“Hear what?”
There it is again—the sharp sound of a high note being played on a lone fiddle.
“It sounds…like music.” I continue to stare into the fog where the sound seems to be coming from.
“Music?” Davien hesitates. “Perhaps this is the haunting that everyone speaks of.”
I shift in the saddle and tug on the reins lightly, changing our course to the direction of the music.
“What are you doing?”
“I don’t know,” I confess.
“We should move away from it. We’re not far from the border of mer folk territory. It could be some kind of siren call.”
I don’t think it is, but I don’t know how to explain to him why I think that. As we move through the fog, a lute joins the fiddle. There’s the soft thrumming of hands on drums, and I hear the chiming bells in the rattle of tambourines. I’m just about to make out the melody when Davien speaks again.
“Katria—” he places his hands over mine on the reins “—we should head in the opposite direction.”
“No.” I shake my head and glance back at him. “I don’t think we should.”
“This might be some kind of magic to lure those that aren’t heirs of Aviness away from the keep. I don’t hear anything.”
I can recognize the song now. It’s one my mother played. I can almost hear her voice on the edges of my memory, hazy, echoing back to me from a distant time. A song of safety, a song of home—that was what she had called this melody. It had no words but she would always hum along as her fingers danced on the lute. I heard this song recently, didn’t I? When? I search within myself but find nothing.
“You need to trust me,” I say firmly to Davien. “You didn’t with Allor. Do it now. My gut tells me that this is the right direction.”
He purses his lips. I think he’s going to say no. But, then, to my surprise, “All right, we ride for no more than an hour. If nothing changes by then, I get to decide our new course. And we flee at the first sign of danger.”
“Deal.” I bring the horse’s pace up to a trot. “Thank you for trusting me. I know you had a lot of reasons not to.” I think back to our time together at the manor and that fateful night that set us both on this path.
“You’ve also given me a lot of reasons why I should trust you.” He lightly caresses my hips, fingers trailing down my thighs, almost absentmindedly. I wonder if he realizes he’s doing it. I don’t point it out because, dangerously, I don’t think I want him to stop. “You saved my life back there. You risked yours for mine.”
“I acted without thinking.”
“And your instinct was to save me.”
“We shouldn’t speak. We don’t want to give away our position and I need to listen to the music.”
He sighs softly. He knows I’m cutting him off—that I’m avoiding this conversation at all costs. “Very well. We can speak tonight at the keep.”
I hope not. I hope to never speak about what I did. Because if I do, then I might be forced to unpack all these complex feelings that I’ve been trying so desperately to ignore. But, even ignoring them, I almost gave my life for him.
I push the thoughts from my mind and focus on the music. After a little bit, I begin to hum along. Davien sits a little straighter, body tensing.
“Is that the song you hear?”
“Yes.” Well, in all honesty, what he heard me humming was the harmonies my mother would sing to the melody. Wordless sounds that are more music and emotion than anything coherent.
Davien chuckles and shakes his head in disbelief. “Then yet again, you were right.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That’s the melody of the Aviness family. It was played at all of their coronations. It’s one of the oldest songs of the fae. If you’re hearing it here and now then the barriers that protect this place must be calling out to the magic in you.”
I can’t fight the swell of pride I feel at being right. “See, it pays to listen to me.” I toss my head back to shoot him a grin. His grip tightens and pulls me back in the saddle, and my head lands on his shoulder.
“If you smirk like that at me again, I won’t be able to stop myself from kissing that smug expression off your lips.” His breath is hot on my neck, the words deep and gravelly. “Consider this your warning.”
He releases me and I straighten in the saddle once more, but there’s nowhere I can go. There’s no escaping him as we ride together. For a while now, we’ve been pressed against each other with nothing left to the imagination. I was able to ignore it while I was focusing on the music, but now he’s made that nearly impossible.
Blessedly, he doesn’t distract me further. The music guides us to the road, only getting louder as we continue down the cobblestones. Without warning, the fog dissipates. We break through into a golden sunset, shining down on a sheltered lake, and a long-forgotten castle.
