Sorrow's Peak (Serpent of Time Book 2) (72 page)

But most of all, he thought about how guilty he felt Brendolowyn was lost. He held up his end of the bargain, keeping Finn alive, but at what cost? They hadn’t been friends, or maybe they had. He didn’t know. He only knew he never wanted the mage to die.

It was a long time before he convinced her they could not linger there any longer. It was foolish to stay. They had what they came for, and when she shot a disbelieving glare at him, it carved straight through him and made it hard for him to breathe.

“If it was you, you’d want us to keep looking.”

“Not if I was…”

He’d been about to say dead, but then he stopped himself, the widening of her eyes making him feel like the most insensitive person on the planet. And maybe he was, but what did she want him to do?

“If I was gone, I’d want you to go, get as far away from this place as possible.”

“I guess that’s easy to say when it’s not you, isn’t it?” she asked him.

There was coldness to her voice and it carved through him like a knife. She pushed past him and headed toward the cave exit. She didn’t stop to wait for him to follow and she didn’t speak to him again until they were outside.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Lorelei stood on the cliff overlooking the sea, watching the white, frothing waves crash upon the rock face below. They’d climbed away from the shoreline, setting up camp on an outcropping nestled safely away from the harsh winds and filling the cavern walls with a sound not unlike constant thunder. It was eerily soothing. It filled her mind and kept her from dwelling too long on any one thought.

Mostly, all she thought about was Bren. His arm reaching toward hers, the burst of light.

She didn’t know how someone could just be gone, as though they’d never been there at all, but Finn was right. Her friend was nowhere. All that remained was the faint scent of his existence and no trail to follow and track him.

How did someone just… disappear? It made no sense, but then what did make sense anymore? The faint memories of the light bursting from within her as she hovered over the drakoren’s hoard, reaching for the broken horns of some god… That was about as senseless as it got, but it served its purpose.

Something woke in her, the wolf she spent the days of their journey fearing lurked just beneath the surface, beckoning her to embrace it. It promised reprieve from heartache, distance from the complicated thoughts plaguing her mind. The temptation was both intriguing and terrifying. For the moment, she wanted nothing to do with it. She didn’t want to forget about Brendolowyn. She wanted to find him. No matter what Finn said, she wouldn’t believe her friend was dead.

And yet what was she supposed to believe. He was nowhere. It was like he’d simply ceased to exist.

Dropping her shoulders as she exhaled, she sensed Finn’s approach long before he arrived there and lowered a comforting hand to her shoulder. “I know you’re upset with me…”

“I’m not upset with you,” she muttered, watching the waves crest in the distance over something jutting from the sea. A slab of stone, she thought, a lost island buried beneath miles of saltwater and forgotten. She didn’t know what it was, nor did she care, but it drew her attention nonetheless. “It’s not your fault he’s gone, Finn. It’s mine.”

“No,” he denied her self-deprecation. Clamping his other hand on her arm, he spun her in to face him, but instead of meeting his imploring stare, she tipped her forehead into his bare chest and closed her eyes. “It’s not anyone’s fault, Princess. Maybe… maybe that was what was meant to happen all along. Maybe he came here to do what he was meant to do.”

“I don’t buy that.” She jerked her head up, fiery amber eyes narrowing into disbelieving slits. “He didn’t come here to die any more than you did.”

“Maybe not, but… what if his disappearance had something to do with you saving him?”

“What do you mean?” Every one of her muscles stiffened. She knew exactly what he was suggesting, and though she’d willed him to explain it, she wasn’t sure she really wanted him to say it out loud. That would mean it
was
her fault. Really and truly her fault.

“You saved him, and all those other people. Maybe that light inside you… I don’t know, maybe being near it reversed what was done before, or…”

Gasping, she started to back away from him but he held onto her arms. “Then it was my doing…”

“Princess, no.”

“We have to get back to Dunvarak. What if…? My brother and all those people… What if the same thing happens to them? What if they weren’t meant to be saved and setting things right means…”

“That’s ridiculous,” he insisted. “Your brother is fine, Lorelei. The people of Dunvarak are fine.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You’re right, I don’t, but you don’t know that they aren’t either. I agree, we need to get back to Dunvarak, but it will take us weeks without the horses…”

“That magical portal you mentioned in Nua Duaan would come in handy right about now,” she muttered.

Finn snorted softly, lips curling into an appreciative grin. “Maybe the Alvarii will help us get there faster, I don’t know, but I think we should head there. Maybe the seer knows more about what happened.”

“And if he doesn’t? I don’t feel right about this, Finn. I don’t feel like just leaving him here is the right thing to do.”

“You can’t leave something that isn’t there, Lore. He is gone. He is nowhere. We spent hours in that place looking for him.”

“Then we’ll go back in, look again.”

“Is that what you really want? To waste time…”

“He is my friend! Looking for him is not a waste of time.”

“I know you cared about him, but he would not want us to waste time. He would want you to get the Horns of Llorveth back to Dunvarak.”

“What do you know of what he would have wanted? You never liked him, and now you want me to just leave him here.”

“I know more than you think, Princess!” he countered.

The tips of his fingers burrowed unintentionally into her flesh, making her wince and gasp between clenched teeth. He didn’t notice.

“I know he loved you, that he spent the days of his life longing for you even though he knew he wasn’t meant to have you, but he came here to do the right thing and he would not want you to make light of his sacrifice by giving up.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We talked sometimes,” he shrugged, finally loosening his fingers. He dropped his arms at his sides and glanced past her shoulder to stare at the setting sun. “When you were asleep, the night before we came into the caverns leading into the mountain, he told me what the Light of Madra showed him when she saved him from death. A future in which she both loved and hated him because of what he allowed to happen to me.”

Closing her eyes, she could almost hear his voice whispering the words,
“I can live without your love, but I do not want to live in a world where you hate me.”

Tears dampened her lashes, leaking through her tightly squeezed eyes and spilling down her cheeks. “The gods are… I hate them. This world we live in… their interference in everything… their indifference to our suffering… I want to do nothing for any of them.”

“Then don’t do what needs to be done for the gods. Do it for the people you love. Do it for Bren and for your brother and your nephew. Do it for your sister.”

“For you?”

She implored him silently to look at her, and she knew he could feel her silent urging to give in, but he resisted for a long time, holding his gaze on the sea. Finally, he turned his stare on her again, his wild, pale blue eyes skittering across her face before lifting to meet hers.

“I would do anything for you, Finn. You know that. You feel it, I know you do.”

“I know,” he nodded. “But none of this is about you and me.”

“Gwendoliir told me before we left Nua Duaan that all of this is about you and me. Without you, I cannot do what needs to be done. Will you… help me?”

He brought a hand up to rest against her cheek, gentle fingertips brushing through the loose locks of hair before he tucked them behind her ear. Leaning inward, he kissed her forehead, lips lingering there as he muttered, “Do you even have to ask?”

“No, but it would still be nice to hear you say it.”

“Princess,” he leaned back, “I would follow you into the abyss if that was where you had to go. I am with you. Always.”

Turning her head downward as she acknowledge him with a nod, she stared at his chest for a long time before bringing her hands up to rest on his shoulders. She wanted to cry again, but she didn’t. There would be plenty of tears; she didn’t know how she knew that. She just did. For the moment, however, she wanted to let go, to lose herself so the thoughts weren’t there to overwhelm her.

Lowering her head to rest on his chest, she closed her eyes and said, “I’m tired, Finn.”

“If you want to sleep, I will keep watch.”

“I want to sleep with you,” she declared.

“It’s not safe.”

“I don’t care about being safe right now.” She lifted her head again, surged onto the tips of her toes and brushed lips to his, murmuring, “I just… want you to hold me. I need to feel our arms around me, Finn.”

Sliding her hand down to catch his, she drifted past him and drew him with her, into the dark near the fire where they laid down upon the stone. Under the surface, the wolf inside her wanted to connect more deeply with him, to actualize the bond between them and embrace what they were, but the woman still wasn’t ready. She was confused and frightened, and though there had never been anything beyond infatuation between her and Brendolowyn, it felt wrong to give herself to Finn so soon after losing him.

Finn just held her, stroking fingers through her hair and listening to the sound of the relentless waves thundering against the cliffs.

She slept deeply and she didn’t dream, and for that she was glad.

EPILOGUE

“The U’lfer chancellor is a sniveling coward who knows nothing of consequence. All he does is cower and whimper and claim he did everything the king asked him to do.”

The window fogged beyond the exhale of his breath, the cold glass responding to the warmth and blocking the dismal grey morning beyond the castle walls. A golden orange carpet of color blanketed the courtyard below, the barren trees naked sentinels standing guard around the palace.

“What am I to do now? How do I find her?”

“Now you wish for my counsel?” The lurid drone of her voice was like a tiny dagger pushing its way into his heart, the casual laughter that followed causing just enough pain to make him feel insignificant. “I warned you not to pursue her in the first place. I told you to focus on her sister, on Aelfric’s real daughter. The U’lfer bitch would have come to us, practically thrown herself at your feet had you listened to me, but now it’s too late. You have disrupted the flow of events and everything you wish for hangs in the balance.”

“Is that all you do, Dea?” Shoving off the wall, he whipped his head around to glare at the woman indolently relaxing among the pillows. She wore little more than a flimsy silk dressing gown, its silver sheen gleaming against her dusky skin. “Take pleasure in my failures? Mock my suffering?”

“You would not have failed if you listened to my counsel. Ninvariin told me…”

“I don’t give a damn about your goddess!” he railed, stalking toward the edge of the bed and gripping the post in his hand. He shoved it, shaking the canopy over her head, but she remained indifferent to his anger. She languidly tilted her head at him, as if to remind him who actually held the power, that with little more than the flick of her wrist she could pin him to the wall on the other side of the room and strip the flesh from his bones.

He hated her for that.

She played the game with him, allowed him to manipulate and abuse her because she enjoyed it, but in truth she could crush him at any time. She simply chose not to because some twisted part of her claimed to actually care for him. She craved power just as much as he did; it was the very thing that tied them to one another in the first place.

“If you care so little, Highness, perhaps I should leave you to it. You can work this out on your own. You clearly don’t need my help.”

“Why do you do that?”

“I could ask the same of you. You ask for my advice, beg me to confer with Ninvariin, and then you ignore what She tells you to do. Even the gods grow bored and weary, my prince, most especially when you do not heed them.”

“And what would She have me do?”

“What does it matter now?” she shrugged. “You won’t do it.”

“You are an insufferable bitch. Pretentious, self-righteous…”

“And yet, you love me.”

“I should have you collared and thrown into the dungeons.”

“You should,” she shrugged. “But you won’t. Because you’re a coward. A scared little boy who thinks only of winning the love and respect of a man who does not deserve your devotion. You did not come here for a kingdom of your own, no matter how many times you tell yourself that lie. You came here to make your father proud, to make him love you.”

“Shut up!” he hissed warning.

“I speak only the truth, a matter you have spent far too long ignoring. Do you want to fix this, Highness? To win your daddy’s love and then hold it over his head like a bleeding heart dripping down upon him?”

“Of course I want to fix it. I want her on her knees before me begging for her life, and then I want to take it from her and crush it in my hand.”

“You cannot kill her. She is protected by forces beyond our understanding, important for reasons I have not yet seen, but you can hurt her. You can make her suffer.”

Intrigued by this notion, his hand slackened as it slipped down the bedpost. “Go on.”