Medley of Souls

by Renee Peters

  “It’s a good book,” he said, finally. “I’m not the most knowledgeable in poetry, but they’re lovely.”

  “Merci, Monsieur Frampton.”

  “...If you would kindly wait for my editor to return to read through it as well, I will be pleased to discuss whether we can continue. I am not quite certain that this volume will sell as your others have once word of your gender gets out.”

  “I can pay my own printing costs, Monsieur,” Joanna unfolded to a stand, drawing her veil back into place.

  “I will certainly bear that in mind,” he said politely, and there was something marginally warmer in his tone.

  “I will be at the Old Gate Inn until a decision has been reached. Thank you for your time.”

  “The pleasure is mine to be certain. Allow me to see you to the door, my lady.”

  Alone again in the blinding, wearying light of the afternoon sun, Joanna felt her exhaustion reclaim her. Still, she knew the birth of another, new sensation; a thread of hope as thin as the bond that stretched between herself and her husband had taken hold.

  All that she could do now was wait.

  Chapter 42

  There had been no word delivered to her at the inn before that evening, and though the moon was high in the sky by the time Joanna managed to peel herself from bed, she dragged on her traveling attire and set out into the night.

  These paths, she knew; they were as familiar as the lines of her face had become in the centuries since she had been turned. She traveled beyond the city gates and down into the nearby valley, toward mounds and piles of rocks that had once been open farmland.

  Once.

  There was nothing left of it now, save for a few stubborn relics of metal that jutted from the rubble of a former life.

  Relics, and beyond the stones, past the tree line, the graves.

  “Ah, there you are, mamour, ma force….”

  Joanna breathed her greeting quietly before letting her valise slide off her shoulder and lowering to kneel between the two piles of stone. The century and a half since she had been spirited away from Canterbury and the memory of the fires had not been kind to her family’s resting place. The cairns had fallen in on themselves and had become overgrown with dried moss and grasses that jutted between the frosted rubble.

  The queen laid down between Marjolaine and Jakob, gazing up between the boughs overhead to drink in the stars.

  There, nested with her family, Joanna hardly felt the chill in the air. Marjolaine and Jakob were almost as they were — warm and present, and not the ghosts who called out through the fires of her memories.

  Tears pricked at her eyes, and Joanna closed her arms around herself, breathing in the scent of earth.

  “My English has improved, mes amours. You know I learned to read and write?” She laughed quietly, pressing a gloved hand to her face.

  Now that she had laid with them, she was not sure she could move. “I read more than the bible, too… I even write my own books. Ma force, though I have used your name to hide. But I think you need not protect me anymore.”

  Her fingers lowered clutching the front of her pelisse as she stared up at the stars through the tree branches overhead. She felt tightness in the back of her throat again, and with a shuddering inhale, the woman sat up again.

  “I wish….” Her words cracked and her lips trembled, and a strained sob escaped her that she leaned forward to bury against her knees. “I still wish, sometimes, I could have gone with you both. I have been so alone.”

  She gasped against her legs and wrapped her arms tighter around herself. “Je suis tellement désolée. Only, perhaps, I am tired from the journey. You know, I ran much of the way.”

  Lifting her head, Joanna pulled her luggage near her. “I suppose you know.” She sniffed. “I have not been kind about allowing your rest, mes amours.”

  Her fingers slipped into the depths of the luggage, fishing for her leather portfolio to withdraw the rough copy of her collection.

  “It is not so often as it was that I wish it. I know you would not want it so. I suppose I do not, either. It was so difficult to find a reason not to want to join you.”

  Gingerly touching the stone beneath which her daughter was buried, the queen fashioned a small smile between the flow of tears. “I have written poetry for you both… for you, mamour,” she murmured to her Marjolaine, “You liked stories so much, and these rhyme like music on the tongue.”

  Her hand shifted, and she touched its opposite to Jakob’s cairn. “And for you. Though I think you would not have liked them as much, save that they give me joy.”

  Joanna’s gaze softened, and she tilted her head. “Do not be angry at me. My heart died with you both and died again with this curse. And now Dorian has given it cause to beat again. He attends my comfort. I think you would approve. I love him, painfully so. I do not know that he feels the same — if he will — but he was kind.”

  The Frenchwoman wiped her wrist across her eyes, breathing in. She expected no word from the Canterbury publisher that night, so she could stay for a while longer.

  Stay and read her heart to her family.

  Chapter 43

  It had taken eight days before Dorian’s carriage passed through the gates of Canterbury in the streaming light of the midday sun. It had been the longest eight days of his life — eight days that had broken him and built him up again.

  Joanna’s wedding band was a warm weight against his skin where it hung as a pendant on a gold chain hidden beneath the layers of his cravat.

  He was in love with his wife, and he could only hope that he wasn’t too damnably late to prove it to her. No other would ever satisfy him — if he had needed proof of that fact, Diana had given it. He could not live without Joanna. The yawning emptiness of his manor, the absence of her light and life — her song, had taken all the joy and satisfaction from daily living.

  He thought back to the question Lian had asked in London. Could he imagine his eternity now, without her in it? The answer was no. He could not know if she was his eternal song, but he knew that she was his — and anyone seeking to claim her from him would have to do so over his pyre.

  He loved Joanna Vaughn — his Condesa, his wife. And with every turn of the carriage wheels closer to the place she had fled for refuge — with each note of her flutes that grew clearer each passing day, he knew the colder dread of the fear that he had already killed what love she thought she had for him.

  Thought.

  She had been uncertain of her own heart, when she’d made her confession — only afraid of the seed that threatened to bloom. Had he not done everything in his power to choke it before it lived? Despite her later confessions, he had needed to take comfort in reading the words of her poem, over and again.

  … while veiled silence bid her blindness

  and deafness and senselessness, she was made for the Night Sky...

  Joanna’s music was closer now, if quiet for her rest in the daylight. But she was here, somewhere in town, and the Conde craned to listen. There had been a point when he pulled the bell cord to bid his driver to stop, and he had pried open the window to listen more intently before directing the servant toward the town’s southern gate.

  He nearly lost his ability to focus when the sound of her flutes in his blood rang ever louder across the half-made bond that stitched them together.

  So close. But where?

  It was only for the sake of knowing she would need its cover once he found her, that he stayed in the carriage instead of searching on foot — at least until the Old Gate Inn with its white-painted walls came into view with Joanna’s flutes singing like a beacon from within.

  There. She was there.

  He did not stop himself from hopping free of the carriage, a call over his shoulder toward the driver indicating where he intended on heading before he wove between the pedestrians and carriages to close the distance.

  The door smacked harder against the wall than he meant when he threw it open, and
a pinning look upon the innkeeper halted all questions before the man had even had the chance to part his lips to ask.

  “The Condesa de Castile is here. Lady Joanna Vaughn. Where is she?” The question was weighted with all the power of an Elder and nearly made the innkeeper sink for it.

  The man managed a quiet answer, and a tremble of fingers accompanied his fogged expression as he passed the room key the Conde’s way.

  Ignoring the looks that followed his back, Dorian crossed up the stairs to the room that held his Condesa.

  Somehow, he found it in himself to be gentle when he slid the key into the lock, despite his impatience and fears.

  The room was cloaked in darkness; the comforter of the bed hung over the window to block as much light as could be managed, though it shone stubbornly from the edges of the barrier. It was nearly plain otherwise, with white and green walls and bare of much more furniture than a table and a four-poster bed.

  A four-poster where Joanna laid, pressed against the edge of the bed away from the threat of what sunlight managed to creep into her room and toward the wall. In a green day dress with her curls loose, the queen hardly stirred beneath the linens for his entrance. And as he closed the distance to the side of the bed, he found the reason for her lethargy in the red sheen of a burn on her jaw.

  She had been in the sun.

  He rarely had a cause to use the gift he had nursed in his blood in the centuries since he had become an elder. But now, the shadows in the room shifted at his will like a moving fog, rising to blot out what remained of the light in a swirl of darkness.

  Her fingers flexed into the blankets. When Joanna’s eyes cracked open, it was first with the gleam of peridot that revealed her Immortality before she shuttered them and drew her hand against her face.

  “Tu es là?” The question was so quiet, it nearly did not breach the barrier of her fingers.

  “Yes, Cherie,” he murmured, his touch reaching to brush a golden tendril from her forehead. “I am here.” He skimmed the back of his knuckles over the crest of her cheek. “Tell me I am not too late, my love,” he said softly, “And I will spend my eternity earning your forgiveness.”

  The Condesa flinched and did not take her hand from her face. “Un rêve,” she breathed, and it almost sounded like a huff of laughter.

  “It is no dream,” he murmured, “My Lady wife… I should put you over my knees for scaring me so.”

  “It is that dream,” she whispered, and lowered her fingers, finally, to look at him. Her hand shifted to catch his, and in a gentle encouragement guided him nearer to the bed.

  “Then it would appear that we burn with the same flame,” he said quietly, lowering himself onto the edge of the mattress. His gaze and music shifted, troubled. “Why did you run, sweet?”

  She turned, easing toward the center of the mattress to make room for him to join her, and he moved without thought to stretch out beside her.

  “Business….” she whispered, reaching out a hand to guide his arm into a wrap around her as he settled against her back. “Ma regret. I would have been home before I was expected, mon cher. I promised.”

  “You did,” he breathed over her ear. “But you also promised you would be found at Delilah Graham’s side.” His teeth nipped the shell of her ear for a reprimand before he soothed the sting with a touch of his tongue.

  Joanna’s music rippled for his bite and his ministrations, and she clung to him more tightly than before.

  He turned a kiss against her skin. “You will forgive my fear that I had driven you from my side.”

  “Non. You could not have so easily done so…” The woman fell quiet in his arms, her music dropping in a breve, despite the steadiness of her voice. “Lilette did not need me for Lian’s comfort. And then I thought you had no need of me either for the lilies of the Lady Widow.”

  His music betrayed him. A rising swirl of regret and self-loathing for her suffering.

  “I swear to you, by our vows —” He had kept his promises. “I have not lain with another.”

  A soft sound escaped her, a hiccup of a sob, as if she could not keep it inside. She turned her face down into her pillow, but the tremble in her music betrayed her efforts.

  Joanna’s hand squeezed his where she held it against her heart, and when she freed her face to speak, there was only composure in her tone and words.

  “I trust you, Dorian. It was not my intent to flee from you, mon couer. I traveled for me. And for you… I am yours. You must forgive me my weakness for you.”

  He shifted behind her, reaching around his neck to lift free the chain and its precious burden. He freed her ring from its links before he spoke again.

  “Then face me, Cherie,” he whispered, and there was the ghost of a plea in his voice. She had welcomed him with her words, but still hid her face and the soul in her eyes. “Give me your song again.”

  He needed to see her eyes to know — to believe.

  “I may weep,” she warned quietly, but there was only a sheen in her gaze when she rolled over in his hold to turn toward him.

  He let his senses take her in, his gaze brushing over the flawless moonlight beauty of her features before he found and held her eyes.

  “Then I will drink your tears,” he answered softly.

  His music reached out along their thread and brushed against her soul as he touched his forehead to her own, bringing the ring between them.

  “You are lacking one thing only, Cherie.”

  With this ring, I thee wed.

  “Ma alliance,” she whispered, and a swell of flute song blossomed between them as she let him slip it onto her finger where it belonged. Her hand raised, cupping his jaw in her palm, and he could feel the smile in her song, more than he could see it. “I thought it lost forever. Merci, mon couer.”

  He turned his lips into the warmth of her palm as his darkness embraced them in its cocoon.

  “Perhaps it was meant for a sign. What was lost… is found.” He let silence fall between them as she nested her face against the warmth of his neck.

  “I love you, Joanna Vaughn. You have my heart unto death.”

  For a moment, his wife was still; as still as her music which had suddenly quieted across their blood. Against his skin, he felt the hot wetness of the tears she had warned of, and her free hand found an anchor in his coat.

  “Je t’aime, Dorian. I love you and I remain yours.”

  She was his, but he was not yet truly hers. And that was something he fully intended to rectify.

  In the shadows, his darkness rose, and the song of his chosen queen lifted to meet it.

  Chapter 44

  “Plus forte —” Joanna gasped the demand that pierced the shadows hiding their passion from the world of men. “I will not break, mon amour.”

  Harder.

  She needed more. Dorian was being so gentle, so careful — as if he would atone for the pain she had already forgotten now that he had come to her. Now that he was hers.

  He had been careful when he peeled her from her day gown, worshipping anew at her altar, and gentle in his claiming, once he had shed his own raiment — as if she would ever think to deny him.

  But it was not his gentleness that she wanted. It was not his care that would burn like fire to consume to ashes all the shards that remained of her eternal nightmare.

  Her husband ground out a rough sound above her — part groan and part laugh, and she felt him release the hold he kept on his darkness.

  “Thank the gods —” he growled, and she could hear the strain his effort at control had caused in his voice.

  His weight grew heavier on her then, driving into her with enough force to make the bedposts shake.

  “Oui! Dorian!”

  She cried out as white-hot pleasure seared through her — rippling through her music to shudder into the tightness that was drawing him deeper into her core. She reached around him to claw one hand into his back and the other into the anchor of his hips, encouraging the be
ast who was her mate.

  More.

  It was what her heart wanted and what her own darkness craved. The hardness of his body filling hers was sealing a gaping void in her soul — and the heaviness of his chest pressed against her breasts, achingly sweet.

  “Joanna… Cherie — my love….” His words drew her higher, closer to the peak that eluded her and she began to move more urgently beneath him.

  More.

  She wanted more than this with an ache that was shattering her soul. “Dorian… S’il vous plait —"

  Her need was twisting her into knots.

  In an instant, he took her breath — branding her with a kiss that hurtled her to a new place in pleasure — and madness. With skillful strokes of his tongue and teeth against hers, his blood spilled onto her tongue to mingle with her own where he had sliced her flesh with his fangs.

  Sparks flew behind her eyes, and a sweet, heated pleasure rushed through her. It was followed by a tumult of emotion that she scarcely recognized as her own. There was that in the taste him, as sweet and full as an aged wine, that was almost too much, and her chorus lifted in response.

  Joanna’s eyes flew open, only to lock upon the blazing amber of his living beast — its hunger rising to meet her own. His arm slid around her to hold her captive against his body as he moved against her — inside her — and he lowered his head to feather his lips across the damp dew of the skin of her throat.

  “Oui….” she exhaled it. This was what she wanted. To feel him — to hear him again in her blood.

  The groan that escaped him deep in his throat sent thrills chasing through her body, but it had lowered several tones to something of a growl that was as familiar to Joanna now, as the music that had risen in her blood.

  “You are mine, Cherie….” he breathed, and he punctuated his claim with a thrust. Then there was only the warmth of his lips and tongue against her skin, and the sting of fangs sweetened almost immediately for the gift he poured into her in an unrelenting tide.