“We are chosen from the few male children born during a violent darkening of the sky, when thunder and lightning drown out the screams of our mothers.” He kissed her, pressing his mouth hard against hers. “That’s the first sign,” he went on quietly. “These special babies are carefully watched but only until their seventh birthday, because if it hasn’t happened by then it never will.”
“If what hasn’t happened?” she breathed.
“I was struck when I was two.” He stood up, lifting her in his arms. “Lightning flashed out of a clear blue sky.”
She buried her face in the side of his neck and closed her eyes. She knew he was carrying her somewhere and that what was about to happen was akin to what he was describing—some part of him was about to do to her what this heavenly force did to the earth over and over again, sometimes with blinding force.
“One minute I was running happily through the garden followed by my mother’s laughter. Then the next thing I remember is being tangled in a thorn bush listening to my mother’s screams, which I’m sure were as sharp as only the two-edged sword of love and ambition could make them.” She felt him kneel and lay her across a surface that was deep and soft yet also firm from the floor beneath it. “To hell with what your father would say!”
*
She was surprised by the pain but she determinedly ignored it and concentrated on the surging rhythm, which she understood with every last drop of her being.
He was not gentle. Straddling her, he ripped open her bodice and then the shirt she wore beneath it, impatiently tugging them off over her head. Her breasts were round and firm and he seemed to find them irresistible as he cupped and squeezed them before bending over to swiftly bite both her stiff nipples.
“My lord!” she gasped.
“What’s wrong?” He stared down at her. “Is it too much for you?” he challenged.
“No!” The intense sensation had been exquisite beyond words.
“Shall I be patient or shall I take you the way I truly want to, Mirabel?” He yanked off the ribbon holding his hair back and let it fall in dark waves around his face.
“Take me the way you want to, my lord!” She reached up to touch him but he stood up and tugged her skirt off like a gale force wind stripping the leaves from a tree in a single gust. Her hips heaved off the rug, her legs long white branches falling to earth beneath his black storm cloud. He slowly unwound his belt and she eagerly sat up to pull down his leggings. She flung them away like a shadow in her blinding impatience to embrace the powerful ray of his naked body, then at last he knelt between her thighs as she lay back across the rug again. Holding her eyes, he firmly gripped the backs of her knees with both hands, pushing them up around him.
Between his muscular thighs a fleshly tower had risen that both fascinated and frightened her but then her awareness of everything was swallowed up by a hot burst of agony. For terrible, confused moments she imagined a raven had flown into the room and was beating its dark wings against her and crying out in its desperate desire to find freedom again, until gradually she realized it was her own voice she was hearing. The opening inside her was deeper than she would have believed and the more selfishly he strove to claim its unknown depths, the wetter she felt her feminine wound becoming. It wasn’t long before the burning pain where he was stabbing her dimmed into a strangely beautiful glow spreading through her womb. But just as her hips began rising up to match his rhythm, he slipped out of her. Despite the more obvious relief, it was also the greatest loss she had ever experienced.
“No, please!” She reached for him.
He yanked her up into a sitting position and she suddenly found herself straddling him. Buried motionless inside her, his manhood felt more like a root from which an exquisite feeling began sprouting swiftly through her pelvis…sweet, subtle tendrils of sensations promising to bloom into something magnificent.
He lay motionless on his back beneath her and his eyes closed when, without thinking, she sank her nails into the smooth flesh of his firm chest and scratched him hungrily. His lips parted as he sucked in his breath and his head rolled slowly from side to side as though in denial of the torturous pleasure but he didn’t stop her and when she saw his dark blood staining her fingernails like dirt, a part of her she had never even been conscious of lost control. With a high-pitched cry full of mind-darkening lust, she fell against him and sank her teeth into the vulnerable side of his neck, sucking on him ravenously.
“Mirabel,” he whispered hoarsely, “stop, please…”
But she couldn’t stop—she simply couldn’t. No vintage from Starpoint could ever compare to the intoxicating experience of his life flowing directly from the vines of his body into her infinitely thirsty mouth.
With a groan, he shoved her off him.
Savoring the life she had stolen from him, she rolled over onto her back. She knew she deserved to be punished for what she had just done to the lord of Visioncrest but for some reason the thought did not upset her.
He pulled her to her feet so swiftly the room spun around her for an instant. “You want to suck me dry, do you?” Seemingly out of nowhere he produced a black rope with which he quickly secured her wrists behind her back. Then he tied her ankles together so that when she attempted to walk she immediately fell forward onto her knees. He stepped behind her. “What you’re about to feel now is a whip, Mirabel.”
She didn’t think the cruel instrument was drawing her blood but the hot strokes hurt so much she found herself squirming facedown like a snail across the unyielding floor in a desperate effort to escape its fiery licks across the agonizingly sensitive flesh of her buttocks and thighs. Yet the way he had bound her made her so vulnerable to the lightning-hot cracks that, after the initial shock, all she truly suffered was an excitement so intense she nearly lost consciousness at one point, as if her thoughts were the frayed end of a wick just barely able to rise above her blood’s burning oil.
He never once said a word as he whipped her. He was still teaching her, silently now, making it clear to her that she could endure more misery, which battled blindly with arousal, than she would ever have believed possible. She also learned, senseless as the truth seemed, that being beaten by him was more intensely fulfilling than anything else she had ever experienced. She didn’t have the time or the energy to wonder why this was so. He was moving too fast and the only thing in the world she wanted was to somehow keep up with him. She sensed he was going further with her than he had intended to and she knew it was a victory for her, helpless as she was, that he hadn’t been able to control himself. She couldn’t understand why it was a source of such joy to her that they were fighting each other like this, the storm of their encounter stripping away the useless leaves of words. All that was left was the brutal beauty of truly getting to know herself for the first time through him.
Afterward Mirabel felt she had at last fallen off that cliff as she rested safely in his arms.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Oh, yes, my lord.” She frowned at the bloody furrows decorating his chest in which she had selfishly planted her desire and from which nothing would grow but more discomfort for him in the form of stiff scabs. She wondered what could possibly have possessed her to do this to him. She tasted shame and a little fear as she remembered her blind hunger for his life’s blood. “Do they hurt?”
“Of course,” he replied but his smile deepened as he stared intently down into her eyes.
*
A web of commerce was spun between all the keeps that sustained the people like a multi-legged spider—the wine everyone drank from Snowvale down to Greenpalm came from Starpoint, which was responsible only for this one sublime and vital export. The other keeps, however, traded a variety of goods. The wool and other raw materials produced in Snowvale were sent directly to Shadowmoon, where most everyone’s clothing was woven and it was also from there that Megran imported all her cooking pots and Landru procured the glass jars and vials needed for his medi
cinal herbs. Mirabel memorized Shadowmoon’s exports by determining what they all had in common, which was simple enough—they contained things, from warm bodies to hot soups to dried plants. Visioncrest was famous for the quality of its vegetables and herbs and within its black walls gold was worked and other precious stones expertly cut and set. Swordriver exported gleaming silver weapons along with fresh fish and the goblets and plates used in the great hall every night. Fruits, nuts and preserves and an ale as invigorating as sunlight came from Bloodflower. Many meat and dairy products, including the wonderful substance called cheese, traveled all the way up from Silverfall, and so on.
Mirabel found herself increasingly curious as to how this human web worked, a symptom of her new relationship with the prince. The more she learned about the kingdom the more she felt she knew about him, for he was literally one of its governing bodies. Inevitably she found herself caught between paradoxes that loomed higher than the mountains, beyond her comprehension. For someone effectively training to be a healer, it was very strange how much she enjoyed hurting the prince and submitting to the pain he also relished inflicting on her. She wanted very much to master the medicinal magic of plants to help cure their human cousins yet she didn’t really like most people.
Her violent relationship with Visioncrest’s lord was a secret. She wasn’t satisfied until she had drawn his blood, even if it was only one darkly shining drop, or until he had drawn hers with one of his whips or riding crops. When they were together a terrible greed possessed her to steal the most precious thing about him—his blood, the mysterious river on which the vessel of his life was borne and without which he would immediately run aground into the grave.
Perhaps it was his reaction to her thirst for the fruit of his veins that enthralled her so. He was strong enough to kill her as easily as she snapped a flower stem in half yet he allowed her to scratch him and bite him and generally crawl all over him like a feral kitten. He permitted her to rip the tender flesh over his hard muscles as though it was only a fine cloth he could easily replace.
Janlay had fatally torn another woman’s flesh-garment beyond repair. Was there a streak of poisonous evil in her daughter as well?
Mirabel didn’t dare pursue this thought. What she did could not be so wrong if the prince himself enjoyed it. In those seductively brutal moments he became the fields beyond Visioncrest as they were plowed and sewn, his pained groans the sound of distant thunder. It wasn’t until afterward, when she was applying a soothing balm to the areas of his body she had wounded, that she was confused and frightened by the things they did to each other.
She met him in his chambers after he made an appearance in the great hall. The sentries who guarded the entrance to the towers knew of her nightly visits but they had been handpicked by the prince and were fiercely loyal, devoted to protecting his private pleasures. The only other person who knew for a fact that for several moons now she had been the prince’s lover was Megran.
Mirabel sensed the old woman felt betrayed. She had always trusted the prince to do what was right, yet now the young woman she loved like a daughter was spoiled for life because of him, in more ways than one.
“But if I love him, why do you think it is so terrible?” Mirabel asked, longing for the return of her jovial companion.
“Oh, no reason.” Megran chopped the head off a gaping fish with one angry stroke.
“But you’re not happy about it,” Mirabel persisted.
“It’s not any of my business, is it? I prepare his meals—that’s all. Although it appears I helped prepare you as well, didn’t I? I fattened you up nicely with knowledge and plucked all your muddled emotional feathers. The passing months trimmed your baby fat and Landru spiced you up very nicely with his herbal lore!”
She wondered if Megran knew how violent her encounters with the prince could be. Was this why the old woman was so upset? She was careful to keep any cuts and bruises concealed beneath her clothing, instinctively sensing it would not be wise to let anyone see them. The prince had also cautioned her to do so. “Not everyone makes love the way we do, Mirabel,” he told her after one particularly devastating encounter. “Some people are actually gentle with each other.”
Then there was the distracting matter of the attention the White Lord had suddenly begun to pay her. Ever since she cured him of a minor infection—for which she prepared a decoction of dandelion tea for him twice daily—he had sought her out regularly. For some reason she had not mentioned this to the prince. She didn’t mind at all when the White Lord came up behind her silently and took her breath away by suddenly whispering a greeting in her ear. One afternoon he caught her in the herb garden, spade in hand. She smiled up at him from where she knelt in the dirt. It was spring again and her days were filled with the planting of seeds. She had scarcely noticed the winter, her nights with Visioncrest’s prince were so hot. “I’m glad you’re feeling better,” she said and was surprised to discover she meant it. It was a pleasure to be able to add one more person to the small list of those she liked, especially since she had been forced to eliminate Darmond.
“And I have you to thank for that.” He squatted beside her.
She shook her head. “No, it was Landru who told me what to do.” She continued digging but more slowly now as she kept glancing at his attire. The pleasure she took in the sight of him was mixed with pity for the girls in charge of his laundry—it had to be quite a chore keeping his clothes so perfectly white. At least it was a bit easier for them in the summer, for during the warm weather all the noblemen went around without shirts, wearing only soft pleated skirts that fell to mid-thigh. The ankle-length cloaks that invariably fell from their shoulders—no longer lined with fur—wafted up behind them in the slightest breeze.
“My father was not from the plains,” she told him abruptly, thrusting her spade into the moist black soil. It had occurred to her that he might think so for the plains people were said to be wild and ignorant.
He caught her free hand as swiftly as a frog’s tongue snaring a butterfly. “Where was he from, Mirabel?”
“He’s not from a keep,” she confessed, and dared say no more.
“Oh… Have you ever seen a shooting star, Mirabel? I’ve seen several and the funny thing is, they all land in the prince’s chamber. Imagine that. They fall straight down from the sky through his window, but the really strange thing is that in the early morning they shoot back up into the sky again.” He released her hand and stood up.
“I don’t hold your mixed nature against you,” he said, his narrow black eyes holding hers. “In fact, I find it very promising. As does the prince, I’m sure.” His open smile was strikingly white framed by his sun-browned skin. “I hope I will see you again tomorrow, my lady.” He turned and walked away, leaving her both relieved and disappointed.
*
Mirabel barely avoided a painful scrape hurrying around a chair made of stag’s antlers bound together with ropes and ingenuously arranged to form a hollow for a dark-green cushion. The prince was sitting in it facing the hearth, which was cold and quiet at this glorious time of year. He was so deep in thought he scarcely seemed to notice she was there even when she knelt before him.
“My lord?” Grasping his knees, she attempted to shake him out of his reverie.
“I know you’re here, Mirabel,” he assured her but he continued staring into the dark cave of his lifeless fireplace.
“Then why are you going to so much trouble to ignore me?” Her hands wandered slowly up his thighs. “I’m half real, at least.”
He met her eyes. “More real than I am, perhaps?”
“Do the Lords visit you?” she demanded.
“You spend the whole day in the garden and yet you still can’t stop digging.”
“Why should I? And why are you being this way?”
At last he relented and grasped one of her hands.
With his warmth flowing through her she relaxed a little, her heart perched on his features as he went back t
o staring at the cold fireplace.
“Because, Mirabel, knowledge is a dangerous seed. You never know what might come of it.”
“Why?” She rested her cheek on his hard knee.
“That’s your favorite word. You’ll get up and ask why after you die.”
She looked up and caught him gazing down at her with an unreadable expression. “When I die,” she repeated numbly. “If I die,” she heard herself say, taking the thought straight from his head as she suddenly realized this was the question she had been pondering for a long time without fully facing—whether she would survive her body’s decomposition just as a plant rises from the earth only after the husk of its broken seed decays. When people died and their bodies rotted in the grave did they somehow become more than they were before?
“Your beloved plants never ask questions, Mirabel.”
“Do the Lords visit you?” she repeated stubbornly.
“Does it matter?” He closed his eyes and rested his head against an antler.
“You’re tired, my lord.” At once she desired to make him feel better. “I could brew you a tea of invigorating herbs…”
He laughed to himself, a soundless vibration of his chest. “She wonders that I’m tired, Lords! You’re a very demanding creature, Mirabel.”
“I will stop hurting you!” she promised fervently.
“No you won’t.” He opened his eyes and smiled down at her but she could tell his spirits were low.
“I want to know your name,” she said, urgently hugging one of his legs.
“Even though I’m not real?”
“You’re perfectly real!”
“But won’t that ruin it for you, Mirabel? Once I have a name I won’t be the exciting, impersonal force you love being dominated by and asserting your own power against. We’ve been lovers for seven moons and only now do you get around to asking me my name?”
She was confused because it was true and yet it hardly seemed to matter.
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