“I did?”
“Yes.” A vigorous shake of brown curls.
“Hunter?”
A silent, far more reserved nod.
“That’s still no excuse to run in and interrupt your father and Alex like a pair of wild dogs,” scolded Brendan from the doorway. Elena’s younger brother and heir was squiring at Port Alain. “Now apologize.”
Two curly heads mumbled something contrite to Jules.
“And to Alex.”
As the boys turned to me and mumbled something else contrite, I ruffled their hair. “I’d be grateful if your father took you riding. I’ve had enough of his company, anyway.”
“I’m sorry.” Brendan sighed. “They’re getting too fast for me.”
“I’m glad you chase after them, not me. Besides,” —I smiled, trying a devious tactic— “we were only gossiping about your future brother-in-law.” At mention of Erich, Brendan’s dark blue eyes, identical to his older sister’s, held a fleeting emotion that snagged my attention. “Jules, why don’t you take the boys, disappear, and leave us in peace?”
With a long-suffering look, Jules allowed the twins to drag him away. As Brendan turned to leave, freed for the afternoon, I caught the sleeve of his light wool tunic.
“Close the door,” I said softly. Intrigued, Brendan shut the heavy carved wooden door and faced me. “You had a peculiar look in your eyes when I mentioned the Duke of Barrow’s Pass.” When Brendan flushed and looked away, I urged, “Brendan, it’s important.”
The young man sank into the chair opposite me. “I don’t like him, Alex. But I don’t know why. And I can’t very well tell my sister that, can I? She adores the ground Erich walks on, and he makes her happy.” He ran his fingers through midnight black hair, staring at his scuffed boots. “And I don’t think he likes me very much either.”
“That’s precisely the problem I have.”
“You?” His handsome face shot up to stare at me in disbelief.
“Anders thinks I’m too imaginative, but from the moment I saw Erich in Ardenna, I felt my skin crawl. No, that’s not quite true. I noticed him at Tucker’s Meadow the morning of the Mage Challenge, and I mistrusted him then. I thought— Listen, Brendan, it’s only a feeling, but I had the impression he supported Charlton Ravess, and I haven’t trusted him since.”
“I thought I was the only one,” Brendan said in open relief. “But I don’t know what to do. Erich’s returning to Barrow’s Pass for a few weeks, and I wanted to send Martin there to sniff round.”
At mention of Martin, Brendan’s man from the capital, I nodded. “I haven’t told Jules how I feel, and I’d rather you didn’t for the moment. Martin just might be my answer. Rosanna suggested I do some digging into Erich’s affairs, but I can’t leave here, not now. Martin won’t be missed from your side if you let it be known that his family needs him. Make up some emergency no one can verify.” I stood and stretched, muscles stiff from sitting cramped in Jules’s armchair. “Rosanna knows about this problem because she knows most everything I fret about. But I’d leave it at that, Brendan. No further than Rosanna and Anders for now.” When he nodded, a small smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, making me wary. “What?”
“Elena told me what you said to Erich about being his Mage Champion. She didn’t see it as an insult,” he added, at my anxious look, “but I do now.” His smile broadened. “I’m glad you told him that.”
I placed a hand on his arm. “What I said to Erich doesn’t apply to you, Brendan. If you ever need my help, you’d better come find me or I’ll hunt you down and dangle you from the highest mast in Port Alain’s harbor.”
He smiled shyly and hugged me. “Somehow I knew you’d say that.”
Couldn’t Rosanna see the truth? I didn’t need Sernyn Keltie. I had family and friends enough, though I’d refused to see it for so very long. My fault, I admit it. But I still didn’t need his guilty apologies.
“Are you all right?” Brendan tugged at my sleeve.
“Yes.” I tossed him a sly grin. “Just don’t tell your sister what I said. She’ll start to worry. I don’t want her to think I’m getting too soft.”
Chapter Four
“Who sent the letter?” Propped against the huge pillows Rosanna kept on the floor by the fireplace in her sitting room, precisely for me, I waited for her answer, never suspecting it had anything to do with me.
Jules’s mother altered her expression to utter blandness as she brushed an invisible speck of dirt from her tunic sleeve, the opened letter lying innocently in her lap.
Instinct screeching, I sat up with a curse. “I don’t want to hear what he has to say.”
“It’s not from him, but about him.” When I sat back and looked away, avoiding the accusation in her eyes, she added, “Your father’s very ill.”
“There are healers in Glynnswood.”
“They can’t help him.”
“And is it his dying wish that I forgive him?” My voice was bitter cold to banish the heartache and grief that had buried itself deep inside for more than a year.
“No.” Her tone was bitter cold to match mine, trying to shame me, and, of course, succeeding. “Sernyn didn’t ask for you. In fact, no one asked for you, Alex. The letter is informative, not an invitation or request to visit.”
Almost tripping in my haste to flee, I stood up, fists clenched tight against my sides. “Yet you expect me to go to Glynnswood.”
“Alex,” she spoke as she sighed, eyes unreadable. “I’m simply telling you what the letter says. I don’t expect you to do anything. In fact, I don’t expect you to do anything intelligent or reasonable where your father is concerned.”
Stung, I slammed the door behind me.
* * * *
“I don’t know why I’m doing this,” I mumbled, settling my poor fretful horse by the side of the road where a small clearing allowed some room to maneuver. Anders and I had followed the road north toward Tuckers Meadow, along the Kieren River, for a day at a slow, steady pace. The turn westward to Glynnswood came, unfortunately, before we reached the vineyards of the Marain Valley. Not that we needed to purchase any of their rich wine. Elena, as promised after the Mage Challenge, kept me well-stocked. Anders and I decided to camp for the night before intruding too deeply into the Glynnswood forest, though one step over the border was too deep for me.
“Because it’s the right thing to do. And it proves that under all that pitiful excuse for a brain, you do have a conscience.” I ignored him, busy rubbing my stiff legs back to normalcy. “Why don’t you start a campfire?” Smug amusement tinged his voice as he unsaddled his horse.
“Why don’t you?”
“If you recall—” He brushed a gloved hand through gray-streaked black hair. “You’re the mage who can change that pile of wood to a respectable campfire. I can only control the fire when it already exists. You forget I’m only a humble—” He dodged the bedroll I threw as I unsaddled my own mount. “Is that part of your fire-making ritual?”
“Listen—” I inched over to where Anders stood clutching my bedroll for meager protection. “I’m only going to say this once. I don’t know why I’m here, but I am. I don’t want to be here, but I am. So don’t make it any more intolerable for me than it already is.”
“Or?”
I stared blankly into cool seagray eyes. “Or?”
“I presumed there’d be a threat behind that statement.”
“Am I that horrid?” I whispered, blinking back sudden tears.
“Alex.” He held me close and stroked my bowed head. “No, of course not. Well, not always,” he teased, trying to soften his words. “I’m sorry. I was only trying to make you laugh because I know how difficult it is for you to be here. That’s—” His body tensed, from head to toe, arms gripping me tight as they spasmed around me.
“What’s wrong?” I stepped back, instinct screaming of danger. “Anders!” I shook him roughly, his face ashen as his body slumped against mine, a bloody arrow in his
back.
A bloody Glynnswood arrow.
Betrayed by flameblast Sernyn Keltie. He betrayed me once as an infant, and betrayed me again as a woman. Quelling the rising panic, I reached for the fire and ice to fight back with magic, but scorching pain and an arrow in my own shoulder destroyed my concentration. I pitched forward against Anders, pulling him with me to the hard ground as I fell.
* * * *
A voice murmured in a soothing tone as I tossed from side to side, words more polite and civilized than I was used to hearing in Port Alain. Glynnswood words, Glynnswood accents. I opened my eyes a narrow slit to face my captor.
“Ah. You are awake.” A gray-haired woman, eyes like Rosanna when they were gentle and not accusing me of ill-bred behavior, was smoothing back the coarse blanket covering me. “Here. You should eat something to get your strength back.” She helped me sit up, mindful of the bandages. “You were fortunate. The wound was not very deep.”
I bit back a vicious oath, wincing against the sharp pain in my shoulder, and closed my eyes, catching my breath. “Anders? My companion?” I tensed, waiting for her answer, afraid the news would be bad.
“He is still feverish, but you were both brought to me in time.” She gestured to the far corner of the darkened room as I opened my eyes. “He is resting there. Now you must care for yourself. Eat.” She picked up a chunk of warm bread, pushing it gently into my hand. “When you feel stronger, we will bring you into the sunlight. You need strength to make the journey home.”
I looked at her with open suspicion. “You’ll let us leave?”
The healer met my skeptical gaze with confusion. “Why would we keep you here against your will?”
“We’re your prisoners.”
“Prisoners?” The woman was indignant, yet trying hard to remain civil. “You are not our prisoners but our guests. Free to come and go as you please once you are well. Why would you think we have taken you captive?” Her eyes flashed almost imperceptibly to the darker side of the room. “Ah. The arrows. Our people did not attack you. Your father—” Bright spots colored her cheeks, and she stared down at her hands.
Not my father, not to me. “What about Sernyn Keltie?”
“Sernyn Keltie promises to find and punish whoever ambushed you and Anders Perrin,” said a soft voice behind me.
I spun around, flinching in pain from the reckless movement. Sernyn Keltie looked no different from my two brief glimpses of him a year earlier, sadness and old grief ever present in haunted deep brown eyes. “You’re not dying.”
His eyes widened at the cold, bitter accusation in my voice. “Should I be?”
“The letter said you were dying.” I flung the coarse wool blankets away to grab my clothes, folded on the low table beside the bed, but the healer firmly, but gently, held me back. “Let me go! Lies, again. A trick to get me here and—”
“I never sent a letter.” Eyes showing clear distress, Sernyn kept his voice even beneath my growing rage.
“Then you asked someone to send word. Lured me here, attacked me, though why that would be necessary, I don’t understand.”
“Hush.” The healer stroked my arms as I started to shiver, the shock and distress doing nothing to help me get well.
But I wanted nothing more from Glynnswood and shook her hands away. “I want—”
“What you want is a clear head to think, something you seldom grace us with, particularly when it comes to your father.”
“Traitor,” I spat at Anders, as he struggled to sit up. Sernyn bolted across the room to help.
Breathing heavily, sweating still from high fever, Anders had the presence of mind to send me a scathing look. “Think, damn it. Why would your father want you hurt, particularly by one of his own people? Don’t be an idiot. Someone who knows he’s alive and precisely how you feel about him used Sernyn to hurt you, physically and emotionally.”
I met Anders’s fevered eyes across the length of the sparsely furnished chamber. Was he right? Had Elena inadvertently told Erich something of my heritage and how I despised Sernyn? There was no other possibility.
“Don’t jump to conclusions,” Anders scolded, leaning gratefully against the pillows Sernyn propped up behind him.
“Then how did Sernyn’s people,” I nearly choked on the name beneath his quiet scrutiny, “know where to find us in the forest?”
Before Anders could speak, Sernyn answered my accusation. “The presence of any stranger to these woods is soon noticed among us. We reached you too late. I am sorry for that. We are responsible for your wounds.”
“No, you’re not.” Annoyed, Anders dismissed him and turned back to me. “You owe your father an apology.”
“Anders, please.” Sernyn placed a hand on his arm, distressed as I slumped down onto the soft mattress and pulled the blankets over my shoulders, turning my back on them all.
Chapter Five
Sernyn kept his distance, and Anders was either too ill or too frustrated to speak to me for most of the next day. “When do you think he’ll be able to travel?” I asked the healer in a low voice as she changed the bandage on my sore shoulder.
“Not for some days.” Her voice betrayed uneasiness. “Master Perrin lost a great amount of blood, and the fever weakened his resistance.”
Lords of the sea, it wasn’t her fault. “I haven’t thanked you for helping us. And any of the others who brought us here.”
She nodded gravely, avoiding my eyes. “I will tell them.”
“Were any of them hurt?”
Surprised at my unexpected concern, she looked up. “No. But I will tell them that you send thanks. Now you must eat again.” Leaving some warm grain bread and hot tea on the table beside the bed, she left us alone.
“Planning to leave me behind?” Before I could threaten that very thing, Anders spoke, his tone brittle. “I don’t think it’s wise. The attack was aimed at you, Elena’s Mage Champion. I’m only a seamage, remember?”
“I can’t stay here.” I winced as sharp pain stabbed through my shoulder, radiating down my back, but determined not to let it stop me from escaping this nightmare as soon as possible.
“Indeed, you can’t.” Anders chuckled to himself. “Why not send word to Jules to have an escort come rescue us?”
“Then word will be out that we were attacked.”
“It doesn’t matter. Whoever’s behind it knows you’re not dead. Unless,” Anders drawled, covering a smile with one hand, “you’d rather hide here for some months.”
“Absolutely not.” I shivered, wrapping the coarse blankets closer around my aching shoulder. “When the healer comes back—”
“You need to walk and get your strength back. Go find her. Or,” he added, trying unsuccessfully to hide another smile behind the edge of the blanket when I stared at him, “your father.”
I stood up with exaggerated caution and held onto the bed frame until the dizzy spell passed. Grabbing my clothes, cleaned and herb-scented, I shrugged into them very gingerly. My boots were impossible. I threw them aside in disgust. Ignoring Anders’s feeble attempt to call me back, I went out barefoot to find the healer, stumbling directly into Sernyn’s arms as I pitched forward, dizzy again.
He brought me inside and set me gently on the soft bed, tucking the blankets around my bare feet. “You should not be outside alone.”
“Afraid I’ll escape?” I asked, looking away to brush nonexistent dirt from my tunic sleeve. “Can we send word to Duke Barlow?” My eyes stayed fixed on the invisible dirt. “If he could send an escort to meet us at the inn—” My voice faltered beneath his quiet scrutiny.
“At the edge of Glynnswood? I will send word immediately. By the time they arrive, Anders should be strong enough to travel.” Sernyn cleared his throat when it was obvious I had nothing further to say. “Will there be anything else you need?” Impeccably polite, as Rosanna had described him so long ago, his tone was distant, hiding grief and guilt behind a guarded barrier. But for his eyes.
I
shook my head like a willful, spoiled child, and then blurted, “Why did you come to Tucker’s Meadow?” From the corner of my eye, I caught Anders’s surprise. I’d never told him Sernyn had appeared on the fringe of the crowd, watching the Mage Challenge. “To see me fail?”
“To see you defeat Charlton Ravess, as I knew you would.” He edged closer to the bed. “I did not know whether my presence would help or hinder you, Alex.”
“It helped in a way that would have shamed you, Master Keltie.” At the unforgiving bitterness in my voice, Sernyn turned to leave, maybe only then realizing his presence at the duel had fueled my rage and desire to annihilate Elena’s enemy, to use my magic in warfare, not peace. Clutching the blankets around my feet, I pulled my knees close to my chest, trying to find the courage to say the one thing I owed him. “I’m sorry about what I said yesterday,” I mumbled so low, hoping he didn’t hear me, and stole a furtive glance in his direction.
But he stopped, slender frame silhouetted in the doorway, and turned grave eyes to meet mine. “Your words yesterday were the only words you ever said about me that were wrong. Anything else you accuse me of, Alex, is justified.”
I swallowed hard and fought back tears. If he was the villain, why was I feeling like a criminal? He didn’t even gloat that I’d come to Glynnswood at news of his alleged illness. “I don’t need you,” I whispered, aware from the corner of my eye that Anders was listening intently. “I never needed you.”
“Alex.” The weight of twenty-six years of grief and heartache centered in my name. “I do not want you to need me. I want you to forgive me.”
“I can’t!” Brushing away stubborn tears like a pathetic, unhappy child, I hid my shaking hands beneath the blankets, bowing my head in utter misery.
“I know.” He came close to the bed and reached out to stroke the top of my head. Before I could pull away, he turned and walked out.
“Alex.”
“Go away.”
“I can’t go away, and I can’t hold you if you’re on the other side of the room.”
Mage Resolution (Book 2) Page 3