Blood and Memory

He slid off the saddle to unsteady feet. Too flustered to tether the horse, Wyl trusted it to remain where he left it as he stumbled deeper into the copse and retched. The sickening need to be rid of the curse seemed to last an eternity as he desperately tried to yield it, rip the sorcery free from its sinister grip. At the rim of his addled mind Wyl acknowledged that this cold, moonlit night was too beautiful for death…once again.

He believed he could taste the taint of the magic that had claimed his body hours earlier. Wyl did not want to remember it, but it was so fresh, so horrific, so ugly in his mind, he could not banish it. Commander Liryk of Briavel has smiled when the man called Romen Koreldy, newly banished from the realm, had suggested the Forbidden Fruit for their overnight stay before leaving for whichever border he chose. He had smiled in understanding, knowing that the mercenary had decided to drown his sorrows within the soft and welcoming embrace of a whore in the region’s well-known brothel. And he had smiled more widely when Romen had accepted the offer of Hildyth. The Commander had sampled her on a previous occasion and had known there could be no better place for his grieving companion to lose himself for a few hours. Wyl Thirsk, trapped in Koreldy’s body, had felt the same until the stiletto had buried itself deep into his heart, trying to take his life. Except it had not. Romen’s body released its trapped guest so it could travel…travel into Hildyth and claim her life instead.

It was not a new experience for Wyl. He had felt that same wrenching sense of despair once before and even now could hardly believe it had happened once again. He was dry-retching now; knew he must force himself to stop. He looked to where his hands—his smooth woman’s hands—gripped the tree he leaned against, concentrated on the feel of the rough bark beneath his tense fingers, and forced himself to ease his convulsions of fear.

Don’t think about who you’ve become. Remember who you are
, he reminded himself.
Remember who you are
!

“I am the son of Fergys Thirsk of Argorn,” he croaked through his new and strange voice.

“I am Wyl Thirsk. General of the Morgravian Legion.” He spoke it more loudly this time, hating the femininity of the pitch.

“I am alive,” he finally said, voice stronger and steadier, his mind accepting, his spirit resolute.

He repeated his mantra until the nausea finally subsided and his cramping muscles stopped answering the call to expel the enchantment. It was not possible anyway, he knew.

Wyl Thirsk raised his head to the starry skies and screamed his despair in the voice of the assassin…the woman he had become this night.

It was a cry without hope. He knew all too well that no shaking of fists or howling to the heavens could change the dark enchantment that doomed him to cheat death. He understood that his spirit was now destined to shift from one body to another, waiting for death to make another attempt to claim him.

A wave of sadness crashed against his thoughts as he remembered Romen, his first victim—if he could call him that. Now Romen’s body was dead too.

Wyl felt gutted to have lost the comfort of that once-strange—now-familiar—vessel that had welcomed him, sheathed him, given succor and life. Romen’s essence had lived on with him while Wyl’s true body was mortifying in a tomb. The two of them were one…and now perhaps they must consider themselves three with this woman among them, part of them…one with them.

She was now their shield; they were now her secret.

Wyl limped to the narrow brook that traveled languorously nearby. It glinted in the silvery light. He threw himself down at its edge and cleansed his mouth. Now he succumbed to the tears; deep, heartfelt sobs shuddered through the body of the woman, but the grief belonged only to Wyl Thirsk.

I live
, he told himself again, fumbling in his pockets for the linen that held the key to his life. In it lay the bloodied ring finger of Romen Koreldy of Grenadyn: noble, mercenary, and beloved suitor of Queen Valentyna of Briavel. Wyl had retrieved it from the chamber at the Forbidden Fruit where he had hidden it…and now he would use it. Use it to beguile Celimus, the treacherous King of Morgravia, into believing that Romen was dead and confirm that the mysterious assassin, known only as Hildyth and masquerading as a whore, had succeeded where others had failed.

Wyl calmed his panicked thoughts, drawing on his skills as a strategist, to think through what he must do. He would send Koreldy’s finger to Celimus, precisely as Faryl had been instructed through the King’s scheming chancellor, Jessom, and in doing so he would allow Morgravia’s sovereign, the betrayer, to live within a false cocoon of safety.

The neighboring realm of Briavel was Celimus’s main concern now and his plans to wed its queen, Valentyna, would be occupying his time. In his disguise as Romen, Wyl had aided Valentyna in hindering those marriage plans diplomatically, but Wyl knew she would not do so with ease again. He understood all too well what a tightrope of careful politics she was treading. Her own nobles and counselors were pressing for the marriage and the peace and prosperity it would bring; in fact both realms were clamoring for a royal wedding of such importance. Briavellians and Morgravians alike had become captivated by the romantic notion of their sovereigns bringing the neighbors into harmony. Both nations could almost hear the wails of an heir that would once and for all unite the realms under one sovereign.

It made political and strategic sense. Of course it did. When Celimus had first broached the subject to him, Wyl had been highly impressed by the farsighted plan the young King had devised to force these two warring realms to set aside their differences, their history of hate, once and for all. He had even agreed to help shape such a union—until his inner sense told him things were not as straightforward as the new sovereign proposed. First, the old King, Magnus, had died only hours before Celimus already had presented Wyl with a well-laid strategy and a team of foreign mercenaries hired and ready to depart. The side of Wyl that knew from bitter experience that Celimus was a traitorous snake smelled the trap. And he had been right. His decision not to support the King’s wishes had led to the slaughter of his great friend, Alyd Donal, and had almost claimed the life of his sister, had he not then agreed to travel into Briavel, escorted by strangers, and win a princess for the King of Morgravia.

How could he have known—in that moment, terrified for his sister and by how close that vicious axe blade had come to ending her life in the Stoneheart courtyard—how twisted Celimus’s plan actually was. Not only had the King planned to use the Thirsk name to win an audience with King Valor and then Valentyna’s hand in marriage, but he had already ordered the deaths of Wyl and Valor—by different assassins—once the betrothal agreement had been made. Darker yet, Celimus had contrived to blame Wyl Thirsk for the King’s death while ensuring that the executioners, one of whom was Romen Koreldy, were also killed, thus covering his trail of deception.

Celimus, however, had not reckoned on the integrity of the assassin, Koreldy, whose lifetime loyalty the King thought had been safely secured with an obscene payment of gold, or of a blood pact made between Thirsk and Koreldy for whichever one of them survived a duel to the death to reveal the King’s treachery. But little did any of them know about an even greater menace that lurked mysteriously around their grand plans and lived within Wyl Thirsk himself; brutal and without loyalty to anything but itself, it was a gift from the witch Myrren to Wyl for his kindness during her trial torture. It had waited patiently for many years to wreak its havoc, and when it had finally struck, it was savage and shocking, forcing the spirit of Wyl, whose body was dying from Koreldy’s sword blow, to claim Koreldy’s life and body instead. Thirsk had become Koreldy and now he had become the whore Hildyth when Myrren’s Gift had struck again.

Wyl surfaced from his troubled thoughts realizing his mind was rambling over old ground. He could not change what had happened; he could only move forward now and work to protect his sister—the last of the Thirsks—and somehow thwart Celimus’s determined intentions to control Briavel through marriage to Valentyna. First, though, he must track down the Manwitch. He was Myrren’s true father and might have answers for him.

In making the decision to let go of the past, his biggest regret was knowing that Valentyna, whom he had loved from the moment she had first breezed into his life when he was General Wyl Thirsk of the Morgravian Legion, had fallen in love with him as Romen Koreldy. His own feelings for her had only intensified during his time as Romen and he could never forgive himself for risking that love and allowing her to think that he had betrayed her when she had so relied on him.

A headache was gathering. He must find out more about who he had become before the pain and this grief over his love for the Queen claimed him completely. She could never love him now in this strange and female body. Wyl could not bring himself to look at his new body just yet or touch it. But he held no such reticence for the memories, not caring that they were not his own. What remained belonged to Wyl now. They were his to remember and use.

He leaned back exhausted against a tree and delved. Wyl learned the whore Hildyth had simply been another guise. He was in fact Faryl of Coombe—a brilliant assassin, born in the midlands, familiar with places far away from Morgravia or Briavel—and riddled with secrets.

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