When last she’d seen him, Ballard’s changes had been startling. She’d given a fanciful twist to the bittersweet woven through his hair and around the newly minted horns sprouting from his scalp by comparing him to one of the nature gods of old. His eyes, though, made her wary. The last flux had permanently transformed them from the darkest brown to the yellow of pine sap with the pupils of a serpent. She’d plucked the bittersweet, caressed the patches of skin made bark and kissed the reptilian eyes closed. Beneath the curse’s physical distortions he was still the patient, noble man she’d fallen in love with.
This was no man. The bark previously dotting his body in patchwork designs engulfed him now, turning him as woody and fissured as an old oak. Tufts of bristling hair burst through the bark in random spots. The twisting scars etched into his torso, neck and face had erupted and hardened, sliding up into his scalp until they twined with the spiking horns and topped his head in a crown of gnarled root and antler. His arms and legs had thinned and elongated, as if he’d somehow survived the tortures of the rack with bones stretched like branches, ending in enormous knuckled hands and feet tipped with black claws dripping gore.
Worst of all, he stared at Gavin from a distorted face empty of recognition. Skeletal cheekbones curved beneath hollowed out eye sockets housing radiant pinpoints of white light instead of eyes—light as cold and distant as stars. He growled, a strange scraping noise neither animalistic nor human but something otherworldly. Louvaen shuddered at the sight of the split mouth with its black tongue and rows of spear point teeth. This was not a woodland’s monarch, but its demon.
“Ballard,” she said.
“No Louvaen, not any longer.” Ambrose spoke across the clearing between Gavin and Ballard. Like Mercer, he’d left the safety of the horse barricade and inched his way closer to them. Shadows played across his morose features. He stopped when Ballard turned glowing eyes on him. The demon’s teeth snapped together in challenge, savage as any wolf trap. He returned his attention to Gavin and repeated the action.
Gavin’s answered with a snarl, far less preternatural but just as threatening. One taloned hand swatted the air, and he stamped a foot in the mud in warning. Cinnia spoke softly behind him, still in the soothing voice that pleaded he remember who he was, remember his father.
“My love, you are Gavin de Lovet. This is your home; we are your family. Your father stands before you—the man who loves you, who protected you from Isabeau’s curse.” She wheedled and cajoled ceaselessly, earning the swivel of his large bat-like ears as he listened to her and kept a jaundiced eye on the chimera who clawed the ground with his fingers and chittered strange noises from a ligneous throat.
Louvaen chanted “Remember, remember” to herself in a whisper. Gavin was the final key to breaking the curse. As a coarse brute driven by aggression and blood lust, his chances of recalling the person he’d been were improbable, yet he’d instinctively raced to Cinnia, guarding her from those he considered a threat. Somewhere in there, a spark of the man burned. If anyone could feed the flame, it was his wife. A chance still existed to save one if not both men.
She gripped her father’s hand so tightly her fingers went numb. They watched as Gavin closed his eyes for a moment, shook his head and opened them to reveal irises as green as spring. A strangled cry caught in Louvaen’s throat as he stared at Ballard and garbled out two words distinct enough for them to understand. “My father,” he said and dropped to his knees.
The same booming snap and concussive wave that had struck the castle when the two sisters declared their love for father and son now bounced across the bailey. Mercer stumbled against Louvaen who canted sideways and nearly fell as a breaker of dizziness slammed into her. The bailey distorted into a warped landscape, as if she gazed through a thick pane of wavy glass. Curses, shouts and inhuman cries rose around her, along with the hissing of Isabeau’s bloodthirsty roses. She struggled to stay upright and clear her already compromised vision. Gavin remained on his knees, clutching his head and rocking back and forth in Cinnia’s arms. That same distortion cascaded over him, changing him from beast to man and beast again. Like Louvaen, Ambrose struggled to remain standing. He held out his arms to balance himself and shook his head several times.
The distortion faded and the roses’ sibilant chorus died. Louvaen clutched her father and peered into his eyes. “Are you well?”
He nodded before exclaiming in a breathless whisper “Merciful gods, Lou. Look!”
She followed his gaze and gasped. The bat-wolf creature was gone. In its place, Gavin slumped unconscious in Cinnia’s arms. Louvaen whipped around to find Ballard. Her jubilation shattered when she found him unchanged. Still the abomination wrought by his long-dead wife’s hatred, he swayed and clawed at his gnarled crown.
Her voice broke on a sob. “Let him go, Isabeau. I beg you.”
There was no letting go, even with Isabeau’s power crushed. Ballard had shouldered the curse’s damaging effects for too long. Broken, it still held him in thrall. She refused to relinquish hope. Unlike Cinnia, she was not a tranquil woman with a comforting mien or soothing voice. Nor was she Ballard’s wife, but if her sister’s methods had been successful with Gavin, the same might be successful with Ballard. She had to try; she had nothing else.
“Ballard,” she said softly. “Do you remember me, forest king? I remember you, just as you ordered.” She released her father to tap a finger against her chest. “The shrew, the scold, the fishwife. Who will make me gentle if you don’t come back to me?”
Time marched by with an old man’s shuffle. Ballard blinked at her, the radiant eyes never darkening or showing a glint of recognition. His skin remained bark; the teeth stayed sharp and his legs and arms thin and stiff as leafless branches. Tears spilled down her cheeks.
Mercer touched her arm. “It’s too late, Lou.”
“Shoot him, Louvaen.” Ambrose’s stern command cracked across the bailey. She jerked and glared at him from her good eye. The flintlock rested in her grip, nearly forgotten and still fully cocked. “Shoot him,” he repeated. “And grant him the mercy he deserves.”
The pistol’s weight cramped her hand. “Just a little more time,” she implored. The curse was broken. If they waited a few more seconds...
Gavin moaned in Cinnia’s arms. Ballard crouched, snaking that black tongue across rutted lips. The jagged twigs distending from his elbows and shoulder blades quivered, and the fur tufts hackled. Behind her Cinnia screamed as he sprang forward, lunging for the helpless Gavin.
“Now, Louvaen! Ambrose roared. “Shoot him!”
She raised the pistol. Half blind and shaking from the cold, she aimed at the leaping monstrosity and pulled the trigger. Light burst from the pan in a shower of sparks. She turned her face away from the bright powder flash as the pistol fired. She caught only a glimpse of a hurtling dark shape flung backward. A grunt and a thud from something hitting the ground followed.
The gun slipped from her fingers, barely missing her toes as it fell.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Louvaen stared numbly at the still figure huddled in the snow like so much deadfall. The tears she’d shed had dried, and she stood rooted in place as Ambrose sprinted past her, cloak flapping behind him as he sank to his knees beside his fallen master. Cinnia called her name, but she ignored her, along with the biting cold, her father’s gentle murmurs and the absolute silence from the thorny tapestry of roses. Only her voice echoed in her head, accusing, relentless. “You killed him.You killed him.”
“Louvaen, I need you.” Ambrose’s voice cut through the accusations like a sharp blade.”
She bristled, outrage incinerating the numbness. She’d played executioner once. She wouldn’t do it again. “I’ll not shoot him a second time, magician.”
“Quit arguing, woman! Come!”
Despite wanting to run away and screech her grief until she was hoarse, Louvaen joined Ambrose where he knelt by Ballard. Shock made her stagger when she looked down at her lover—naked, gaunt, bloody—and very much alive. More blood ran crimson in the snow around him and streamed through Ambrose’s fingers where his hands wrapped around Ballard’s thigh. She’d aimed for his chest and shot him in the leg. The sorcerer scowled at her.
