Page 123 of Heartsong
“He must have felt like he had to move, since I found the bug and was quitting.”
“Most likely,” Gavren agreed gravely. “All we can do now is make safe the other guardians and monitor his activities.”
“Poor Dragan,” murmured Carys. She met Frey’s gaze, and they shared a solemn moment of sadness for their captured clanmate.
“Not long after freeing Gavren, we returned to the Gorsedd glen and gathered those of you we could. Many had been taken. We’ve spent the centuries looking for you.” She hurried through the words, as if what she said gave her pain.
Frey remembered sensing earth around him, as if his stone self had been toppled into the dirt for a time, but the majority of his confinement to the stone sleep had been spent in various shelters with other clanmates. It made the interminable time bearable, to be kept with kin.
“We sensed it, being together,” he told her. “Thank you for keeping us safe.”
“It’s been my honor.”
“We didn’t know much, but we knew we were together. We were able to share what we learned. We heard the music you played us, felt the sunlight in our room.”
Her eyes went wide. “You…could speak to each other?”
“In a sense. Inside, we’re still sentient. Many have retreated deep inside the collective consciousness for comfort. We can sense one another, communicate.”
“That’s…I didn’t know.” Tears spilled from Carys’s eyes. “I just wish we’d been able to do more. All these years—we’ve gathered many of you, but there are still some missing. A few have been destroyed. And now Dragan is taken. Yet the two of you are the only ones we know of who have woken. We’ve tried everything, I swear to you, we’vetried.”
Gavren gripped her hand tight as Carys began to weep. She turned into her mate’s body for comfort, and Gavren held her tightly. For his part, Frey gripped his own mate tight, and they sat in silence, unwilling to interrupt Carys’s grief.
When her tears slowed, Gavren fished a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped her tears.
“We’ve been waiting for you for centuries,” he told Frey. “Why now, after all these years, we don’t know or understand, but we’re grateful.”
“I want to do right by the clan,” insisted Carys.
“You have,” Frey hurried to tell her. “You’ve kept us safe, sheltered. You provided for us. And tonight, you came to our aid. I owe you a debt for saving my heartsong.”
“You owe us nothing,” said Gavren firmly. “Especially not when the two of you could be what finally breaks the curse. With what you’ve said, I believe the problem lies in Frey having an incomplete anchor to Albion. Perhaps this will grow naturally with the mate bond. Yet, I wonder if it couldn’t be hastened.”
Carys’s brows arched. “The ritual?”
“Yes. My kind has a mating ritual, a ceremony with rites to tie our magicks together. This is what anchored me to Carys and freed me of the Underhill. I wonder if it would work for you.”
“What would we have to do?” asked Anna.
Frey held very still under her, unable to determine her thoughts from her neutral tone. The idea of having a way to reclaim the day, to have all of his Anna, was just as tempting as Glendower’s collar, if not more. Yet, he couldn’t help worrying if Anna would hesitate or not wish to go through with such a ritual.
He knew she cared for him, had told him shelovedhim, but was that enough? Could he ask it of her if she was uncertain?
“It’s a simple ritual. Just requires the right words and physical connection. Whenever you’re ready, just repeat the incantation. It could take a moment for the magick to anchor.” And Gavren slipped into a language far more ancient than any of them sitting there, reciting words that settled in Frey’s bones and made his soul tremble.
Frey wasn’t sure how he was supposed to remember a fae incantation, but when he thought of the words, they appeared in his mind, flowing from one to the next as easily as a summer stream flowed from the mountain.
“And what does it all mean?” Anna asked.
“That to each other you pledge your troth, your loyalty, your love. That you forsake all others and bind yourselves together. That they are your home and you are theirs.”
“Dwi adref,” Frey murmured.
Anna’s eyes jumped up to him, and he smiled for her. “Dwi adref,” he whispered in her ear before kissing her temple. “Whenever you’re ready,fynghân.”
“I love you, Frey,” she whispered back.
He wanted to soak in the words, but part of him worried that she said it rather than the incantation. They were both tired, he reminded himself, and too much had been asked of Anna already today. There would be time. They would have time.
