by P. J. Fox
The next thing she knew she was on her back, in the grass. The broken columns reared over her, holes in the spreading landscape of stars. And then, roughly, he turned her head back to his and was kissing her again. And she was kissing him back, arching herself against him as she dug her fingernails into his back.
His body was a marble weight, pressing her into the frozen earth. But neither was as cold as the fire that raged within, a fire that raged without consuming but that threatened to consume her. She’d never felt such a sheer, overwhelming, animal passion and it confused her: after what he’d done, after what he’d taken from her, she should want to escape him.
He’d betrayed her trust—hadn’t he?
Or had he merely offered her a gift that she hadn’t understood?
In either case, she didn’t care. Writhing, she bit him again. He bit her back and the feeling that coursed through her was like lightning. Shot through the cold was a spreading, syrupy warmness. She wanted this. She wanted him. She wanted more.
Her kirtle was undone, his hand on her breast when he stopped. “This can’t happen,” he said, his sibilant voice hoarse. “Not now. Not yet. Not like this.”
“But I want you to,” she said. They’d be married the next afternoon; what possible difference could it make? She wanted him now. And part of her, too, she knew, wanted to get it over with. She was frightened of the act; had been raised her whole life to be. Surely there could be no harm in forging ahead, while she felt brave.
“I know.” His lips were still the merest hair’s breadth from hers, which was maddening. “But there are…rules that must be observed.”
She sensed that he wasn’t talking about the rules of propriety.
“Will it hurt?” she asked. She’d suddenly remembered that, unlike Tristan, she wasn’t immune from the cold. She hadn’t noticed it until now, but she was shivering and her fingers and toes were numb. Somewhere near her ear, she heard the ticking of a night beetle.
“Isla,” he said slowly, “you have to trust me.”
“Do I have a choice?”
He considered his answer for a long time. And then finally, “at this point, no.”
FIFTY-THREE
Sitting on her bed once again, Isla once again wondered where Rose was.
She was getting married the next afternoon, and she was alone.
Tristan had escorted her back to his room, and then left on some unexplained errand of his own. She could guess what that errand was, though, and found the prospect stomach-turning. And then she remembered that he undoubtedly knew that she’d had that reaction, felt overwhelmed by guilt and shame and fear of upsetting him, mixed with a profound self-loathing that that should be her reaction, and wanted nothing more than to go to sleep.
At least then she could escape.
The problem was that, as exhausted as she was, she didn’t think she could sleep.
She had too much on her mind.
A mind she now shared.
The door flew open, startling her, and Rose appeared. She was carrying Mica, who was still howling. She hissed at the cat, swatted the side of his cage, and then smiled apologetically at Isla. Her smile was tight, and small. Rose hated cats. Putting the cage down, she bent over and released the catch. Mica bolted out, only to halt abruptly a few paces later. She perused the room and then, in the eternal way of cats, decided to pretend that this was where she’d intended to be all along. She sauntered around in a circle, rubbing her head against this thing and that, before finally flopping over onto her side and beginning to lick between her toes.
Isla was just about to comment on this when the door opened again, this time admitting Luci.
Luci and Rose eyed each other warily, much like a pair of cats. Isla wisely said nothing. Mica, meanwhile, began to lick under her tail.
“Who are you?” Rose asked.
“I,” Luci replied, with the faintest touch of derision, “am the chief lady’s maid.”
“And what does that make me?” Rose sounded scandalized.
“My subordinate.”
“I’m her maid,” Rose replied, “not you.” She was ignoring Isla entirely. They both were. Isla might as well have been a piece of furniture for all she entered into the conversation about who got the dubious honor of being her servant. That she herself might decide this had occurred to no one. Or, if it had, they’d dismissed such a ridiculous notion out of hand. Isla sighed inwardly. Well, it had been ever thus.
“If you’re her maid, then where were you earlier?”
Score one point for Luci. Isla suppressed a small smile. She suspected that Luci knew exactly where Rose had been and, well, Isla could guess. Undoubtedly she and Hart had found the unoccupied corner of some barn. Or she and some other strapping young thing. Rose wasn’t particular. And she certainly seemed to have made friends, by dinner.
“You think I’m not up to the challenge.” Rose sounded petulant.
“I don’t think one thing or the other.” Luci’s tone was brusque. “If you are, then you’ll have a chance to prove yourself. And if you’re not, then you’ll have a chance to prove that, too. But spend one more afternoon hanging around the stables, while your mistress needs you, and I’ll see that you’re thrown out of this castle on your ear.”
“This place is no fun.”
Luci blinked. “No, it isn’t.”
Rose turned to Isla. Isla shook her head slightly, in confirmation. “I’m not enjoying myself, much.”
Rose was right about one thing: Enzie had been a lot more relaxed. Then again, there had been much less to do—or so it must have appeared to someone of Rose’s station. In truth, Enzie should have been just as tightly run as Caer Addanc; if not perhaps as cheerless. Having been here for a few hours, now, Isla didn’t think she’d ever been to such a depressing place. Luci, for all her dour demeanor, represented the most cheer that Isla had seen so far. At least she’d smiled, or almost smiled, once.
“Luci,” she asked, “where are you from?”
Luci had given Rose some things to fold; she shouldn’t be working so late—it must have been well into the wee hours, she and Tristan had been outside a long time—but she’d grumbled something about getting work done since her mistress was indisposed regardless.
Pausing, Luci glanced up. “I’m from Raumsdalr, on the other side of the lake.”
“But that’s a gnomish settlement!” Rose looked aghast.
“Yes,” Luci said patiently. “I’m half gnome.”
Well, thought Isla, that explained a lot.
“Wait—your kind can—can interbreed?”
Luci’s expression turned a bit fixed. “You make us sound like horses. Yes, we can interbreed. Or in the case of my parents, fall in love and get married. I have six siblings, all of them married.” Luci set about folding a chemise with rather more force than was strictly necessary. “I’m the only one who’s not.”
“And why are we here, anyway?” Rose was, apparently, bent on changing the subject. By complaining. An unwise choice, around Luci; Isla had divined that much, already. “It’s the middle of the night! We should be in bed!”
“Gnomes are naturally nocturnal.” Meaning that they were most active at night, and preferred to be. Which also explained something about Luci’s—and Eir’s—temperament during daylight hours. No wonder Eir had been so disagreeable the whole trip North.
“And—men—like his grace, and our mistress….” She trailed off, glancing at Isla.
Women like her were—what?
“But I’m tired!”
“You spent the afternoon on your back,” Luci snapped. “It’s not my fault if you didn’t spend it sleeping.” Luci, undoubtedly, could have used a nap; if the comparative hominess of this room were her doing, then she’d worked hard indeed. She’d also been left, along with her addle-brained assistants who were most definitely not part gnome, to unpack and sort Isla’s entire trousseau. Even a woman with comparatively few belongings, as it turned out, still had a great ma
ny. Rose’s assistance would, no doubt, have been helpful.
Isla wondered idly what Rowena was doing. Probably sleeping; either that, or she was crouched in some garret somewhere mourning the loss of her book. She and Isla had barely spoken since that day. At first Isla had been relieved, but in truth she found her sister’s silence even more unnerving than the constant stream of insults.
At least when Rowena was talking, Isla knew what she was thinking.
But now…she’d glance at her sister and, once in awhile, get an unsettling feeling.
With a final muttered word, Rose wished her goodnight. Luci was lecturing her about something to do with getting a good night’s sleep—which was a laugh, considering how little there was left of the night. And considering the fact that Isla was fairly certain that she’d never sleep again. Luci would leave in a few minutes, and then Isla would be alone.
Except…not truly.
She’d never be alone again.
She’d been distracted throughout the walk back to the castle, through the grounds, and once she’d arrived back in her room. She’d listened to Luci’s and Rose’s banter with half an ear, not caring whether the two became fast friends or killed each other in a match to the death.
Nothing that was happening in the outside world compared to what was going on inside her mind. The castle could have fallen down around her ears while she sat there on the bed, and she wasn’t entirely sure that she’d notice. Or care. She felt like she’d suffered from too little sleep, or too much wine; the earth kept seeming to tilt on her, her vision blurring in and out of focus. Worse, she couldn’t trust her own feelings about this—or anything else.
What had happened in the ceremonial circle…that hadn’t been her. Her reaction to Tristan had been so alien to her, and yet had felt so natural. Biting him, wanting to hurt him; where had that come from? Not from inside of her, certainly. That wasn’t her. Except, of course, it had. And it was. That was him—but it was also her. His violence, his need to feed, was part of her now. In that brief moment, before she’d completely abandoned herself to lust—a lust that had been much more raw, and intense, than any she’d experienced before—she’d had the thought that she didn’t understand what she was doing. Or why. And then, for a long time after that, she’d had no thoughts at all.
Tristan was a creature of absolutes. Of need. She understood this now, in a way she hadn’t before. His thought patterns, and processes, were the result of conscious effort over time. Of conscious learning, about what it meant to be human.
This thoughtful, urbane being was at once his true self and a veneer. He was both the calculating, watchful cold of death and the brilliant, blazing heat of rage. Jealousy. Hunger.
The desire to possess.
She took a deep breath and let it out. Luci had left the room and she hadn’t even noticed. She was alone, now—maybe had been, for some time. Time was a concept that had ceased to have meaning for her; she hadn’t even thought it strange that Luci and Rose should be awake at this ungodly hour, until Rose had pointed it out.
Hers was a constant battle not to scream and swear and bang her head against the wall. To fight this, this presence within her. She wanted it out of her head. She wanted to tear her hair out of her head. On a conscious, rational level she knew that such a response was pointless; would, indeed, only make a bad situation that much worse. And, moreover, leave her bald for her wedding day. But just beneath the surface of those decent, reasoned intentions bubbled a screaming command to do something.
To fight it!
It was atavistic, instinctual: the terror-blind response of the mouse to the cat, or the deer to the mountain lion. She swore she could feel it creeping, slithering around the inside perimeter of her skull. Exploring. She wanted to think of something—anything—else but her mind kept returning to this idea no matter what she did to distract herself.
She hadn’t moved in what felt like hours.
If she wanted a cup of tea, did they both have to want a cup of tea? Or did she have to want it badly enough to overpower him? Could her will overpower his? And what if he wanted tea, and she didn’t? What then? Would she find herself eating and drinking things she loathed? Would she find herself craving human flesh?
That she’d sensed even something of his desires in her own actions terrified her. How much was she changing and—even worse to contemplate—what if she changed without even knowing it? What if she’d already changed, and was only convincing herself that she hadn’t? That she was still herself? What if none of her impulses were her own?
What if she was sitting on this bed, not because she willed it but because he did?
Heaping insult upon injury, she had the additional problem of struggling to censor her thoughts: not to think about the things she didn’t want him to know that she was thinking about.
Throughout the pitches and jousts of this inner battle, Mica had been asleep at her feet. Completely uninterested, once again in the manner of cats. The castle could indeed be falling down around their ears and Mica would sleep on, certain that such petty matters did not concern her. She’d bestir herself if and when something important happened, like food.
Oh, Isla thought wearily, to be a cat.
Exhausted, she slumped on the bed and passed into a fitful sleep.
FIFTY-FOUR
The morning of her wedding dawned cold and clear.
A dawn that Isla didn’t see, because she slept far later than she’d intended. No one had come to wake her, which she supposed must have been intentional; brides, or so she’d been told, needed their sleep. Not that Isla really had slept, not in the truest sense of the term. She’d more passed out, spending the remainder of the night and most of the next morning face down on the coverlet. She’d never undressed, never crawled under the covers.
Her—it was really more unconsciousness than sleep—hadn’t been restorative and she’d woken feeling stiff, her joints aching from cold. Her mouth felt like something had died there. Died, and rotted. Her eyes were gummy, and she winced against the too-strong light.
She stretched, wincing again, as feeling returned to her limbs. That this should be her wedding day, a day she was incapable of enjoying, seemed profoundly unfair. She’d waited for this moment for so long: even before she’d met Tristan, she’d dreamed her own secret dreams of some Prince Charming riding in to sweep her off her feet and rescue her from her life. Of escape. Except she wasn’t sure that, right now, she wouldn’t rather be back in Enzie. Alone. Because at least then she could be alone.
With her realization that Tristan could share these thoughts, and probably had, came a renewed sense of violation. She was furious with him for what he’d done, and she was afraid. Part of what made her so furious, and afraid, was that she did still love him and did still want him and knew, in her heart of hearts, that she would have made the same choice again. Would have put the ring on her finger, because he wanted her to.
And now what?
Luci’s words filtered back to her: men like his grace, and our mistress…men and women like what?
What had Luci meant?
And why had she stopped speaking so abruptly?
What did she know, that Isla didn’t?
She knew that Tristan wasn’t human; but she knew, just as clearly, that she was. Even after what had happened. He’d referenced that something—something more—would happen on her wedding night. Tonight. That there would be a different kind of sacrifice. Was she the sacrifice? Was that what he’d meant? What was he going to do to her?
She bathed, and dressed, in a fog, allowing Luci and Rose and Luci’s helpers to do with her as they chose. She barely felt present inside her own body, letting them lift her arms, her legs, scrub her down and scrub her hair. After awhile, they stopped trying to make small talk, only exchanged glances with each other.
Isla was thinking about Tristan.
About what had happened, what might happen, and what she was afraid might happen. Would she still be human? Would
she even still be alive? This bond between them only flowed in one direction; his motives remained oblique to her, as they had from the beginning. She wanted to believe that he wanted her, at least as much as he was capable of wanting anything, or anyone, but she knew too that he had priorities that she couldn’t even begin to understand. She’d experienced something of him the night before, although the glimpses into his life had been fleeting and too full of information for her to process, even now. She wanted to believe that she understood him better, because of what had happened, but the truth was—she didn’t know.
First and foremost, she was frightened of the unknown. Part of becoming Tristan’s wife would be joining her life to that of a creature who wasn’t human. What would it be like? And as time went on, and their bond deepened, would she still be the same? Or would she change? Had she, as she’d wondered the night before, already changed without realizing it? Was she just a memory of her former self, clinging on, as Tristan’s host had been?
What if she never adapted to her new situation?
What if her feelings of wanting to escape only intensified?
What if, seeing Tristan from the perspective of an equal, she developed a different opinion of him? She’d hoped, from the beginning, that by aligning her star with his she was heading into a place of freedom and independence. Her entire life so far, and certainly her entire adult life so far, she’d felt like a fish out of water. She’d hoped, always, to find a place where she belonged. A place, and a person, that felt like home.
Was she, even now, passing into darkness as the church had warned she might, by consorting with a demon?
Consumed with these thoughts, Isla had no real sense of time passing. Although Luci seemed to take an age to fix her hair. She was plucked, and buffed, and perfumed, until she resembled not so much a woman but a perfect doll. A doll who was scared, because she’d never fully trusted anyone before; and now she had to. The fact of this bond, and of her putting herself completely in Tristan’s power, meant that she had to.