Silver Hollow (37 page)

“She was my wife.” He spoke with thickening emotion. Dropping his hands abruptly
,
he turned back to the billows and began to shut his shop down for the night. He moved about as if he had only commented on the weather.

Only her trained eye caught the twitch of his muscles when he fumbled with his tools. Or the pain in his eyes she photographed to memory when he chanced a glance. Some nights Amie had watched the stables through the kitchen window en route
to a midnight snack. She knew he kept the fires going late
most nights.

“She died less than a year after our melding.”

“Sorry.” Amie closed the space he had given her after his revelation. “I’m guessing it was a long time ago?” His eyes burned a hole into hers, he stopped his methodical movements and it was obvious he was holding back.

“You would think so, wouldn’t you? To a human every day is brimming with fresh blithering newness. But I can never forget the brush of her skin or her breath mixed with mine.
Our union was one of necessity. Eventually, I came to love her, in my own way.
Only one chance at happiness do most men find in this life and mine died
long ago
,
as ye say.”

Amie dragged the toe of her boot through the hard
-
packed earth. “I know there’s a lot of things about you—this place—that I don’t understand.” She looked up beseechingly. “But I’m trying. You don’t know how hard I’m trying
.
For a place where things aren’t supposed to change much
,
a whole heck of a lot has changed ever since I got here
.
”

“It is you who change
s
things…too many things,” he cryptically replied, while tearing his shirt off his shoulders and removing his apron.

Amie tried not to stare at his chest, especially since her sight was level with its breadth. She followed him as he brushed past her and stepped out into the rain. The icy sheets melted on contact with his skin, trailing
in
rivulets
against his
honey
-
toned skin in their wake. The sight was strange to say the least. Amie was wondering who, or more importantly,
what
he was.

When he turned back to face her, face expressionless, eyes enigmatic, his soft voice carried easily over the wind. “Come here. You’ll feel better, I promise.”

“
You’
re crazy
,
you know?” Amie laughed, looking around in case there was a video camera or something betraying this practical joke. Crossing her arms over her chest
,
she forced her eyes to remain glued to his. “There is no way I’m going to willingly stand in that.” She shivered. Memories of her night in the forest had haunted her dreams again of late.

“You shall if ye want me to forgive you for ruining me wife’s dress.” His grin was startlingly white, transformed his face into something easily the most handsome creature she had ever seen.

Faye is going to kill me for not bringing her
along when she hears about this.

“Come along
,
Amie, put down the dress and forget to be
flummoxed
for a second.”

It was her name on his lips that made her obey. Taking in a deep breath
,
she set the dress and her cloak aside, but was unprepared for how cold the rain was. A shriek escaped her lips on contact with the icy gale. Her breath was heavy on the air but nothing close to the heat rising like steam off his shoulders.

He held a hand out to beckon her. “Come here.”

Once her hand slipped into his she felt a jolt of warmth shoot up her arm and explode through thousands of nerve endings. Until a gut
-
clenching pain began to jab at her scar. Opening her eyes to look up, she was surprised to see his smile highlighted against the brewing lightning
storm. He released his hold of her just as quickly as she jerked to escape it and as the sky streaked with shades of violet gray, she found her troubles did melt easily away.

“It hurts for me to stand in the rain, to bathe in water. But I do it because it helps me to forget. You shall learn our ways soon enough
,
Amie Wenderdowne. I pity you for the price they make you pay for their mistakes. But for now do be satisfied not knowing everything. Just breathe.”

Amie let the rain numb her skin until she could no longer feel the nightly freeze or anything else. Every breath was a struggle in this kind of cold so she watched him with wonder. How could he stand this torture if it hurt him so?

Cocking his eyebrows, he brushed the hair out of his eyes with an unspoken challenge. She smiled, until he twisted his torso and ran past her, straight for the distant tree line. Amie tore after him.

Her fear of the forest went away with Dearg burning like a smoke signal in front of her. Every time she came close to touching him he swerved, often running in embarrassing circles around her. She shrieked as lightning struck the forest. The rumble of thunder covered her laughter and his.

She heard it just as he swerved and twisted to circle her, taunting and enjoying the game. His laughter came thick and gasping, touched with smoke and surprisingly young. So he wasn’t prepared when she threw all her weight on him and they both toppled into the mud within the outermost trees.

S
he
laughed
when they untangled,
because he came close to resembling a comic villain with that fac
e
. Dearg smiled before letting it fall into his usual blank composure. Amie saw the recognition in his eyes as an unexpected emotion welled deep in her soul and escaped through her laughter, the pent
-
up frustrations she felt because she could not burden anyone else with them. He did not fight when she let her head rest on his chest and sp
i
lled her tears over him like a prayer.

Long into the night, after Amie’s tears were snuffed out, he brought her back to the stables and his tiny fireside. Here Amie changed into his dead wife’s dress by the stalls’ shadows. When she emerged wearing the revived dress, with its swirling Wenderdowne symbols and the old tongue written into the hem with spiders silk, he smiled.

He had little to say while she spilled forth her frustrations and her hopes because he confessed to her he
did
not deserve to know them. She did not leave him until her eyes were heavy
-
lidded with sleep and then he sent her up
to the house for bed. She didn’
t know he watched her and the light of her window until it was at last snuffed out.

Chapter 32

Xc
alibure

In her dreams the light tended to blur about the edges, often melding into an inky darkness.

They had shoved her into the hay trough the moment they caught their first glimpse of the flames illuminating the big house. She had rushed ahead of them, to catch sight of the source of those awful blood-curdling sounds. So many screams and such a charge of nixy filled the air that a thick cloud hung heavily on the air, charged with a blending of powers. What she saw was beyond comprehension, worse than anything she had known in her life. Outlines of bodies were strewn all across the open field and half of the great house was on fire.

Amie screamed as she watched a lone figure jump out of the tall tower of the castle and drop to the battlements far below with a sickening crunch. She realized belatedly they were no longer ahead of her. Their hands quickly lifted her, shoved her into the stables, the stall where she could watch the keep and the house from both vantage points.

“Iudicael, you must take her and flee! I am afraid for her safety!” Mother was crying and pulling the man towards her.

“N
o
, Dameri! I shall nay leave you all defenseless!”

“There is no other way, my love. I would die a thousand deaths to have you both safe and in my arms. But they will not stop until they have her, not until everything we love is destroyed!”

He grabbed her mother’
s
face and kissed her passionately.

Amie
was skinny, slight enough that she could slip through the wooden bars of the hay trough undetected. She heard what they said quite clearly. She couldn’t stay, not if they expected to survive. She wanted them together, now they had found one another again. She could not bear to see
M
other cry, not because of her. So she ran.

Her feet could carry her far faster over open ground than the trees she was accustomed to maneuvering about. She did not know where she was running to, where it would be safe. She had only been in the forest, never to the great house
,
except for one special occasion. Something tugged her toward it, pulled her closer until she neared its burnt
-
out wing and a rain of ashes coated her skin.

Distantly she could hear them calling her name, but it was too late to go back now. So she was surprised when a pair of strong arms plucked her from the ground and into a warm embrace. It was too familiar, but when he pulled her away to look her over, she was startled by how haunted his eyes looked this night. She had known him all her life, though. Trusting her inner nixy, she wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face in his ash
-
riddled cloak.

Amie
woke the next morning with a dying scream in her throat and the scent of ashes on her tongue. The dreams were often vivid, but not quite like this. With each passing day they festered into living
,
breathing things that left her waking to an unfamiliar reality. It was
exactly
as it had been before, when she couldn’t remember which world was real, the waking or dreaming.

Breakfast without Morcant lightened her dark mood, however.

…

Henry’s song carried in the prelude before dawn, through the thick castle doors she was fast approaching.
“Sing a song of Auld L
ang Syne,
that merrily meshed toshed toad. Caught the pox of ginger lice and never swore he told…”

Amie pushed t
he castle door open and trudge
d
down the front steps. She had stared at it with such wonder
the
foggy night of their arrival. Now she sneered at the stones her feminine boots were not accustomed to tread.
She froze when she caught Dearg’s unobtrusive gaze and quickly shifted her attention to Henry.

Annoying morning people.

S
he scowled when he called for
her
to join them. “Jessamiene! You’ll really love this next song, taught to me by an old dungeon master who worked in the Skull Palace itself! He used to sing it to the inmates to encourage morale…”

“How did you wake up on the happy side of the bed?” Engrossed in her grumbling
,
Amie did not see the patch of stubborn icy dew in her path to meet him. Her heels slipped, hands flung high and Dearg managed to catch her so her back hung parallel to the ground. Their eyes met and her cheeks flushed.

“Marvelous catch
,
Eddie, lad! Fine thing you were here to catch her. These old hands aren’t as spry as they used to be!”

Dearg blinked, helped her up and moved away from her as if he were burned.

Amie tried her best to pretend she hadn’t spent most of the previous night pouring out her soul to the one person Emrys forb
ade
her to see. “Thanks
,
”
s
he whispered as he set her to rights and helped her climb onto Bean’s back. His gloved hand lingered on her leg a fraction of a second to
o
long before he tipped his cap to them and shuffled off. Amie glanced over her shoulder to watch while steadying the reins and Bean’s sensitive nature.

“Ah! Nothing better than the morning after an autumn freeze!” Henry puffed a dramatic gulp of air and held an arm in a wide arc between them.

“If you say so,” Amie said, unwilling to admit she was awake yet. She brought Bean into a trot after her overly eager Uncle.

Man had to have taken a hefty dose of gooseberry juice
this morning to be this excited.

Amie twisted back to watch the open outer gates of Wenderdowne slowly creak into themselves, night lights from the windows winking out as the first pale rose of dawn crept over the hill. The forest left all sunlight behind it, so within the first league they were entrenched in night’s wake. The deeper they tr
od
,
the brighter the dancing lights
hovering
betwixt the trees. Uncle Henry emitted a soft golden glow of his own despite the overhanging twisted branches efforts. He sang with remarkable pitch, unlike his driver Mr. Cutterworthy, but this did nothing for her musical ear. “Tickled the lass and bade her show, oh the poor ole toad in the middle of snow,
w
ill ye kiss me
,
Rose
,
and carry me home?”