| |
Nara ran as Haven fell forward. The fact he didn’t become a plume of burning embers in an instant was the only thing that reassured her he wasn’t dead. Although she had thought him dead already in this life. Burnt by a creature she didn’t understand.
Orman staggered, and Haven dropped to his knees. The blade fell from his hold and that frightened her just as much. Orman leaned into the walking stick, the pointed end pushing down into the ground. It shone in the morning light that made the world around her glisten as though she weren’t really there.
Despite the lean, Orman did not look the same. He was younger. The woman beside him stood silent, her arms hanging down by her sides. As Nara continued towards them, Neroli fell to the side, reminding her of Haven’s death in the first life. For half a heartbeat she thought she saw the ring of soldiers on the gravel, but they disappeared just as quickly.
Her fall distracted Lord Orman, and he reached for her as a puddle of dark blood swelled out around her across the ground. The world shifted again as though Nara were standing in the remains of the forest. Grass grew up through the gravel, the brilliant crunch beneath her feet lost as she reached Haven.
Nara stood beside him, her hand on his shoulder. She wanted to look down and make sure he was ok, but she couldn’t look away from Lord Orman. Haven’s shoulders slowly rose and fell beneath her touch, and that was enough for her. Lord Orman took another step towards her fallen aunt, then turned his anger on her.
He raised his walking stick, the end turned into a sharp point reaching for her. She batted it away too easily with her sword. He either wasn’t trying or was just warming up.
“I thought you were dead,” Haven whispered, and Nara shook her head. But her focus never shifted from the man before her.
“Was she one of the wives?” Nara asked, wondering if it even mattered. Would her father have known such a thing, or was that the reason he had promised her to the old man?
“She was more,” Orman said, something sad in his voice, but he was looking at Nara with his steely grey eyes, and she could feel his hatred and anger.
“If you had her, why did you need me?”
Orman sighed, lowering the walking stick back to the ground. It changed instantly in his hand as he pressed it down, and he appeared to be leaning on it.
“All that effort, all those lifetimes—was it even worth your energy?”
“It was,” Orman admitted, glancing down to the woman at his feet. Neroli appeared just as young as the blood continued to spill around her. A large slice through her chest just beneath her neck indicated where Haven’s sword had met.
“You didn’t take from Nara,” Haven whispered, and she squeezed his shoulder.
“You thought he had,” she replied just as quietly, and the man before her gave a little smile and a huff of a laugh. “You thought I was the reason he appears younger.”
“You have something of your mother’s,” Lord Orman said, “something very special.”
“Neroli said she could use the stones,” Nara said, thinking of her asking about them. Nara had thought Neroli wanted to help protect them, but she might have wanted them for herself.
“It is more than the stones; it is the ability to use them.”
“They aren’t talking to me,” Nara snapped. Her frustration bubbled over—at this whole life, the lack of answers, and the differences from her other lives. She had thought the stones were hers, and yet they were not.
“It is more than the stones,” Orman repeated, which only fuelled her frustration.
The sword in her hand glowed, although she wasn’t pointing it at him. Nara would happily fire as much lightning as she could muster at the old man, but she doubted it would end things, and it was too heavy to lift. It had taken all she had to run for Haven.
The hounds were silent, she thought, looking around at them. They stood still, as they had in the field, and she saw them for the creatures she had at that time. Despite their appearance of death, she reached for the nearest one and ran her fingers between its ears. It looked up at her with frightening eyes. They were the solid black she had seen before, but within the black a red fire seemed to burn.
She had thought their eyes missing when she had seen them before, like skeletons with little fur remaining. This was something different. It returned the confidence she had lost facing the fire creature. “The fire tree,” she whispered, and the hound appeared to sigh.
She dropped down into a squat to be level with its face, her sword pressed into the ground beside her. She put her hand to the hound’s face, staring into its eyes. It wasn’t just fire. The fire tree was there; she could see it burning away. She smiled as the hound reached forward and pressed its nose to hers. It was no longer wet and warm but dry and cool. There was something of the fire tree in the smell attached to the creature before her, as though covered in smoke.
“Sunshine?” Haven whispered behind her. She turned then and took him in properly. He was worried and tired. There was a small nick beneath his beard across his throat. She felt ill at how close she had come to losing him. “He didn’t take from you?”
His hand was pressed into his side, blood leaking between his fingers, and his face appeared even more pale as the sun shone across the yard. She looked back at the manor to find it was as she expected. A ruin, barely enough walls standing to even indicate how big it had been in her first life.
“You thought he did,” she said, understanding why he would want to end this life. If she had lost him, she might be willing to go on her own. Despite what she had just seen in the hound, she was certain the fire tree no longer waited for them.
“I will have what I need,” Lord Orman hissed and closed his hand around her arm. She wondered at what point he had been able to get close enough. She had been distracted, but the hounds hadn’t tried to stop him or alert her. Nara wondered if, like Neroli, they were not what they seemed. She was reminded of the creature they had seen in the cellar beneath the house.
Orman’s fingers pressed into her as he dragged her across the gravel. It crunched loudly beneath her feet and then was lost to the grass, as though the world around her wasn’t sure of how it should appear. Despite his younger appearance, Lord Orman’s hold was very much what it had been in her father’s library that first night.
She shivered at the thought and raised the sword in her hand to find it missing. She had been so certain she had hold of it; her hand had been holding firm around the leather handle. And yet, when she glanced over her shoulder, it lay on the gravel beside Haven, beside a hound who watched as she was dragged away.
Haven climbed slowly to his feet as Lord Orman dragged her away from the ruins and towards the river. It seemed too far away, and yet she could hear it beyond the trees as though it had continued to flow long after they had been lost from this life and everyone else.
Silence closed in around her as they hit the trees. There seemed to be nothing else around them, not even the river, which Nara was sure she had seen the sun glinting from the surface just beyond them. She had seen her mother come out of these trees and wondered what she might have been doing that night and if she would ever learn.
Lord Orman’s sharp fingers bit into her skin as he pulled her to a stop. Nara thought they had punctured the skin, but she no longer struggled against him. She glanced over her shoulder towards the manor, but there was no sign of Haven or the hounds. Her fingers searched for the stones at her belt, but they were missing. Had she put them down, or had she given them to someone else? Were the stones she had carried even hers? Lord Orman himself had destroyed one of them.
Now she was back where she had followed the hounds, standing over her mother’s grave and her own. She searched for a sign that someone had cared about either of them.
“You took the stones,” she said, thinking back to where they might be and the surprise when she had held them in the dining hall.
“I thought I had them,” Orman said, his fingers closing tighter around her arm. She sucked in a breath at the pain, trying not to cry out. She didn’t want him to know he had an impact on her. “How did you take them with you?” he demanded.
Nara shook her head. She didn’t understand much of what went on each life, if they were transplanted where they needed to be, born into those lives, or it was something else entirely. But she understood the stones.
“It isn’t the stones that you want,” she said.
“You are what I need. I was promised.”
“By Neroli or someone else?” Nara asked, her focus on the worn marker over her mother’s grave. “You appear to have it returned, whatever it is you are looking for.”
Although the man did not appear young, he appeared much younger than he had, a similar age to her father. He would have been older than her mother, even when she was young, when she had walked into the house with her hair about her shoulders and the stones in her hand.
“She took from me,” he growled.
“And so you took from her?” Nara asked.
“I just wanted what was mine, but she was gone before I could get it.” He released his hold on her. Nara put her hand to her arm, sure it was wet with blood from his sharp fingers pressing into her skin.
“All of this was for what you lost, and yet you still have all that power, and you had Neroli.” His dark eyes focused on Nara at the mention of Neroli. “Could she not give you want you wanted?”
“She tried,” he said, “but it wasn’t the same.”
“You look the same,” Nara replied.
“You will mend what was done and undo what your mother took from me,” he said, reaching out for her.
Nara tried to evade his reach, but she tripped as she backed up. Too easily, he managed to get hold of her again. He drew six jade stones from his pocket. Nara wondered if they were the stones her mother had held or if they were different in every life. Did it not matter then which ones she held? Although, as he pushed them into her hand, there was something comforting about them.
They didn’t whisper. She didn’t get the sense of a monster, or danger, or a hint of what might have happened to Haven. But she closed her eyes and held them tightly in both hands. Lord Orman’s grip was still tight around her arm, but she shook her head slowly, wanting them to be the stones she had looked for.
Did they not have anything to tell her because this was the end, as she had feared it would be?
Lord Orman’s grip tightened.
“Give it back,” he whispered, but it felt like a demand, as though she had little choice but to obey yet didn’t know how to.
“There is more,” she said, her eyes still closed, focused on the stones in her hand and not on what Orman wanted from her. “My father, the curse.”
“I am cursed!” Orman growled, the sound travelling through her soul as though his hold on her linked them. “Your mother stole from me, left me a shell of what I was.”
“And yet you travelled through lifetimes, twisted the world to your will, dragged us here,” Nara returned, opening her eyes and searching for a sign of anything within his grey steely gaze. It was as though he was without a soul. “Did you give it up?”
“I thought she would make me stronger, but she didn’t. I could have been so much more with her.”
“Is that why you and Neroli...” Nara wasn’t sure what she should suggest the relationship was. She couldn’t guess.
His grip tightened at the mention of the name. For an instant Nara thought she saw something beyond the steely gaze, a feeling perhaps. But it was gone as quickly as it had formed, and Nara thought she was mistaken. “She was something else,” he replied, and Nara could no longer hear the sadness in his voice.
“She was not enough,” Nara said, the realisation sadder for the aunt she hadn’t known than for the old man before her. He might have cared in his way, yet Neroli hadn’t had the strength to give him what he longed for, and so he had searched out others. “The other wives,” she thought aloud.
“A means,” he muttered. “As you are.”
Nara smiled. She had more power than he realised. He scowled, tightening his hold, and she cried out.
In the distance, she thought she could hear the hounds barking and yipping. It seemed strange that it would take them so long to find her, to seek her out. Or were they protecting Haven? She worried for him. He was usually so strong, but after the attack of the fire monster and then Lord Orman, he could barely stand.
“I am not for your benefit,” she groaned under his tightening grip.
“Of course you are. Your father thought you of no use at all. And yet here we are.”
“He is long gone,” Nara said. Even the tired old man who had welcomed her home had never actually been here.
“It doesn’t matter!” Orman growled. “I have chased you through so many lives, never reaching you and yet knowing you were close. You may have escaped the last life, but this one is mine. This is the end for you and an end to this. I have won, Nara Millard, and you will give me what I deserve.” He pulled her closer, leaning over her, his slender body pressed against her, his dank breath in her face.
“I don’t know how to,” she blurted.
She tried to hold on to the stones, willing them to tell her anything, give her any idea of what was to come, but they remained silent. Lord Orman pulled her hand closer and then pressed his hand over hers, forcing her fingers apart so they were both touching the stones. She wondered that they hadn’t been lost or dropped into the grass at her feet.
In that moment she thought she could smell the fire tree, the sweet smoke that differed to every other fire she had experienced. She wondered if it was possible, and the scent grew stronger. The idea that she was close to the end still hadn’t been clarified by the stones in her hand, but it was as though she was standing beneath it. The heat of the flames, warm and comfortable, the flickering light surrounding her, the gentle crackle and scent of the burning leaves filling her senses.
“Give it to me,” Orman breathed across her skin, and she swallowed the sick feeling growing in her chest. “Give it all to me.” His voice was soft and coaxing. She felt the demand beneath it, as though she had no power but to obey.
But she had no idea how to do what he wanted or whether his words would simply pull from her what he needed. Despite the pull she could feel in her chest to do as he demanded, she hoped within her very being that she wouldn’t work it out, that he wouldn’t become what he had been.
Her mother had managed to take from him. Nara breathed in the scent of the fire tree as Lord Orman aged before her, growing more and more ancient, withering away. His hair became white, his skin pale, and his cheeks hollow.
He cried out as he tried to pull back, but Nara had hold of him, and then her golden sword appeared through his chest. He stared at her wide eyed as it disappeared, leaving a gaping wound. He opened his mouth to say something, and his head was cleaved from his shoulders. It bounced along the ground at her feet to rest by her mother’s grave marker.
As his body fell away, dissolving to dust upon hitting the ground, Haven stood behind him with two bloody swords in his hands. Nara crumpled to the ground, the stones still clutched in her hand and Lord Orman’s blood splattered across her face.
“Is he gone?” she asked, unsure if he had ever truly been there in the first place.
When she looked up, Haven nodded slowly and then fell to his knees before her.