Lilac didn’t need his Sanguine magic to obey. She gave him her hand, and he pulled her up, sitting her in the wide seat before him. “What are you doing?”
“We’re going home,” Garin said decidedly. “Back to the High Forest. I’ve changed my mind.”
Morwenn tilted her head as she stroked its snout. Loïg whinnied at her, stomping his front legs.
Garin slipped his hands over the reins and tugged them left.
But Morwenn tutted, wagging her finger before Loïg. “They’re our guests, and we’re going to make sure they get to the island safely. Where the rest of your brethren are.”
As Garin cussed and tried to tug to the right, Morwenn calmly bent, and straightened with Bisousig in one arm, kissing the struggling feline on the head. The cat swiped, and the sea witch narrowly dodged it; Bisousig then turned in Morwenn’s arms and reached—for them, for Garin, caterwauling loudly.
Ignoring this, Morwenn tossed her hair over shoulder, baring herself, and sauntered past them, trailing her free fingers over first Lilac’s calf, thenGarin’s. It didn’t look like it, but Morwenn’s skin wasice-cold. Clammy, like a corpse at the bottom of a cave.
As Garin clawed her off, dread festered within Lilac’s very bones. Her dreams of high cliffs and rocky shores—the towering, glittering palace with its twisting turrets like sea glass she’d witnessed in her slumber… those raging tides. They had been waking nightmares.
Below, the waves had begun to crash against the cliff, tremendous walls of barrelling water. The skies above darkened, and there it was again—the thick blue fog rolling in, obscuring the horizon.
“You’re rather fond of soirées, aren’t you, Your Majesty?” The sea witch’s deep, husky laughter rumbled from behind them. “Hurry up, then. You won’t have all day, and the ride to the island is several hours.” She tilted her head at Garin. “You and my brother are our esteemed guests, and my dark creatures aresolooking forward to welcoming the representatives of the High and Low Forests.”
Something began to nag,pullat Lilac’s subconscious again, stronger than fear. This had all gone wrong. The chest—Kestrel’s silence.
The revenant.
The stories werewrong; this was more than a wayward princess left to drown. Morwenn was worse—was shaped by time, eroded by the forces of the sea. She was older than the Breton thrones, older than the skewed bloodline of Trécesson heirs.
“We’re leaving,” growled Lilac forcefully. She grabbed the reins and tugged herself, but her loyal horse seemed entirely ensnared in Morwenn’s gaze.
“I’m afraid the poor Strigoi is afraid of a little water, my dear Morvarc’h,” she cooed. “I thought that was an old wives’ tale.”
“Morvarc’h?” Garin snarled. His arms snagged around her, creating a protective cage, and together they scrambled to dismount—but it was too late.
With a tap on his rump, Mowenn sent Loïg galloping toward the thin edge of the cliff. Garin contorted his body to throw them off to the side, but the reins they clutched came to life, latching onto them, securing them into place on the saddle.
The creature leaped, sending them plunging toward the crashing maw of sea below.
EPILOGUE
I’ve been cursed to walk this earth for 192 years—193 in early November, but who’s counting? Any poor sod who’s ever crossed paths with me will tell you that there are an unreasonably high number of things that irk me to the high heavens. It began in my childhood: slow, misting rain—I prefer drenching storms, a sprinkling of thunder and lightning, if you will. The feel of the coarse wool coats Aimee made me wear on our market day trips down to the Paimpont bakery run by the Heussaffs in the winter.
As I got older, it was the clanking of the armor we were forced to don, and—understandably—the cries of dying men. But eventually I grew numb to it, as one does when he is subjected to continuous war for a decade of his youth. Many of us did.
When I was turned at twenty-five, I found the feeling returning tenfold. Sensation fed into my anger, which then fed into my hunger. Years later, the inn brought me great reprieve, and the Algovens seemed unbothered by my need to interact minimally on my shifts, and looked the other way when I’d slink down to my cellar room where I’d rot, a bottle of blood in my hand, until the next evening. Even on the tavern’s most raucous nights, it seemed being among Daemon folk—not even necessarily other vampires—was different for me. Soothing. Calming.
Reassuring, almost—and on my darkest days, when the memories refused to quiet, I’d sit and ponder if I was ever meant for the human life I scarcely truly missed. Of the childhood that came to me in eye-blurring fragments.
And then, the princess walked in, and everything changed. Like the fates themselves were calling out to me, a burning beacon of change and reprieve. It was as though everything warm and good in the world stood right in front of me, in the form of a rain-soaked woman making a mess of my floor.
I’d banished the thought of making a mess ofherimmediately from my fucked up mind.
Last night I was hardly myself, either. Shards of the evening unfold: sitting at the card table with Bast, Myrddin, and that loathsome Casmir. Drinking. Betting. Gambling, and running to Rennes, feeling as free and as caged and scared as I’ve ever felt.
That thumping, sweaty mass of writhing bodies that drove my senses wild. And the queen—the queen in her mask, smelling of magic and dusk and Myrddin’s black powder, and her blood that sings out to me. Centers me.
And that dripping, sweet cunt that leaves me breathless and drives me over the edge all over again.
Last thing I knew, I was in an alleyway, and the next, I’m chasing the warlock down the stairs and out the door. Adelaide nearly took my eye out with one of her exploding bottles, but Myrddin didn’t manage to get very far from me, either. It seems that we, too, are tethered in a way.
At the moment, I am blinded by the sensations of a red lust and ravenousness, locked in a most intimate embrace and whispering sweet nothings to the soft, white linen canvas before me.
