The End of The Cursed

‘The Question of the Immortal Queen’s true mortality, could only be ascertained if she was ever to be found.’ History of Gyllene

Frederick stopped the wagon and climbed out of the driver’s seat, remembering to use the step and not to simply leap out. After an eternity, they had finally reached the sea. The King of Twyle had not been waiting for them at the Estate as he should have been. Neither were Freyr or Gilda. There had been no reason for the lot of them to stay at the manor, not when everyone was apparently already at the Keep. He turned to look back at his sister. She was haggling over the fare with a Sea Captain, all the while hanging on the arm of her besotted new husband. She was going to have some explaining to do when they reached Gyllene. Although, his father might simply kill Mr. Grant and widow her without a second thought. It would take care of the problem-and although he had been young, he remembered no paternal tenderness from his father, so it was not an unlikely scenario.

Frederick shook his head and spat on the discolored wet boards beneath his feet. He didn’t remember the last time he had seen the ocean, but he already didn’t like it. It was just a big expanse of gray damp. The docks smelled of aged fish – a specialty of his homeland apparently. It turned his stomach in a knot even as the wet wind chilled his skin and clothes. The edge of the sea spelled the end of the blissful warmer climate and the beginning of the more wretched one. This journey was a ridiculous. They should have simply taken over the manor house and ruled that half of the kingdom. At least there the weather had been warm. He walked over towards Freya resignedly.

“Well? Do we have an agreed upon price?” He asked his sister and the Captain impatiently. It wasn’t as if money was much of an issue. The Duke had given them quite a bit of gold for the trip, as well as three of his own guards. Pelynor had sent along one of the dark guards as well. He didn’t seem to trust his father’s reasons for sending his own guards with them.

“It’s not the price that’s the problem lad! It’s that your sensitive sister here is insisting we travel at night!” The Captain spoke with a thick accent that matched his wiry reddish hair. Frederick shrugged.

“Isn’t that the preferred time? Don’t you sailors like to orient yourselves by the stars?” The Captain sighed in irritation.

“Not here we don’t! The trip is only a half day long to cross this here ribbon of water. Short as spades, but dangerous as hell! The channel is thick with submerged rocks, by day the water is clear as glass and you can avoid them. Try the journey in the dark and you may sink the ship.” Frederick closed his lips tightly as a growling sound escaped them.

“Is this the first time you have sailed this route then?” He asked. The Captain sputtered momentarily, but did not make any actual words. “If you are an experienced sailor, surely you are familiar enough with the various pitfalls, that you can navigate in the dark? If not, I am sure that we can find a sailor who is willing to do so.” He turned his back on the man and pulled his sister by the hand. The man sighed loudly.

“Alright alright you bloody bastard. I’ll take you across the channel now. Just sell them damn cart and ponies first. I’ll not be taking live animals on board while sailing blind.” The Captain folded his arms as if this was the last word. Frederick grinned with his gleaming pointed teeth.

“Of course. No animals on board was our goal as well.” Freya gave her brother a very angry and pointed warning glance. He just laughed.

Freyr put his furred face against the chilly stone of the bedroom wall. He had pulled down every sheet and adornment in the room and let the sunshine stream in. The golden threads of light illuminated his monstrous form as he stood motionless. He had killed two people yesterday, well, three. One of whom he had deeply loved, and one of which he would have been prepared to love completely. Their bodies were in the cold morgue underneath the Keep. The largest body would stay in that horrible place until Spring…the other had already been interred. The catacombs beneath the castle were frozen too thoroughly to dig spaces for coffins at the moment. A space was ready, as always, but due to the ursine nature of one of the bodies, a larger coffin would have to be built and a larger space dug.

Freyr had stood over Gilda’s coffin the previous night as it was slid into the space which had been intended for someone else. The frozen ground had prevented them from filling in the hole, but Freyr had managed to drop a handful of earth on the gleaming surface of the coffin. None of the servants seemed surprised to have to help their Prince bury his bride. Most of the recent additions to the tomb had been women. The dead wives of the Demon Kings already lined the walls. It only seemed natural to them to add the most recent bride to the macabre collection. There would be no funeral for Gilda until the Spring, and even then it would have to be nocturnal…just as her burial had been. He blinked rapidly. Gilda would never see sunlight again, not even in death.

Every muscle in Freyr’s body hurt. His many injuries were nothing. His body was almost fully healed after his transition from bear to man back to bear again. It was emotional agony and severe depression that turned all the individual muscle fibers of his body into screaming nerves of pain. He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. He had never expected to have a happy life, but this was an interminable hell.

“Sire?” A young woman had just entered his room without him even noticing her. He hadn’t heard the door. He turned his enormous animal head toward her. She didn’t so much as wince. She must have worked in the Keep since birth.

“You need not address your subjects until an audience can be arranged…in a few month’s time. But the staff of the Keep expects a statement from their new master and King.” Her words were softly spoken and well-intended, but he could not hear them as anything but the needling whine of a blood drinking insect through his haze of pain.

“I have no desire to harm you. Please leave immediately if you do not wish me to change this mindset.” He spoke in a low cold voice that was gravelly and tight. He turned his back to her.

“As you wish majesty.” He didn’t hear the door. “I should tell you though, that it is almost evening. The King of Twyle is hoping you will dine with him tonight.” He could hear her wincing in expectation of his fury. He did not disappoint her. She gasped as the oriental porcelain pitcher from his wash table crashed against the wall an inch from her head. The door creaked shut with a thud behind her and her footsteps echoed loudly and rapidly down the hall. He sighed. The pitcher never would have hit her. Even though he had not been looking, he knew exactly where she was from the sound of her breath.

The King of Twyle could dine alone. Soon enough Rearden would be King of Gyllene anyway. Freyr had no intention of remarrying and producing an heir or being any kind of King. Once Rearden married Freya, the Kingdom was his. Freyr would simply disappear into the woods and forget that he had ever been human and ever been contented. There was no life here for him anymore. There was only the death of his wife, his unborn child and his father, and that was too many ghosts to endure. The day that Freya arrived was the day that he would leave.

Gilda had been his entire world for twelve years. Everyday spent her in company, every moment watching her. The air around him had always borne her smell. Without her, his life had no purpose, no meaning…nothing. There had never been any question of him falling in love with her. He understood that now. She was what had kept him alive. Without her humorous nature and vivacity he would have become a depraved animal like his brother. That was the difference between them, he had had a purpose, and someone to love. His brother had had no one. Now he too would sink into the pit of degeneracy that plagued his species.

Clothilde stirred the embers of her fire. Her pretty little creation was a real Princess now. No matter how upset Gilda had been about what she had done, now that she had everything she’d ever wanted, she must happy. The embers crackled and readied themselves to show her the picture of her beautiful angel. Gilda’s face appeared, as perfect as a living girl could be. Her eyes were closed and her long lashes rested on her golden cheeks. The perfect curve of her lips were underscored by jewel-like redness. Clothilde leaned closer. They were red as blood… No wait, there was blood, dark and dried at the corner of her mouth. Clothilde inhaled painfully. The blood was wiped away by a mortician. His profession was betrayed by his robe and tidy appearance. The ivory bed sheets that Gilda lay on where not bedsheets but the inside of a white marble coffin lined with silken pillows. The lid was shut over the only child she had ever raised, and the coffin itself slid into the wall inside a set of catacombs.

It had to be a trick. She had been fooled by a vision like this before and would not be again. Somehow Grigor’s influence had reached beyond the jail cell and caused them to create this ruse. She peeled through the layers of the event, where was…Freyr’s face invaded the vision, He looked like the waking dead. His rugged face was pale as a corpse, his eyes black with pain and unshed tears that burned them red. Clothilde cried out with her hands to her lips and backed away from the fire. She skittered backward away from the flames like an insect. No man was capable of feigning such emotion. What had happened? Where was Grigor? How had he managed this?

She flipped through the flames like a book to his cell. He was still in there…but he too looked haunted. He had been injured. His clothes were rent, and he held his side with his hand, it was scarred and pockmarked through the tears in his clothing. How? Why had he not healed? She searched the flames for the King and found him. He was dead on a marble slab in the basement of the Keep. How had this? No. What had she done?

Clothilde forced the images backwards in a heart pounding panic. Her nerves jangled with anxiety as she found the image she was seeking. Grigor had entered Gilda’s chambers-someone had freed him from the cells in the dungeon. The King had heard the noise and come to investigate, but the curse had rendered him a second aggressor. Freyr had tried to stop it…but the sunlight had touched him. In an effort to save Gilda from his father and himself from the new expression of the curse, Freyr had thrown Gilda out of a window. Instead of saving her, the fall had killed her.

Clothilde’s relief at finding Fairlight alive had changed the curse. The cursed now required the touch of direct sunlight to begin the transformation-and the unexpected effects had killed Gilda. Gilda’s sprawled body looked like a golden snow angel on the surface of the white snow. Only the blood on her face and on the ground around her betrayed the true nature of the scene. Even the shards of window glass just looked like ice glittering around the maiden lying on the expanse of perfect white.

Clothilde flipped forward again to Freyr. He was in a room in the Keep. He was crying without tears. Agonized gasping was all he had left as he tore through his bedroom. His fist hit the wall repeatedly as his mouth open and shut with hoarse screams…while his eyes were dry. Everything he had touched was summarily broken and destroyed, crushed to dust or hurled across the room in desperation and fury. Impossibly he turned to look directly into the fire and threw a large candelabra toward her vantage point. Clothilde leapt backward instinctively and ended the vision. She closed her eyes and put her forehead on the floor.

It was true then. Gilda was really dead. Her child, her true child, the daughter she had raised from the age of five, was dead. What had she done? She rocked back and forth on the floor clutching her head. She had done so much in service of her grand revenge…in an effort punish the guilty…to get justice. Instead she had only caused more pain, more darkness. She’d used an innocent child like a pimp would use a whore and the curse had killed her. Pain washed over her like being caught in a rainstorm, torrents of icy cold pain racing down her chest and arms. Her hatred ebbed in order to make room for catastrophic grief and regret. Everything in the room shuddered as rays of red light like rivulets of blood flowed across the floor and back into her body. Power surged and coursed through her, returning to its rightful place. She stood up, every muscle fibre tingling as she grew younger, stronger, and more powerful. She had lied to Grigor. She had lied to Gilda. She had lied to anyone who had ever asked. Now that her power had returned to her, she was incredibly strong. She could do more than anyone knew. She had to get back to the Keep as quickly as possible. Clothilde opened the window in the grimy inn room.

Outside on the ground the Innkeeper heard a strange cawing sound. He looked up to the second floor window as a raven flew out of it and into the darkening sky. Huh. The tenant must have forgotten to shut it and let a bird in. That would be a mess.

Fairlight quietly tiptoed down the stairs to the basement of the castle. She turned left to head down the corridor to the room the body was in. Heading right would take her to the dungeon and she had no business there. If she went to the dungeon she would actually kill her father. With the way she was feeling right now, it would not be a clean death either.

She grasped a torch from one of the sconces lining the blackness of the tunnel and found her way to the coldest room in the castle. The elderly servant in the room looked up from his chair in surprise as she entered. He was asleep, like most people who worked in the castle, he worked only at night. His duties would not begin for several hours. It was cold enough in the room to keep the body from decaying. Two marble slabs stood in front of him. One held the ursine body of the King of Gyllene, and the other was now empty. He had covered the horrifying body of the King with a sheet. The dying snarl frozen on the creature’s face was disturbing, and its glassy eyes were open and staring.

Fairlight touched the beast on the chest. She had betrayed him accidentally. Coming here at all had been a mistake. She’d been so afraid that he would kill her for who and what she was…instead it was the other way around. Every other place she had gone it had only been a matter of time before someone had discovered her. Death after death had taken its toll on her and she had finally been desperate enough to go to the place she had feared would be the most dangerous for her. Her rightful home. Fairlight sighed. She could give him what little she had left, but then she would never awaken. If she never awakened then the secret of who and what Gilda truly was would not be known.

“I will be back momentarily.” Fairlight said to the old man. He mumbled something like “m’lady.” Before tucking his head back to his chest. She took her torch back from the sconce and left the room, weaving her way through the carved passages inside the cold mountain to the crypt. Her own little coffin was in here, and she was afraid to pass it…even covered up it still held power over her. But she had to get to Gilda. She would have awakened at least an hour ago. She must be horribly frightened in the dark and increasingly airless box. She couldn’t avoid this dank and earthy hallway with its sweet smell of death and incense. Stopping to see her brother’s corpse had already been selfish. The sole unburied coffin was in its slot at the end of the corridor, a space hewn in solid rock…ostensibly for the King himself. However, another trench was already being dug. This space had most likely been made for the future 4th wife of the King.

Fairlight used every ounce of her unnatural strength to haul the heavy white marble coffin from its resting place. She leaned against the smooth side gasping for her breath. Fairlight lifted the lid with her fingers pulling it upward until it rested on its hinge. Gilda sat up with a cry of relief.

“Oh God! I thought you were going to leave me in there. I thought no one knew I was alive. I thought…” Fairlight put her hand onto Gilda’s face, she was crying and jerking spasmodically with leftover panic.

“Shhh... You are safe now. Things did not go according to plan, but the curse is ended.” Fairlight shoved the lid all the way off the coffin. “Clothilde saw your death and she was heartbroken. All those you love are free, and you are alive.” Gilda shook her head, placing her hands to her stomach.

“But the fall!” Fairlight smiled.

“No my dear. ALL those you love are free. Even that small one. My mother crafted you from iron in order to be able to endure whatever pain and violence a life with the cursed would bring.” Gilda’s tears were flowing freely down her face. “Yes. Do that. You should heal whatever injuries you may have sustained. You are alive, but you are hurt.”

“You gave me a drug that made me collapse.” Gilda’s voice was hoarse, she had most likely been screaming in the coffin. “I said I didn’t…” She coughed. “want to do this.” She wiped bloody spit off her mouth. “And Grigor he… he tried, he nearly…”

“I’m sorry. There was no other way. I needed you to look dead. I didn’t know that Grigor was going to be in your room.” Fairlight helped Gilda to stand up and step out of the coffin. “If I had seen him…if my visions had shown me that possibility…but they didn’t. I’m so sorry.” Fairlight steadied Gilda with her arm and shoulder. “You confound my sight. I can’t see your future properly.” Gilda shrugged Fairlight’s hands off of her.

“Please. Don’t touch me. You betrayed me! You convinced me I had to die!” Gilda shoved her. “I almost sacrificed my child because I thought it didn’t have a chance!” She wiped her face with her hand again. “Just show me how to get out of this horrible place so that I can find Freyr.” Gilda snapped as she hugged her arms around herself. Fairlight nodded. She should have expected this sort of backlash. She helped Gilda to her feet and began guiding her through the labyrinth-like stone tunnels that made up the basement of the Keep.

“I will take you to the base of the long stairs. If you take them, you will get back to King’s hallway.” Fairlight stopped walking as they reached the door to the mortuary. “You’ll find Freyr’s room easily once you are back there. But be cautious. He thinks you are dead and he is extremely upset. I don’t want to see you hurt.” Gilda laughed harshly.

“Just thrown out a window.” She turned back to Fairlight momentarily. “You are not coming with me?” Fairlight smiled. Gilda actually sounded hurt,

“No. No I have something I need to do down here.” She put her hand on Gilda’s arm again. “Gilda, do you remember your father?” Gilda looked at her in surprise.

“What does that matter now? I have to get to Freyr, I have to tell him that I’m not dead!” Gilda tried to tug her arm free from Fairlight’s grasp, but she held her tightly in her bone-like hand.

“Was he very much older than your mother?” Fairlight asked. Gilda narrowed her eyes.

“Let me go.” She insisted. Fairlight groaned.

“This is important! Was your father young or old?” She had to tell Gilda who she was. She herself had to know for sure. Gilda tore her arm free from Fairlight’s grasp with a snapping sound.

“He was older than my mother. I didn’t notice because I was a child…but his hair was gray.” She turned on her heel and ran up the narrow set of stone stairs away from her. Fairlight wanted to go after her, but she only had a small amount of time until it became too late for her brother. She turned back to the mortuary. The old man nodded as she entered.

“My Lady.” He said more clearly this time. She glanced around the room impatiently.

“Do you have something to write with?” He looked perplexed.

“No my Lady, I do not.”

“Never mind. Please, tell me, you do know what I am do you not?” Fairlight put her hand back on the torso of the giant bear corpse which lay under the silk sheet. The old man nodded. His saggy cheeks bobbed with the effort. “Then you will not be surprised when I tell you that you need to go inform the staff that their King is not dead. He was ill, but his witch has healed him. You must go immediately.” Fairlight instructed him. The man bowed to her, even though he seemed confused and unsure.

“Are you sure my lady…he…I mean…” The man was stuttering as he made his teetering way toward the door. Agh. Why did they not retire older servants when they became feeble? Her brother would be too far gone to recall by the time the old man made it to the stairs.

“I said go!” She shouted. Her new face was made all the more terrifying by the force of her anger and the whiteness of her already pale eyes. The old man rushed away from the room as fast as his arthritic knees could convey him. Fairlight sighed and slumped against her dead brother. She wished she could see him as a man again. She did not want to make her goodbyes to a dead bear, but she had no recourse.

“Brother. You have been my only friend, the only one of my whole existence. In fifty years I sought safety and survival, but I never sought love or affection. I assumed those things would always elude me because of the horrible truth of what I am.” Tears made her voice thick. “You did not fear me, or hurt me, or harm me in anyway. You sought my guidance and my regard and my love.” She kissed the forehead of the terrible bear face. “I have very little left. I only hope it is enough to revive you. It has been enough to keep me holding on when I should have been dead a thousand times over.” She rested her cheek against his fur. “Goodbye dear one. I am so sorry.” Losing her life was of little consequence. It took all her concentration to hold onto it in her dead body as it was. Letting it go…letting it fly into someone else…that was almost a relief.

Freyr had been to dinner with Rearden, or more accurately Rearden had come to find him and brought him food. Freyr had decided to leave his room in order to eat in the dining room because he hadn’t wanted Rearden to see what the inside of his room looked like. There wasn’t a single stick of furniture connected to the other. His room was more sawdust and porcelain shards than anything else. He did have to return to it now though. Grief made him tired, and he wanted to forget in sleep even for a minute, just how terrible his life was. Freyr opened the door to his room and entered. He groaned out loud. He could not endure this!

“Get out!” He hissed at the hallucination seated on the remains of his bed. “I do not want to be tormented by you!” His voice was tight and cold. He slammed the door quickly behind him. He could not let the servants catch him screaming at thin air. The appearance of the room alone was going to give them pause. The illusion on his bed looked defeated.

“But I’m here, Freyr, I’m truly here. I’m not dead.” Her wide golden eyes were full of tears. “I’ve never wanted to torment you. I only want to...” She bit her lip. “apologize.” The impossible lie his eyes were telling him leaned forward so that her hair spilled over her face. He cursed under his breath. Even though he knew it was false he wanted to touch it. He wanted to hold it and crush it to his chest and pretend for one second that the woman he was seeing was not really dead. She looked up at him through the shimmering curtain of her hair. “Please Freyr. I am alive.” She sighed in what sounded like exasperation. “Fairlight drugged me to make it look like I was dead. I’m not. I am alive. I swear to you that I am alive. Why else would I have been unable to move during the fight? Why would I do that unless I was drugged?” It had Gilda’s voice and it told such pretty lies. He knew that his own half mad mind could play such subtle perfect tricks on him when he was injured or overwrought. Killing his wife, unborn child and father in the same day would certainly have given his feeble mind the inspiration to fabricate this illusion. Still. He had never felt such intense desire to fold someone in his arms and hold them.

He slumped down into a plush armchair that had been clawed to ribbons so completely that it looked more like a snowdrift than a chair. Freyr looked steadily at the ghost and sighed. Picking up the half full decanter of brandy from the floor next to the chair, he tipped it back and drank…setting it down significantly lighter. If nothing else, the apparition might distract him until the decanter was empty and he was asleep.

“Then say something that will convince me that you are real, and not merely a manifestation of pain from my aberrant mind.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and took another sip from the crystal decanter. Gilda sighed and fingered the remains of the embroidered sheets.

“Don’t test me! For heaven’s sakes, I swear to you that this is true!” Gilda looked down at the carnage that was his room. She looked dismayed, and then confused. “What did you do? Some of these things were priceless…and why don’t you have a glass? You can’t drink straight from a de…” Freyr stopped her from speaking by flying across the room in a single motion and covering her mouth with his. He wrapped his ridiculous, foolish, insane little love in his arms and held her to him as he kissed her fervently. He kissed her neck, face, shoulder, and lips again. He was too overwrought to consider being angry with her. Gilda wrapped herself around him and kissed him back wordlessly. He pulled away momentarily.

“How? Why? Why would anyone?’ Freyr was blathering as he kissed her face, eyelids, cheeks and the curve of her jaw.

“Fairlight thought it would end your curse…if Gran…Clothilde thought I was dead because of it.” Gilda gasped as Freyr continued trying to kiss her through her explanation. He stopped abruptly.

“You knew?” She couldn’t possibly have known. She would never have… “What do you mean?” He was furious. Every bit of adrenaline which had flooded him with spine-tingling relief at finding her alive was now channeled into all- consuming rage. Gilda looked frightened, and ashamed.

“I did know. Fairlight told me in the same vision when she warned me about Lord Phillip. She said I was going to die…and within the year. She said there was no way to alter that fate. The only thing I could do to make it better was to die in service of you, or those I loved.” Gilda put her face in her hands and spoke through her fingers. “I don’t know what changed…but I am still here. I never wanted to leave you.” Freyr took the crystal brandy decanter and threw it into the fireplace sending out a rush of flame.

“You thought you were really going to die? You did this just to end some stupid curse I don’t even care about anymore?” The difference in their heights had never seemed this palpable as he stood over her, while she lay crumpled on the remains of the bed. “What about the child? There’s no way it…”

“It lives. The child is safe.” Gilda’s voice was so quiet that it could scarcely be heard above the still roaring flames. The flickering light across her white gown made it look she was on fire.

“But you thought it – and yourself were going to die. All for the sake of some stupid spell?” He picked her up by the shoulders and held her up to his face. “Has life with me really been so unendurable that you would rather die? Did you despise this child that much?” Gilda was crying, but he didn’t care. “Is my curse so monstrous that you thought I would rather be without you than continue to endure it?” Freyr released her, allowing her to crumple back onto the collapsed and shredded bed. “I killed my father in order to try to save you. I thought I had killed you.” He sat down again in the chair, unwilling to look at her. Gilda lay face down, crying silently. He would not be moved by this.

“You know that none of that is true.” She didn’t even attempt to look at him. The goose down from the bedding he’d destroyed drifted and settled into her hair like snowflakes. “You know I love you. You know full well that I would willing die to save you. And I did refuse…she just went ahead anyway. Why else would she have to drug me? If I’d been cooperative none of this would have happened.” Gilda heard him make a disgruntled and unimpressed humphing sound. She looked up at him with angry eyes, all her tears burned out of them. A flood of resentment was flowing through her veins now, washing the regret out of her system. “It isn’t as if you haven’t done the same thing! You died once to save me from Lord Phillip! You thought that was some sort of deep romantic gesture. So it is all fine and well for a man to give his life for someone?” Gilda curled her hands into fists. “In that case it is noble and grand? To rip my heart out and leave me distraught and alone is fine for you to do? However, if a woman does it, then it must be an attempt at suicide because she hates her life?” She was no longer prostrate on the bed but standing on the feather covered floor in front of him. “I was merely told that I had to die…and that your father was going to kill me. Everything was so different than it was supposed to be, none of this happened the way she foretold.” She was beginning to babble. “Then Grigor was there and he tried…your father tried to stop him…” Gilda stopped speaking. If she kept speaking she would cry, and she was not going to do that again. She dug her nails into her palms. Freyr growled.

“I stepped in front of a bullet meant for you in the heat of the moment. I didn’t wander blindly into a pre-ordained death like some sort of sacrificial offering.” He was still beyond angry. He gripped her by the shoulders and pulled her struggling body across the floor toward himself. She tried to wrench herself free but his grip was too tight. “Trifle with your own life but not…” Gilda interrupted him.

“The child? The one neither of us mentioned for weeks? The one I know you don’t want? YOU are the one who made it clear that if there was any chance of a child you would leave me. You left me once already…after you…” Gilda hugged her sides. She was still wearing a flimsy burial robe. “You just left me, shamed and alone as if a child would end any feeling or relationship between us. At least I cared about it! I’d just been told I would die either way…either way I was going to take her with me…either now or during her birth. Since I didn’t die yesterday, I suppose that is something we can look forward to in the summer months.” Her voice was bitter and racked with pain. Freyr inhaled slightly in surprise. She truly thought there was no hope. Freyr’s anger collapsed into a tightness in his chest.

“Why are you so certain that you and your child will die?” Freyr released her softly. Gilda walked swiftly out of the room. He stared after her in surprise. What? Why was she leaving? He shouldn’t have slackened his grasp. Gilda returned through the connected doorway between their rooms. She extended a small smooth stone toward him in the palm of her hand.

“Because Fairlight managed to give me this…from hundreds of miles away, in my original vision…the one in which she told me that Lord Phillip would attack us.” Gilda looked at the floor as Freyr took the unassuming pebble from her hand. “I didn’t really believe it. I hoped it wouldn’t be true.” Gilda’s voice was halting and full of tears. “But then Lord Phillip did come, and the scene was just as she said it would be.” Gilda’s voice was panicked.

“You said yourself that she did not predict Grigor’s presence or the baby itself. She is not all powerful.” Freyr felt his heart begin beating again…with something other than rage. “She is wrong. In this. I know it.” He forced himself to look at her. “You will be nineteen by the time it is born. You cannot die in childbirth without proving her wrong…there is no way that she can be right!” He took her face in the palms of his hands. “You survived being thrown out a window by a bear. You can survive anything else.” He dropped the small stone on the floor as he wrapped Gilda in his arms and brought her head to his chest. The stone flared brightly and glowed like a torch as it rolled unnoticed under the bed.