Chapter Seventeen

Liane led Kane to another cell, this one made of metal instead of stone. He walked warily through the doors of the box-like contraption and dropped into one corner as if he had no bones, no muscle left. His leg screamed, his body wanted nothing more than to shut down completely. The doors closed silently, Liane pushed a lever near the doors of the new cell, and it began to move. Up. His stomach did not move in time with the mechanism, but seemed to lag behind.

“You’re taking me to Sophie,” he said weakly.

“Yes,” Liane answered. “Against my best judgment, yes.”

He relaxed, resting his head in the corner of the box as it moved. Up and up, as if he were being lifted on a cloud. He’d been so close to death. He’d felt it, creeping upon him. And now here he was. Liane was alive. Sophie would be with him soon...

The contraption stopped, and Liane offered her arm. Kane took it and painfully rose to his feet. The doors of the box opened slowly.

This Level was not at all like the one he’d been taken to upon arrival at the palace. There were plush rugs on the stone floor, colorful paintings on the walls, tapestries, flowers...and there were beautiful women everywhere. Some of them were half-dressed, others wore frocks he could see through. He blinked, to make sure it wasn’t his imagination. It was definitely possible that he was actually dead.

There were a few men, too, but not many. Men dressed in blue stepped out of rooms along the hallway to watch as Liane led him along. One or two of them offered to help, but Liane would not accept their assistance so they all just looked on.

They finally reached a door where Liane stopped. A large, older woman stood there, arms crossed over her massive chest.

“Has anyone come here looking for her?” Liana asked.

“No,” the woman said simply. “And no one’s been in or out of the room, as you instructed.”

Liane sent the woman away with a wave of her hand, and opened the door on a large room decorated in pink and red.

Sophie lay on the bed, naked and half covered with a pink sheet. Her wrists had been bound with silk scarves, and she was lashed to the bedposts.

Kane found a burst of strength and broke away from Liane. “Who did this?” he asked gruffly. “I’ll kill him, I swear...”

Sophie leaned up and forward and started to smile at him, and then as she noted the state of his face and the blood on his tattered clothes, the smile died and tears filled her eyes. She tugged on the scarves, trying to free herself.

“Who did this?” Kane asked again, and Sophie’s gaze cut to Liane.

Liane swept past Kane and began to untie the scarves. “I had no choice. She was...well, let’s just say it wasn’t safe to leave her unattended when I left her here.”

“She’s naked!” Kane said.

“I didn’t have time to dress her,” Liane said sharply. “I was in a bit of a hurry to get to you.”

Kane sat on the side of the bed as Liane removed the second scarf from Sophie’s wrists. When she was free, Sophie threw her arms around his neck. Gently, and yet hard, as if she couldn’t hold him tightly enough. As he wrapped his arms around her, he knew just how she felt.

No, he wasn’t dead. He was alive, and Sophie was very real. For a long while they just held on to one another. Liane stepped away from the bed, silent and almost shy.

Kane thrust his fingers in Sophie’s hair. “Have you seen Ariana?”

Sophie nodded. “She’s fine. She’s grown so much, as you can imagine. Three weeks,” she whispered. “I never thought I’d go an entire three weeks without seeing her.”

“I know.” He comforted her with his hands and with soft kisses on her cheek.

Liane pulled a chair to the side of the bed and sat. “We need to talk,” she said in a formal voice.

Sophie wrapped herself in a pink sheet and sat beside Kane. Their arms were entwined, their thighs touched. She rested her head on his shoulder.

“In two days ...” Liane took a deep breath, an indication that she was not as calm as she appeared to be. “No, it’s actually less than two days, now. Closer to one and a half. When that time is up Sophie and the emperor will be married.”

“They will not,” Kane replied.

Liane laid her eyes on him. “Some things are beyond my control. You, I can see safely out of the palace. Her,”—she nodded to Sophie—“she stays.”

“If you can get me out of here, you can get her and the baby out, too.”

“He’ll kill me,” Liane said simply, without fire or fear. “I am responsible for getting Sophie ready for her role as empress. If I lose her, Sebestyen will blame me, and he will kill me. Or worse.”

“Come with us,” Kane said as he tightened his arm around Sophie.

Liane shook her head. “I can’t go. I have...things to do here.”

“But—”

“This is my home,” she interrupted. “I’ve lived in this palace longer than I’ve lived out of it.”

It was true. For so many years he’d wondered if she was alive, if he could save her, if everything would one day be the way it had once been.

She was alive, but was not the girl he remembered. He couldn’t save her, it was too late for that. And nothing would ever be the way it had once been.

“I’m not leaving her here,” he insisted.

Liane glanced toward the window. “Fine. Stay. Sophie won’t be the first empress to take a lover. His second wife was quite fond of one of the masters-in-training. Unfortunately they were caught in the act. The empress was dropped into Level Thirteen and the master-in-training was...well, you don’t want to know what Sebesteyen did to him. We’ll be more careful than they were,” Liane said sensibly. A smile crossed her face. “It’s actually perfect. Sebestyen is desperate for an heir, and I suspect he is incapable of producing one on his own. The next emperor will be your child, Kane. You can have Sophie to yourself almost all hours of the day and night. Sebestyen only requires a few hours a day from his wives. Sometimes only a few minutes. Once she’s with child, he’ll likely not need to see her at all, so you’ll have her completely to yourself.”

Kane stood to loom over his sister. “Sophie is not going to marry Sebestyen.”

She gazed up at him. “Yes, she is.”

“I will not share her with another man!”

“You can’t stop it.”

“I can,” Sophie said softly.

“What?” Liane snapped.

Sophie held her head high. Her spine stiffened. “I think I can stop the wedding.”

Sophie wrapped herself in the silk sheet as she stood and gave Liane a list of the supplies she needed. Linara leaves and blooms, preferably fresh. Water and bandages for Kane. Clothes that were not sheer. Soup, again for Kane. Her baby, brought to her for feeding and for comfort.

When that was done, she wanted to be left alone. With her baby; with Kane. She looked at him and smiled, and stroked his unmarked cheek gently. She was afraid to touch the other cheek, the one sporting an ugly gash, afraid she would hurt him more than he had already been hurt.

“Leave us,” Sophie said softly.

Liane reacted to that request. “The potion should have worn off by now,” she said.

“It has,” Sophie said. “For the most part.”

“He is in no condition to—” Liane began.

“I’ll take care of him,” Sophie interrupted.

Liane left the room, and Sophie insisted that Kane lie down on the bed. She touched his face, her fingers barely brushing again the damaged skin. He had come very near death; she could feel it.

It was everything she’d feared, when she’d resisted falling in love. Yes, she might lose Kane, one day. She might lose Ariana; she would one day lose her own life, either in old age or by accident or in battle or in any one of a thousand ways.

But not loving—not living—that was no alternative at all.

“I love you,” she whispered.

Kane took her hand and squeezed it. “I love you, too.”

She unbuttoned his ragged, bloody shirt and removed it gently, wincing at the damage that had been done to him. Could she fix this when she was not carrying a child inside her? Did she have enough power within her to heal the man she loved? In time?

Liane returned with everything Sophie had requested.

Everything but Ariana. Sophie once again asked for her daughter. Her breasts were heavy and it was past time to feed her child. Liane did not want to leave the room when Sophie asked it of her.

And then Sophie commanded, rather than asking, calling upon every ounce of strength she possessed. Reluctantly, Liane left the room. Sophie knew that Liane was still afraid when she heard the lock turn.

She finished undressing Kane, then she bathed him and dressed his wounds. He fell asleep while she ministered to him, and that was just as well. It would be difficult to explain what she was doing. Especially since she didn’t know if it would work or not. She flinched at every cut, every bruise. Those marks of violence hurt her as if they were on her own skin.

Liane brought Ariana to the room, along with a bassinet. While Kane lay upon the bed, covered in that awful pink sheet, Sophie fed Ariana, rocked her to sleep, and laid her in the bassinet.

It was time.

Light came through the window differently, now. It was softer, hinting that soon afternoon would be over and evening would come. This was best done by the light of day. She wasn’t sure how she knew that, but she knew.

Sophie laid the linara leaves and blooms around the bed and across Kane’s body, and then she placed her hands over his heart.

“I wish for you, with all my heart, a prompt healing of this body.”

She waited for the bruises and cuts to disappear, but they didn’t. Her hands began to tremble. Was the healing of his body so much more difficult than the good luck and healing of the mind she had offered him last time? Did she have to be with child in order to be the powerful witch Juliet claimed she had always been?

“Heal now,” she said in a softer voice. Nothing happened. “Please.”

Kane slept on, and the wounds remained. Disheartened, Sophie laid down beside him and wrapped her arms around his battered body.

“I wish I had studied more, the way Isadora suggested, so that I might be a more powerful witch today. If I were more powerful I could fix everything with a wave of my hand.” But of course, life was not so easy. Perhaps it wasn’t meant to be.

She had tried to understand her gift, and perhaps that was beginning to happen. When she'd gone to Shandley and all those women had gotten pregnant—it hadn’t been a day filled with unharnessed lust that left those women with child. Husbands and wives had come together on that day; lovers had sought one another out. It hadn’t been random lust that brought them together, but love.

She had been in the presence of the affected women and men, even if only for a moment or two. On that day, her mind had been on the baby growing inside her and, yes, she’d been thinking of the rebel she had found lying beneath the linara tree. Juliet had said her gift had something to do with out-of-control emotions, and Sophie was just now beginning to understand what that meant.

Her love had spread beyond her body to affect those around her. If she were with child and the emotion she felt was something other than love, would that spread to those in her vicinity in the same way? Would she emit a cloud of emotion that would touch those around her?

She could not recall being truly angry at any time during her pregnancy. What would happen if it was anger that rushed through her instead of love? How would those around her be affected?

“Heal, Kane," she whispered as she laid down beside him and snuggled against his cool body. He needed her warmth. “Heal for me.” She closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.

Kane woke to find that evening had fallen. He slept naked in a soft bed, beneath silky sheets, with an equally naked Sophie curled up beside him.

He lifted his arm, and noted that there was no pain. He and Sophie slept in darkness, so he could not see the bruises on his arm. But they’d certainly been there when he went to sleep.

His face didn’t hurt, either. Maybe Sophie had given him some witch’s potion that took away the pain. He lifted his fingers to his face and felt the place on his cheek where the wound should be.

All he felt was the thin ridge of a scar.

Had he slept for months, losing time the way he had after meeting Sophie by the pond? Was Sophie empress?

He shook her gently. “Wake up, Sophie.”

She moaned and wrapped her arm around him. “Do I have to wake up? I was having the most wonderful dream.”

“Are you married to him?” Kane asked.

Sophie raised up slowly and looked down at him. It seemed as natural as breathing that they were lying there together.

“I’m not married to anyone. What are you...” A touch of moonlight shone through the window, enough so that he could see her smile. She laid her hand on his face. “It worked.”

“What worked?”

“The heartfelt wish of a true and powerful witch,” she whispered.

“You wished for this?”

Sophie nodded. “I wasn’t sure that the spell would work, but it did. It just didn’t work right away, like the wildflowers.”

He touched her face, traced the cheek with his fingers. “So, I’ve fallen in love with a witch whose every wish comes true?”

“Not every wish,” she whispered.

She was thinking of escape, he knew. Wishes and healing were her strengths. Escape was his. “I’ll get us out of here, I promise you.”

“I know you will,” she whispered tentatively.

He threaded his fingers through hers and held on tight. “There’s something I must tell you,” she said, her voice sweet and low, and obviously uncertain. “I don’t want to, but...it wouldn’t be fair of me not to. I only hope you don’t hate me when I’m done.”

“Nothing could ever make me hate you.”

She took a deep breath, as if instilling herself with courage. “I tried so hard not to love you.”

“I know.”

“I didn’t want to love you.”

He reached up and touched her face, and felt a single tear on her soft cheek. “Are you so upset that you won’t live that decadent and unencumbered life you planned?”

“There was a reason for that plan, Kane. There’s a curse; a curse upon the men the Fyne women love. It’s the reason Willym died too young, and the reason my mother never stayed with one man for too long.”

“I don’t believe in curses.”

“I didn’t want to,” she whispered. “Neither did Isadora. We convinced ourselves that the curse was a myth, because it isn’t right that an entire family should be forced to live three hundred years without a true and lasting love.”

“What’s the nature of this curse?”

Sophie touched his hair, gently. “You’ll die,” she whispered. “The records indicate that you won’t live to see thirty years.” She straightened slightly, and her voice grew stronger. “We can separate, and I can try very hard not to love you, and then maybe...”

He drew her down so that she was lying across him. “No. I won’t leave you, and I won’t allow you to leave me. If I know nothing else in this world, I know that I would rather have one year with you than fifty years without you."

“Those are pretty words, Kane, but do you really and truly mean them?”

“Yes.” The feel of her skin on his was so right and beautiful, after days of pain and separation. He wouldn’t give it up, not for anything.

“I might be able to break the curse,” she said, with a touch more of life in her voice. “I am discovering new powers every day, and once I learn how to harness that strength maybe I’ll find a way to undo what a scorned wizard did ages ago. If a wish will heal you, then maybe...just maybe...”

“One problem at a time,” he said. “First we get out of here, then we’ll see what we can do about this curse of yours.”

She nodded, and placed the palm of her hand over his heart. “I have one more wish, Kane, but I can’t make it come true on my own. No spell can give me what I need tonight.”

He would die for her, fight for her. He would give her his heart and his body and his very soul, if she’d have them. “What’s your wish?”

She listed toward him, her hair hiding her face as it fell across her cheek and down to his chest. “Your child, inside me. Now.”

Liane sat on the edge of Sebestyen’s bed and watched him pace. He was restless, more restless than she had ever seen him. She only knew one way to calm him down: She began to unbutton her robe.

He realized immediately what she was doing, and with a lifted hand and a sharp word, he ordered her to stop.

It was her worst fear. Worse even than never having the opportunity to kill him. Worse even than being drugged and thrown into Level Thirteen.

He no longer wanted her.

“I spoke to Father Merryl today,” Sebestyen explained. “He advises that my best hope of siring a child quickly is to abstain for a few days before the wedding night.”

Father Merryl despised Liane and her place in Sebestyen’s life. No doubt he saw this as a way to drive them apart. It was working. “Perhaps we should postpone the wedding,” she suggested.

“No.” His answer was gruff, but certain.

Liane refastened her robe and leaned back on the bed. She still had hopes that Sebestyen might change his mind. He did need her, and he always wanted her. Father Merryl had never been able to keep Sebestyen from her, though no doubt he had tried.

“The girl. Sophie. What are you going to do to her?” she asked.

Sebestyen’s answer was immediate and without emotion of any kind. “Get her pregnant, let her give me a son, and then...I haven’t decided what will come next. I probably should just kill her, I suppose, but then it will be over.” He sighed, as if the end of his vengeance would be painful. “Should I just humiliate her again and again? In front of Sulyen, of course, so the humiliation will be his as well as hers.”

“He is the one you wish to destroy,” Liane said.

“Maybe I should order her to provide entertainment for the next council meeting. In the old days I used to have one or two of the girls and one or two of the Level Three Masters put on an erotic show at the end of the day. Everyone seemed to enjoy it, especially Maddox. Would he enjoy the show so much if his daughter was a participant?”

Liane’s heart constricted. This was the woman her brother loved they were talking about. She should not care . . . “You don’t have to marry Sophie in order to debase her in that way.”

“True. And there are one or two priests remaining who have some scruples about such matters. They might turn a blind eye if the woman on display is a concubine, but if it’s the empress, they’d surely raise a fuss over the matter. I suppose I should just stick with the original plan to get her with child and then kill her after the baby’s born.”

Sophie had at least a few months before she had to worry about her husband trying to eliminate her. Liane suspected Sebestyen would always take pleasure in humiliating Sophie, whether Maddox was around to watch or not. It would be best if the new empress did not become pregnant right away. She’d warn Kane tomorrow that he and his woman must take care. The sooner Sophie gave Sebestyen a child, the sooner she’d be expendable.

“Is she taking to her lessons well?” Sebestyen asked. He moved closer, his movements smooth and quiet as he walked to the bed and looked down at Liane with amusement in his eyes.

“Very well. You’ll be pleased, I imagine.’’ Many men, perhaps most, would certainly not want their wives and lovers trained in the ways of sex by such talented men. But Sebestyen was confident, and with good reason. He was as skilled as the masters, in his own way.

“I’m sure she cleaned up nicely. She was quite pretty even when she was dirty and dressed like a beggar. Will she make a properly elegant empress?”

“Yes. The two of you will make a lovely couple,” Liane said harshly.

Sebestyen smiled. “You’re jealous of her.”

Liane sat up straight. “No, Sebestyen, I am not jealous. I am in need of a man’s attentions, and you have shown me none for days.”

He sat beside her and placed his arm around her shoulders. The mattress dipped, and she fought to keep from rolling against him. “There are men available to you on Level Three, are there not?” he asked casually.

She thought of the way Kane had refused to share the woman he loved; she thought of the way he had looked at Sophie when she’d led him into the room where she waited.

What she had with Sebestyen was exciting, at times. It was pleasure and power and the joy of her planned revenge. But it was empty, compared to what her brother had.

Sebestyen lifted her robe and skimmed his hand along her thigh. “Then again, if you don’t want another man to pleasure you I can always make you quiver without wasting the bodily fluids I’ll need on my wedding day.’’

That was how he thought of her, a meaningless place to deposit his precious bodily fluids. A barren repository. She had wanted so much for him to truly need her, but she’d been fooling herself.

Liane clamped down on Sebestyen’s wrist and pulled his hand away from her body. She tossed that hand aside and straightened the skirt of her robe. And then she held her breath. Men had been killed for less.

But he didn’t looked inclined to kill her. Not yet, anyway. “You’re right of course,” she said calmly. “There are men on Level Three, all of them capable of fulfilling my needs quite well. Would you like to watch? That used to be one of your favorite pastimes, but it’s been a long while since I fucked another man in your bed. Should I ask Vito to join us here? Perhaps you’d prefer to make the trip to Level Three tonight. I have a very comfortable chair in my bedroom.”

His eyes changed in an instant. They went darker, the lids dropped. She couldn’t tell if he was aroused or violently angry. Aroused, most likely.

“Not tonight.” Sebestyen said as he stood. “Perhaps another time. You go ahead, though. Obviously there’s no reason for you to remain here.”

“And tomorrow night?” Liane rose and brushed a wrinkle from her robe.

“I doubt I’ll have need of you tomorrow, either.”

If she told him, here and now, that his bride was in bed with another man, nursing his wounds and planning to cuckold her new husband, there would be no more wedding to worry about, no annoyingly beautiful woman to come between Liane and her emperor. None of the other empresses had been a threat to her. Not like this one would be.

But she didn’t want to see Sophie dead any more than she wanted to see Kane hurt. They belonged together, and she would see that it happened. Somehow. She would do one good thing in her life. No matter what it cost her.

Kane was wonderfully healed, his skin unmarked but for the small scar on his cheek. His strength had returned while he slept. The leg was healed, the bruises almost entirely gone. He made love to her fast and hard, and it was more beautiful than the first time she’d joined with him, more passionate and right. There was an unexpected strength in their lovemaking, as if it were spiritual and earthly at the same time. She exploded beneath him, he shuddered above and inside her. And then he held her in his arms and slept again.

She could not sleep as he did, but she did doze on and off. A short while later, she felt his child quicken in her body. It was what she needed, and what she wanted.

Ariana woke, and Sophie fed her. The baby had once slept through the nights, but they’d been apart and everything had changed. While Sophie fed her daughter, she talked softly about the sister Ariana would have in a few short months. Kane would surely like to have a son, but that was impossible. The Fyne women produced daughters, they birthed witches. It had been that way for hundreds of years.

A few hours passed, and Kane woke her with a wandering hand. This time he made love to her slowly. The child she needed was done; this coming together was for them and them alone. It was for love and pleasure, for all they’d missed and all they had to come.

She climaxed three times. Once when he touched her; twice while he was inside her. Each orgasm was more powerful than the last, and when Kane came with her, that last time, she was so exhausted she fell asleep while his large body was crushing hers, and he was still tucked inside her body.

When she woke he was lying beside her and had his hand in her hair. The sun was coming up; Ariana would be awake soon, and she would need to be fed again.

“What are we going to do?” Kane whispered.

If they escaped, Liane would be killed. Neither of them doubted that. If they stayed, the secrecy of their relationship and the fact that she would be married to another man would eventually tear them apart. They likely wouldn’t last until the child she carried was born.

“I’m going to call the wedding off,” Sophie said, “and then Emperor Sebestyen is going to gladly let me go.”

“It’s a nice plan, Angel, but I don’t think he’s going to release you that easily.” Kane raked his hand through her hair. “I wouldn’t. I won’t.”

“He will.” She turned to face him. By morning’s light she could see the scar. She ran her fingers over the ridge that marred his cheek, and before her eyes the scar diminished. It did not disappear, but the scar was now no more than a thin pale line that would always remind them of a time when they’d almost lost each other.

And the day wasn’t over yet.

“Make love to me again,” she whispered, cocking her leg and draping it over Kane’s hip.

He smiled. “You’re going to have to marry me this time, you know.”

“I know.” She laid her mouth on his and kissed him deeply. And then he was inside her, fast and hard.

When she clenched around Kane and his climax came in time with hers, Sophie allowed one tear to fall.

Juliet woke with a start, coming up off the bed with her pounding heart in her throat. The sun was barely over the horizon; it was Sophie’s time of the day.

She jumped from the bed and ran into Sophie’s room, not sure why she needed to be among her sister’s things at this moment. The room was just as Sophie had left it. The dress she’d been wearing that morning, when she’d come home and found her daughter gone, was still laying across the bed. Isadora wouldn’t even allow Juliet to clean the room, insisting that Sophie would take care of it when she returned.

Isadora refused to believe Juliet when she said Sophie would not step foot in this cabin again. It was rare that Juliet had visions about her sisters, and she never had visions about herself. But this one fact she knew without a doubt.

Juliet sat on the bed and grabbed the dress, clutching it to her chest with one hand and rubbing the soft sleeve over her cheek with the other. In an instant she saw her youngest sister as clearly as if she sat before her. Sophie and Ariana and Kane Varden were together, and they were happy. There were forces that wanted to change that simple fact. Powerful, dark forces.

Sophie was sunshine itself; she should not have to face darkness.

Juliet clutched the dress tighter, wrinkling it in her fists. She’d always tried to protect her sister, as Isadora had. Maybe they’d protected her too staunchly, and for too long. The youngest Fyne sister had learned some tough truths in recent weeks.

Juliet’s eyes rolled up and her heart rate increased. A shaft of knowledge knifed through her body. Sophie was stronger than she had been when she’d left Fyne Mountain. Stronger in heart as well as in body and mind. She was determined; she was discovering the strength of her true power.

All these years, they’d thought Sophie was the least powerful of the three sisters, but that wasn’t true. She had more power than Juliet and Isadora combined, and she had harnessed that power after all these years. She was mighty; she was powerful.

And she was in trouble.