“Sebastian?” she croaked, bending over him and tentatively stroking his muzzle.
The wolf whimpered. He fixed a desperate gaze on her.
“Get away from him.”
She jerked upright.
Eric stood beside her exhausted horse, his far more lethal crossbow aimed at Sebastian.
Magic, but a nasty, dark-tinged magic, like the dust of dried blood, swirled around him.
She stared at him, berating herself for not seeing it sooner. “Magic generally runs in families.” Wasn’t that what the Godmother had said?
“You did this to him!” she burst out, without thinking. “The curse—it was you!”
He snarled, all pretense of charm gone. “And why not? He had everything! I had nothing! Was his blood any better than mine? And then his father died, and no one was prepared to take over, so I did! And I ran the estate, the forest and the lands better than the Old Duke had! Why shouldn’t I have it?”
She wanted to reply, Because it isn’t yours, but she knew better than that. Any opposition could make him fire.
“Did I kill the boy?” he continued, voice cracking with strain. “No! I took care of him! I took care of the inheritance by rights I should have had! And I was honest the whole time! I didn’t take a penny or an acorn for myself, except to give myself the things that a proper Guardian should have! And did anyone ever reward me for it? No!”
She made an abortive move, and the tip of the arrow moved to aim at her. “So I cursed him! What of it? All he ever really wanted to do was be left alone to play with his magic! So, three nights out of the month he had to be locked up! So what! Nobody was hurt, and I was still in charge!” His eyes narrowed. “And then you came strolling through my forest, and you— Bah! Uppity, snippy shrew that you are! You weren’t like other women. You wouldn’t shut up when you were told, and I had to stop you before you ruined everything I’d done.”
“I— What?” But before he could answer, she realized what he meant. He knew after he had bullied and threatened her that she was going to get even, and she herself had told him that she had a powerful enough father to cause him some serious problems…and she felt her eyes widen.
“You turned Sebastian loose that night!” she gasped.
“I figured he’d kill you.” Eric shrugged without taking his eyes off her. “Either you’d be found, and the King would order Sebastian to be locked up forever, or you wouldn’t be found because Sebastian would tear you to pieces, and no one would ever know what happened to you. Either way, I would still be in charge.” His face took on an expression of baffled fury. “How the hell did you manage to only get bitten?”
She shook her head. She still didn’t know. She remembered screaming at the wolf, remembered it suddenly letting go of her, looking at her with some unfathomable expression in its eyes, remembered it running—
His lip curled. “You have the luck of the very devil. When you got foisted on us, I decided to find a way to make you trust me. Once you trusted me, I tried to get rid of you in that ambush. When that didn’t work, I knew all that messing about with Sebastian in his workroom meant that you were some sort of witch. And you were doing something to me so I couldn’t think properly.”
She tried not to show how right he was.
“That was when I got away so you wouldn’t work whatever magic it was you were doing to me, and got my head clear.” He laughed. “You two aren’t the only magicians around here. I don’t need all your potions and powders and diagrams—I don’t need them, because I’m stronger than you! And you two, so smug, so pleased with yourselves, talking about how you’d change the curse. I already knew it could be changed! And when I got away from you, well, that was when I knew the answer to both my problems. I’d change the curse. I’d force Sebastian into the wolf, outside of the full moon, when both of you thought you were safe. He’d attack and kill you. I’d kill him, alas, too late to save you.“ He smiled, an icy smile that sent chills all down her spine. “Then Eric the Hero gets the Dukedom, if not the title, for saving the Kingdom from a man who’d become an uncontrollable monster. The King gives out land all the time to people who kill monsters, and I already take care of this area. Happy ending. Well, not for you, and not for him, but that hardly matters. That’s how it is still going to happen. I’ll just rip you up a bit to hide the arrow-wound and—”
The wolf had been lying quietly all this time without moving, her hand lying on his shoulder. She hadn’t noticed Sebastian tensing under her hand until it was too late.
Two hundred pounds of fur and fury launched itself straight for Eric. Not snarling, but silent and deadly—the man, and not the beast, never mind that the man went on all fours and wore fur.
And at the same time a dozen snowballs rocketed across the clearing, aimed right for Eric’s face.
The snowballs struck first, blinding him just as he reacted to Sebastian moving, so the shot went wild, and the crossbow bolt buried itself in the wood of the tree trunk just above her head. Then Sebastian hit him, and knocked him to the ground. His crossbow went flying.
But it was the man who was in charge of the body, not the wolf, and the man didn’t know how to fight like a wolf. Eric threw him off and rolled to his feet, pulling a knife as Sebastian crouched, ready to leap on his enemy again. The two froze, measuring each other.
Another dozen snowballs, thrown by the invisible hands of the Spirit Elementals, hit Eric again. Sebastian took advantage of Eric’s distraction to slam his shoulder into Eric’s legs, knocking him down for a second time, then sprang away before Eric’s knife could touch him.
Bella scrambled for her own crossbow, and lurched to her feet. She had just enough time to load an arrow, when a new voice rang across the clearing.
“That will be quite enough.”
Everyone froze. The voice—female—wasn’t loud, but it held unmistakable authority.
Godmother Elena, dressed much as Bella was, and practically bristling with power, entered the clearing, accompanied by a dozen or more of the lighted orbs that Bella thought she’d invented. The Godmother didn’t so much glare at Eric, as freeze him with her gaze.
She regarded him for quite a long time. He stared back at her defiantly. “Thank you very much for that quite Traditional monologue,” she said, coolly. “There were one or two pieces of the puzzle I hadn’t yet found—”
The uprush of dark magic caught the Godmother by complete surprise.
It was like an avalanche of hate, but it was one that packed a very physical punch. With no sophistication, only raw power, Eric slammed the Godmother into the snow, as if a giant fist had backhanded her. With a second blow, he flattened Sebastian to the ground. Then, still fueled by fury, he turned toward Bella—
And stopped.
And toppled to the ground.
The bolt of her crossbow sticking out of his left eye.
“It would take an extraordinarily lucky shot,” she remembered Eric saying…
A lucky shot? Or The Tradition?
The crossbow fell from her hands, and she started to shake. And that was when things really got confusing, for suddenly there were men with colored scarves wrapped around their arms, or bunches of leaves pinned to their chests, who hadn’t been there before, and they were everywhere. One went to help the Godmother to her feet. One caught Bella as she almost fell. Two ran to Sebastian as he tried to struggle to his feet and fell over sideways, and wrapped his bleeding leg up to staunch the flow of blood. Then more people poured into the clearing, including a young woman in servant’s livery that had been stitched with such exquisite work that it was elevated far past being a mere “uniform.” She had a blue ribbon wrapped around her arm, and she and a man with a green scarf immediately took over the situation. In no time, Sebastian was hoisted up on a stretcher and carried off, the Godmother was assisted onto Bella’s mule, Bella herself was helped into the saddle of her horse and Eric’s body was taken away. It all happened so quickly that she felt dizzy.
She
looked down at the young woman. “Sapphire?” she said, incredulously.
The woman nodded. “Eric cast a spell on us, as well,” she said. “The loyal servants, the ones he knew wouldn’t leave—he got us alone and blasted us with dissolution, one by one. It’s a horrible spell—it rips you right out of the world and leaves no trace behind. I suppose he thought he’d killed us, and some of us did die, but the rest—we were in a kind of limbo, a nowhere place. And when Sebastian started calling real Spirit Elementals to take our place, we were able to cross back over to serve him again. We hoped he would figure out what had happened to us and break the spell—”
“It broke when Eric died, then,” she said, and felt like bursting into tears. “But why is Sebastian still a wolf?”
“Because it’s a curse, not a spell,” Sapphire said, sadly. “And curses don’t die with their maker.” She looked up at Bella with solemn eyes. “I’m sorry, Mistress Bella. There’s nothing to be done.”
19
BELLA SAT IN NUMB SILENCE. SEBASTIAN HAD BECOME a human again with the dawn, but he hadn’t spoken to her—or indeed to anyone. The King had ridden in just after dawn, with the Prince and a formidable entourage to take charge of everything. Bella, who had been pacing and crying outside the chamber where Sebastian had been taken until the sun rose, had been given something to drink, and she didn’t even remember going to her room. She just finished the warm flagon someone had thrust into her hands, and the next thing she knew, she was waking up in her bed.
As soon as she was awake, Sapphire appeared.
“You have to get up, Mistress Bella,” the servant said, her attitude making it perfectly clear that this was not negotiable. “The Godmother has asked for you.”
Her head hurt horribly, and she really just wanted to lie in a ball and be miserable for a while. Oh, they had gotten an ending, all right, but it wasn’t a happy one. Sebastian had been betrayed by the person he counted on the most, and now—who knew whether or not he was going to become a wolf every night instead of just on the full moon?
I suppose we’re going to find out, she thought apprehensively.
Then she steeled herself. Hadn’t they proved that Sebastian could control the beast? He’d done it three times, now. Surely the King and the Godmother would see that—
She got up, let Sapphire help her into one of the much less practical gowns in the closet and sat mutely while Sapphire fussed over her hair, muttering to herself. Finally, the servant stepped back and examined her handiwork critically.
“Now you look like a proper lady,” she pronounced.
Bella made a face. “I think I liked you better when you were just a ribbon.”
“I’m sure you did, Mistress Bella,” Sapphire said, unperturbed. “Now, the Godmother and the King are waiting for you in Sebastian’s workroom. You must go there. The Master needs you.”
Feeling decidedly strange, not being in breeches for the first time in weeks, Bella made her way up to the top of the tower. But there was someone waiting for her at the foot of the stairs.
Sebastian looked completely, utterly miserable. He had clearly been waiting for her and no one else, because the moment he saw her, he steeled himself visibly.
“Bella, you don’t have to— I mean, it was one thing when I was only a wolf three nights out of the month, but if I— I won’t hold you to what you said. If you want to go home and forget you ever saw me, and I don’t blame you—” He stopped, evidently forgetting every word of a speech he must have memorized. Instead, he tentatively took her hand, and looked mournfully into her eyes. “Please—please don’t go.”
A huge knot of tension released itself. Somewhere in the back of her mind she had been sure that after last night he would never want to see her again. Whether out of guilt, or trying to protect her, or some other daft reason, she had been certain he was going to send her away, and he was the Duke; she would have had no more choice in the matter than when she had been sent here.
And then, probably, he would ask the Godmother and the King to lock him up somewhere—somewhere far away, where he would be a danger to no one but deer and rabbits.
She took his other hand. “You couldn’t drive me away,” she declared, and his eyes lit up with that expression she had come to love. “It will be all right. It has to be.”
“The Tradition does demand a happy ending…” he said, although he still sounded uncertain.
“Even if it didn’t we’ll make it give us one,” she said fiercely.
Which was why, when they entered the workroom, they entered it together, hand in hand, which drew an amused look from the Godmother and a raised eyebrow from the King.
Bella had not had a chance to look at the King before, and she had never seen him except at a distance, so while he studied them, she studied him.
He didn’t look old enough to have a full-grown son, but perhaps the rumors about the royal family having some Elven blood in them were true. He certainly looked as fit as Eric, and of the same physical type, including the dark and slightly sardonic features, but that was where the resemblance ended. There was nothing of that undercurrent of cruel indifference that had tinted everything Eric had said or done, even when he was at his most charming.
But there could be no mistake about it. He could be utterly ruthless when he needed to. And that was demonstrated by the two guards with crossbows with silver-tipped quarrels already loaded, the silver collar and chains at his feet, and the iron box in the middle of the floor.
“Well, Duke Sebastian,” the King said, in a voice like velvet over steel. “Your curse has been changed. If you can’t demonstrate to us that you’ve changed it for the better, Godmother Elena and I are going to relocate you, as we have discussed previously.”
“Then you relocate me with him, Your Majesty,” Bella said, without waiting to be addressed, raising her head defiantly. “Where he goes, I go.”
“Thus depriving my kingdom of a promising sorceress?” The King gave her an opaque look. “Have you no sense of duty to your King?”
“You weren’t the one who was bundled up here by armed men with no warning and no explanation!” she snapped. “I think I stopped owing you anything when you snatched every right I had out from under me!”
“She has you there, Eddy,” the Godmother murmured. “And I did warn you that not everyone is going to take to being treated in that fashion quietly. That’s how The Tradition makes rebels. You’re lucky she hasn’t grabbed a knife, taken you hostage and absconded with Sebastian to set themselves up as forest bandits.”
The King muttered something under his breath, his brows knitting.
“You wanted strong and independent thinkers, Eddy, not sheep. You wanted people who, in an emergency, could be counted on to pick up whatever weapon there was and defend themselves and their Kingdom. Don’t complain to me when you also get young ladies like this one.” She folded her arms over her chest, and gave him a decided look.
The King muttered something into his beard. Then he sighed. “A King is not supposed to apologize for anything, and I absolutely will not apologize for the steps I took to safeguard other people of my realm from a potential monster. But the man apologizes for not having the wit to see that you deserved a better explanation than you got, and something other than the sort of arrest that more properly is handed out to a convicted criminal.”
Bella tried not to gape with astonishment. After a moment, she made a curtsy, and replied, “I accept the man’s apology, Your Majesty. But I am not going to leave the man I love to live out the rest of his life in lonely exile.”
He nodded a little stiffly. “Very well, then. Now…I suppose we wait until moonrise.”
“It’s not far off, Majesty,” Sebastian said in a strained voice. “I can feel it.”
Godmother Elena sighed. “Well, that answers the first question.” She looked at Bella. “You might want to look away. This isn’t pleasant.”
Wordlessly she shook her head. The Godmother shrugged. “Then
you’ll have to come over here. If he can’t control himself, I don’t want you on my conscience as his first victim.”
Much as she hated to leave him alone—that made sense. Reluctantly she let go of Sebastian’s hand, and stood beside the Godmother. Sebastian stood beside the iron box—which had breathing grates set into the door on the front—and one of the guards encircled him and the box with braided silver wire, twisting the ends together so that it formed a rough magic circle.
Then, they waited.
When the change came, it came with brutal suddenness. One moment Sebastian was standing in the silver circle, looking determined. The next, he had let out a horrible, burbling cry, dropping to his knees, and then to all fours.
Muscles rippled, and there were terrible popping and crunching sounds as the bones moved under his flesh, elongating and shortening, relocating, and the flesh and muscle itself grew or shrank to accommodate the changes. His loose clothing must have been designed for this, since he shook it off almost immediately as he convulsed. A thick pelt of hair erupted all over his body. His face was the worst to watch, as it stretched and pulled, the ears migrating to the top of his head, his teeth growing so fast she could see it happen. And all of this was accompanied by heartbreaking moans and gasps and whines of pain, until with a final convulsion, everything settled into place, and the wolf raised its muzzle and uttered that howl that had become so familiar to her, that long sobbing cry of despair.
Then the wolf dropped its head and stared at them.
Bella could feel it; feel the beast warring with the man for control. She kept her eyes on the wolf’s eyes, refusing to look away. The magic was a mere shadow of what had been here last night, but she gathered it up, anyway, and thrust it at him, backing it with her will. “Come back to me,” she whispered to him. “Come back to me. Come back to me!”
The beast was not going to give up. As she stared into the wolf’s eyes, she sensed the epic struggle going on inside him, a struggle created by Eric. She would not turn away from it; she would not, not even if it meant she would watch him lose that struggle.
Beauty and the Werewolf Page 30