“But I do,” I answer. “I do, Ilsevel. I love you more than my very life.”
Her hands grip the stone lip of the basin for support behind her. She doesn’t look frightened exactly. Her incredulity is so great, she’s almost forgotten to be afraid. I take another step toward her, and she cannot flee farther, not without falling into the basin itself. “If you remember nothing else,” I say, urgency making my voice rougher than I intend, “perhaps you’ll remember this.”
Then, though I am not gifted with the tongue of an angel like she is, I begin to sing: “Vel-sa almar. E luralma idor-hath.”
The words of thevelarinvows sound strange in this world, thin and frail, delicate as snowflakes falling on barren ground. But I sing them nonetheless, hoping against hope that, upon hearing them, she will recall the meaning of the old Licornyn verse:
My life is yours,
And, should you require it,
My death.
Ilsevel’s face goes very still as the resonance of my song fills that secret place. Her eyes harden, but not with resistance, I think. Rather, it is concentration I see in her gaze, as though she’s trying to decipher some cryptic message relayed to her from across the boundaries of worlds. I pour the full depths of my heart into my song, in a way I never could on the night I first made this vow. That night she was merely a stranger to me.
Now she is a stranger once more. And yet more beloved than she can possibly imagine.
Her lips part gently as my voice trails back into silence. I wait with held breath for whatever she might say, knowing the fate of my very existence rests upon her next words. “That was—” she begins.
In that moment, voices erupt on the far side of the wall.Male voices.
Ilsevel jumps out of her skin, breath catching tight. “If you don’t want to be positivelyblastedto oblivion, you need to go,now,” she urges.
“No.” I shake my head, my eyes unwilling to move from her face. “I won’t leave you—”
“Oh, that’s lovely, that is!” She throws up her hands. “You won’t leave me, you’ll just make my life a hundred times more difficult, standing there like a great lump, declaring your love for me in a foreign tongue! Please, just hide, won’t you?”
My brow puckers slightly. I move a hand, indicating my great size. “Where, exactly?”
To my surprise she hastens to the nearest wall, grips a handful of ivy, and pulls it back, revealing, of all things, the very staircase she’d described in her story, the one she’d claimed she never could find again. She sees my dubious expression and wrinkles her nose. “Apparently my childhood self didn’t look hard enough.”
There’s more at play here than that. This wall, this doorway, positively reeks of magic the nearer I draw to it. Magic akin to the strange spell layered beneath the dark Miphates’ enchantment. It ripples in the atmosphere, mysterious but not altogether threatening. Ilsevel doesn’t seem to be aware of it as she ushers me through the opening.
I pause, one hand gripping the edge of the stone frame, and look back at her. “I will find you again. I will make you remember.”
She is so close to me, close enough that I could lean forwardand kiss her if I dared. But she scowls at me ferociously. “If you come near me again, I swear I will scream,” she hisses. “This is your last warning, fae. Heed it!”
With that she lets the ivy curtain drop, and I am left in green-cast gloom.
I half-wonder if I ought to venture farther down the stairway, seek out that gallery of the gods she once described. But curiosity keeps me poised at the top of that narrow stair. I have to know who she is meeting while clad in that strange and revealing gown. Not her father, I trust.
Peering through trailing vines, I see a door at the far end of the courtyard open, and a tall figure duck through. He straightens, giving me a clear view of his face. A flood of pure rage and bloodlust bursts in my veins. It’s him. Artoris. The damnable Miphato whom I last saw manhandling Ilsevel in the burning Temple of Lamruil. Morthiel’s righthand man, a practitioner of the darkest magic craft known in all the worlds combined.
“Give me to drink, Taarthalor,”whispers the darkness in my veins, never fully suppressed anymore.“Pour out blood unto me.”
I would gladly damn my soul to pour out the blood of this monster. I hate him more in that moment than I’ve hated any man.
But a thought catches hold of my brain before I charge out through the ivy, bellowing like a bull. That dark magic encasing Ilsevel . . . it is ofnecroliphonorigin, certainly Artoris’s own handiwork. It is keeping Ilsevel alive, preventing her from succumbing to the horrificblow I myself dealt her. If I kill Artoris now, what will happen to Ilsevel? Will she crumple over in agony, her arms wrapped around the hideous gash where my sword drove through her abdomen, piercing organs and ripping apart her insides?
I cannot do it. Gods damn me to the depths of the nine hells, but I will not risk her life, her pain.
Resisting the urge of virulium, I stand my ground and watch the mage as he draws near to my wife. He strides swiftly toward her, his black robes billowing like wings in his wake. She draws herself up straight and tall as a queen and begins to speak, but he grabs her by the shoulders, draws her to him, and plants a rough kiss upon her mouth. It’s almost more than I can stand.
Ilsevel, however, pushes him roughly back. That sight is enough to ease some of the burning in my chest. She doesn’t welcome his embraces. She doesn’t love him. Her face is a mask of hostility, and though I am too far away to hear their words clearly, the tone of anger is unmistakable. She’s even more vicious toward Artoris than she was to the stranger who vaulted over her garden wall.
Artoris tosses back his head and laughs at her, which serves only to raise her ire. When he offers his hand, she refuses to take it, but turns and marches to the water basin in the center of the garden, leaving him to follow in her wake. Now that they are closer, I can hear them even over the murmur of the fountain.
“Let’s get this over with,” Ilsevel growls ungraciously.
