Page 18

ALICE

I have checked everywhere in the castle.

Behind every door, every wall hanging.

I’ve been up on the battlements looking out every side.

The only thing I haven’t been able to do is leave the place.

It seems you need wings to be able to do that.

There is no Fenrother.

There has been no Fenrother for the past twenty-four hours.

Day merged into evening, into night and then day again.

The solitude is absolutely getting to me.

As is the magic of the place.

Food appears. I hear pattering feet but never see anyone, and the figures in the tapestries still move.

All except the one in the great hall.

Those figures remain resolutely still, frozen in a time when a Lambton Wyrm came calling and no one escaped his wrath.

I don’t eat in the great hall.

By the evening following my exhortation for Fenrother to leave me alone, I have retreated entirely to the bedroom, the fire flickering in the darkness.

I’ve found other bedrooms, but I’m drawn to the one Fenrother uses.

The bedclothes smell of him, and occasionally I find a shed scale.

It’s utterly idiotic, and probably the start of Stockholm Syndrome, but I…

well, I miss him.

How can I possibly miss the big monster with the fixation on my lady parts and yet who had absolutely no idea what they were for?

Maybe because I am genuinely going mad from the silence and boredom.

To endure this for decades…

longer…I can’t imagine what I’d be like.

Although perhaps I don’t have to look far.

There’s a swish, like silk over stone, only it’s a sound I recognise without needing to see anything.

I’m off the bed and have yanked the door open to see the tip of a blue-scaled tail slide past in the passage outside.

“Fenrother?” My voice cracks with lack of use and I sound like an old lady.

The tail has already disappeared down the stairs, but my ears thump with an external pressure, and Fenrother in his humanoid form comes back up the last few stairs to peer at me.

As if he’s never seen me in his life.

For the first time since I got here, entirely involuntarily, anger bubbles up within me.

I run at him with a roar, slamming my fists into his broad chest.

“How dare you leave me here on my own without even saying goodbye!” I yell as I pound on the unyielding flesh.

“You can’t do that. You can’t bring me here and leave me alone.”

A growl ripples through his chest, and I feel a hand wrap around my waist. Which is when I remember the towel.

The one I found in another room.

The one I wrapped around myself instead of the big dress which was getting on my nerves.

The one which clings to my every curve.

“Female, desist,” Fenrother rumbles.

“I have been out hunting for meat. And where is your garment?”

“It’s…I…oh!” I exclaim as I lift my head to look at him and spot the old woman out of the corner of my eye.

An old woman dressed in grey and brown, her clothing is shapeless, covering her from head to toe.

She leans on a short, stubby stick, the handle of which is intricately carved with designs I can’t quite make out.

Her long, curly hair, white peppered with grey, pokes out from a rather natty printed scarf in direct contrast to the dull colours of the rest of her outfit.

She has a kind face, crinkled with age.

Of all the creatures I’ve met so far in the Yeavering, she provides by far the best impression.

Although she might yet offer me a shiny apple from the woven wicker basket she carries, so I decide to reserve judgement.

“I came because I thought I was needed, but perhaps not?” she says in a rheumy voice with a glint of mischief.

Fenrother nearly jumps a foot in the air, his body flinching badly as he too sees her.

“You,” he growls. “What are you doing in my castle?”

“Oh Wyrm, you don’t need an answer to that question,” she says with mirth infusing her voice as she gazes around.

“I do,” Fenrother snarls.

“And I will have it, or I will bite you in half, crone.”

“Less of the crone, I’ll thank you.” The old woman straightens and puts her stick in front of her like a weapon.

“Meg of Maldon, if you please, as you well ken, Fenrother.”

Fenrother lifts his lips to reveal his fangs.

“No witches here. Leave, now.”

He has not released my waist. If anything, he clutches me tighter.

“I am here to help you, Wyrm, and your female.” She turns, inspects a stone shelf behind her, and then sits like she’s here for the duration.

“Although, perhaps I am not as needed as I thought I would be.” She eyes where Fenrother has hold of me.

And the towel which is slipping under pressure.

“The last thing I require in my life is another Faerie, even a half Faerie,” Fenrother growls.

“I have brought food for my mate, and I intend on feeding her.”

I look between him and her.

“I am here, you know.”

Fenrother’s attention returns, mostly to where the towel is slipping.

“I know,” he rumbles.

His voice goes right through me, reverberating in my core and making parts of me tingle.

It’s probably because I’m gripped tightly to him, no other reason, and nothing to do with the fact being left alone in this castle for twenty-four hours has driven me half mad.

“You need me, Wyrm.” Meg sighs.

“If you’re to do as the queen requires.”

At the mention of the queen, a snarl is ripped out of Fenrother.

“She sent you?” A set of vicious claws appears on his free hand.

Meg laughs, and it’s about as far from a witchy cackle as I could imagine.

Instead it tinkles through the air like music.

“I do not bow to the queen,” she says, and her words carry an element of danger which I think Fenrother can feel as his body tenses.

“I am beholden to no one save myself.”

“Worse than being beholden to the queen,” Fenrother says, almost as if he’s oblivious to the threat she poses and the way the air seems charged.

“A rogue Faerie halfling has no place in my domain.”

“Ah,” she says as some of the threat dissipates, “but you’d know all about the rogue Faerie, wouldn’t you?”

Fenrother wrinkles his nose.

“I did what was required of me in the Night Lands and nothing more.”

Meg grunts ambivalently and gets to her feet painfully, using the stick to assist.

“You will welcome my visit, in time, Wyrm. I have left you both something to ease your passage with your mating.” She eyes me with a half smile.

“Although I’m sure you’ll work it out very soon. I’ll be where you need me, when you need me.” She winks at Fenrother who lifts his lips to reveal his fangs.

Before I can point out I am a pawn in this game the queen is playing and the last place I want to be is here, she disappears as if she was never there at all.

And on the stone ledge behind her is a new book.