“But you broke her spell.” He stopped pacing long enough to cup her chin in his palm and give her a lingering kiss. “With a little help from a certain former Dominion you happened to meet.”
She melted into his kiss like wax in a burning candle, the slow throb of desire pulsing in her lower belly. She knew it wouldn’t be long until he bedded her again. But this was hardly the place for that.
Her sense of unease was growing. The sooner they were quit of this place, the better.
Reluctantly she broke away and gathered her scattered thoughts. “I suppose ye’re in no tearing hurry to rush into this rebellion of yers? From what ye’ve said, time passes even slower in Heaven than it does here.”
“True.” Clearly too restless to stand still, he resumed pacing. Perhaps he too sensed the weight of hidden eyes upon them. “If matters come to a boil up there, I’m certain Gabriele will fetch me, though she may be feeling a trifle annoyed with me at the moment.”
He slanted her an assessing glance. “If Uriel—I mean Beltran—is in France, do you think we can go there? Can you, ah, steer us through the mirror?”
Glancing over the dead city, she laughed bleakly. The momentary hope that had flickered in her heart now dwindled. “We can’t even return to Tintagel without a mirror.”
Looking surprised, he pivoted toward her. “But we have one. Or at least, we might. Still water carries a reflection much clearer than many a polished plate. Can you open a portal that way?”
“I can try,” she faltered. “I know so little about this magick, aye? But the first time I called it, the day I passed into the Summer Lands, I used a waterfall near Glencross. Its surface was smooth as a lady’s hair—smooth as glass.”
He grinned at her. “I was hoping you’d say that. Because, without the Grail to cloud the waters, yonder well in the Baptistery makes a perfect reflecting pool.”
Chapter Nineteen
“Linnet, this is truly extraordinary.” Zamiel extended his arms to examine himself. “We’re barely even wet, and that only from the spray as you pulled me through the cascade.”
Incapable of speech, Linnet merely nodded. She’d scarcely begun to accept her Fae heritage and this unsettling magick that let her pass through time and space. Certainly she didn’t begin to understand how to direct it, choosing where or when she might emerge.
But intent must have something to do with it. She’d been thinking and speaking of Glencross when they returned to the Baptistery and fell or jumped or were drawn into the well. The experience still terrified her, and she would never willingly subject herself to it, save by dire necessity.
Now here they stood beside a shimmering sheet of water—a cascade, barely taller than she, that poured over a jumble of rocks into a foaming pool. Around them blazed the bronze and crimson splendor of the familiar autumn forest near Glencross. Thin rays of sunlight slanted through the boughs to splash the dried leaves that crunched beneath their feet.
The first time they’d passed through the mirror, it had been Michaelmas, the February snow frozen in ruts on the roads of London. They’d gone into the Faerie Glasse at Midsummer, embraced by the balmy breezes of Tintagel. Now, along the Scottish marches where she’d grown to womanhood, it was autumn.
How long had they dwelled in Lyonesse? Was it even the same year? A shiver swept along Linnet’s skin, colder than the crisp air that pierced her thin gown. Chafing her arms, she shivered.
Zamiel was in raptures over their emergence, striding around the clearing with his usual boundless energy. Yet her shivers caught his immediate attention. With a sound of dismay, he hurried to her side.
“Dear heart, you’re chilled through—and no wonder. Working your magick must exhaust you.”
“It’s Faerie magick, not mine.” She sighed. “Although I suppose it’s mine too, aye? I’ll have to get used to that.”
Despite the raw damp wind she knew so well, the autumn splendor of Glencross seemed to throw its arms wide in exuberant welcome.
It had been autumn when she left, a year or more ago, to make her journey to the Tudor court. Ever since, she’d longed for the quiet comfort of home. Amid the elegant, glittering dangers of the Queen’s court, she’d been like a fish in a tree.
Now, despite the uncertainty of not knowing when they were, a sparkling tide of joy bubbled through her. She’d returned to her home, and she’d brought her love with her.
Zamiel of Briah might not be the proper laird her folk were expecting. But with her to teach him, their love to nurture him, and the strong honest soil of Glencross to anchor him, he’d make a good laird and a strong protector for her people.
She already knew he’d make the perfect husband for her.
Linnet spread her arms and spun, laughing, until the bright blaze of harvest colors blurred around her.
When she was dizzy, she stumbled to a halt and sank to her knees beside the foaming pool. She was travel-weary, aye, but also parched and famished. Eagerly she scooped up a double handful of the bracing liquid and raised it to her lips. She gulped it down and sighed with pleasure, welcoming the familiar metallic tang of the mineral-rich water.
In London, no rational person would drink the foul waters, which teemed with bad humors and disease. But this was a place she trusted. To her, the finest Gascon claret in the Tudor court had never tasted half so delightful.
“Nectar of the gods,” she said blissfully to Zamiel. He’d sprawled on a fallen log, where he dolefully eyed the damage the seawater at Tintagel had wrought to his boots. “Don’t worry about yer boots, ye peacock! They’ll get us to the castle, aye? It’s not far.”
She sighed. “Though I can’t tell ye what my servants will think to see me turn up like this. The last word they had from me was last winter. I sent my steward a letter before I left for Cornwall, telling him I’d be gone a while.”
Not to mention what the Queen is going to think when she hears I’ve come back, she thought dryly. I wonder if we’ve any chance to secure her blessing before we wed? I’ll write to explain what happened—she’s part Fae, she’ll understand it. She liked Zamiel and thought him a fine Protestant. That can’t hurt our chances.
“Oh, look,” Zamiel said suddenly. He bent to lift a swath of dark fabric pooled on the ground. “Someone’s left a cloak for you. Did your servants know you were coming?”
“I hadn’t time to send a courier,” she said wryly, as he draped the garment around her shoulders. The mantle was lush velvet, frogged with antique gold and lined with sleek fur, so rich and glossy she couldn’t help stroking it. “’Tis an odd sort of garment to leave.”
Indeed, it was far too valuable a cloth to leave lying about, and early in the season for such a heavy fur besides. The wearer’s fragrance floated from the folds, smoky oil of civet with a dry hint of sage.
A subtle unease tugged at her. She could think of no one at Glencross who would own such a decadent garment, much less leave it carelessly behind. And no one who would perfume his body—for the fragrance was decidedly male—with a scent as rare and costly as civet.
Scalp prickling, she slid the heavy garment from her shoulders. “This can’t have been left for me. Let’s leave it where ye found it.”
An unfamiliar voice unrolled like a gray ribbon across the glade.
“Keep it, my lady, as a token of my gratitude for the great service thou hast wrought for me.”
A shadow detached from the surrounding trees and flowed into the clearing. Beside her, Zamiel spun toward the shadowy figure, rapier leaping into his hand. Recognizing the antiquated dialect of Faerie, Linnet seized his arm to hold him back.
Despite the shafts of sunlight slicing through the trees, the new arrival stood cloaked in darkness, as though he commanded the shadows—or repelled the light. The stranger was tall and powerfully built, a warrior’s strength of chest and shoulders rippling under a belted tunic and breeches of royal indigo, bordered in Celtic knotwork of antiquated style. A gleaming mane of silver hair was clubbed smoothly at his nape, benea
th a slender coronet of silver and gold entwined.
The face beneath seemed oddly familiar—smooth-shaven, hard-edged, blazing with the lethal beauty of the Fair Folk. Although the stranger was smiling, his pale blue eyes were glacial.
Desperately she gathered her wits for a cautious reply. “If we did ye some service, my lord, we’re glad for it.”
“Art thou so certain?” the strange lord murmured.
For lord he clearly was, and his lordly attire the merest part of it. She could name no obvious reason, beyond his unsettling arrival, for the powerful unease flooding through her. Aye, the man was Fae, but he wasn’t even armed, save for the sickle-shaped dagger at his belt. A blade identical to the one Morrigan had borne, like the crescent medallion on a thong around his corded throat.
A Goddess worshipper.
But that was nothing strange, if he came from the Fair Folk.
Deftly Zamiel slipped free of her restraining grip and placed himself before her. He spoke pleasantly enough, but a vigilant tension crackled through his slim frame.
“I fear you’ve the advantage of us, stranger. You seem to know the lady, yet I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure?”
“The pleasure,” echoed the pale-haired figure and laughed. His brittle mirth sent icy fingers sliding down her spine. “Nay, Severity, thou wouldn’t have. Thou might be trapped for now in a mortal body, but thou wear thy Father’s essence like a crown. Thou art darkness and light, death and life, damnation and deliverance—all qualities one must respect. But one thing thou art not is Faerie.”
Zamiel swooped into an elegant leg. “You have me there. Did we meet in Tintagel?”
“Assuredly not.” The stranger’s head tilted as he considered. “Contrary to legend, I am not utterly without honor. Because thy lady has done me such good service, I shall grant thee an answer to thy question. I’ve been awaiting thine arrival an exceeding long while. When the pair of thee finally appeared, I followed thee here.”
Zamiel was a coiled spring, hand resting lightly near his sword. “From Tintagel?”
The other smiled. “From Lyonesse.”
With shocking suddenness, that niggling sense of unease that had haunted her in Lyonesse—the pressure of unseen eyes—snapped into focus.
Morrigan’s grand plan, played out with such painstaking patience, had never made sense to her. The witch’s motive for pushing her into the Faerie Glasse had not been clear. She’d assumed Morrigan wanted her to retrieve the Grail, or at least drink from it, but Linnet had proven unable to do either. Had the Grail been nothing more than a lure to draw her through the glass?
Zamiel had drunk from the Cup of Truth, but the witch couldn’t have expected that. His journey through the mirror had been unplanned, and probably unwanted from Morrigan’s perspective. And they’d brought nothing out from Lyonesse but the clothes on their backs.
But this powerful, alarming Fae with the ice-cold eyes had followed them out.
He couldn’t have come through without Linnet. Morrigan had said her magick was rare. This potent apparition had been trapped in Lyonesse, imprisoned alone in that dead, crumbling city for a very long while, if the antiquated cut of his cloth was any indication. Clearly, the goal of Morrigan’s careful plan had been to free him.
In the City of Lions, Arthur of Camelot had fought his bastard son. On the shores of Lyonesse, he’d defeated the usurper—who was also Morrigan’s son, a child of witchcraft and deception, conceived when Arthur believed her the Faerie Queene, his lover. The night Morrigan wove a glamour and came to Arthur’s bed in the guise of her own mother, she’d conceived the King’s bastard.
Clearly the man standing before her was not Arthur, King of Camelot. Which meant he was...
“Mordred,” she whispered.
The stranger threw back his head and laughed, a cascade of joyless mirth that turned her blood to ice. “So my name is not forgotten in the realms of men! This will simplify matters, when the time comes.”
Zamiel’s hand closed around his hilt, but he didn’t draw, no doubt wary of the open violence a naked weapon would unleash. At the moment, the newcomer had done nothing overtly to threaten them. While the man laughed, Zamiel darted a glance toward Linnet.
“Who the Devil is Mordred?” he hissed.
“Arthur’s son, Rhiannon’s half brother. A priest of the Goddess and a sorcerer.” She shook her head frantically. “I’ll explain it all later, aye? We have to get away from him.”
“No need to flee, my dear lady.” Mordred had stopped laughing. Again, his head tilted as though he listened to something just beyond hearing. “Fortunately for thee and thy guardian angel, I have pressing business in the Summer Lands, with my ever-doting mother. Although I required thine assistance to escape my loathsome confinement in the City of Lions, now that I’m free, I can travel anywhere I like by my own power.”
Mordred, Prince of Camelot, swept his arms upward. A white curtain of mist billowed from the trees and wrapped around him. Linnet’s skin tingled, her Faerie senses recognizing the magickal Veil that warded the Summer Lands—a magick so powerful even the Faerie princess Rhiannon had rarely been able to summon it.
This man called it with no more than a thought. Now it swept around him like a curtain.
The mist rolled across the clearing to obscure their vision. Zamiel’s rapier hissed free as he leaped forward and plunged into it.
By the time he’d crossed the glade, the mist had vanished. And so had the sorcerer who’d summoned it. Zamiel stood alone, gazing about him and cursing.
“He’s letting us live,” Linnet told him a short while later, when they’d realized Mordred would not return. “Whatever his business in the Faerie realm might be, he doesn’t seem to think it concerns us—at least for the time being.”
“Perhaps.” Frowning, Zamiel prowled the glade. By now, he too had drunk deeply of the iron-flavored water and looked much refreshed.
She drew a steadying breath and gathered her reserves. At the moment, they could do nothing about Mordred of Camelot. What they could and must do was walk to Glencross and begin to reclaim her place there—however long she’d been missing.
Gradually the tension leaked from Zamiel’s lithe frame. He slid his rapier back in its sheath.
“I’m not certain I’d want to be Morrigan le Fay when her prodigal son returns,” Linnet told him. “She might have had the wolf by the tail in Lyonesse, but now that he’s slipped his leash, it wouldn’t surprise me if he lunges for her throat.”
“She apparently took her time about freeing him. From what I’ve seen, he doesn’t strike me as the forgiving sort.”
She sighed. “Whatever happens to her, she has what she wanted from me. Belike we’re free of Faerie business, at least for a little while.”
“Well, I should hope so,” he murmured, lips curving in a teasing smile. “For I believe, my lady, the two of us have a wedding to plan.”
Linnet’s heart lifted as he drew her into his arms. The last remnants of tension dissolved from her body as she inhaled the dark warm scent of tobacco and the man she loved.
“Aye, that’s so, my lord.” Matching his teasing tone, she twined her arms around his lean waist. “If ye haven’t changed yer mind about marrying such a troublesome lass.”
His violet eyes met hers. “Linnet Norwood, I’ll marry you twelve times over if that’s what it takes. Once for your people at Glencross, once for the Queen in London, once for the Fae at Tintagel—”
“Stop, for Bride’s sake!” Laughing, she pressed a hand against his smiling mouth. “Once is like to be enough, aye? We’ll inform my folk and write the Queen straightaway for her blessing. Then I’ll show ye the lands and business of Glencross, if ye’ve a mind for it. No doubt we’ve thread yet to spin and wool to weave from the summer shearing, the winter ale to brew, and the Glencross cheeses—”
“Cheeses too?” He gave her a look of comical dismay. “Hell’s Bells! As lord of the manor, I’ll be a hopeless dolt.”
“Nay, ye’ll learn, just as I did. ‘Tisn’t hard when ye apply yerself. And ye’ll have me to help ye along.”
His eyes lowered to her mouth. The slow burn of passion sparked smoldered in his gaze. “If I prove an apt pupil, will you reward me?”
A quiver of sensual excitement fluttered low in her belly. Winter would soon wrap Glencross Castle in its sheltering arms. The vision of long slow nights spread before her, the cozy intimacy of a low fire and mulled wine in the lord’s snug chamber. An image coalesced before her—Zamiel’s sleep-tumbled ebony hair and diamond-bright beauty blazing among the colorful draperies of her canopied bed, while the snow flew beyond their shuttered windows.
“Oh, aye,” she breathed, tingling, a slow blush warming her skin. “Ye’re a talented sort of lad. I’ll reward ye well, husband, for every new skill ye master.”
The breath snared audibly in his throat. His smooth tenor deepened with passion. “In that case, when can I begin my studies?”
“Right now.” Twining her fingers in his lush mane, she drew him toward her. Their mouths brushed and fused in a lingering kiss that stole her breath and tightened her nipples against the thin fabric of her gown.
Their kiss was deepening when a light step sounded on the path behind them. Reluctantly, Linnet broke the kiss and turned to meet the newcomer. In light of her unheralded return after so long away, she gathered her wits to introduce herself and Zamiel to a probable stranger.
But the slight, silver-haired figure wrapped in cream-colored skirts and a rose-red mantle who came flying into the glade was heartbreakingly familiar, and crying her name.
Tears of joy flooded Linnet’s eyes and spilled forth unchecked. With brimming heart and open arms, she ran to embrace her beloved friend, Rhiannon le Fay, and the broad-shouldered blond knight who loomed protectively behind her.
Epilogue
Linnet Norwood, Countess of Glencross, married Lord Zamiel of Briah on Twelfth Night.
It was an uncommon sort of wedding, said the good folk of Glencross, but one oddly suited to their unconventional new earl. He made no secret of the fact that he’d brought no lands to the match, though his purse seemed never to run dry. And it was transparently obvious he knew nothing—at least to start—of managing a great manor and the vast lands, farms and villages attached to it.
Laura Navarre - [The Magick Trilogy 02] Page 32