The Water Thief

by Jane Kindred

  Sebastian bent to pick up his stockings and shoes from the grass. “I suppose it must be, for you to call me Sebastian.” He lifted one foot to pull the stocking over it and Macsen stepped in automatically to give him a steadying hand at his shoulder, and then smothered the heat of a blush in his cheeks as he realized he was being chivalrous to a man—and this man in particular.

  “I need some of your…the Cantre’r Gwaelod magic.” He barely managed not to stammer it.

  Sebastian paused in pulling the gossamer fabric over his toes. Damn him, he was daintily pedicured like a girl as well. “Exactly how do you mean to acquire it, Macsen? Is one of us going to drown this morning after all?”

  Macsen was, but that wasn’t the point. Face burning furiously despite his resolve, he spat it out. “From your kiss, dammit.”

  Sebastian calmly unrolled the silk up his leg and snapped it under his garter, then pulled his slipper up over his heel before moving on to the other pair. “I believe the response to that would be ‘go sod yourself’.” He secured the other stocking and stepped into the slipper.

  Macsen let go of him, fuming. “I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t a matter of life or death.”

  Sebastian straightened and laughed in Macsen’s face. “That’s rich, Macsen. Very good. You had me going.”

  “I’m absolutely serious.”

  Sebastian folded his arms. “If it’s so deadly serious, why don’t you just use the vial you stole the other day?”

  “I’ve already used it.”

  The expression in the brown eyes hovered somewhere between disgust and amusement. “Do you have an addiction, Macsen? Perhaps you should have yourself committed to All Fates for some professional help.”

  Macsen tried to will down the heat in his cheeks, furious with himself for letting Sebastian get to him, though that had hit too close to the mark. “Listen, damn you, I wouldn’t come to you unless I had no other choice. And despite what you seem to think, I’m not carrying some secret torch for you, trying to find excuses to kiss you. The idea is abhorrent, but I’m desperate.”

  Sebastian’s eyes flashed with anger. “What a flattering request. Of course I’ll consent.” He turned on his heel and started back toward Llys Mawr, but Macsen caught his arm.

  Sebastian jerked against his grip. “Let go of me!”

  “Please.” Macsen loosened his hold, and Sebastian yanked his arm free. “I didn’t mean kissing you was abhorrent, I meant the idea of taking your power—” Macsen swore. “Look, you don’t understand. I have to finish what I’ve started, or others are going to suffer for it.”

  “Who’s going to suffer? What the hell are you talking about? The only person I see in any danger of suffering is you.”

  “Emrys is going to have them hanged. The people whose wells I replenished—he’s sworn to have them tortured until they give up the name of the Water Thief, and killed if they refuse.”

  Sebastian regarded him, unconvinced. “Then why don’t you just turn yourself in, Macsen? Tell Emrys it was you and it was all a lark.”

  “You don’t understand him. He wants blood for it. He’ll punish them anyway. And yes, it was a lark at first, but he’s a conniving son of a whore, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let him steal and extort from my own people and put the blame on me.”

  Sebastian’s demeanor softened. “But what have you done for the others? Helped them run off? Why do you need magic for that?”

  Macsen had hoped to avoid telling him everything, but Sebastian was stubborn and persistent, and he wasn’t going to agree without knowing it all. “I take them across. To the other realm. I give them new lives.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  I wasn’t sure what shocked me more. That Macsen considered himself truly the lord of Cantre’r Gwaelod with its attendant responsibilities—and actually cared about “his” people—or that he was claiming to be smuggling human beings to another realm. The story was so absurd, it almost had to be true. Though if Sven hadn’t told me of his own journey from the upper realms, I would have dismissed it completely. At least my suspicion about his apparent desire for me had been confirmed: he only desired what was inside me.

  I regarded him, anxiously awaiting my answer. It was equally absurd that I was entertaining his request. “What’s in it for me?” I demanded.

  Macsen rubbed at the attractive layer of stubble on his cheeks. “I suppose…I can give you what funds I have available. Emrys keeps a tight hold on the finances, but I do have an account.”

  “Of course you do.”

  Macsen glared. “I didn’t lie to you about that. I have an account, I just don’t have unlimited funds at my disposal. It’s not as if your inheritance is in a neat bundle of bills tucked into sacks of hundreds and sitting in a vault for the taking. I have enough to cover reasonable monthly expenditures befitting the earl of Cantre’r Gwaelod. That is all.”

  “It will do. For a beginning. But you’re going to have to find a way—and soon—to access much more than that if you want me to continue to keep quiet.”

  With a sigh, Macsen gave me a reluctant nod. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  I put out my hand. “All right, then. We have a deal.” Macsen shook on it awkwardly, as though he still thought of me as a woman and had to resist the habit of lifting my hand to his lips for a kiss. “So. How do you…? Do you need it now?”

  “Yes.”

  He stepped toward me, and I drew back, holding him off with my palm. “What about my payment?”

  “Sebastian, I don’t have much time to help them. I promise to fulfill my end of the bargain when I get back. If I don’t, you’re free to go straight to Emrys and end all this.”

  Given his evident fear of Emrys’s wrath over the theft of a single bottle of my power, this seemed a reasonable surety.

  I nodded and dropped my hand. “All right. Go ahead.”

  Macsen stepped in once more, placed one hand at the small of my back to draw me close and the other at the side of my head, and kissed me. I had meant to show no response, to passively let him take my breath, but one touch of his lips made me forget my resolve. I slipped my arms around his neck and closed my eyes without quite realizing I’d done so, surrendering to the prickling excitement his kiss delivered to my skin.

  Macsen pulled away, and I had to stop myself from making a little moan of disappointment. “Sebastian.” His eyes were amused when I opened mine. “You’re supposed to be giving me your magic.”

  “Oh.” Heat rose in my face, and I withdrew my arms. “I didn’t… Is there something I’m supposed to do?”

  Macsen put my arms back where they’d been. “Relax. Just breathe the way you do when Emrys—when you feel like you’re about to drown. Take a deep breath and hold it as long as you can before you exhale it into me. Think of me as the glass vessel.” He stroked my cheek with his thumb in a convincing display of wanting me and not my magic. “I’m going to need as much as you normally give him.”

  I realized what he was asking of me. I had to succumb to that sensation of letting go completely, reach that moment of release in which I breathed in the water during Emrys’s sessions. That moment that felt like I was giving up and drowning.

  I nodded. “I’ll try.”

  He lowered his head, and I closed my eyes once more, breathing in deeply through my nose, and then stopping as though the glass apparatus were over my face and I could take in no more. It was difficult not to simply feel Macsen, to explore his taste and the texture of his mouth and forget what we were doing. I began to feel the urge to breathe and resisted it, letting what I’d already taken absorb the magic in my blood, aware on some level of the blood vessels carrying oxygen through me.

  I must have made a sound of fear or discomfort, because Macsen moved both hands to my face and held me gently but without letting go of my lips, softly stroking as he’d done when he’d calme
d me that first time while I’d lain in my bed at Emrys’s mercy. I shuddered, remembering the suffocating feeling, remembering the need to breathe and the knowledge that there was no air, only water that my lungs were going to take in if I succumbed.

  I clung to Macsen, moaning and shaking as I resisted, and at last I felt that odd sensation of something rushing through me, and I breathed out, through my mouth, into him.

  Macsen’s grip tightened on me, and he pressed his body even closer to mine, his arousal obvious—as mine must be—even if his was only the arousal of magic. I felt him take it, felt his lungs expand, and there was a brief moment where it seemed simultaneously that all of me was flowing into him—and all of him was filling me.

  With a cry into his mouth, I let go and pulled myself forcefully from his grip. Macsen seemed almost in a daze, confused by the severing of our connection. He blinked at me, and a pale blue spark seemed to light the edges of his irises for an instant. My magic was inside him.

  “Sebastian…” He reached for my hand. “Did I hurt you? You’re crying.”

  “I am?” I touched my fingers to my cheek and felt the moisture.

  “Did I take too much?”

  I shook my head and wiped at the tears. “I think it’s just a side effect. Water leaving me.” I laughed nervously. “Good thing I didn’t piss myself.”

  Macsen laughed, a genuine, surprised sound. I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard an actual laugh from him before. “Such language for such a genteel lady.”

  I drew my hand out of his and dried the other cheek. “Shut up,” I said, though I was smiling. Smiling at Macsen Finch, who had stolen my life and my inheritance and had just kissed me so thoroughly it was a wonder, in fact, that I hadn’t come. I couldn’t resist the urge to touch my lips, still feeling the vibration of his upon them.

  “I have to go,” he said, reluctant, as though he were actually my suitor and had to leave me after a secret rendezvous. “I’ll see you when I get back.” He walked away toward the stables, and I stared after him, wondering what on earth had just happened. The gift of my magic had changed something between us. Or at least changed him. Maybe it was temporary. Maybe once he’d expended the energy I’d bestowed upon him, he’d be back to his sullen looks and his biting sarcasm.

  I hoped not. Which was foolish. Utterly.

  August fell silently into step beside me in the curling mist as I returned to the manor. Her presence was comforting and had ceased to surprise me.

  “I suppose you saw that,” I said.

  “Felt it, more like.”

  I turned and gaped at her. “Felt it?”

  “Not actually, not as if it were me kissing him. I just sense when things are happening to you—when our magic is being used.”

  I continued walking. “And I suppose you disapprove.”

  August sighed exactly as if she were a live, weary sister looking out for her little brother’s welfare. Even though I was younger by mere minutes. “I don’t judge you, Sebastian. I just worry. He’s not exactly a friend to you.”

  “You don’t think I know that? Besides, you’re the one who said you felt sorry for him.”

  “That was when he was a child. He couldn’t help his bitterness against us then. But what he does as an adult is another matter. He’s made a conscious choice to steal everything from you.”

  “I think Emrys keeps him on a rather short leash. He’s in too deep to simply step out without facing Emrys’s wrath. And I’ve seen his wrath, by the way. It’s not pretty. I think he may have abused Macsen when he was a boy.”

  August tucked her arm into mine as we neared the entrance. “You’re making excuses for him.” She stopped and I waited. “I don’t want to see you hurt.”

  “I can take care of myself, August. I’m not a child.”

  Unexpectedly, she embraced me and kissed me on the cheek. “No, you’re not. And no, you can’t. You think you can, and that’s what scares me. You’re here alone with them, with no one to protect you—”

  “I have Sven.”

  “Sven has himself to look out for first and foremost.” She held one hand in the other, pressing her thumb against her palm and stroking the back of her hand in a nervous gesture. “I feel as if I’ve thrown you amongst a pack of wolves for my own selfish need for revenge.”

  “They’re not all wolves, and you didn’t throw me amongst them. Emrys did this. To us both. You got me out of All Fates. You saved my life. You don’t know what it was like in there. It’s a place for madmen, and I was becoming one. I wasn’t always sure who I was anymore or what was real.”

  “I know.” August looked pained. “I’m sorry. I wanted to come sooner.”

  “Stop blaming yourself for everything.”

  She drew a heavy—and illusory—breath. “I have to go. Please be careful.”

  “Lady August?”

  I turned my head toward Sven’s voice, thinking he must see her, but she’d vanished the moment he spoke, and he was, of course, speaking to me.

  “What are you doing out here so early?” He stepped out of the double doors on the solarium and came to take my arm. “It looked like you were talking to yourself again. Are you feeling all right?”

  “Again? When have I talked to myself before?”

  Sven laughed. “Do it quite a bit, actually. Sure you’re all right?”

  “Of course. I’m fine.”

  “Any progress with that bastard?”

  My pulse quickened. Had he seen me with Macsen? I swallowed, trying to think of a way to explain myself, but Sven went on, apparently oblivious to my inner conflict.

  “Figure he just needs to be leaned on a little harder. Want me to take care of that? I can do it discreet.”

  “No need. He just agreed to give me the balance of his monthly account immediately. That’s what I was doing out here, meeting him to have it out.”

  Sven grinned as we headed for the dining hall for breakfast. “Monthly account, eh? That’s a start.”

  “That’s what I said.” I lowered my voice. “He claims Emrys keeps a tight fist around his purse, but he gets a monthly stipend. I told him he’ll have to find a way to get more than he’s been getting if he intends to keep any for himself.”

  Sven squeezed my arm and murmured at my ear as we entered the dining hall. “That’s my Sly. And I might have a little something else in mind to add some incentive.”

  It was impossible to ask him what he meant as the others were joining us, but I couldn’t help the little prickle of unease at the thought of what else he might have in mind for Macsen. Did he intend to harm him? August’s words came back to me: “Sven has himself to look out for first and foremost.” He wasn’t a wolf. He was my friend. But I wasn’t fool enough to think he wouldn’t do whatever he thought it would take to get whatever he thought he deserved. I’d have to have a word with him in private later to make sure he wasn’t planning anything that would jeopardize my fragile truce with Macsen.

  I ignored the voice in the back of my head that was trying to make itself heard. The one that said it wasn’t the fragile truce I was afraid of jeopardizing, it was something more that I imagined had begun between us. Whether something was happening between us or not, how could I possibly be wanting it to? I was out of my mind.

  * * * * *

  There was no opportunity to speak with Sven after breakfast, as Mr. Baines required my presence in the burgeoning garden. I found my mind wandering as Baines prattled on about the azaleas and peonies and showed me the foundations that had been laid for a raised plot that would hold several varieties of lavender. My thoughts were preoccupied with the inadvisability of my obsession with Macsen Finch.

  What if I was out of my mind? The fact that Sven had noted me talking to myself on multiple occasions that I couldn’t even recall was worrying. The fact that I could feel August’s touch—something I’d
never heard said of a ghost before—was troubling. And the fact that I could see her plainly before me, hear her speaking to me, when no one around me was aware of her presence at all…that was not how ghosts behaved. Perhaps All Fates had affected me more than I’d suspected.

  Mr. Baines took offense at my apparent disinterest and I had to apologize and claim to be under the weather. I headed back to my room, hoping to find a moment to talk to Sven, but he wasn’t about. Abigail had taken the morning off to take care of some personal business, and I couldn’t put aside the nagging feeling that it might be on Sven’s business after all.

  I managed all on my own to change into a proper afternoon dress before Abigail’s return, prepared to make amends with Mr. Baines and sit down with him to discuss the progress of our designs, but as I stepped out of my suite into the corridor, I nearly stumbled over Macsen.

  “You’re back. Did everything…go well?”

  Macsen nodded and reached for me, putting his hand on my wrist. “It’s done.” He looked down at my arm, turning my hand palm up, and his thumb stroked over the sensitive skin at the place where they joined. A rush of energy went up my arm as though I’d struck my funny bone, only it wasn’t an unpleasant sensation. It was need and desire and promise. It was my own essential magic returning to me.

  “Macsen,” I whispered.

  His head shot up, and he pressed his fingers to my lips. “Shh. Not here.” He led me back into the room and closed the door.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to call you that—”

  “Sebastian.” His dark eyes were earnest, and almost pleading. “I feel you inside me. I need—I want—”

  I didn’t wait for him to voice that desire. I reached up and drew his head down to mine and kissed him. Macsen groaned sensuously against my lips, his arms sliding around my waist and pressing us together, and then he abruptly pulled away. Heat rushed to my face, and I tried to stammer my apology for being such a fool, but he was bustling me backward into the bedroom. He closed the door with his foot and dropped me onto the bed beneath him as he crawled over me, unbuttoning the jacket of my walking dress.