by Nunn, PL
But that just did not sit right, deep down inside. The assassin was not an explainable aspect of her psyche.
“Little human,” a silvery voice called out. Alex looked up from his gaming even as she refocused to find the author of the summons. His gaze found her and his face went still. She caught only the briefest detail of his expression before her attention was centered on the figure of the Mistress of Hunts. Lady Tyra reclined among the gamers, lithe and almost mannish in straight trousers and severe tunic. She made little effort with spectacular garments. She still managed to stand out amongst her peers.
Victoria swallowed and inclined her head. “Lady Tyra?”
The hunts mistress smiled. A lazy turning of the lips that hinted at all the secrets in the world and told nothing of any of them. She shook the die slowly in her hand and cast them onto the table.
Without looking at the outcome of her throw she told Victoria, “The hunt rides tomorrow night. If no one else chooses to outfit you for the ride, see me at the stables.”
Her pulse pounded. She knew she was pale as death. She nodded, fighting for calm in her tone. “I’ll see you. Thank you, Lady.”
Tyra shrugged and went back to her game. Victoria did not know quite what to do after being released from that gaze. Her own drifted back to Alex, who was staring unabashedly at her. There was surprise on his face. Shock at the announcement that she would ride with the hunt. Good. Let him be shocked. Let him wonder at her sanity. She certainly wondered at his.
‘Ride with the hunt’ the message had said. What if it were the chance at escape with help from friends on the outside?
What if riding with the hunt signaled the end of her captivity here? Then she would be rid of Alex and his betrayal. Be rid of the fear of the Unseelies. And the assassin?
Somehow she did not imagine she could shake him so easily.
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Part Seventeen
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Alex lay awake, long after he had retired to his own apartments, staring at the lightening sky outside his window. The stars were all but gone in the last dregs of night. Morning slowly cast a pale blush of color to the air. He was alone. It was not uncommon. Leanan often found diversions other than him to amuse her. His presence had little effect at curbing her pleasures.
He did not think to remark about it. He did not think to feel jealousy. It was a sidhe practice. Infidelity was not a word that existed in their vocabulary. He wondered sometimes why he never worried over what she did, and yet on those rare occasions when his mind possessed full clarity concerning Victoria, he worried incessantly over what she was up to. Her eyes had been full of apprehension tonight.
Her face, when she had passed, had been on the verge of panic. Something had her frightened and in Leanan’s absence, he found thinking of Victoria, remembering Victoria, shockingly easy. Leanan clouded his mind. Leanan made him blithely unawares. He wondered why he might be jealous of Victoria for so little as dancing with Azeral and yet not blink an eye when Leanan engaged in an orgy with a handful of sidhe courtesans.
He turned onto his stomach and rested his chin on the backs of his arms. The pillows shifted with silken sighs under him. His mind was full of Victoria this night. For the most part he did not think of her. Just forgot about her existence until she happened to present herself in his path. It was a guilty feeling, like forgetting to do something vitally important until it was too late to do anything about it. He would think about it and dwell on it until Leanan took his thoughts elsewhere. It half reminded him of the new bendithy servants Lady Miralaha had acquired. The way they had been surly and uncooperative until she had altered their way of thinking and forced them to forget their gripes and made them perfectly happy to be serving her. He felt all too often that the same sort of thing was perpetrated on him. He thought what Leanan wanted him to think. He did what she wanted him to do. He gave his loyalty and his affections to her and the resources of his human power to her father. They had all the perks in the relationship. They received the benefits and the majority of the time he was only too happy to go along with it. Until he had a few private moments to think. Then he questioned.
The strange thing was, he had not had the desire to balk against the establishment until Victoria had come. Until he found himself wondering why he did not know all the things he should have about her. If he and she had come to this world together. If they had been lovers. Why could he not recall how she felt, or how her lips tasted? It was too convenient a blank. Too coincidental with Leanan’s fits of possessiveness. It made him think that someone was altering his mind as easily as they altered the minds of the keep’s servants. It made him feel around the edges of his mentality and wonder what lay hidden there that was not of his own construction.
They had not taught him how to shield, but he had picked up the rudimentary basics. Even the fairies knew how to shield to some extent. He knew nothing of the mind games they played, but knew they were masters each and every one. He had seen too many manipulations of the servants to think otherwise. It was just a matter of figuring out what they were doing or had done in one’s own head. The only thing he was certain Leanan, bless her lovely sidhe hide, had tampered with was his memories of Victoria. It was the single starting point that he had. So he searched there. Dredged up every memory he could about Victoria and found that there were damn few that came easily. And there were some that he knew without knowing how he knew.
Lying there, searching diligently inside his own head was a frustrating effort. He was just too close to the problem at hand. Distance was what needed. And if Alex was good at any one magic, it was letting his mind’s eye drift free of his body and soar outside it. He pulled back, and instead of fleeing out the window he hovered in the confines of the room. His body lay dormant and relaxed on the bed of pillows. The breathing was even and slow, almost as if he slept. If anyone came in, it would seem just so.
The physical shell meant nothing, told him nothing. He looked inward, as he might a bird or an animal he wished to mentally hitch a ride with. He was careful to keep his mental eye separate from the magnetic pull of its physical form. His body tended to want to join with his psyche. He was a novice at such mental calibration. He knew not what to look for in a severe introspection. Thoughts focused on Victoria and why she was such a void in his memory when she should have been prominent. He came up with nothing. In frustration he delved deeper, and suddenly rebounded as he skidded off something smooth and impenetrable. He backed off, not knowing if the barrier was some natural occurrence or not. He had the distinct desire to leave it alone, to run and forget the need to find the method of his madness. He forced himself not to. Forced himself to search around the edges where the barrier seamed together with his own psyche. There was power here, he felt it.
Was familiar with the taste of it. It had a signature that was not his own. Azeral had been in his mind enough, had borrowed enough of his human-generated magic for him to recognize the print of his unique signature. And on top of that stronger magic was a lesser one that hinted at Leanan. He hovered in shock for a while, blind and deaf to the world. They ‘had’
been in his mind. They had planted their own whims inside his head and until he had stubbornly searched for traces of Victoria, he had not suspected the extent.
Oh, he had known they were manipulating him. But not that they had constructed barriers in his mind.
Damn them. He trusted them. He loved Leanan. How could they? Or was the trust fabricated?
And the love…?
Even so, he knew he could not stop the feelings. If she walked into the room he would have fallen over himself for her attention. If Azeral had asked, he would give him anything, even though in the back of his mind he knew it was not given with free choice. He pounded uselessly on the barrier. It absorbed the blows. He gathered power and hurled it at it. It dispersed. He exhausted all the brute force he had and still changed nothing.
And then with desperation he pried at the edge
s where Leanan’s and Azeral’s influence overlapped and managed to flake away at the upper layer. Encouraged he worked at it in diligence. Fine web work cracks appeared, and pieces slid away like melting ice on a windshield.
The fractures seemed to shoot through his body, following the paths of his veins. It was a cold and brittle unpain. Discomfort settled, edged with frost. Lights flared in eyes that could not at the moment see more than the backs of lids. It felt like something was gearing to break and for an instant he was afraid. Afraid that he had done some irreparable damage. He was that unstable. The outer layer of intrusion was nothing more than ragged patches, easy to see through, easy to avoid.
Underneath, the other barrier remained solid, except in one tiny section that in his excitement over the dismantling of the other he overlooked entirely.
He slammed back into his body, suddenly made aware of breathing gone heavy and muscles too long tensed. He was tired. Physically exhausted. Tears streamed down his cheeks, wetting the pillows under his face. His head hurt abominably. Memories flooded in.
Emotions that had been long buried.
Despite the pain he felt gleeful and giddy.
There was a freedom returned that he had barely missed. It was still hard to place what notions were entirely his own and which were whims of Leanan. He could not quit the feeling of desire when he thought of her. He could not find hate for her. But he was also perfectly aware of where he stood with Victoria. And what, because of Leanan’s machinations, he had done to her.
God! Some things were not forgivable. Excuses of any caliber mattered little in some situations. And his malleable little Victoria of the silvery voice had proved to be of an unexpectedly unforgiving nature. An unexpectedly violent one, and most assuredly of an alarmingly powerful one. A hundred apologies for a situation he could not begin to explain to himself swam through his head. It was not his fault. His thoughts had not been entirely his own. The court and its bewitching members had drawn him in like a whirlpool. Leanan was an enchantress. Her charms were as inescapable as the weather. And once snared, he was helpless. He could not quite remember when he had gone from mistrust to infatuation. From wariness to utter pliability. Victoria would have to hear it. Whether she understood or not, she had to be told. He wanted to find her now.
He knew where her apartments were. Just a matter of slipping through the halls in the early morning when the court was deep in the beginnings of their sleep. Find her.
Explain as best he could to her what had happened, what was still happening to him. Try and tell her that it had never been his choice to forget her. As far as betraying her trust, he was not sure if that had happened before or after Leanan had gotten inside his head, but he would muddle through that explanation. He just needed to talk with Victoria.
“Alexander,” the voice drifted through his chambers like a whispery breeze. He stiffened, missing a heartbeat at the intrusion. He turned over and squinted through the darkness to make out the willowy shrouded form of his sidhe paramour. His heart hammered within his chest. Did she know? Had she sensed the shattering of her mental restraints? Her voice was sultry, her movements slow. He felt no tension in her. She looked more sleepy than angry. He quelled the fear, formed a smile for her. If there was no need for her to look she might not notice that her invisible bonds were broken.
She drifted to his bed and gracefully lowered herself upon it next to him. Her long fingers touched the bare skin of his chest. Lingered. She was tired. He could see it in her eyes. Her lips were pouting and rosy, her lids heavy. She had come from someone’s arms. He drew her into his own. Kissed the side of her mouth and murmured.
“I missed you.”
“Did you?” She snuggled into his embrace, lying her head in the crook of his arm.
“Always,” he told her, holding the impatience in check far, far back in his mind. He must not give her a hint that he was less than content. She closed her eyes wanting no more from him at the moment than arms to hold her while she slept. It was an inconvenience. An insurmountable blockage in his immediate quest to find Victoria. He was well and truly thwarted.
Leanan was too light a sleeper to ignore any quiet retreat on his part. Until she woke with the afternoon, he was stuck.
And if she insisted on his company after she had awaken, then he might not have the chance to see Victoria at all since she was riding with the hunt. The hunt of all things!
Victoria who despised hunting.
After the hunt, then. When the court was immersed in the celebration of its own grandeur. After the hunt he would find her.
~~~
She moved into the-fey lit darkness, a tingly feeling of excitement coursing through the byways of her body as she stepped outside the inner walls of the keep. The air was fresh and cool and the sky awesome and liberally sprinkled with stars. Despite the cumbersome walls of the outer bailey, she felt as if she had been granted some exquisite freedom. The guards had let her pass without comment, with nothing more than steely-eyed nods at her passage. She felt as if she had bested them at some game.
A bendithy servant led her to the stables and she found herself among a cluster of milling bodies both equine and fey. The bendithy had no more knowledge of her position than she and left in concern to seek aid in the finding of her mount. She remembered Tyra’s offer and searched out that worthy lady. It was hard to pick her out among the field of jeweled armor and shining night horse flanks. She asked a sidhe lady and was given directions in the form of a general wave to the right. She edged through heavy bodies looking for the mistress of the hunt. The coppery blonde hair of that one stood out as a beacon from beneath an ornate helmet.
The lady stood by the side of an enormous nighthorse, checking her own tack as opposed to letting the stable servants do it, as most of the other sidhe were content to do.
Victoria stood quietly behind her, waiting until she had finished her inspection of harnesses and buckles. The animal snorted and roughly butted its nose against the Mistress of the Hunt’s armored chest. The lady took an involuntary step back and patted the offending, velvety nose. The animal’s glinting orange eyes settled upon the human standing behind its mistress. Its long ears pricked forward with interest. Tyra followed its gaze. Her lids half obscured her pale eyes.
“So you decided to join us after all. I had my doubts.” Victoria swallowed. “You said you’d help outfit me.”
“So I did,” Tyra said. She slapped the heavily muscled shoulder of her mount, looking Victoria up and down.
Victoria had chosen to wear the leathers she had come to the keep in. Sidhe-made and soft, yet resilient enough to have survived the sometimes harsh journey afoot to the Unseelie court. It was a comfortable attire and one that made her feel more physically secure than the outfits provided for her by Azeral.
Tyra nodded her approval. It was by far less flamboyant than any of the others and would do little in the service of armor, but then she would be an observer on this hunt, not a hunter. She hoped she would have no need to protect herself from whatever poor beast the sidhe chose as prey.
The mistress of the hunt signaled to a stable servant, calling out a name. The bendithy boy nodded and hurried back into the shadow of the stable awning. He returned momentarily with a smallish nighthorse. Tyra walked towards it, her own great animal trailing. Victoria gave the beast right of way and followed after.
“She’s a gentle thing,” Tyra informed her. “Well-mannered and used to the seat of an untrained rider. Give her her head and she’ll follow the pack. She knows the ways of hunt. Trust her. Touch her nose, let her smell you.”
Not totally unfamiliar with nighthorses, Victoria had no qualms over holding out her hand for the animal to nuzzle. The warm breath tickled. She rubbed her knuckles over the tip of the soft nose. The ears pricked forward and the glowing eyes regarded her solemnly.
Horns sounded, and every head turned. Tyra’s attention left Victoria totally as the hunt’s mistress mounted and urged her beast forward throug
h the crowd. Victoria stood by her own uncertainly as riders climbed to the backs of their steeds. The bendithy servant gently took her elbow, dull fey eyes looking at her encouragingly.
“Mount up, milady.” He held the bridle while she found the high stirrup and pulled herself up. Her mount stood passively at her less than graceful ascent. She took the reins in hand, along with a fist full of silky black mane. The animal shifted, vying for position among the other nighthorses.
Up ahead she saw the glitter of gilded armor as the high lords formed the apex of the hunting party. Azeral would be there, with his lady, Neferia. Victoria had no wish to share in that company. Her beast was content to find a place in the rear, not far from the less grandiose animals of the retainers who would trail the party with refreshments and pack animals to carry back the carcass of the prey.
The great hunt moved out. The outer bailey doors opened and like a parade of festival riders, they left the confines of the keep. The nighthorse’s sure hooves took the steep mountain path at a effortless cantor. Victoria held tightly to reins and mane regardless, insecure now that she had no magical means of controlling her mount. The trees surrounded them in short order. The foliage thick and still green despite the cooling weather. There was something of a path that they followed. A trail where the bramble was not quite as high and the brush not as dense. The nighthorses still had to jump here and there to avoid a fallen branch or a particularly thick clump of ground bound vines. The darkness was too overwhelming with the foliage cutting off the light of the stars for her human sight to make out much of the passage. She trusted to sidhe night vision and nighthorse senses to keep them on track. Her beast seemed to know exactly what it was doing. It resisted her attempts at guidance and took the path it judged most sound. She soon learned to accept its judgment.
The incline was steep enough to warrant some degree of alarm on her part.
She was forced to sit back in the saddle to compensate for the odd angle at which her mount descended. She clutched the saddle behind her with one hand and held onto thick mane with the other. Her legs were already strained from clenching the girth of the animal so tightly. Leaves and small overhanging branches brushed her face.