like crystal and steel welded together. Leaning his forehead hard
against it, he fought the frustration and tried to think of a way
out of the cage that trapped him, but his mind was as useless as
his trembling legs. Voices came to him like the muffled sighs of
the ocean through a conch shell. The amorphous figures
murmured and slowly took shape before him.
Lights flickered on as torches flared. Nicholas could see
buildings lining the square, the marble rosy in the light. Around
him, men and women took their seats upon benches that led
upward in a semicircle. A fine irritation jittered along all his
nerve endings. He felt as though he were a beast in a pit.
“Nicholas Rostov, you have formerly expressed a desire to
wed Catherine Elizabeth Seraphina Galerien, of this country,”
a voice declared from midway up the rows of seats.
Desire, thought Nicholas, does not begin to cover it.
“If this is still your wish, by what right do you claim her?”
This answer, at least, came quickly to him. “I have no right.”
Nicholas groaned, pressing against the invisible cage that
held him. He couldn’t coerce, or outmaneuver, or argue logically.
But Sera was there, he had heard her, felt her presence. He had
come to tell her—he had lived to tell her—and nobody was
going to stop him now.
“I have no right to take you from the safety of this place,”
he said in a voice that tried for calm but shook with emotion.
“All I have is my love for you. I love you, Sera.”
The small shadow at the periphery struggled, whether to
run to him or away, he couldn’t tell. But the larger one touched
her arm, and she quieted.
“Let her come to me,” he called out to the dark shadows
about him. “If just to say good-bye, let her come.” But the
invisible walls hemmed him in, as alone as he had ever been in
the gray Outlander world beyond this light. He forced himself
to go on, ignoring the listening ears, the strangers prodding him
for all his secrets. It no longer mattered a damn who heard him,
as long as she did.
“Sera!” His voice broke on a laugh that was half a groan. “I
don’t think you understand what it means to me that you see
what I am, all of me and still you love me.”
He cleared his throat. “You never let me off, did you? You
never let me hide in logic or pretension, yet you believed in me
when I doubted I would ever be good enough. Because of you,
I changed into a man whom my people actually seem to look
upon with fondness. Because of you, Katherine is no longer
afraid of me—or anything else. Rather amazing, isn’t it?”
He gave a low laugh that caught in his throat. “I have no
right to you, Sera. Bloody shame, isn’t it, because I love you
with all my heart. I think I did from that moment in Hadar’s
palace, when you told me how you might have a terrible disease.
Do you remember how you decided that if one was disgusting,
two would certainly keep me away?”
Nicholas stared at his hands and muttered, “Now I’ve
probably embarrassed you in front of your people and ruined
my chances. But I came here so I could tell you. I shall love
you until I die. That is all I have to say.”
“Nicholas!” Her clear cry cut through the muffled air.
The barrier shattered into a thousand pieces. Nicholas turned
blindly toward the sound of her voice. Sera burst down those
endless stairs into the pit and flung herself against him. His
arms whipped around her. She lifted her face. Her eyes were
shadowed, and her face was thin. But she glowed.
Nicholas tried to grin. With the lump in his throat, it was
too hard. He buried his face against her neck, breathing in the
sweet scent of her body, fighting for control.
Sera tugged lightly at his hand. “Come away,” she
whispered, glancing about them, and he remembered himself,
and where they were, and the scrutiny that she must feel from
the inquisitors who stood witness. He followed her out of the
square and on through a wide city street smelling of flowers
and fresh, blessedly warm air, and he realized that Sera’s elusive
scent came from Arkadia, itself.
It was around them and part of her, and it was the earth
that had nurtured her all her life. In the soft lamplight, the
buildings rose about him in the classic Greek style, clean of
line and perfectly harmonious. This was quite unlike any city
he had ever seen, not even Montanyard. Sculptures stood
everywhere, magnificent, finer than any he’d seen in Florence.
The streets were broad, and the stone that made them perfectly
cut. Somewhere singing in the back of his dizzy brain was the
strangest feeling of ease exchanged for tension, as though he
had finally, after years of exile, come home. The Temple Square
was empty. The people must all still be gathered in the
amphitheater beyond the mountain pass.
Nicholas pulled Sera behind the columns of a great marble
building and wrapped his arms about her. She nestled against
him, her own arms holding tight. This was what he craved, what
he needed to live again. Bending his head, he covered her lips
with his own, to take her joy and give it back again. He cupped
her cheeks and planted kisses over her nose, her mouth, her
eyelids. The words he’d kept boxed inside him flew from his
lips. “I love you,” he whispered. “I love you.”
In the dim light, he fumbled for the necklace and clasped it
around her throat.
“Blue and white,” he murmured, tracing the oval of the
brilliant sapphire, feeling the soft skin above her collar bone
with the back of his hand. “The colors of Laurentia.”
“Red and white,” she said, drawing his hand to the rubies
and diamonds of the chain. He could hear the smile in her voice.
“The colors of Beaureve.”
Laughing, he lifted her high and twirled her so many times,
he lost count. “I love you,” he said again, for all the times he
had not said it. And then, because it was a serious decision she
had, after all, made in the midst of high emotion, he asked,
“Are you sure?”
The moon rose, silver and full, and he saw the radiance
again on her face, and the teasing smile that he had seen before
only rarely. It had the same effect it always did on him, turning
him heated and eager in a flash.
“How many times must I agree to marry you, Nicholas
Rostov? Indeed, I do not believe you have formally proposed
even now.”
He pulled her up against him, letting her feel his heat and
his need. “Once upon a time,” he said between butterfly kisses
to her cheeks, her chin, the soft, upward curve of her mouth, “a
king got himself well and truly lost. And a beautiful princess
took pity on him.”
She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him back,
ardent and joyful and sensual beyond his wildest dreams. “What
happened then?” she whispered.
/> “She married him.” He buried his face in her neck, breathing
in her scent, which was the perfume of the flowers all about
them. “And they lived happily ever after.”
Epilogue
A week later, Sera watched the moon rise over Arkadia.
The light shone into the room where she stood with Nicholas
behind her, his arms wrapped about her waist. It was their
wedding night, and there was nothing more she would have
wished than this—to have him warm and strong at her back,
sharing her world, whichever one it would be. Waiting to be
wed would have seemed torment, for they were not permitted
to be alone with each other for more than a few minutes at a
time. But there were compensations for her body’s hunger for
him. This week she had seen Nicholas’s face light at the sight
of scientific discoveries at the academy, at the feel of a Hill
horse beneath him, and at the sounds of intense, earnest debate
among young men and women in the agora.
He had spent hours with her grandfather, discussing
oligarchy and democracy, for Arkadia had been in transition
from the former to the latter since the tenth century, when the
eugenics program was discarded. Most of all, she treasured the
look of relief and happiness on his face when he gazed through
Grandfather’s scrying glass and saw the French troops hurrying
away from Laurentia’s border, toward France.
Never, she thought with a blush and a shiver of anticipation,
had he looked so young, so eager and relaxed, except after their
bodies had met and merged in love.
This night, she had seen his even deeper joy at the sight of
her, sitting suddenly shy in her crimson gown and veil when he
came to “abduct” her from her home.
Her kinsmen and her friends had put up very little fight
when Nicholas and Jacob Augustus appeared at Grandfather’s.
There had been much laughter and applause when he had swept
her up in his arms and carried her from her childhood hearth
while Jacob, as groomsman, ran ahead to bring the horses for
the bride and groom to ride away.
Jacob had taken time to get to know Nicholas in the last
week, as if to make up for the prejudice that had unwittingly
caused her so much unhappiness. And in the end, he had
confessed a genuine liking for the king, intensified by his study
of Nicholas’s genealogy. Hill blood ran in the Rostov line from
Sophia, the daughter of a Russian prince and an Arkadian
mother, who had met and fallen in love with Nicholas’s
grandfather. It was Queen Sophia’s room that had the hidden
staircase and the wondrous wallpaper that included a bird from
the Hills.
This discovery explained many things to Jacob. He now
knew why the king felt that little prickle at the back of his neck,
why he could fend off recurring pneumonia with the force of
his will alone, and why he was able to hear Emmanuel’s warning
on the battlefield in the Brotherhood camp. Jacob surmised that
the Hill blood running in Nicholas’s veins was what had toppled
his sister into delirious love in the first place.
Sera could have told Jacob that Hill blood hadn’t a thing to
do with her love for Nicholas, but she wanted to encourage his
new interest in the Outlander world. For if Jacob, the future
Mage, became curious, others would follow, and the bridge
between both worlds would strengthen.
“What are you thinking?” Nicholas wrapped her closer, his
breath a warm, soft huff against her ear. She bent her head to
one side, giving him access. A jolt of heat swept through her
when she felt his soft kisses on the sensitive skin beneath her
ear.
“Among other things, how delighted you were with the
wedding present your groomsman gave you.”
She could feel his lips curve against her skin. “The Hill
cloak! Sera, did I ever tell you how much I wanted to travel?
When I was a boy, all I could think about was what the Pyramids
must look like, and the Great Wall of China, and the Taj Mahal.
I never thought I’d be free enough to do such a thing. And now,
we can go anywhere we want, and be back by suppertime.”
How she loved his joy. Such a man as her husband would
never grow old. “Do you remember Jacob’s instructions?”
“I should hope so,” Nicholas said with another huff of air,
this time not so gentle. “They were certainly simple, although
several months ago, I wouldn’t have believed in such things as
Hill cloaks and beautiful, magical, stubborn women.”
She smiled at that last and turned to twine her arms about
his neck. “Tell me how to use a Hill cloak,” she said, rubbing
her lips against the smooth skin just above his collarbone.
“Tomorrow,” he murmured against her hair. “I can’t think
when you do that.” His hand traveled up her side, cupping the
fullness of her breast. She gasped as his palm grazed the nipple.
Memory and privation sharpened her hunger, and she arched
into his hand. But there was one last gift she wanted to give
him before she surrendered to the need coursing through her
body.
“Now,” she whispered.
He sighed and drew her close. “Either I think very hard of
the exact place where I want to be, or I hold your hand, and
you’ll guide me. Jacob also said that certain sensations would
be… unsettling and that I should let you guide me the first time
or two. But I know where I want to go.”
“Where?”
“To bed. With you.” Nicholas kissed her again, maddeningly
exciting little teases along her throat and down, lower.
“There will be a bed, I promise.”
The cloaks lay across the couch by the window. Sera
carefully fastened one about Nicholas’s shoulders. “Don’t put
the hood up until it’s time,” she said, with frightening visions
of Nicholas lost on the wind.
“I have better things in mind for tonight than waiting for
you to rescue me, Sera.” His eyes danced with excitement as
she fastened her own cloak. “Take me to a nice, big bed where
we can make love all night.”
“Hold on to me,” she said, reaching out for his hand.
Nicholas lifted the hood over his head. The world
disappeared in a whoosh and swirl of air. He held on tight to
Sera’s hand, sailing on the wind like a hawk high above the
earth below them. The stars and the moon glowed, cold and
remote above them. His nose was cold, but everything else was
blessedly warm beneath the cloak’s thin wool. What magic had
they woven into the warp and woof of the fabric? His heart
pounded, his eyes watered against the wind, and he brushed
them with his free hand, to better see rivers below him like
shining silver ribbons.
Excitement thrummed through him. This, then, to fly above
the world at will, was the freedom he had always craved. He
felt the earth beneath him coming up fast. For an instant, his
insides lurched in sickening fear of a crash.
Wildly, he looked
round him, but the place was a blur in the darkness.
Softly as a feather, they touched down into warmth and
light. He blinked, disoriented. His feet felt boards beneath them,
his hands the blaze of a fire. He drew down the hood of his
cloak and looked about. His great, canopied bed with the crown
at the top rose on the dais directly before him. Sera stood beside
him, beautiful in the firelight as she unfastened her cloak and
laid it carefully upon the chair in his room. For a moment, he
didn’t understand her, and thought this must be some joke she’d
thought to play.
But she came to him with that radiance on her face and
unfastened his cloak.
He caught her fingers in his hand. “Why? Why of all the
places in the world, here, in my room?”
She raised his hands to her lips and very softly kissed them
both. When she lifted her gaze to him, he saw that her eyes
were that serene, deep blue of an ocean on a perfect summer
morning, when the world is new again.
“I’ve brought us home, Nicholas,” she said.
Home. It was such a simple word. And with it, she gave
him everything—her allegiance, her happiness, her complete
trust.
If he had learned one thing in the last months, it was to
accept a gift of love without reservation. He scooped his wife
up into his arms and carried her to his bed. She held on tight to
the nape of his neck, warm and soft in his embrace. As he laid
her down, she smiled up at him, a full, rich curving of her lips
because he had understood her gift. Aye, he thought bending to
her, a man who holds tight to the blessing in his arms may be
flawed in a million ways, but he’s no fool.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mary Lennox grew up dreaming of places where magic
and happy endings coexisted. She woke up long enough to leave
graduate school, marry an irreverent lawyer and tour the world.
Nothing could have prepared her for the medieval beauty of
Europe’s cathedrals, the grimness and glory of Russia, or the
exotic mysteries of India. The only way to top that experience
was to turn carpenter and build with her husband her perfect
house on a tranquil horse farm in Appalachia, home-school her
kids from grades k-12, and gallop her horses on the wooded
Lennox, Mary - Heart of Fire.txt Page 42