by Nora Roberts
“What boy? Davey?”
“No, no, not the whelp you made. Your lover, the one you had in life.”
Her lips trembled as she understood. “So you toy with my dreams? What does that matter to me?” But she was shaken, down to the pit of her. “He was called Cirio. What do you think became of him?”
“I think your master arranged for him to be your first kill.”
She smiled with one of her sweetest memories. “He pissed himself as Jarl held him out to me, and he sniveled like a child as he begged for his life. I was new, and still had the control to keep him alive for hours—long after he begged for his death. I’ll do better with you. I’ll give you years of pain.”
She swiped out, cursed when her raking nails passed through him.
“Entertaining, isn’t it? And Jarl? How long before you did for him.”
She sat back, sulking a little. Then shrugged. “Nearly three hundred years. I had a lot to learn from him. He began to fear me because my power grew and grew. I could smell his fear of me. He would have ended me, if I hadn’t ended him first.”
“You were called Lilia—Lily.”
“The pitiful human I was, yes. He named me Lilith when I woke.” She twirled a lock of her hair around her finger as she studied Cian. “Do you have some foolish hope that by learning my beginning you’ll find my end?”
She tossed the covers aside, rose to walk naked to a silver pitcher.
When she poured the blood into a cup, her hands trembled again.
“Let’s speak frankly here,” Cian suggested. “It’s only you and I—which is odd. You don’t sleep with Lora or the boy, or some other choice today?”
“Even I, occasionally, seek solitude.”
“All right. So, to be frank. It’s strange, isn’t it, disorienting, to go back even in dreams to human? To see your own end, own beginning as if it just happened. To feel human again, or as best we can remember it feels to be human.”
Almost as an afterthought, she shrugged into a robe. “I would go back to being human.”
His brows lifted. “You? Now you surprise me.”
“To have that moment of death and rebirth. The wonderful, staggering thrill of it. I’d go back to being weak and blind, just to experience the gift again.”
“Of course. You remain predictable.” He got to his feet. “Know this. If you and your wizard steer my dreams again, I’ll return the favor, threefold. You’ll have no rest from me, or from yourself.”
He faded away, but he didn’t go back. Though he could feel the tugs from Moira’s mind, from Glenna’s will, he lingered.
He wanted to see what Lilith would do next.
She heaved the cup and what was left of the blood in it against the wall. She smashed a trinket box, pounded holes into the wall with her fists until they bled.
Then she screamed for a guard.
“Bring that worthless wizard to me. Bring him in chains. Bring him—No, wait. Wait.” She turned away in an obvious fight for control. “I’ll kill him if he crosses paths with me now, then what good will he be to me? Bring me someone to eat.”
She whirled back. “A male. Young. Twenty or so. Blond if we have one. Go!”
Alone, she rubbed her temple. “I’ll kill him again,” she murmured. “I’ll feel better then. I’ll call him Cirio, and kill him again.”
She snatched her precious mirror from the bureau. And seeing her own face reminded her why she would keep Midir alive. He’d given her this gift.
“There I am,” she said softly. “So beautiful. The moon pales, yes, yes, it does. I’m right here. I’ll always be here. The rest is ghosts. And here I am.”
Picking up a brush, she began to groom her hair, and to sing. With tears in her eyes.
“Drink this.” Glenna pushed a cup to Cian’s lips, and immediately had it pushed aside.
“I’m fine. I’m not after drinking whiskey, or swooning on you without it.”
“You’re pale.”
His lips quirked. “Part of the whole undead package. Well. That was quite a ride.”
Since he refused it, Glenna took a sip of the whiskey herself, then passed it off to Moira. “E-ticket. She didn’t sense us,” she said to Moira. “I’d like to think my blocks and binding were enough, but I think, in large part, she was just too caught up to feel us.”
“She was so young.” Moira sat now. “So young, and in love with that worthless prick of a man. I don’t know what language they were speaking. I could understand her, strangely enough, but I didn’t know the tongue.”
“Greek. She started out a priestess for some goddess. Virginity’s part of the job description.” Cian wished for blood, settled for water. “And save your pity. She was ripe for what happened.”
“As you were?” Moira shot back. “And don’t pretend you felt nothing for her. We were linked. I felt your pity. Her heart was broken, and moments later, she’s raped and taken by a demon. I can despise what Lilith is and feel pity for Lilia.”
“Lilia was already half mad,” he said flatly. “Maybe the change is what kept her relatively sane all this time.”
“I agree. I’m sorry,” Glenna said to Moira. “And I got no pleasure out of seeing what happened to her. But there was something in her eyes, in her tone—and God, in the way she ultimately responded to Jarl. She wasn’t quite right, Moira, even then.”
“Then she might have died by her own hand, or been executed for killing the man who used her. But she’d have died clean.” She sighed. “And we might not be here, discussing the matter. It all gives you a headache if you think about it hard enough. I have a delicate question, which is more for my own curiosity than anything else.”
She cleared her throat before asking Cian. “How she responded, as Glenna said. Is that not usual?”
“Most fight, or freeze with fear. She, on the other hand, participated after the…delicacy escapes me,” Cian admitted. “After she began to feel pleasure from the rape. It was rape, no mistake, and no sane woman gains pleasure from being brutalized and forced.”
“She was already his before the bite,” Moira murmured. “He knew she would be, recognized that in her. She knew what to do to change—to drink from him. Everything I’ve read has claimed the victim must be forced or told. It must be offered. She took. She understood, and she wanted.”
“We know more than we did, which is always useful,” Cian commented. “And the episode unnerved her, an added benefit. I’ll sleep better having accomplished that. Now it’s past my bedtime. Ladies.”
Moira watched him go. “He feels. Why do you think he goes to such lengths to pretend he doesn’t?”
“Feelings cause pain, a great deal of the time. I think when you’ve seen and done so much, feelings could be like a constant ache.” Glenna laid a hand on Moira’s shoulder. “Denial is just another form of survival.”
“Feelings loosed can be either balm or weapon.”
What would his be, she wondered, if fully freed?
Chapter 9
The rain slid into a soggy twilight that curled a smoky fog low over the ground. As night crept in, no moon, no stars could break through the gloom.
Moira waded through the river of fog over the courtyard to stand beside Glenna.
“They’re nearly home,” Glenna murmured. “Later than we’d hoped, but nearly home.”
“I’ve had the fires lit in your room and Larkin’s, and baths are being prepared. They’ll be cold and wet.”
“Thanks. I didn’t think of it.”
“When we were in Ireland, you thought of all the comfort details. Now it’s for me.” Like Glenna, Moira watched the skies. “I’ve ordered food for the family parlor, unless you’d rather be private with Hoyt.”
“No. No. They’ll want to report everything at once. Then we’ll be private.” She lifted her hand to grip her cross and the amulet she wore with it. “I didn’t know I’d be so worried. We’ve been in the middle of a fight, outnumbered, and I haven’t obsessed like this.”
“Because you were with him. To love and to wait is worse than a wound.”
“One of the lessons I’ve learned. There have been so many of them. You’d be worried about Larkin, I know. And about Tynan now. He has feelings for you.”
Moira understood Glenna didn’t mean Larkin. “I know. Our mothers hoped we might make a match of it.”
“But?”
“Whatever needs to be there isn’t there for me. And he’s too much a friend. Maybe having no lover to wait for, no lover to lose, makes it easier for me to bear all of this.”
Glenna waited a beat. “But.”
“But,” Moira said with a half laugh. “I envy you the torture of waiting for yours.”
From where she stood Moira saw Cian, the shape of him coming through the gloom. From the stables, she noted. Rather than the cloak the men of Geall would wear against the chill and rain, he wore a coat similar to Blair’s. Long and black and leather.
It billowed in the mists as he crossed to them with barely a sound of his boots against the wet stones.
“They won’t come any sooner for you standing in the damp,” he commented.
“They’re nearly home.” Glenna stared up at the sky as if she could will it to open and send Hoyt down to her. “He’ll know I’m waiting.”
“If you were waiting for me, Red, I wouldn’t have left in the first place.”
With a smile, she tipped her head so it leaned against his shoulder. When he put his arm around Glenna, Moira saw in the gesture the same affection she herself had with Larkin, the kind that came from the heart, through family.
“There,” Cian said softly. “Dead east.”
“You see them?” Glenna strained forward. “You can see them?”
“Give it a minute, and so will you.”
The moment she did, her hand squeezed Moira’s. “Thank God. Oh, thank God.”
The dragon soared through the thick air, a glimmer of gold with riders on its back. Even as it touched down, Glenna was sprinting over the stones. When he dismounted, Hoyt’s arms opened to catch her.
“That’s lovely to see.” Moira spoke quietly as Hoyt and Glenna embraced. “So many said goodbye today, and will tomorrow. It’s lovely to see someone come home to waiting arms.”
“Before her, he’d most often prefer coming back to solitude. Women change things.”
She glanced up at him. “Only women?”
“People then. But women? They alter universes just by being women.”
“For better or worse?”
“Depends on the woman, doesn’t it?”
“And the prize, or the man, she’s set her sights on.” With this, she left his side to rush toward Larkin.
Despite the fact that he was dripping, she hugged him hard. “I have food, drink, hot water, all you could wish. I’m so glad to see you. All of you.” But when she would have turned from Larkin to welcome the others, he gripped her hard.
Moira felt her relief spin on its head to fear.
“What? What happened?”
“We should go in.” Hoyt’s voice was quiet, and tight. “We should go in out of the wet.”
“Tell me what happened.” Moira drew away from Larkin.
“Tynan’s troop was set upon, at the near halfway point.”
She felt everything inside her freeze. “Oran. Tynan.”
“Alive. Tynan was injured, but not seriously. Six others…”
She took Larkin’s arm, digging her fingers in. “Dead or captured?”
“Five dead, one taken. Several others wounded, two badly. We did what we could for them.”
The cold remained, like ice over her heart. “You have the names? The dead, the wounded, and the other?”
“We have them, yes. Moira, it was young Sean taken. The smithy’s son.”
Her belly twisted with the knowledge that what the boy faced would be worse than death. “I’ll speak to their families. Say nothing to anyone until I’ve spoken to their families.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“No. No, this is for me. You need to get dry and warm, and fed. It’s for me to do, Larkin. It’s my place.”
“We wrote down the names.” Blair took a scrap of paper out of her pocket. “I’m sorry, Moira.”
“We knew this would come.” She slipped the paper inside her cloak, out of the wet. “I’ll come to the parlor as soon as I’m able, so you can tell me the details of it. For now, the families need to hear this from me.”
“Lot of weight,” Blair declared when Moira walked away.
“She’ll bear it.” Cian looked after her. “It’s what queens do.”
She thought it would crush her, but she did bear it. While mothers and wives wept in her arms, she took the weight. She knew nothing of the attack, but told each and every one their son or husband or brother had died bravely, died a hero.
It was what needed to be said.
It was worse with Sean’s parents, worse to see the hope in the blacksmith’s eyes, the tears of that hope blurring his wife’s. She couldn’t bring herself to snuff it out, so left them with it, with the prayers that their son would somehow escape and return home.
When it was done, she went to her rooms to put the names into a painted box she would keep now beside her bed. There would be other lists, she knew. This was only the first. And every name of every one who gave his or her life would be written down, and kept in that box.
With it, she put a sprig of rosemary for remembrance, and a coin for tribute.
After closing the box, she buried her need for solitude, for grieving, and went to the parlor to hear how it had been done.
Conversation stopped when she entered, and Larkin rose quickly.
“My father has just left us. I’ll go bring him back if you like.”
“No, no. Let him be with your mother, your sister.” Moira knew her pregnant cousin’s husband was to lead tomorrow’s troop.
“I’ll warm you some food. No, you will eat,” Glenna said even as Moira opened her mouth. “Consider it medicine, but you’ll eat.”
While Glenna put food on a plate, Cian poured a stiff dose of apple brandy into a cup. He took it to her. “Drink this first. You’re white as wax.”
“With this I’ll have color, and a swimming head.” But she shrugged, tossed it back like water.
“Have to admire a woman who can take a slug like that.” Impressed, he took the empty glass, then went back to sit.
“It was horrible. At least I can admit that here, to all of you. It was horrible.” Moira sat down at the table, then pressed her hands to her temples. “To look into their faces and see the change, and know they’ll forever be changed because of what you’ve brought to them. To what’s been taken from them.”
“You didn’t bring it.” Anger lashed in Glenna’s voice as she slapped a plate down in front of Moira. “You didn’t take it.”
“I didn’t mean the war, or the death. But the news of it. The hardest was the one who was taken prisoner. The smithy’s boy, Sean. His parents still have hope. How could I tell them he’s worse than dead? I couldn’t cut that last thread of hope, and wonder if it would be kinder if I had.”
She let out a breath, then straightened. Glenna was right, she would eat. “Tell me what you know.”
“They were in the ground,” Hoyt began, “as they were when they set upon Blair. Tynan said no more than fifty, but the men were taken by surprise. He told us it seemed they didn’t care if they were cut down, but charged and fought like mad animals. Two of our men fell in the first instant, and they gained three horses from us in the confusion of the battle.”
“Nearly a third of the horses that went with them.”
“Four, maybe five of them took the smithy’s son, alive from what those who tried to save him said. They took him off, heading east, while the rest held their line and battled back. They killed more than twenty, and the others scattered and ran as the tide turned.”
“It was a victory. You have to look
at it that way,” Blair insisted. “You have to. Your men took out over twenty vamps on their first engagement. Your casualties were light in comparison. Don’t say every death is one too many,” she added quickly. “I know that. But this is the reality of it. Their training held up.”
“I know you’re right, and I’ve already told myself the same. But it was their victory, too. They wanted a prisoner. No reason else to take one. Their mission must have been to take one alive, whatever the cost of it.”
“You’re right, no argument. But I don’t see that as a victory in their column. It was stupid, and it was a waste. Say five for the prisoner. Those vamps had stayed and fought, they’d have taken more of ours—alive or dead. My take is that Lilith ordered this because she was feeling pissy, or it was impulse. But it was also bad strategy.”
Moira ate food she couldn’t taste while she considered it. “The way she sent King back to us. It was petty, and vicious. But playful in her way. She thinks these things will undermine us, crush our spirits. How can she know us so little? You’ve lived half her time,” she said to Cian. “You know better.”
“I find humans interesting. She finds them…tasty at best. You don’t have to know the mind of a cow to herd them up for steaks.”
“Especially if you’ve got a whole gang to handle the roping and riding,” Blair put in. “Just following your metaphor,” she said to Cian. “I hurt her girl, so she needs some payback for that. We took three of her bases—should add we cleared out the second two locations this morning.”
“They were empty,” Larkin stated. “She hadn’t bothered to set traps there, or base any of her troops. Added to that, Glenna told us how you played with her while we were gone.”
“Sum of it is, this was tit for tat. But she loses more than we do. Doesn’t make it any easier on the families of the dead,” Blair added.
“And tomorrow, I send more out. Phelan.” Moira reached out for Larkin. “I can’t hold him back. I’ll speak to Sinann, but—”
“No, that’s for me. I expect our father has already talked to her, but I’ll see her myself.”