“Where is the blonde woman just brought in tonight?” Petros asked.
“Lord Nikos is questioning her,” the herder replied.
Petros frowned sharply. “Where?”
“In the exam room.”
A violent curse exploded from Petros’ lips and he hurried toward the door that led into the exam room. Not bothering to knock, he pushed the door open and entered, his lips pulled back from his teeth.
But what he had expected to find, he did not. Instead of a quivering woman being raped by a man Lucien had nicknamed the Dog Lord, Nikos Carrus was plastered against the wall, his eyes wide in terror. The woman with her back to Petros was slowly advancing on the quivering Dog Lord.
“She is contaminated!” Nikos blurted, pointing with a trembling finger. “She has the sickness!”
Knowing Christina would never have allowed a human into the compound who was infected with the plague, Petros stood where he was and advised Nikos he had better leave while he still could.
“Quickly, Carrus. I will deal with this one,” Petros stated.
Tearing from the room as though the hounds of hell were nipping at his heels, Nikos rushed by Petros, not even bothering to shut the door behind him.
“Foaming at the mouth are you?” Petros asked quietly.
The woman turned, and indeed, she was foaming at the mouth. But it was not the soapy residue on her lips that made Petros take a step back.
“By the demons,” he whispered, his normally pale face turning even paler.
“I will infect you if you don’t leave me be, Revenant!” the woman shouted and her voice made Petros stagger back again, slamming into the wall as he stared at her. “I mean it!” She came closer, but not close enough for him to be able to smell the soap on her breath.
“Who are you?” Petros whispered, his gaze roaming over her face as though he was a starving man seated before a table laden with bowls of sustenance.
She took another step closer, her chest heaving then turned and vomited.
At any other time, Petros would have been amused at the woman’s attempt to place herself off-limits to the Coven. Her ingenuity was to be applauded but under the circumstances, his sense of humor had fled and been replaced with a black scowl that boded ill for the one who had brought about the expression.
“I imagine the soap doesn’t taste too well bubbling around in your belly, eh?” he growled. “I imagine it’s swishing around and causing you great discomfort.”
Retching even harder, the woman was bent over, holding her belly.
Petros spat out a filthy word in his native tongue then turned around and went to the door, yelling for a passing herder to bring the healer. He took a seat, dropped his elbows to his spread knees, clasped his hands and stared across the room at the sick woman who had sank to her knees as she retched.
“Damn it, Petros, I haven’t had time to finish processing her,” Christina grumbled as she came into the room. She stopped, took a look at the woman, and then turned a raised brow to Petros. “What the hell did you do to her?”
“This woman won’t do,” Petros announced, continuing to stare at the woman.
“And may I ask why not?”
“Do you have another blonde?”
Christina threw her hands into the air. “Hell, no, I don’t! What’s going on here? Why don’t you want this one? Isn’t she pretty enough? I haven’t personally examined her but I’m told she’s comely.”
The ill woman turned so she was looking at Petros. She was panting heavily, obviously frightened, but her beautiful face was filled with pleading.
“I don’t care if she is prettiest woman alive,” Petros snapped. “She won’t do.”
“Why the hell not?” Christina demanded.
“Look at her! She could be a carbon copy of his wife!” Petros stated.
Christina whistled as she turned to survey the woman. “By the gods I can see the problem. Oh, well, that isn’t good, now is it? I see your dilemma.”
“Then find me another one who…” Petros began but a guard entered the exam room, bowed his head and asked to speak. “What?”
“Begging your pardon, milord, but His Majesty asked me to find out what was taking you so long,” the guard said, wincing.
Christina whistled again and turned her eyes to the ceiling. “I think we fucked up, Pet,” she mumbled.
Petros hung his head, shook it, and then wearily pushed himself up as though the weight of the world was bearing down on him. “I’ll have to tell him the woman is ill. Just find another, Tina.”
“Why is she ill?” Christina asked and walked over to the woman. When she got a whiff of the soapy smell, she began to laugh. “By the goddess, did she ingest soap? Well, at least her pretty little mouth is clean! Oh, this is too much!” She looked around at Petros. “Didn’t I tell you she was intelligent?”
“We’d best move her to Diamhair Keep,” Petros said as he reached the door. “All we need is for him to see her.”
Christina sobered. “Aye, you may be right. I’ll have her sent there first thing tomorrow night.”
“Keep her out of sight until then,” Petros advised. He shook his head in disgust. “He’s going to have my hide for this.”
“I don’t envy you, Pet,” Christina said as Petros left the hut.
Taking the stairs to Lucien’s chamber, Petros used every vulgar word in five languages he could ever remember hearing. His shoulders were hunched and his eyebrows one thick diagonal pointing toward his hawk-like nose.
Lucien was stripping off his shirt as Petros knocked at his door. He called out his permission for Petros to enter. He glanced up as he unbuttoned the fly of his britches. “Where’s the woman?” he asked.
Petros licked his lips. “There’s a slight problem.”
“What kind of problem?”
“She’s sick.”
“Sick how?” Lucien demanded. If one of the herds had something contagious, they could all succumb.
Staring at the prince’s naked, broad chest with its wide swath of scar tissue that bisected the thick pelt of hair over his pectorals in five slashing lines, Petros winced.
Lucien sighed loudly. “You do that every damned time you see the scars, Petros. Would you please stop reliving that night?” he grated. “It’s bad enough I have to.”
“If I had only been quicker,” Petros said. “If I had…”
“What is the woman sick from?” Lucien asked, his eyes flashing a warning that no more would be said of what had caused the brutal scarring on his chest.
Petros had never lied to his friend and prince. “She ate soap so she’d foam at the mouth. It made her ill.”
Lucien’s eyebrow crooked. “And she did this because?”
Petros’ lips twitched. “The Dog Lord went sniffing and sent for her. It was her way of scaring him off.”
“Did it work?” Lucien growled.
“Indeed, it did. Old Bark-at-the-Moon ran out of there like his tail was on fire.”
Lucien studied Petros for a moment then reached up to rub at the pain still throbbing over his right eye. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Lucien, just forget about this one. She…”
“What aren’t you telling me?” Lucien repeated.
Petros tucked his bottom lip between his teeth for a moment then blew a heavy breath through his nostrils. “She looks like Magdelena. Except for the blonde hair, they could be twins.”
Lucien went perfectly still. He stared at his old friend, passing his psychic ability gently over Petros’ mind and gleaning the impressions and unspoken thoughts that roiled inside the other man. What he saw with his sixth sense made the pain in his head intensify.
“Let me send her on to Diamhair Keep, Lucien,” Petros offered. “There’s no need for you to ever have to see her. It would bring back…”
“Bring her to me,” Lucien said, making his way to the bed. The pain was so severe he could barely walk and didn’t have the strength to remove h
is britches.
“Lucien, I don’t think…”
“No, you shouldn’t think,” Lucien snapped as he flung himself on the bed and turned to his side, dragging the pillow over his face. “You should just do, Petros.”
Petros saw his prince begin to tremble and knew the pain had reached a height that had to be excruciating. There would be no arguing with Lucien now so he turned and walked out of the room as fast as he could.
The woman had been taken to a holding room off the main pen. When the door was opened, she threw up an arm to shield her eyes from the bright flare of the lantern for the room was in total darkness.
“She hasn’t been cleaned up yet, Petros,” Christina argued.
Petros spun around and fixed the healer with a nasty look. “He is in agony.”
“Aye, but another five minutes won’t matter. She stinks.”
True enough, there was a ripe smell coming from the woman. Part sour sweat from her obvious fear and part musky unpleasantness from the vomiting, the stench was enough to make Petros cover his nose and mouth with his hand.
“Hurry up, then,” Petros warned Christina.
The woman balked at being manhandled out of the room by two burly guards. She shrieked and tried to claw them as they ripped her already torn and filthy gown away, leaving her naked as they dragged her to a cattle trough.
“Quite the hellion, isn’t she?” Christina asked as she and Petros watched the guards battling with the woman, pushing her beneath the water, one holding her arms behind her as the other took obvious pleasure in lathering her with soap.
“Even bedraggled like that,” Petros said quietly, “she bears such a strong resemblance to Magdalena it is uncanny.”
“The herders weren’t going to enter into the Fifth Zone last evening,” Christina observed. “They swept through there only because the trail boss had a feeling.” She looked over at Petros. “You think Sibylline put that feeling in his head?”
“This smacks of her nastiness,” Petros replied and flinched as the woman managed to free an arm and slam her fist into one of the guard’s eyes. “That’s going to make quite a shiner.”
“Stop being so careless, Ari!” Christina warned the guard who had slapped a hand over his wounded eye.
Screaming and cursing her captors, the woman was dragged from the water and wrapped up in a large fleece towel. Another set of guards laid hands to her to roughly dry her hair and tightly braid the waist-length mass.
There were tears of anger and pain in the woman’s eyes as still another set of guards shoved her and jerked a clean gown over her head. Her flesh—still wet in places—stuck to the thin cotton so that her breasts and nipples stood out against the fabric.
“Lovely,” Christina said with a sigh. “Wish I’d already staked claim to her before we suggested her to Lucien.”
“I wish she’d never been brought here in the first place,” Petros grumbled. “Let’s go, men!”
Kicking and twisting against the hands that held her, the woman was dragged along by the guards as they followed behind Petros. She stumbled up the stairs, not given any time to lift one foot after the other as the guards propelled her upward. By the time they reached the prince’s door, the woman’s shins were scraped and bleeding in places.
Petros sniffed, sniffed again, and then turned around to lift the hem of the woman’s skirt. When he saw the abrasions, his jaw tightened but he made no comment. He narrowed his eyes at the taller of the two guards then looked away.
Lucien’s personal guards opened the prince’s door at Petros nod and stepped aside. Neither even glanced at the woman being dragged into the room.
Petros walked up to the bed. “My Prince,” he said softly. “The woman is here.”
Lucien was trembling even worse than when Petros had left him and it was all he could do to peel the pillow from his face. Even as low as the candlelight was in the room, the glare hurt him and he was forced to squint.
“Closer,” he ordered, his teeth clicking together.
Petros turned and motioned the guards to bring the woman closer.
The woman snarled, bucking in the guards’ tight grasp and her screech of denial was so piercing Petros spun around, reached out to snag her hair, and jerked her head back.
“One more shriek like that and I will relieve you of the ability to make a sound! Do you hear me?” he hissed. “Your prince is in pain and your screeching doesn’t help!”
Trembling almost as violently as Lucien, the woman kicked out with her bare foot, catching Petros on the shin and as he bent over with the unexpected pain, she lifted her knee and tried to drive it under his chin. She would have succeeded if the prince’s hand had not shot out to shove Petros away.
“You conniving little bitch!” Petros snarled and threw his hand over his shoulder, his intent obvious to everyone in the room.
“No!” Lucien ordered and the backhand that might well have broken the woman’s neck had it connected with her face froze in mid-swing.
Petros lowered his hand. “This one is nothing but trouble, my Prince. Let me get rid of her. I…”
Lucien pushed himself up in the bed and stared at the woman struggling between the guards. Her long braid whipped back and forth as she twisted in their grip. Her lips were skinned back from her teeth. Although her hysterical crying sent daggers of agony through his forehead, he was mesmerized by her face. There was a feral light to it that caught and held his attention even more than her eerie resemblance to his dead wife.
“Who are you?” Lucien asked in much the same tone Petros had used when first he’d laid eyes on the woman.
“I am diseased!” the woman shouted. “I have the plague! I have the plague!”
Petros looked quickly at his friend. The loud shout had caused Lucien to squeeze his eyes shut to the volume, but when Petros started to reach out to the woman to silence her babbling, Lucien shook his head.
It was that motion, which sent the prince into convulsions and turned his body rigid as he fell back to the bed, his entire body in spasm.
“Get the healer!” Petros yelled. He quickly unsnapped the leather gauntlet on his left wrist, rolled it into a tube, and put his knee on the mattress in one motion. Bending over Lucien, he pried the prince’s jaws apart and dragged the leather between his teeth, making sure Lucien’s tongue was pressed down to keep him from swallowing it.
The woman was dragged back and out of the way. Her eyes widened as men poured into the room and fanned out—two to each side of the bed as they climbed upon the mattress to hold down the bucking man’s limbs.
“What happened?” Christina snapped as she came running in.
“Seizure,” Petros said unnecessarily for the entire bed was trembling beneath the force of the prince’s convulsions.
“We need help here!” the healer ordered and the two guards holding the woman reluctantly let go of her and hurried to the bed.
The woman stood where she was for a second or two, watching one of the guards who had been holding her so brutally take the struggling man’s head and turn it to the side as the healer bent over him with a syringe. No one was watching her as she slid sideways toward the opened door, her watchfulness never leaving those gathered around the bed.
From the corner of his eye, Petros saw the woman slip like a shadow through the door. He pushed one of the guards with his crooked elbow. “Get that bitch,” he ordered.
Hearing the running footsteps rushing toward her, the woman grabbed the hem of her skirt and tried to outdistance her pursuer, but the guard was quicker, better fed and longer of limb than she, and before she could gain the stairs, she was grabbed from behind and crushed against a rock-hard solid chest. When she tried to struggle, fingers clamped onto her neck and the lights faded out in the space of a breath.
Chapter Two
When Lucien woke, he was flat on his back, a cool cloth plastered across his forehead. His neck stung from the potent narcotic Christina had administered and his head—though
still filled with terrible pain—felt filled with cotton. He reached up a heavy-feeling hand to drag away the cloth, sliding it down his cheek and onto his bare chest.
“Thirsty?” Petros asked softly.
“Aye.”
There was the squeak of the old rocking chair as Petros got up followed by the shuffle of his feet across the carpet. Every sound was magnified a hundredfold in Lucien’s brain, especially the trickling of water from the carafe into a goblet.
Petros gently slid his hand under Lucien’s hot neck and lifted his head. He said nothing as he brought the rim of the goblet to Lucien’s lips and tipped it. When Lucien had taken his fill, he carefully lowered the hurting man’s head to the pillow and withdrew his hand.
“Where is the woman?” Lucien asked, his voice weak.
“At the foot of your bed,” Petros replied. “Chained like the bitch she is.”
Slowly, Lucien turned his head but he could see nothing save the bulk of the mattress upon which he lay.
“Did you hurt her?”
“I wanted to,” Petros answered. “But no. Ari did that nerve compression thing on her neck and she went out like a light. She’s still out.”
Lucien frowned. “Is she all right?”
Petros craned his head around and looked down at the woman curled on her side, her left leg shackled to the footboard. “Aye. She’s breathing normally. Want me to wake her?”
“No. I couldn’t fuck her if my life depended on it,” Lucien said with a sigh. “Leave her be.”
“You’ve slept a long time, Lucien,” Petros said. “Dawn is less than an hour away.”
“Go to your room,” Lucien ordered. “I’ll be back to sleep before you lay your head to the pillow.”
Petros glanced slowly at the window where he had already pulled the thick draperies close together. “What of the girl?” he asked.
“The guards will see to her,” Lucien said and already his voice was thick with the lethargy radiating from the imminent rise of the sun.
Petros’ steps were slow, as though his feet were mired in thick mud as he headed for the door. He spoke quietly to the guards, warning them to watch the woman carefully.
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