by Janzen, Tara
Without moving away, he looked to her face and found her eyes open, huge and glazed from the poppy, her irises milky-blue rims of luminosity around the dark abysses of her pupils. Her lashes were long and wet and tipped in gold.
He held her gaze, curious about this woman he had labored over so mightily. To his surprise, she stared at him with equal intensity.
“Chérie,” he murmured. The Norman term of endearment was not one he used often, but it came easily when looking at his mystery maiden.
He used his palm to smooth the hair back off her brow. She was warm, but not fevered. Her skin was soft, like a child’s, but she was no child.
“Are you awake, lady?” he asked.
Awake? Ceridwen thought hazily. How did one awaken into death? And who would choose not to be awake when Death’s messenger was so achingly beautiful?
She gazed up at him, taking him in piece by exquisite piece and putting him together into a dreamlike whole. She faintly remembered that she had stolen a green charm cursed with a faerie’s death-sleep, stolen it from an ominous, black-cowled demon flanked by spectral hounds.
Or maybe not a demon. His charm had brought her to this new land of death, where her limbs felt heavy, but her thoughts and her heart were too light to hold; where a creature of unsurpassed comeliness beckoned to her with a gentle touch and the sweet, dark melody of his voice.
A sigh swelled in her chest. She would not have expected glittering black eyes from a faerie prince, yet his eyes were darker and brighter than a night full of the moon and stars, an onyx color to match the sleek, flowing length of hair that framed his face, streamed down his chest, and pooled on her breasts in a loose, silky confluence.
Ah, and his face. She lifted her hand and lightly traced the near perfect symmetry of his features. His was the kind of strange beauty no mortal man embodied and no mortal woman could resist. Truly, he was a magical being, for only magic could have created such an artful line from brow to chin—she caressed his cheek and let her fingers trail to the long, masculine curve of his jaw. Or create such a mouth as to make even a maid think of a kiss. Her fingertips brushed his lips.
He smiled, and she felt color suffuse her face. Amazing, that she could blush even in death. Clear as night, his eyes teased her, sparkling with an inner light like the stars sparkling around his head. Never had she seen such stars. The cosmic orbs danced both high and low in flaming shades of yellow, red, and blue, leaving trails of fire in their wakes. The sheer dazzle of him in his heavenly firmament left her breathless with awe.
“Sweet prince of the tylwyth teg,” she whispered, thoroughly taken with him. Death had been the choice of wisdom, after all, and not the final act of a coward.
Dain’s smile turned wry. Silly chit, to mistake him for something even half so pure and noble as a prince of the faerie folk. Though had he been elfin, he was sure he could have found salvation in the adoration shining in her eyes, for the old stories said elves lived in hope of gaining a human’s love.
He had long since abandoned any such aspirations himself, but he knew he engendered lust with ease, and he saw that, too, in her eyes. Poor, untried virgin. He would do his best to return her untouched to her Mychael and spare her the more interesting pastimes available to those with adventurous natures.
“What’s thy name, chérie?” he asked in his most mellifluous voice, honey sweetening his words to draw her out.
“Ceridwen,” she whispered. “Ceridwen ab Arawn. And yours?”
He hesitated for only a moment. “Dain.”
“Dain.” She repeated his name on a soulful sigh, and Dain couldn’t help himself; he grinned. Vivienne could take lessons from this one.
“Where is your Mychael, little one?”
“Strata Florida.”
His grin faded. Just his luck. He’d been given the keeping of a Welsh maid with the name of a white monk rather than a rich lord on her lips. Then again, hadn’t a prince of Powys, Rhys ap Gruffudd, granted the Cistercian monks large tracks of upland grazing all the way to Rhayader? Surely over the years even the most ascetic of orders had managed to accumulate some profit on such bounty.
But would they part with it for a woman?
He mulled over an answer to that for more than a minute and couldn’t quite turn it to his liking. Women and holy men didn’t mix nearly as well as they had before Gregory VII had cleansed the church of “fornicating priests.”
“Dain.” She spoke his name again in a dreamy voice, infusing it with a good deal of wonder, and wonder she might. What was he going to do with her?
“Is Mychael your uncle?” he asked, hoping for an abbot.
“Brother,” she answered.
Worse and worse. The brother of one as young as she could hardly have had time to advance in the church—and yet there was the chemise. Someone coddled the girl.
“Wherever did Ragnor find you, chérie?” he asked, absently caressing her from her cheek to her ear and letting his fingers slide into the softness of her hair. He didn’t really expect an answer to his question, and he certainly didn’t expect the one she gave.
“On the Coit Wroneu.” She sighed and turned her face into his hand. “Running for my veriest life.”
His gaze narrowed, and his fingers stopped their aimless, sensual wanderings. “From whom?”
“Mine own cousin.” Her tone became distressed and angry. She lifted her face to him. “The Thief of Cardiff, Morgan ab Kynan. May God curse his knave’s soul for the hypocrisy of his sins.” Her voice broke with a sob, and she closed her eyes to hold back a fresh round of tears.
Anyone with a heart or a care would not have bothered her further. Dain had neither, not when she’d spoken Morgan’s name. Here was a story too rich to miss, of how a Welsh prince and thief of unsurpassed skill had lost this rare jewel, and even more intriguing, how much he’d be willing to pay to get her back.
“Aye, Morgan’s a sinner.” He commiserated with her, knowing his words were far from the truth. The only sin he could lay at his friend’s door was that he’d never told Dain of his precious cousin, not that their meeting would have been more opportune under different circumstances. Dain had forsaken good opportunity with highborn virgins when he’d put down his sword and taken up more esoteric apparatuses.
“With no heart,” she added, the tears running freely down her face.
“Aye, no heart, not a trace,” he agreed, then added in an offhand tone, “What do you believe to be his most heartless deed?”
Her lips trembled, so sweetly it took an act of will nor to lower his own to still their fluttering. “The deed that would leave me ground to dust between the Boar of Balor’s jaws.”
“Carado—”
Her eyes flashed open. “Shh,” she admonished him, pressing her fingertips to his lips. “Don’t speak his name. ’Tis said the sound alone is enough to call him forth.”
Dain refrained from laughing aloud, even though he remembered many a morn when yelling at the top of his lungs had not been enough to call Caradoc forth from a night of drink. If the maid believed such was possible, she had heard rumors he had missed.
“Sweet Ceridwen, why would the Lord of Balor want to hurt you?” He couldn’t bring himself to call his old friend “Boar.”
“No bride of the Boar of Balor will survive her wedding night,” she said in a hushed voice, her eyes growing even larger, if that were possible.
Dain felt his lips twitch with the makings of a grin. “Mayhaps ’tis the alliteration they cannot abide, chérie.”
“Mayhaps,” she agreed somberly.
Then it hit him, the significance of what she’d said.
“Morgan takes you to Balor as a bride?”
“Aye.”
Ragnor would be dead within the month and Morgan probably soon to follow, Dain thought, after Caradoc stripped the flesh from Ragnor’s bones and staked him out in the wilderness to die. One did not abuse the betrothed bride of a powerful lord without penance being paid. One did not lose a
bride either—and for certes one did not go around plying rose oil between her legs.
The thought gave him pause, and he was taken with an urge to check her again, to make sure he’d done no damage.
“But no longer,” she said, her hand trailing down the front of his tunic. A beatific smile played about her mouth. “Now I have died and come unto you.”
Before he could assure her that she had not, he felt her fingers tangle in his hair and exert gentle pressure, pulling him down.
“A kiss of peace, sweet prince?” she asked. “To welcome me into paradise?”
She was not very strong, yet somehow was strong enough to have her way, drawing him ever closer. Her gold-tipped lashes drifted down, giving him a moment to reflect on the doubtful wisdom of his next action—but a moment wasn’t nearly long enough to stop him.
Their lips met, hers sweetly, innocently closed, expecting the blessing of a saint. He couldn’t have delivered that even if he were nobly pure of heart, for when his mouth touched hers, instinct usurped his reason.
Warmth was his first sensation, then softness, then something more. For all she gave, Edmee did not kiss, and there was much he’d forgotten—much he’d missed. He parted his mouth to trace the curve of Ceridwen’s lips with his tongue, and was rewarded with a sigh.
The resonance of that sound set up a vibration very near where his heart had once been. Their breaths mingled and became the same, flowing from one life to the next. The luxuriance of the ether filled his senses and went straight to his head, finer than wine, more potent than his deadliest draught. She tasted like a woman, every woman, all women, a rich mélange of flavors he couldn’t begin to absorb. They ran through him, rousing a wildness he had long thought broken to his will.
With that realization, he dragged his mouth away from hers, his blood racing faster than he would have admitted to anyone. In contrast, the woman below him was the picture of peace, drifting off to sleep with a smile on her face, blissfully unaware of the havoc she had created in less than a minute, with less than conscious effort.
Dain knew he was a charlatan. He also knew when he was in the presence of someone else who wasn’t what he or she seemed, though in the maid’s case, he couldn’t put a name to what he’d felt in her kiss.
He reached out to touch her, but caught himself and drew his hand back. Her hair had dried into a cloud of haphazard curls and was spread out around her like the light of God, a halo of illumination surrounding her small, bruised face. Farther down, the remains of a thick, damp braid lay in disarray beneath one of her arms. She needed someone to tend to her, but he had done all he dared—mayhaps more than he should have dared. Nothing remained but for him to find Morgan and arrange for her return.
A smile twisted his mouth and a soft curse escaped him. She was to be the bride of Caradoc, and through the grace of God and Dain’s own rough magic, nothing had transpired that would keep her from fulfilling those vows.
Chapter 4
Ceridwen heard bells ringing in the distance, ringing prime, the hour of prayer at dawn. So much time seemed to have slipped away from her, ’twas good to recognize a singular moment. She’d been drifting here and there in her memories, hither and yon in her mind to strange places she’d never seen before.
Despite her myriad pains, the soft lapping of a warm tongue on her fingers brought a faint smile to her lips. She lifted her hand and felt a dog’s muzzle.
“Good Jack,” she whispered, thinking of her father’s old lymer, though it seemed a very long time since she’d seen the dog or her father, or home—Carn Merioneth.
With a lazy effort, she turned her head, and a scream froze in her throat. ’Twas no lymer at her side, but one of the spectral hounds, the white one.
“Awake ye are, finally,” a raspy voice said close to her other side.
She jerked her head around, a mistake with instant repercussions. A searing bolt of pain made the room swim and grow hazy. She squeezed her eyes shut and fought the dizzying blackness that threatened to claim her once more. “Yer s’posed to drink the bard-boy’s potion, ye are.” A warm cup was pressed to her lips.
The hound was real, not part of the wild, wondrous dreams she’d had of a dark-eyed prince of the tylwyth teg, and if the hound was real, so was the black-cowled demon.
She forced her lashes to lift, giving her a glimpse of the man next to her. It was not he. Relief dissipated a measure of her fear, but none of her pain. Her head throbbed and so did her bones; her body ached, feeling tight and bruised.
“Drink,” the old man ordered, lifting the cup and dribbling wine into her mouth. “Dain’ll skin me arse and feed it to the bitch, if ye don’t.”
She swallowed the sweet wine, more to keep from choking than to save the graybeard’s backside.
“Ye’ll notice I hain’t laid a finger on ye. Not one, I’m touchin’ the demned cup and not so much as one of yer fine white hairs.” His voice trailed off into unintelligible mutterings of which she heard only the words “soft,” and “pretty,” and “what’s it to ’im.”
A low growl rumbled out of the hound on her left, and a wave of terror washed through her body. She did choke then, and spluttered, and near fainted when the dog lunged across her—but it was to the old man the dog went, with her head twisted down and her albino jaws closing around his throat.
“Call ’er off! Call ’er off!” he croaked, frantic.
Ceridwen watched in horrified fascination as the dog’s sharp white teeth slipped through the old man’s papery skin. All she could think was, Aye, this is a trick the dog knows well.
A gurgling sound from the man startled her into speech.
“Hound” was the only word she knew to use and “come.”
Her voice, weak and scratchy, barely carried the necessary distance, but it was enough to gain the dog’s attention. Pale blue eyes turned on her.
“Come,” she repeated, and gestured with her hand.
The dog, a levrier, sleek and lean and powerfully built, complied, releasing the old man into a heap on the floor and returning to Ceridwen’s side.
The graybeard coughed, dragging up spittle he wiped on his sleeve. He touched his throat, and his fingers came away smeared with blood. Ceridwen expected him to leave, but he reached instead for a shallow pan on the brazier and refilled the cup he’d spilled.
“The jongleur’ll owe me for this.” He pressed the cup back to her mouth and leveled a beady gaze on the dog. “Watch yerself, Numa, or one night ye’ll find yerself skewered and hangin’ o’er the flames of hell.”
Numa, Ceridwen thought, wondering at the strangeness of the name. She’d heard another odd name in this place. Dain, that’s what the sweet prince had called himself. Dain.
A smile flitted across her mouth. In her dream, he’d kissed her.
“Drink,” the graybeard said, tipping the cup higher and pouring a few drops past her lips. “I’ll not have ye dyin’ on me watch.”
Death had been in her dream too, but ’twas clear now she hadn’t died, and if she hadn’t died, she was still betrothed to the Boar of Balor. Despair found a foothold in the thought. She would be going home, but Carn Merioneth was no more. The wooden palisades of that fair place had long since been razed in fire and replaced with the stone blocks of Balor. The flames still burned in her nightmares, reaching past the skies to the heavens and the vengeful God who had unleashed Gwrnach, Caradoc’s father, upon them.
Those who had escaped the flames had been butchered in the bailey, ending the beautiful dream that had been Carn Merioneth. All had died except for the two who had been lost, she and her dear sweet brother, Mychael, and the one who had found them. Moriath had been the name of the maid, and she had disappeared years ago. Except for the letters Ceridwen treasured as life itself, Mychael had also been lost to her, from the day Moriath had put him in the monastery at Strata Florida.
She swallowed the wine the old man had given her and pushed his hand away. “No more.”
“All of it.
”
She shook her head and lifted her other hand to ward him off. She was more successful than she’d hoped. He jumped back out of reach.
“Be careful with that demned thing,” he hollered, then swore a jumble of curses.
With a sense of bemused wonder, she became aware of the serpent stone still clasped in her hand. Its green depths caught the first rays of morning sunshine streaming in through the windows and reflected it back, casting prisms of light against the striped damask draped at the corners of the huge bed in which she lay.
Brochan’s Great Charm. She opened her fingers and let it float in her palm, as real as day. And if the stone was real, why not the place it had taken her, the sweet oblivion of a faerie’s death-sleep?
She lowered her lashes and closed her hand around the stone, drawing it to her breast. Aye, better to try the faerie death again than to find herself in Caradoc’s cruel grasp. He wanted her at his mercy, not her hand in marriage. She’d read it, read it in a book that held the key to the Boar’s dark, impossible desires. Only Mychael could save her. Mychael, sweet saint, was unassailable by evil. Mayhaps if she’d shown more religious fervor, she, too, would have been beyond Caradoc’s reach.
She had not, however, and God had forsaken her, set her adrift in the strange world of men with little to help her find her way.
A wave of languor washed through her, muddling her thoughts. She wanted sleep, and that was where her heart led her, back to the heavenly lair of Dain, the dark-eyed prince of the Light-elves. Letting out a soft breath, she gave herself up to the welcome heaviness seeping into her limbs and showing her the way to the stars.
Erlend held the half-full cup and clucked in disapproval. She hadn’t finished the draught. ’Tweren’t his fault, not a bit of it, but he’d be demned if there was anyone else to step for’ard and take the demn blame.
~ ~ ~
The misty light of dawn filtered through an ancient grove of oak and hazel in the Wroneu Wood, capturing the form of a young man running through the trees. Morgan ab Kynan watched the sentry from the open flap of the tent where he’d gotten barely two hours of sleep. He could tell by the irritated expression on Rhys’s face that Dain had been sighted, no doubt already breaking the boundaries of the camp with his levrier hounds running alongside.