The Witch (11 page)

“Who is it, Deki? What other male will have her?” Will she have? And why did the very idea of it burn him so? “Tell me.”

“A soul often knows the answer to the question before it is asked. Look inside yourself, brother. Tell me then that you do not see the answer you seek.”

Deki hadn’t always been such a cryptic bastard.

It was a trait in his brother that had developed over millennia and Jushua didn’t care for it one bit. “Just say it.”

“I will not. It is not my place to speak the name. You know as well as I that our words have power. Look at what Kennera has managed with only her words and her soul’s pain? I will not say it and put the Fates out of sorts. Capricious bitches, all of them. Even the male.”

“You know the Fates?”

“They were not happy with my soul. Five thousand years ago I paid their price.”

“Why? And what was it?”

“I gathered my soul together through ways that I will never speak of, and that angered them. The loss of her was the cost. The knowledge that she would love another when we were finally reunited was just their salt upon my wounds. I know and have accepted this. And…the girl she is now is not the same one that she was then. We…would have been happy then, but after all she has experienced to this day, she would not be as happy with me now.” Deki stood and checked the fire, then Jushua watched his brother prowl around the small camp. When Dekimos finished he stood next Jushua and stared down at him, at the girl.

Something in his brother’s face had Jushua remaining quiet.

Finally Dekimos spoke again. “Do not feel guilt, brother. When the answer comes to you. Know that this is the way it is supposed to be. I made my bargain with the Fates five thousand years ago. And a Dardaptos keeps to his oaths.”

Jushua had much to think about as he sat at her side through the Evalanedean night hours. So much to think about. 

She was wrapped in a man’s arms, snuggled warm into a muscled chest that smelled faintly of spice and forest. A blanket was thrown around them both, and other than the rocks she’d overlooked when setting up her bedroll she was surprisingly comfortable.

Which was it? Deki or his brother? The two were so different, and even more different from the memories she’d had of both of them.

Five thousand years was bound to change every soul, but the dichotomy of what she thought she knew and the reality that surrounded her had thrown her off balance more than once since her journey to the demon world, and then to this place.

Evalanedea.

Home
.

Was it her or the sword who’d said it? Felt it? Loren didn’t know.

Her first rebirth had been to an Evalanedean. She had witnessed firsthand the Dark Sorcerer’s destruction of what had once been her proud and noble people.

A people that hadn’t been completely faultless in the outcome.

Her parents and the Dardaptos had co-ruled Evalanedeans main continent—there had been three land masses in her original world—and they had been complacent in their lives. They hadn’t prepared for an outright attack, especially from a being that originated someplace other than Evalanedea.

The Dark Sorcerer had spared none but two lines of people from those that her family ruled. She’d never understood why those two lines had survived, but he hadn’t been able to touch their lines completely.

She’d died in that life at the age of twenty-five, only nine years after learning of her rebirth. There hadn’t been time to learn much of what she was to do.

Each rebirth she’d learned or hypothesized something else about the Dark Sorcerer, something that she hoped would help her defeat him.

Or…help her not put things into motion that awakened him more fully now.

Her dreams could end either way.

That was one thing that hadn’t changed in five thousand years. In some dreams she defeated him and survived. In some she lost. And died.

Always dying, over and over. She should be used to it by now, right?

She opened her eyes and looked at the living source of heat surrounding her. Blond hair told her it was the younger brother, and that was confirmed by the sheer size of the naked arm muscles right there by her ear.

Jushua was a lot bigger than Dekimos. Where the healer was built more like a swimmer, Jushua was a big blond tank.

In fact, the arm he’d draped over her stomach weighed a ton. Still, it was nice and warm where she was. Maybe she should stay against him for just a little longer?

If she woke up she had to face the evil that was headed her way.

And sometimes she didn’t know where she’d get the courage to do that.

“You are awake, are you not, little witchie?”

“I really wish you would stop calling me that. Makes me feel like I am ten years old, or something.”

“You were not much more than that when you were killed the first time, were you not?”

“No. In the grander scheme of things, no. I wasn’t. Move your arm, please, I’m feeling a little trapped here.”

“Not warm and coddled, that was my intent.”

“Why?” She knew the truth. The only reason he’d agreed to accompany her to this world was because his brother had insisted. Jushua was there to protect Deki.

She wasn’t certain he cared if she lived or died. And she understood that.

“Because…I believe it may be my destiny to do so.”

She wanted to tell him that was ridiculous, but she bit her tongue.

He was there beside her, so it was his destiny to be there with her.

She’d spent a great deal of the past six years thinking about destiny and how she felt about it.

One thing she’d vowed to do was never interfere in another’s path. If asked, yes, then the choice to follow that destiny would be presented to her.

But she would never intentionally interfere with another’s.

If he was supposed to be there with her, then he would be. Period.

Whether she wanted him to be or not. She just had to deal.             

Loren was really good at just dealing.

The girl held up for the hike through the Evalanedean Heirche Mountain range better than Jushua had expected.

The Heirche were the steepest, most wooded mountain range on the main Evalanedean continent. Only the strongest of his people had ever attempted to cross them on foot five thousand years ago.

Of course, the range had weathered a bit since then, becoming a bit less steep.

But more forested. Jushua was accustomed to the grassy plains of Easchu, the realm he had inhabited for those past five thousand years.

He had forgotten the scent and sight of the Heirche, so majestic as they towered over the cities below.

Cities his father had built.

From where he sat looking at the nearest of those cities, they had not grown much. Odd, that.

Five thousand years should have brought with them five thousand years of progress and growth.

Evalanedea wasn’t like the Gaian realm that he’d heard so much of lately. Cities didn’t just rise and fall—Evalanedeans were too damned long-lived and stubborn to let that happen—over hundreds of years.

His father had been more than two thousand years old when he’d built his first city. A thousand years before Jushua’s parents had joined together as mates.

His mother had been so much younger than his father at the time they had met. She’d been a peasant girl just into her adulthood when his father had spied her walking amongst her father’s flower fields.

His father had instantly known the girl was to be his destined mate, though she had been but twenty-something years. 

And his father had loved her, fiercely, through their three thousand years—and twenty-two children—together.

She had been so young, but this girl was about what his mother had been when she’d married a king.

Yet at least twice as powerful.

He found himself drawn to her side, again and again.

And that filled him with guilt. His brother deliberately walked ahead, and Jushua knew Deki was trying to distance himself, to not be the protective Dardaptoan male that he was.

The girl witch wasn’t his brother’s.

And Jushua had yet to figure out whose she was. And that ate at him.

He looked over at her, where she sat beneath an ancient tree that he almost swore had been in that exact spot five thousand years ago—albeit a helluva lot smaller. “So do you have any plans for when we get to Darda?”

“Get what I am supposed to get. Do what I am supposed to do when I am supposed to do it. Hopefully not get killed while doing it.” She looked at him as she said it, and he
knew
she knew more than she was telling. What secrets did the pretty little witchie keep?

“So don’t you think it’s time you shared what your purpose is?”

She had her sword drawn, and it glowed when he spoke. That sword bothered him, and he looked away quickly.

She was the former mate of one brother, and carried the magical sword of another at her side. What did it all mean? The ties between her and his family perplexed him, greatly.

And where did he come into play in this path of hers? Was he what the Gaians would have called a wildcard?

She hesitated and in that moment, Jushua knew there was something she hadn’t bothered to tell them. He stood and crowded her back against the tree after a quick glance at his brother.

Dekimos was hundreds of feet away, staring out over the horizon. Jushua doubted his brother could hear them. If he could, Deki’s hearing had improved over the years.

Her hand tightened around the sword and she started to lift it. He knocked it aside. “Tell me the truth, girl. What lies do you keep?”

Druid eyes looked back at him and she darted a tongue out to moisten her bottom lip. Jushua wrapped his hand around the flawless skin of her throat.

He squeezed slightly, to let her know the threat he presented.

She certainly hadn’t looked at him like he was much of one since the moment he had found her in the Gaian world. That irked him.

Surely she knew what he could do to her?

Her skin felt so damned soft beneath his fingers. Her entire neck was fragile, feminine, and beautiful.

If he lost even half the control he possessed, he would lean down and replace his fingers with his teeth.

He wasn’t a blood drinker by necessity, but some of the older members of his Kind enjoyed tasting…just a little. Especially tasting females…

Jushua caressed her pulse. “Tell me.”

“Tell you what?” She tried to tilt her head away from him but the tree stopped her. It was just him, her, and the woods of his homeland in that moment.

He could smell her. A floral scent that had him half intoxicated.

Druid. Nellanic, not the paltry Gaian imitation. Most definitely.

He’d always enjoyed the scent of the plantling females; it was soft and subtle and had long evoked memories of home.

He’d always assumed it was because of Nelciana. They had been both friends and betrothed. He knew her well, had played with her most of his childhood. They hadn’t had a great passionate love like that which had existed between his parents, but he’d still loved her greatly.

And had mourned Nelciana when he’d thought her lost. Had thought of her often.

This reborned sister of her shared a resemblance; around the eyes, mostly.

But the girl she had been was still there, too.

He’d paid her so little attention then. She’d been but a girl, hundreds of years younger than he and his twin. And her sister. When he had been with Nelanora, it had been at infrequent family gatherings. She had been just a child to him, then. A cute little sister to tease and torment. And he had paid her such little heed other than that.

Now he wished he had at least taken the time to be with her, to learn of her what he could then.

But those opportunities were five thousand years in the past.

All he had was now.

Her pulse had fluttered, just a bit, beneath his hand. Jushua brushed his thumb against her skin. Damn the Three Hells, he wanted to taste this witch.

She had very beautiful skin. “Tell me…what is it you are hiding from us? And does my brother know?”

There was such pain and grief when she glanced toward Dekimos. She knew, didn’t she? “Dekimos knows that destiny guides the hands that we play. He knows what I have to do.”

“Yet once again you give cryptic words, but no truth. I want to know why you came back now, and why that damned sword almost seems to live for you.” And he wanted to know why the girl seemed to draw him to her now when she never had before.

Did he trust her?

Jushua was man enough to admit that he didn’t trust this little witchie for even a moment.

But his brother did.

And there wasn’t a damned thing he wouldn’t do to protect the last brother he had. “Tell me.”

She looked right at him, those witchie eyes of hers staring through to his soul. “There will be a choice made, and I won’t go into details. But it’s going to have a big price tag attached.”

“They always do. But who will pay it?”

A tear slid down her cheek, and pooled in the dip of his thumb and forefinger. It burned there for a moment, then hissed its way into the air around them where the small drops hung before dissipating. “We all will. Let me go. We have to get to the center of Darda if this is going to work.”

“That’s the problem—you’ve yet to say what this is. And what it has to do with you and this damned sword.”

Jushua looked down at the girl, and something shifted in him, allowing him to fully understand what his brother had meant.

The Fates had screwed Deki by giving the woman who had once been his brother’s to another man. Just as Deki had said.

The idea that
he
was that man stabbed right through him.

But he was. Jushua didn’t know exactly how it was that he knew, but he did. In that moment, looking right down at her he wanted her more than anything of all time.

The thought of another man touching her, wanting her, even his brother, both sickened and angered him.

Because she was his.

Did she have even an inkling?

What did it mean? Did it change anything about how he felt? Would he even act upon it? How could he not?

But how could he, right in front of his brother? What kind of man would he be then?

He brushed his fingers over her neck. “No, I will not hurt my brother this way…”

“What?”