Give Me (Wyrd and Fae #1)(35)

“Lourdes!” Elyse raced to the window, knowing she was too late.

How did she do that? Lourdes was on the ground below, seated on Hector, her cloak billowing as she urged him toward the castle gate. Beyond, the moon shone on Galen and Diantha riding at full speed over the fields toward Igdrasil.

Elyse’s heart pounded like never before. Great gods help me! She cried, “Andromache!” and leapt.

For one second she felt nothing, heard nothing, sensed nothing.

Then there was a rushed feeling, and she was seated on the horse—precariously. Elyse leaned forward and gripped Andromache with her knees. “Sun and moon, help me hold on.” She’d wyrded the horse and the bit and bridle—but no saddle. She didn’t remember the fall. One moment she stood on the cool stones of the window casement. Then she was clinging to the speeding horse and charging past the gatehouse.

Everything about the world bombarded her senses. Aeolios was abroad tonight. He’d blown away all mist and clouds. The moon was brilliant and the stars blazed. The cold night wind filled her lungs with sea air. The jeweled net that bound her hair fell away, and the wind blew it everywhere.

Ahead she heard Hector’s complaining snorts—and Lourdes…panting? A strange repetitive mix of grunt and whine. Farther ahead, Galen and Diantha neared Igdrasil. They were going to make it. But Elyse was not. She slipped from Andromache’s back, the ground blasting toward her face.

“Igdrasil!”

She didn’t hit the ground. She landed in the tree, safe between two huge branches. Igdrasil’s energy streamed into her and filled her with strength and confidence and love. It connected her to all of life. She could feel Mother, pulsating, singing in every molecule of every discrete thing in existence.

All will be well.

On her right far below, ocean waves broke over the rocks at the cliff’s base. On her left, horses’ hooves pounded the earth. Galen and Diantha were coming, the princess in the lead—and Lourdes hard on their heels.

“Galen!” Lourdes screamed. “Galen!”

Ugly, shrill. Full of venom. Lourdes raised her hand to throw a curse, and Elyse blocked it with a flick of her wrist.

Horses’ shrieks mixed with their riders’ screams, horrific yawps of animal and human terror. Elyse had made a terrible mistake. She should have been watching the prince and princess. Diantha didn’t know about the cliff.

“No!” Elyse threw out her hand, and a ball of light appeared in her palm. It grew into a great sphere of living radiance and shot out into the sky past the cliff. The sphere surrounded Galen and Diantha and extracted their souls in the instant before their bodies hit the rocks.

Elyse’s ring expanded, floated off her hand into the air. The gold and silver bands unwound from each other. The gold band absorbed Galen’s soul, and the silver one took in Diantha. In a snap, the bands reunited and returned to Elyse’s hand.

“Elyse?” Lourdes reined in Hector beside Igdrasil and slid off. She walked unsteadily toward the tree. “Is that you?”

Fury coursed through Elyse’s veins. Rage more intense than she’d ever thought possible drove her from the tree to the ground. She ran to Lourdes and raised her hands like claws. “Cage!”

“Elyse!” At last Lourdes had a little respect. At last she believed in Elyse’s power. “I didn’t mean to!” She flailed against the invisible walls of the tiny, fierce boundary. Elyse made the boundary tighter.

“Right, Lourdes. You didn’t mean to. Just as you didn’t mean to kill Mother.”

In rage, in despair, only half aware of her actions, Elyse reached into the depth of Lourdes’s being, extracted her soul, and flung it into the heart of Igdrasil. She flicked her wrist at Lourdes’s body, and it flew over the cliff, as inconsequential as a dead leaf blown away by Aeolios.

Elyse collapsed to her knees, trembling. She stared at Igdrasil’s trunk. Lourdes! Elyse sensed no attempt at communication, but she knew Lourdes was in there. Galen and Diantha, on the other hand, were definitely conscious in her ring—and desperate to get out.

“Diantha.” Galen’s voice dripped with longing and frustration. “I’ll find you.”

“I’m here, Galen, my love.” Sweet Diantha.

Elyse slapped her hands over her ears, but the voices were in her head. Diantha tried to slip unnoticed through an unused part of Elyse’s brain to take control of her body. Elyse nipped that off and drove the princess back into the silver band.

Great gods, what have I done?

This time when the ground flew at her face, it found its mark.





12

A Bower



Moving. The soft pad, pad, pad of footsteps and the smell of damp grass. Elyse half opened her eyes. She was being carried by a man with yellow hair.

“You’re awake.” His eyes were the color of lilacs, and his gaze filled her with well-being. But he was wrong; she wasn’t awake. She was falling through space. Everything went dark again.

Flickering brightness. A beam of sunlight kept slipping past the trees and splashing over Elyse’s face. Now she was awake. She sat up on a pile of leaves. The air smelled of hawthorn and rosemary and damp dirt. She was in the woods at the dip by the fallen tree.

The events of last night flooded her mind. What had she done to Galen and Diantha? To Lourdes? Thank sun and moon Mother wasn’t here and didn’t know. Everything had gone horribly wrong. Galen and Diantha…at least she’d been trying to save them. What she’d done to Lourdes was unforgiveable. She’d thrown the wyrd in a fit of rage, intending to put Lourdes where she could never work evil again. Without thinking it through, she’d stripped Lourdes from her body and trapped her spirit within Igdrasil.