The Royal Hunter

by Donna Kauffman

  Baleweg seemed to stand taller. “What gives me strength is exactly what we’ve been discussing. Heart. Love. I fear I’ve shut myself off from it for far too long, all for the selfish desire of self-preservation. Although I dandied it up under the guise of seeking knowledge and learning.” He shook his head. “I knew that if I let myself love anything, you’d merely come along and destroy it. What I didn’t realize was that loving, even briefly, gives me a greater understanding of the world than any number of years of pursuing whatever skills might be found inside my mind.” He frowned. “And yet, the one and only time I did allow myself to love, the tragedy didn’t simply befall me.” He eyed Emrys. “How pathetic,” he said calmly, “that human life is the worthiest subject you can find for your own tiny amusements.”

  “Tiny? You consider human life so trivial?”

  “No, but you do. And that makes you a tiny being. No matter how immense your skill, your power, you will forever be a man stunted by your lack of—”

  “Compassion? Morality?” Emrys rolled his eyes. “Talk about pathetic.”

  “How could you be expected to master those qualities when you lack the very basis of it all?”

  “Are we back to that heart thing again?” He smirked.

  Baleweg took a small step forward. “Perhaps if I’d started with you, things would be different.”

  “Whatever do you mean?” He took a small step backward.

  “Had I allowed my heart to open to you,” Baleweg said softly. “It is to my shame that I allowed jealousy to color my feelings toward you.”

  “Oh, did you want to be my sweet papa?” Emrys said sarcastically.

  “Hardly,” Baleweg said, his voice cool.

  “Oh, please, tell me how you really feel, old man.”

  “I was never your father. You are the son of an institution, unfortunately for us both. But I could have been a true mentor. However, I was taken aback at the ease with which you learned, how quickly your mind adapted to any and all sort of stimuli or applied thinking.”

  “And you think that if you’d given me a few hugs along the way, I’d be a better man for it now?” He puckered his lower lip. “How touching.”

  “It could have been. We would have been a team rather than adversaries. Imagine what we might have discovered.”

  “That’s your problem right there.”

  They both turned in surprise when Archer spoke. “Yeah, mates, I’m still here.” And he had had enough of this. He folded his arms, hoping his still-shaky legs wouldn’t betray him. “Baleweg, you talk about heart, but your bottom line is that you still wanted Emrys here to be your lab pal, your partner in science and all things mind-expanding.” He gestured to a bemused Emrys. “Like he said, a few hugs wouldn’t have changed things. You’d have had to have felt a real bond with him.” He looked to Emrys. “I’m not sure you can bond with someone who has no emotion save his own banal search for anything that will stave off boredom.” He laughed when Emrys’s mouth quirked. “Let the little brain continue, if you will. I understand how boredom might be a problem for someone like you. I mean, when a guy figures out how to walk through walls, it’s hard to find someone to be an entertaining chap to a mate like that. It’s easy to see how you’d think yourself above it all, and how that would lead a bloke like you to start thinking of other people as a game. Little pieces to be played with.

  “Which leaves the only bloke you’d have a chance in hell of even passing a decent evening ale with as the guy who can hardly stand being in the same room with you.” He shrugged. “Makes perfect sense that you’d want to tweak the chap a bit for his hard-headedness. And, since you stopped seeing people as humans long ago, I guess it makes sense that your attention-getting scams got larger and more elaborate as time went on.” He looked to Baleweg. “Of course, your opting for the complete dull life package must have driven this blodger nuts. Gave him nothing to play off.”

  He turned back to Emrys, whose eyes had narrowed considerably.

  “Until now,” Archer continued. “You find his one weak link, the way to finally get his goat for good.” He nodded a salute. “Pretty sharp. But now what? I mean, okay, you got him this time, you hurt him good, with the bonus of restructuring the entire future of a monarchy. I’m guessing that will be entertaining as all hell for, oh, what, an hour? A few days?” He shrugged. “So now what? How can you top that? I mean, he’s not likely to give you another candidate, is he now?” He glared at them both. “Now you’ll really have to go out and find a way to entertain yourself. Because we all know this was never about your having a good time, it was about your proving you could hurt him. And you have. So bingo, mate, you win the prize!” He laughed, knowing well it might be his last. “How does it feel to be the big winner?” He turned from them both, hoping like hell he was pulling this off. Yet he meant every word he was saying. “You ask me, you’re both pathetic. You both lose. You deserve each other.”

  There was total silence and Archer waited for Emrys to kill him on the spot. But Emrys did nothing. Hope began to well inside him. He’d spouted off because he’d realized what was really going on here, the two of them in an age-old war of basic family dysfunction. Except they happened to have some pretty serious methods of wounding each other. Maybe, just maybe, his mouthing off was actually going to help.

  Baleweg was the one to break the quiet. “In order to inflict pain on someone, or wish to,” he said quietly, “one would have to care in the first place.” He made a tsking sound. “Never thought of it that way.”

  “I don’t care a whit about you,” Emrys said petulantly.

  Archer thought he sounded for all the world like an angst-ridden teenager annoyed with a stubborn parent. Probably a somewhat accurate summation.

  “I never imagined you did. Though now I wonder.” Baleweg cleared his throat. “Archer is quite right, however. I never gave you a spot of a chance and suppose I deserve everything I got in return. I only wish you hadn’t involved others in your vendetta against me.”

  “I wasn’t getting back at you!” Emrys suddenly exploded. “I never wanted you in the first place!”

  Baleweg very quietly said, “Didn’t you, then?” When Emrys didn’t move or speak, he moved closer. “I am, as Archer said, the only person who could ever truly understand you. It would make perfect sense.”

  Emrys abruptly let out a long-suffering sigh. “Well, you’ve certainly taken all the fun out of this little adventure.” He whirled around as if to flounce off, but Baleweg reached out his hand and laid it on Emrys’s arm. Blue sparks shot around the room and bounced off the walls, and Archer ducked as they whizzed by.

  “Where are you off to?” Baleweg asked.

  “Why on earth would you care?” He sneered. “Archer says, Archer says. Well, he of little brain is not all-knowing. I have many grand adventures planned and none of them concern you. I will be perfectly happy to never see you again. I’ve tired immensely of our little game of cat and mouse. You’ll not be seeing me again for quite some time, though I daresay that won’t bother you as you go back to your yawningly dull little existence.”

  “It is rather dull, isn’t it.”

  Emrys said nothing, but neither did he move away. And Archer knew he wouldn’t. He was finally getting what he’d always wanted. Baleweg’s full attention.

  Baleweg took his time, fulfilling the role of the reluctant parent all too well. If the situation hadn’t been so serious, Archer would have been amused as he watched the war wage behind those blue eyes.

  Finally Baleweg sighed, as long-suffering a sound as Emrys had made earlier. Quite grudgingly, he asked, “I don’t suppose you’d like some company on your next adventure?”

  Emrys’s eyes, an exact copy of Baleweg’s, narrowed. “What manner of trick would this be?”

  “No trick. Perhaps I am tired of living a shrouded existence. Perhaps I should try to spice things up a bit. See how the other side lives.”

  Emrys laughed. “I seriously doubt my pursuits wo
uld be of any interest to you.”

  Baleweg merely raised his brows. Challenge issued … and accepted. “Why don’t we find out? Then perhaps you can try on one of my rather tedious little adventures of the mind.”

  Emrys examined his nails and Archer felt himself relax. Emrys was well and truly caught now. His interest was piqued. He was indeed nothing more than a very spoiled child, albeit one with dangerous powers, who’d been doing anything and everything to get the attention of the only person in his life who could possibly understand him. Baleweg, a man with pent-up jealousies who had hidden himself away instead of confronting them, burying his head in the sands of his studies … and thereby provoking Emrys on and on. It was a vicious circle, the cycle of which might never have been broken if they hadn’t been finally forced to confront one another. Archer only wished they could have done so without putting an entire kingdom at risk.

  Not that he thought it would all be resolved so easily. But, at the very least, Baleweg could watch over the devil rather than leaving him to his own devices. And perhaps the old man would learn that there was more to knowledge than what could be found inside his own head.

  “I suppose we could try,” Emrys said finally. “But one little squeal from you, old man, and phht, I’m gone.”

  “We’ll see what the future holds.” Baleweg turned to Archer, then looked back to Emrys. “Would you mind if I spoke to young Archer here in private?”

  Emrys huffed, but opened a triangle behind him. Archer moved forward, alarmed that perhaps this had all been an elaborate charade. He wouldn’t put it past Emrys.

  “I’ll be back,” Emrys said, then sneered. “And don’t worry, hunter. I hate Connecticut in any time.”

  Archer felt like collapsing with relief. He was surprised to find a very stern Baleweg when he turned around. “Don’t give me that look. I just saved your arse, old man.”

  “And set me on a course I’m not so certain I like.”

  Archer shrugged. “I didn’t force you to make that offer.”

  Baleweg said something that actually sounded like a curse under his breath.

  Archer would have grinned, but he had other concerns on his mind. “Do you think he meant it? He’ll leave Talia alone?”

  Baleweg nodded.

  She was safe. He leaned his head back against the wall. Thank God. So he had no right to feel cheated. No right to feel sorry for himself. This was what he’d wanted for her all along. A safe return home for them all.

  Safe. He remembered then what Baleweg had started to tell him earlier. “You meant Talia was the one who gave you strength against Emrys, didn’t you?”

  Baleweg nodded.

  “But didn’t you say she was almost killed trying to help Catriona and helping you find us?”

  “But she is a woman with an immense heart. I told her she had done her best, that it was my turn to fight. I should have known she wouldn’t be able to stand back and do nothing.”

  Archer grabbed his robes. “Is she okay?”

  Baleweg smoothly released himself from Archer’s grip. “I imagine she is very, very weak. But yes, I think she’s okay.”

  “You think?”

  “You could go find out for yourself.”

  That stopped him. “Don’t bother playing matchmaker. Talia is back where she belongs. I’m sure she’ll meet someone who can keep her safe and warm.”

  “You can walk away so easily? It is you that she loves.”

  His heart stopped.

  “Her connection with Catriona may well have saved that baby’s and the young queen’s life. But I couldn’t connect with you through all that. It was her connection with you that did it. She had to surrender her heart to do it.”

  He felt as if Emrys had sent him into the wall again, headfirst this time. “She did?”

  Baleweg nodded. “I promised her that her questions would be answered.”

  Archer slumped back then. He should have felt an overwhelming joy and relief that there was even a slim chance he’d see her again. But how on earth could he ever walk away from her if he knew that she felt for him what he felt for her?

  “All that talk about heart. Now it’s your turn to tell her. You owe her that much.”

  He was right. She was home, in Connecticut with no idea what had happened to them all. He owed her a proper good-bye, even if it killed him.

  “And, of course, I assume you’ll want Ringer back.”

  In all the tumult, Archer had actually forgotten about his little mate. “Where is he? You didn’t leave him—”

  “I left him in very good hands.” Baleweg smiled.

  Archer swallowed hard. “Talia has him?”

  He nodded.

  “What, you didn’t think I’d go back so you put an insurance policy in place? What if I decide to just leave him with her?” He didn’t say he’d already thought about that anyway. Ringer had never been happier than when he’d been in Connecticut. With her.

  And he couldn’t deny he had ever been, either. Dammit.

  “Okay. I’ll go back. But just so she knows what happened and to say a proper good-bye.”

  Baleweg said nothing, merely gave him that wise look he’d grown to … Okay, so he didn’t mind it as much these days.

  “What about the queen? What if Talia wants to go back to court?”

  “I’ll arrange whatever you wish.”

  Archer fell silent then. “I can’t believe I saw a life come into this world today.”

  Baleweg merely nodded. “A miracle every time.”

  “Do you think they made it?”

  “I’m sure they did all they could.”

  “Could we go and find out? So I can tell Talia?”

  Baleweg smiled. “I’m sure we can work that out.”

  “What about you and Emrys? Do you think the two of you will work things out?”

  Baleweg’s smile vanished. “I’m not certain. Perhaps I can redirect his … energies.” He didn’t bother trying to hide his irritation. “I am set in my ways and this new direction I’ve chosen might prove to be an ill fit.” He sighed in the face of Archer’s knowing grin. “Perhaps we were both on a path to destruction. In our own separate ways. Perhaps your wisdom in showing me this will be a blessing for us both.”

  Archer nodded, ignoring the skepticism clear in his voice. “I just hope you don’t live to regret it. He’s … something.”

  “Yes. He is that.” Baleweg cleared his throat and smoothed his robes. “Now I believe it is time for you to embark on your new direction.”

  The triangle opened before them.

  Chapter 26

  Talia had no idea how long she had slept. The sun was streaming through the dormer windows when she finally opened her eyes. She felt as if she’d been hit by a truck.

  She groaned as she rolled to her back. However long she’d slept, it hadn’t been long enough. She looked at the clock. God, it was late. She had to get up and feed and water the animals. She went to stretch, but her fingers cramped. She looked down and saw the blue ball still clutched tightly in her fist.

  Oh! Tears immediately sprang to her eyes as it all rushed back with painful, heart-wrenching clarity. She squeezed her eyes shut, wanting to go back to several seconds ago when she hadn’t remembered. But it was too late.

  The images came pounding at her, assaulting her, and she was too weak to shut them off. Archer making love to her in that unbelievable bedroom. Catriona telling her that they were sisters. Connecting with her, feeling the baby despite all that horrendous pain.

  Connecting with Archer.

  Baleweg holding her hand and telling her not to forget. As if she could. Reaching for him, hoping that through him, she could help Archer and Catriona. That final connection snapping, the last thing she remembered before she’d lost consciousness.

  Maybe it had all been some sort of nightmare. A dream that she’d finally awoken from. It was certainly fantastical enough.

  The luminous blue orb in her hand said otherwise. />
  As did the snowy owl perched at the foot of her bed.

  At the sound of her scream, which had been more a hoarse croak, the owl merely turned his head and stared at her with big, dark eyes. Archer was right. It was there in the eyes. “Ringer?”

  The owl bobbed its head.

  “Oh, God. You’re still in Oz, Dorothy.”

  Ringer lifted his wings, shook them out, and settled down again.

  “How did you get here?” Then she remembered. The flash when Baleweg had backed through the triangle. “Little sneak.” Her voice was very rough, her throat even rougher. She needed to take a warm shower. An aspirin or ten wouldn’t hurt, either. But that meant leaving this bed, and she was pretty sure that wasn’t happening yet.

  “How are you at making tea?”

  Ringer merely blinked.

  “That’s what I thought.” Talia looked toward the window, then at her clock. Stella and the girls were likely already at work. She laid her head back on her pillow. God, she really was home. It was almost impossible to imagine going back to her regular routine, her normal life.

  But it wasn’t completely over. Baleweg had promised he’d come back and tell her what had happened. Her heart clutched as she thought of Catriona and the baby. And Archer. Whom she’d never see again. No. She wasn’t ready to handle that yet.

  But she was grateful for Ringer’s presence. He was her only link. And she’d cling to that link without apology.

  She heard the slam of a truck door. Stella. And her thoughts drifted back outside. She wondered what they’d say when they realized she was home. Then she remembered something else. Her truck was still at the hotel downtown. Well, that was the least of her problems at the moment. She was sure Stella would give her a lift into town to pick it up. How she’d explain being back without it, or Archer or Baleweg … much less the weakened condition she was in … she had no idea. She groaned, unwilling to think about it.

  Thoughts of Archer crept back in, along with worries about whether or not Baleweg was able to get to Catriona in time. Certainly if the worst had happened, she’d have felt it when she reached out that last time, but she’d been so weak, it had taken all she’d had just to find Baleweg. It was only because of his strong mind that the link had been made at all.