“I . . . I’m—”
He bit them off. Kane never apologized. He had done far worse than this, and had never asked pardon. He was beyond pardon. Far beyond. ’Twould be a waste of words and breath to say he was sorry.
“You worry about him,” Jenna said, her voice soft, as if she’d taken no offense at all.
“I would hate to see him fall prey to the fancies of weak minds. He is merely a very clever man, too clever for his own good at times.”
Jenna looked at him for a moment, as if she weren’t nearly as convinced as he was—or as he told himself he was—that there was nothing more to Tal’s unusual abilities than extreme cleverness.
“So you have asked him, then?”
“Asked him?”
“If he has a sorcerer’s powers.”
“Of course I have not!”
She lifted a brow at him. “It seems a reasonable question, between friends.”
“There is nothing reasonable about such foolishness.”
He increased his pace, heedless of whether she could keep up with his long strides. She did, with little appearance of haste.
“Is it that you fear Tal’s answer?”
He stopped dead and turned to her. “Have you forgotten who you speak to, that you accuse him of fearing mere words?”
“Oh, no,” she said, halting to look at him levelly, with the steady courage he’d come to expect from her, the courage that allowed her to face him calmly where armed men would quail. “I have never forgotten. You are Kane. You walk alone, and all the evil I have ever heard of you is true. You have told me often enough.”
Her words should have pleased him, but somehow they did not. “Then you should know better than to speak as you did.”
She shrugged. “It merely seems to me that there is only one reason not to ask. If his answer is no, there is nothing—”
“I did not ask how it seems to you,” he ground out.
“I understand,” she said in a tone clearly meant to be soothing, but that instead managed to annoy him further, “for a man so set in his mind on such things, it would be a difficult choice.”
“Choice?” His tone was ominous, but she seemed to blithely ignore the warning.
“If his answer is yes, you must admit there are indeed things beyond that which you can see and touch in this life. And perhaps you must admit as well that you would turn your back on him were it true.”
“I admit nothing of the sort.”
Her voice went as soft as his had become harsh. “And that is your choice, Kane. If you cannot admit that, then the other option is that Tal lies. And that you could not forgive.”
She had put her finger upon it so neatly, the dilemma that had plagued him ever since he had realized there were depths to his friend perhaps better left unplumbed. He had not thought himself so easily read, yet she seemed to know instinctively things he preferred to keep deeply buried.
He stared down at her, wishing for an instant that she was as others, fearful of him, ready to flee at a mere glance. But she stood her ground, stubbornly, foolishly, refusing to give way. And then he had given way, turning on his heel and striding away, Kane the Warrior vanquished by one small, determined woman.
JENNA STAYED IN the shelter of the trees, out of sight, watching Kane. The contrast between the dark, powerful man, his expression little short of tormented, and the soft, golden glow of the sunbeam that lit him as if intentionally, tugged at something deep within her. It was as if all he was crystallized in that moment, all the dark grimness of his life battling the light of hope.
She felt it in him, every time he touched her, felt the war going on inside him as if the two sides were tangible. The man he could have been fought the man he had become, and she wondered if he would survive no matter who won. And she felt the pangs of guilt; he’d been content here, until she had come. She had brought him to this, forcing him to revisit old habits, and relive old memories. She had brought that look of anguish to his face, had stirred up whatever demons he now battled.
In that moment, to her astonishment, she was glad he had refused to take up arms again, even for the sake of Hawk Glade. She saw now that if he fought again, it would settle the battle for his soul irrevocably; Kane the Warrior would win, and the boy who had refused to slaughter a puppy as mere demonstration would vanish forever, crushed as surely as the small animal had been crushed. As surely as a young girl had been murdered by her own father, also as mere demonstration.
He lifted his head then, turning his face to the sunlight that poured down over him. His features were painted with stark clarity in the harsh light. His eyes were closed, his mouth twisted with what appeared to be pain barely suppressed, leaving the thick, dark lashes the only softness amid the strong features.
Jenna wished the sunlight were healing as well as warming. She’d never known a man more in need of it.
Were it not for the help she must have to save her people—and, if she were honest, the unexpected, soaring rapture she’d found in the arms of this wild, untamed warrior—she would have wished she had never come here.
She had come to know the man behind the legend, and she had no wish to be the instrument of his destruction.
Chapter 13
HE COULD NO longer deny the inevitable.
He stood in the opening of the cave, his naked body still tingling, the sweat of passion still damp on his skin. The night air flowed over him, and he thought he was still so hot from Jenna’s embrace that he must be steaming like a lathered warhorse.
He stared upward, at the pale orb that flooded the small clearing with eerie silver light.
His body was sated, lax with a pleasantly heavy languor, but there was a tightness within him that even the near-violent release he’d just found with her could not relieve.
The moon was full.
He knew that Jenna knew it as well as he, yet she had said nothing. At least not in words; tonight she had turned to him before he could reach for her; tonight she had been the aggressor, pouring herself over him like sweet, hot fire in a way that had set him ablaze like never before, in a way that had set him crying out her name in a gasping voice he barely recognized as his own, in a way that had seared away all thought of anything except the need to hold this woman into eternity.
He looked away from the moon, staring now out across the small clearing into the darkness of the forest. This tiny bit of a pleasant eternity, all he would ever know, was over. He would go back now to his solitude, and where he had once desired that above all else, he now found it a cold and empty prospect.
“Kane?”
Her voice came softly, from close behind him, and a moment later her arms slipped around his waist from behind. She was still unclothed, and he could feel her warmth, the soft curves of her body as it pressed against his back. He didn’t need to see her; he knew every one of those curves now, knew every plane and hollow and secret place. And in turn she had learned him, with an eager innocence that still stunned him with its power; nothing in his life had ever aroused him as Jenna’s simple look of wonder as she gazed at him, her sigh of pleasure as she touched him, caressed him, and he responded with the fierce, helpless ardor only she had ever brought him to.
He was responding to it now, his body hardening at the mere feel of her closeness.
“I do not know if it is of worth to you,” she said quietly, “but I do not wish to leave.”
Kane’s eyes closed. How like her, he thought, to bring it so simply into the open, while he had been fighting to ignore the meaning of the full circle of silver light that hung above them. He fought down a shiver, not daring to speak.
“When I came here, I was in search only of Kane the Warrior, the legend, the man who had become myth. I did not expect to find a man who fought within himself as valiantly as he ever fought an enem
y. I did not expect to find the man who would turn my blood to fire, and my body to some molten thing I no longer know.”
“Jenna,” he said hoarsely, not caring that his tone was nothing short of begging; he could not bear this.
“I know you will not come with me,” she began.
“I cannot,” he said, his voice still thick. “I . . .”
“I know,” she repeated. “You have no desire to fight again, and now that I . . . understand, I do not wish you to.”
“It is not that,” he said, the words torn from him against his will. “I . . . cannot leave here. If I do, I will die.”
Jenna went very still behind him. “I do not understand.”
He swallowed, wishing he’d never begun this, but it had somehow become imperative that she know it was not heartlessness that made him turn her down. It had not bothered him before, but he found he could not so easily dismiss the woman who had made him wish for things that could never be.
“Tal . . . Tal warned me of this, when I first came here. He told me if I left these mountains . . . I would cease to be.”
“And you believe him?”
He shook his head, then let it loll back on his shoulders. “You can say nothing I have not already said. ’Tis folly to believe in such things, and you well know I do not believe in prophecy. But Tal, however he does it, however he knows . . . he is right more often than wrong. Much more often. And when he said this, I . . .”
“You chose to believe,” she said softly when he did not go on. “Why?”
“Because I knew he was right,” Kane said, sounding as hopelessly befuddled as he felt.
She hugged him then, tightly. “That is where it began, isn’t it? Your predicament, the battle that still wages within you? You believe Tal’s words, deep inside, yet there is no way he could know except by methods you cannot accept.”
He felt a shudder go through him, and her arms tightened further, holding him even closer. To his amazement, he took heart from it; he who had always stood alone, who had never required help from anyone, was taking strength from this slender woman’s embrace.
“You have been waging this struggle for a very long time,” she said softly. “You must be very weary of it.”
“Tal is my friend,” he said, unable to think of anything else to say.
“Yes,” she said. “He is. No matter what else he might be, he is your friend.”
She fell silent then, and he knew that the time had come. As painful and unsettling as the subject of his mysterious friend was, he knew it had only been an excuse to avoid a subject he feared would be more painful. He looked up at the moon again, wondering that he had never seen mockery in its uncaring cycle before. He shuddered again; telling himself it was the chill of the air, knowing he was lying.
“It is all right, Kane,” she said, as if in response to the rippling of his body. “I know you will not come with me. Our bargain did not include—”
Kane swore softly at the mention of the infernal agreement they’d struck. After a moment Jenna went on as if he hadn’t spoken.
“I no longer ask it, in any case. Even if Tal’s foretelling is wrong, ’twould be a kind of death for you to take up arms again. I do not wish that. You have taught me much in my time here. It will be enough. It must be.”
“Don’t.”
It ripped from him, a rough, jagged chunk of sound.
“Kane—”
“Don’t go back.”
She released him then. He turned to look at her. She was staring at him, expression puzzled, eyes wide and glinting in the moonlight. He couldn’t believe he’d said it, but would not call it back even had he been able. It was not that he wanted her to stay; it was simply that he did not want her to go. ’Twas a fine line, but a line, nevertheless.
“But . . . I must.”
“You can’t. You know what will happen.”
“I have no choice, Kane,” she said. “I must return to Hawk Glade, to my clan. They need me. And what you have taught me.”
“You will die. And that is a bigger certainty than any prediction I’m fool enough to believe.”
“If I do not, I will be worse than dead.”
He stared down at her. She stood there, her slender, naked body, the body that had taught him more than he could begin to have taught her, silvered by that damned moon’s light. He read determination in every line of her, raw courage in the set of her delicate jaw, and her passion for her people in her eyes. In that moment she looked like a creature of destiny, forged in the fire of some creator with a vision far beyond his own poor sight.
She looked like an avenging angel come to life, and in that instant he thought she just might achieve her miracle; who would ever gainsay such a spirit?
“Can you not understand, Kane?” she whispered.
He did not know. It had been a very long time since he had cared for anything as she cared for her people.
“If it were Meg, and you had a chance to save her, would you not go, no matter the cost?”
Kane stiffened. Her heartfelt plea for his understanding accomplished her goal of easing her departure in a way he knew she had never intended. She had reminded him, all unmeaning, of the harsh reality of the difference between them. Jenna would give her life for the people she loved; Kane had let the one person he had ever loved die. It was no wonder she was eager to leave; why would a woman of such courage and fine mettle want to have any more to do with him than she had to?
That she had apparently found pleasure in his bed had been as big a surprise to her as to him, but it changed nothing. Who knew that better than he, he who had slaked his needs and gone on with less thought of the woman he left behind than the horse he rode? If he did not like being on the receiving end, ’twas his own fault for letting himself be softened by what they had unexpectedly found together.
This was the end that had been destined from the beginning, and he would not quibble with it. He was still Kane, and Kane was a proud man. Far too proud to beg anyone, let alone a woman he’d never searched out in the first place. Let the fate who had dropped her into his life have his laugh; it was time for him to get his small world back the way it had been.
“Will you leave in the morning?” he asked, pleased at the coolness of his voice.
She seemed startled by the sudden change. “I . . . hadn’t thought.”
“Our bargain is fulfilled. I have taught you all that I can of fighting in such a short time.” He didn’t dare look at her, standing there like some living sculpture molded by an artist with an exquisite eye. If he did, surely he would sweep her up and carry her back to his bed. “And you have . . . done as you agreed,” he ended, fairly steadily.
“Kane—”
“There is no reason to delay.”
She drew in an audible breath. “No. I suppose there is not.” She looked at him, seeming a little bewildered by his sudden change. “Kane—”
“You have said you must go. So go. It is not the first time I have watched someone march toward death.”
“Has Tal foreseen that, as well?”
He stiffened. “Mock me if you will. I need no seer’s eyes, but only a warrior’s to see that you have not a chance.”
“I meant no mockery,” she said quietly. “I just ask why Tal’s foretelling is any different than your own.”
Perhaps it was not different, he thought. Perhaps Tal simply had a different way of being certain. His own was based on years of ugly reality, Tal’s . . . on he knew not what. He knew only that once Jenna left here, he would never see her again. And no matter how he tried to convince himself that was as he wished it to be, he could not help but think of the emptiness she would leave behind.
And he knew in that moment who had truly been the fool in their fool’s bargain.
SHE
DID NOT KNOW what had caused the change in him. More than once she had been convinced he would be more than glad to see the last of her. She had disrupted his life, his peace, and he had told her he didn’t like the fact. She had thought, once she had begun to spend the nights in lessons of things much more intimate than war, that perhaps he had softened toward her; surely no one could be by turns so tender and so ardent with someone he hated.
Or perhaps he could; she had heard there were men who took their pleasure and departed, unmoved beyond a sense of physical release. She had overheard her mother speaking of such things with Evelin once, when they had thought her asleep. Such men abounded outside Hawk Glade, they had said, expressing their thanks once more to whatever god had sent the hawk to guide them to this place.
The memory of that quiet time of utter safety spurred the need in her yet again, the need to return, to go home. Yet she found herself as reluctant to go as she had once been to stay, and there was only one reason for her quandary, and his name was Kane. Something in him reached a place within her she had never known existed. There were no men like him in her calm, peaceful world, yet it was that very wildness that made him different that called to her, that made her wish there was some other way.
She thought of coming back, but deep inside her she knew he was right, and the chances that she would survive what was to come were slight. And she knew as well that hoping she might could hamper her, could make her hesitate when hesitation could lose all. She had no wish to hamper herself with a foolish dream of something that could never be. Even if she did survive, Kane had given no indication he would want her back. Indeed, he had tonight given every indication he would be glad to see her gone.
She had thought he would turn to her when they had returned to his bed. Instead, he had looked at her as if he were considering ordering her back to her blankets by the fire. He did not, but neither did he reach for her, nor even touch her. It was as if he had already cut himself off from her, and the completeness with which he did it chilled her. She herself was aching for him, aching for one last shared moment of glory between them. But he lay with his back to her, heedless of her pain, apparently able to shut off his own need in a way that left her shivering.
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