Chapter 22: The Voice

Aldric's POV

There is no thinking in the red.

There is a hot dark place, and my body moving through it.

There is one pale light far ahead, and I have been told never to touch it.

I went up that ridge on four legs and half a man's mind, and the only word I had was hers.

I could not hear her.

I could feel her, small and cold and terrified at the other end of the link, and a blade against her throat.

That was all the red needed.

I knew what it wanted me to do.

It wanted me to tear the man in half.

It did not care who was standing in the way.

"Stay back!" Lester shouted. "One more step, my King, and I open her up."

The red laughed in my chest.

I took the step.

Then, in the dark behind my eyes, softer than the shouting and far steadier than I was, a girl began to hum.

Four notes.

Up, up, down, and a long one at the bottom.

Not the way her father hums it.

Hers shook, and broke, and began again, and she did not stop.

I had told her I'd hold on.

I had promised.

I had a daughter, and she was singing to me from the end of a knife.

The red stopped.

It did not leave, because it never leaves, but it stopped.

I stood in the leaves with my sides heaving.

My own two hands came back to me.

I was a man again, in a torn coat, in the dark.

She stood near the treeline, with Lester behind her.

"Wynn," I said, aloud.

My voice shook.

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