Shifters After Dark Box Set

by S M Reine et al.

  “Perhaps no simple ill. I have seen fae struck so—by the touch of iron, a sip of wine, a bite of bread milled at the hands of men.”

  “You’re suggesting he was poisoned? By what?”

  “How do I know what disagrees with men?” Her tone was sharp, but it was honed by the worry clear in her emerald eyes.

  I lost myself in them for a moment. There may have been no magic, fae or otherwise, at work upon my brother, but it seemed I had been thoroughly ensorcelled by Brinn. One taste had been enough to capture me.

  What taste had captured Pel?

  He knew enough to not eat nightshade or wild mushrooms or the bright scarlet Adam and Eve berries that had tempted others to their deaths. There were plenty of tart rowan berries about to sate the mouth, and Brinn had been bringing us birds and rabbits, so our meat was fresh. Even the bread today had been fresh-baked.

  What else had Pel eaten earlier besides the dark rye loaf?

  Rye.

  A sudden spasm slammed into my gut. “Holy Fire.”

  Brinn’s perfect, red-gold eyebrows quirked up in question.

  “Ergot.” The explanation clearly meant nothing to the fae. “Help me get him back to camp. I need to check our stores.”

  27. Alain

  With Brinn’s help I lifted Pel across my shoulder and trudged back to camp. It was late, he was heavy. I cursed my way along, wondering how we’d come so far. I had to rest twice, and on the second stop Pel’s eyes fluttered open and he mumbled words I’m sure not even he understood.

  “Be easy,” I soothed, but he resisted me as I heaved him again to my shoulder.

  “Only a few minutes more,” Brinn assured him. He stilled immediately under the soft hand she laid on his back. Whatever fae magic she worked on him, I hoped only that it would last till we were back in camp.

  When at last I laid Pel on the blanket Brinn hurriedly spread by the fire, my muscles quivered their relief. Brinn had already picked up my brother’s water pouch, though it seemed her hand on his brow was doing more for him than any amount of cool water could. Already he was trying to sit while she urged him down.

  “I’ll be right back,” I told them.

  The packs rested in the broad crook of an old elm tree not twenty paces away. A brace of saplings draped with fragrant honeysuckle vine blocked my view of Pel and Brinn as I rummaged through the foodstuff looking for what might have poisoned him.

  The moment I stepped out of sight was the moment I was first betrayed.

  28. Brinn

  The princeling’s fever cozened his thoughts, I knew. The essence of my faeness so near would have called to him in any state, but the sickness upon him made him even more vulnerable.

  “Brinn.” He panted my name in a tone that told me all was lost. As I urged him, hands on his shoulders, to lie back, he caught me in his arms. It was a hard embrace, almost bruising, certainly desperate. His own desires magnified tenfold by the mix of magic and fever.

  A part of me resisted. “You’re not yourself,” I told him. “This isn’t meant for us.” The other part of me that ran the moors and bayed in the moonlight softened my struggles, ensured I didn’t say no.

  That part wanted this, craved this, perhaps more than the sensible side of me that melted in Pel’s embrace.

  Pel lay back as I had been urging him—and carried me with him. One strong hand tangled in my hair, the other pressed at the small of my back before it crept down to cup more rounded flesh. The lips on my cheek burned with fever. I turned my head away, but when they followed with burning insistency, I gave in, allowing first his lips and then his tongue to claim me. I sucked at them, feeling him harden and respond as he pressed me tight against him.

  I doubted he was seasoned in the art of seduction. His movements seemed more desperate than sensual, as though afraid the permission given were a mistake and would be withdrawn at any moment.

  Deliberately, he rolled me over so I was half beneath him. The twisting of his hips at mine sent pulsating thrills where we connected. In a few moments the bit of cloth still between would make little difference. I closed my arms around him.

  It was thus that Alain found us.

  “God’s bane.”

  He didn’t shout the curse nor fling it with disdain. He merely stated it, flatly, making the burden of pain so clear within it echoed that much louder.

  In haste, Pel drew his tongue from my mouth, his breath rasping in my ear, the sudden stillness of his body atop mine sign of the same guilt that had gripped his brother when he thought we’d been discovered.

  Not for the first time I tried to understand men who found only guilt and sin in pleasure. The brothers loved one another. Why could they not delight in the happiness of the other?

  29. Alain

  My heart stopped at sight of them. I had never seen my brother nor any man in the throes of passion with a woman. I supposed I must have looked the same when I embraced Brinn, full of lust as I had been. I could hardly blame him fevered as he was and naked as she lay.

  Brinn, though … The moon was barely higher in its travels from the time I thought I would be bedding her. I had thought … no matter now. She was fae and it was no more than the bond of blood that held her to us. Both Pel and I. Likely it made no difference to her with whom she coupled. I had heard of lands to the east where sultans kept harems of women for their pleasure. Perhaps fae women bedded whom they pleased when they pleased.

  If so, I wanted none of it, nor of her. I wanted—nay, needed—any woman I coveted to be as true to me as I would vow to be to her. That Brinn could move so easily from me to Pel…

  There had been no finish, though, it would seem. Just as with Brinn and me. A fast embrace; a shared kiss, deep and hard; and the rise of lust caught short by circumstance. Not that it mattered. I had it on good authority that coveting was as sinful as the act itself. I chastised myself more than I could Pel, younger and more naive as he was. I should not have been tempted, should never have let my heart be swayed. That way only led to disappointment and betrayal.

  I saw a faint gleam of sweat on my brother’s brow, and beneath were eyes bright with fever and wide with guilt. That was Pel—he had not caught Brinn and me as I had caught him, did not know that she and I had not so long ago shared the same passionate embrace. Yet his guilt was plain, as though he knew that Brinn should not be his.

  Brinn was first to move. She did not try to cover herself—that was not the fae way for they had no shame in their nakedness as I had come to know—but instead she smoothly disentangled herself from Pel and briefly cupped his face before she rose to deal with me.

  “What did you discover?” she asked.

  I blinked. I expected outrage, denial, pleading—anything but a casual question and reasonable tone. And for a moment, I had no idea of what she spoke, intent as I was on the situation at hand. I glanced at Pel before answering, schooling my tone to match her neutral one. “There is ergot in the flour.” I nodded toward the sack that hung nearly forgotten from my hand. “Red rye. He ate half the baked loaf.”

  I had chosen the millet.

  I shuddered, thinking how such small decisions could have such vast consequences.

  30. Pel

  The utter closeness of Brinn, warm and naked and pliant, circling me with the mysteries of her flesh, engulfing me with the magic that she breathed, devouring my mouth with hers flamed the fire that burned through me fever-bright.

  Before Brinn I had known only a sweet stolen kiss or three and explored the soft shape of womanly breasts through modest gowns. Never had I grown so hard and urgent save between the palms of my own hands.

  A moment more and I would have stripped away my breeches and plunged with fierce abandon into her. Even now my flesh twitched at the thought of the moment so unbearably near. But then Brinn had flown out of my arms as quickly as she tumbled into them.

  One look at my brother and the grief twisted across his face undid me. Brinn was not—would never be—mine. How could she
be? Spoils to the oldest by the law of the land. Alain would claim all while I was left with nothing but the Old Magic that tortured my sleep and pummeled at my heart whenever this fae drew near.

  I could want for more, but I was not deserving of it. The knowledge tore at me under my brother’s stricken gaze. Guilt rushed in to claim what passion had filled me not a moment before. I hung my head, while fever raged again behind my eyes. I welcomed it, hoping it would burn away the transgressions of my life, punish me for the hurt in my brother’s eyes and the jealousy that spiked in my soul.

  Brinn and Alain spoke of bread and flour in soft and civil tones. I followed only snatches of their words, not at all clear why they should be discussing baked goods and not the thing Alain had caught us at.

  But then the familiar belling that had been sounding in my ears for some time became louder, driving the conversation from my head. The belling became a howling on the wind as it drew nearer. This was no hound of The Wild Hunt, but the thing in my nightmares come to exact retribution for betraying the man I loved most in my life.

  The Questing Beast.

  “May I see?” I heard Brinn ask of Alain, dimly as though from a great and deep distance. She stepped away from me, and the howl of The Beast rose over the soft steps of her retreat.

  I had never heard The Beast so near. As Brinn moved away, the pull of magic from The Beast that rode the wind overcame me. Alain had struggled before to keep me from flying after the elusive creature at times when its pull was not nearly so strong. I knew I had to move before Alain could stop me this time. Sweat trickled in my eyes, the salt of it stinging me to action. Wiping at my brow with one hand, I grabbed up my sword with the other. Half running, half staggering I made for Lleuad.

  He snorted in surprise as I fell against him. Training held him steady, though, as I clambered with neither skill nor grace to his back. He wore a bridle always, the reins of it looped across his withers, but he had no saddle. Nothing to hold to save his mane, clipped down for battle. Long practice alone held me to my seat though I swayed dangerously when Lleuad lunged forward at the twitch of my knees.

  To our rear, Sol snorted his displeasure at being left behind. And only a breathspace later, I heard Alain’s loved and familiar voice shouting after me. Nearly lost in delirium, I couldn’t make out the words. It mattered little, though, as I had no intent to halt our flight. The Beast howled again, teasing me to follow. Branches whipped at my face and struck at my shoulders as we ran. It was dangerous to gallop at night over unknown ground; if not for the fever or The Beast so near, I never would have gambled with Lleuad’s legs so. A stumble, a missed jump, badger hole or rabbit den could sprain a knee or snap a bone. But when The Beast belled again—so near now that a touch more moonlight would surely reveal him—instead of giving rein and letting Lleuad find his own pace through the shadows, I urged him on. He laid his ears back and shook his head, but his stride lengthened as I flattened low against him.

  “On, on, on,” I urged him. Chipped turf rained behind us as we ran. The trees thinned ahead, then opened on a meadow bathed in moonglow. In the middle of the field, black against the gray of grass, The Beast waited. Lleuad flung back his head and skidded to a halt. My nose, low over his neck, took the force of it. I suspected there was blood, but I could not feel it, felt only exquisite dull pain. Lleuad whinnied—a nervous sound so different from the confident challenge he screamed at other stallions in battle—and backed away, back toward the woods.

  “Whoreson!” I cursed at him, though in truth I could not fault him. No amount of training had prepared him for the shape that lurked ahead, waiting.

  My head pounded with the throb in my nose and the fever in my brain. I fought to keep Lleuad’s head toward The Beast, but it looked to be a battle that would be won at the expense of energy I held not in excess. Clutching at my scabbard, I slid from Lleuad’s back and released him to his whims. In a flurry of legs and tail he cantered away.

  Gulping great gasps of air I stumbled forward. What I did was rash. In a lucid moment, I would have realized that, but the majority of my moments now came from a mind addled with fever and cozened by the magic of The Beast that awaited me. As I worked my way nearer, the magic grew in strength, touching that place of night terrors, caressing my sins, my guilts, and stripping my courage bare.

  Even as I stalked none-too-silently nor gracefully upon it, the shape of it remained shadow. That it was aware of my approach was evident. It turned to watch me come, twisting its long, thick neck this way and that to better see me. The details of it, though, lay cloaked in darkness.

  From its silhouette, I could see it was two, maybe three, times the bulk of a plow horse with a broad chest and tapered hips. A set of short horns protruded from its brow, while a thin tail lashed behind. It lifted a foreleg as I advanced—in menace or warning I could not tell—and the leg was curved and pliant, articulated like a cat or a bear’s, not a horse or cow’s. Although I could not make out claws or talons in the moonlight, I had little doubt it wielded them.

  It occurred to my half-fogged brain only then that I had left my buckler behind. A stupid mistake. And too often stupid mistakes proved to be last mistakes.

  I halted, the better to assess The Beast. Of course, I’d heard tales of dragons and seen many imaginings of them drawn on vellum and stitched in cloth. There was dragon familiarity about this animal, but somehow I knew it was not one. I looked for folded wings along its back, saw none. Squinting, I could see it had a coat of short, bristled fur—much like a wild boar’s—and that it wasn’t scaled like a snake nor leathered as a lizard.

  But while I knew what it wasn’t, what it was eluded me still.

  Indecision tore at me. I had found my Beast and it was real. The thing of my nightmares stood manifest before me. That knowledge alone was worth the price of the hunt this night.

  Yet there was the knowledge too that I had followed it here under compulsion. Even now I could feel the magic of it twisting in my blood and muddling my thoughts, cozening my mind. I tried to take a step backward, could not, and immediately The Beast’s regard heightened in the rise and turn of its head, its eyes glittering green like a cat’s in a slant of moonlight.

  I swiped the back of my hand across my own eyes, wiping the sweat from them, feeling the heat of fever gathered there.

  A word I’d heard my brother say found its way into my head: ergot. I cringed. Holy Fire. It made folk do things, see things, not normal, not real.

  Doubt crashed into me. What if The Beast before me was only the manifestation of my desperate desire to know the thing that haunted my dreams—and infringed now upon my waking thoughts as well—was flesh and solid and not that which Alain likely believed: the wild imaginings of an unstable mind.

  To believe in my own sanity, The Beast had to be real. The compulsion on me now had to be as Brinn had guessed—the Old Magic buried deep within me stirred from its slumber by the call of like magic in the strong and primal form close by.

  Caught in the open, unable to retreat, and undecided whether to move forward reminded me of how I felt when Brinn was about. Until tonight, when over-bold I’d transgressed. My chest constricted as guilt washed afresh over me. This time, though, it wasn’t guilt over the betrayal in my brother’s eyes, it was because of how much pleasure I had taken from Brinn being wrapped about me, knowing she’d been driven by as much passion for me as I had for her, and enjoying the beat of drums that thrummed through me when I pressed close and the delirium that was not fever when I hardened in her embrace.

  The Beast growled, a low and hollow sound.

  Here on the empty plain with only God, myself and The Beast to bear witness, I could admit I would covet my brother’s lady no matter the pain to Alain. Not by choice but by nature. I could not help but ignite in her presence. It was no more in my power to deny that reaction to her than I could stop the night terrors from coming. What was in my power was whether I ever acted again on those feelings.

  Another wave
of guilt beat at me.

  The Beast lowered its head and took one step, two, toward me.

  I gripped my sword, not yet prepared to challenge it, fearing to find it made of nothing more than moondreams.

  This new guilt, likewise, I could not face. Not yet. How long could I live with the temptation of Brinn so near, so open? How long could I cover my desire for her? How long before I would either go mad in her presence or have to leave?

  Yet how could I ever leave my brother?

  My breath shortened as I considered how much pain the future seemed to hold.

  The Beast crouched.

  Then sprang.

  31. Alain

  When I saw Lleuad trotting toward us, riderless, my heart froze. If Pel, fever-caught as he was, had fallen at the reckless gallop they’d been at—I didn’t want to think of the consequences. I slowed for just a moment to catch Lleuad’s reins, then pushed both horses to a run as we coursed after Brinn.

  We sped into the moonlit clearing together. Sol trumpeted in surprise and fear, while Pel’s stallion hauled back hard, nearly sitting on his haunches. I would have been unseated had I not loosed the reins and let him free. Sol danced under me. When he reared in fear, I slid from his back, cursing that I had not grabbed up my sword in my haste to follow Pel.

  Brinn, unhampered by horses, had already closed in on the shadows that loomed in the center of the clearing. Rarely had I heard her bark, but now she was voicing her frenzy in sharp and rapid form. Pel, staggering, with only a sword to protect him, faced a great monster, the likes of which I’d never seen. As I ran toward them, I saw Brinn charge in, snapping at its underbelly, trying to divert its attention from Pel. I was still too far away when the creature bellowed, lowered its head like a bull and struck Pel with his far horn.