Dark Immortal

by Keaton, Julia

  Not willfully, of course. He was a monster … stone … cold … unfeeling.

  She had looked at him, though, that first day. She had lifted her head and stared straight at him, the first time any woman had looked directly at him since the sorcerer, Gaelzeroth, had given him ‘immortality’.

  And she had shuddered to find his eyes upon her, his monstrous face frozen in the grimace of torment and pain that overtook him each dawn as the sorcerer’s curse turned him once more from a living, breathing monster of flesh and blood and bone to stone.

  Bitterness rose like bile in his throat as his memories surfaced to torment him, memories he had thought that he had crushed to dust long ago.

  Gaelzeroth had chosen his place and method of imprisonment with diabolical care, positioned him so that he had to watch the slaughter of his wife, his sons, and daughter.

  Uttering a howl of anguish and fury, he launched himself from his perch, spread his wings and fled his birthplace, his prison, his memories … and most of all, her.

  * * * *

  “She’s worsened. I cannot fathom it. I was certain the fever had broken.”

  “Has she been told about Lord Smythson?”

  “Nay! And what would be the point? She’s likely to join him in the family crypt at this rate.”

  Voices faded in and out of Bronwyn’s consciousness, as if those who spoke in the room around her were moving toward her and then away again. She hurt everywhere it seemed. Sometimes she found herself freezing, sometimes burning.

  And each time she managed to lift her eyelids, the room had changed.

  One moment the room was filled with sunlight, the next shadowy with candlelight.

  She dreamed that she lay crumpled and freezing on the ramparts of the castle, begging for her life, screamed weakly as William pitched her over the walls, jerking and twitching when she slammed into the ground.

  She didn’t hit the ground though. She hit something else.

  The horrible grimace of the hulking gargoyle perched above the entrance of the castle materialized in her mind and she sucked in a breath to scream. His face changed, though, still harsh, but strangely comforting.

  The room was lit with the golden glow of candles when she opened her eyes. She stared at the drapery above her for several moments, wondering what had wakened her and finally turned her head to look toward the hearth.

  He crouched there, watching her through hooded, brooding eyes.

  A jolt went through her, but it was surprise, not fear. It took a focused effort to hold her hand out to him, to form her lips into a smile. “You didn’t leave me,” she whispered, her throat grating with the pain of speaking.

  He stared at her hand for several moments as if surprised. Abruptly, his face twisted and he surged to his feet.

  He meant to leave. The thought sparked fear where his presence hadn’t. “Don’t go!” she whispered, lifting her hand as if she could reach across the distance between them and draw him to her.

  The gesture made him pause. He glanced at something across the room, studied it hard for several moments, and then moved toward her. “You are safe now,” he said, his voice emerging as a low rumble of sound.

  A rustle of movement drew her gaze and she turned her head to discover what it was he had stared at so hard before. One of her maids lay huddled on a pallet near her door. She rolled over and went still again and Bronwyn glanced back at the man who towered over her.

  He hadn’t taken her hand. He was staring down at it, she saw, as if it was a snake. Curling her fingers around two of his, she drew his hand to her, struggling with the weight of his arm and finally pressed his palm to her cheek. “Brave knight, I owe you a debt of gratitude. Tell me how I can repay your kindness.”

  She heard him swallow. For many moments, he simply allowed his hand to lie limply against her cheek and then his fingers curled, the pads of his fingertips brushing lightly, almost caressingly along her cheek as he reclaimed his hand. “The fever,” he muttered, his voice grating.

  Bronwyn frowned, puzzled by his allusion to her illness. “This is a dream then?”

  His finely etched lips twisted, but she had the sense that the contempt was turned inward. “Nightmare, more like if you see before you a knight and not a monster.”

  Her gaze flickered over his face searchingly. “I see a brave and noble man who slew a monster.”

  Anger surged into his eyes. “Then the fever has addled your wits, woman!” he growled. His fists came down on the bed on either side of her and he leaned closer until his face hovered mere inches above hers. “Or is it your sight you’ve lost?”

  His ferocity unnerved her, and still she felt no real fear. She lifted a hand to his cheek, tracing the harsh plain. “Nay. There is nothing wrong with my eyes or my wits.”

  He looked startled when she touched him. Deprived of his anger, his gaze flickered over her face speculatively before a feverish gleam entered his eyes. “Give me yourself,” he snarled. “Spread your soft white thighs for me, little rose. Let me bury my flesh deeply inside you. Give me surcease from my torment, and I will consider myself well paid.”

  Shock went through her and revulsion, as well, not for him but the image he summoned of William plowing ruthlessly into her body.

  He saw the revulsion and misunderstood it. “I thought not,” he snarled.

  She caught his wrist as he began to withdraw. “Yes,” she said in a suffocated whisper.

  “You are unwell,” he said coldly.

  She licked her lips, unnerved by the offer she’d made but determined. “I will heal … because you gave me back my life. I will gladly give you what you have asked.”

  Several emotions flickered across his features, but too quickly for her to read them. Turning away, he strode toward the window and disappeared through it.

  Near dawn, the fever came upon her again, but this time it did not fill her mind with strange, frightening images.

  Chapter Three

  “Was it bad news from the King, then, Lady?”

  Bronwyn blinked, dragging her gaze from the window to stare blankly at Zella for several moments before the question finally penetrated her abstraction. Frowning, she turned her attention to the needlework forgotten in her lap. “Not as bad as I had feared. Not as good as I had hoped,” she murmured finally.

  She couldn’t prevent a faint smile from curling her lips when she glanced at her companion again for she could see Zella was struggling mightily with curiosity. “He is allowing me six months of mourning, no more. In the meanwhile, he will appoint someone to oversee Raventhorne. ‘Tis not of tremendous strategic importance, but far too important to allow it only to remain in the hands of a widow … especially one as young as I.”

  Several emotions flickered across Zella’s face. “Mayhap the next husband will be better than the last.”

  Bronwyn’s belly clenched. Instead of commenting, however, she merely returned her attention to the needlework.

  “He could hardly be worse,” old Marta snorted.

  “’Tis bad luck to speak ill of the dead … and tempting Fate besides. Nothing is ever so bad that it cannot be made worse,” Bronwyn chided her old nurse.

  “Mayhap, but the man was a brute. I’ve nae notion why he decided to take a flyin’ leap from the top of the castle, but I, fer one, am glad he did.”

  “They’re sayin’ downstairs it’s this place. Its cursed,” Zella put in, shivering and crossing herself.

  Bronwyn stabbed her needle into her finger and sucked in a sharp hiss of pain. She was glad for the distraction, however. “That’s absurd,” she said testily, dabbing at the drop of blood on her fingertip with her handkerchief. “Most likely William was drunk and fell to his death.”

  The lie stuck in her throat. She had tried to convince herself since the day, almost two weeks before, that she had finally woken fully lucid that the images swirling about in her mind were nothing more than the product of her fever. She had found it difficult to do so when she had be
en informed of William’s death, and the manner of it. Her bruises and cuts had begun to fade already, but the scrapes on her feet, legs, elbows and palms were hard to attribute to the beating.

  Truthfully, she couldn’t recall much in the way of details about that incident. She’d been shocked and frightened when he’d begun to roar at her threateningly and then too stunned after the first blow to register much besides the pain.

  But the scrapes and scratches did not seem consistent with the beating. They seemed far more in keeping with the ‘nightmare’ she had been trying to convince herself was not real--of William trying to throw her off of the castle tower.

  Zella shrugged, obviously reluctant to give up on the notion of a curse. “Say what ye like, the place has always give me the creeps. And there’s no denyin’ it’s been plagued with bad luck.”

  Bronwyn stared at her hands in her lap. She knew that was what was being whispered among the servants, but it had not been ‘bad luck’ that William had lost his heir little more than a week before he lost his own life. Her memories might be hazy on a great many things in the time that she had been so ill, but she was certain she had not simply ‘lost’ William’s heir. The babe had been flourishing before William’s attack and he had beaten her unmercifully shortly before she miscarried. She was certain, if no one else was, that that was the reason she’d lost the child.

  Bronwyn sensed Marta’s assessing gaze on her. For a moment their gazes met and Bronwyn realized that Marta knew very well that the ‘tragedy’ was no accident. “Gaelzeroth was an evil man--practiced the black arts, he did. Mayhap the place is cursed and mayhap nae. But he was a powerful sorcerer and I can nae think it likely there was anyone about in those dark days capable of placing a curse upon Raventhorne with him about. Most likely it is only his evil that lingers in these old walls.”

  Bronwyn shivered at that. “He has been dead more than a hundred years,” she said uneasily. “Surely not?”

  “Aye,” Marta agreed. “But he wrested this place from its rightful heirs with his black arts--slew every last man, woman, and child--I feel the souls of the innocents still crying out against the evil done to them. They are trapped here, can nae find peace so long as these lands lie in the hands of their murderer.”

  Trying to tamp the uneasiness Marta’s words stirred inside her, Bronwyn considered what Marta had said and found a flaw. “William was the last of his line,” she pointed out, and by his own machinations since he had been directly responsible for the death of his heir. “Gaelzeroth had no issue, and slew his own brother before he produced an heir. It was his cousin who came into the place after his death. William was not even in direct line, himself--In inheritance, yes, but not the bloodline.”

  “Just as I said,” Zella pointed out with satisfaction. “The place has been plagued with misfortune.”

  Bronwyn glanced at the young woman wryly. “Misfortune of their own making--which is not truly misfortune at all. In any case, if what Marta says is true, then the innocent should be at peace, the evil dispelled, the curse, if there ever was one, lifted. Gaelzeroth and all his get are no more.”

  “Then I will be sure to tell them that the next time they cry out for justice,” Marta said caustically.

  Bronwyn reddened. “What do you suggest, then?”

  “Ye should petition the king to seek a husband fer ye descended from the old lord’s line,” Marta said promptly.

  Bronwyn gaped at her old nurse, but frowned as she thought it over and finally shook her head. “I am not unwilling. If I must take a husband, then one would be as welcome to me as another, but Gaelzeroth slew the Raventhornes--even to the babes. He wanted none to challenge his right to these lands. How am I to find that which no longer exists?”

  Marta looked nonplussed for a moment, but she recovered quickly. “Not in this kingdom, but it is said that the old lord, the first lord of Raventhorne, came to Beaufontaine from Verde Isle. Mayhap there are those of his bloodline there still? That is the only way that I see that this could be made right--if Raventhorne came back into the hands of those to whom it rightfully belongs--those who won it by means honorable and just, not with evil, deceit, and murder as Gaelzeroth did.”

  Bronwyn stared at her old nurse dubiously. Marta obviously believed she had some say in her fate when, in truth, she did not. She could ask the king if he would find a husband for her that hailed from the old lord’s bloodlines, but it seemed unlikely that he would consider it--especially if that entailed offering her to a lord of Verde Isle. He would want to reward some of his own men by gifting them with the estate.

  Running her temples to soothe the beginnings of a headache, she set her needle work aside and moved restlessly to the window to stare out blindly at the world beyond wishing she had not been born a woman. Women were chattel, passed from man to man, father to husband. They rarely had any say at all in who was chosen for them.

  She certainly had not. The king had arranged her first marriage when her father had died, leaving her his only heir. She had not been displeased. William was personable enough when he put himself out to please and he had behaved with the exquisite manners of a gentleman. How was she to guess that it was no more than a façade? In truth she had seen common men that were less brutish.

  She had not even said anything to set him off. She had simply ignored him when he had come in raging about whatever it was that had displeased him, because she had already learned that saying anything at all was liable to make him turn on her.

  Would the next be as bad? Or worse?

  Possibly, and yet there was no escape. She must marry. A widow alone was fair game for any who might decide to prey upon her.

  It might have been different if the babe had lived. Then the king would certainly have appointed a guardian, but she need not have wed again.

  Distress threaded through her at that thought. She had despised William. And yet she could not help but grieve for the babe she’d lost.

  Swallowing against the painful knot that rose in her throat, she turned away from the window, gathered her cloak and left the room.

  The wind caught her cloak as she let herself of the stout oak door that fronted the castle proper sending it whipping around her. Ignoring it and the chill bumps that formed on her arms, she headed purposefully for the family chapel. It was empty at this time of day, and although she did not find comfort in prayer, she wanted to be alone--completely alone.

  From force of habit, she performed the ritual of humility and worshipfulness required by the gods, and then moved to a bench to stare as blindly at the crypt that held her son as she had stared from the window before.

  She felt--empty, lost, and she wasn’t entirely certain why. There was an aching sadness inside of her that might have been because she had not truly grieved for the child, but she did not think that that was truly the reason. She felt sad about the babe. It had been an innocent and she hadn’t hated it as she had the child’s father, but she had barely begun to accept that he was nestled within her womb when he was gone.

  It felt like something else.

  Unbidden, images rose in her mind, disjointed as they had been since she’d first awakened from her illness.

  She knew it had not been entirely dreams, which she had to accept that some of it was memory, not dream, but there were aspects that she found equally difficult to accept as reality.

  William had tried to kill her. She was absolutely certain of that. The ‘dreams’, the marks upon her--even the fact that William had fallen from the tower made it impossible not to accept that much.

  But she had not saved herself.

  And she still found it difficult to accept that the ‘man’ who’d saved her life was no man. An image of his face teased at her mind. She had found she could not mold it into a solid form, but she remembered his eyes. They were the color of ice. She remembered the well-defined bones of his face; the high cheekbones, the strong, square jaw, the forceful chin, the sharply defined nose. She remembered his finely etched
lips and his chilling blue eyes best, but she also remembered that she had found his harsh face appealing.

  Because he had shown compassion for a stranger, a woman who meant nothing to him … and he had sacrificed something vitally important to him to help her.

  She realized abruptly why he seemed familiar to her.

  Rising from the bench, she left the chapel, halting again when she reached the courtyard and tilting her head back to look up at the gargoyle that guarded Raventhorne Keep.

  “Nightshade,” she whispered.

  Chapter Four

  Nightshade knew when she looked up at him that she was beginning to remember. A flood of turbulent emotions filled him. Dread vied for dominance with pure animal lust. Shame came in a close third.