by Nora Roberts
best be soon.”
“Come, then, let me tend your wounds.”
“No,” Thane rolled his shoulders, welcomed the pain. “It reminds me. I have work.”
“When it’s done, meet me. It’s time to practice.”
FINGERTIP to fingertip, Aurora circled with Owen in a dance. The music was lively, and pleased her a great deal more than her partner. But he couldn’t have known of her displeasure as she smiled at him and sent him a laughing glance over her shoulder when the set parted them.
When the music brought them together again, he stroked his thumb over her knuckles. “The king has favored you.”
“I am honored. I see much of him in you, my lord.”
“When it’s my time to rule, I will outreach him.” His fingers squeezed hers. “And I will demand much more of my queen than he of his.”
“And what does your father demand of his queen?”
“Little more than obedience.” He looked over to where Brynn sat, like a statue, with her women. “A comely face, a bowed head, and two pale daughters will not be enough for me.”
“Two?”
“Dira is the youngest of Brynn’s whelps. There was another, but she was killed by wild beasts in the Black Forest.”
“Wild beasts!” Though she couldn’t manage a squeal, Aurora clasped a hand to her breast.
“Do not fear, my lady.” He smirked. “There are no beasts in the city—none that walk on four legs.”
The figures of the dance parted them again, and Aurora executed her turns, her curtsies, and counted the beats impatiently until she faced Owen once more. With her head saucily angled, she stared into his eyes. “And what would be enough for you, my lord, for a queen?”
“Passion. Fire. Sons.”
“There must be fire in bed to get sons.” She lowered her voice, and spoke with her face close to his. “I would burn to be the mother of kings.”
Then she stepped back, dipped low as the dance ended.
“Walk with me.”
“With pleasure, sir. But I must have my woman with me, as is proper.”
“Do you do only what is proper?”
“A queen would, when eyes are on her.”
He lifted a brow in approval. “A brain as well as beauty. Bring her, then.”
Aurora put her hand in his and gestured carelessly with the other so Cyra followed them out onto the terrace. “I like the sea,” she began, looking out over the cliffs. “The sounds and the smells of it. It’s a wall to the back, protection from enemies. But it’s also passion, and possibilities. Do you believe there are worlds beyond the world, my lord prince?”
“Tales for children.”
“If there were, a king could rule them all, and the sons of such a king would be gods. Even Draco would bow.”
“Draco’s power is weak, so he sulks in his cave. This”—Owen laid a hand on the hilt of his sword—“this is power.”
“A man’s power is in his sword and arm, a woman’s is in her mind and womb.”
“And her heart?” Now he laid a hand on her breast.
Though her skin crawled, she smiled easily. “Not if she gives that heart away.” She touched her fingers lightly to his wrist, then eased away. “If I were to do so, my lord, to offer you my heart and my body, my value to you would diminish. A prize easily taken is little prize at all. So I will bid you good night, and hope you consider what I hold to be worth the winning.”
“You would leave me with so many choices?” He gestured toward the women in the banquet hall as Aurora moved away.
“So you will see them . . . but think of me.” She left him with a laugh, then turned to a mumbled oath when she was certain she was out of earshot.
“Empty-headed, fat-fingered toad! He’s a man who thinks first with the lance between his legs. Well, there is little warrior in him. I’ve learned that much at least. Cyra, I need you to talk with the other women, find out all you can about the queen and her daughters. What are they in this puzzle?”
She cut herself off as they walked past guards and began to talk brightly of the feasting and dancing until she was back in her chambers.
“Rhiann.” She let out a huge sigh. “Help me out of this gown. How do women of court bear the weight every day? I need the black tunic.”
“You’re going out again?”
“Yes. I felt eyes on me when I was at banquet. Eyes from above. Gwayne said there was a spy hole next to the minstrel’s gallery. I want a look. Would Lorcan station guards there during a feast? He seems too sure of himself to bother.”
No, it had not been guards watching her, Aurora knew. It had been the grass-green eyes of her wolf. She needed to learn why he’d been there.
“And I need to see how the castle is protected during the night.” She pulled on her tunic. “I have enough magic to go unnoticed if need be. Did you learn anything of use?” she asked as she strapped on her sword.
“I learned that Owen went back and beat the stable hand after all.”
Aurora’s mouth tightened. “I’m sorry for it.”
“And that the stable hand is Thane, son of Brynn, whom Lorcan took as queen.”
Aurora’s hands paused in the act of braiding her hair, and her eyes met Rhiann’s in the glass. “Brynn’s son is cast to the stables? And remains there? His father was a warrior who died in battle beside mine. His mother was my own mother’s handmaid. Yet their son grovels at Owen’s feet and grooms horses.”
“He was not yet four when Lorcan took the throne. Only a child.”
“He is not a child today.” She swirled on her cloak, drew up the hood. “Stay inside,” she ordered.
She slipped out of the chamber, moved silently down the corridors toward the stairs. She drew on her magic to bring smoke into the air, blunt the guards’ senses as she hurried by them.
She dashed up to the minstrel’s gallery and found the mechanism Gwayne had described for her to open the secret room beside it. Once inside, she approached the spy hole and looked down at the hall.
It was nearly empty now, and servants were beginning to clear the remnants of the feast. The queen had retired, and all but the boldest ladies had followed suit. The laughter had taken on a raucous edge. She saw one of the courtiers slide his hand under the bodice of a woman’s gown and fondle her breast.
She hadn’t been sheltered from the ways of men and women. The Travelers could be earthy, but there was always a respect and good nature. This, she thought, had neither.
She turned away from it, and focused instead on the essence of what had been in the room before her.
One that was human, she thought, and one that was not. Man and faerie-folk. But what had been their purpose?
To find out, she followed the trail of that essence from the room and out of the castle. Into the night.
There were guards posted on walls, at the gates, but to Aurora’s eyes they looked sleepy and dull. Even two hundred good men, she calculated, could take the castle if it was done swiftly and with help from inside. As she worked her way along the wall, she heard the snores of a guard sleeping on duty.
Lorcan, she thought, took much for granted.
She looked toward the south gate. It was there that Gwayne had fled with the queen on the night of the battle. Many brave men had lost their lives so that her mother could escape, so that she could be born.
She would not forget it. And she would take nothing for granted.
Her senses drew her toward the stables. She smelled the horses, heard them shifting in their stalls as she approached. Though she scented man as well—sweat and blood—she knew she wouldn’t find him there.
She stopped to stroke her horse’s nose, to inspect the stall, and others. Whatever Thane was, he did his job here well. And lived poorly, she noted as she studied the tiny room that held his bedding, the stub of a candle, and a trunk of rough clothes.
Following the diagram in her mind, she searched the floor for the trapdoor that led to the tunnels below the st
ables. One channel ran to the sea, she remembered, the other to the forest.
It would be a good route to bring in her soldiers, to have them take the castle from the inside. If Lorcan hadn’t found it and destroyed it.
But when she opened the door, she felt the air stir. Taking the candle stub, she lit the wick and let its wavery light guide her down the rough steps.
She could hear the roar of the sea, and though she was tempted to take that channel, just to stand by the water, to breathe it in, she turned toward the second path.
She would have Gwayne bring the men through the forest, split into companies. Some to take the walls, others to take the tunnels. Attack the walls first, she calculated, drawing Lorcan’s forces there while the second wave came in from under—and behind.
Before he could turn and brace for the second assault, they would run him over. And it would be done.
She prayed that it could be done, and that she would not be sending good men to their deaths for nothing.
She moved slowly through the dark. The low ceiling made it impossible to stand upright, and she could imagine the strain of a man making the same trek in full armor.
And it would be done not after a night of feasting and dancing but after a hard march from the hills, through the forest, with the knowledge that death could wait at the end of the journey.
She was asking this of her people, and asking that they trust the fates that she would be worthy of their sacrifice. That she would be a worthy queen.
She stopped, bracing her back against the wall of stone and dirt as her heart ached. She would wish with every ounce of her blood that it was not so. That she was only an ordinary woman and could leap onto her horse and ride with the Travelers again, as she had always done. She would wish that she could hunt and laugh, love a man and bear his children. Live a life that she understood.
But to wish it was to wish against the fates, to diminish the sacrifices her parents had made, and to turn her back on those who prayed for the True One to come and bring them back into light.
So she lifted her candle again and headed down the tunnel to plot out her strategy.
When she heard the clash of steel, she drew her own sword. Snuffing out the candle, she set it down and moved soft as a cat toward the narrow opening.
She could see them battling in the moonlight, the young man and the old. And neither noticed as she boosted herself out of the tunnel and crouched on the floor of the forest.
5
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?”