Maria Isabel Pita

by As Above, So Below

  “It’s up to her. After all, it’s her life.”

  “Her life has been in your hands ever since her father saved her. Her soul was given into your keeping then, for it was seen you were the only man who would be able to appreciate her.”

  “And I’ll continue to do my best to keep her safe and happy but I can’t bar her from her own nature anymore. It’s not right and I can’t take the strain. I’m not as young as I used to be. I grow older every day and yet for all I know she’ll always be this young. At the very least, she’ll preserve her charms for a lot longer than normal women. How will I be able to hold her then? I’d better start learning how to let go of her.”

  “Loric, I’ll always love you!”

  “But you won’t always be in love with me.”

  “Yes I will!”

  “Good luck, Mirabel.” The Lord took a step back. “We regret that the simple act of being born put you in such a position.” He turned toward the window.

  She suffered a breathless pleasure as he finally pulled his stare out of her and the instant she could she ran straight into Loric’s arms. “I always believed my father loved me even though I had never seen him until that night. He saved me for you!”

  “I’m sure he does love you, Mirabel, more than we can ever fathom. But then, love is powerless, isn’t it, so why should he bother?”

  “Loric, please, I don’t want to do this without you. I can’t!”

  “But I don’t share your nature, Mirabel. How can I help you?”

  “By not being angry with me, or jealous.”

  “That’s a bit too much to ask. Dur you said his name was? If I see him again, I’ll slit his pretty throat.”

  “You’re not going to help me at all?”

  “That’s not true.” Abruptly, he sat down to breakfast. “I’ll do what I can. Just don’t ask me to go against my nature, which is to kill any man who lays a hand on you whether it’s made of flesh or not.” He consumed a soft-boiled egg in two bites.

  Mirabel gave him a tragic look he didn’t notice as he concentrated on his appetite. How in the Lords’ names was she going to balance her deep love for him with her desire to explore herself? Yet do it she must.

  *

  It was a long winter. The world wore white for whole moons at a time, making it difficult for supplies to reach them from other keeps, and the unusual scarcity of luxury items shortened everyone’s temper. The young men got too drunk every night—wine, thank the Lords, remained plentiful due to their prince’s foresight—and the poor chef’s imagination was strained to the limit as the nobility demanded more and more culinary delights while fewer and fewer supplies arrived on time, if at all. It was rumored Snowvale Keep could not open its gates and that the valley around Moonshadow would be a disease-breeding swamp once the ground thawed. Everyone except Mirabel spent a good part of the brief, gray days envying those who lived in Greenpalm or anywhere else less intimate with the infinitely soft white clouds the Lords had strewn around Visioncrest as if the keep’s towers were the posts of their favorite bed. The princess found the weather stimulating and inspiring, everything it apparently was not.

  To her the pure ground was Dur’s white shirt. Winter was the best season for him and his companions to slip into her world—the stark lines of the landscape neat, straight seams easy to make out from above, whereas spring was full of complicated embroidery—the trees’ full skirts rustling beneath veils of perfumed breezes glimmering with pollen, neat rows of freshly planted seeds like tiny buttons on a bodice. In spring and summer there was too much elaborate detail, too many swaying patterns confusing their vision and making it more difficult to find a direct path into form.

  In winter, conjuring Dur’s white shirt and dark slacks was at once the simplest and the most intense experience in the world. All she did was open the way for him. She was not imagining or creating him. Her backbone was the rocky path—covered by her pale skin like a fine layer of snow—down which he journeyed with less and less difficulty, focusing on the red fire of her heart like a traveler lost in a blizzard making his way toward a blazing hearth seen through a small window. He had described the cells he told her composed her body as snowflakes whirling around him in the storm of her concentrated being when he dove into the rushing river of her blood and surfaced in the nocturnal pools of her pupils.

  Mirabel was learning as she had never learned with Landru. It was worth the strain and loss of sleep to receive a detailed and amazing answer to every question she asked. It was knowledge like an avalanche descending on her so that she was breathless with wonder and there was no stopping it. The position she was in was uncomfortable, even dangerous, but it was too late to turn back.

  She met with Dur whenever she could, usually in the dead of night. She wondered that Loric had not commented on how tired she looked but his silent glances said as much as words, and she could read the angrily concerned lights in his eyes. She was careful not to neglect her responsibilities as princess, which included long nights in the hall eating and drinking and smiling to keep everyone’s spirits from sinking into a claustrophobic despair.

  “I know you leave our bed almost every night.” Loric finally confronted her one evening in the dining hall after they had both drunk a generous amount of wine.

  “We talk!” She sighed, too exhausted to defend herself further.

  “He answers all your questions as I did.” He made a valiant effort to sound as though they were merely discussing the frigid weather. He even smiled but that was for the court’s benefit.

  “Is it wrong to want to understand things?” She took a tired bite of a duck’s breast. It was too liberally seasoned with herbs, their flavors conflicting with each other. “Megran would have wrung his neck!” She scowled behind her crimson napkin.

  “It’s not so bad—you’re simply losing your appetite for anything except the power you’re so hungry for.”

  “It’s better than ending up with a mouthful of dirt,” she retorted.

  He laughed, a burst of humorless mirth. “You’re right.”

  “Then why are you arguing with me?”

  “I suppose because I can’t join you.”

  “I’m sorry, Loric. I’m just so tired lately.”

  “That’s what you get for asking why all night.”

  “What are you so angry about? I should think you’d be happy the Lord was wrong. Dur hasn’t threatened the kingdom in any way. All we do is talk and the last time I saw his friends—”

  “Let’s just see what happens when your training is over, shall we? He’ll be strong then. He’s honing his formative talents, learning how to hold his fiery breath longer and longer… Where do you two meet?”

  “You can’t expect me to tell you that. You said yourself you’d slit his throat if you ever saw him again. That’s why I’m so tired, because we have to meet in secret.”

  “Forgive me for making this so hard on you, my love.”

  She winced at the sarcastic thrust but she had left herself wide open to it. “What do you think will happen once he’s…strong?” She couldn’t resist asking.

  “I have no idea.” He cast a benevolent smile she didn’t trust at all across the hall.

  “You mustn’t try to stop him!” she whispered urgently, clutching his hand as he reached for his wineglass. “You don’t understand.”

  “I understand everything a lot better than you do, Mirabel.”

  Chapter Twelve

  She knew it would be an easy matter for Loric to follow her when she left her bed again that night, or to have her followed, yet despite what he had said in the hall she didn’t think he would. To creep after her in secret was not his way. She didn’t doubt he intended to confront Dur. He would challenge the young Dragon openly and by then, or so she fervently hoped, she would know how to stop them.

  Lying on her back staring into the darkness, Mirabel was finally forced to admit to herself that she was betraying her husband. She didn’t want to, yet she was. She
was so tired her mouth was dry from all the wine she had drunk without enjoying its effects and all her muscles protested when she slowly raised the heavy comforter off her naked body.

  The cold hit her like a slap from a hand large enough to strike all of her at once and tonight it almost felled her. She was weaker than she thought, which was truly ironic since it was her quest for power that was responsible. Her bare feet planted themselves courageously on the icy floor and she shuddered from the tips of her toes to her shoulders with a pleasure whose painful edge was sharp as a sword. All extremes of sensation were mysteriously related to ecstasy if you didn’t fight them…if you surrendered yourself to them completely.

  Something was different about tonight. The moon was not shining through the diamond-paned windows of the room but she could sense it had found a break in the clouds and was gazing down at the world with a face as pale and cold as hers felt. It would be full moon soon, perhaps this very night, and part of her suddenly knew something was going to happen, something beyond the usual magic of Dur’s appearance.

  She rose from the bed, fighting her natural reluctance to abandon it, and silently left the room cloaked only by her long hair. She deliberately left her robe where it hung beside Loric’s so that her skin would fully reflect the moon’s luminous surface. Dur would be able to enter her more swiftly and directly than ever tonight. All she had to do was position herself before a window through which a silver path of light reached into the keep.

  She hurried through the larger chamber beyond their bedroom. The stag’s chair sitting in front of the cold hearth seemed to rear toward her and she almost felt it chasing her like a wounded, vengeful beast across the floor’s frozen black lake as guilt threatened to break her heart and drown her in despair.

  Visioncrest was experiencing a shortage of coals for its braziers and wood for its fireplaces that was not yet serious but Loric thought it best to set a good example and conserve as much as possible himself. Their attendants told everyone that their prince and princess relied exclusively on each other for warmth at night, thus assuring that other noble couples would lie together under piles of blankets and furs as their own timber-greedy fireplaces remained dark.

  She parted the double doors a crack, slipped between them and, after pausing an instant to make certain they weren’t locked, entered the tower stairwell. Only every third oil lamp was lit but she didn’t need even that scant illumination. Her bare feet had memorized the rounded steps and their spiraling curve seemed a part of the way her blood flowed up and down through her body. The flames flickered as she hurried past them. Resolutely she ignored the part of her that regretted not wearing her robe and wished she had taken a drink of water from the pitcher by the bed, because these comforts were not as small as they seemed—they were her enemies, for if she surrendered to them she would lose the edge on which she was balanced between the worlds.

  Freezing drafts moaned past her like ghosts caressing her, lifting strands of her hair and turning her nipples to stone. The spirit of her breath wafted before her and every few paces her palms pressed against the damp walls to both balance and propel herself more swiftly downward.

  Mirabel found the small window she wanted, far enough away from Loric to feel alone and well above and beyond everyone else. It had become her favorite place and now that she was there again she could forget it was the reason she felt so drained all day and why the man she loved was under so much stress. She could forget about everything except what she wanted.

  The moon had indeed slipped out from behind the clouds. It looked like the round end of a fingertip pointing directly at her through the small rectangular opening in the stone and she gasped when she seemed to feel it prod her in the womb. The walls of the tower were so thick that more than half her arms rested on the sill as she unlatched the window and pulled the frosted panes open all the way. Pressing her body against the unyielding stone, she cried out softly as she allowed the penetrating cold to fully possess her. Not since she was five years old and had ventured out into the snow had she been so breathlessly excited. Now however, instead of defying the weather, she let the night’s icy nails stab through all her pores and dangerously grip the very core of her flesh.

  Dur entered her as swiftly and confidently as she had hoped he would. She clung to the freezing stone of the sill as her body began trembling uncontrollably. She moaned helplessly, her warmth and life abandoning her in the form of a white mist that instantly vanished in the crystalline air. She flung her head back instead of her whole body as she longed to do, unable for a moment to believe what she was deliberately giving herself to. Tomorrow night, she vowed, no matter how much she longed to see him, she simply had to rest.

  Imprisoned drafts moaned sympathetically in the dark stairwell behind her, warning her about going too far, but she remained standing before the window, perched on the edge of a step, defying all the laws her body begged her to obey.

  Four stars caught her eye as they appeared in a small opening in the clouds. They were somehow familiar to her. She had seen that same glimmer in two pairs of eyes… She realized then that they were attempting it again—the forked thrust of their separate beings that had come so close to killing her. She sensed what was happening as clearly as she felt the rough stone of the windowsill on which her breasts rested and the knowledge was even more chilling.

  Her body was growing numb. It had stopped shuddering and become rigid, the warm current of her blood suffering the same fate as water. More experienced now, Dur was forcing his companions to take their time, to venture through the blizzard of her blood cells very slowly as they relished the approach to her heart’s passionate life toward the ultimate moment of wading out of the formless cosmos through the dark pools of her eyes.

  “Oh, Lords, please!” she breathed as the drifting clouds formed a dark profile around the moon that resembled the sinister beak of a bird of prey staring at her with one cold hungry eye. “Dur!” she gasped.

  “Mirabel…” She heard a faint whisper behind her, or just outside the window, or in her own head. “Don’t be afraid. Hold on…” She could not do otherwise—her fingers had become part of the sill, stiff and senseless. She seemed to catch a glimpse of Dur’s cheek reflected in the moon and that subtle yet overpowering pleasure, the one that lured her out of her comfortable bed every night, took hold of her. She could sense he had reached the hearth of her chest. He was safe inside her and guiding his friends to where he had found a haven in her heart. But her pulse had slowed down and the fire of her life, which they needed to find their way, was swiftly dimming. In the corner of her eye she saw his outline three steps above her, his shirt woven from the mist of her failing breaths, his black jacket tailored with haunting love by the shadows. “You can do it, Mirabel.” He spoke as softly as her imagination but she believed him as she could never believe herself. She knew he would not let her die. He would teach her how to survive and even how to enjoy the most frigid night’s cruel embrace.

  His friends arrived so suddenly she missed the transition as they slipped the darkness of the stairwell on as casually as jackets and smiled up at her from a few steps below her, their strikingly handsome faces and long-fingered hands caressed by the oil lamp trembling above them. Her neck and body were so stiff she could barely turn her head to look at them.

  “Quickly!” Dur said. He stepped down behind her and she watched as his arms in their deep black sleeves reached through the window to pry the frozen roots of her fingers off the sill. Then he turned her around and the young Lord with hair like the sun seen through a cloud’s protective veil gently helped her lower her arms to her sides.

  After that there seemed to be no one in the stairwell with her, yet the ray of moonlight shining through the window was swallowed by a dense shadow before reaching the inner wall as they surrounded her, and in their concentrated darkness she developed a sense of herself again. Their combined warmth was so thick and heavy, consciousness almost slipped out of her grasp as her skin me
lted back into its living tenderness so swiftly she felt she was underwater, sinking. Dur’s eyes pulled on her awareness like stones yet also somehow held it steady. The open folds of his white shirt and the ruffled ends of his sleeves were the luminous foaming crests of dark waves, his chest and hands beneath them visible on the ebb, his fingers warm currents she longed to surrender to, to ride their caress and give herself completely to the fatal undertow of the impossible desires he aroused in her. Feeling him inside her like this was all she cared about anymore. Nothing else could compare with the experience.

  Dur moved up two steps and his companions edged back onto the step just below her. Suddenly Mirabel was forced to consider an objective view of her situation. As the dark-haired Lord smiled up at her, his eyes mirroring the moonlight, she realized Loric had every right to throw her out of Visioncrest. She shivered and crossed her arms self-consciously over her breasts, once again vulnerable to the terrible cold outside their encircling warmth.

  She couldn’t believe she had just willingly given herself to the freezing night outside and actually taken pleasure in its biting effort to possess her forever. Once again these young Dragons had nearly killed her to have their way and she had let them. She had wanted them all inside her. It was all she had wished for lately—to prove to herself and to them that her feeling was a path they could travel into the sensual world—and they knew now that it wasn’t only Dur who could use her so.

  “Well done,” he praised her quietly, leaving teasing trails of warmth across her cheek from the caress of his fingertips.

  “What happens if I wish you away?” She tried to smile.

  “You know this has nothing to do with mere wishing.”

  “This goes beyond anything—” the dark-haired Lord began fervently but was silenced by a glance from Dur, who said calmly, “This is a beginning but we must be very careful.”