The Wolf King Read online

  Then a flash of red caught my eye, and I saw a gorgeous, dark-skinned young woman slide silently beside Lleweyn and rest her hand on the middle of his back.

  He moved into her touch without conscious thought and glanced at her.

  “Rayale,” he whispered, and in that one word, I heard a fullness of emotion I’d never expected to hear from one so young.

  The girl was on the cusp of womanhood, with high cheekbones and feline slanting eyes that looked upon my son with the same type of intensity. They were so young, the two of them, but already, they knew.

  I pressed my fist to my rapidly beating heart. I was transfixed by the sight of them, even as I wondered who could be showing me this. This wasn’t my vision. I had no knowledge of this memory.

  I glanced behind me. Ewan was looking straight ahead. At first, I’d thought I’d been remembering my memories, but…

  “Ewan, are you seeing this too? Do you see—?”

  “Aye, Vi,” he rumbled with a voice full of gravel. “Aye, I see it. She is so familiar, is she no?”

  He glanced at me, and I nodded. “Yes. She is familiar.”

  “But what are they to do with us?” he asked.

  I looked back at the two youths, watching how Lleweyn could no more seem to keep from touching her than she could him. I saw how they bent their heads toward each other, whispering softly of things that seemed to matter deeply to them.

  Then I watched her laugh. She tipped her head back, and the sound of it filled the night with song, like the ringing of a lovely melody.

  He mouthed something to her, and she brought a flute to her lips. She played with the precision of a master.

  Instantly, the laughter and playing in the trees froze as everyone turned to watch her. Where she’d been merely pretty before, now she was enchanting. Hypnotic.

  “I…” I whispered and cleared my throat. “I… I’m not entirely certain, but that child, that boy… Lleweyn, he was not around the table in the other scene. I’d have remembered,” I ended softly.

  He nodded. “These were our children. Where are they now?”

  Closing my eyes, I thought of them, all their beautiful shining faces a mixture of mine and Ewan’s. They were the evidence of our love for each other, the proof of a beautiful life we’d built together.

  Ewan and I were trapped in this place, and I’d forgotten them. But instead of feeling panic, I felt something entirely different.

  Sliding my fingers through Ewan’s own, I squeezed tight. “We will find them again.”

  I felt his eyes upon me. “How can ye be certain of that?”

  “I… I don’t know,” I said.

  I watched as the scene shifted before us again. We were back in the dining room, but now past Ewan was standing at the head of the table and holding fast to a goblet of wine.

  “Mother will speak, my cubs, and all I ask is that ye listen and say nothing until she is done.”

  He looked older than the other versions of him, not that he’d aged physically. He was still a robust-looking man in his thirties, with a head full of thick, shaggy black hair and brilliant gold eyes. His body was fit and powerful.

  But there was a weight on him and a tightness in his frame that bespoke of great sorrow.

  Past me stood, smiling softly at him before nodding toward the table.

  All eyes were glued to her.

  “My children. The joy of my heart. It has been with great pride that I’ve been able to call you my own. Knowing where I came from and who I’d been destined to be, it is a miracle that I stand here before you today.”

  The girls began to quiver, as though intrinsically understanding that whatever the past me was about to say, it might not be good.

  The boys were looking at their papa with obvious questions in their eyes, but no one interrupted past me.

  She was dressed in her red cape, wearing a soft white gown beneath. I frowned, glancing down at myself, noting that, though my dress was torn and stained black and brown in spots, the style of it was the exact same. I fingered the edge of the now-brittle fabric between my fingertips, sick to my stomach.

  “Ewan,” I squeaked, “I think this is—”

  “Our last night,” he rumbled and held me tight. “I think so, too, lass. I… I think I remember this.”

  Past me pressed on, and I could do nothing other than listen, half with hope and half with dread.

  “Mother,” the one with the book asked from the end of the table, voice tight and quivering with obvious fear.

  Past me smiled at her, looking soft and serene, flooding the room with preternatural peace, as though she’d come to a great conclusion, was at harmony with her decision, and only had to share it with those she loved most.

  “Rose, my youngest. My bright star. As brilliant as you are wild and free. Father and I will be forced from here soon.”

  “What? How? Why?” A great roar rose up from all the rest of them, but past me held up her hands.

  Past Ewan shook his head. “Time runs out, children. Please listen, and do not interrupt Mother again.”

  Picking up past me’s hand, he kissed her knuckles tenderly. My Ewan ran his thumb over my hand, and I swore I could feel the ghostly press of his lips to it.

  “Ewan,” I squeezed out.

  “I ken, beloved,” he murmured deeply. “I ken.”

  His arms banded even tighter around me, as though holding me firm to him. Both of us knew that this was it, the moment we’d been lost to one another.

  Past me smiled at her children with tears burning in her bright blue eyes. “Forces outside of our control will tear through all of Kingdom. We have moments, maybe even less.”

  Past Ewan laid a hand on past me’s shoulder. “Mother can fix this, but—”

  Other me sighed deeply, eyelashes fluttering. “But,” she picked up, “you all know that my powers do not work like the fairies do. My powers are dark and can be unstable.”

  “Mother was able to craft these talismans for all of ye. They will keep ye safe, keep you in an alternate realm suspended in time until we can find our way back to ye.” As he spoke, he walked around the large table, handing each child a heart-shaped stone threaded through with a bit of dark leather.

  Uriah’s hand quivered as he took the charm. “Mom. Mother… Lleweyn is—”

  “Yes.” Past me finally allowed the tears to fall even through her smile. “He is trapped in the gods’ games, but he will be safe. I have foreseen it.”

  I gasped, blinking, remembering that now, remembering the visions I’d seen for the week leading up to this very night. I’d scrabbled like mad to ensure my children would remain protected, but Lleweyn had been outside of my grasp, outside of my domain.

  The terror that had gripped me had nearly killed me until I’d received a vision from something so great and powerful and outside the realm of this world or any other. I could not remember a face, or even the sound of its voice. All I could recall was the peace and the certainty that Lleweyn would be protected.

  I swallowed. “Our babies,” I whimpered.

  “Violet, I… I…” Ewan’s voice was only a thread of sound, reedy and cracking, full of heartache and pain. Now it was my turn to give him my strength.

  Twisting in his arms, I laid my head against his chest and pressed dozens of kisses against his wildly beating heart.

  “It may take time before Father and I are able to break through wherever it is my powers will send us. But rest assured,” past me whispered brokenly, “we will never stop working to break free. We will find you again. We will find you all.”

  Then past me walked down the line, kissing the head of each child with tenderness before slipping the charm out of their hands and gently placing it around their necks.

  The moment the talisman pressed against their flesh, they vanished. And with each child that disappeared, I saw sadness build and build in both past Ewan and past me.

  Rose was the last child left, and she was gripping her talisman fast
in her fist. “I do not want to go. Take me with you,” she pleaded, with tears falling heavily and silently down her cheeks.

  Past Ewan and past Violet held hands, a unified front in the face of their daughter’s fear.

  It was past Ewan who knelt and took Rose’s hand in his free one, rubbing her knuckle tenderly.

  “My baby cub, know that could we take ye, we would. But where we go, it will no be safe. Mother is right, sweet one. Her powers are dark, and while they’ll keep us alive, I canna promise more than that. It could take us many lifetimes to return to ye. But we will. We will always find one another.”

  She hiccupped. “I love you, Papa.”

  Behind me, Ewan tensed, and I felt him swivel. When I looked back at him, he was staring not at the tender scene of love between father and daughter, but at a dark corner where white flame burned.

  The watcher was back.

  “She called me that before,” he said softly. “Papa. The visitor to our hell,” he mumbled low.

  I nodded, recalling said visitor and then gasping as the pieces of the puzzle finally slid into place. The beautiful enchantress in the vision with Lleweyn. She’d been younger then, more plump of cheek and burning with youth, but it had been her.

  “Rayale?” Ewan mumbled, and the white flame burst high into the heavens, as though saying, “Yes, it’s me.”

  “Oh gods,” I whispered, horror and gratitude warring in me. “Oh gods, what have we done to you?” I asked her. “I know why the watcher came for us, Ewan. I know why she came.”

  He nodded, and it seemed that he was pressing himself to me as tightly as possible.

  “I think,” he said, “because we couldn’t find our way out alone.”

  Great terrible wailing sounds issued all around us. But when I looked back at the scene and I saw Rose vanished from her seat, I knew it hadn’t come from the memory being shown us. Rather, it was coming from me.

  I was sobbing uncontrollably.

  Past Ewan and past Me were holding fast to one another, pain etched into the lines of their faces as they no longer had to remain brave before their children.

  “Ewan,” past me said, “I’m scared. Scared that whatever I create will be so dark, so malevolent that we will never be able to find one another again.”

  Past Ewan shook his head. “If it’s hell we go to, then at least we’ll be in hell together. The children sleep. They are safe. And maybe someday, if we canna find our way out, they will yet be found. We did all we could, my beloved darkness.”

  I cried so hard that I could no longer see them, but I heard the tearing of energy and magick ripping through their world, felt the brutal and great violence of the ground and sky at war. And then the world was nothing but darkness again.

  Ewan held me tight.

  “I wasn’t strong enough, Ewan. I did this. I built this hell for us. I trapped us in this ugly, horrible place. I am so sorry. I am so sorry.”

  He held me tight, neither of us saying a word.

  Again, we were caught up in the funnel that would lead us right back to the hell I’d fashioned for us.

  And when we were deposited back into it, all I could do was cry and sob, and he held me tight, giving me his strength.

  My heart ached for my children, who would never know that Mother had failed them so miserably. I wasn’t a being of light. What I’d created was a monstrosity, a curse within a curse for Ewan and I both.

  Ewan carried us into his cave, and we lay together, watching as the sky turned different colors. There was no rain anymore. It was all so beautiful, and I had all my memories now.

  I knew who I’d been, and he knew too.

  When the sky blazed with orange and the sun just barely clung to the horizon, I pressed my lips to Ewan’s one last time.

  This was our last night here. I knew it. There was nothing left to show us.

  When we died, we weren’t coming back again.

  I marched from the cave, never looking back, heart a shredded mass in my chest, beating painfully, twisting me up inside. My children. They’d trusted us.

  I moved without thought, muscle memory guiding me back to that same vile place it did every night. I climbed the tree, sat on my branch, and waited.

  “Why did you show me all of that?” I asked the watcher, hoping she was listening, hoping she heard me and that she was somewhere close and hidden from me. “Why would you show me what I could never have again?”

  “Because you can,” she said, and I jumped, so violently startled that I nearly slipped off my perch.

  She sat one branch up from me, with one leg dangling below it. She gripped her flute tightly.

  She looked older than she had in the vision. Her hair was all white and there were small lines around her eyes and mouth. She’d aged. I’d seen her here before, and she’d not looked so old then. But though she was older, she was no less beautiful. In fact, she was even lovelier than I remembered.

  My jaw dropped. “What… what happened to you?”

  There was a softness to her. Her coarse edges had been blunted. But she was stronger for it. There was a core of steel in her now that hadn’t been there before.

  “Time always demands its fair share. Do you see this, Violet?” She held up that same lovely silver flute she’d played for Lleweyn, and I nodded.

  “Do you know what I can do?”

  I smiled. “Play beautiful music.”

  Her laughter was as light and ethereal as it had been then. “Sort of. But if I concentrate, I can also do this.”

  Lifting the instrument to her mouth, she played, and the knife I gripped tight in my hand was suddenly pressed against my own breast. I screamed and stared at her in shock.

  “What… what is this sorcery?” I was not the one holding the knife to my breast. It was her. She was making me do it.

  “It is called will, Heartsong. Violet. Red. Whatever name you wish to go by now. I can help you break this curse you’ve crafted, but you must let me do it. I know now why you’ve been trapped here. I saw it too. Your powers are dark, but mine are both light and dark. If I force you to end the cycle, we could create an even more dangerous flux in the time stream. But choice… choice is different, you see. Choice is light. Not darkness.”

  “You can end this curse?”

  “No.” She shook her head, staring at me through eyes grown far wiser than any I’d ever seen before. “Only you can. I can only provide the push. Your power excels at one thing—survival above all. It is why you cannot break the spell. You tried the other night, tried not to stab Ewan, and you very nearly tore yourself apart in the process. That was when I began to piece it all together, but it wasn’t until tonight that I finally understood.”

  My brows dipped, and the pounding in my chest was so loud that I could hear the beat of it driving through my ears, obliterating all other sound.

  “Think, Violet,” she said. “Just think for a moment. Every curse can be broken. How?”

  I shrugged. “A kiss.”

  She chuckled. “Well, if it had been as easy as that, I’m sure you and Ewan could have broken it the other night.”

  I snorted. “Then… a spell?”

  “Mmm.” She shook her head. “Sometimes. But there is usually one way that any curse can be broken without fail.”

  “Oh.” I laughed. “That’s easy. Kill the curse maker.”

  She stopped smiling.

  And the smile slipped from my face, too, because it was suddenly clear to me why I could never seem to find that one missing puzzle piece. Because my own power had hidden that very truth from me.

  Rayale was right. She’d known me better than I’d known myself. My power excelled at keeping me alive above all else. It had always kept me alive despite everything I’d done wrong that should have ended me over and over and over again.

  And in order to keep me alive, it had forced me time and again to sacrifice Ewan rather than myself, but the result had kept us trapped, locked in place.

  I glanced
down at the blade tip still resting against my heart. My arm was frozen there. I could not shove it through. Everything inside me resisted it.

  But…

  I looked over at her, and her eyes were sad.

  “We were never both supposed to make it out of here, were we?”

  She snorted. “Oh, we’re all making it out of here, believe that. I learned how to freaking manipulate time, and I happen to have friends in some pretty high places. And he owes me big, that bastard. I think he knew all about this tit for tat situation we have going here, and he didn’t warn me.” Her mouth turned down into a harsh frown. “But he totally underestimated me. Most people do.” She cocked her head. “So tell me, Little Red, are you ready to die yet?”

  My blood turned to rivers of ice. The dark rising of power was tingling all around. I could almost hear Ewan’s feet trotting ever closer.

  I’d known when I’d left the cave that I was never coming back.

  I thought of my children, our children, suspended in time, locked away in darkness. I’d only had time enough to see them safe, and I was grateful I’d at least been given that.

  “Tell me, Rayale,” I said, looking at her one last time, “is my Lleweyn safe?”

  Her nostrils flared, and her hand squeezed so tight around her flute that her knuckles lightened. “I promise you, Mother, he will be. He will be, and that boy will finally make an honest woman out of me. Truth, though. I sort of hate how hard I had to work for him. He added years to me, that ass.” She held up a limp strand of her silver white hair and frowned mournfully down at it.

  Shocked by her irreverent words, all I could do was laugh, my heart lighter than it had been since arriving at this dead zone. “Oh gods, I can honestly say that I approve. You are a great woman, Rayale, and I remember your past with him.”

  Her jaw clenched, and her eyes refused to meet mine.

  “But I also know that, though he is my child, what he did wasn’t right.”

  When she looked at me, her eyes were sparkling with a wet sheen. Brushing at her nose with her wrist, she shrugged, but I could almost see the ghost of a grin whisper over her mouth before it was gone.

  “I have plans for him. Don’t you worry, Mama Red.”