Cursed by Ice (36 page)

“I did not plan this,” Mordu said, holding up his hands. “Speak to my wife, who enjoys toying with fate.”

Hella laughed. “Do not place all the blame on me. I merely turn fate, I do not decree who should love another. That is your doing.”

“I assure you this happened all on its own. I have had nothing to do with it,” Mordu said.

“And yet you are meddling now,” Weysa pointed out.

“I’ve been given no choice! He is all but screaming for my attention. I cannot bear to see a soul suffer from love, no matter what his crimes in the past.”

Hella smiled and leaned into Mordu. “You see? You are simply soft at the heart of you.”

He clucked his tongue at her but did not push her away. He had missed his wife, he realized.

And after all, nothing went together better than fate and love.

Garreth was on his knees in Mordu’s temple a week later, just as he had been every night since Sarielle had abandoned him. Only tonight he asked for nothing. He was numb from asking. He was empty of pleas and full of heartache. What else was there for him to do? What else could he do?

He heard a sound behind him and turned disinterestedly toward it. It was another one of the curvaceous mems, her beauty on display as her gown flowed freely against her body. And yet he did not register her beauty. Just like everything he saw, she appeared pale. Just like everything he tasted was bland and everything he touched was numbed.

He had never known so much pain. Not even when he was being frozen fast to the ground.

“Can I get you something, my lord?” she asked, her voice dulcet.

“No. I thank you.”

She moved closer to him, so close he could feel her body’s warmth and smell its gentle perfume.

Again, it made no impact on him.

She reached out and touched his hair, her hand drifting through it intimately. He drew back and gave her a hard look.

“Do not do that again.”

“But why?” she asked softly. “You are in the temple of the god of love. Perhaps your prayers would be better heard and answered if you were to use the power of passion to propel them to the heavens.” She stepped up to him and leaned the whole of her body against him, her hand cradling his head to her breasts.

He lurched away from her with a resounding “No!” Gaining his feet, he put distance between them. “I know you are trying to help,” he said, “but I would rather find another way.”

“There is no other way,” she said. “Mordu demands you make this sacrifice if you want your love.”

Garreth went still and narrowed his eyes on her. “And you know this how?”

“I am his priestess. One of the most powerful mems you will find in any of his temples. I know Mordu’s ways. He insists on you using love to regain love.”

“Where did you come from?” he asked, still suspicious of her and growing more so by the second. “I have not seen you here before.”

“But I have seen you. Night after endless night. Praying for your love. Now I am standing here, telling you the way to have your prayers heard. Lie with me in passion and you will have your prayers answered.”

She reached for him again but he caught her hands.

“No! I am sorry, but … if that is what I must do to get my prayers answered … I cannot do it. It would be a betrayal to the one I love and I cannot betray her.”

“Not even to gain her?”

“I would gain her and lose her again all in the same instant. I know Sarielle. It would cause a wound in her that might be impossible to repair and I will not hurt her.”

“But how do you know this? She has left you of her own accord because you are cursed. What makes an inconstant woman deserve such devotion?”

A part of Garreth went icy cold.

“Who told you I was cursed?” he hissed at her.

She hesitated. “I heard your prayers to Mordu. You said it yourself.”

“I said no such thing. I spoke of penance and torment; I said nothing of being cursed. Who are you?” he demanded of her, grabbing hold of her wrist.

“You would abuse the handmaiden of the god you beg favors from?” she asked fiercely.

“If you are a handmaiden of the god of love, then I am not cursed,” he spat at her.
“Who are you?”

She pulled away with an incredible show of strength, taking the warrior by surprise. As she pulled back, her body grew in stature and her soft, feminine looks fell away. In their place stood the mighty figure of a god. A god he had seen once before.

Sabo.

“You have called me to you only to deny me?” Sabo thundered roughly.

“I never called you!” Garreth said even as his stomach quailed and churned. It was never a good thing to make a god angry.

“You have called me every moment of these days past, your pain and your suffering so loud as to garner my full attention!”

“I want nothing from you. You have nothing to give me,” Garreth said.

“What if I said I did? What if I could give you something you want very much?”

Garreth narrowed distrusting eyes on him. “Like what?” he asked carefully.

“Your brother.”

His brother. Maxum. Sabo was the only one who knew what had become of him. For the first time in weeks Garreth’s attention shifted away from his grief. If there was one thing he wanted as much as he wanted Sarielle, it was his brothers’ freedom from their respective torments.

“Where is he?”

“I could tell you. But you must make a pact with me first. You must promise to keep yourself away from this woman you crave for all the rest of your days in this world … which is a very long time since you are immortal for all intents and purposes.”

“Why would you want me to make a promise like that?” It was strange, but as things stood it would be an easy promise to make. He would not wish himself on Sarielle. She was better off far from him and his wretched existence.

“Because I enjoy your pain and suffering. It feeds me just as your warring ways feed Weysa.”

Now Garreth truly hesitated. He had been brought back to this world to serve Weysa and her faction. Sabo was now saying that Garreth was, in fact, feeding him and Xaxis’s faction? That had not been his intention. And yet there he was, standing before a god grown strong because of his agony and torment. He could not knowingly defy Weysa by making a pact with this god in the face of his pact with her.

Nor could he cure the source of his pain. He was damned either way.

So be it. If he was going to be damned regardless, he
may as well use it to discover the whereabouts of his brother.

“Where is my brother?” he asked quietly.

“Do you so swear? To never set eyes on that girl again?”

“I …”

What was wrong with him? He wasn’t going to see her anyway. Why didn’t he just say yes and be done with it?

But he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t bear the idea of saying definitively that he would never wish to see her again. And he could not bring himself to defy Weysa. To do so might bring her wrath down upon Dethan. He didn’t care what happened to him, but he would not rob Selinda of her love the way Garreth had been robbed of his.

“Leave me be and enjoy my pain from afar,” he said quietly. “I make no pact with you.”

“You are a fool! You’ll never see her again anyway! Don’t you want to know what hole I have buried your brother in?”

That got Garreth’s swift attention.

“Buried? He is buried alive?”

Sabo roared out in fury, realizing he had given away information he had not wanted to. “It doesn’t matter!” he growled. “You will never be able to find him! He is buried so deep the world would have to split apart in order to free him!”

“Yes, but at least I now know his fate,” Garreth said grimly. “And for now, that is enough.”

Sabo roared in anger once more. “Kneel before me! I will show you pain and suffering like you have never known!”

“There is nothing you can do to me that will touch the suffering I already endure,” Garreth bit out.

Sabo lifted a hand high and a bright, brilliant light filled his palm. “Shall we see if that is actually true?”

He pulled his arm back and Garreth tensed for the coming strike.

To his shock, there was an explosion and Sabo went flying across the temple and into the far wall. He hit it so hard that the thick marble stones cracked down the center. Garreth’s head whipped about and he saw that two other gods had come into the temple. Hella and Mordu. He would have recognized them anywhere.

Hella put her hands together and a darkness swelled between them, the darkness and power of the unknown, of the abyss of the world if there were no fate or future. The black bolt shot free of her hands and slammed into Sabo once again. She was a beautiful virago, a force to be reckoned with. Mordu put his hands together as well and a light so bright formed between them that Garreth had to look away. The light of pure love and hope—that which everyone prayed for and longed to see, but they often flinched in the face of it.

Sabo didn’t have a chance. The powers of both the gods thrashed him thoroughly. He wasn’t able to get a single shot off before he roared in rage and disappeared from the temple.

“And good riddance, I say!” Hella said with a huff. She turned to Garreth, who was still holding a hand up to protect his eyes from the brightness of the powers being thrown about. “Well. Now, look at this one. Darling, I must say I am impressed with him.”

Mordu nodded. “He is most loyal.”

Garreth suddenly realized he was standing in front of gods and quickly dropped to his knees and bowed his head to Weysa’s compatriots.

“I beg your forgiveness,” he said quickly. “It was never my intention to feed Sabo’s power.”

“Nonsense,” Mordu said in his booming voice. “The fault is mine for not finding a solution to your pain sooner.”

“A … a solution?” Garreth asked hesitantly.

“Yes, yes. I almost forgot! Here!” Hella snapped her fingers and suddenly a large body was falling against Garreth. He instinctively reached out and caught it as it collapsed. It was burned black, barely more than a skeleton, but it was clearly a man.

“I do not understand,” Garreth said as he laid the body on the floor as gently as he could. But as soon as he did, the body gasped in a breath and the man’s eyelids opened, revealing a set of dark green eyes Garreth had known all his life. “Jaykun!”

“Yes, it’s your brother!” Hella said with a delighted laugh and clap of her hands. “Now, tell me. Is fate not kind to you?”

Garreth was speechless, his eyes welling at the sight of his brother and the horrible state of Jaykun’s body. Jaykun could not speak, could not move, but he held Garreth’s gaze with what must’ve been every ounce of energy in his body.

“I … I don’t understand,” Garreth choked out as his tears blurred his vision.

“It’s simple. Jaykun is to take your place. You are to bring the name of Mordu into the cities your brothers will dominate,” Hella said sternly. “This is your fate now.”

“I …” Garreth was speechless.

“What she means to say,” Mordu said as he touched his wife’s hair fondly, “is that you are released from your curse. You have a new bargain if you choose it.”

“My curse? I am released of my curse?” he said numbly.

“Yes. But now it is your brother who will suffer his own curse. He will fight turning-round in Weysa’s name, and you … you can go find that little thing you’ve been
wailing about for the past moon’s waning and give her child a father,” Hella said.

“Child?!”

“Yes. You will find she is with child,” Mordu said. “Your child, to be clear. And you will find she is just as miserable without you as you are without her.”

“But …”

Garreth simply could not process what he was seeing and hearing. It was all too much at once. Luckily Hella found his speechlessness amusing, not offensive. She tittered like a girl and leaned her body flirtatiously into her husband’s.

“Is this not fun?” she asked him. “I would like to do this more often.”

“Whatever you wish, my love,” Mordu said to her warmly.

“I thank you,” Garreth blurted out at last. “I am … I am so grateful. There are no words! I beg you to forgive me for not having the right words!”

“We are merely pleased that you are pleased … and that you will not be wailing about in my temple any longer,” Mordu said, his tone turning stern at the end.

“No! I swear I will not! How can I? You have … you have given me everything!”

“Not everything. You must win her heart back on your own.”

“Do you know where she is?” Garreth asked.

“Of course we do. But surely you don’t expect us to give you that too?” Mordu said with a hard look.

“No! This is more than enough! I will find her myself! Thank you. I … Please, at any time tell me how I might thank you!”

“I am sure you will think of something. Now, remember your pact.”

“I will. I will bring the name of Mordu wherever I go!”

“Very good. Now come, my love,” Mordu said to his wife, touching her cheek fondly. “Let us bring more fated loves together, shall we?”

“Oh yes! Let’s!”

And just like that, both gods were gone.

Garreth was breathing hard, which brought the acrid smell of flesh burnt to cinders to his nose. He cradled his brother closer and looked about wildly. He saw a stunned mem standing in the corner of the altar room.

“Get my brother!” When she did not move fast enough he roared, “
Now!”

Dethan watched as his brother paced and prepared saddle bags. Garreth’s energy was frenetic, his plans clear.

“Once she hears the curse is removed she will come back to me. She will want to come back to me,” he kept saying aloud, although Dethan was pretty sure he was talking to himself rather than talking to Dethan. But his words filled Dethan with dread and he knew he needed to speak up, to come clean about what Davine had done.

“Garreth …” he began. Then, quailing in the face of his guilt, he said, “How can you possibly find her after all this time?”

“She isn’t far. She would never leave Koro too far behind. So, that is the fastest way to her.”

“What is?”

“Koro. I am going to find him.”

“Are you mad? You can’t go into the wyvern’s den by yourself!”