Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #6)(63)

Won’t we?

The figure that was Daylily sat upright.

Behold our strength.

She put out an arm. It reached for miles, for leagues, for years. It reached beyond worlds and beyond minds. And it found a place where a young man hid in the topmost reaches of a tower, the door bolted and blocked, his captive bound to an iron link in the wall. He sat with his back to the door, listening to the whispers of those outside planning how to get in, fighting exhaustion and terror in his struggle to keep awake and alive.

The thing that was Daylily grabbed him by the collar and lifted him out of himself, hurtling him back across distances so vast they could not be fathomed, for such is the distance between each mind. And he, as dreamers do, thought nothing of this strange flight. If he felt anything at all, it was relief to be, however briefly, freed from the knock, knock, knocking on the far side of the tower door.

He stood upon the barren plain, his eyes closed, feeling nothing save the ground beneath his feet.

Then the she-wolf said, “Lionheart?”


He turned. What he saw startled him so much that he staggered back three paces and flung out his hands to catch his balance. Then he whispered, “Daylily?”

For it was she whom he saw bound by the manacles to the dirt-driven stakes, facedown with a chain about her neck. Her red hair fell freely over her shoulders and face, her only covering in that desolate place. For here she could have no protection.

“Daylily!” he cried and leapt forward, unaware of anything else that might watch them. He did not know if he dreamed or if, by some strange magic (many strange magics had been happening to him lately) he had been transported here. He fell to his knees beside her, searching for some lock or catch he might undo. “What happened to you? How did you come to be so bound?”

“Go away, Lionheart,” said she, her voice husky and low. “Don’t touch those chains.”

But he tried anyway, for such was his nature, always contrary, always disobeying. He could find no means to free her, however, and at last he had to sit back, his fingers bruised and bleeding, staring at her aghast.

She struggled up to her knees. The length of the chain allowed her that much freedom at least. Her hair, longer here than it had ever been in life, fell across her front and covered her knees like robes.

“Did you return to Southlands?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“After I was gone?”

“After you were gone.”

“But that didn’t matter, did it? You did not come for me.”

Lionheart tried to swallow. The air was very dry, cold, and still in this place. “I came to make peace with my father.”

“That is good,” said Daylily, bowing her head so as not to look at him. “He is dying.”

“He is dead,” said Lionheart. “But I saw him. Before the end.”

She nodded. Then she said, “What did you do? When you left me, what did you do?”

“I died.”

Her icy eyes flashed up at him from under her shielding hair. “A ghost, then? Is that why you’re here?”

But he shook his head. “Not a ghost. I’m not dead anymore.”

He wasn’t. In the darkness of this place under that midnight sky, Lionheart’s face glowed. A glow of change, of growth, of life beyond anything Daylily had ever known or experienced. The closest thing to it she remembered seeing was in the face of a newly opened lotus flower just as the first breath of morning touched its petals. It had seemed to respond with a song of color and vibrancy that Daylily herself could not hear but could just barely see.

It was a sight she hated, for she could not share it. And she hated it now in Lionheart’s eyes.

She tried to raise her hands as some sort of shield, but the chains on her arms restrained her. She could only turn her head and stare out across the blight of her mind toward a horizon of darkness.

“Did you find Rose Red?” she asked at last. “Did you save her?”

Lionheart studied that profile, the crisp lines of her jaw and brow, harder and more stern, yet simultaneously more vulnerable in this barren land. Beautiful Daylily, not so beautiful now. He found it difficult to speak.

“No,” he managed. “That is, I did find her, but it was not I who saved her. She is safe now though. She is . . .” He stopped, uncertain how to continue, and Daylily heard many things in that silence, things he might not have intended to reveal. “She is safe,” he said. “And she is whole.”

“By whole, I assume you mean no longer hideous,” Daylily said, still gazing out to the emptiness. “Did you come upon some beauty spell and, just like magic, solve all your problems?”

“Rose Red was always beautiful,” said Lionheart. “I was simply too blind to see it.”

How she wished to laugh! How she wished to throw his words back in his face, to ridicule, to . . . to bite.

To tear.

To rip.

The red wolf turned suddenly and lunged at Lionheart. But he did not move, for he had seen already what she was, and he knew that she could not reach him. As he looked at her, tears welled in his eyes, spilled over, and fell to the dust, where they disappeared, unable to touch the dryness.

“I wish—” He stopped, waiting for his breath to allow more words. “I wish I could save you, Daylily,” he said.