I trailed my fingers delicately along the carmine petals of a musk rose, the rest of it's body stark and bare amidst the snowy backdrop. It seemed to me that this little, steadfast bloom, though crusted in frost, was determined to bloom in spite of wintery adversity. I took solace in it's vivid presence. All the world was hued in hoary shades — white, grey and black — and yet here was a colorful blemish to spoil nature's achromatic gloominess.

There was a forsaken hush about the garden, the cold having dissuaded all from venturing outside, and even the birds were silent today; but I was not alone.

"Must you watch me like that!" I could feel my hackles stirring in unease.

"How then shall I watch you?" Lucian drawled quietly from behind me, where he leaned against a barren pear tree.

"Not as though you... wish to eat me!" I finished feebly, hoping to insult him by hinting at his monstrous proclivities.

"But I am hungry, Aria," he countered. I could hear the smile on his lips, without turning to look, and I bristled at the licentious innuendo.

"Bah! I hate you!" I seethed, blasting him with the full force of a loathing that I did not really feel.

I did not mean it — had wished only to snuff the smirk from his face, but instead I had behaved perversely. I instantly regretted the words as soon as they leapt off my tongue and turned to apologize, but instead I found myself retreating some small measure when he pushed himself off the tree and stormed towards me.

"I would rather have your hate than your horror!" he fumed, but restrained his hands at his side and curled his fists into his mantle as opposed to shaking me as I assumed he longed to do.

"They are one and the same!"

"Nay, they are not," he countered. "The former merely vexes me and can be overcome with time-"

Think that if it pleases you, Lucian.

"But the other," he commenced, unaware of my thoughts, "is an insuperable terminus. I would sooner be a mindless creature all the rest of my days than suffer your revulsion an instant longer-"

"My Lord," a servant chimed unexpectedly from behind us.

We had neither seen nor heard his approach, too engrossed in our battle of words to notice the crush of Gerald's boots upon the snow. We turned now to pin him with relieved stares — nay, mine held relief; Lucian's eyes, conversely, sustained only his growing displeasure.

"Speak, man!" he growled.

"Y-your father b-bade me fetch you to him," Gerald faltered.

When Gerald remained in the garden, Lucian grew impatient. "Well?" he fumed, when Gerald merely stood waiting awkwardly for further instruction. "You have delivered your message, now begone!"

"Aye, My Lord." Gerald replied directly, swiftly picking his way back whence he'd come along the path he'd forged through the ice. I made to follow, but Lucian halted my progress with a steely grasp upon my upper arm.

"We are not finished here," said he.

"You are hurting me," I seethed. "Let go!"

"Where do you hurt besides your arm, Aria?" he persisted as he watched his fingers turn bloodless where they gripped me fiercely. "Have I affected you no place else? Your heart, perhaps?"

"By God, Lucian, if you don't-"

"Or have I sorely misjudged my significance? Tell me, do I affect you so little, that you care not-"

"I could never care for a beast!"

"And when you bear my children, will they be monsters too? Will you hate them as you do me?"

"Yes!" I cried, then immediately thought of a better retort. "I will not give you children! I will never allow you near me again." Lucian opened his mouth angrily only to snap it shut an instant later. Whatever he might have said, he swallowed therewith.

"You don't despise me," he sighed harshly.

"I do!" I said just to be contrary.

"I don't believe you!" he snarled. "The night I was injured, Aria... were your eyes lying then?!"

"You believe what you wish to see!" I sobbed. "Release me, Lucian!" I watched him through a blurring prospect, my view besmirched with tears, as his face turned piecemeal to iron and the fire left his golden irises.

"And that is my answer?" he nodded curtly. "Very well." He turned suddenly and left me to follow in his wake, saying only, "Let us not keep Godwin waiting," afore distancing himself from me... in more than just a literal sense.



❅



"You will both, doubtless, be happy to know that I have asked Fendrel to take his leave."

It startled me to hear Godwin speak for he had been silent the while I'd sat beside him near the glowing hearth. Lucian stood with his back to us, surveying the snow-clad rocks of the shoreline that lay below the window. He hadn't glanced at me since I'd entered.

The sibilance of the flames licking across the blackened wood had ere now eaten into the hush that had lain thickly between the three of us. Though the heat radiated from the blaze in embracing waves I felt the cold deep in my bones and remained mute as Godwin waited for a response. Lucian, predictably, remained mute and I too offered no reaction, save a subtle sigh of relief. Godwin, noticing my shoulders relax slightly, nodded thoughtfully.

"Do you know what my father once told me, Ariana?" said he, raising a scholarly brow. I bit my lips, unwilling to speak. "That death favors the curious," he informed me finally.

"But surely an intrepid heart finds glory," I reasoned heedlessly. Though I had willed my tongue to silence, it had, perforce, a mind of its own.

"There is a fine line between courage and outright folly, my dear." Well, the man had as good as called me out for a fool. My lips tightened marginally.

"What would you like to know, Ariana? You must have many burning questions." He templed his hands and studied me austerely.

"Everything! I wish to know what you are and why you brought me here; why was I chosen to live amongst your kind!"

"Careful, my girl. My kind and yours are one and the same." His voice hardened a fraction as he narrowed his eyes, forcing mine timorously to the floor.

Lucian had said as much that time in the woods when he had caught me near the maze and inferred that we were not so different.

I will have the answer to that enigmatic statement too! I vowed Who was I really...

"As you wish," Godwin conceded, and my eyes popped wider, momentarily believing him to be a mind-reader, but he was only addressing my demand to know everything.

He looked to his right. Lucian's back was still rigid with restlessness. "I have never seen my son so agitated," he smiled inscrutably and directed his next words to his son. "Be easy, Lucian, I will allow no evil to befall your wife."

Lucian turned to fix troubled eyes on his father, but they dulled quickly when he brought them to me.

What game are they now playing? But I must let the answers come to me.

"I see you do not understand," Godwin nodded. "You do not quite realize the predicament we are all placed in. Let me enlighten you then."

Please do! My inner voice was scathing.

"By all rights, you should be dead."

So you all keep telling me, I interjected silently.

"If not as creature fodder, then by Fendrel's law..." My mouth dropped. "Ergo, it appears that I have had to make an enemy out of him by refusing his demands." Lucian's head snapped around towards his father. Godwin continued but he now directed his gaze solely to his son.

"I will protect this family by any means necessary; even if it means the loss of a powerful ally. That being said, since Ariana is now part of my family, she is mine to protect." As if on cue they both pinned me with searching looks. "You see, Ariana, I find it incredibly curious that you survived a night in Niflheim."

He means the maze!

"This can mean only one thing: that you had a very dominant and impressive protector by your side. Am I right? Only you can shed light on what transpired yestereve."

"Yes." I was too shocked by where his line of questioning was going to remain testy any longer.

"I have a theory, but I shall get to that in a minute." He compressed his lips at Lucian and a silent message passed between them. "Or perhaps I shall let Lucian explain that to you..." And judging by the astonishment that Lucian wore, he too had surmised a few facts and had revelations of his own to impart.

Godwin leaned back in his seat and, looking pointedly at Lucian, indicated the vacant chair beside me. His son obeyed and I kept my stony gaze forward, his nearness disturbing my equilibrium forcibly. He had always been a dynamic force and my blood had always been stirred by him. But surely I was now free of his influence? After all that had passed between us, why should he still affect me.

"Do you know what Therianthropy is?" This question was intended for me and I shook my head curtly. "Therianthropy is the ability to shape-shift. This talent is something only the male of our kind can do." His emphasis of the word 'kind' had dark undertones, but it was of no matter and I did not react for he absorbed my attention completely with his revelation. "We shed the skin of our humanity every eight and twenty days, when the moon waxes into her fullest state. Her influence over us is absolute and with this shifting of flesh and bone... we lose all sense of ourselves. We become Valdyrer."

"Valdyrer?" I frowned.

"Aye, a Valdyr is an Óðinnssønn."

A Son Of Odin?

"The process of becoming a Valdyr — shifting into our wolf-skin — is also known as lunacy because we are altered beyond any physical or mental recognition. Non compos mentis," he clarified. "It is an uncontrollable rage that turns our minds from logic to bloodlust, a primal need to hunt and destroy our prey. I think you can appreciate that now that you have seen what no one else has lived to witness."

"Yes," I nodded fearfully, that action drawing from him a rueful smile, but as he commenced, his face became grim once more.

"Were we to be released from that prison..." He seemed in the grips of a terrible thought and I shuddered to imagine the resulting rampage that would ensue if what he suggested had ever come to pass. There was no doubt that those creatures — my family, essentially — would obliterate every living thing that moved into their sights.

"However, let us not dwell on that thought, but consider that 'twould be the deadliest scourge known to any that inhabit this region. Greater even than the Black Death. Now that you know our terrible secret, can you imagine what would happen to us if the world at large were ever the wiser?"

The furrows in my brow lengthened and deepened as I contemplated his words. I should relish the thought, but instead it scared me. I was utterly frightened by the idea of losing my family, Valdyrer or no! Though I wanted to be numb towards them, I could not. As inconceivable as it was, I still cared! I could not lie to myself, not in the privacy of my own thoughts, but I loved them still.

"Our lives are, therefore, as much in your hands as yours is in ours. Do you understand this, child?" he asked carefully to which I nodded emphatically. "You also understand now the need for secrecy?" he persisted, his eyes became veritably frigid as he asked this of me. I was unable to deny it and he took my silence to mean that I agreed to that too. "And you recognize that we have need of a prison?"

Niflheim...

"I do, but why kill those men? Why kill Thomas?!" The accusation in my voice was clear.

"It was not my wish to have the boy sent into Niflheim, Aria. I agree that he should never have been condemned to that fate, but had he succeeded in ravishing a daughter of my house... I would have had no qualms at all about taking his life," he sighed. "As to the matter of the unfortunate malefactors you seem disposed to champion, I can only say this: the hunt is crucial to pack solidarity. We feed the Valdyr so that it does not turn to mischief. No prison would keep it forever contained if its mind, deranged as it is, were not otherwise occupied." He spoke as if they, the Valdyrer were a separate entity; and I suppose, in truth, they were.

"But-"

"Aria, the men we use up are the worst of society's degenerates. Rapists and murderers all. I am as unsympathetic to their plight as they to their victims. Argue with me no longer for you will not sway our belief in this. This is the way it has always been with the Valdyr and we choose to regard it as a cleansing of human detritus!" His tone forbade me to question him further.

I sifted through my mind for a safer query. "I understand why you have severed ties with Fendrel, and I thank you for it, but for what possible reason should he wish to kill me?"

"As I explained, the burden of our secret is a great weight indeed, and no one takes its seriousness to heart as much as my brother-in-law." He paused hesitantly before continuing. "After all, Fendrel had his first wife executed when she discovered our secret..."

I gasped and Lucian moved his hand, with the intention of grasping mine where I gripped my thigh. But he stopped abruptly, remembering the great rift between us, and stayed his hand. Godwin watched with keen eyes as our interaction played out and I resented instantly the knowing look that creased his eyes.

"I think it an outdated and prejudice belief that we, the cursed, should harbor this secret as though we alone carry its burden. Our mates should have a share in that weight for they too are affected by this legacy. Would it not, therefore, be bigoted indeed to claim those notions — of superiority — for is not your gender as capable of carrying the onus."

"Then why was I not told ere now, Godwin?" I asked with a sad shake of my head.

"When would the right time have been, Aria? Your formative years were spent in the south. You did not grow up with our myths and legends of gods and monsters. I must, however, take full responsibility, for Lucian, you must understand, had wished to tell you long before now," he pursed his lips apologetically. I glanced at my husband but his eyes dwelled over the fire with distrait weariness. "I was mistaken, I see that now. You are right; we should have told you before you were bound to us."

"And if I had wanted to leave?" I said. "Would you have let me go?" But Lucian answered me instead.

"No. You are one of us," he maintained with finality.

"As to that-"

"I myself have confided in Anne," said Godwin thoughtfully, "for, you see, my mind is not of the same bent as Fendrel's." He stroked his chin. "In sooth, I believe that he is not a little touched in the head; a Dóttir av Máni is priceless insomuch as she is rare. To kill one is a madness that I will neither take a part in nor ever condone — hence my deep misgivings when he took my sister to wife. However, Rose is as wily as a fox and 'twould take more than Fendrel to fell my sister-"

I pressed my palms into my forehead in confusion and interjected, as was the Greyback habit, before Godwin could continue further.

"Wait, my lord. Prithee, what is a Dóttir av Máni? Moreover, what am I?"

"Ahh," he exclaimed before taking a long draft of wine from his silver cup. "Not what, but who.That brings me to my next point." I blinked rapidly and tried as best I could to keep up with him, but I was yet confused. "Tis strange..."

What is strange?! I wanted to scream, though it was all strange, to be sure!

"Your mother is an enigma to me," he mused pensively. The man was beginning to infuriate my temper!

"Yes," I said impatiently. "And as a result, so am I, is that what you mean?"

Godwin sent me a warning look for my temerity, and I immediately quietened down.

"My point is this: only a Dóttir av Máni can bear the fruit of an Óðinnssønn!"

"My mother was a Dóttir av Máni? But what is that?"

"In essence, she is a daughter of the moon. You may also consider her a chimera — a being that is composed of the parts of more than one creature. Do you remember the armband I gave you? The one we took from Edwyn that belonged to Cara." He waited only long enough for me to nod curtly before he went on, "Your mother was no ordinary woman, Ariana. Is it merely a coincidence that the arm band depicts a two-natured animal? Perchance, but I think not!

"The wolf must indicate that somewhere in her linage she has valdyr blood, but the wings I can only guess at. Whatever the other half of your blood line is, little Hálfrblód, we must assume it is very powerful.

"Why do you call me Hálfrblód?"

"That is what Rose told me you were, when she first saw you, and she invariably would have shared that knowledge with her husband."

"Does she know what I am?"

"My sister speaks to the old gods, howbeit, they reveal only what they wish her to know. So to answer your question, no, I do not believe she has the answers just yet. We, neither of us, understand the mysteries of Cara's ancestors and can tell you naught but that she was wasted on Edwyn, for she was certainly a chimera of sorts."

A chimera? Óðinnssønn and Dóttir av Máni? The Valdyr and the moon? I squeezed my eye shut, trying to in vain to digest it all ere Godwin continued.

He leaned over to me so that his face was close to mine. "You must therefore understand two things, Ariana: Edwyn is not your father..."

"And the s-second?" I stammered, noticing Lucian's keen interest in my reactions thus far.

"Simply this: you are not what you thought you were," he reiterated. I waited for him to elaborate and eventually he did. "Edwyn cannot be your sire. His seed is stale and has always been fruitless," Godwin scoffed derisively before he shared his next observation. "That the man should think his wife's womb suddenly swelling with child a miracle, tells me he was a greater fool than I had initially taken him for!"

"But Elinor was with child when I left!"

"Aye, but who's child thickened her belly? 'Twas not her husband's stench that filled my nostrils when first I met her..."

"Then... who is my... father?" The question had been no more than a harsh whisper, but Godwin seemed to understand what I had been unable to articulate.

"I know you are not without some sense, Ariana," he sighed in vexation. "Despite your recent, willing sojourn to Hell. Can you not guess at your sire's identity?"

The implication that I was only somewhat foolish, stung me quite, but he was right — what fool would willfully go to Niflheim. Furthermore, I would have had to be utterly dense not to interpret what had been insinuated in this morning's meeting with Fendrel...

"You cannot mean-"

"Fendrel," he nodded. The name sliced through me like a killing blow.

I felt warm fingers thread into mine and, though they was bloodless and cold, I curled them over Lucian's; endeavoring to absorb the heat of his strength. I looked over at him and he squeezed my hand reassuringly.

"I estimated that Fendrel and I were both in the south, Heathersea specifically, around the time you would have been conceived, and since I can safely rule myself from the equation, that leaves only Fendrel."

"The similarity in your coloring is also too much of a coincidence, Aria," said Lucian. "I do not think that a happy accident, do you?"

"Aye," Godwin concurred. "Tis a compelling and potent pedigree that rushes through those veins," he nodded to the blue lines on the inside of my wrists as Lucian brushed the pad of his thumb gently over the point in question. I pulled my hand away and schooled my features.

It then occurred to me suddenly that Godwin had just favored me with the answer to my most burning question. It had been a question I had lived with ever since I had met him:

Why me? And now I had my answer. "You sensed this the first time we met on that street long ago," I guessed.

Godwin's lips relaxed into a smile. "Yes, I recognized immediately that your lineage, the smell of your blood, was that of a thoroughbred's." He tapped his nose. "I knew straight away that I would bring you here-"

"To marry Lucian," I finished for him.

"Tis true, I needed a continuation of the bloodlines and yours is of... unequivocal quality, although your parentage was yet unknown to me. But that was before I came to know you, Ariana. You are more than just-"

"You bought me from Edwyn to be be nothing more than a gestating vessel?" I seethed and both their brows lowered dangerously. "I will not be a broodmare!" I vowed firmly. I will especially not be used to breed monsters! But the latter I kept wisely to myself. I could see clearly that I had offended Godwin with my disgust; he who was always so staid and calm.

"Oh but you will. You see, my dear-" said he.

"Father!" Lucian growled in warning.

"You are already with child..."





***As always, your VOTES and COMMENTS are definitely some of the highlight of my day! ***