This is a teaser for my contribution to He bears the cape of stars-Anthology from Duck Print Press
warnings (for whole story): amnesia, character is a murderer, emotional hurt/comfort (minor), fantasy with science fiction, flashbacks, fraught family dynamics, hurt/comfort (mild), interspecies relationship, magic use, mind control, non-human character, past tense, pov third person limited, red string of fate, reunion, second chances, soulmates, violence (nongraphic descriptions), werewolf
Arell de Borge had only one heartbeat before light flooded the hallway, blinding him. “The hell?” someone growled. Should he first give in to the bile in his throat or the black dots in his vision? Arell leaned back against the entry door, squeezing his eyes shut. He had known the door was there, just as he knew that to his right was a small rug with scuffed boots and to his left a small door leading to an even smaller closet. He knew this house as well as he knew the mansion he had grown up in. “Care to explain?” And he knew that voice. Arell carefully blinked against the light, shadows and shapes transforming into furniture and bits and pieces. He knew everything by heart, as if he had stepped out mere hours ago and not seven years past. “I’m waiting.” Tristan Lupin hadn’t changed in the last years, his form bulky, his face a bit too sharp, his dark hair the same untamable mess. “What are you doing here?” Every word was spoken with intent. As if Tristan was weaving a spell, which was impossible. Werewolves couldn’t cast any magic, at least not the kind mages like Arell could. “I’m not accountable to you,” Arell said. He was still trying to get his mind back into order, to make sense of what had happened. “You appear in my home, dirty and beat up, and you don’t think I’ve got a right to know what mess will come knocking at my door?” Arell had never brought any mess knocking at anyone’s door—especially not Tristan’s. He’d gone to great lengths to ensure it. “No mess will be coming,” Arell breathed out, half sulking, half finding his ground again. He looked at his hands, scratched and dirty from a tumble in the woods. The adrenaline made him jittery, the urge to run and flee almost overwhelming. In three steps, Tristan was so close that Arell saw nothing but his yellow eyes, then he dragged a stumbling Arell down the hallway into the living room. Nothing had changed—the soggy couch, the scratched table, the wide window front. The beat-up picture mover in the corner that was always losing bits of its color. Arell had tried to fix it, casting spell after spell, before finally putting a loadedup seal on the side to keep the color in the shifting images. The charge must’ve run out; the red was missing again. Tristan pointed to the picture mover, and for a second, Arell was confused—Tristan never watched the news channel—and then he saw the lines crawling over it. Arell froze when the words finally made sense. Murderer on the run! / Birthday party at de Borge mansion gone wrong / Secretary found dead / De Borge son wanted for questioning / Resistance pulling the strings? / Money offered for leads on whereabouts “What?” Arell couldn’t make sense of the question. His mind was even more in tatters than he had assumed. The whole night was catching up to him. “That Lorel is dead.” Arell caught a tremble in Tristan’s hands before Tristan stuffed them into his heavy-duty cargo pants. It drew his eyes to the leather cuffs around Tristan’s wrists. Those were new. “Answer me.” Right. Question. Lorel. Lifeless eyes. Whispered words. A body on the ground. Magic dissipating. Nothing remaining. “Yes.” ...
Find the rest of this story, and many more wonderful tales about masquerades here!