Page 72

The Lambton Wyrm.

FENROTHER

The hermitage is not empty.

I growl under my breath as I approach the dwelling, carved into the sandstone cliff, its doorway a blank space but with smoke curling from the flue which perches on a small outcrop.

No one should be here without my permission, and today is not a day anyone wishes to be on my bad side. Without even thinking, I stride through the doorway and find myself instantly ten feet away on my behind, wings rowing uselessly at the lack of air.

An explosion spell, one I should have expected, only my mind is anywhere but here. I change to my Wyrm form and shove my head through the spell and into the dwelling.

“If you value your limbs, you will leave this place,” I snarl.

“Fenrother!” Meg of Maldon hurries from the rear of the hermitage with a cauldron. “If I’d known it was you, I’d have removed the spell!”

The cauldron’s contents smell absolutely delicious. But I can’t possibly think about filling my stomach.

“Why are you here?” I ask, shifting out of my Wyrm in order to fit through the doorway properly.

Meg ladles out a large bowl of the stew from her cauldron and shoves it into my hands with a large wooden spoon.

“Sit,” she exhorts me.

To my surprise, I sit. The stew steams, and the fire in her hearth flickers, the scent of woodsmoke mingling with that of the dish.

“Eat,” she says.

“My mate…” I take a mouthful of the stew even though I have no intention of doing so.

“You said I could stay here, a moon month ago,” Meg says, placing the cauldron on a hook to one side of the fire.

“I did not,” I growl through another spoon of the stew which is too delicious and something I am not deserving of. “I would have known if I said you could stay anywhere on my land.”

“I am where you need me,” Meg says, not looking in my direction as she turns over a pile of rags as if searching for something.

“The queen has taken my mate.”

“And you let her?”

The growl which rips from my throat can’t be thwarted by mere stew. “NO.”

Meg shakes her head, and I contemplate eating her, but I know it’s not going to get me anything other than a sore stomach. So, instead I eat more stew, which remains good even with the bitter taste in my mouth.

“The queen took her back to the Faerie hills. You know I cannot go there,” I mutter.

“Fenrother, when are you ever going to learn anything?” Meg sighs.

“I have learnt plenty from the text you gave me.” I find myself grinning. I like thinking about mating my Alice.

“You didn’t learn enough.” Meg pulls out a basket filled with balls of wool and shoves her arm into it, pulling free a skein which glints in the light. “Because it doesn’t appear you learnt how not to give up.”

“I have not given up. The queen cannot keep me from my mate, no matter what curse I have on me, no matter what the prophecy says,” I snarl. “A prophecy which is entirely wrong given I have no fire since meeting my one true mate.”

“Have you ever bothered to read the prophecy properly?” Meg asks, sitting on a comfortable looking bench with her knitting, the needles clicking as the skein becomes something other than a long silver line.

“I have read the prophecy many times,” I lie.

“So, you’ve no doubt interpreted it.”