I balled my hands into fists, fighting the instinct.
“What is yer name?” I asked her, squeezing my eyes shut. I had to make her real. Not the enemy. But real.
“Violet.”
At the sound of that name, I felt heat radiate all the way through me, as if someone had lit a torch in my soul. And for a second, the madness choking me in its grip lessened.
“Tell me yours,” she pleaded, voice sounding strained, as though she, too, felt that same demanding darkness attempting to leech sanity and reason from her. “Tell me something, wolf. I… I have to—”
“I am Ewan,” I whispered, and she sighed. A soft smile gripped her, and the madness receded from her gaze.
“Ewan,” she said in a small, quavering voice.
“Aye, lass?”
Her smile grew wider, impossibly wide and full, and a lone tear trekked out the corner of her left eye.
The madness in me receded even further. I wanted to reach for her, wanted to hold her, to whisper to her just as the man in the sands had done back then. But I couldn’t move.
“There is darkness here,” she said. “And I do not think I can fight it.” Her hands had moved from her lap, and the left one was creeping ever closer to the blade she’d dropped earlier.
My own gums felt swollen, tingling with the need to drop my fangs, and my throat burned for a taste of her blood.
I shivered. This place was dark. It was evil. And when I was here, I was evil too.
“Do ye… do ye think that’s why we do as we do? Why we hurt each other so?” I asked tentatively.
She swallowed hard. “I… I don’t know. All I know is that when I am not here, when I was traveling through time, I was remembering other parts of—”
“Me,” I finished, feeling exactly as she had.
She nodded. “Yes. It was so real, wasn’t it? That peace? That clarity of mind? It felt good.”
“Aye,” I rumbled.
“Do you think we are damned? Is that why we are here?”
Her hand had found the hilt of her dagger, and she was slowly dragging it back her way. Would we even remember anything tomorrow? Already I could feel the images of our time in the funnel fading away. All I recalled were trees and sand and the vague impression that I’d once held treasure in my arms.
It was like I couldn’t create new memories here, not ones that would last for long, leastways.
“Did we exist before this, lassie?” I asked her softly, gruffly, not even sure why I asked it at all.
Her eyes were huge and welling with tears. That damned silver blade was now fisted tight in both her hands. “We had to have, Ewan. We had to have. Otherwise, what was the point?”
I shivered when she said my name, hearing an echo of that name said just that way so many other times before—with heat, fire, want, need, and love so profound that it brought me to my knees every time. Before I even knew what I was about, I had her hand in mine.
Fur had ripped through my forearms, and I felt the call of the wolf too damned close to the surface for bloody comfort. But she did not pull away from me or act fearful of my clawed touch.
Instead, she was trembling now too.
“Oh,” she breathed, “it is like you are flame, singeing and burning me, but in the most delicious way.”
Her skin on mine was the touch of velvety roses. I lifted her hand to my nose, sniffing her wrist, breathing her in.
And as I did, I felt the tide come crawling back toward the shores again. The images were fuzzy and faint, but echoing with warmth and laughter and deep, impossibly deep threads of eternal devotion and love.
I kissed her just over the pulse point, my fangs scraping along her soft, tender flesh, fighting my urge to pierce.
I whined, and she trembled. When I looked at her, I saw a glint of evil growing in her eyes, saw that wicked blade still resting upon her thigh, but there was something else in the witch’s eyes that’d never been there before.
She smiled.
I wanted to remain in this second, frozen with her in this place, and never leave, because I could almost grasp it, almost pull it back in, the memories of a better place. Of a happier one.
But then the mask stretched tight over her face, and the awareness and warmth were suddenly gone.
She stood.
And I let her go. I watched her walk through the cave entrance as snow blasted her from all sides, whipping the red cape around her ankles. She walked down the trail, a solitary, dark figure growing smaller as she faded into the distance.
Night had come upon us, and my own thoughts turned small. Memories receded. The hunger overtook me. Fur sprouted all over my body, and I called forth the shift.
Once I’d become the beast, I howled and trotted down the path to meet my dark, twisted destiny all over again.
Ten
Rayale
“Dammit.” My voice shook as I watched her sink that blade deep into his heart, and watched his own fangs slide into the delicate carotid of her neck.
I shook my head.
Something about this damned place made them forget and revert over and over again into the monsters that craved only the death of the other. But in order to leave the ley line, they had to choose to go.
I wasn’t sure how to make that happen. All I knew was this place was their genesis. The ley line was where it started and where it would end for them.
I’d hoped showing them their beginning would help. I’d hoped that seeing the birth of their great love would have jogged those bloody memories loose.
But when the ground shook beneath my feet and the sky tore in two, I knew it hadn’t been enough. No sooner had they returned here than they began to lose it all over again.
Heart sinking, hope quickly dwindling, I waited for the darkness to take us again, waited to fail all over again. But right before it did, I saw something I’d not seen happen with them any time since I’d arrived here.
Violet, still alive, was leaning over Ewan, holding his dark head fast to her breast as she crooned in his ear and brushed at his blood-soaked fur.
“Oh, my wolf. Oh, my darkest heart. I… lo…”
And then the veil ripped, and we were all tumbling down, down, down again.
But rather than wail and rage, I felt hope burst within me. Just as Ewan had gotten better from his time with me, she was getting better from her time with him.
Maybe I didn’t need them both to remember. She was the Heartsong, the magick of the fae. She was the power here.
If I could unlock her, then maybe we all stood a chance of escaping this hell. And if that meant I had to travel back and forth through time to make it so, then so bloody be it.
Violet
* * *
Back. Back from the dead.
I gasped, shooting to a sitting position. My neck still burned from the throb of fangs puncturing me, bleeding me dry of life and vitality.
I expected to see the driving rain, the bitter gray clouds of the sky above me, and the swampy earth beneath me.
But I was in a world of sand dunes a beguiling shade of gleaming umber. Glowing moons surrounded by thick rings were high in the sky.
I heard a rustling sound, and then two figures were barreling not just past me, but through me. I sucked in a sharp breath, expecting to be stung by cold, or even knocked to the ground. But I felt nothing.
They were vapors. Moving vapors.
One of them was me.
And the other…
“Wolf,” I breathed as the memories came crashing back. I’d been in this place before, a land outside of the dark, terrible world, a land I’d once known.
Ewan, for that was his name, was rushing after the younger me. Grabbing her elbow and whipping her around.
“Stop yelling, lass,” he growled, shoving his handsome face into hers. His body was stiff and tight, radiating urgency.
Younger me tried in vain to shake him off, but Ewan’s grip was unyielding, leaving a bright red mark on her pale flesh.
I rubbed at my own elbow in sympathy.
“Get off me,” younger me growled, and I shivered at the raw rage in her eyes.
I knew what she would do a second before she did it. I rolled my tongue around the inside of my mouth, remembering the feel of his flesh upon it as I’d bitten down hard enough to break skin.
Ewan tossed his head back and groaned, the sound a mix of both pain and erotic pleasure. His hand curved to cup the back of her head gently, tenderly, even as his voice trembled with barely checked fury.
“Damn ye, lassie. I did not wish to do this yet.”
I shoved a fist to my breast, feeling the rapid beating of my heart beneath it, breathless with anticipation as my mind flooded with a surge of memories that had been lost to me for so very long.
This was it.
The very moment that’d defined my life.
The wolf, my wolf, padded silently toward me. I looked at him, wondering if he remembered this as vividly as I did. But there was darkness in his gaze, a darkness that’d not been there the day before.
When I thought it, I knew it was true. He and I had traveled time before. Together. I reached out for him. He’d rejected me before. I hoped he would not reject me again.
He seemed unsure. But I did not see the burning flame of rage in his dark eyes this time.
He took a step toward me. And then I heard the moan.
At the sound, my own moan escaped me. I tipped my head back, closing my eyes, not needing to see the moment to remember it in exacting detail.
Ewan’s eyes had glowed, and his mouth had pulled back like a dog’s muzzle. His fangs had dropped, and my heart had raced out of control in my chest—but not with fear.
Dark desire had gripped me then. I’d wanted his bite. I’d wanted it so badly I thought I might die without it. But I’d been too proud to ask for it, instead doing all in my power to make him believe I did not want him.
The truth was that I’d wanted him too much. It’d been such a conflict in my heart, the need to have the man who’d violently butchered my guardian before my eyes, warring with my need for vengeance.
I’d hated him, but only because he’d made me want the one thing I knew was forbidden to me.
His bite had not been savage, but it had been deep. I’d trembled, groaning in wild, desperate desire. I panted and clutched at him, alive and in ecstasy for the first time in my long, long life.
I’d been fashioned to be a prison for the fairy darkness. I wasn’t made to love. Or need. Or want. But I was defective. I always had been. Everything I’d been created not to be was exactly what I was.
I had needed. I had wanted.
And I still did.
My wolf lowered his head to my lap, not moving, not licking me. But I felt a tug of war in him. His body was tense, his muscles tight as if he wanted to run away, as though if I made even the tiniest of movements, he’d flee.
But he was crying out as only a wolf could, the sound so broken, so desperate and full of longing. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I laid my hands along his thick neck and patted him.
I felt different. Like the madness that’d stolen my mind was lessening its hold on me, and I was remembering everything all over again.
“Do you remember, Ewan?” I asked him softly.
But the wolf looked at me without knowledge or human intellect. He had almost reverted to what he’d been yesterday.
So why could I recall, and Ewan could not?
Just before the vacuum fell over us again, I felt the tug of wind brush my back, and this time, I was ready when the funnel yanked us back through the dimension of time and space. I held on to my wolf, who’d still not moved, though I knew by the tense lines of his body that touching me this way wasn’t easy for him. And yet I sensed that, just like me, he needed to touch me to feel grounded in the reality of our present. So I took advantage of the opportunity and did the one thing I’d been dying to do since yesterday. I kissed his muzzle, whispering to him over the sounds of his panicked growls, telling him that I would be right there with him.
When I spied a pillar of burning white flame steeped in shadow hovering just within the periphery of my vision, I knew the watcher was back and stronger than ever before.
I stared at it, feeling as though I knew it somehow, sensing that it and I had walked through many memories together.
Ewan was silent in my arms, breathing steadily, but pressed as tightly to me as he possibly could.
I felt the watcher’s gaze on me.
“You are a friend, aren’t you?”
It said nothing, but I hadn’t expected it to.
“You are showing me a past that was. Someone I used to be. Reminding me of all I am. I… I think it is working. So please, please do not give up on us.”
The white flame flared so brightly that it stung my eyes. I had to shield them against the glare. When I finally, lowered my arms, we were no longer falling in the darkness, but had landed into another memory.
The funnel of time was gone, and we were in a dark room scattered with hundreds of pillows. Lying atop them was the same beautiful man as before.
Past Ewan was naked, staring at the wall before him with a hard frown. His tight muscles were full of shadow and light, making him look inhuman and otherworldly.
My heart trembled, and the wolf on my lap sighed deeply. I could not release my hold on him. I wanted to keep him with me always. Needed to.
I had a sense that I’d lost him once and hadn’t even known it until just now. The thought cut through my soul like a blade and made me want to weep.
I frowned as I suddenly realized that dark words had begun to appear on the wall before past Ewan in large, feminine cursive.
“Violet is strong, but she is young and untried. I did my best and raised her with all the love I could.”
Tears pricked my eyes as I recognized the scrawling of my second guardian, the only one who had ever truly loved me before Ewan. Miriam, my second guardian, had been a seer and the Gray Fae. Powerful. Motherly. She’d been goodness personified, and she’d loved me more than she probably should have considering that loving something like me tended to be more of a curse than a blessing.
“Time to tell you of yer mate, Wolf. Of the darkness that holds her soul captive.”
My blood ran cold, and I stopped petting my wolf.
He covered my legs with the full weight of his body, pressing his large snout into my hands and running his broad head back and forth, asking without words that I not stop touching him.
My wolf did not seem to remember all I did, and yet within him was the same awareness of me that I had of him. Miriam had spoken of my darkness to him, and I’d never known it. He’d never told me. Strange that I could remember that. I was starting to remember not just the memories shown to me, but those not shown too.
“She was conceived of dark magick.” The words spread quickly across the blank wall. “Perhaps it was wrong to keep her naïve of her past, but it was the only way I knew to nurture the hate. Ye see, her magick can no be worked through the good. She is powerful, verra powerful, but it is only through hate that she can bloom. So I let her hate ye, and for tha’ I am sorry. But I would do it again, to make her who she is. Violet’s power can take many forms, some benign and useful, but most dark and terrifying.”
I sucked in an incredulous breath, shocked into silence. Ewan was leaning on his front legs, laying his head over my shoulder and whining softly. The sound felt like pain, like terrible pain. But not my own. His.
I looked at him through blurred vision and rubbed his head.
“So that is me then, is it, beast? I am evil? Did I do this to us? Did I make this happen?”
He said nothing to me, only licked the side of my cheek, swallowing the tears of my heartbreak.
A second before the funnel took us up again, I felt the cool wash of air press against my back. I was fairly certain that this time, we’d return to the world of clouds and rain and hell.
I sobbed into hi
s collar, sick to my gut that I knew the answer to my own question, but not sure how I could have done it. I was magick though, and just as Miriam had told him ages ago, I was the very darkest kind of it.
If we were in hell, I was beginning to suspect that I was the very reason for it.
I looked for the white flame, wanting to ask it what it knew, but I did not see it this time.
I was right. We landed back in the swampy fields, just like before. The skies were alive with fury and the world damp with its tears.
But I did not sit in the muck and sob this time. We had only hours before we’d be forced to endure the nightmare again, and I didn’t want to waste any of them.
So I got up and walked to his cave. The wolf trotted faithfully after me.
When we got inside, I looked at him.
“Do you not wish to shift today, Ewan?”
His answer was to lie on the cold hard ground and plant his head on his paws, staring at me mournfully.
The need to reach for my blade tingled at my fingertips. I smiled softly at him.
“I’m starting to remember, wolf.”
His tail thumped the ground.
My smile grew wider. “Why did you never tell me of that darkness in my soul? Why have you never feared me as you ought to?”
His tail only thumped harder.
I searched my soul, feeling a flicker of black flame burning deep inside me. At the very heart of me. How had I forgotten that flame? I knew what it was now. It was my dark heart. The dark, twisted magick of the fae.
There was power in me. Endless power.
But I was afraid to tap into its potential. If I was so dark, did that mean I was incapable of anything good?
I looked at him, wishing he’d speak with me. I was lonely in this cave, but I knew I had to respect his right to make sense of things as he saw fit. But it was hard when I craved his company, not the beast, but the man—Ewan. I wanted to hear him talk to me, wanted him to remember as I was. Wanted him to resurface again so that we might compare notes, see if the memories I was beginning to recall were truth or fiction.