He regretted that she stayed, knew the fear gnawing at him now was part of the price he’d paid for this great love.
Still he wrapped his arms around her, brought her close to smell her scent, rub his face in her silky brown hair, listen to their Songs as they wove melodically together. He was blessed and would always be blessed if she was in his life.
Quashing his fear into a tiny wad, he put it in a locked chest deep inside him where it would not cause panic and shame him. Better he keep this to himself as all the other men were doing. Though the pairbonded ones knew they would die with their women: Bastien and Alexa, Jaquar and Marian, Marrec and Calli, Sevair and Bri.
Others in the force: Mace and Clua, the newest male Marshall pair…all the Marshalls and most of the Chevaliers. When one fell, both would die, the bond and fate ensured that.
He would not pairbond with Raine. He wanted her to live if he died…though he did not think he would live long if she perished and he survived.
A small mutter of protest came from her and she sounded as if she was rising from the sleep she needed. He’d let that fear out already, so he punched it back again, snapped chains around that inner chest. Held her close and murmured words—a mixture of Lladranan and English. He chuckled deep in his throat as he thought that now he’d linked with two Exotiques, and Raine was not from that same place as the others, he might very well know the language better than any of the other Exotiques’ men.
For a moment he thought of Elizabeth, let the experience sift through him, part of his life, part of how he’d treated—and would treat—this new woman he cherished more.
Elizabeth had been a sweet rippling stream in his life, but never quite his as he’d wanted, and he accepted that was a good thing.
For he and Raine fit so much better together. Raine was an ocean swell of love that surprised him, inundated him, took him under. Kept him forever.
He let Elizabeth go, the last splinter of hurt vanished.
He could love Raine so much more because he’d had time with Elizabeth, and Elizabeth had been—was—a good and true woman. But she’d never been meant for him. He’d tried to force fate and had stumbled and fallen.
As he let sleep creep up on him, and listened to Raine and breathed her, he only hoped his true destiny had a better ending.
Pounding came at their door, rousing Raine. No gorgeous gamalon scale of strings attached to the lovely harp on Faucon’s door, but small-fisted banging.
“Come on, Raine!” Alexa yelled in accented English. A shiver went down Raine’s spine as she realized that she’d decided to stay. She, too, would begin to speak English with a Lladranan accent, God willing.
Song willing.
Struggling from the grip of man and covers—and wasn’t that wonderful, a man who’d held onto her all night long, when they weren’t making love—Raine stumbled from bed. She grabbed a coverlet and wrapped it around her and went into the sitting room to crack open the door. “We’re not up yet. Go away.”
Alexa scowled, shifted from foot to foot. “Why aren’t you up?”
“So, like, you sprang right into action after your task was done and your Snap, right? Well, I want to bathe and eat.”
“But we want to go to the Ship! Nobody will until you do, Madam Lucienne Deauville says. I want to see my quarters. I thought we could hold another battle planning conference there. Get our sea legs.”
Raine stared at Alexa. “No one is going to get their sea legs on a ship floating in a calm bay.”
Alexa lifted wide eyes, smiled a winsome smile. “It’s a start.”
“Go. Away. I’ll be down in about an hour.”
“Make that two,” Faucon said in a morning-rough voice from behind her. “It’s still very early, hardly dawn.”
Alexa huffed a breath.
“Don’t make me call Bastien,” Raine threatened.
Eyes narrowing, Alexa said, “You think that man can control me?”
“Ayes,” Raine replied and heard the word from Faucon at the same time.
Bastien’s bulk showed behind his wife. “Come on, Alexa, a gift for you arrived from the Castle.”
“What? A present? For me?”
“And you might want to bother, I mean talk to Jikata,” Raine said. “You probably didn’t get your fill yesterday.”
“True, very true,” Alexa said. “Later. A gift. From whom?” She began to badger Bastien.
Faucon chuckled and Raine turned to him, feeling a little embarrassed. She’d thrown a different life away for this man and he knew it. As grand gestures went that was pretty damn big.
“I am so lucky,” he said.
She relaxed, then lifted her brows at him. “And are you going to learn to control and manipulate me like Bastien does Alexa?”
Grinning, Faucon said, “We’ll manipulate each other. And Alyeka—Alexa—likes it. But if everyone is waiting for you—which is only right—perhaps we should rise a little earlier.”
“You just want to know what Alexa’s present is.”
He tilted his head. “I already know, her new mount is ready, the young volaran that will come on the trip. Arrow for the Dark.”
“Oh.” So many volaran names indicating their destiny.
At that moment sunlight slid through the windows. Raine smiled. “Another pretty day.”
“With a pretty sight to come, your Ship.”
He was proud of her, and she was proud of her achievement. And now that she was staying, she would call it “the Ship” like everyone else. There was only one. “My Ship!” She tasted the word, then hurried over to the windows.
“We’re facing east, inland,” Faucon said. “The sea’s to the west,” he teased.
She rolled her eyes, muttered, “I knew that, but I’m used to an ocean on the east.” Heading for the shower, she said, “I do want to take a good tour.” She flashed her lover, her man, a smile. “See if all the details are right.”
She led several admiring tours until the Ship felt familiar under her feet. Groups of volarans streamed to alight on the quarterdeck, sniff around it, march along the regular deck, then return to their Landing Field and stables.
The Chevaliers and Marshalls grinned, even when they saw the hammocks strung with little room between them where they’d sleep. At noon Alexa dismissed the last lingering Chevaliers, welcomed Corbeau and his family, who brought lunch. Along with them came all the Exotiques and their men, including Koz, Marian’s brother. They adjourned to the main cabin belowdecks that Raine called a lounge and Alexa a war room.
Raine and her charts of the course were up first, pointing the way with her forefinger, talking about tides and shoals and wind patterns. All the information was in her mind, easy to recall, and she knew fatalistically that her father had been right. She would have to Captain this Ship of her own.
Then they rolled up the other maps and brought out the one of the island. It was mostly volcano, no good harbors, no cove that would accommodate the draft of the Ship.
“So the plan is that we go in at dawn. They shouldn’t be able to see the Ship, Raine and Marian and Jikata will be cloaking it.” Alexa hesitated a little on Jikata’s name. They didn’t know her very well yet, only that she was key.
They all looked at Jikata, she merely nodded. “If there’s such a songspell, I can do it.” Then she looked around pointedly. “As for the City Destroyer weapon knot, Marian showed me the spell yesterday evening and I can handle that, too, the lead and the ritual and the Power. But we must practice as a group. I understand that you have been practicing together, which is all to the good, and the Singer brought in people whose voices approximated yours, so I have had some practice that way. But we must practice together. Is that clear?”
“Clear,” Marian said.
Jikata looked at Alexa. She gave a little cough. “Clear.”
The rest of them spoke together. “Clear.”
Nodding decisively, Jikata said, “Good.”
After one more cough, Alexa sai
d, “Now the actual battle plans.” She shifted a map with geographical gradations away to reveal a map of the island easier to read. “I anticipate that the minute we drop the cloaking spell, or invade, the Master will order out the horrors. Hordes of horrors.”
Raine felt sick but nodded.
“The sailors who wish to fight will land with the first wave of Chevaliers. The goal of those fighting outside the volcano will be to distract the monsters and the Master from us Exotiques who are going in.”
“In a volcano?” asked Jikata. She moved closer to the map.
Alexa said, “It’s mostly inactive.”
“Huge mountain,” Jikata murmured.
“You’re so right,” Alexa said. “Here’s a ledge where all of our volarans can land. We’ll take the gong which will also distract the Dark, and maybe the Master, because the Dark wants it, and wants it intact. It’s dangerous and should be destroyed. The feycoocus will hide it.” Alexa gestured and Marian rolled out another map that showed a cutaway of the mountain.
“We’ve been working on this map for weeks and we owe the intelligence to Sevair, Bri’s husband, who attached a spyeye to the Master. Since he doesn’t bathe, we’re still receiving information. Circlets monitor the eye twenty-four seven and we may even get information during the battle.”
“Priceless,” Bastien said. He was leaning against the door, arms crossed.
“So, we land here, and send our volarans back to the Ship.”
No one wanted to doom the volarans, and the knot’s magical shield could accommodate a limited mass.
“Then we take the gong—” Alexa trailed her finger down and across the mountain “—to an inactive lava tube here. The Master rarely uses these tubes, so he won’t think of them as access points first.”
“Take the gong,” murmured Jikata. “I don’t hike.”
“Ride the gong,” Alexa said. “There’s probably snow, and if not, we have, uh—” she waved “—anti-grav.”
Raine’s mouth dropped open. Her mind boggled, trying to imagine what Alexa was saying, then she decided she didn’t want to.
“It will work!” Alexa assured.
“Yeah,” Bri said, grinned at Alexa, who beamed back.
Raine and Jikata looked at Calli. She shrugged with an amused smile. They turned to Marian, who sighed. “Crazy as it sounds, it will work.”
“Anyway,” Alexa said briskly, “we ride the gong down the mountain to the tube. Then we go down the tube to this cavern.”
It was a huge space in the middle of the mountain.
Jikata frowned, tapped a well-kept nail on figures. “Are these the dimensions?”
“Ayes,” Alexa said. “Plenty of room to do a ritual.”
But Jikata was shaking her head, pointing down to another tube angling deeper into the mountain, threading her finger down it to a smaller dome-shaped cavern. “And these are the dimensions for this chamber?”
“Ayes,” Marian said.
“Do we have any information on this room?”
Marian shivered. “Not much. I think I was stashed there for a while. The old Master called it the larder.”
“Is there food in there?” Jikata asked.
“One moment,” Jaquar said as he leafed through papers. There was quiet until he looked up. “No, the old Master kept prey for the monsters there, but nothing’s there at last report.”
“The acoustics will be better in this chamber,” Jikata said.
“But—” Alexa started.
Jikata raised her head and there was something in her manner that had them all stilling. “There is a chamber of these exact dimensions in the Caverns of Prophecy, where I spent a great deal of time. If I were to speculate,” she said slowly, “I would say that Amee has ensured the chambers were identical.”
Alexa’s eyebrows rose. She rubbed her hands. “Guess we get a little more of the gong thrill ride.”
“Oh, joy,” Marian said.
“Then the feycoocus take the gong to where it can be destroyed. Jikata takes the stage and we’re her girl backup group. There’s a time during the ritual for a warning. That’s when we mentally notify the guys outside to break off fighting and retreat to the Ship, which has been hiding in a cove. Then we Destroy the Dark.”
Raine was sure it wouldn’t happen like that.
“We’re going, too,” Bastien and Luthan said in unison.
Alexa whirled to look at her husband. “Ttho.”
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Jikata stared at Luthan, the shell of her hard-held control nearly crumbling, as she tried to grasp the plan. She’d studied the Weapon Knot City Destroyer ritual, and had coolly determined that was possible. But this mountain-gong idea was absurd.
Luthan met her eyes and she saw his determination. That quality was matched by everyone else. She’d never met such a group of determined people. A people at war.
Bastien strode forward, set his large hands on Alexa’s small shoulders, a fierce smile on his face. “You think I want you to die inside the mountain away from me when I die outside? Or vice versa? We’re bonded with the coeur-de-chain, we die at the same moment, so let us die together.”
Bri linked hands with her husband, Sevair, looked at him. “The gong will only hold us.”
The craftsman was the right one to ask. A smile hovered on his lips. One of satisfaction. “I’ve made a sled.”
The women switched their gazes to him. Jikata’s heartbeat spiked as she looked at Luthan. He wouldn’t be outside, fighting the monsters and evading them the way he’d done all his life. He’d be inside with them.
“A sled,” Bri repeated.
“Ayes. Wooden, waxed runners.” His smile curved deeper. “Marrec lived in the north, he knew of sleds.”
Koz cleared his throat, and Sevair glanced at him. “Koz lived in Colorado like you. He will steer it.”
“Koz’s body has no muscle memory of sleds. Even as a boy, he didn’t sled much,” Marian, his sister, snapped.
Tapping his temple, Koz said, “My mind recalls, we’ve all studied the physics of it, and I’ve been practicing. We’ll be a seven-man bobsled team.”
Marian gathered the glances of the women. “All those who have sledded before the last couple of weeks raise their hands.”
Jikata joined the rest of the women shooting their hands up, a brief memory of laughing and tumbling off a toboggan with her mother and father during a winter holiday coming back to her.
Koz lifted his hand, Marrec’s stalled halfway up. Not much skill among the men.
Koz leaned back in his chair. “Good thing you’re all experienced. A saucer is harder to steer than a sled.”
Marian snarled. Jaquar took her hand and lifted it to his lips, they locked gazes. “We, too, are bound together, will die at the same moment. If I must breathe my last, I want to be looking at you when I do.”
Jikata met Raine’s eyes. They shared a look. Neither of them wanted their men to perish if they did, and Jikata was certain the men felt the same way.
Real discussion stopped at that point and the maps were put away and food brought out. Jikata didn’t eat much and Raine picked at her food.
As Jikata ate, she sensed tension winding Luthan tighter and tighter. Or perhaps he was reacting to her. All the awful visions that she’d put out of her mind, or those she’d only recalled fragments of, swarmed into her head—the battle, people and volarans dying outside.
The women and their men dying inside, or in a terrible explosion.
That feeling that she’d live to be the Singer surrounded with these women as her friends seemed a vague wisp of past hope, impossible.
Luthan rose from the table first and excused himself and her, held out his hand.
A tiny muscle flicked at his temple. He, too, must be remembering all his visions. The different fates of these vibrant people. She couldn’t leave the room quickly enough.
Hope and Lightning were on the quarterdeck, and Jikata and Luthan mounted in silence, flew to a stretch of emp
ty beach a mile from the manor, then the volarans returned to their herd.
Luthan turned his back on the Ship in the distance and walked south, leaving hard dents of footprints in the sand. “Sometimes I don’t think I can bear it,” he said in a nearly conversational voice. His mouth twisted. “Everyone knows I have flashes of the future. I’ve kept a cool manner so people won’t ask. I’ve spoken about the battle results once, to Bastien.”
She’d caught up with him, matched his stride with long lopes. Reaching out, she caught his hand and he came to a halt.
Pivoting, he faced her, took her hands. A pulsing conflagration of Song whipped through her, through them, like wildfire. Not a physical need, but emotional and spiritual. He needed her, hated his visions, had been punished for them as a child, felt apart from everyone because of his “gift.” The only one who’d accepted him unconditionally was his brother Bastien—a man with striped hair called a black-and-white, with wild Power that usually caused madness. Luthan had bitterly decided his whole family had been mad.
All this flared through her and she dropped his hands to take him in her arms, comforting him as he’d done her the night before. “Sshhh,” she crooned, holding him, not knowing when the last time it was that she had offered simple comfort, that anyone had asked it from her.
He drew in a steady breath and calmed, but she sensed emotions were still dammed within him and wondered if she could break that dam, whether she should.
“The Exotique Singer,” he said in a low voice. “So serene, are you so confident of your place in the world?”
“On Earth, certainly,” she said. For now, the next few years. Then she’d have to continually fight to stay on top. “You, too, are serene and confident of your place.”
“I know who I am. My wealth, title, nobility,” he bit out. “As a man, I’m loved by my brother—” he hesitated “—his wife, and the other Exotiques have affection for me.”
“Great affection, love. I felt that. Great respect.”
He shrugged. “It almost makes up for the fact that my father never cared and my mother prefers to live with her sister instead of her sons.”
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