“Before I tell you, I want you to consider another choice.” Ambrose’s voice was as hard and flat as his expression. “Granthing sired Gavin.” He paused at Ballard’s glower. “Blood wills out, dominus—stronger than curses. Marry again; sire a son of your blood.” He pointed at the door. “That thing in there isn’t Gavin; show mercy and put a bolt through him.”
A dullness settled inside Ballard followed by a surge of impotent rage. A growl erupted from his throat, as bestial as the sounds his tormented son uttered in his bedroom. He slammed a fist into the wall’s unyielding stone. His eyes watered as a shockwave of pain surged up his arm and into his shoulder. Ambrose didn’t flinch before his lord’s anger. He waited quietly as Ballard paced in front of him, cursing and cradling his hand.
Ballard flexed his fingers. His knuckles began to swell and he’d split the thin skin deep enough to bleed. “Blood or no, Gavin is mine,” he said. “I’ll not murder my son. Find another way.”
Ambrose sighed. “I knew you’d say that, but I wanted you to know there was a choice.”
“That’s no choice. What’s your solution?”
“I can’t break the curse, but I can manipulate it.” He shook his head as Ballard’s eyes widened. “Words are power, especially in curses. They bind their victims in several ways. You and Gavin are intertwined in Isabeau’s words. I can redirect the curse’s effects from Gavin to you. You won’t be able to withstand them forever, but you’re a man grown and stronger than Gavin in every way. You can resist more. However, when it breaks you—and you will break—the curse will snap back like sinew stretched too taut.”
Ballard’s gut roiled. The image of Gavin, feral and inhuman, rose in his mind’s eye. Would he turn into the same thing? Something worse? A creature of such insensate violence that Ambrose—or someone else—would have to put him down like a diseased dog? “You’ll need to do a lot more than just tie me to a bed.”
“Yes.”
“Will such a measure give you enough time to find a way to break the curse?”
Ambrose shrugged. “I hope so, but I can’t guarantee success.” His hard gaze turned pitying. “You are my liege and my friend, Ballard, as was your father before you. My actions won’t be those of a friend. The spell I’d use to redirect the curse’s effects is permanent. Once I cast it, I can’t reverse or revoke.”
Ballard stared at his boots. He’d always been a man of implacable purpose and deep pride. Those traits had gained him power, prestige and wealth. They also blinded him to the wants of others, especially his wife. She’d exacted her revenge, and her son now suffered for Ballard’s hubris.
He clapped Ambrose on the shoulder. “Do it, my friend. If we can’t break the curse—if Gavin and I both turn—then you kill us.”
----------*****------------
Three days had passed since the flux faded, and while he’d regained most of his lucidity, he’d lost the ability to see in color. The world became shades of gray. The fire dancing in the hearth gave off heat, but the flames were no more colorful than the ash they produced.
Long years and the continuous transformations to his body after each flux had built within him a kind of numb acceptance. A colorless world was the least of his problems now. Ballard raised an arm to study the patch of skin from elbow to wrist. His claws skated across the ridges and crevices of hardened flesh resembling the bark of an old gnarled oak. He sported a similar patch on his right side, riding along his lower ribs and down to his hip.
A day after the flux, he’d discovered the bony protrusions erupting from his scalp—a single pair peeking above his mop of hair like the brow tines on a young stag. He’d laughed aloud at that—Isabeau mocked her cuckolded husband from the grave. He laughed even harder when his fingers tangled in a mat, not of hair but of thread-like vines as delicate as tendrils of bittersweet nightshade. He plucked one, feeling a hard pinch. The tendril, crowned by a leaf, coiled around his finger.
The curse had changed him in many ways; these were new and different. Like Gavin, he bore an animalistic appearance with his reptilian eyes, claws and fangs. Unlike Gavin, he also wore the mark of the forest. Bark for skin, vines for hair—as if Nature laid claim to him, turning him into an amalgam of the very land for which he’d sacrificed his wife and ultimately his son.
A hard banging at the solar’s door interrupted his thoughts. He ignored it, as he had the past dozen times.
“Ballard, you whiteliver! Open this damn door!”
He remembered a time when he would have ripped the door off its frame to reach and kill the person who dared call him a coward. Now he simply shifted on the pallet near the hearth and stared up at the ceiling, listening to Louvaen rail at him for the fifth time today.
“Ballard, I know you can hear me!”
He’d wager half the countryside heard her. He could never boast he loved a shy, retiring woman.
He waited through another round of pounding on the wood before it stopped. Despite his lethargy, the sudden quiet piqued his curiosity. He sat up and listened. Only the fire’s crackle teased his ears. He’d known her just a few months but learned early that Louvaen Duenda didn’t give up easily when she had a purpose. She tenaciously stood outside his door for three days, at first cajoling him with a soft voice to let her in, then in firmer tones that grew increasingly frustrated and angry when he refused to acknowledge her or the food tray she or Magda brought him twice a day.
Ballard missed her. He saw her face each time he closed his eyes to sleep, and his arms ached to hold her slender body against his. As loving as she was shrewish, she offered him succor unmatched in her boundless affection for him. She was blind as a mole to his disfigurement, but he’d seen the faintest shadow of aversion in her gaze when she discovered him testing the chain in the well room’s cell. Even she couldn’t ignore the worst of the changes, and he’d bled inside despite her lighthearted banter and her continued willingness to embrace him.
The particular rhythm of her gait alerted him she’d returned. He waited for the next round of insults she’d hurl at him. Instead, a loud thwack sounded, and the door vibrated. It continued to shake while Louvaen muttered words guaranteed to make a sailor blush. Another hard thwack followed the first, and he rose, drawn to the door despite his resolve to ignore everyone and everything on the other side. More baleful mutterings and a third thwack made the planks quiver under Ballard’s palm.
“What are you doing?” Ambrose’s voice, heavy with disapproval, halted her cursing.
“What does it look like? I’m opening the door.”
Ballard’s lips twitched at the sarcasm in her tone.
“Give me the axe, mistress.”
His eyebrows shot up. He could picture the scene in the hall. Louvaen’s temporary retreat had been anything but retreat; she’d gone for a weapon. If he wouldn’t come to her, then by gods she’d come to him. He shook his head and allowed himself a brief smile. Blood-thirsty termagant.
