Shana Abe Read online

  The winter cold in his eyes did not lighten. “Do you think to seek your nunnery now?”

  She didn’t want to. Avalon knew it right away, as soon as he said it, that the idea of leaving to join a convent had become nothing but dreary and bleak. Endless days, endless routines, solitude, lasting reflection, stoic women, only those thing? for the rest of her life. It had seemed bearable before; at one point it might have even been a welcome respite from the turmoil of London.

  But not today. Today, with this man in front of her—so large and sure of himself, so handsome as to make her even now look away from him before the blush overcame her—the thought of a nunnery was almost worse than anything. And yet it was all she had left herself.

  “There is nothing to stop me from leaving,” she said, trying to make the words real for both of them. “At a convent I may retire in peace.”

  “Oh,” he replied, low. “I thought we had already covered that.”

  It took almost nothing to lean down and kiss her, he was so close already, and she had nowhere to go. His touch was light but commanding, an exploration of the shape of her lips, the softness of her. Avalon took a breath against him and he took it back, hands now firm on her, pulling her to him.

  The passion flared from nowhere, it swirled through her so that her arms wound up around his shoulders, she fell into the solid form of him, she flowed into him and he into her, holding her tight. His hand cupped the nape of her neck, his fingers caressed the curve of her jaw, brushed down to the delicate shape of her throat, her shoulders.

  She was lost, hopelessly lost and didn’t care, as long as Marcus held her and kissed her like this, hard and ruthless now, something deeper and wilder than before.

  “Avalon,” he said against her throat, pressing a kiss there, “I don’t want to argue with you.”

  He was going to win, she realized, because she was unable to stop him, she couldn’t make him stop kissing her, she couldn’t block out the feel of his body against her, hard muscles and rigid lines. The honey of his lips, his mouth, was back, drugging her. She couldn’t help but kiss him back.

  “Please,” she gasped, one last effort, and the roughness of his cheek stung hers, a painful pleasure. “Go away.”

  “I can’t.” He shifted his arms around her. “I can’t.”

  Marcus used his body to take them both down to the ground, cushioning her but not yielding his embrace, until she was flat on the grass and the sky was a dizzying ring of blue above her, framed in jagged stones.

  His weight was something unexpected and alarming, not crushing but holding her completely, taut against her, his leg between hers, his thigh pressing up against a place that filled her with hot desire.

  She turned her head to the side and he followed her there, relentless, using his mouth to torment her, to whisper her name across her cheekbones, down to her ear, back again. There was a rhythm that was taking her against her will, it blossomed in that place where he touched her, it left her short of breath and he began to match it, moving with her, something fiery and hard against her leg, and he shifted down her, his hands on her breasts, skimming them, causing her to arch into him more.

  His hand was farther now, finding her skirts, pulling them up and aside until he caressed her bare skin and she turned toward him, dazed but wanting more of this, craving his touch. His fingers found where his thigh had pressed, the center of her, and Avalon let out a startled sound that he took with his lips and covered as he began to caress her there.

  The honey was inside her now, overpowering her, it was molten flame, suffusing every part of her, and he knew it; she felt his fierce smile against her, his kisses more urgent.

  “Stay with me,” he said, mastering her, and she could only close her eyes and shake her head, the honey made her mute.

  “You will stay.” He slipped a finger inside of her and she let out a sob, pressing into him.

  “You will,” he murmured, “truelove.”

  Everything caught and rose in her, shattered apart in an explosion of clenching pleasure, a storm that left her weak and spent amid the grass.

  The circle of the sky above her burned her eyes now, she had to shut them to block out the light, to hide from its openness.

  Marcus moved his hand, pulling down her skirts again. “You will stay.” He kissed her lips, lightly now. “You belong here, with me.”

  I love you, came the thought, and Avalon didn’t know if it was from her or him or the wind, or just an echo from the chimera.

  Marcus pulled her upright, brushed off the grass and leaves that clung to her as he would do for a child, turning her around until she was neat again, only the flush of her skin telling of something beyond the ordinary. He smoothed her hair back; she felt his fingers in her braid, tucking and weaving, slow and careful.

  When he was done she looked up at him and he down at her, and there was something almost like pain in his eyes.

  “It’s time to sup,” he said, quiet, and then he took her arm and led her back inside the keep.

  Chapter Ten

  The lamp was low on oil, and the flame was beginning to sputter too much for Avalon to decipher the cramped lettering on the ledger she was reviewing.

  “ ‘Seven full-blooded … Angles’?” she read aloud.

  “I believe that is ‘Angus,’ milady.”

  Ellen leaned over Avalon’s shoulder, frowning down at the faded writing. “Of course,” she added hastily, “I cannot be sure.”

  “No, you’re right.” Avalon slumped back in Marcus’s chair and closed her eyes, blocking out the dim yellow light.

  Ellen was Avalon’s personal choice for the role of steward for Sauveur. She was the wife of one of the warriors, and after Avalon’s dramatic show in the bailey, no one dared voice opposition to her choosing a woman for the coveted position.

  Ellen was bright, willing, and enthusiastic. She had an instinctive way of grasping matters at their root, and she could add and subtract large numbers in her head. No one else had come close to being as good. When Avalon told Marcus her choice, he had merely agreed, saying he was sure she knew what she was doing.

  Full-blooded Angles. If only Marcus could see her now, hunched over these papers in his solar in the darkest night with burning eyes and a headache.

  “Go to sleep,” Avalon said to her pupil, who looked up from the ledger in surprise.

  “To sleep? But milady, there is so much to do—”

  “And we have come far in two days, I think. Have you not noticed how quiet it is, Ellen? Everyone else has retired.”

  The other woman looked around at the shadowy room, the guttering lamp. “Nathan!” she exclaimed, standing.

  “Go on,” said Avalon. “Your husband is waiting for you.”

  This was a fact. Nathan seemed to be completely devoted to his wife, and proud that Avalon had picked her from the many volunteers for the stewardship. He had even gone so far as to bring both women their dinners as they worked this evening. That was hours ago now.

  Ellen curtsied and apologized. Avalon waved her away, smiling as Ellen almost ran for the door.

  And Avalon, who had no husband to run to, took a moment of self-indulgence and leaned her forehead on the back of her hand, closing her eyes again.

  Five days ago Marcus had met her in the abandoned gatehouse. Five days ago her entire perspective on the world had changed forever, all because of him. Five days ago Avalon had learned that she could be nothing more than a slave to her own senses, and that the laird of the Kincardines knew it, and knew how to control her with it.

  Humbling, embarrassing, intoxicating. He had touched her and her defenses had been ground to dust—nothing left but him, the desire for him, the hunger for more. He had unearthed a vital element in her that she had not even suspected existed, and he had used it expertly. And Avalon knew he would use it again, if she let him.

  If she wanted him to.

  With one last spark and a hiss, the flame from the lamp died, the last defense a
gainst the darkness. Now the room was lit only by thin moonlight, reflected shine from the clouds outside. She liked it better like this, actually.

  “Oh, go to sleep,” she said to herself, stretching.

  The tiny room they kept her in had long ago lost its slight appeal. It wasn’t that it was ill kept or too plain. Putting the pallet under the window helped fight the old feelings she always got from unbroken darkness, and she invariably left at least one lamp lit for the night. Yet it never seemed like enough.

  She was fortunate to have a private room at all, and she knew it. But lately she had been thinking of another room in this castle, one she had not yet seen. Lately, as in the past five days.

  What did the room where Marcus slept look like? What view did it have? What colors were the blankets on his bed?

  Avalon stood up, disgusted at herself. Impossible thoughts, crazed dreams, to consider these things—

  As she pushed away from the desk her sleeve brushed against a stack of papers, toppling them in a whoosh, an avalanche of flutters down to the carpeted floor.

  “Splendid,” she muttered, and bent down to gather them up.

  Her hands scooped up the pages on top, pushed them together in a pile and left them on the floor, too tired suddenly to sort them out. Then she picked up the odd bits and pieces that had drifted off to the corners. The last one was almost in the fireplace, now thankfully nothing more than embers.

  Avalon studied it—a leaf torn from one of the books, she thought—and brushed loose the ash on it as she walked through a patch of moonlight. The silver light glanced over the words written there, slanting black handwriting, sloppy, broad strokes. Hanoch’s writing, she knew it well now. Hanoch’s words:

  Keith MacFarland arranged the meeting. MacFarland delivered payment, claimed no other knowledge. Pict leader was Kerr. Price was one gold shilling per head. Fifty shillings for the baron. Twenty for the girl. To be paid only when finished. Coinage was French. d’Farouche paid in full to Aelfric, son of Kerr.

  Avalon stared down at the words, reading them again until their meaning penetrated.

  Hanoch had discovered who bought the Picts. Hanoch had known. He had found this MacFarland person and got the information and here was the proof, finally, that Bryce had killed her father. Proof!

  “Awake, lady?”

  Avalon jumped and clutched the paper to her chest, whirling around as her other arm swung out, ready to defend or attack. Balthazar stood right behind her. He lifted up his hands and took a step back.

  “Easy, lady, you are safe.”

  She stared up at him, still holding the paper against her pounding heart, her other hand a fist.

  “I beg you not to harm me,” said the wizard, bowing low. “I implore your forgiveness for arriving so.”

  It was a gentle teasing, designed to ease her, and it worked, letting her fingers loosen, bringing her hand down to her side.

  “You startled me,” she reproached him.

  “Alack. I am unworthy of your forgiveness, you know me clearly.”

  “You walk like a cat,” Avalon grumbled.

  “A lowly cat, a stray, a mongrel, I grovel before you, lady—”

  “Do stop.” She walked away from him, over to the desk, slipping Hanoch’s note into the folds of the tartan at her waist when her back was to him. She turned around to find him motionless, watching her, a wraith in robes in the moonlight.

  “You do have such a flair to you, for a monk,” she said to him.

  “I am not a monk. I beg your pardon.”

  She stared at him, baffled. “But you said you were, to those men, the emissaries.”

  “Wise lady, I urge you to think back. What I said was that I joined the Monastery of Saint Simeon.”

  “To be a monk,” she concluded.

  “No longer. I am no longer a monk. I renounced my vows before I came here.”

  Avalon laughed a little in spite of herself, marveling. “You might have lied to them, but you didn’t, did you? You told them the truth, and let them draw their own conclusions.”

  The wizard folded his hands inside his sleeves and gave her a look from twinkling eyes.

  “And you carry the image of the crucifixion on you, but you have renounced your vows.…”

  It struck her suddenly that this was not funny, that it was a grave thing for a man to go back on his word, for a man of God to turn his back on his order. She knew then that the wizard had not done this with a light heart, that it had taken something devastating to change him.

  “I’m sorry,” she began, mortified, “it’s none of my concern. I hope you can—”

  “Shhh!” The wizard interrupted her, put his finger to his lips. “Listen, lady! Do you hear?”

  Avalon froze, became as still as she knew how to be, but all she heard were crickets and a slow breeze through the trees outside. And the smallest, smallest sound of the embers dying in the grate.

  “What?” she whispered, locked in place. “I don’t hear—”

  “A dream, lady. It is with us.”

  “A dream?”

  Balthazar spread his arms wide; the robes opened up like the wings of a bat in the darkness, his fingers splayed. “Oh, he has dreams, do you hear them?”

  Her fear was back, worse than when he had startled her, sending the blood rushing to her head. “No, how could I—”

  “Listen!” commanded the wizard, and the bat wings grew wider, engulfing the room, engulfing her.

  She was hot, terribly hot, and thirsty. The thirst was killing her, like nothing she had felt before; it was a hideous beast, a monster in her that dwarfed even the chimera. The thirst was all of her, it plucked the desert sun from the sky and lodged it in her throat. Her tongue was parched to the roof of her mouth, her lungs were sand, bags of sand, like the ones the nomads carried, but loose, punctured, and the sand ran all through her, soaked up her blood and turned it bleached gold, the color of old bones.

  She labored to breathe through the sand, but each breath sucked in the dry air and strengthened the monster thirst. There was nothing else around her, only this, an enduring agony, where even the thought of water made the monster howl and dig in deeper, clawing her, shredding her.

  Oh God, what was happening to her? Avalon put her hand up to her eyes to shield them from the bright sun, but that wasn’t right, because it was night outside, she knew this, it was nighttime and the moonlight had been so shallow. But the sun burned her hand, unprotected where it left the sleeve of her robes, even for that short moment it scorched her skin and she had to bring her hand down, feeling in front of her for the table in the solar—but it was not here.

  Listen! shouted the wizard and the chimera together, and now she heard the wind outside, a sandstorm pounding the walls, seeping into the room, crisping her lungs further.

  She stumbled forward, ducking her head; she had to leave this place, she had to escape, she had to find water.

  The buttery. There would be water there. No, better yet, her room—it was closer. There was a pitcher of it waiting for her there.

  She fell against the wall of the hallway. The sandstorm was louder now and she was still blinded, feeling her way along the stone wall. The stones were hot from the sun, they could not be cool as they should be because the sun never stopped here, the sun would burn them all to ashes, even the stone. All the water in the world had boiled away by now, there was nothing left.

  Avalon folded both hands over her face, heedless of the pain of her burned skin, and tried to run, to find shelter. There was no water, what was her recourse? Why couldn’t she die? Why didn’t they just kill her?

  When she lifted her hands from her face she was lost, somewhere she did not know, a cramped room with layers of sand on the floor, and there was a man tied down to a table. He was red and brown and black, his lips were the monster of thirst, even the blood had dried to a crust on them. His hair was matted and dirty, a wild beard covered his chin.

  She couldn’t move from the table, the
ropes were too tight on her, she had no more strength to fight them so why didn’t they just kill her? Why suffer like this?

  Death was paradise, denied to her.

  A drop of something hit her lips, trickled back to her tongue, and was gone before she could taste it, soaked into her mouth.

  “More?” asked a gentle voice in a language she didn’t know, but she knew what it meant, that one word. It meant water.

  Yes! she tried to scream, but nothing came out, not a word, not a whimper. She couldn’t even move her head, her forehead was tied down to the table. The ropes cut into her, more bleeding.

  “Yes!” called out Marcus on the huge bed, tossing and turning where she could not, becoming tangled in the furs, the blankets.

  Sand blew through the chinks in the white walls. Sand embellished the dark wood of the crucifix hanging over the table, obscuring the crown of thorns on Christ’s head.

  “Renounce,” said the same strange, gentle voice in its own language, and if she could have freed her tongue from the desert dryness Avalon would have babbled her agreement, Yes, yes, I will, whatever you say, only give me more water.…

  Marcus flung his hands out, moaned in his sleep. The moonlight fell only across his face, showing her his scowl, his hair not matted, no beard. There was no sand in this room.

  Avalon looked around again, closer. There was no sand. There was no sun. No voice, no crucifix. It was still nighttime. She was at Sauveur, and this must be, had to be the rooms of the laird.

  “My God,” whispered Marcus in his sleep, and his body was almost bowed up, arching in torment or pain from the nightmare that gripped him.

  Avalon stood with her hand braced on the wall by the door—cold stone, no heat—heaving for air, still trying to accept where she was.

  There was a pitcher on the table across the room. The pitcher would have water.

  She let go of the wall and almost ran to it, almost cried at the sight of the still reflection of the moon on the surface of the blessed water.

  With shaking hands she poured some into a mug, and she had never heard a happier sound: the liquid splashing into the bottom of the glazed mug. She put the pitcher down and drained the mug at once, letting it spill down the sides of her face, joyous water.