A low growl.
The black cat leaped toward her, leaving the shadows of the forest and emerging into the firelight. For a moment the animal seemed to be suspended in the air as it pounced. The mountain cat was huge, almost as large as Ryn, and it bared its teeth as it descended toward Juliet.
She tried to scurry away, but tripped over a small rock and fell, landing on her backside vulnerable and exposed and fully aware that it was too late to try to escape again. She waited for the teeth and claws to descend; a scream caught in her throat. But before the cat’s body landed upon hers, a blond blur flew across the space between them and knocked the black cat away. The animals fell to the ground several feet away from Juliet.
As Juliet struggled to her feet the animals fought, rolling across the campsite entangled, their teeth and claws bared. They snarled, snapped, and fought with those deadly talons. Ryn growled; the large cat screamed, a primal shriek that split the night and Juliet’s heart. She backed away, moving toward the flame and the cave. Neither the fire nor the cave would save her if the cat won this fight, but instinct drove her to shelter and light.
There had been such pure hatred in the cat’s eyes as it had pounced at her. For one terrifying moment she had been sure she would die here, far away from Isadora and Sophie and Fyne Mountain. But Ryn had been watching over her. Even if he was still angry with her for offering to rid him of the wolf that claimed a portion of his soul, he considered it his duty to protect her.
The animals rolled across the ground, both of them bloody and tiring quickly. They snarled and wielded sharp claws like the deadly weapons they were, and wrestled with beastly muscles that rippled in the firelight. They would not stop until one of them was dead.
Or both were. As much as she wanted to escape this so-called marriage Ryn insisted was fated, she didn’t want to see his life end this way. Logically, the death of both animals would be best for her, so why was she terrified that Ryn would not survive?
When her back met the cave wall, she sank to the ground and watched the fight in growing horror. The wolf and the cat rolled near the fire but not into it, and their bodies were too-clearly illuminated. Was the blood tinting Ryn’s golden fur his own or the cat’s? Could she actually feel his energy fading, draining from her as it drained from him, or was that her imagination?
Like it or not, they were connected, just as Ryn had explained. Through the earth, through the mountain, through the soul. She did not understand how, but she knew it was truth. He said she did not trust her power, that she denied it—that she fought it. If ever she needed to embrace her abilities, it was now. Ryn needed her.
Sitting with her back against the wall and her heart in her throat, Juliet called upon every ounce of magic she possessed. She gathered that strength—that power—pressed her palms to the ground, and reached out to Ryn.
The wolf was infused with a burst of energy that was the advantage he needed, and the tables turned quickly. The cat was tired; Ryn was not. The wolf overpowered the tiring cat, pinning it down. This was no longer an evenly matched fight. With a mighty swipe, the wolf tore away the cat’s throat.
The cat fell back, dead, and Ryn limped toward the darkness of the woods. He moved away from Juliet as if he intended to lick his wounds in the forest. Alone.
She stood shakily and walked toward the fire. Before her eyes, the black cat lying on the ground was transformed from a wild animal intent on killing her into a pale, naked man with long black hair tangled around his face. The process was a painfully slow one, as hair receded and paws turned into hands and legs grew longer and paler. Fur became skin; talons became fingers. The wounds Ryn had inflicted remained, uglier and more stark against flesh than they had been when lost in the black fur of a mountain cat. The man’s throat, what was left of it, was bloody and torn, and less serious wounds were scattered along his slender body.
Which meant Ryn’s wounds would remain, even when morning came and he was man again.
“Stop,” she called, turning her back on the dead man and running toward the fair wolf that had reached the edge of the forest. He turned to look at her, and in that instant she could see the Ryn she knew in those eyes. The man, the wolf. Both. How had she not seen it last night? “Let me take care of you.” He didn’t move, not into the forest or back to her. “I’m a healer,” she said.
There was no melding of their minds, as there had been in the past. Ryn was physically and emotionally drained, and yet he maintained the shield between them.
Juliet gathered her own strength, concentrating on the light in her soul and the goodness in her heart and the magic that had surrounded and infused her all her life. She could allow Ryn to go into the forest and die, and in the morning she would be free to move down the mountain. Escape was what she wanted and needed most of all. She could not be married to his man; she could not turn her back on her sisters when they needed her.
And yet, Ryn had saved her. He had been willing to sacrifice his own life in order to protect hers.
She dropped down, pressed her hand against the ground, and delved into his mind as best she could. She felt the change, the shift in the energy between them, as he allowed her in. Let me care for you, Ryn. Let me bind your wounds and keep you safe as you kept me safe.
After a moment’s hesitation, he turned and limped to her. The closer he came to the fire, the more horrible his wounds appeared. She had doctored many women who were ill, and she had cared for her own sisters. But she had never treated a man—or an animal—with such deep, bloody wounds.
It would take all her knowledge and will to keep Ryn alive through the night.
Liane woke knowing instinctively that she was not alone, but she took care not to move or make a sound. She opened her eyes very slightly; not even halfway.
The tall, dark figure of a man leaned over her bed, a hood covering his head and shading his face. How had he gotten past the sentinels at the door? She was always well guarded, and while the empress’ sentinels might not like her or her change in station, they would die to protect her. It was their calling.
The how didn’t matter. The intruder was here, in her room, by her bed. Did he plan a kidnapping for ransom? Or an assassination? She moved her hand slowly and steadily toward the pillow, as if shifting her body in sleep. Even Mahri did not know that her mistress slept with a blade beneath the pillow. No one knew. Old habits were hard to break.
The man leaning over her bed moved quickly, clamping his hand around Liane’s wrist before she could reach the weapon. That touch was so familiar, she ached to her core.
“Now, now, sweetling,” he whispered. “Is that any way to treat your husband?”
Liane rolled up slowly, genuinely surprised. “What are you doing here?”
Sebestyen did not release or even loosen his grip on her wrist. “Why does a man normally call upon his wife in the middle of the night?”
She tried to jerk her hand away, but he held tight. There had been a time when her heart and body cried out for him to come to her, but that time had passed. “What’s the matter?” she asked sharply. “Have you already grown bored with your new concubines?”
“Yes,” he whispered.
“So soon?”
“Before I ever saw them.”
She wore a plain nightgown that had not been constructed for seduction. It was roomy around the middle, in order to accommodate her growing belly, and warm enough to ward off the night’s chill. The gown had been made for warmth and comfort, and yet she felt naked as she sat before Sebestyen.
He had betrayed her by taking another woman—no, women—into his bed. He had turned her into one of the foolish, powerless empresses she had always detested. How dare he come to her in the night and assume that she would willingly lie with him?
Liane stretched past Sebestyen, reaching for the lamp on her bedside table. She wanted to see the face that was lost in the darkness of that hood; she wanted the bastard to look her in the eye and try to explain away his transgressions.
“No light,” he said softly, easing her away from the table. “Your maid might see the flame and become curious.”
“And what if she does?” Liane snapped. “It isn’t as though you don’t have a right to be here, if you insist upon it.”
Sebestyen shook his head, and when he did so, his features were even more lost in the darkness of the hood. “No one can know I came to you,” he said. “No one.”
“But—”
“Do you trust me, Liane?”
Trust? She had loved Sebestyen, hated him, wanted him, needed him...sometimes all at once. But she had never, ever, made the mistake of trusting him.
“No,” she answered.
“Just a little, perhaps?”
She thought of the way she’d found him in bed with another woman, the way he had continued to entertain the concubine even though she watched while what was left of her heart broke into a million tiny pieces that could never be repaired. “No.”
He did not become angry, but he did utter a low, thoughtful, “I see.”
Liane almost expected her husband to grab her hair and push her back onto the bed and spread her legs, the way he’d done a hundred, a thousand times before. He was not a man to take no for an answer, and if he wanted her, he would have her. It was his way.
But he didn’t push her. Instead he laid his hand upon her belly and left it there, the touch gentle. For several long, silent moments they sat in the dark, one of his large hands resting over their child, her wrist caught in the grip of his other hand.
“What do you want?” Liane finally whispered.
He answered with a harsh laugh, and then he said, “What difference does it make what I want? What difference has it ever made?”
Liane tried to see into the darkness the hood cast over Sebestyen’s face. “Everything you have ever wanted has been laid at your feet. By your father, your mother, the priests, your ministers.” She swallowed hard. Heaven above, her mouth was dry. “Even by me.”
Sebestyen let his hand rest on her stomach. She was very quickly getting fat and misshapen, and he’d made it clear that he didn’t care for the changing shape and needs of expectant women. And yet that hand remained in place, steady and strong.
“What do you want, Liane?” he asked. “What do you desire above all else?”
She did not even have to think. “Freedom.”
For a moment all was deeply, darkly silent. Sebestyen had likely expected her to confess that he was what she wanted more than anything, and if she were smart, that’s the answer she would have given. But she was tired of the lies that had colored and filled her life. Just this once, she wanted to speak the truth to her husband.
“What makes you think I’m so different from you?” Sebestyen whispered, ending the uncomfortable silence. One finger moved gently against her stomach. “My cage might have better trappings than those on Level Twelve, but it’s still a cage.”
“Are you asking me to feel sorry for you?” she asked, incredulous.
“No.”
“Then why are you here?”
For a moment there was only the darkness of the night and the feel of his hands on her wrist and her belly. Nothing else mattered.
“I am here to look upon my wife and child.”
Suddenly she knew that on those nights when she’d awakened feeling as if she were being spied upon, Sebestyen had been here. Not so close, perhaps, but here. Watching. “How did you get into this room without being seen?”
“I have my ways.”
Secret corridors, hooded cloaks, hidden stairs. Liane was one of the few who knew of the passageways behind these walls, narrow corridors and stairs that wound from one level to another. She had used those routes most often in her years as Sebestyen’s assassin. Apparently she had not been advised of all the secrets of the palace, because she had not known that it was possible for Sebestyen to leave his quarters without even the sentinels being aware of his departure, or that there was a private way to enter the empress’ chamber. Sebestyen knew, and he had used that knowledge to come to her in the night.
A part of her wanted nothing more than to reach up and touch her lips to his. To lie here beside him, beneath him, and pretend that nothing had changed.
But another part remembered watching him make love to his whore, and she did not think she could ever forgive him.
Not that Sebestyen ever asked for forgiveness.
“You wasted your time,” she said, as if she did not care. “I won’t lie with you ever again.”
“You’re my wife and I’m emperor. You can’t refuse me.” She could almost hear the smile in his voice, and again she wished for the light of her bedside lamp.
“I just did.”
The shuffle of feet in the hallway that led to Mahri’s room distracted an angry Liane, and a moment later a sleepy voice called, “My lady, are you all right?”
“If you ever trusted me...if you ever loved me, don’t tell,” Sebestyen commanded quickly as he left Liane’s bed and faded into the shadows of the dark bedchamber.
Mahri arrived a moment later, carrying a candle that cast flickering light around the room. Liane glanced over her shoulder, in the direction of Sebestyen’s disappearance, but she saw nothing. No sign of Sebestyen or his exit. No tapestry or curtain stirred as if it had been recently disturbed.
“I heard voices.” The young girl stopped just inside the doorway and yawned.
Liane took a deep breath and lay down upon her soft bed, pulling the coverlet to her chin. Sebestyen didn’t want anyone to know he’d come here, which meant she should shout the news at the top of her lungs. “I had a bad dream. Perhaps I was talking in my sleep.”
“Would you like some tea?” Mahri offered.
“No.”
“I can sit with you if you’d like.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Liane said sharply. “You need your sleep and so do I.”
“You’re truly all right?”
“Of course.” With her heart pounding and her mind spinning, Liane closed her eyes. “I’m sure I’ll drift off to sleep quickly, if you’ll get that candlelight out of my eyes.” “I’m sorry, my lady.” Mahri backed away quickly. “Call if you need me.”
“I will.”
Liane listened as Mahri returned to her own small room, and then she waited a moment more. Her ears were keen, and yet she heard not even the faintest sound. “Sebestyen?” she whispered when a few silent moments had lapsed.
There was no response, and before she fell asleep again, she wondered if his appearance at her bedside had been a dream.
Juliet used strips of the nightgown she wore beneath her frock for bandages to bind the wolf’s wounds. The lacerations were deep, where the cat’s claws and teeth had ripped at him. It might’ve been her flesh so horribly ripped. Would’ve been, if not for Ryn.
“I’ll make sure you’re on the mend, and then I’m going to head down the mountain,” she said as she wrapped one damaged hind leg snugly. She ignored the body on the other side of the fire. Were the cats a warring clan of the Anwyn? Or another species altogether? Would she run into more of them as she made her escape? Were they all violent, or was this particular cat an unusually barbarous member of his species? She would probably never know. Ryn would likely not be able to speak, come morning. He had several weeks of healing ahead of him.
She’d see that he was in good shape before she left, of course. There were surely edible roots and fruits in the woods. She’d gather a supply and leave it nearby. She’d also leave a few fresh bandages, so he could change his own dressings. It was a good plan. Ryn was so badly wounded he would not possibly be able to chase after her for at least several days. By then she’d be far away from this mountain and the wolf creature, if luck was with her.
Luck. She hadn’t experienced much of that lately. Not of the good variety.
When the sky turned gray, she left the wolf resting in the cave and forced herself to study the body that lay close to the dying f
ire. She could not simply leave it here to decay while Ryn healed. When she screwed up her courage to touch the creature, she took him by the wrists and dragged him, a few inches at a time, into the woods. The going was easier there, since it sloped downhill and there was a bed of needles from the evergreen trees to make their progress quicker. Still, it took all her muscle to handle the chore. She dragged him to the edge of a gorge, and using every bit of the strength she possessed, she rolled the body over the edge, flinching as it dropped.
She returned to camp to find not a wolf, but a man. The ugly wounds remained, more devastating on flesh than they had been while lost in fur. Ryn’s transformation had left the bandages she’d bound so neatly in disarray.
Where had he left his discarded kilt and knife last night, when he’d transformed into a wolf? The man on the bearskin bedroll was completely naked. While Juliet knew what a naked man was supposed to look like, she had never actually seen one. She really should be genteel and cover Ryn’s long body with whatever she could find at hand, but in truth he was beautiful. Wounded, unconscious, naked, and beautiful. She did finally turn the bearskin up and over in order to cover his midsection, though he did not seem to need the warmth.
As she did so, he opened his eyes and looked squarely and strongly at her. “The Caradon is dead?”
“If you mean the mountain cat that turned into a man after you killed him, then yes.”
Ryn nodded and closed his eyes briefly in sheer relief. “I smelled him yesterday, but the Caradon do not usually wander so far to the east. I was hoping he’d turn toward home before he came upon us.”
“You knew yesterday that thing was coming? Why didn’t you warn me?”
“I did not wish to frighten you.”
“Too late,” she muttered as she gathered the bandages to rebind the wounds.
He allowed her to tend to him without moving, without a word of complaint even though she knew her gentlest touch must be painful.
The Moon Witch Page 10