Heart of the Forest (Arwn's Gift Book 1) (37 page)

“Here for your bow?” I asked, glancing at the bow and quiver that leaned in the corner.

“As always, Dy’ne, your penchant for stating the obvious is plowing astounding.” He snorted, and I rolled my eyes.
Smart-ass.

“Hunting with Grwn?”

“No, he and Hedda are going to market, and they’re bringing Morwenna over at midday. Remember, Dy’ne?”

“So why do you need the bow?” I asked as he fastened the quiver to his belt and strapped his bow beside it. He didn’t answer me at first. Instead, he grabbed for his sword and buckled it in also.

“None of your plowing business, Dy’ne.”

“Did you just say that you don’t want to fuck me for a month or two? Because I could have sworn, you just said that you don’t want to even see my cunny until you leave at the thaw, Elf.” I smirked at him, and he narrowed his eyes at me, circling closer to the tub. Footsteps on the stairs ended his stalking, and a sigh broke from both of our lips almost simultaneously. He flashed me a smile.

“Pity for you, Dy’ne. You might have had the upper hand for a change.” He chuckled deviously and righted his belt. “I’m going with Hywel and a few others to hunt stag in the forest. What you Dy’ne call ‘Yule’ is tomorrow, remember?”

“How could I forget? Caoilfionn made downstairs look like an evergreen and a holly bush exploded,” I grumbled.

He stepped close to me and leaned down. I thought he was going to kiss me. Instead, he nipped my bottom lip and stood.

“Mm, you should wear a dress today. I like easy access when I come in from killing something. You haven’t had the pleasure of having an elf whose blood is up yet. I think you might like it, Dy’ne.”

“I’ll wear what I fucking please, Elf.” I stuck my tongue out at him and stood. Those golden eyes of his swept slowly up over my body, tracing every inch with their molten heat. Smirking I pulled the linen sheet from a nearby chair and wrapped it around myself as I stepped from the tub. He stepped behind me while I pulled my hair over my shoulder. His breath was hot on my neck.

“I’m going to absolutely ruin that tight sex of yours tonight, Dy’ne.”

“If I let you.” I tilted my head back and grinned up at him. A deep dark growl rumbled in his throat as he stared down at me and as I stood on my toes to seize his lips. Behind us, Caoilfionn cleared his throat. Yorwrath leaned closer to me and then, at the last minute before our lips touched, he pulled back cackling. “Tonight, Dy’ne. Even if I have to rip those leather trousers off you,” he called on his way out as he slapped his palm against the top of the door frame.
Such a sheepfucker.
I glared at him as Caoilfionn stood in the kitchen staring at me exasperatedly.

“Yes, I know. Morwenna will be here any moment,” I groused at Caoilfionn, who only stared with mild amusement at my irritated display as I closed the door.

After dressing in my trousers, chemise, and bodice, I righted the amethyst at my throat and walked down the stairs with my good boots clacking on the wooden stairs. Morwenna was already there, seated in front of the fire by the cots, reading a book. Hedda and Caoilfionn were talking calmly as they stood over the girl. I noticed that Grwn was absent.

“I thought you were spending the day with Grwn?” I asked Hedda as Morwenna ran up to me.

“Valentina! I drew you!” she beamed, holding up a picture. I blinked as I stared at the crude chalk drawing. She drew me with a sword in my hand and a black garland on my head. Beside me in the picture was a black rider twice my size and a red-nosed white dog that dwarfed me.

“Who’s that?” I pointed to the rider.

“That’s Gwyn ap Nudd, silly!”

“And that?” I pointed to the dog.

“That’s his wolf, Dormarth. They’re protecting you!”

“Don’t take up all of Miss Valentina’s time with your ramblings, little one. Be as quiet as a mouse and sit in that corner reading your book,” Hedda instructed her daughter, as she tied her cloak tighter around her shoulders. “I won’t be long—maybe an hour or two. Thank you so much.”

“It’s nothing,” I assured her as she made her way to the door with Caoilfionn.

“I probably won’t be gone so long,” Caoilfionn offered me a smile and then glanced at the drawing Morwenna held. He faltered for a moment and his brows knit before he pulled the hood of his almost white cloak over his head and ducked into the snow-filled cold with Hedda.

“So who’s Gwyn ap Nudd?” I asked Morwenna as we walked into the back by the fire. She held her book.

“He’s the Winter King! When the first snow sticks to the trees, he rides across the lands gathering souls of the dead to take back with him to the Otherworld. See!” She opened her book to a page that showed a menacing figure wrapped in black armor like I had seen in those flashes in my mind. I sat on the floor, and she followed my lead, sitting beside me. She turned the page with her tiny fingers, and there was a drawing of someone in silver armor fighting the black armored figure. “That’s Arwn, he’s the king in the Otherworld.”

“I thought Gwyn ap Nudd was king?”

“Only in winter. At midwinter, they fight, and if Arwn wins spring comes early! But if he loses we have a long nasty winter.”

“Why would you draw him protecting me? He seems rather like the nasty sort.” I stroked her forehead and she furiously flipped through the pages.

“Because you’re all alone here.” She glanced up at me and grinned as she smoothed the book open. On the page was a drawing of a woman with black hair and eyes that were vivid purple, with an amethyst at her throat, and behind her a long twisting line of women that stopped at the top left corner with a tall male figure standing in front of a tree. “He doesn’t want you to be lonely. I would have drawn Arwn too, but he doesn’t leave Annwn.”

“Why do you think I’d be lonely? I have Yorwrath and Caoilfionn to keep me company.”

“Mummy says Yorwrath doesn’t love you because he calls you the bad word. And that he’s going to go back to his H-O-R-E-S and not come back at May Day. I mean Nos Galan Mai… Daddy doesn’t like it when I use Mummy’s words for holy days.”

“Oh.” I couldn’t say much more. Something about what she said hit a nerve, and I suddenly found myself coiled tight and a bit angry.

“And you’re the only one of your kind.”

“There are other Vanotta here.”

“No, from the Otherworld, see.” She flipped through the book again. “
Gallwch chi yn…nodi creadur o'r… An…nwn drwy eu llyg…llygaid sydd yn borffor mewn lliw
.” Slipping her fingers under a line opposite a page full of different creatures and people with eyes in various hues of purple, she beamed at me. She seemed so proud that she got all the words out. I stared at her blankly as it was all gibberish to me.

“I don’t speak the elven tongue.”

“Oh. It says ‘you can always spot a creature from Annwn by their eyes, which are purple in color.’” I pursed my lips.
What a rubbish fairy story
. Still I smiled at her, I hadn’t the heart to break it to her that I was no more from the Otherworld than she was. My mother and father both had dark eyes, and my sister had green eyes. But Gwyn ap Nudd bothered me. My having visions of him riding with his massive white hound coupled with the town burning couldn’t be good.

The door to the shop opened and I nearly jumped out of my skin as Caoilfionn came inside coated in snow, with a satchel over his shoulder and a letter in his pale hand. He caught me staring and tucked it away into his belt.

Later, after Hedda had collected Morwenna and I finished treating the blacksmith’s apprentice for a nasty burn, Caoilfionn and I were alone. I glared at him from my chair when the door rattled with the boy’s leaving. He poked the Yule log and stood shedding that glamour, which made him look like just another pretty elf.

“Why do I see Gwyn ap Nudd when I bathe, Caoilfionn?” I called to him as he started for the stairs. He paused and smirked.

“That’s a good thing. It means the herbs are working.”

“Oh, he’s not the only thing I’m seeing. I see this place on fire, and I see an altar to the sheepfucking Dawn in the town square.”

“Well, their reach is far but worry not, my mistress.” He gave me a reassuring look before he turned from the stairs and walked past the shelves of herbs. “Dealing with it will be simple enough. You’re safe here.” He picked up several different herbs I didn’t catch and mixed them with beeswax. I was almost shaken by his calmness as he hummed a soft tune. “Would you like to come with me?”

“Sure.”

With my utterance of consent Caoilfionn grabbed his stave from by the door and as he did his appearance changed again—rolling back into that guise of a handsome and yet unremarkable elf. Grabbing my cloak and sword, I followed him into the night after locking the shop. We rode the dapple together through the streets of town, past the fields to where the king’s road jutted from between the arms of the forest.

Caoilfionn continued to hum as he hopped from the saddle and smeared his forehead and neck with the salve he had made and then struck his stave on the ground. The illusion of it just being some random gnarled branch shattered and he anointed the crystal atop it. He gazed up the road and then peered into the forest for a handful of moments. Once satisfied by whatever he saw, he cleared his throat and thrust the stave into the air. That white crystal flared to life like a captured star, and he shouted a single word, and all sound around us stopped. It was like the bitter winter wind was afraid of wrangling with whatever power the unicorn was conjuring. He brought the crystal down to point at the king’s road, and my body broke out in gooseflesh as I felt his magic pulsing out from that simple point. I could almost see it like a net of diamonds that was cast out from that spot on the road to over the city and all the way to the shore. And then it was gone, and sound returned. Caoilfionn lingered, listening in the night.

“Is something wrong?” I asked after we had stood in silence for quite some time. My fingers were starting to grow numb from the cold.

“Shhh, do you hear that?” he whispered and closed his eyes, as his stave returned to the guise of a gnarled old walking stick.

“No.”

“Smell this and then close your eyes.” He held the ointment out to me. I looked it over for a moment before I took a whiff of the pungent herbs. I half staggered off the horse’s back—the potency was almost too much for me. Shutting my eyes as I fought to get my bearings I did hear it. The baying of hounds and a host of hoofbeats.

The snow was thick at our feet and almost came up to my knees. The moon illuminated the night as surely as the sun did the day as those hoofbeats grew louder. The haunting howl of the humongous hounds heralded the churning crunch of snow that made me only a little afraid to open my eyes. Caoilfionn’s hand on my back made me jump, and my eyes opened with the shock of the touch.

Standing before me was that large black-armored rider. I peered at the host that loitered behind him. Among the horde, I picked out Baba Yaga riding a massive undead chicken with black feathers and a sole cloudy, rotten eye that dangled from its socket. Red Sun was beside it on a chestnut warhorse that was larger than any horse I had seen aside from the one ridden by the daunting figure in black.

The white wolf with the ruddy nose approached me, sniffing the air around me. Oh, I was both terrified and confident of my safety in a single breath. The monstrously mammoth wolf, who I could only assume was Dormarth, stepped back from me to return to the side of Gwyn ap Nudd. He said something in a voice that had all the dark nuances of rolling thunder, but I couldn’t understand a word he said to me.

“He is offering you a place beside him in the host for tonight’s ride,” Caoilfionn translated. I shook my head no. I couldn’t find my voice; I was too stunned to speak. Caoilfionn said something and Gwyn ap Nudd sounded his black horn and the host of horrors continued on.

“You’re recognized, Valentina! No other before you has been recognized by either Gwyn ap Nudd or Arwn.” Caoilfionn was almost giddy. “Do you know what this means?” I stared at the grinning, glamoured unicorn for a handful of moments.

“Nope, and at this point, I don’t particularly care. It’s…an added complication that I probably don’t need.”

“It means the Swynwr can’t treat you like some random human slave next time you see him because you are recognized by Gwyn ap Nudd himself as Arwn’s blood—you’re truly Annwn royalty!” He was so wound up by this revelation that I was starting to worry his heart would burst from excitement.

“And what does that mean outside of Annwn?”

“Well…”

“That’s what I thought.” I sighed and rolled my eyes before remounting the dapple.

“You’ll always be a princess to me, Your Grace.” He laughed as he slipped into the saddle behind me. “It might not matter to you but it’s a big deal to me,” he added, as we continued down the king’s road.

“Promise me something?”

“Anything, I am at your service.”

“Don’t tell Yorwrath.”

“Why?”

“I just don’t think it’s important.”

“But it’s important enough not to tell him?”

“I thought you were at my service and all of that sheepfucking nonsense?”

“Whatever you wish, Your Majesty.”

“Damn straight.”

“Ah, the ego of royalty.”

“Shut up.”

Caoilfionn and I returned to find the shop full of light. Every single candle was lit, and the windows all glowed. Yorwrath had beaten us home. As we neared, I couldn’t help but grumble to myself about how cranky he was going to be. Caoilfionn, with his hands at my waist, chuckled quietly as we neared the door. A child’s scream cut through the night killing all of the mirth in Caoilfionn’s throat.

“Go see to it. I’ll put up the horse,” Caoilfionn said, lifting his hands from my waist. Slipping from the saddle, I threw open the door to the shop. It was loud and lousy with noise; entirely too many people were in the enclosed space for my liking. The ealdorman, the innkeeper, and a few other prominent people were gathered. Cutting through all the cacophonous chatter now and again was that scream.

“Everyone who doesn’t need to be here—out!” I yelled, as I elbowed passed people and unlaced my cloak. The crowd had started to disperse by the time I had hung up my cloak on its wooden peg. I still had to practically fight my way to the cots. I half expected to see some bloody but underwhelming hunting injury that could have been taken care of by any mother with a needle and thread. Children had a nasty habit of being worked up by the attention they received for crying. But that was not what I found on the cot nearest the fire.