outstretched.

Indifferent to the soul-balls he left swinging in his wake, he tore a straight path through the tree canopy. He didn't apply his air brake as he came in; he hit me at full force. An eagle's dive-bomb on the field mouse.

It was the type of strike that rattles you right out of your body. Grappling for my face, he grabbed me while I was still spinning. Two surprisingly strong hands pinioned the top of my head, thumbs tight on my temples.

I flailed, striking at him.

His grip was worse than a pit bull's locked jaws.

I couldn't shake him. And I started to hear his mutters again. Louder this time. The long, pitiless stream of them, all strung together without rises or falls.

Fear slashed through me. If he got inside me this time, I'd lose it. I'd lose my mind here, in this forest of strangers. I'd never find my way home. I'd stay here, madder than Mad-one and twice as lost.

No.

I won't let it happen. I want to go home.

I hooked both of my legs around his waist and wrapped my arms around his body. And then, I made us fly. We zoomed through the torn canopies, following the same trail we'd broken not moments before, heading to the light—
there must be light
—to the place where no trees grew except a walnut with a split trunk.

We came out of the woods in a burst of leaves.

I looked down and saw the patch of waist-high grass, where not one single sapling grew. With a smile as wide as an avenging Valkyrie's, I dropped us like a bomb.

*   *   *

On impact, we bounced apart.

Those terrible thoughts stopped, chopped off in mid-stream. I knew I should hurt, but I didn't even feel my aches anymore. I was beyond that. I lay in a crop circle of flattened grass, breathing through my mouth as if I'd run a very long race.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the wizard's form. He lay in deeper grass. His illusion had remained intact; he appeared as corporeal as me. He was immobile. Flat out. Not moving, not talking, not shaping curses with his gnarled hands.

But his eyes were slit open, and as I watched his lashes fluttered.

I crawled over. Pushed aside the long grass, then rose on both knees over him. I clasped my hands together and raised them in a knot high over my head. His eyes widened. I saw the color of them and awareness too.
Good. He'll feel pain.

And then, without much thought, I brought my clenched fists down.

Two. Three.

Four times should do it.

Any job worth doing at all is worth doing well. I added two more blows. Then I pushed myself to my feet—strangely clumsy—and walked away from that thing I'd battered. My brain slowly worked to reason it out. Why wasn't he dead? Why hadn't hitting him like that completed the job? Because it stood to reason, if he still had a form in Threall—albeit broken, bloodied, damaged—he still had life.

Or at least, access to a soul.

I concentrated on pushing the tall grass apart so I wouldn't crush its stalks under my feet, and on walking slowly and deliberately so I wouldn't tumble ass over kettle, and finally on moving purposefully and forward in the direction I needed to go.

To the light.

I knew how to finish it.

Mad-one lay curled like an infant not far from the base of our tree. Her palms were pressed hard over her ears, and tears ran unchecked down her cheeks. “He won't hurt you anymore,” I told her as I passed. “He's not going to hurt anyone anymore.”

I tipped back my head and searched for Lexi's cryeath. I could see my twin's soul, a jeweled source of illumination peeping from under a burden of ugliness.

Up,
I thought.

It's easy to hover, but it was easier to sit astride a thick branch as I set about finishing what I'd started. I took a handful of his damp vellum and began once again the careful process of pleat and pull.