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Haven’s sword moved quickly, lighting up the space as it sliced through the animal just as it leapt. The sword moved through the beast as though it wasn’t even there. An illusion, and then it was gone.
“Is that one of your hounds?” he asked, looking around the small space for a sign of where it might have gone or whether there was another.
“No,” Nara said.
“You are certain?” he asked, turning to her.
She nodded, looking at the space where it had been. “It looked the same,” she said, “but not quite.”
“The same as they appeared in the field?” he asked, then nodded as though he had seen them as she had and understood what they were.
They were something unexpected, yet not quite the same as this one. There was something of the Mer in it, and that worried her.
“Is it Lord Orman playing games?” she asked, her voice surprisingly level. They had taken on so many creatures over the years, unflinching in what was needed, not fearing what was to come even though it was usually death for one of them, separation again for both.
“Perhaps,” Haven agreed.
She wasn’t sure what kind of power Lord Orman had. Enough that he could stalk them through countless lives and keep a decayed world alive just to draw them in. The idea that she was the monster in this life returned, that they were the monsters. Haven had tried to reassure her previously that it wasn’t true, but in a way it was.
Haven walked into the cell that had been his on the last night of his first life and put his hand to the bars. Nara wondered if the lord’s threat the previous evening held any weight. But then, this space might have been something very different if they had visited it last night. They could return tomorrow and find it different again.
“He is still here,” she said.
Haven nodded absently as he looked over the bars, pushing his arm through to the other side. And Nara was suddenly against him, pressing herself against his chest, holding him tight. She gripped him as though he might disappear if she were to let go. If she looked away, might he cease to exist? Or might he disappear to the fire tree?
This life felt different, the sword heavier in her hand, the world too real around them.
“I don’t think the fire tree is waiting for us,” he said. “I want to be there together, but I don’t think we shall see it again.” He sighed, slipping the sword into the sheath across his back, struggling in the small space. It rang out against the bars, and then he was holding her close.
“I think you are right,” she said. “I’m tired,” she added, thinking of the river and the odd sensation she had walking into it and allowing the water to take her away. “I’m tired of waiting for what will not come.”
“Do you think there is a curse here?” he asked. She didn’t want to pull away and look at him, but she wondered at his thinking. Then she wondered if it was because Father had mentioned that the last time they were here. She had thought of that night and his words so many times, searching for a reason. A reason they would never discover.
“Do you think we will find out?” she asked.
“You think we won’t. Another life without answers.”
“Another life with the Fates playing us. But maybe it isn’t the Fates,” she admitted, thinking of the old man who had stood before her with a sword. The world was not as it appeared to be. “Have we been reliving our lives in the same... no, in different...?” She didn’t know what she was asking. She didn’t understand when or where she was. She was certain she had covered most of the world in some way or another across their many lifetimes. And yet, this place was as it had been left.
The manor was what it might have been if she had travelled away for only ten years or so. Except she hadn’t aged. Her sister had aged far more than ten years. Maybe twenty—but then that didn’t make any sense either.
“None of it makes sense,” she whispered.
“No,” he agreed. “And yet we still look for what would explain it away.”
“Would he tell us?”
“Who?” Haven asked gently, still holding Nara tight as though he too thought that this was the last life, the last chance to be together. “Your father or the old man?”
“They are connected, aren’t they?” She realised it then—no matter which of them had caused this, it was because of the other. Some promise Father had made, or something Lord Orman had promised him, keeping him in the position he wanted, yet she hadn’t fully understood that before. It didn’t matter which had promised the other; it was a link that could not be undone, not in the first life, and they had chased them down attempting to correct it so many times.
She shook her head against Haven’s chest, taking in the steady beat of his heart. Whether or not they doubted they were alive, they certainly appeared to be. The questions continued to build, and yet she had no more clarity than when she had arrived in this life, found him in a field and peeled his clothes away. The lack of urgency in a hunt, the lack of pull. There was too much missing from this life, despite the overwhelming history that had come alive.
“Haven?” she asked as she pulled away from him, missing the heat of his body instantly. Although it wasn’t cold in the cellar, only cool, it was him she missed. She tipped the stones into her hand, and a hound howled again in the distance. “Lord Orman,” she whispered over the stones in her palm, then closed her fingers around them. She wasn’t sure what she thought might happen, whether he would appear before them or pull them suddenly to where he might be.
Haven took her hand and raised it towards him. Then he leaned down, and she opened her fingers again. “Lord Millard,” he whispered and closed his fingers over hers, trapping the stones between them. The stones had whispered to them both during different lives.
They stood in the silence, holding the stones and listening for something they might never be told. There was no whisper to run, no understanding of what was to come, not their end nor even a hint of the fire tree. Nara took a breath then, searching for the scent that might come. She had smelt it in this life, if only briefly. Did that provide some comfort, that it was still waiting for her to return? Or was the brief sense an idea that it wasn’t really what was to come?
Perhaps they would never find it again. Their next life might be something very different and very separate—and that scared Nara more than leaving Haven for the fire tree. At least if she went there, she knew she would meet him again.
Nothing came to her. She looked up at Haven concentrating on their hands, and she knew they were not telling him anything either. She stepped back, allowing the stones to fall away, and watched as they scattered quickly across the stone floor.
Lord Orman had wanted them, but Nara wondered at their usefulness. She remembered the first time she had picked them up from her mother’s belongings, as though the little leather pouch had called her name. She had held it close, feeling a sense of reassurance, as though her mother might still be with her in a way.
Nara had thought that the voice had been her mother’s, reaching out to her from wherever she had gone. She wondered then, for the first time, if her mother was waiting beneath a fire tree. She sucked in a breath, fearful that in losing them she had lost the connection to the woman she barely remembered. Dropping to her knees, she reached for the stones.
The hounds had started to bark, long and loud and determined. All of them. Haven dropped down beside her to help her pick up the stones. They held them together again, counting them over and over to ensure they had all six. Not one of them was damaged or chipped from the fall to the stone floor, and Nara slipped them back into the pouch.
“What is it?” Haven asked, his blue eyes intense although it was dark. She had slipped her sword away, and she wasn’t sure when she had done it. He had done the same in the cell; the sound had rung out around them. Nara wondered if that had given them away, if someone knew where they were. But did that matter?
“Sunshine?” Haven asked, and she focused on the shine of his eyes, as though it was enough to light up the world.
“I thought of my mother and worried she was beneath a fire tree.”
“Is that possible?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Nara said, feeling the strain and the worry. The hounds continued to bark and bark. She thought she heard someone call out to them, but she couldn’t be certain. Were they calling to her? “There are six hounds,” she whispered.
“There are six stones,” he replied.
“They are leading us,” she said, heading for the stairs, drawing her sword. The golden glow gave her some comfort and lit the way out.
“Sunshine?” Haven called after her, but he was only a step behind. “Who is leading the way?”
She emerged on the gravel at the back of the manor, the air too cold around her, almost taking her breath away. She could hear the hounds running away from her on the gravel, but she couldn’t tell in which direction, and she couldn’t see them. The dark night had closed around them completely, and there were not torches here, not even a light from a window.
“How long have we been down there?” she asked, the cold hurting her chest as Haven stood close to her, taking her hand in his. She could already feel the cold trying to steal his heat.
“Who are we following?” he asked again.
“The hounds—the six hounds that have been leading us since we arrived, guiding us.”
“To your mother’s grave?” he asked.
“And the market, and keeping us in the dining hall, surrounding us. It isn’t the whisper of jade; it is something else entirely.”
“There is no pull,” he whispered, but Nara felt that it wasn’t necessary, not if the hounds were guiding them. Although they hadn’t led them away from Lord Orman.
“Is he not the threat?” she asked. “Is he not the monster to defeat in this life?”
“He defeated us in the first and the last,” Haven murmured, and raised his too-blue eyes to her. “This is different,” he said, “and I don’t like it.”
“Do we want to live as we have been?” Nara asked.
“Is there any choice?” Haven answered, and for the first time he sounded frustrated by her, by the question. She wanted something different, but not this. Before she could respond, a hound howled in the distance, the sound long and odd. Not quite natural, not quite the same as she might have heard from another dog, or wolf even. Something made her shiver, and for the first time in this life Nara felt a pull, as though it was the direction she had to go.
Haven’s hand closed around hers, warm and tight in the cold air, and they stepped forward together away from the dark house into a darker night, with no idea of what might lie before them. She sensed the hounds in the dark then, as though her fingers caught in the thick coarse fur. They dragged her forward, in the direction she needed to be, in the direction they had to go.
She was desperate to ask if Haven could feel the same, the pull, the understanding. And although she was tempted to pour the stones out into her hand, she left them where they were. She didn’t want to lose them, and she doubted they would give her anything different to the feeling she had now from the hounds.
A hound barked in the distance. It seemed so far away and yet too close, as though warning her of danger, and yet she didn’t have the sense of danger. Haven’s hand was tight around hers. He kept pace with her, moving quickly but not running, and she hoped he felt the same rather than trusting that she knew where they were going. He had a sense of his own, or at least he’d had one before the stones had whispered to him.
Something glowed in the distance, a gentle orange glow like a fire, or something else—sunshine, and yet she knew it wasn’t. Not in the surrounding dark, the sky the same indeterminate black as the rest of the world around them. She could have been beneath the ground or the ocean, and she wouldn’t have known the difference.
Another bark drew her from the distraction of her surroundings or the lack thereof. It was only because Haven held her hand that she knew he was there. And then his sword lit up the small area of the world around them in brilliant white light. The gentle orange glow continued ahead of them, although she couldn’t see what might be making the light. It reminded her of the fire tree, and yet if it was that, it would be ablaze and visible for some distance. She was almost excited, thinking that they might be returning there together, and yet she knew it could not be.
A woman stood at the edge of the orange glow, a silhouette and nothing more, yet as they got closer it became apparent that it wasn’t a woman at all but one of the hounds sitting tall on its haunches. It raised its head to the sky and let out another howl. Gooseflesh covered Nara’s skin. She shivered, but not from the cold, although she could see the misty air she exhaled in the light of Haven’s sword.
Nara was certain it was the fire tree calling. Although she couldn’t smell the smoke, nor see the tree with the certainty she did when she sat beneath it. She knew in her heart it was that. She lost Haven in that moment, wanting to squeeze his hand tighter, and yet he wasn’t there. She lit up the world around her with her sword in the same golden glow she thought would be the tree, wondering why she hadn’t done so sooner.
The air warmed around her, as though the sword not only gave a gentle light but also the same warmth as the sun. She could see a little further, a little lighter, although she understood it was still dark.
The hound loped towards her, walking out of the light, which dimmed as it moved into her light. It was a hound she knew, as though it had followed her from her first life, but this was the first life, although that idea wasn’t quite right. Nara shook her head. The hound paused, as though waiting to see what she might do.
It appeared different in the glow of her sword, and the solid black eyes appeared to reflect its light. It turned away from her then, and she caught movement in the edge of the light of her sword. The hound moved closer to her, its eyes reflecting a white light rather than her golden one. She could only hope that it was Haven.