by Nora Roberts
“I am.” She started down with his beer. “They had a mathematical layout for manuscripts in the ninth century, and the scribes ruled the parchment in hardpoint by scoring it with a stylus on the back. Sometimes they cut too hard. You can see the scoring on the parchment in the book. Bo here’s inflated, pretty pleased with his station in life. He’d have some lackey do the scoring. And if it was more like twelfth century—which, by the ink, I don’t think so anyway—they started using a kind of pencil to rule the page.”
“So it’s old, which we knew. What’s a couple hundred years matter?”
“Easy for you to say, old man. It matters, in this case?” She handed him the beer, sat. “Because while I’ve found snippets of the legend of the island that appear to date further back, this is the oldest serious account, and a first-person account. An account of traveling there for the celebration of the rising. When the stars were created, Doyle. It tells us when the stars were born. It’s what we call, in my circles, a discovery.”
“Dating the stars isn’t finding the third one.”
“Sometimes knowledge is its own reward.” She said it dryly, believed it absolutely. “But if I can date this, and somehow authenticate it, we’d know when the queen was born, the stars created. We know this enchanter dude sailed from the coast of Clare—alone. Odds are slim he had to sail far, as he left at night, arrived the same night. Putting magicks aside a minute, we assume the island was here, off the coast of Clare, which I like because so are we.”
Frowning over that, Doyle picked up the beer. “That would make us pretty damn lucky.”
“Considering the last couple months, luck be damned. We’re where we’re meant to be. I don’t know if we’re going to sail out one night and hit that portal, but using this account, putting it together with other sightings, doing the math, calculating currents, maybe we’d have ourselves a location, or an area anyway. There’s always a pattern, Doyle.”
He took a slug of beer. “Now you’re interesting me.”
“Good. This has to be more secondary after today. Logically, we can’t take the star back until we find it. But it’d be to our advantage to have a direction, to give Sawyer some possible coordinates when we do find the third star.
“She’s going to be even more pissed.”
“She’s hurt. Maybe we find it before she’s back in action. And no,” he said when Riley just raised her eyebrows. “I don’t believe that for a minute.”
“Okay then. To round it up. Find the star, find the island, get the job done. Hope getting the job done includes destroying Nerezza.”
“A sword does her, according to our seer.”
“And it would be extra nice if it was yours, but neither of us thinks it’s going to be that clean and done.”
“Bran enchants it with that in mind. It may be time to start working on that part of the deal.”
“It couldn’t hurt.” She’d thought of it herself. “Could be with the spell Bran’s already put on the weapons, we’re already covered there. But . . . Let’s lay it out while we’re here and the others aren’t.”
She could talk straight to him, she thought. Say things to him she’d hesitate to say to the others. Things that weighed against hope.
“If we don’t finish her before we get the stars back to the island, we’ve still saved the worlds. Yay, us. But she’s going to come for us when we’ve done our job. She can afford to wait.”
Her eyes held his, cool and steady as she continued. “Bran and Sasha go off and get married, have a couple kids. Annika and Sawyer are living on some island—on land for him, in the sea for her. They’ll probably even make that work. Me, I’ll find a dig or write a book. Likely both. You’ll do what you do. And she’ll come for us, one or two at a time, and pick us off like flies. She can’t kill you, but she can probably come up with something worse.”
The image didn’t sit well, so she reached over, took his beer, had a sip. “We’ve been set on this course, every one of us. We’ve been brought together for one purpose, all of us. To find the stars, return them, save the worlds. We’re getting there. I believe we can do it. I think we can complete the quest. But after that, Doyle, nobody says we all live happily ever after. Nobody says we’re fated to kill the dark god and do a victory dance.”
“Then we’d better say it, and do it.” He took the beer back, sipped. “Because no way I’m being the sex slave of some psycho god for eternity.”
“I was thinking she’d more likely keep you slow roasting over an open fire pit for eternity.”
“I like the heat, but the point remains. We’d better do it, Gwin. All the way. Or nobody rides off into the sunset until we do. We’re stuck together until she’s blown out of existence.”
She’d thought of that, too, but . . . “Annika’s only got a couple months before she’s mermaid all the time.”
“We do it before. We’ll put Bran on the sword. We’ll be ready for her when she comes back.”
“Okay. One god-destroying sword goes on the list.” Riley gestured. “Read.”
• • •
In her chamber, in her cave, deep underground, Nerezza stirred. The pain! The pain scored like claws, bit like teeth under her skin, burned like jagged tongues of fire and ice over it.
In all of her existence, she had never known such pain.
Her scream of rage sounded as a gasping whimper.
The thing that had once been Andre Malmon—human, wealthy, savage in his way—held a chalice to her lips in his clawed hand. “Drink, my queen. It is life. It is strength.”
The blood he fed her trickled down her scorched throat. But the pain, the pain. “How long? How long now?”
“Only a day.”
No, no, surely it had been years, decades. She had suffered so much. What had they done to her?
She remembered whirling wind, a terrible fall, scorching heat, blazing cold. Fear. She remembered fear.
And the faces, yes, she remembered the faces of those who’d struck out at her.
Tears burned down her cheeks as she drank, as Malmon’s lizard eyes stared into hers with a mixture of adoration and madness.
This, this is what they’d brought her to.
“My mirror. Get my mirror.”
“You must rest.”
“I am your god. Do as I command.”
When he scurried away, she fell back, limp, each breath a torture. He came back, clawed feet clicking on stone, held the mirror up.
Her hair, her beautiful hair, now gray as fetid smoke. Her face yellowed and scored with lines and grooves, her dark eyes clouded with age. All her beauty gone, her youth destroyed.
She would get it back, all of it. And the six who’d caused this would pay beyond measure.
As rage fed her, she grabbed the chalice, drank deep. “Get me more. Get me more, then you will do what I tell you.”
“I will make you well.”
“Yes.” She stared at his eyes, mad into mad. “You will make me well.”
CHAPTER FOUR
As Doyle read, translating smoothly, Riley took notes. It helped her form a picture of the island—a sketch really, but something more tangible. And one of the three goddesses. Dressed in white robes, belts of silver or gold or jewels. And Arianrhod—Bo definitely had a crush going there—stood out in the description. The slender beauty with hair like a flaming sunset, eyes bright as a summer sky. Yadda, yadda, Riley thought as she wrote blue eyes, redhead. He praised her alabaster skin, her voice—like harp song.
Wants to bang her.
“What?”
“Huh?” She glanced up from her notes, met Doyle’s eyes. “Didn’t realize I said it out loud. I said—wrote down—he wants to bang her. Bo’s hot for Arianrhod.”
“And that’s relevant how?”
“It’s called an observation, Lord Oblivious. I also observe we’re talking about a forested island, one with tall hills—and a castle, palace, fortress built on one of the tallest. That’s strategy. You want high ground.
We know there was a civil war, and the rebels lost, ended up being banished, stuck in the Bay of Sighs. Where we found the Water Star. Something else we pull out of this journal may be a step toward the Ice Star.”
After considering it, Doyle summed it up. “I don’t think Bo getting a woody over Arianrhod tells us anything more than he’s got a dick and she’s hot.”
“Maybe not, but odds are the other two also rate hotness, and he’s all about the one. Plus, he writes Arianrhod invited him. Maybe they’ve got something going. We come from them, that’s the story. You gotta bang to beget. It might not make any difference which of us come from which of them, but it’s relevant if Bran’s ancestor and the goddess—the one with a Celtic name—did the tango, and Bran’s a direct descendant.”
After a moment, Doyle gave her an eyebrow jerk she took as acknowledgment of her point. And went back to reading.
He had a good voice, she thought. Not what you’d call harp song, but a good, strong voice. He read well, and not everybody read well out loud.
She wondered how many books he’d read. Thousands maybe—imagine that. Here was a man who’d gone from tallow candles to laser technology, from horse and cart to space travel.
She could spend a decade picking his brain on what he’d seen, how he’d lived, what he’d felt.
For the moment she continued to take notes, following Bohannon’s observations and descriptions as he continued on horseback from the beach, through groves of orange and lemon trees—the blossoms perfuming the sweet night air.
“We can surmise spring—orange blossoms.”
“That’s considering the island runs on the same rules of seasons as this world,” Doyle pointed out. “And on this side of the equator.”
“Point.” And a damn good one, she had to admit. “But we stick with the physical location, at Bo’s time and place, and we get spring. Surmising. A well-kept island, too. He talks of the groves, the wide, dry road—lit with torches. A full moon, which also helps estimating a time. The silver palace—you have to wonder if that’s literal or just prose.”
She filled in details as he read. Expansive gardens, women in flowing gowns, music piping through open doors and windows, out onto wide terraces. The new queen’s standard—a white dove soaring over a blue sea—flew atop every tower.
Doyle got as far as the entrance hall—brilliant tapestries, gilded trees flowering in silver urns—when he put the book down.
“If I have to read interior design, I’m going to need more than a beer.”
“And when I can describe the island, the palace—in detail—to Sasha, she can draw it. And drawing it might trigger a vision. The vision might get us closer.”
He finished off his beer, set it down. “That’s a good idea.”
“I have lots of them.”
“You have lots of ideas. Some of them are good.”
“If you want another beer, bring me down some water. I went up last time. And I need ten.”
“Ten what?”
“Ten minutes.” She pushed away from the table, went to the sofa by the fire, stretched out. And was asleep in a finger snap.
Doyle appreciated the skill, one a soldier developed. Sleep on command, sleep anywhere.
He left her to it, wandered upstairs and decided water was likely the better choice for now. Opening a bottle, he drank while walking to one of the windows.
A fist closed around his heart, twisted viciously. From here he could see the well, one he’d fetched water from countless times in his youth. Bran had kept it, made it part of a garden area. A garden Doyle knew his mother would have found charming.
Flowers, shrubs, small trees, winding paths ran over what had once been a plot for crops, and the stables were long gone. Likely gone to rubble before Bran had bought the land.
He made himself look out, look over to the gravestones, and felt a new jolt when he saw Annika kneeling beside his mother’s grave, arranging . . . flowers and little stones, he noted.
She had the sweetest heart, he thought, the kindest he’d ever known. And he’d known kindness in his time, as well as brutality. She shifted, took more flowers from her basket, arranged these on his father’s grave, along with her pebbles.
She would do this, show these people she’d never known this respect.
And he’d yet to walk out to them.
Nothing there but dust, he told himself, but in his own heart he knew better. Riley had the right of it. Symbols did matter, and respect should be paid.
But for now, he turned away, went back down the stairs.
He took a good long look at Riley. She slept flat on her back, her head on one of the fancy pillows, her arms crossed over her belly at the wrist. A sheathed knife on her belt.
He imagined if she’d had her hat, she’d have tipped it over her face.
It wasn’t bad as faces went. It was no Annika, but few were. But she had good bones that would likely serve her well into old age—if she lived that long. A strong jaw that could take a punch, a wide mouth that always had something to say.
He supposed the short hair suited the face, even though he suspected she hacked at it with her own knife when needed.
He’d been known to do the same.
He remembered the first time he’d seen her in wolf form—that night on Corfu, in the midst of battle. The shock of it, the absolute magnificence of her as she’d stared him down with those gilded eyes.
Eyes that had wept for him when she’d thought him dead.
He’d forgotten what it was to have a woman weep for him.
He hadn’t allowed himself to have a woman for anything other than the most basic release in a lifetime or two. Looking at Riley now, reminding himself she wasn’t remotely the type of woman he’d ever been attracted to, he wondered why she should make him think of that release, and more.
Likely because they were the only two of the six who weren’t getting that release. Probably just that simple.
Then she opened her eyes, looked directly into his, and he knew it was far from simple.
“Problem?” she demanded.
“Your ten minutes are up.”
“Right.”
She sat up, stretched, and he swore he saw the wolf in the gesture.
When she stood, he remained where he was, blocking her.
“Repeat. Problem?”
“No. I forget you’re short.”
“I’m not short. I’m average. You’re taller than average.”
“You’re short,” he said flatly, and moved aside. “I’ll give this another hour, then I have to move, get some air.”
“I hear that. I wonder who’s in charge of lunch.”
“You’re hungry again?”
“It’s the cycle. It keeps the metabolism on a slow burn. Anyway, another hour or so and we should be able to finish the journal. Did you read any more while I took ten?”
“No.”
“So, I’ll bet you twenty he bangs the goddess. Or she bangs him. I’ve got a feeling she’ll take the lead there.”
Doyle thought of the prissy purple prose. “I’ll wager that. She can do better.”
He picked up the book; she went back to taking notes.
At the end of the hour, Riley held out her hand, palm up. “Pay me.”
“He could’ve been lying. I nailed the moon goddess in the castle on the hill.”
“Pay up.”
Resigned, Doyle dug twenty out of his pocket.
“If we had more journals, I’d go double or nothing the sister goddesses did their own bouncing during the celebration.” Riley stuffed the bill in her pocket. “It follows. We started there, too, on the island. Our bloodlines. It all started there. And more than a millennium later—by my surmise—we’re working our way back there. We’re able to do that because of that bloodline, because each of us has something more, a kind of gift.”
“I was cursed. It wasn’t a gift.”
“I’m sorry.” Sympathy and briskness mixed in her tone. “I’m s
orry for what happened to your brother, and to you. But putting the emotion of it aside, that aspect of you, the curse of immortality is part of the whole. Every one of us brings something special to the table, and together it makes the meal.”
His face, his eyes hardened and chilled. His voice flashed, iced fire. “You’re saying that my brother was meant to die so I could be cursed?”
She might have answered temper with temper if she hadn’t clearly heard the guilt and grief tangled in it. “I’m not, and there’s no point getting pissed. I’m saying that even if you’d saved him, you’d have been cursed. If the witch had never lured him, there would have been some other connection, altercation. You said yourself you’d searched for Nerezza, for the stars, for hundreds of years. No luck. But you hook up with us, and in a couple months we have two of the stars, and we’ve kicked her ass twice. It was always going to be up to us.”
“And what was he then, my brother, in your surmising? No more than a pawn to lure the knight?”
“He was your brother.” Her tone rolled over the keen edge of his. She didn’t flinch from it. “Why something evil chose him is impossible to say. I’m saying something else chose you, and the rest of us. The journal, for me, adds more weight to that.”
Though she kept her eyes level with the barely banked fury in his, she paused a moment. Now her tone gentled a little. “I’m the last one who’d ever devalue the bond of family. It’s everything. I’m just trying to get a sense of the really big picture, and logic the crap out of it to try to move us forward.”
“Logic’s the least of it though, isn’t it?” He rose again. “I need the air.”
After he strode out, she hissed out a breath. “I’m a freaking scientist,” she uttered in frustration, then picked up her notes and went out to find Sasha—and lunch.
Since everyone appeared to have scattered, she made her way to the kitchen, hunted up the makings for a sandwich.
As she layered turkey with ham, considered her choice of cheeses, Sasha came in with a new task chart.
“I figured lunch as a free-for-all today,” Sasha began, “as everyone’s settling in. I’ve got you down for it tomorrow, unless we head out somewhere.”
“Works. You want one of these?”
Sasha glanced at the enormous sandwich in the making. “I think much less. Bran spent some time talking to his family in Sligo, and he’s going to work in the tower. Annika wanted to help him, and Sawyer went out to start scouting the best place to set up target practice.”
Sasha set the canvas chart, suitably artistic as well as practical, on a ledge.
“So you’ve got some time?” Riley asked her.
“I can, if you need something.”
“Doyle and I worked our way through that journal. I’ve got notes. Bran’s ancestor—kind of a pompous boor—did it with Arianrhod.”
“Did what with— Oh. Oooh,” Sasha repeated, lengthening the word.
“Exactly. You get the implication.”
“That it’s possible Bran’s descended from her? That would make sense, wouldn’t it?”
“Logic.” Vindicated, Riley poked a finger in the air. “What I didn’t add, logically speaking, to Doyle, as he was getting pissy, is we’ve got two Irishmen who live in the same place—a few hundred years apart, but the same place.”
“Doyle could be from the same line.” Nodding, Sasha put the kettle on for tea. “It follows, doesn’t it?”
“Down the line for me. Let me give you some highlights from the journal.”
While she did, Sasha sliced an apple, some cheese, added some crackers, and settled down with tea.
“It may have been right off this coast,” Sasha stated. “It may be again.”