HERE WAS HER wolf, and she thrilled to see him.
He fought with an icy focus and relentless strength that Aurora admired and respected—and envied. The skill, yes, the skill of a warrior was there, but it was enhanced by that cold-blooded, cold-eyed style that told her he would accept death or mete it out with equal dispatch.
The faerie was old, it was true, but a faerie nonetheless. Such creatures were not vanquished easily.
She could see the sweat of effort gleaming on Thane’s face, and how it dampened his shirt. And she saw the blood that seeped onto the cloth from the wounds on his back, still fresh from a lashing.
How could a man wield a sword with such great talent and allow himself to be flogged?
And why had he watched the feasting through the spy hole? It was his gaze she had sensed on her. And his essence she had sensed there. His, and that of the old graybeard he battled now.
Even as she puzzled it over, two columns of smoke spiraled on either side of Thane. And became armed warriors. He blocked the sword of the one on his right and spun away from the sword of the one on his left as it whizzed through the air.
Raising her own, Aurora leapt. She cleaved her blade through one of the warriors and vanished it back to smoke. “Foul play, old one.” She pivoted, and would have struck Kern down if Thane hadn’t crossed swords with her.
“At your back,” she snapped out, but the warrior was smoke again with a wave of Kern’s hand.
“Lady,” the faerie said with an undeniable chuckle, “you mistake us. I only help my young friend with his training.” To prove it, Kern lowered his sword and bowed.
“Why am I dreaming?” Thane demanded. He was out of breath as he hadn’t been during the bout, and the surging of his blood had nothing to do with swordplay. “What test is this?”
“You are not dreaming,” Kern assured him.
“She’s not real. I’ve seen her now, in flesh. And this is the vision, not the woman.” Love, lust, longing knotted inside him so that he fought to ice his words with annoyance. “And neither holds interest for me any longer.”
“I’m as real as you,” Aurora tossed back, then sheathing her sword, she twisted her lips into a sneer. “You fight well. For a groveling stableboy. And your sword would be all that interests me, if I believed you’d gather the courage and wit to use it on something more than smoke.”
“So, no vision, then, but the simpering, swooning female.” He lifted the cape she’d tossed aside when she leapt to his defense. With a mocking bow, he held it out. “Go back to your feather bed, else you catch a chill.”
“I’m chilled enough from you.” She knocked his hand aside and turned on Kern. “Why haven’t you treated his wounds?”
“He doesn’t wish it.”
“Ah, he’s stupid, then.” She inclined her head toward Thane again. “Whether you are stupid or not, I regret you were beaten on my account.”
“It’s nothing to do with you.” Because the beating still shamed him, he rammed his sword back into its sheath. “It’s not safe for a woman alone beyond the walls. Kern will show you the way back.”
“I found my way out, I can find my way back. I’m not some helpless female,” she said impatiently. “You of all men should know—”
“I do not know you,” Thane said dully.
She absorbed the blow to her heart. They stood in the dappled moonlight, with only the call of an owl and the rushing of a stream over rocks to break the silence between them.
Even knowing the risk of mediation, Kern stepped up, laying a hand on Thane’s shoulder, the other on Aurora’s. “Children,” he began brightly.
“We’re not children any longer. Are we, lady? Not children splashing in rivers, running through the forest.” It scored his heart to remember it, to remember the joy and pleasure, the simple comfort of those times with her. To know they were ended forever. “Not children taking innocent pleasure in each other’s company.”
She shook her head, and thought how she had lain with him, in love, in visions. Him and no other. “I wonder,” she said after a moment, “why we need to hurt each other this way. Why we strike out where we once—where we always reached out. And I fear you’re right. You don’t know me, nor I you. But I know you’re the son of a warrior, you have noble blood. Why do you sleep in the stables?”
“Why do you smile at Lorcan, dance with Owen, then wander the night with a sword?”
She only smiled. “It’s not safe for a woman alone beyond the walls.” There was, for just an instant, a glint of humor in his eyes. “You watched me dance.”
He cursed himself for speaking of it. Now she knew of the spy hole as well as the tunnels. And one word to Owen . . . “If you wish to make amends for the beating, you won’t speak of seeing me here.”
“I have no reason to speak of you at all,” she said coolly. “I was told faeries no longer bided near the city.”
At her comment Kern shrugged. “We bide where we will, lady, even under Lorcan’s reign. Here is my place, and he is my charge.”
“I am no one’s charge. Are you a witch?” Thane demanded.
“A witch is one of what I am.” He looked so angry and frustrated. How she longed to stroke her finger over the lightning-bolt scar above his eye. “Do you fear witchcraft, Thane of the stables?”
Those eyes fired at the insult, as she’d hoped. “I don’t fear you.”
“Why should an armed man and his faerie guard fear a lone witch?”
“Leave us,” Thane demanded of Kern, and his gaze stayed locked on Aurora’s face.
“As you wish.” Kern bowed deeply, then disappeared.
“Why are you here?”
“Prince Owen needs a wife. Why shouldn’t it be me?”
He had to choke down a rage, bubbling black, at the thought of it. “Whatever you are, you’re not like the others.”
“Why? Because I walk alone at night in the Black Forest, where wild beasts are said to roam?”
“You’re not like the others. I know you. I do know you, or what you were once.” He had to curl his hand into a fist to keep from touching her. “I’ve seen you in my dreams. I’ve tasted your mouth. I’ll taste it again.”
“In your dreams perhaps you will. But I don’t give my kisses to cowards who fight only smoke.”
She turned, and was both surprised and aroused when he gripped her arm and dragged her around. “I’ll taste it again,” he repeated.
Even as he yanked her close, she had the point of her dagger at his throat. “You’re slow.” She all but purred it. “Release me. I don’t wish to slit your throat for so small an offense.”
He eased back and, when she lowered the dagger, moved like lightning. He wrested the dagger from her hand, kicked her feet out from under her before she could draw her sword. The force of the fall knocked the wind out of her, and she was pinned under him before she could draw a breath.
“You’re rash,” he told her, “to trust an enemy.”
She had to swallow the joy, and the laugh. They’d wrestled like this before, when there had been only love and innocence between them. Here was her man, after all.
“You’re right. The likes of you would have no honor.”
With the same cold look in his eyes that she’d seen when he fought, he dragged her arms over her head. She felt the first licks of real fear, but even that she held tight. No groveling stableboy could make her fear. “I will taste you again. I will take something. There has to be something.”
She didn’t struggle. He’d wanted her to, wanted her to spit and buck and fight him so he wouldn’t have to think. For one blessed moment, not to think but only feel. But she went still as stone when he crushed his lips to hers.
Her taste was the same, the same as he’d imagined, remembered, wished. Hot and strong and sweet. So he couldn’t think, after all, but simply sank into the blessed relief of her. And all the aches and misery, the rage and the despair, washed out of him in the flood of her.
She didn’t fight him, as she knew she wouldn’t win with force. She remained still, knowing that a man wanted response—heat, anger or acquiescence, but not indifference.
She didn’t fight him, but she began to fight herself as his mouth stirred her needs, as the weight of his body on hers brought back wisps of memories.
She’d never really been with a man, but only with him in visions, in dreams. She had wanted no man but him, for the whole of her life. But what she’d found wasn’t the wolf she’d known, nor the coward she thought she’d found. It was a bitter and haunted man.
Still, her heart thundered, her skin trembled, and beneath his, her mouth opened and offered. She heard him speak, one word, in the oldest tongue of Twylia. The desperation in his voice, the pain and the longing in it made her heart weep.
The word was “Beloved.”
He eased up to look at her. There was a tear on her cheek, and more in her eyes where the moonlight struck them. He closed his own eyes and rolled onto his bloody back.
“I’ve lived with horses too long, and forget how to be a man.”
She was shaken to the bone from her feelings, from her needs, from the loss. “Yes, you forget to be a man.” As she had forgotten to be a queen. “But we’ll blame this on the night, on the strangeness of it.” She got to her feet, walked over to pick up her dagger. “I think perhaps this is some sort of test, for both of us. I’ve loved you as long as I remember.”
He looked at her, into her, and for one moment that was all there was, the love between them. It shimmered, wide and deep as the Sea of Wonders. But in the next moment the heavy hand of duty took over.
“If things were different . . .” Her vision blurred—not with magicks but with a woman’s tears. It was the queen who forced them back, and denied herself the comfort. “But they aren’t, and this can’t be between us, Thane, for there’s more at stake. Yet I have such longing for you, as I have always. Whatever’s changed, that never will.”
“We’re not what we were in visions, Aurora. Don’t seek me in them, for I won’t come to you. We live as we live in the world.”
She crouched beside him, brushed the hair from his brow. “Why won’t you fight? You have a warrior’s skill. You could leave this place, join the rebels and make something of yourself. Why raise a pitchfork in the stables when you can raise a sword against an enemy? I see more in you than what they’ve made you.”
And want more of you, she thought. So much more of you.
“You speak of treason.” His voice was colorless in the dark.
“I speak of hope, of right. Have you no beliefs in the world, Thane? None of yourself?”
“I do what I’m fated to do. No more, no less.” He moved away from her and sat, staring into the thick shadows. “You should not be here, my lady. Owen would never select a wife bold enough to roam the forest alone, or one who would permit a stable hand to take . . . liberties.”
“And if he selects me, what will you do?”
“Do you taunt me?” He sprang to his feet, and she saw what she’d hoped to see in his face. The strength and the fury. “Does it amuse you to find that I could pine for one who would offer herself to another like a sweetmeat on a platter?”
“If you were a man, you would take me—then it would be done.” If you would take me, she thought, perhaps things would be different after all.
“Simply said when you have nothing to lose.”
“Is your life so precious you won’t risk it to take what belongs to you? To stand for yourself and your world?”
He looked at her, the beauty of her face and the purpose that lit it like a hundred candles glowing from within her. “Yes, life is precious. Precious enough that I would debase myself day after day to preserve it. Your place isn’t here. Go back before you’re missed.”
“I’ll go, but this isn’t done.” She reached out, touched his cheek. “You needn’t worry. I won’t tell Owen or Lorcan about the tunnels or the spy hole. I’ll do nothing to take away your small pleasures or to bring you harm. I swear it.”
His face went to stone as he stepped back, and he executed a mocking little bow. “Thank you, my lady, for your indulgence.”
Her head snapped back as if he’d slapped her. “It’s all I can give you.” She hurried back to the tunnel and left him alone.
She slept poorly and watched the dawn rise in mists. In that half-light, Aurora took the globe out of its box, held it in the palm of her hand.
“Show me,” she ordered, and waited while the sphere shimmered with colors, with shapes.
She saw the ballroom filled with people, heard the music and the gaiety of a masque. Lorcan slithered among the guests, a serpent in royal robes with his son and heir strutting in his wake. The black wolf prowled among them like a tame dog. Though his eyes were green and fierce, he kept his head lowered and kept to heel. Aurora saw the thick and bloody collar that choked his neck.
She saw Brynn chained to the throne with her daughter bound at her feet, and the ghost of another girl weeping behind a wall of glass.
And through the sounds of lutes and harps she heard the calls and cries of the people shut outside the castle. Pleas for mercy, for food, for salvation.
She was robed in regal red. the sword she raised shot hot white light from its killing point. As she whirled toward Lorcan, bent on vengeance, the world erupted. The battle raged—the clash of steel, the screams of the dying. She heard the hawk cry as an arrow pierced its heart. The dragon folded its black wings and sank into a pool of blood.
Flames sprang up at her feet, ate up her body until she was a pillar of fire.
And while she burned, Lorcan smiled, and the black wolf licked his hand.
Failure and death, she thought as the globe went black as pitch in her hand. Had she come all this way to be told her sword would not stand against Lorcan? Her friends would die, the battle would be lost, and she would be burned as a witch while Lorcan continued to rule—with the man she loved as little more than his cowed pet.
She could turn this aside, Aurora thought returning the globe to its box. She could go back to the hills and live as she always had. Free, as the Travelers were free. Content, with only her dreams to plague or stir her.
For life was precious. She rubbed the chill from her arms as she watched the last star wink out over Sorcerer’s Mountain. Thane was right, life was precious. But she couldn’t, wouldn’t, turn away. For more precious than life was hope. And more precious than both was honor.
She woke Cyra and Rhiann to help her garb herself in the robes of a lady. She would wear the mask another day.
“Why don’t you tell her?” Kern sat on a barrel eating a windfall apple while Thane fed the horses.
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“Don’t you think the lady would be interested in what you are, what you’re doing. Or more what you don’t?”
“She looks for heroes and warriors, as females do. She won’t find one in me.”
“She . . .” With a secret little smile, Kern munched his apple. “Does not seem an ordinary female. Don’t you wonder?”
Thane dumped oats in a trough. “I can’t afford to wonder. I put enough at risk last night because my blood was up. If she chatters about the tunnels, or what passed between us—”
“Does the lady strike you as a chatterbox?”
“No.” Thane rested his brow on a mare’s neck. “She is glorious. More than my dreams of her. Full of fire and beauty—and more, of truth. She won’t speak of it, as she said she wouldn’t. I wish I’d never seen her, touched her. Now that I have, every hour of the rest of my life is pain. If Owen chooses her . . .”
He set his teeth against a flood of black rage. “How can I stay and watch them together? How can I go when I’m shackled here?”
“The time will come to break the shackles.”
“So you always say.” Thane straightened, moved to the next stall. “But the years pass, one the same as the other.”
“The True One comes, Thane.”
“The True One.” With a mirthless laugh, he hauled up buckets of water. “A myth, a shadow, to coat the blisters of Lorcan’s rule with false hope. The only truth is the sword, and one day my hand will be free to use it.”
“A sword will break your shackles, Thane, but it isn’t steel that will free the world. It is the midnight star.” Kern hopped off the barrel and laid a hand on Thane’s arm. “Take some joy before that day, or you’ll never really be free.”
“I’ll have joy enough when Lorcan’s blood is on my sword.”
Kern shook his head. “There’s a storm coming, and you will ride it. But it will be your choice if you ride it alone.”
Kern flicked his wrist, and a glossy red apple appeared in his hand. With a merry grin, he tossed it to Thane, then vanished.
Thane bit into the apple, and the taste that flooded his mouth made him think of Aurora. He offered the rest to a greedy gelding.
Alone, he reminded himself, was best.