With a shake of my head, I hasten deeper into the garden. Artoris will appear imminently, then we must speak our sacred vows to one another. But for a few moments, at least, I may enjoy my solitude. This is not my first time in this secret garden. Memory sparks—memory of two young girls, giggling and full of mischief, sneaking into forbidden places on their hunt for the old castle dungeons. Lyria was always game for a lark back in those days, more akin to me in spirit than either of my sisters.
I turn my head suddenly. We found something as children, did we not? No dungeon entrance, but something else. Something mysterious. My gaze searches the far end of the courtyard where a curtain of ivy hangs thickly over the wall. Something about itcalls to me. After that first visit, Lyria and I returned several times, searching, never to find again what we had initially uncovered. I’d often thought perhaps I dreamed it entirely, but now . . .
All thoughts of Artoris and my pending doom banished, I step around the lover’s basin and approach the far wall. Hands shaking, I begin to pull back clinging ivy vines. There are so many, so densely grown, I begin to think I’ll never get through. But then—Ah! There it is. Exactly as it has lingered in my memory all these years.
A hidden doorway. Like a gaping mouth in the wall. A wall that should be no more than two feet thick, but here seems to venture much more deeply into a stoney cavern. A stairway, beginning just at my feet, leads down into darkness, and the air rising from within is cool and moist.
I stand as though frozen, one hand still gripping a fistful of greenery. Is this the entrance to that labyrinthine gallery Lyria and I explored together all those years ago? We never did discover where those twisting passages might lead. My heart leaps, singing in my breast of escape. I almost let it drive my feet down that stairway in eager flight.
But I stop. My fingers curl tightly around their handful of vines, knuckles whitening. What would be the use of rushing down those stairs, of losing myself in the tunnels below? If, indeed, they really are there. If I didn’t lose myself in a tangled network of underground stone, if I somehow emerged beyond these walls, out in open country . . . what then? I’m hardly dressedfor escape in this revealing white gown and veil. I have no money, no horse, no supplies, nor even the first idea where I would go.
Besides, how long will it be before Artoris’s dark spell begins to ebb? How long before the pain catches up to me again, breaks me in two before I inevitably succumb to death? Without Artoris to reimplement the magic, I will surely perish in agony. Is that what I want? Maybe. Maybe I simply don’t care anymore.
I chew the inside of my cheek, undecided. While none of my previous escape attempts have turned out well, it is difficult to resist the draw of this opportunity. But—
A sudden scrabbling noise makes me jump back from the wall, my hand pressed against my beating heart. Is it my bridegroom? I don’t know why, but I can’t help thinking it’s important he not see this secret door. With a little gasp I spring forward, pull at the ivy so that it falls over the opening.
Movement draws my eye. Not back to the garden door from whence I expect my bridegroom, but up. Up to the top of the wall, where a figure appears, scaling stones from the far side. An enormous, broad, hooded figure, whose too-small cloak does very little to shield the eye from a vast display of muscular, naked flesh. I’m so shocked at the sight, I cannot speak or move, only watch as he hauls himself over the wall and drops into the garden, graceful despite his bulk. He lands not far from where I stand.
I should scream. Shouldn’t I? Surely there must be guards posted somewhere near who would come running to my aid. Itoccurs to me that the bells I heard down in the village might have been an alarm after all. Am I now facing the very perpetrator who inspired their ringing?
He turns to me abruptly, his face shadowed by his low-pulled hood. Nevertheless, I feel the tension that shoots through him at the sight of me in my white gown and beaded veil. He looks as though he’s seen a ghost.
I push the veil back from my face angrily, glaring at this strange invader. “What in the gods’ names do you think you’re doing?” I demand, my voice shrill in the stillness of the air. “Don’t you know this is a sacred space?”
He is silent for such a long stretch, I begin to wonder if he’s mute. He makes no move, not even to breathe. Yet there is such a burn of energy in the atmosphere around him, as though his very flesh is about to ignite.
Then he speaks in a rough voice, almost animalistic in its timbre, uttering a strange, foreign word:“Zylnala?”
10
TAAR
Standing there in that outlandish white gown, with the beaded veil covering her face so that her features are completely obscured, she looks like some fantastical being. An angel of legend, come through the mists of many realities to grace the mortal world with her presence.
And yet I know her. I would know her anywhere—the shape of her, that exquisite frame which houses the brilliance of her shining soul. I have explored every inch of her with such meticulous detail, know every curve, every dip, every slight flaw that makes up the perfection of her being. I would recognize her anywhere, in any world, under far stranger guise than this.
But when she throws back that veil and glares at me with all the ferocity of a cornered wildcat, the fury in her eyes goes straight through my heart like an arrow. I see her again in that moment asI saw her on the night of our first meeting. That defiance in the face of impossible odds, the way she stands her ground, squares her shoulders, and refuses to flinch where others would cower back in terror. For an instant, I could swear I smell smoke in the air and see flames dancing in the depths of her pupils.
“Zylnala.” Her name—my own name for her—slips from my tongue like a prayer. I feel as though my soul has stepped outside of the physical realm and floats in a space of suspended eternity, here, with her. “Zylnala,I’ve come for you.”
The knot in her brow deepens. “You’vewhat?”Her gaze flashes side-to-side, as though she’s become suddenly aware of how alone she is in this small garden space, how utterly vulnerable. True to character, she only draws herself straighter, her fingers clenching into fists. “My father is coming,” she says, fixing me with an imperious stare. “Even now he and a host of castle guards draw near. If you don’t take yourself back over that wallimmediately,sir, I’m going to scream, and you’ll be run through with a dozen lances before you get a second chance.”
Her words could not strike my ears with more delight if she crooned her love for me. Ilsevel—my wild spirit. Alive. She doesn’t know me, and she hates me, and she threatens me with violence, but she is alive.My legs go weak, and I wonder if I’m about to drop to my knees right there and then, like a worshipper in abject supplication.
But there is pain in that stare of hers, pain in that lack of recognition. “Do you not know me?” My lips form the wordsalmost of their own accord, forcing them out from my thickened throat.
“Knowyou?” The disdain in her tone is a kick to the gut, but one I would welcome again and again. “No, I certainly do not. I don’t go around forming the acquaintance of half-naked vagabonds who vault uninvited over my father’s wall.”
I gaze at her, gaze deep into those flashing dark eyes, which look upon me and see only a stranger, a threat. Almost unconsciously my hand moves to touch my heart, reaching yet again for thevelraconnection, which should burn so bright between us. But it’s gone—we broke it together, she and I. With our carelessness, our fear, our pain. What should have sustained us throughout the long years, we turned instead into a means of destruction. And yet I still feel the place where itshouldbe, almost as profoundly as I once felt thevelraitself.
I take a step forward. She startles, tripping on the long train of her white gown as she staggers back from me. “Go away,” she snarls. The low-cut plunge of her neckline reveals the rich swell of her breasts as her breath comes hard and fast. “I mean it! Get out of here, now!”
I stand quite still save for a long, careful inhale through my nostrils. Then, with every effort to gentle my rough tone: “I’ve crossed worlds to find you, myzylnala. I’m not leaving your side. Never again.”
With those words, I push back my hood, revealing my face to her. Her mouth opens to say something, but the sight of me shocks her to silence. I suspected it might; here, in the mortal world,the fae blood of my heritage always seems to shine brighter even than it does in my own world, instilling in me a luminous quality, an otherworldliness which is difficult to disguise. My face and form radiate strength and beauty unmatched by mortal men—not the sculpted perfection of pureblood fae and their glamours, but enough to make a profound impact.
She stares at me, her mouth open, her expression somewhere between aghast and enthralled. Her brow pulls together, her cheek tightens, and her eyes run across my features then slowly down my muscular frame. I search desperately for even a trace of recognition in her gaze. I cannot find it.
