by
Pages: 392
Pages: 392
Pages: 392
Where does magic end and love begin?
Oliver Evans spent his youth spinning one tall tale after another until it got him over his head in trouble. Returning as an adult to his grandmother's cottage in Aberdaron, Olly is determined to put his past behind him and settle down. But the misty Llŷn Peninsula hides dangerous secrets. Olly is torn between the Longing, a powerful force driving him away from the only home he has ever known, and the growing conviction that the merman prince of his childhood make-believe is real--and in desperate need of Olly's help.
There is more truth in Olly's stories than he realises. If he is to have any chance of righting past wrongs and rescuing his prince, Olly must navigate the truth in his old stories and discover the magic right in front of him. But Olly has a powerful enemy on the Llŷn, an ancient king who would like to end Olly's story-telling permanently.
And that’s the story of how I ended up sitting in a tub in my grandmother’s kitchen, knees up around my chin, hoping that the rest of Nan’s cronies would wait until I was done scrubbing my back before visiting.
Luck was with me. Either the Aberdaron village grapevine had taken the night off, or Mrs Griffith had gone easy on me and held off sharing the news of my arrival. The screech that had me leaping out of the tub, scattering water across the kitchen floor wasn’t that of an outraged pensioner, but the kettle reaching the boil.
“Hot! Hot! Hot!”
The emptied kettle did not make much of an impact on my bathwater. I refilled it and set it to boil. “Nan chose to do this?”
READ MOREMaybe she’d got religious in her old age. Making things harder than they needed to be was a common tenet, right? Discomfort brought you closer to God, which also explained the size of the tub. If I wedged myself back as far as I could fit, I could get both feet in the tub, but my arms hung over the side. Still, that last jug of water had raised the temperature of my bath to ‘tolerable’, and I settled back with a sigh.
My eyes shut on their own accord. All at once, my long journey had caught up to me. The sound of the kettle mixed with the rise and fall of the waves. Lulled by their even rhythm, I let myself drift.
“But though they sang their hardest, and used all their most cunning songs, the wrath of King Gurcant was too powerful. One by one, their voices failed, but still the waves came. On and on until the entire land was taken under the sea.” The voice came directly into my ear, so close it tickled my skin. “And the morgenau grieved, that they might no longer live upon the land, and the city was lost to men, and none dared challenge the King beneath the Cliffs who rules all within the Deep and on and on, until the city and the morgenau and even the King were all forgotten.”
Much like the waves, the voice had a hypnotic quality to it that filled me with lazy satisfaction. The sun was warm on my skin, but the arms draped around my shoulders were pleasantly cool. High overhead gulls rode the headwinds. There was not a cloud in the sky, nothing to break this endless contentment. “I’d like to hear you sing.”
The arms tightened around me. “You would like to be driven mad! If a man were to hear our song without the cliffs to carry it, it would break him.”
“A knight is no ordinary man—”
“But he is yet a man! Do not ask me this. You must not, even in jest.” His fingers were uncomfortably tight. “You understand? Promise me that you will not ask me again.”
“All right, all right! I get it.” I swatted at him. “Get off, you big lump.”
“Say that you promise.” His hold did not budge.
Cold fingers closed around my throat, pulling me down. My nose and mouth filled with water. I choked, throwing out my arms in panic. My foot connected with the side of the tub, bringing me back to reality. I sat up, coughing hard. It took a moment for my mind to understand the kitchen chair, my towel hanging over it, or the kettle, hissing and spitting on the bench.
I took a deep breath before levering myself up out of the bath. “A dream. That’s all it was. A dream.” A combination of my vivid imagination and the cooling bathwater. “Get a grip, Olly.” I turned the kettle off, leaving the tub for the morning. Wrapping myself in the towel, I made my way upstairs to the bedroom that had always been mine. Best cure for an over-wrought mind was sleep, and if my first night back in Aberdaron had been any indication, I was well in need of some shut-eye.
But as I pulled the blankets over me, it wasn’t the waves I heard, but the fading ripples of that voice.
God, that voice.
I’d always had a soft spot for arrogance. The voice checked that box, and more besides, boxes I didn’t know I had. It got me intimately, but as I settled back, I found myself puzzled. If the voice was so familiar, why couldn’t I place it?
COLLAPSE 