FENROTHER

I want to follow her, my Alice, as she flees from me, but my guilt holds me back.

It sits in my stomach like a stone, and that is something I know all about.

Not the first time I’ve swallowed a stone, although this one is of my own making.

I should have told her.

I should have said about the curse.

About the way it ends.

My text told me all about choice and I gave my mate none.

Alice disappears into a gulley, and having her out of my sight tears at my heart.

She belongs to me. I shouldn’t have to lose her.

But a curse is a curse.

I have not the magic to break it.

Mine comes from the earth, not the air, the strongest of the elementals.

I am but a Wyrm.

And I hate being powerless against such a force.

The Faerie could have stopped the wars in the Night Lands in a single glance, a flick of their delicate wrists, but instead they chose to send wave after wave of us into the breach, as if it was a game.

A game I refused to play, and this is the result.

I roar out to the fells, to the heather, to the creatures within, but no one listens.

No one ever listens to a Wyrm.

I am silenced.

A crack of thunder spears me from behind.

I become the Wyrm in order to resist, but unease settles within me.

If the Faerie are close, I should have Alice by my side.

The queen gave us a moon month, and it has been longer.

I had held hope in my heart she might not come, she might have lost interest, but I was wrong.

I am hopelessly wrong wherever my Alice is concerned, save for giving her pleasure.

I swarm my way over the fell side, searching for her, needing her.

Wanting to tell her how much she means to me, to my Wyrm, to my pizzle, to all of me, every single scale, every flutter of my wing, every point on my tail.

I might not be able to break the curse, but I belong to her until I am no more, and I need her to know this.

Rain pounds as I dive into the gulley.

A shriek which is suddenly cut off makes my scales stand on end.

“Alice!” I growl her name through a magical fog which seeks to dull my senses.

“She is mine now,” Mab echoes back to me, maybe in my head, maybe in the air.

“And you are mine too, Wyrm.”

“Never,” I growl, thrashing at the chink of chains which seek to bind.

“I belong to no one, not even you, Mab. It’s the reason you could not make me fight on in the Night Lands, the reason you want to take the one thing I own from me.”

“You will be mine, Lambton Wyrm, if you want her to survive the birthing of your young.”

I can’t see straight anymore.

“If you hurt her, Mab, I will come for you, and you will not escape my wrath, Faerie queen or no,” I snarl as my head hits the caged spell she has placed over me.

Every inch of my being strains at it.

I cannot get through, I cannot get to her, I cannot rip her to shreds.

“I won’t give you anything, , not until I have your troth. Your loyalty to me. Provide it and she lives…refuse me and she dies.”

I shove my nose hard into the spell and it sizzles on my skin.

“Follow me, and I will kill her without a single regret, Wyrm. You have three days to decide her fate, and yours.” The queen’s voice flows back at me and as sudden as the cage appeared, it has gone, and I am left snarling at the sky.

Every part of my Wyrm wants to go after her.

Every single inch screams at me not to let Alice go.

But she cannot die either.

I have to have her close to me at least until the curse finally takes hold.

That is, if she is prepared to look in my direction ever again.

I should have told her about the curse.

But my regrets are too late.

I may have lost my mate in more ways than one.