Yes, I have tested it extensively.
She sighed, let tension and hurt, guilt and anxiety spiral from her as she concentrated on thinking instead of feeling. I haven’t missed any energy I use to power it.
Good. You will start your practice with the stridebeasts?
Yes, with one, tomorrow night—ah, tonight, Cana, the smallest female. And see if my armor will protect her the whole night.
Draeg may notice that.
She bit her lip. Then I will have to think on this.
You are not ready to trust him.
With her body and with her animals, but this secret new to her? Shouldn’t she want to trust him with everything now they were lovers? Probably.
I want to cherish the secret of my primary Flair, and keep it between us. It’s special knowledge and a prize. Also, I have known him for too short a time. Yet she’d made him her lover. Had great respect and affection for him.
He is trustworthy in matters of the care of the animals.
Lori wondered at Baccat’s phrasing, then sank into a light doze, though sharp and angular bits and pieces of the day poked at her. The stipulation, she whispered down her continuing link with her Fam. He purred and she could nearly feel the vibration comforting her body as well as her mind.
Which stipulation? Baccat asked.
The one the Sallows demanded of us, the Yew Family, that if we do not treat the horses well for a month, they shall be returned to the Sallows. I don’t like breaking a promise that the Family gave. Is it possible to stop by the Sallows’ on the way out of town? Is their estate anywhere on the way?
Call upon the Sallows when we leave in the middle of the night? And would you trust them not to stop you?
Very good questions. I don’t know. But it is troubling to me that one of my last acts as a Yew will be breaking a promise.
Or we can wait until the month is up and leave, Baccat said.
Something in his tone echoed in her mind. I thought you wanted to go to my Valerian estate with me. She tried to keep her own tone inflectionless.
It is what is necessary. I realized, just as you did, that we cannot stay here for the amount of time it would take for Cuspid and Folia to release the reins of control of the Family into your hands and care. They like their status and power. From what I have observed, we would have to wait approximately two to three years.
Lori shuddered, fully awake now.
And I calculate that the Residence will be ready to acknowledge you in fact as D’Yew in a decade, perhaps a decade and a half, at least.
Now Lori swallowed. She hadn’t thought everything was quite so bad, but she trusted her Fam’s analysis more than her own. He was less invested in the Family.
BUT, continued Baccat, were our circumstances different, naturally I would prefer to live in a civilized, cosmopolitan environment such as Druida City as opposed to the wild outback of somewhere south, a tiny estate far from any minuscule gathering of huts, let alone a town.
“Oh. I’m sorry.” But restlessness claimed her again, the need to take a step toward her ultimate goal. Go to the main back door. I want to work with my personal armor on you—
What!
Please, Baccat. She swallowed. Also, I wish to see you.
I am your Fam and your friend. I will stand by you and with you staunchly, he said, and teleported to the door.
She rose from bed, wrapped herself in her winter robe, and walked through the sitting room and out the door.
You are going somewhere, Loridana? the Residence asked mentally, as if he couldn’t tell. Irritating.
My FamCat is at the back door. I want to pet him and say good night to him.
It is very late.
I have been working late for months. Absolute truth, though it had been on her own project, not the one approved by the Residence, Cuspid, and Folia.
This seems unwise to me, the Residence said, but didn’t forbid her, as it might have last year. Was it, too, wondering about the limits between them? Who knew? It would never tell her.
I want to pet my Fam, she repeated, running lightly through the house, disabling the alarm on the main back door. Baccat leapt into her arms, big furry cat, and her face stuck a little to his fur, wet from her tears.
He licked her cheek and sent through their private telepathic bond, I like the salt.
That caused her to smile. I want to coat you with the strongest armor I can, all right?
He purred. An excellent experiment. Ready!
Stop me if you begin to feel uncomfortable.
I will not. So far, your personal armor is exquisite. Flexible, not interfering at all with any actions. Very tough. I have received no bites or clawings from dogs, hunting cats, raccoons, foxes, or celtaroons.
Good. Though she didn’t like him testing her Flair so extensively.
And I have had a small rest. Perhaps I will stroll about on some of these other FirstFamily estates. No Fam can touch ME!
Baccat made her smile, and she encased him in the best personal armor with the strongest Flair she had.
Time will pass, situations will be resolved well, he said as he licked her cheek again.
He sounded hopeful. She wasn’t. There didn’t seem to be a way for her to get everything she wanted.
A hole ripped inside her.
* * *
All morning, Draeg fulfilled his duties, trained the horses and exercised the stridebeasts, even drilled himself in fighting patterns, waiting for Loridana with near breathless anticipation. Certainly a lot of sexual anticipation—he remained partially erect—and tenderness slopping around in his heart.
He told himself he must have mistaken his feelings. The use of his creative Flair, the construction of the mosaic and that trancelike state and its release, had made him believe Lori was his HeartMate. And he rationalized.
But when he saw her coming toward him at her regular time in the early afternoon, his heart thudded hard, and a glow emanated from her, the most beautiful woman in the world.
In this moment, he would do anything for her, and he knew he’d lied to himself. He and Lori were HeartMates.
As she came closer, under the glow that his love vision gave her, he noticed a layer of gray smudge. Easily determined to be an amateurish tracking spell.
When he took her hand and brought it to his lips, they tingled as they came in contact with the spell. Her cuzes, the twins Zus and Vi, had used joint Flair to set the tracer spell on Lori.
To leave it would be wrong, but to remove it might alert the twins that someone watched Lori and observed them, and endanger his mission here.
He struggled with the morality, then Baccat swaggered up and Draeg grinned. With a flick of his fingers, he transferred the spell from the woman to the cat. Let the twins try to figure out what had happened. Maybe think their inept spell had transferred to the Fam.
Baccat wrinkled his nose and spat at Draeg.
Lori chuckled, withdrew her hand from his, leaned forward, and brushed his lips with a kiss.
The moment dazzled him: the spring sun shining on her hair, her gaze soft and tender, the scent of horses and stridebeasts and trees budding and the land.
Nothing could be better.
And he spied on her. His whole life here was a pretense. She didn’t know his true name.
No!
He would not think of that, spoil this moment, these days of falling in love and discovery. No, and no and no. Shove guilt and everything else aside and into a box and don’t open it.
He deepened the kiss, tasted her lips, explored her mouth, ran out of air and stepped back, his chest rising and falling too rapidly. Then he stepped in and took her in his arms, against him, lifted her up and whirled around, listening to the joy in her laughter.
Later, much later, he’d fix this mess. Somehow. Now he held on to his lover.
* * *
Twelve days passed. Every moment stolen. Every moment glorious for Draeg because he became more and more deeply involved with Lori
. She spent more septhours at the stables, with him and her animals, appearing committed to bonding with her stridebeasts and the horses as strongly as possible. He found her forehead to forehead with each of them every day, communing with them.
And every day when she ended her work with the animals and before she teleported to the Residence for dinner, she did that little ritual of sharing her energy—enveloping all the beings, including him, with a calm and refreshing spirit. Along with love.
They all anticipated that moment. Wherever Baccat and Corax were, they’d show up a couple of minutes before then. The time for dinner at the Residence was set in iron.
Draeg himself, the Fams, the stridebeasts, the horses, and various small and wild animals would all bask in that energy and her benediction, her link with the land that she shared. He could almost taste the essence of the estate on his tongue. He wasn’t sure how he’d learn to live without it.
So it went during the days.
The nights, he and Lori rolled over the bedsponge, or in a grove, a pavilion, a meadow, the boathouse, wild with sex.
As for his mission, he’d been able to trace his hooks in Zus and Vi to a couple of lower Noble houses, though they didn’t go out so much, and Draeg reported the locations to Tinne Holly. That man told Draeg that the Nobles had hosted discreet gatherings with most of the attendees being members of the Traditionalist Stance political party. Tinne had put some observers in place.
No one left the Yew estate by glider at any time, and Tinne Holly had not discovered any damaged modern gliders.
The twins’ tracing spell that Draeg had transferred from Lori to Baccat had unraveled throughout that day, gone when the Fam teleported away that night.
But Draeg was less concerned with his mission than with his own feelings and his . . . HeartMate. His bond with Lori grew thick and strong; emotions flowed easily between them, open on both ends. He marveled that she let him see her so vulnerable, and he did the same. Taking life and love as they came, living in the moment, with no deep thought or logical analysis.
He hadn’t been back to T’Blackthorn Residence, had stayed here on the estate, enjoying the budding of trees, the blooming early spring flowers, the blossoming of Loridana D’Yew. He cherished each second of this interlude, wondering—dreading—when this special bubble of time would shatter.
Twenty-nine
The past week and a half had thrilled Lori, made her laugh and cry and feel and live as never before, because of Draeg.
Naturally, she hid all her excessive emotions from her Family and Residence, an equally difficult acting exercise as her usual watchful tension.
Monitoring by the Residence increased, and not only on her, but its chambers and corridors, too. The house and Folia had asked fisher Fastig Yew to check her progress on the boathouse every morning after she “worked” the night before—a reluctant duty he did with thinned lips since it delayed his own day.
In this manner she spent at least a septhour a night in the boathouse refining what she’d done last winter . . . and restoring the bedroom that she’d neglected before. She had Draeg’s help with that.
Yes, she studied the map, and Baccat’s memory sphere when he delivered it, walking through the streets of Druida again and again, impressing the way on her animals.
She also experimented with her primary Flair of personal armor, renewing Baccat’s to impenetrability every evening before he pranced off to enjoy the culture of Druida City. And she practiced until she could cover her whole herd, stridebeasts and horses, with a light weathershield and armor during the night, expanding one by one.
She didn’t think Draeg really noticed that because he was preoccupied—with her, to her own soaring delight.
Lori set aside her immediate plans to leave.
After their confrontation with the Residence, the twins had been careful and subdued. They hadn’t left the Residence as often, but they hadn’t gotten in her way, either. They, too, knew about appeasing their elders for a while until the moment was right to press to get their own way.
Now was a time of waiting. For them. For Lori, it was a time of loving.
As the nights warmed into spring, instead of going into Druida City, she slipped into the stable apartments and learned all the angles and textures and tastes of a man.
She might be able to last out the probation the Sallows had stipulated for the horses. She would steel herself to participate in the Spring Equinox ritual, Ostara, letting Cuspid and Folia lead but this time contributing only what she must. No more would she provide more Flair than necessary. She wouldn’t make up for the slacking of others, not even if it meant the ritual lasted three septhours instead of one because the energy had to build enough to be used.
So she enjoyed the hiatus, relished her lover and the bond strengthening between them . . . and dared to imagine that perhaps . . . perhaps . . . when the time was right for leaving, she might be able to ask him to come with her.
He wasn’t a lowly Flaired man, and he valued Family, but he was here, with her on her estate. She observed how he interacted with her animals . . . caring, even loving. More than once she’d found pleasure on his face as he looked over the land, stopped to look at a particular view. He spent most of his time here, at least the days, and nights they spent together. So if he had Family, perhaps it wasn’t here in Druida.
Dare she believe, even in the slightest, that he might come with her to her estate? She’d have to ask about that Family of his.
She sang with the spring. Until the morning she found Zus tormenting Baccat in the Fam’s garden. She should have expected that. The twins were too spoilt and impatient to deny themselves their pleasures for long.
Her breath caught at the sight of Zus dangling Baccat by the scruff of his neck—holding the FamCat in one strong, vicious hand, a branchlet in the other. Lori froze for long heartbeats as she saw Baccat struggle to evade the jabbing pointed stick. Finally her feet came loose and she ran, yelling, “Halt!”
With a gleaming-toothed smile Zus let go of her Fam, and Baccat plummeted. Then Zus kicked her cat. Her horrified scream mixed with Baccat’s shriek as he went flying over the garden wall toward a field. She stopped and flung her senses down their bond—managed a gasp when she understood the personal armor she’d encased him in last night still enveloped her beloved companion. She knew when Baccat bounced, sudden silence replacing his screech as he drew in air and tumbled down a ridge, surprised, dizzy, but unharmed.
More panting and her throat seemed to close in reaction to her terror. She bent over and braced her hands on her thighs, listening to Zus laugh.
Slowly, slowly, she straightened her spine one vertebra at a time, then pivoted to face Zus squarely, no more than two meters from him.
“What?” That one questioning word mixed mocking and sneer. “Did you think your miserable pet was the first animal I killed?” He tossed the stick end over end, caught it, then threw it away into the brush.
“You can’t do that!” It squeaked from her tight throat.
“You have no power here, no say, little girl.” His upper lip rose.
“That’s what you think.” She tried to stay cool, to steady her breath and her spinning mind. “I’m simply biding my time.”
“What!”
But his ugly expression was too revolting. Barely aware of what she did or her surroundings, she stepped up to her cuz. And vomited her breakfast on him, chest, legs, feet.
He yelled and swung at her, and she pushed him back with her Flair, knocked him on his ass.
* * *
Draeg, feeding the animals in the paddock, with Corax on his shoulder, heard a terrible mental scream from Baccat, then Lori.
What happened? Draeg demanded, but for the first time since he’d known her, her thoughts had muddied and held hysteria.
Corax flapped into the air. I go see. They are in the cat’s garden. Draeg blinked as his Fam flew, then disappeared as he teleported through air, then appeared again, a smaller spot.
Cat is in field. Mean man in garden with Lori, THREAT!
Teleport to me, Lori! he commanded.
She did, swaying, smelling of puke.
“Let’s clean you off.” With a fast couplet, the spell cleansed and refreshed her, and then she flung her arms around him, panting.
“What happened?” Let her get the hard emotions out, tell the story her own way.
“Zus tried to kill Baccat. He didn’t, but he tried!”
Fury exploded inside Draeg, running fire down his veins, energizing his muscles. “You want me to beat him up?”
“What?” she mumbled, with her head on Draeg’s shoulder.
“You want that I should find your fliggering cuz and teach him a lesson with my fists?”
“No.” She hiccupped. “No.” That sounded a little more steady. “But I can’t stay here now. Zus thought he killed Baccat, but I saved him with—”
“What?” Draeg’s turn to ask, though he felt the granite determination to leave the estate solidify in her aura. The resolve washed to him through their bond, settled in her body.
“What do you mean, ‘leave’?”
She withdrew enough so they stood, eye to eye, hers dark green.
“I’ve been planning to leave since the winter,” she said simply.
He stared. “Leave.”
Nodding, she expanded her comment. “I have no place here. What power I have I must use to finesse events and manipulate others.” Her lips twisted. “I am only used, my energy, my Flair.” She stepped away and he let her, surprise still immobilizing him as he understood what that might mean for them.
She stalked back and forth, rubbing her arms; she wore no coat.
Draeg flicked the fingers of both hands at her, said, “Weathershield.”
Another nod, this one of thanks aimed at him. “I am not respected.”
“You’re D’Yew.”
She turned to look at him, a sneer on her face. “I am called that so I will behave. I have been called that so I would behave since my mother died.” One shoulder lifted and fell. “It means nothing.” Standing tall, with fire in her eyes, she continued, “I was not formally named as D’Yew after my last Passage, nearly a year ago, when I attained my adulthood at seventeen.” She flung out her arms, as if sweeping the past away and aside and gone. “No ceremony to vow loyalty to me as D’Yew has been done, has even been scheduled. I am finished here!”
Heart Legacy Page 25