by Jane Godman
Tanzi regarded him with surprise. “Are you not returning with me to enjoy the victory celebrations with your friends? I thought you would relish our defeat and look forward to reaping the rewards of victory.”
He looked down into the deep, blue midnight of her eyes. “Then it’s clear that you don’t know me. I would never celebrate death. And I’m a wanderer, Tanzi. The road is my home. I need no other reward.”
There was a flash of something other than distaste in the dark depths. Was it disappointment? Or was that his own wishful thinking?
“Thank you for saving me.” She held out her hand and he took it between both of his. She glanced up at the palace, and a shadow crossed the marble perfection of her features. “Although I no longer know what my future holds.”
He gripped her hand. The old allegiances had changed and new bonds had been forged today. Were they enough to overcome the hatred of centuries? Only time would tell. “My friends will treat your fairly, that much I can guarantee. And I will make you a promise of my own. If you need me again, I will come to you.”
She scanned his face, her eyes bewildered. “How will you know?”
He smiled. “Trust me, Tanzi. If you need me, I will know.”
Chapter 26
Stella stood on the balcony of her room and gazed across the parkland. Darkness cloaked the scene and hid any sign of the earlier chaos from her view. Grindan was gone, having renewed his vows of eternal loyalty before he and his warriors returned once more to their underground graves. She hoped their rest would be peaceful and uninterrupted.
Was Moncoya out there in the shadows? What was he planning? One thing was for sure, he would be planning something. Her skin prickled at the thought, but she refused to turn away. They had faced and defeated him. He was the man who had stolen her childhood. Stolen countless lives. If he was out there, let him see her standing here in the palace he used to call his own. Let him know how it felt to be the tyrant overthrown.
A movement behind her made her turn her head quickly. This was Moncoya’s legacy. Until they knew his whereabouts, they would be forever condemned to look over their shoulders.
Cal slipped his arms around her waist and drew her back so that she could lean against him. Stella sighed, enjoying the warmth of his body.
“I’m about to get into the hottest, most decadently scented bubble bath in the history of the world. Join me?”
His lips traced the outer shell of her ear. “Tempting as that offer is, I remember making a promise that I would tell you everything once this was over.”
“Tell me in the tub.” She turned in his arms, pressing her cheek against his chest.
“We have a great track record in water, Stella, but it’s never involved talking.” He tilted her chin up so that he could look at her face. “I keep my promises.”
“So do I. I promise not to distract you.”
“You are a distraction to me all the time.” She made a protesting sound and he smiled down at her. “I didn’t say I was complaining. On the contrary, you are my favorite diversion.” His face became serious again. “I’ll do you a deal. You bathe while I talk. If you still want me to, I’ll join you later.”
If you still want me to? Something in his manner troubled her. Surely she knew all, or nearly all, there was to know about him by now? No more obstacles. Please. We’ve fought so hard for this moment. What more could there be? Cal’s grave expression told her there was definitely something. It also told her it wasn’t going to be pleasant.
The bathroom was self-indulgent, as befitted the faerie queen. Occupying the center of the room, the sunken bath resembled a small swimming pool. When it was full, Stella shed her clothing and slid gratefully into the scented water, feeling some of the awfulness of the day just gone wash away as she did. Cal took up a seated position on the tiled floor with his back to the wall. His knees were drawn up and his hands clasped loosely between his legs. His eyes remained fixed on Stella’s face and a faint smile played about his lips.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she murmured.
“Like what?”
“Like you are rehearsing how to say goodbye to me.” A slight tremor in her voice gave away the fear that had suddenly gripped her.
“Stella...”
“Please, Cal...what else is there that I don’t already know about you? You are Merlin. You are half sidhe. Niniane turned out to be the ex from hell and imprisoned you at Darnantes. In order to get free you had to strike a deal with the angels to act as sort of Otherworld law enforcer. I know all of that and I still—” She drew in a shuddering breath. She wanted to tell him she loved him, yet that distance was still there in his voice and in his eyes. “—want to be with you. If you are going to tell me you don’t feel the same, then please get on with it because you can’t shock me anymore with revelations about your past.”
“Moncoya is my brother,” he said quietly.
“Oh.”
“Shocked yet?” He quirked an eyebrow at her.
“A little bit.”
“We have the same father, but different mothers. My mother was mortal. His mother was a sidhe princess, our father’s equal. While Moncoya was raised as his heir, I only met our father once. My mother and I spent my childhood running from him.” Although the words were stilted, he seemed to be gaining in strength as he spoke. Stella waited, sensing his determination to continue. He wanted to tell it all this time. “My father was ambitious and evil, perhaps even more so than Moncoya. He devised a plan to take over the immortal world. He believed that if he sired a child with a mortal woman and gave that child up to the devil to be raised as Satan’s own, his reward would be to become the ruler of all Otherworld.”
Stella regarded him in growing horror, sensing where the story was going. “So there really is a devil? Satan does exist?”
“Perhaps not in the sense that mortals generally understand the concept. It has suited his purpose to encourage the view of him as one who wields power over sin and darkness. But, yes, there is one demon who is stronger and more evil than all others and his name—or one of his many names—is Satan. In his eagerness to please this demon master, my father decided that only the purest and most virtuous mortal woman was fit to be the mother of Satan’s child. So he raped my mother, a young nun, in her convent bed while she slept. When the other nuns discovered her pregnancy, she was beaten and cast out from the convent. No one would believe that she did not know what had happened to her. My father found her and explained how I was conceived and the glory that awaited me. Through his pact with the devil, he had already given me the greatest gifts and powers he could bestow.” His lips twisted into a bitter smile. “My father did not bargain on the strong woman he had chosen. My mother ran from him and took sanctuary with a holy man, a hermit who lived in a cave. It has a nice symmetry that my cave-dwelling days began even before my birth, don’t you think?”
“I think your mother sounds like a remarkable woman.”
“Oh, she was. As soon as I was born, she rose up from her bed and took me to the nearest church to be baptized so that the devil could not claim me. Then we traveled to another part of the country in order to hide from my father’s anger. Little did my mother know how very difficult it would be to keep me hidden.”
“Why was that?” Stella was fascinated by the faraway look in his eyes.
“I was rather precocious. I could converse like an adult by the age of eighteen months and was able to read and write by the time I was three. Then, of course, as a child it never occurred to me to hide my magical powers. I became something of a legend, word spread wherever we went and my father eventually heard about me. It meant we spent my entire childhood on the run. No sooner would we settle in one place than I’d do something that was likened to a miracle and we’d have to pack up and leave.”
Stella, whose own childhood
had been a series of moves and changes, felt a rush of sympathy for the boy he had once been. “That’s why you cared for me when I was I child. You knew how it felt.” Her voice was husky.
“That might have been true at first. Later I cared for you because of who you are.”
“You said you met your father once. What happened then?”
“He caught up with us when I was thirteen. My mother had become ill. The nomadic life we’d led had taken its toll and we’d been forced to rest in one place to allow her to recover. My father found us. He was delighted with me. Oh, not because I was the son he had been waiting for. I was a hybrid, after all. He already had everything he wanted in his other son. Moncoya was his heir, a true-blood sidhe to carry on his name. No, he wanted me the same way Moncoya wanted you, Stella. He wanted to use me as a weapon of destruction against his enemies.”
“What did you do?”
“I killed him.” He watched her face to see how she would react to the words. When she didn’t speak, he continued. “It actually wasn’t intentional. He kept badgering me to demonstrate my powers to him. When I refused, he called me a mongrel, a cur, the excrement the devil had scraped off his boot.” He smiled. “We had much better insults back then.”
“But he was your father! How could he speak to you that way?”
“Exactly. I lost my temper. I told him I’d show him an example of my powers that would make his eyes water. It did more than that. As a young boy, I didn’t know my own strength and I didn’t hold back. He died in a ball of flames. Do I regret it?” Cal considered that matter, then shook his head. “At the time I was in shock at what I’d done. Now I know I rid Otherworld of an evil despot. Unfortunately, another evil despot—his other son, my brother, Moncoya—was waiting in the wings to take his place.”
“At least I know now why you and Moncoya hate each other so much.” Stella sat up a little straighter so that she did not have to tilt her head back to look at him. “What I don’t understand is why you think telling me this would change things between us.”
He bowed his head. His voice was low and, within it, she heard some of the anguish of his troubled dreams. “Because now you know what I am. What I was created for. I was put on earth to destroy it, to be the son of the devil. The powers I have were given to me for that purpose alone. You couldn’t love me—no one could—not knowing the truth about me.”
Stella emerged from the scented water and, shivering slightly at the coolness of the tiled floor, knelt before him, resting her arms on his knees. She ducked her head so that she could look at his face. “That might have been your father’s intention, but he failed in his bid to make you evil. You are the opposite of what he wanted. You’ve devoted your whole life to fighting evil. It doesn’t matter what you were meant to be, it’s what you are that makes me love you, Cal.”
He did look up at that. One side of his mouth lifted slightly. “Then you do love me?”
“How can you not know that?” Her voice was shaky. “How could you not feel my love for you whenever you are near me?”
“I did. Although I knew how you felt, I thought that once I told you everything you’d change your mind.”
“Well, I haven’t and I never will. But you know what? Every time I have imagined myself telling you I love you, I never pictured a scenario where I would be naked, wet and freezing my backside off while you were fully clothed and not even touching me.”
Cal started to laugh, relief imprinting itself onto his features. Rising to his feet, he picked Stella up and carried her back to the bath, wading fully clothed into the hot water with her. Bubbles clung to his face and hair and he blew them away as he knelt and caught her up in an endless kiss.
It was some time before Stella could speak again. “Cal?”
“Yes?”
“Two things. First, does this mean you love me, too? Because you haven’t actually said so.”
He started to laugh. “Haven’t I? Ever since I spoke to you for the first time on that beach in Barcelona, I’ve rehearsed so many speeches and here I am forgetting every word of them. Stella, I’ve lived through thousands of years and yet, until I got to know you, I’d never lived at all. You brought my heart to life. You gave me a taste of the magic humans experience every day. You showed me what it was to love. Yes, I love you with every ounce of my being and, no matter what the next thousand years hold, or the thousand after that, I want to face them with you at my side.” He kissed her again. “What was the second thing?”
“Take those clothes off and show me how much you love me.”
Chapter 27
The elves had done a remarkable job of restoring the palace gardens to something resembling normality. There was just one problem, which Jethro pointed out to Cal and Stella when they emerged into the morning sunlight.
“It’s been a full twenty-four hours and we can’t find anything to stop them. We turned hoses on them and they paused briefly to drink the water before carrying on. We fired rocks at them and they picked them up and used them as weapons against each other. We tried lighting torches and threatening them with fire, but they just swatted them away.” Jethro regarded the warring ogres with disbelief. “When one becomes too injured to continue it wanders off into the forest while the others keep going. Nothing seems to deter them.”
“I told you they would fight until one of them is established as the new leader,” Cal said.
“But what are we going to do with them in the meantime?”
Cal shrugged. “There’s not much we can do. If we leave them to it, they’ll move on eventually.” He nodded at Dimitar, who was coming toward them. “Got yourself a sidekick?”
Jethro grinned. “I thought human servants were tied to their vampire lords for life, but he seems to think there’s a get-out clause. For some reason, he’s switched his allegiance to me. I’m not sure I can cope with being called ‘master’ for all eternity.”
“What will you do now?” Stella asked.
“Oh, you know. Places to go, people to see.” Jethro kept his voice light. The message was clear. It was his business and no one else’s.
“Stay safe. And, Jethro?” Jethro had started to walk away, but he turned back, raising a questioning brow at Cal’s words. “Thanks.”
“Anytime.” Jethro sketched a wave at them both and continued on his way, meeting Dimitar in the middle of the lawn. The two men walked away toward the lake together.
If you discounted the ogres, the gardens were peaceful. The morning sunlight threw diamond shapes across the lake waters and highlighted the colors of the garden. Cal breathed in the scent of the flowers mingling with the tangy pines and held Stella close. He was one of the lucky ones. He had both worlds. And now he had someone he could share them with.
“When you consider the solitary reputation of the necromancer, you appear to have a remarkable propensity for generating loyalty, my friend.”
There was only one person who could take a simple statement and turn it into a pompous speech. Turning slowly, Cal came face-to-face with the Dominion.
“You’re a long way from home.”
“I thought, given the events of the past few days, I should make the effort to come to you.” The prim smile appeared. “After all, we owe you a great debt of thanks.”
“You owe that to Stella,” Cal stated firmly.
The Dominion bowed his head in acknowledgment. “Indeed. You have achieved all we asked of you and more, Miss Fallon. The gratitude of two worlds is with you this day.”
Stella returned the angel’s smile. “You say that as though I had a choice.” She twined her fingers with Cal’s. “And yet, it didn’t turn out so very bad.”
He smiled down at her before turning back to the Dominion. “You haven’t come all this way to thank us.”
“I do wish everyone I dealt with was as astute
as you, Merlin Caledonius. It would make my job so much easier.” The Dominion looked gravely from Cal’s face to Stella’s. “The prophecy has been fulfilled. The heart of the necromancer has been claimed.”
Stella gave a little start of surprise. “He’s right, Cal. I never thought of it like that. My heart belongs to you. You are the one who has fulfilled your own prophecy.”
“I don’t want to rule Otherworld. That has never been my ambition.”
“Come now. This was your prophecy. You must remember your own words. He who claims the heart of the necromancer star will unite the delightful plain. Others, notably Moncoya, have interpreted it to mean he who claims the star’s heart will be in control of Otherworld. Yet all those centuries ago, when you foresaw this day you used the word unite, not the word rule.”
Cal frowned. “What are you suggesting?”
“A pivotal battle has been won. But Otherworld is a long way from the peace it needs. Moncoya is defeated, but not destroyed. Others will sense an opportunity in his absence. The wolves did not engage in this conflict. Do you think they will stay out of the next? Prince Tibor will not remain lightly in the background. There must be a peacekeeping force in place, with an interim council set up to maintain order, a powerful presence allowing all voices an equal hearing. This must be overseen by one who commands the respect of all.”
“You mean me, don’t you?” Cal groaned.
“You had that respect anyway. Now you have the heart of the necromancer star and you have defeated Moncoya.” The Dominion was relentless. “Your credentials are second to none.”
Cal turned back to Stella. “What do you say? I’ll go wherever you want me to. Do we stay here or do we go back?”
Stella rose up onto the tips of her toes and whispered something in his ear. Cal grinned and slid an arm about her waist, holding her close against his side. “Yes, we can go back now and then to do some shoe shopping and get the latest computer games.” Turning to face the Dominion, he nodded. “Looks like you have yourself a deal. I’ll head up your interim council. On one condition.”