#honoes!

Our honeymoon had ended, and the forest was behind us. It hadn’t been bad, really. I liked him. It still felt awkward though. How could it not?

Shadow’s Rest rose before me like a curious haven. I’d never imagined it as a haven, but after two weeks with a new husband, trying to adapt to his ways and absorb the ways of his family, seeing my little boy again, even seeing my family, talking with Susie.. it was really appealing suddenly.

Not to criticize Reiner. He came with me, and he seemed interested in the place. I guess he’ll probably go hunting with Vryce or whatever.

Seeing Witsy was.. it was just incredible. I feel like a good mother when I see his radiant smile.

“Mama, can you play with me? I MISSED YOU!” 

 So we spent a solid hour playing with his carved wooden knights and I got to be the gryphon they were attacking.

It felt so good.

It was much later that uncle came in, smiling warmth to a secret unspoken and the little boy he had raised largely in my absence. “Anweena, sweetling, there’s a gift for you which arrived whilst you were away. Witsy, lad, it is supper time. Come along now.” 

A wail of fury from my little red-haired son, but after threatening to kill everyone on Tyria, he gave in. And went off to the nursery to have his supper after making me promise to come and tuck him in. 

And I wandered to where various wrapped gifts had been set aside for me to open. Bridal wedding present things. So strange. I vaguely wondered if I ought to wait for Reiner.

But no, this one was addressed to me specifically. Opening it, I found myself frowning. A dagger? And that handwriting..

.. peculiar.

I reached to touch the hilt and

SHOCK

It was like a bolt of electricity to my heart, jarring me, leaving me staggering. Flashes of images pouring into my mind like ice cold water, and I wondered if I was going to die to see just WHAT it was that had happened.

I was sinking, engulfed by memories.

I saw him. HIM.

Kristoff. He was laughing and dancing, the vision filtered in violet. Mesmerism. I knew that as if I heard Aiden’s voice say it flatly. Aiden? Aiden.

Seeing him through Aiden’s eyes was disturbing. Because Aiden saw how young the man was. The stolen flesh of Bastion, Kristoff’s descendant, handsome, golden-eyed, bronzed skin. 

I remembered when that was what I’d seen too.

I could feel my heart screaming though to see him. Terror. hatred. And the old frightened lust, the submission, everything he’d broken me into that I despised.

Why was Aiden here?

I had a feeling that I knew.

And the flickers of memory shifted. It wasn’t a cohesive memory. The girl Kristoff had been with was gone as I felt the next roll over me.

Aiden had attacked him, and Kristoff was using Bastion’s elementalist power. If Bastion remained in the body, only Grenth knew, because the forces he was using were horrifying to see even second hand, and I felt my guts knotting in terrified memories of my own. He wasn’t as beautiful now as he’d once been, as I wondered at whether the corruption of Kristoff had altered him.

And Aiden caught the blue flames Kristoff flung contemptuously at him. They sucked up inside those strange runes of his, and flared there before vanishing.

And then Aiden was saying something. 

I felt his voice rumbling in my own chest, as if I WERE him.. “Sorry, muffin, looks like you missed.” He drawled, and Kristoff’s golden eyes flared with rage.

 I felt myself shaking and wondered at Aiden’s calm. I could feel HIS cold rage buried within, but he was taunting, mocking. Sneering at this monster who’d left me shattered in his wake. 

And then he was dodging, leaping aside as the centuries-old spirit within a mortal body exploded into lava and fire, and chased that mocking blue-hot fireball with something considerably worse.

A hundred years ago, or perhaps only a handful of winters, I was a different man. 

A ravening, ravenous wolf. And I sought every edge. Any edge. 

Favours and bonds can be better leashes than magic in many ways, and in those distant days, I forged a leash of my own for my wretched half-brother’s oldest children. A son and a daughter. 

No power is strong without sacrifice, and I sacrificed aplenty. Living bone carved from my thigh in the pouring rain. Silver stolen from the mountain’s bowels.

And I called forth a shadow, a thread of Wolf’s very tail, and wove the norn Spirit into the artifact I crafted. 

Created and gave, twinned, one to each of my kin. Binding them by their leashes, in a way none of the fools could grasp. I would feel their pain, their disquiet. I could save them.

And what would they do for me? How would I own them in return? So long as they carry their warhorns, my gifts, they do not see me for their enemy.

It’s nothing very complicated, and you might even think that it stemmed naturally from the fact that I am not, in fact, their enemy. 

But when you intend harm to their father, it’s a useful enough tool, and the leash therefore loose indeed upon them. So loose as to be unnoticed. Its opposite end is far tighter about MY throat should they fall into danger.

That was the man I was.

Eternity stretches between him and who I have become, first under the tutelage of Shi Xun, and then with my studies and work here in the Mists.

But that leash remains.

And so it was that, after a pleasant visit to my priestess, her shining adoration of me as ever a sweet ambrosia upon which I drew, I felt the pull as I have not in long years.

It seems that I have business in Tyria once more.