Alador slung the spear at her retreating form. His strike could have been true, should have been true, but at the last moment he threw wide, hitting the base of a tree instead.
“Go!” He shouted again, shaking the very heavens with his cry.
And when she was nothing but a memory once again, he wiped at his cheek, only to discover it was wet with his tears.
~*~
Luminesa
Five years had passed since that night she’d extracted the key from Alador’s chest.
Five long miserable years.
The Goblin had lied about nothing.
Every night she visited the children, peeking through their windows, watching them grow and mature, ripen into beautiful humans before her eyes.
Once, Kai had caught sight of her, or so she thought when she’d seen a grin spread upon his lips.
She’d thought that maybe, somewhere deep down inside he had remembered, but the grin had faded as quickly as it’d appeared, he’d turned from the room and walked away as though he’d never seen her at all.
Luminesa had visited Gerda by a frozen pond two winter’s ago, walking upon the waters toward the girl as a pillar of snow, one of the many forms she’d taken around the children time and again.
Even Baatha had accompanied her, winging proudly through the sky.
She was so much bigger now. Maturing into a lovely young woman with eyes of deepest blue and hair like Rumpelstiltskin’s spun gold. The child had looked up at the bird, and her brows had scrunched into a tight furrow, as though a memory tried to leak its way through...but just as it’d done with Kai, seconds later she’d shrugged and continued down the forest trail to home. Looking right through Luminesa as though she did not exist.
And while their disinterest hurt, it was nothing compared to the pain and torture she felt each time she visited the centaur herd.
Because unlike the children Alador had remembered Luminesa.
Remembered her as being a cold-hearted, cruel witch who’d used them all mercilessly.
Throwing that spear at her back hadn’t been the only thing he’d done to her.
Another time there’d been an arrow with its tip lit on fire. Madness had contorted his features and she’d not even been able to get close enough to him to show him the bracelet.
And slowly she’d stopped visiting quite as often, only coming to the barrier between her lands and theirs as she gazed down upon the herd with her heart trapped in her throat.
Today was such a day. She stood upon the windy bluff, surrounded by a tower of funneling snow. Her bare feet crunching in the ice beneath as her tears crystalized on her frozen cheeks.
Majestic pines covered her on almost every side, so that you’d have to squint to see her there.
Baatha’s claws gripped tight to her shoulder, bloodying her gown in deepest crimson.
But she didn’t care. In fact, she hardly felt the pain at all.
When she’d first met Alador, Luminesa had been void. A woman with no emotion, no feelings...empty of life.
But then he’d come along and he’d sparked a fire in her. Awakened, and brought her back to life.
Luminesa sobbed as she remembered what she’d once been to him, clutching his bracelet tight to her breast as she gazed upon the laughing, and jeering centaurs below.
The winter this year had been milder than the year before that, and the year before that...ever since she’d returned from that world the Goblin had dropped her into.
It wasn’t that she was no longer powerful, but all that power...she kept it inside herself now. Trying in vain to lock it all away again. Trying to forget the passion...the love.
The fire he’d brought to life inside of her was slowly gutting out.
Luminesa wondered if it were possible to die of a broken heart.
Baatha’s beak nuzzled her cheek, the sharp tip of it slicing through so that yet more blood spilled. But again, she felt nothing.
Maybe one day she’d turn into snow and simply cease to be...
No one would care.
Not even the Goblin. He’d never stepped foot upon her lands again. His revenge complete. He’d broken Luminesa. Yes, she’d survived his riddle, but he’d stripped her of everything that mattered.
Gray curls of smoke circled like writhing masses of snakes below as the centaurs ate and drank, singing bawdy songs of war and sex.
But she gasped when she finally caught sight of the wintery, feminine curves of Haxion.
Alador’s sister was looking up at Luminesa, as though knowing intrinsically where she was.
Every year, and only on Yule night, did the centauress come to meet Luminesa.
The first year, it’d been to warn her with threat of pain to leave her brother alone. The second, to plead that whatever enchantment Luminesa had placed on him to take it off because he screamed and cried during the night, spouting nonsensical words of love, hatred, and utter devotion. The third year was to tell Luminesa that Alador would be hand fasted by order of their shaman, and that a bride had been selected for him. The fourth to say that Alador had refused, punching out the brother of his soon to be bride so forcefully that he’d nearly killed the stallion with a single blow to the temple.
And now...slowly and surely, the centauress made her way up the steep face of the mountain to where Luminesa stood. Her raven colored mane with that stripe of purest white whipped like a banner in the arctic breeze behind her.
Luminesa said nothing when the centauress finally joined her near an hour later, breathing heavy from the exertion of climbing up so high into air so thin.
“You’re here,” she said matter-of-factly.
Luminesa wouldn’t look at her, because now she spotted Alador below and the pain of seeing him mingled with the indescribable pleasure was like a blade to the heart.
His hair had grown out as long as it’d been when she’d first seen him. He was still big, and brawny, and muscular, but no longer the gregarious male she remembered. He kept himself apart from the herd, and they from him.
When a centauress approached him with a tankard of ale, he snapped at her, snatching it out of her hands and saying something which caused the mare to turn and dash away.
Her bottom lip trembled to see him thus.
“Why would you think I wouldn’t come?” she whispered like an automaton. Her eyes full of only one male.
“Maybe because I’ve begged you every year to keep your distance from him. To leave him be. Because you’re a monster, Ice Queen.”
Lashes fluttering, Luminesa told herself not to cry. That she wouldn’t cry. But she was soul sick, and she was broken.
Forcing herself to rip her eyes off of him, she finally turned toward Haxion. The mare had grown even prettier, if that was possible.
What had Alador ever seen in Luminesa?
A cold-hearted, pathetic spinster who’d squired herself away from the world.
But he’d brought warmth into her life, brought her out of her shell, and slowly, back to life.
She ached for his fire again. For the touch of his tender hands. For the way he whispered of his devotion to her on the few nights they’d had to themselves with no threat of ice demons threatening to tear down their doors.
There were times, like now, when she wondered if they’d made the right decision.
But all it took to convince her all over again that they’d made the right choice was when she saw the children with their parents, smiling, happy, and free. Luminesa and Alador had lost everything, but the children at least had a future now.
“I will not return again,” Luminesa said slowly, proud that her voice did not quiver. “That is why I’ve come. To tell you that this is over now. I have released your brother, and whether he believes it or not, all I wanted for him, all I’ve ever wanted for him was his happiness.”
Haxion looked as though she’d been slapped. Her green eyes so like her brothers, widened sharply, and she shook her head with a helpless sort of gesture.
> “Why would you say that? After all you did to him? To them?”
Luminesa had tried in the very beginning to explain to Haxion that it’d all been a lie concocted by the Under Goblin and aided by the dark magick of Baba Yaga. Her plea had been desperate for Haxion to understand, but it’d been for naught.
The centauress had whipped out a blade, bringing it tight to Luminesa’s throat so that when she swallowed it’d nicked her, and had threatened to end her if she so much as sneezed in his direction again.
Of the two of them, Luminesa was the strongest. They both knew it. Knew that if she’d really wanted to she could have ended the mare with a mere flick of her fingers.
But Luminesa hadn’t wanted to. It hadn’t been Haxion’s fault for defending her brother as she was. In fact, Luminesa had been proud that Alador had someone who clearly cared for him as she did.
Without any of the impassioned fire she’d displayed last time she’d said it, Luminesa said, “Because I love him. And I always have. Everything he believes is a lie. He was once mine, and I was his.”
A small smile played along her lips as she remembered their few and precious stolen nights together.
Haxion shook her head, but unlike last time it lacked the fire or the heat of fury. There was nothing now save for confusion and bewilderment.
“But surely he’d remember that?” Haxion’s words didn’t actually seem to be for Luminesa at all, but she answered anyway.
“You said he once cried out for me. Professing his love and—”
Haxion’s hands covered her face as she murmured sadly, “He still does, Ice Queen. Every night he screams out for you. He hardly sleeps and yet when he does he’s haunted by memories of something that couldn’t possibly have happened.”
His sister’s eyes looked broken and full of sadness. Luminesa could see the struggle, the fear that maybe, just maybe Luminesa had never lied to her at all...that what they believed had been nothing at all like the truth.
Not knowing what to say, Luminesa looked away, back to the spot where Alador had been last, but the place was empty and he was gone.
“I am leaving now, Haxion. I cannot bear the sight of this place any longer.”
“Where will you go?” she asked softly.
She shrugged. Did it matter? To anyone? “I do not know. But away. Far away.”
This was the first time the centauress had ever actually deigned to carry on a conversation with her that didn’t involve threat of pain to her person.
Luminesa might be tempted to call it progress, but the flame of life that’d burned so bright before was now nothing but a slowly extinguishing tinder.
Soon she’d be the woman of ice again, frozen, heartless, and emotionless.
And this time when it happened, Luminesa wouldn’t fight it. She would simply wait to fade. Maybe then her spirit would finally find its peace.
“Since you do not seem inclined to rip my head from my neck this time, I wish to give you something I’ve hung on to for far too many years. I no longer need it. Remember the payment we spoke of in the beginning, when you came to me asking my help to retrieve Alador?”
Haxion nodded. “I have not forgotten.”
Reaching beneath her breastplate of ice, Luminesa tugged the bracelet of hair free. Both of them.
She’d wrapped them tight around each other, creating a thick braid of silvery-white and deepest black.
Haxion’s jaw dropped as she turned her palm over to accept the gift.
There was hardly any warmth left to it anymore.
But even so, that last tinder of fire within her soul whimpered at the thought of relinquishing the last piece of him.
But Luminesa was tired of fighting. Tired of clinging to an illusion, the reality was that the Goblin’s last trick had been his very best.
For years Luminesa had clung to the vain hope that with a little more time and patience the enchantment might wear off and that Alador would remember her again. Would come running to her, taking her up in his arms, and begging she take him back. That now he remembered it all.
But he hadn’t, and she was so, so tired...
Closing her eyes, Luminesa forced herself to truly let him go. “This then is what I would require of you. Give it back to him and tell him it is over.”
“But this is Alador’s hair.”
Luminesa nodded sadly, just barely touching the tip of her fingers to the braid.
“How did you get this, Luminesa?” she asked with shock in her words.
She smiled as her eyes began to swim with tears once more. “He gave it to me.”
She was going to go now, but before she did, she said one last thing. “You know, when we handfasted he told me that in Kingdom finding your hearts true mate was a magic far stronger than any darkness in this world.”
Haxion’s green eyes shimmered wetly too.
“I believed him. I really did.” Then with a weak wave of her fingers, Luminesa called the ice to her, melting into a tower of it and without saying a goodbye, turned and left the world of centaurs behind forever...
~*~
Alador
Haxion came barreling through his hut.
With a growl, Alador looked up ready to tear into her for disturbing his peace.
The stupid singing and dancing and gorging on food had left him with a raging headache.
In fact, for the past five years he’d felt nothing but a raw pool of rage that always simmered just beneath the surface ready to erupt at the slightest provocation.
It was for that reason alone that he snapped his mouth shut, and said nothing to his sister. Deep down he knew the problem was his own and no one else’s, he just wished he knew why.
He’d thought after the nightmare had ended with that bloody Ice Queen he’d be able to leave well enough alone...but the days were horrific and the nights even worse.
By day he loathed the very thought of that vile woman, but by night his soul clawed out at him to go to her, to claim her as his again...
Again, as though there’d been a first time.
“What?” he finally snapped when she’d still failed to say anything.
Faintly he saw something in her hand, a lump of something...but he wasn’t quite sure what. Haxion stared at him as though she’d never seen him before.
“Alador, I’m going to ask you a question, and I want you to give me an honest answer. Do you hear me?”
Temper always at the edge of exploding, he would have probably screamed at her to leave him in peace or suffer his wrath, but something in her voice—a quiver maybe—caused him to pause.
Cocking his head to the side, he raked his eyes over her face.
She was worried.
Worried and anxious.
And as angry as he always was, she was still his sister, and he loved her.
“What?” he said, trying to temper his tone.
Wetting her lips, she shook her hand at him, the one that held onto the lump of something.
“At night, when you dream of the queen—”
He growled, nostrils flaring. She wasn’t supposed to know that, no one was, but since he and his sister still shared a hut, it was nearly impossible to prevent it.
She hushed him with a flick of her wrist, continuing on as though she’d not been interrupted. “When you dream of her, was there a memory, a moment of...”
She blew out a heavy breath and every cell in his body went alert because she was nervous. Haxion, a proud centauress warrior who’d never suffered a case of nerves in her life, was practically twitching like a sapling in the breeze right now.
“...did you handfast to her?”
Her green eyes pierced his and it was like someone had shoved a fist through his gut.
“What?” he asked, taken aback, because he knew he’d never shared that with her.
It’d been his one shame.
The sex aspects of the dream had been wonderful.
But the deeper, more spiritual emotions had made him f
eel raw, wounded, and uncomfortably exposed because only one other centaur male had ever bound himself to another not of his species.
Alador knew better than to do that. He’d never do that.
And yet when he’d wake from those dreams his body would tremble and tears would leak from his eyes because something primitive deep inside of him screamed at him that it was real. That it had happened, that something dark and horrible had happened to make him lose his woman.
But then the sun would come up and the memories would scatter and he’d be left with nothing but the rage and the murderous anger of her duplicity.
The woman had been evil.
She’d murdered. Had tortured the children, tossing them down a steep gorge, it’d only been a miracle that Alador had been there to rescue them.
But then sometimes he’d remember other things.
Remember words like goddess, queen, my love, horse...
And in the gray time between dusk and dawn a thread of a memory would come loose, a soft sigh, a tender touch, sweet words of affection.
He shook his head. “I never—”
Haxion unfurled her fingers and lying on her palm was a thick braid of hair—black as ink, and as silver as a moon-kissed snowdrift.
His jaw dropped. “That is my hair.”
She nodded slowly. “I know, brother. It is. And no magic in the world can separate the hairs from our head unless given with our consent.”
Those words rocked him to the core. The dreams...he remembered the dreams. But they were lies, surely they were lies...
She walked to him slowly, taking his hand, she tipped it over and slid the bracelets to him.
“Brother, what if the truth is not what you remember while awake, but what your mind conjures in its sleep?”
“No.” He shook his head. Desperate it not be true, because to believe it was true was to know that he’d tried not once but twice to kill his mate, but not only that...that he’d abandoned her.
Haxion’s eyes were sad. “The day I asked her to find you. I liked her, Alador. Immediately. She was kind to me. Not at all like the stories.”
“No.” He took a step back, but clinging to the bracelets. This couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t, because his heart still burned with hatred, but mixed up in it was the dreams...the memories of a woman, a goddess, who stirred his soul and heart.