“Live!” Loumarch shouted from the shore as Garin scrambled to his feet.
He wiped the hair out of his eyes and rose, preparing to leap off before one of the Morgen slithered onto the edge of his, her mouth gaping over rows and rows of glistening teeth. She was particularly long; her gaze particularly hungry. A crown of thorns sat upon her head above a trail of green-blonde hair. Instead of lunging for him, she slithered back into the water, causing a wave to rock the pad he stood on. Garin teetered to the back edge and ran, launching himself into the air and landing on his feet this time.
“Especially ferocious, you are. Do you know what we do with immortals like you?” came the Morgen’s sultry voice, vibrating in his skull. “We drag you to the bottom, tether you in strong vines and iron chains, and pick, pick,pickat you until there’s hardly any meat left on your bones. Then, if you’ve regenerated, sometimes after months, we’ll do it again. When we tire of you, we leave you to drown repeatedly. You all succumb eventually.”
There was sloshing behind him. She was getting closer. The next one was further than Garin could jump.
“Live!” the ghoul of his grandfather croaked once more.
Garin bent to center his gravity as the lily pad shook. He lashed out, snarling and swiping like a feral animal at the Morgen’s head, which popped up playfully, its rows of teeth hungrily gnashing.
“I’m already dead,” he snapped, his broken voice carrying across the water. “I’m a man who didn’t die when he should have died. I’ve been dead a long time.”
His grandfather’s next words reverberated in his bones as the morgens’ had, shocking him. “There are days, years that might feel like it. But youare a vessel of magic and knowledge. You arenotdead, my boy. Not when you have so much life ahead of you.”
The morgen bucked beneath him, and he stumbled forward, barely catching himself. Garin made a running jump for the next lily pad—and as he landed in the water just short of it, two hands clamped onto his shoulder, shoving him down into the dark. They grabbed at him, yanked his clothes; when one pair of hands released him, two more latched on, pulling him down.
He didn’t need to breathe, but his human instincts were begging to kick in as panic filled him. Water in his lungs would render him just as unable to fight as any mortal would’ve been.
Live, the husk of Loumarch Trevelyan had said.
Chest burning, Garin glanced up at the moon through the sloshing water, finally stilling against the straining fingers digging into his mouth, ears, and nose—beneath the stands of white hair wrapped around him like a writhing tomb. Maybe itwasa creature Kestrel sent to communicate with him, just as he’d possessed Hywell. Maybe he’d dreamt this all.
Or had the arcana of this ancient land sunk its teeth into his grandfather, too?
Suddenly the water shook, bubbles and hisses surrounding him. Garin found himself free, his arms shielding his face from a blinding light that lit the sky. An explosion of warmth cast the surface aglow, radiating from something—someone—above him.
When he broke the surface gasping, he expected smoke to fill his lungs. Yet the night air had never tasted so clear.
Standing upon the nearest lily pad at the center of the lake, was a person.
It was Lilac, and she was on fire.
She wasshroudedin it: flames encased her, an especially bright fireglow concentrated in her eyes, her lips, at the tips of her hair, and in the vortexes that encased both hands. Unbound, her whipped in a vortex of ember around her, the ends of it also fraying in flame. Her body was glistening and entirely bare, dripping in sweat.
She was burning. She was paralyzed by the pain.
“Lilac!” he thundered. Fangs burning, his weak heart thudding harder than it had in centuries, Garin frantically sloshed toward her, unfettered byMorgen or any of the lily pads that seemed to be making way for him across the pond. He wanted to douse her. He wanted to shield her from the night and unsuspecting eyes—she was probably cold. His own teeth had begun to chatter. “I’m coming!”
He wouldn’t lose her, wouldn’t dare come close to anything like it again. He’d slit his wrist upon her mouth, allow her to take of him with her blunt teeth, heal her from the inside out like he should have when she was broken and bleeding in his arms.
Anything to keep you here, right here in front of me.
Even if it meant breaking every rule, even if it meant their hierarchy invalidating anything she felt for him. Garin didn’t care about some ancient law that sought to discourage what he felt for her, were he ever forced to become Lilac’s sire.
No force on earth could do that.
When he was close enough to feel the heat of the fire that consumed her, he realized it was blood that ran over her bare breasts, down her legs, dripping between her fingers visible within the flames. She wasn’t burning, nor was the plant beneath her. She was…she waslaughing. Lilac’s head tipped back, a look of ecstasy etched upon her delicate features, the airy sound of her giggle whooshing out like the embers rising into the night.
Then, there was a shriek. Garin tore his gaze away just in time to see two Morgen lunge out of the water, slither onto the shore, and grab Loumarch by the shoulders. He didn’t struggle, didn’t make a sound as they dragged his frail body toward the lake.
Instead, the old man—the remnants of him—used the last of his energy to call out to Garin once more. “I will find you again, my boy!”
The rest of his words were lost to the lake as they pulled him beneath the surface. His grandfather had no chance, he was already a dead man.
There were more nights than Garin cared to admit where he’d pondered the unthinkable. That perhaps, a mass grave beneath a bloodstained glade or the watery depths was where he, too, belonged. He was an abomination, a rudimentary ghoul exhumed from the dirt at the cruel expense of magic—just like Loumarch. Just like thatthingthat possessed Hywell.
He was a half-dead creature nipping at the heels of the living.
