Heart Legacy

by Robin D. Owens

  Realizations clunked into place in Draeg’s brain. “The wandering through Druida City.”

  Her laugh cracked, once. “Not wandering, determining a route away.”

  “The animals—” he began.

  “We’ve been waiting for the weather, the nights to warm for good travel.” Her lips tightened briefly before she spoke again. “Then we will leave Druida for a Valerian estate in the south that is mine alone as the child of my father.”

  All those questions about his journeying south.

  “Leave,” he repeated.

  She gazed at him, then beyond him to the land, then her survey must have focused on the animals. “There’s nothing for me here. I’d hoped . . . but, no.”

  Striding back to him, she stopped no more than thirty centimeters away. Her direct stare matched his. “Will you come with me?

  “I—” He actually flapped his hands in a confused gesture. “This is sudden.”

  Her jaw clenched and she glanced aside. Then her head tilted. “The Residence summons me to my duties.” A harsh laugh ripped from her. “I will do as I have been trained, follow the schedule the Residence and my elders set. Do as they want.” She met his eyes. “But not for long.” She shook her head. “Zus will think that Baccat is dead. Can you hide my Fam in the stables and keep him safe?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Thank you. I must go.”

  Draeg held out his hand to her. “Lori, lover—”

  “You’ll try to talk me out of this, won’t you?” Another shake of her head. “You can’t.” She made a cutting gesture. “It’s done. I. Am. Done.” Her lip curled. “Now I must go pretend to be the dutiful daughter of the house, as I have been for months.” Her lashes shielded her eyes for an instant. “It has never been so hard.”

  “Lori—”

  “Later, Draeg, I have my duties.” She vanished.

  And he let his knees simply give way and plunked onto the ground.

  Corax circled overhead, spiraled down, then landed before Draeg.

  The cat is unharmed. He teleported away. So did the man.

  Automatically, Draeg checked his hook in Zus. The man strolled in CityCenter.

  Wrath turned Draeg’s vision red and he suffered it, then let it ebb naturally. Mostly anger for Lori, at her Family, her Residence, all those who’d hurt her and used her and hadn’t supported her during her life.

  And there was anger at fate. His tentative hopes and dreams crashed. He had to get away from the estate—how foolish!—that he realized he’d begun to think might be his someday. Stup!

  Some anger he saved for himself. He couldn’t see how he was gong to manage not to hurt her, himself. He swallowed hard at the guilt that ate him like an army of ants.

  Draeg snapped out a telepathic thought to Tinne Holly to have Zus followed, observed, his every action noted. Spied on.

  The female cuz, Vi, remained in the Residence, her aura hook solid. He’d alert watchers when she left, too.

  Meanwhile, now that his life had taken this turn, he had to reevaluate it, and plan.

  You should get away for a while. Been stuck in one place for too long, Corax said. But I will stay with you.

  “Thanks. I appreciate it, but I’d rather you looked out for the animals.”

  I will do that. No one will harm my horses!

  “And the stridebeasts.”

  No one will harm stridebeasts or ME! Corax gave a wild, fighting scream and flew to the stable ridgepole. Draeg hopped to his feet, fulfilled his own responsibilities to the animals, then took off walking.

  Everything inside him roiled. He was falling in love with, and sure enjoyed fabulous sex with, Lori D’Yew. She was his HeartMate. And since that particular realization, he’d been scrutinizing the estate. Riding over it not just to exercise a stridebeast or a horse, but with the simple knowledge that it could all belong to them. Them as a couple, he’d assured himself, when the thought that he’d presumed uncurled and twitched nastily in his gut. Never had he thought of it as only his. Though, of course, he’d thought of Lori as only his.

  He’d begun to appreciate the estate, the elegant grassyards surrounding the Residence, the gardens, especially those places his lover, his HeartMate had made hers. He liked the occasional roll of the land, the bluff above the river, the paths, the Yew groves.

  And Lori didn’t want it.

  He’d heard that in her voice, saw it in every taut line of muscle in her body.

  She wouldn’t even fight for it, which was beyond comprehension for him. Could. Not. Be. Scanned.

  Of course, he’d fight for the respect and the title and the estate for her—for them. Face it, he’d fight for the land for himself, and not just because he liked it, loved it, but because in some niggly part of his mind he’d come to think of it as his. That he’d be T’Yew. Some selfish part of him that made him writhe in guilt, but had set roots so deep that with mere thought or hideous shame, he still couldn’t uproot it.

  He wanted the estate . . . and hadn’t really known until a few minutes before. A selfishness whispered inside that he’d wanted the status, too.

  Lori didn’t. She was stubbornly determined to leave, and another tiny notion beat frantic wings inside his head, his heart, like a trapped flutterby. He wouldn’t be able to talk her into staying, sex her into staying . . . love her into staying. She would carry out her long-term plans and he couldn’t convince her not to.

  If she had to choose between him and what she thought was her freedom, her estate, she would choose the animals she’d loved before him, the freedom she cherished more than their loving, her plans more than his wishes to fight for this land.

  She’d choose that Valerian land she’d mentioned over his devout vows to fight for her deserved place at the head of the Family.

  At least she’d choose that southern estate over her lover, since she didn’t know they were HeartMates. He wasn’t sure what she might do if she knew they were HeartMates, and he couldn’t tell her.

  She might give HeartMates and Draeg Hedgenettle a chance. Might accept him.

  He fliggering doubted she’d give Draeg Betony-Blackthorn a chance after all the lies he’d told, the lie he’d lived. He wasn’t at all the man she thought him to be.

  Crap, his head ached. He stopped a moment to massage his temples, stretch tension from his neck, hell, from all of his muscles, his entire stiff body that seemed to match the rigidity of his mind.

  Then he bent over, rolled his spine up vertebra by vertebra, and felt a little better. He breathed in the long and deep pattern that matched Lori’s when she meditated. And smelled sweet long grasses beginning to poke their tender blades above the ground, scented the large river.

  He hadn’t been all the way down to the river, seen that edge of the Yews’ property.

  Thirty

  The Yews’ property. Those words poked like a sword into his inflated ego, his own tender shoots of wishes to be master of this place.

  To hide her plans, when she stayed out at night and away from her Family and the Residence, she’d done various refurbishing jobs. Now he understood why she’d hidden her work in the boathouse—not that he’d ever given that a thought before. Some detective he was.

  Yeah, that hurt, how long she’d been planning and how little a possibility he had of turning her from those plans.

  The boathouse deck overlooked the river, though he really didn’t need any more amazing views seared in his imagination. Yet he stepped onto the deck of the boathouse and a spell fizzed against his skin. He blinked as the wood beneath him showed silvery gray, then polished brown. He swallowed. Lori finished the inside first, then the outside . . . the Family and the Residence thought she was working on this when all the while she explored the streets of Druida, or made love to him. She’d already done the work and set an illusion spell. One, he thought, that only a Yew would see, so he was exempt.

  He felt that the spell would erode from showing old to revealing new, day by day. Probably
she’d set a trigger in it to drop when she left the estate for good.

  He descended the stone steps past the boathouse, until he reached a treated wooden fence a meter from the edge of the bluff that held a gate. No doubt the steps became steeper on the other side. Studying the fence, he saw it towered high enough and solid enough to keep the stridebeasts from jumping over it, though might not keep a horse—a stupid horse—out.

  They’d have to add another half meter . . .

  No, shuttle that thought aside.

  He examined the sturdy gate that appeared no older than a couple of months, well cared for, the metal handle and latch not at all rusted and with preservation spells. When he touched it, he stilled. Only preservation spells imbued the gate . . . He sent his senses running down the fence in both directions, found not a hint of a spellshield. Shock clenched his gut. Nothing to keep out burglars. Or murderers.

  Not that those sorts could breach the Residence walls, but to have perimeter walls with no spellshields shocked him.

  Of course, the older Yews would consider the best wielder of spellshields in the world to be their worst enemy, old T’Yew’s second wife, who had killed him in self-defense, and propelled—they’d think—Loridana’s mother into madness. The woman now married to Tinne Holly. So when whatever spellshields had been on this fence, or the previous one, had failed, no new spellshields had been done.

  No shields. Inconceivable. Lori would know that this fence was vulnerable, but did the other Yews who lived in the Residence? Did the Residence itself care? He didn’t know. He didn’t even know how much the Family would care. Perhaps they put all their faith in the bastion of the sentient Residence, though that building was more on the lines of a manor house than a castle in the scheme of FirstFamily Residences.

  Draeg locked the gate carefully behind him. A good lock, one that he wouldn’t have been able to open had his skin not tingled with the codes of Yew approval, and that Lori had made stout, but the fence itself . . . Draeg shook his head.

  Studying the bluff edge, he noted she’d been careful to set the fence back from any ground threatening to crumble, a responsible caretaker, even when not happy in her duties. So showed the path, too, now no longer steps but well-defined and hard-packed ground and a layer of crushed white stone, solid, the incline not too great to ascend or descend and switching back twice. Everything tidy and well kept. As he walked down the path, the fresh scent of the river, of greening trees, drifted by him on a lazy spring breeze. Yes, everything about this place satisfied him . . . and Healed little aching pockets within his mind or heart that he didn’t know he had.

  And everything reminded him that Lori planned on leaving. That he’d have to wrestle with the decision to leave with her or stay. He had to stop and steady himself, tear his gaze from the view to his feet, until he’d calmed again. For some reason his body thought that if he hauled out a sword or a blazer and simply acted, everything could be solved.

  Or if he loved her enough. She was his HeartMate; he should love her enough. But the dread threading through him made him all too aware that when she found out his deception, she wouldn’t ask him to come with her.

  He continued down the path, looking upstream at the wide river flowing through the end of Noble Country, then downstream past one last Noble estate where the water tumbled into the Great Platte Ocean. Pink and white, purple and beige and pale yellow blossoms floated on the deep green water that showed riffs and rills of white foam.

  The odor of the water itself, cold and earthy with a touch of far-north mountain ice, now overwhelmed the lighter fragrance of spring blossoms. Water had not filled the banks and lapped at the fine dark brown sand turning into mud. Draeg strolled downstream until he reached the demarcation of the end of Moungala Street and across. He continued to walk, trespassing for a few meters on the D’Marigold estate, before the sun grew too warm and the taste of salt from the ocean touched his lips, reminding him he’d gone too far, so he turned back.

  “I know you,” a high, young voice said. “I like you!”

  Draeg stopped in his tracks. He wanted to pivot and see who addressed him, but he also wanted to run away. He knew the boy he’d see if he turned.

  He’d heard of the child. But the Hollys and the Blackthorns had made sure that he and the boy had never met, and Draeg finally understood why.

  “I know you and I like you,” the boy repeated.

  Draeg’s insides rippled in a long shudder.

  This youngster could only be Cal Marigold, the reincarnation of Draeg’s beloved teacher, Tab Holly.

  Slowly Draeg inched his feet around, increment by increment. Until he stared down at the seven-year-old. Whose bright blond brows lowered. “I know you and I like you and I remember your walk.”

  The shudder spread from Draeg’s inside outward, until his skin flinched in the breeze off the cool water. He trembled, sank slightly into his balance to remain stable through shock, just as the individual before him had taught him, kept his eyes on the source of the consternation.

  Cal’s gray eyes went distant, then seemed to glaze; when he spoke it was in the rough, deep tones that Draeg had not heard for so very long, and that sounded odd coming from a smaller chest. “You remember. You settle into your balance well, Draeg, and move better than the last time I saw you.”

  Which had been at Tab’s deathbed.

  A choked sound ripped all the way up from Draeg’s gut and rasped across the dry tissues of his throat and out.

  He swept the boy up in a hug. One he wanted tighter, but the bones were not the long, strong, thick bones of an older man, but the malleable, easily broken ones of a child. Draeg buried his face in the child’s torso. “I have missed you,” he mumbled gutturally. “Missed you.” Words, too, tore from him. “So much.”

  He hadn’t thought they were so close to the river, but it must have been spuming wetness because his face was covered in damp.

  Small hands patted his head, and Draeg lifted it to meet a steady pewter gaze. The boy’s soft mouth pursed, flattened. “I came back, you know.”

  “I heard.”

  Cal nodded. “Because I wanted a HeartMate.” His expression simply brightened with an inner light. “And I have one this life.” He grinned, showing a few missing teeth. “I’ve been granted that boon!”

  “Yeah,” Draeg agreed.

  “My parents are HeartMates,” the boy confided, then cocked his head in a gesture that sent another pang through Draeg, “Do you have a HeartMate?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Draeg replied.

  “That is the very most important thing in the world. You must treat it so, as the most important, your greatest priority.”

  “Yeah.”

  The youngster shook his head, gave Draeg’s ear a tiny slap as reprimand. “No. You must think of your relationship with your HeartMate first and do what is right, first.”

  “Ah.”

  “I guess that was why we were supposed to meet. You think?”

  “You think?” Draeg said at the same time.

  “Yup,” the kid said.

  A roar came from the path above them. And the sound of winter-brittle uprooted bushes. Pebbles and larger rocks bounced down around them.

  “That’s my dad; you better put me down,” Cal said.

  Yeah, Draeg better, because Cratag Maytree T’Marigold was one of the few men who could wipe the polished fighting salon floor with Draeg’s practice robes—and had. But Draeg’s arms remained locked gently around the child.

  “Down!” Cal ordered.

  Draeg set him carefully on his feet.

  “It was good meeting you, but we shouldn’t see each other again for a while, I don’t think,” the child said seriously. “We were too close before and I have to forget before and remember now.”

  “Live in the moment, the eternal now,” Draeg said rustily, as Tab had once admonished, every time they settled down for a meditation session.

  “Yes. I’m going to be an actor.” The small chin
—not at all like the features of one lost Tab Holly—set.

  “An actor.” Draeg let his appalled surprise show.

  “That’s. Right.” Small shoulders straightened. “I am an artist.”

  “I—”

  “Maybe you should go soak your head,” the child said gruffly, again using close to Tab Holly’s tones.

  “Yeah?”

  “I mean it.” He gestured to the water. “Clear your head.”

  “In a cold river?” Draeg asked. And the boy had distracted him just enough to have a huge hand grab his shoulder and spin him around.

  “Don’t come near my son again. He must forget his past life.” Cratag Maytree T’Marigold stopped all the words, all the questions in Draeg’s mouth with a punch to the jaw that dropped a curtain of blackness upon him.

  When Draeg awoke, the sun, Bel, hadn’t crossed the sky in much of an arc. In fact, he thought he heard the words, “I’ll see you later. Remember what I said,” plop down in childish tones as he stared upward.

  He’d said that a HeartMate should be the priority.

  FamMan? questioned Corax.

  I’m all right, he sent telepathically. He rubbed his jaw, wiggled it, then rolled to his feet and dusted himself off, brushed twigs and dead leaves off his clothes, shook off dried mud. Returning from the river, slowly.

  Good. I watch the animals! Bo-ring.

  Good. He repeated his Fam’s words, then his mind spun back to his recent staggering encounter.

  Tab Holly, Cal Marigold. Cave of the Dark Goddess. Yeah, like most people he believed in the Lord and Lady, in the Wheel of Stars and reincarnation . . . and like most people, including Cal himself and Cratag T’Marigold, Draeg had been totally freaked out to see rebirth in solid, unmistakable action.