The Huntsman of Adamos (Quartet)- draft

CH TANGLED

Fleur wanted to know why he hadn’t told her he was a huntsman.

“Because I’m not anymore.” Rieth whispered in his gravely damaged voice. “Tell me what happened today? Desa said you were having a nightmare about someone named Damien and then you screamed and fainted when she asked you who he was.”

Fleur sipped her tea then revealed in a quietly anguished tone, “When the Southern Castle fell, I was captured by the Dark Ones. Prince Damien himself tortured me.” She drew in a shaky breath then released it slowly. “I am starting to remember things, detail I had forgotten, horrible stuff I wish I could forget again. I can’t... I can’t make it stop. I don’t know what to do... I feel like I don’t know who I am anymore. It’s frightening Yuli, but he is trying so hard to be brave.”

“He is very brave.” Rieth sat down beside her and pulled her into his lap, cradling her in his arms.

She had so much personality and will that it was easy to forget how small she really was. In a decade, Yuli would be taller than her, just like all her children were taller than her before they reached the century mark. Rieth swallowed remembering the looks on Jenna and Kalen’s faces when they saw her at the festival. Kalen had shaved off his beard and both had dyed their hair. Serapha had used magic to alter the shapes of their lips and cheeks. His heart broke for them and it made him feel selfish as he held the person they could not share yet.

“He really admires you. He wants you to teach him how to be a huntsman.” She asked again, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

He sighed, “I gave it up, I won’t go back.”

“Gave it up? But you still have your power, I can feel it,” She insisted.

He took her empty mug and set it aside then kissed the inside of her wrist as he often did. His breath was warm against her skin as she turned her hand to caress his face. His beard and hair had been singed off until it was only a few inches long. He knew that was why Cassie had looked at him with such scrutiny, with a short beard he looked just like his late brother Kaleth. He decided to tell her the truth, or most of it.

“Fleur, I was the first in my house to have huntsmen’s magic. My family sent me away to be trained, I was made into a weapon. During the war, I became cruel, a loner. My family died before the harvest, before the war even ended. The Xelusians sent assassins to kill all the Huntsmen and their families, the few living guardians, and the King and his family. Like the King, I survived when most did not. It changed me. I became like the Huntsman you fear. I was powerful but merciless.”

He swallowed hard then forced the next part out. “I even killed a child once. Only my brother kept me from being lost completely, he made me leave the life of war and I became a woodsmith as I had been mentored to be. I had let my cruelty touch everything I loved, even a woman who loved me felt my wrath and I lost her. She didn’t die, she left me, and I deserved it. A Guardian once told me, we do not have to be who we were born to be, we could seek hope and happiness. So, when I came forward it was like I had been given another chance.”

His whispering voice was almost drowned out the raging wind and blowing rain outside. “I began looking for my hope and it rescued me.”

Her hand had been gently touching his cheek as he spoke, it was a soothing patting motion. “I’m glad I found you.” She pulled his head lower until their lips met.

She could feel his soul loving her. It was so familiar reaching toward hers and hers reached back as they kissed. She loved him, she had always loved him, even when she loved another. Her memories swirled in a confusing tangle, she tried to push them away. She wanted these moments with Rieth to pass without the trauma of her memories, just the two of them, holding each other. Her memories prodded her with the time she and Rieth had shared more but mixed it with other times when she was with Yurieth and Yuriel, her mind tried to make them the same. She must have paused because Rieth spoke her name. Blinking at him, she wished she could see him through her eyes instead of her fingertips because her mind was playing tricks on her and trying to tell her that her enemy, her loyal friend, and her new lover were all the same person.

“Fleur?” He breathed her name again.

“I’m lost... My memories are all tangled, like my yarn when Fishlover gets bored.” She felt him wipe away a tear that had leaked out. “I love you, Rieth, be with me?”

“Fleur, you’re not well.” He refused.

His whole body trembled with want but he feared pushing the memories that were leaking out of her mind into his like drops of honey from a comb. Every time they had been intimate swirled around them like invisible autumn leaves, even the ones from the hallucinations in the Soul-Spider trap. His heart was pounding so hard it hurt. “You should rest.”

Fleur stood and stepped toward her bed, then she turned slowly, her robe and gown slid down her curves. Her eyes were glowing with magic she didn’t know she was using as siren’s magic mixed with oracle shine to try to compel him. “Help me forget, Rieth. Give me something new to remember. Something that’s real.”

Rieth’s breath caught in his chest, when Fleur was Daisy, she had said those exact words to him only a month after the end of the war. They had made love for hours, then while he slept, she had left Aetheria to rebuild the biomes of her birth world. His whole body shook, his soul didn’t want to resist the magic. It wanted her worse than it had that afternoon in his shop when a kiss turned into a frenzy of passion. He thought it had been a moment of weakness, but now, letting her unbutton his shirt, he realized he couldn’t have resisted with all his strength and will. He was hers, he had always been hers. From the moment, she nearly died in his arms outside the City of the Kings through his imprisonment in the Dark Dust Dimension, during the war he fought beside her as her friend only, and up to the moment she had saved him from forever death as his decades long search for her ended. Even now, everything he was and would forever be was tied to her alone.

“Fleur, please...” He whispered raggedly as her lips kissed his flesh and her fingertips delicately traced his scars.

Resistance was futile. It wasn’t that she was too powerful to resist, they were evenly matched. It was because he didn’t want to resist, he had been a fool to resist in the past, so he didn’t any longer.

When Rieth woke at dawn, the sky outside was deep gray and weeping violently. His body was still vibrating. He pulled on his pants and went to find Fleur. She was standing in front of the window facing the cove.

“I can feel them all now.” She said in a small voice. “And something else, there is something in the storm.”

He put his arms around her from behind and kissed the top of her white hair. “You need to rest, Fleur.” With the storm going it would be almost impossible for Serapha and Jenna to trek across the island to Soldier’s Cove.

“I can’t. My mind won’t let go of something. Corbin... something is in him. I feel like he is... is...” She hesitated.

“Like he is what?”

“Like he is Prince Damien or like Prince Damien. It’s crazy. My mind is trying to make everyone into someone else. Even you.” Fleur made a frustrated sound.

“Who does your mind say I am?” Rieth asked softly.

“It doesn’t matter, it’s not true. It’s not. Everything is just tangled.” She bowed her head, her body trembled.

“Fleur... who?” He insisted on knowing.

“You’re him... Lord Yurieth, the Huntsman of Adamos, that everything between us happened before, that you’re going to kill me because I was just your duty until I had your son and I have, now my usefulness is over.” Her body shuddered with such force he feared she was going to have a seizure.

“I would never hurt you. You must believe...”

In a rush she blurted out. “Nevermind, you’re not him. We still have to figure out who tried to kill everyone. If there are brigands out there we haven’t caught and if Corbin is working with them. We are running out of time, the Royal Guardsmen will be stuck on Brightwater until the winter is over and we’ll be on our own.”

He squeezed her in his arms. “Fleur, you already know he is. We both do. We never found where the brigands were hiding because all trails lead back to Lumberton and the guardsmen never caught them because someone was protecting and helping them... Corbin. There were eight more robberies during the fall festival, someone who knew the patrol patterns and travelers’ habits. We just have to find a way to prove it is him and that he has a new crew.”

“Banth thinks the same too.” She turned to look up at him and leaned into the kiss he pressed against her forehead. She relaxed as he smelled her hair, then he whispered, “I love how you smell like flowers and citrus wood.”

“Rieth, who helped you look for them?” She asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Siger and I are both trackers, it was part of my Huntsman’s training that I shared with him. We looked and found no camp. I even explored an old abandoned lumber mill I found northwest of Lumberton. Someone had been there months earlier but they were gone and hadn’t returned. Westfalls and Port Arbor were both under protection of the Mariners, so that just left Lumberton.” He explained but stopped when she shuddered in his arms, “Fleur?”

Her brow creased as though she were in pain and remembering something. “Siger... I remember standing in the snow, teaching a boy how to use swords and he was there but his name was something else... his laugh was the same and he pulled my braid in jest.” She sighed, almost sobbing into his chest. “Nothing makes sense, everyone is someone else. I think I’m going mad.”

He cupped her face and lifted her chin. “You’re not going mad, you’re healing. Don’t fight it, just stay with us. Have hope, Fleur.”

She released her hands from where they were clenching her arms and wrapped one of them around his neck and placed her other hand over his on her cheek. “Yuli is my hope as are you... just... just don’t be him.”

He wished she could see the promise in his eyes so he tried to convey it through his damaged voice, “The Huntsman who hurt you is gone, and I swear by the Light, he will never hurt you again. You are my hope.”

He kissed her slowly, as his longing soul embraced her wounded one. He had done this to her, he and his family, and he would spend the rest of his very long life making amends and healing her.

Fleur felt everything at once; honor and deceit, promises and lies, love and heartache, fear and hope, light... light and darkness. She leaned back from the kiss, something like magic burned within her, brilliant like the beacon of her lighthouse. It saw the shadow approaching, felt its cold presence coming closer.

Her eyes glowed, entranced, as she breathed out, “A shadow is coming toward the cove.”

It was so haunting and horribly familiar that Rieth almost jumped out of his skin when someone pounded on the front door. He lowered a dazed Fleur into a chair quickly, and sent a thought to his brothers.

‘Abrieth, Regis, wake up. Fleur says a shadow is coming to attack the town. Her magic is returning.’ Rieth felt them stirring. ‘Hurry, and tell Serapha, I don’t think we have much time.’

The pounding sounded again and Fishlover growled demonically. Rieth whistled the command to protect to Fang and signaled his war feline to step away from the door and go over to Fleur who was swaying in the archway. Corbin was standing on the porch, he looked angry to Rieth but to Fleur, he felt homicidal, full of jealousy and darkness. Before she could shout a warning, Corbin lunged forward and stabbed Rieth with a cursed blade. Fishlover yowled and leaped to his master’s defense as Fleur caught Rieth who staggered backward and fell. While Corbin struggled to fend of the vicious feline, Fleur almost sobbed in horror. Rieth was dying in her arms, just like Yurieth and Yuriel had done before. The pain of his lifeglow fading was horribly familiar.

“Oh no, not again,” was all she could repeat. Her mind tangled as memories and reality overlapped and she couldn’t tell them apart.

Corbin grinned at her helpless state, and struck her across the back of the head. Before the wolfhound howling upstairs could get out of her son’s room, he hoisted her over his shoulder, kicking at Fleur’s wounded cat trying to crawl after them as the feline yowled its distress. Smirking at his dying rival, Corbin slammed the door and rushed away into the storm.

Yuli crept down the stairs with his bow drawn taut. Fishlover was laying at the bottom of the stairs in a pool of blood. Fang growled and whined at the same time. Horrified, the boy saw Rieth lying by the door with a dagger in his chest. When the door flew open, Yuli almost put an arrow in Brie. He stared in shock as Siger caught the arrow midflight while Fang ran barking out into the storm.

“Easy lad, we’re here to help,” Siger reassured him as Brie knelt next to Rieth.

Brie splashed Rieth with a potion of healing, then carefully drew out the cursed blade. He pulled an obsidian bottle from his pocket and poured Water of Light on his brother’s wound. “He missed the heart by a last finger’s width (centimeter), Siger, and the blade is cursed.”

“Where did you get that?” Yuli demanded.

“My wife and sister make it. Come on, heal,” Brie turned his head to Siger, “I don’t have another bottle.”

“It’s the same as Mom’s eyedrops, I’ll get more.” Yuli bolted upstairs and then back down with a box containing several bottles.

Siger smelled one of the bottle, “Water of Light and tincture of pain-sooth leaf.” He handed it to Brie who poured it over the wound, then Siger took one of the bottles over and dabbed it on Fishlover’s wounds, “He would be quite put out if we let his cat die.”

As the third bottle was poured over Rieth’s wound, it closed up leaving a nastily puckered scar. Fishlover bit his finger and Rieth woke, he inhaled deeply and swore aloud as he sat up. “Cursed cat!”

The healed Fishlover just gave him a droll look.

It was the loudest Yuli had ever heard him speak but that didn’t stop the seventy-eight-year-old from hugging him. “I thought you were going to die, Dad.”

“Not tonight, I’m going to be okay, Yuli.” Rieth reassured him as Brie raised an eyebrow. “But I need you to be brave. Corbin took your mom, we have to go after him. I need you to go give Banth a message. Tell him to tell the King that Corbin knows who she is and he carries a shadow, his uncles are going after them. Also tell Karstien the magic is breaking. Do you have it all?”

Yuli nodded, “Tell Banth to tell the King that Corbin took Mom, knows who she is, has a shadow, and the magic is breaking. His uncles are going after them. But how is Banth going to reach the King?”

“Banth has an emergency escape portal directly to the Palace in his basement, all he has to do is activate it,” Rieth revealed. “Yuli when he goes through it, you go with him and asked to see Lord Kalen. The Guardian will protect you. I love you, now go.”

“I love you too, I’m glad you’re going to be my Dad.” Yuli hugged him again and then grabbed his cloak before running out into the storm with Fishlover following him.

Rieth whistled into the storm, Siger brought down his shirt and boots and Rieth dressed while they waited for the wolfhound to return.

“Does he really carry a shadow?” Brie demanded quietly.

“Yes, brother, it has been dormant a long time, but she felt it.” Rieth answered worriedly. “She doesn’t have her light or a lightning sword to fight it with either. And I don’t have mine or my arrows.” As he pulled his extra bow and quiver out of her entry closet, he wished for the high powered, magic-tech infused weapons Davin and Daisy had built for him in the war. He longed for a quiver full of explosive, meteorite ore tipped arrows. Even with his magic to boost the mundane metal hunting tips in this set, they wouldn’t be powerful enough to even damage the Shadow if it broke free from Corbin. They would be lucky to survive it.

As if reading his thoughts, Brie squeezed his brother’s shoulder. “Fleur will survive this, we will rescue her.”

Reith whistled again. They stood and waited, then Fang ran out of the darkness carrying one of Fleur’s slippers. Together, they set out into the storm without waiting for reinforcements. Fang followed an impossible trail through the storm, it reminded Rieth of a typhoon, reaching out with his weather sense, it felt like a typhoon only stronger than any he had felt. Fang first found Fleur’s other slipper, then one sock before finding another. As the trail skirted beyond the volcanic ridge that surrounded Lumberton, Rieth realized where they were going. They were headed straight to the abandoned lumber mill, the one Rieth had checked before and found empty.

“I know where he’s going.” Rieth stated firmly.

“The old lumber mill,” Siger agreed.

“You’re not going without us, Uncle.”

Rieth turned to see Karstien and Shadz had caught up with them, now they just had to save her.