“Friede!” I shouted back, doing all I could to break free from the tight grips on my arms. I had more to say, but I wasn’t sure what it was. I hadn’t wanted this. I hadn’t wanted her to hate me.
The lord seemed amused. “My, what a joyous family reunion.” He nodded at the specters, who pulled me inside the carriage like they were lugging in a sack of grain. The lord grabbed hold of the sides of the carriage doorway and heaved himself inward. “You must be so delighted that you came.”
***
My fingers dug into the black leather seat. It was my first time in the carriage with company.
The lord sat across from me, his hands folded tightly in his lap. I imagined his eyes attempting to bore through the veil to shoot daggers straight into me.
“That was not very nice,” he said at last.
I gripped the leather harder, imagining that it was the arms of his leather jacket instead. “What have you done with him?”
“Are you going to order me to answer you?”
“Will you not answer me otherwise?”
The lord moved his hands up, stopping shortly below where the veil began.
“I feel compelled to answer you,” he said. “I feel compelled to do anything I so much as think you want done. It is a battle within me not to slit my own throat at this very moment.”
I smiled sweetly.
“But I will not let you have power over me.”
I scoffed. “I don’t think you have much of a choice.”
“No, I do not,” he said, his head tilting slightly toward the carriage window. “But still, I have the power to fight it. And I will fight it until my last breath.”
Don’t tempt me.
I bit my tongue and followed his gaze out of the window. We were entering the woods now. I had missed the chance to bid my childhood home one last farewell.
A surge of wickedness came over me. There was one place nearby that was still home. And it could save me, if but for a moment. You promised them you would help. Dream or not, I’ve got to know.
“Were you alive long ago? Say, a thousand years in the past?”
The lord’s head snapped toward me. “How could you—”
“Answer me!”
The lord spoke before he could stop himself. “Yes.”
I’m not crazy. It wasn’t a dream! “Don’t move,” I said.
The lord tensed.
“Have them stop the carriage.”
He knocked on the window and the carriage halted instantly. “Olivière, if you remember—”
“Stay still,” I said. “Don’t speak. Don’t move.”
If I can go back, I can stop him before Jurij was ever hurt. Before he ever took my mother. Before she ever fell ill. What if he caused the illness somehow? I didn’t understand how or why, but it seemed to be too much of a coincidence since it happened right after I met him. Maybe he planned to make me grateful to him from the start.
I have to go back. Before this village ever became cursed with men and their goddesses.
I pushed the carriage door open and ran trembling off of the dirt path and deep into the woods.
My legs burned. My dress snagged on branches and tore. Lily petals fell from my hair, withered already by a day without earth and water. I hiked up my skirt and kept moving.
I reached the cavern and tore inside. I had no candle to light my way, and my feet stumbled from time to time over a rock or a spike I didn’t fully remember, but I made my way through the darkness.
And it was the violet glow and the cavern pool that awaited me, called me home.
Even my wild and racing heartbeat seemed suddenly subdued, quiet, and calm. There was something in the pool that wanted me, a gentle vibration, an unrelenting reminder of life. It was as if until that moment I hadn’t realized that even among the voluble pounding of my heart, there had been gaps every other beat. Moments of silence in which my heartbeat echoed here, in the pool, in the depths of the secret cavern.
Little droplets of purple rose up from the surface and spread out to banish the darkness trying to invade the corners of the cavern. I moved closer to the edge of the pool, dipping one hand into the water to grab a droplet of violet. But they were too quick.
Can I do this without Elgar? Was the blade the key?
The violet light came from a sphere, large as the pool, covering the bottom. I scrambled to my knees, shoving aside my skirt and scuffing my legs on the cold stone, and bent as close as I could to the water’s surface. The little droplets tore off from their shells and rose up to the surface, but as many droplets as there were, the sphere grew no smaller. It seemed to be contracting and expanding, like the beating of a heart.
I took a deep breath and submerged my head beneath the water. The violet droplets soared toward me, and I fell in. The sphere drew me in like a man to his goddess. I would swim to the heartbeat that called mine and embrace it.
I can do this. Even without Elgar.
I snapped awake. A familiar feeling. I felt the sudden shock of the water being disturbed and a moment later a strong arm pulled me violently upward. The figure next to me struggled. It thrashed with such force that eventually, I pulled away from the light. My heart ached as I saw it grow smaller in the distance.