by Kai Andersen
“And the ring?”
“Though the ring was attuned to her, Lila has no use for it. It was really a part of your quest.” Giselda was suddenly holding the wooden ring. “Take that to the king of the Castle of Light, and he will give you the phoenix, as agreed. After I take you back to the place where we first met, I shall take Lila back to Rikandia, while you make your own journey back home.”
“Maybe the little princess can come back home with us.”
Merry smiled. “And how long do you plan to take her under your wing, young man? A month? A year? Ten years?”
Rodin squared his jaw. “Forever, if need be. Or until she finds someone who can protect her as she ought to be protected.”
“Your heart is in the right place, Rodin, but people should be given the chance to find out their own paths in life.” Before Rodin could come up with more rebuttals, Merry called out, “Come, Lila. We need to be going.”
Lila’s face screwed up. “But I want to play.”
“Someone back home is waiting for you to play with him.”
Lila squealed, and her pretty face lit up. “Jack!” She ran toward Merry. “Home! I want to go home.”
* * * * *
“Something is bothering me, Rodin.”
The rest of the quest had gone as Merry had predicted. After exchanging the ring for the firebird, Merry had “flown” them back to a place a few hundred meters outside of Halcyon. Then she had left them alone and taken Lila home.
“What is it?”
Giselda turned to face him.
It was twilight. After making camp, they had satisfied the hunger that had been gnawing at them since Giselda had made her oblique declaration after leaving the Castle of Light. Now they lay entwined within the tent, with Firelight roosting on a makeshift perch that Rodin had made outside the tent.
Now that she was asked the question, Giselda hesitated to give voice to her thoughts. “It was something that Merry said. Or rather, what she didn’t say. See, in the Castle of Light, the test was the choice between the golden cage and the wooden cage. In the Castle of Night, it was the same way: the golden ring against the wooden ring. I know you probably don’t see it as tests, but they are. To me,” she insisted, when she felt some movement from him that she interpreted as negation. “Remember how you couldn’t move when Lila put on the golden ring? Because it was meant to be my test, not yours. And I don’t mind the tests, really. At first, I was, maybe, mad because Amber’s fate had rested on my decision, only I hadn’t known about it. Now, on hindsight, I’m still mad at that part of it, but I learned a lot about myself from going through the tests. Whether I failed or succeeded, the tests exposed my character so clearly that I couldn’t do anything but face it.
“And I didn’t like what I saw about myself, Rodin. I didn’t. I don’t. That’s why I don’t understand -- how could you love me, the way I am?”
Giselda wasn’t aware of her agitation, of how her voice had risen in tone and volume, until she heard Rodin’s calming voice and felt his soothing hand on her hair. “Is that what’s puzzling you?” he teased lightly. “Easy enough to answer if it is.” His voice turned serious. “You saw yourself clearly for the first time in these three days, but you forget, I’ve had plenty of time to see you, to really see you. And I’ve learned to differentiate between what you appear to be and the real you. What I saw was that beneath the grasping and scheming ways, the real you was there -- golden and shining, just waiting for the dirty husk to be chipped away.”
Tears were falling in earnest now.
He wiped them away with his thumbs, but more just kept on falling. “Perseverant, tenacious, and with a never-give-up attitude that defies adversity. An enormous self-confidence rooted in your self-worth -- and not your title -- that enables you to get what you want.” He paused. “Or die trying.”
The words were familiar, as if she had heard them before. She searched through her mind, and her memories took her to a beautiful sunny morning, where she was ... walking ...
She’s beautiful ... What I like is her tenacity, her perseverance, and her never-give-up attitude in the face of challenges and adversity.
She looked at Rodin in wonder.
Whenever she faces obstacles in the path of her chosen goal, she just pushes through them, goes around them, whatever, to reach her goal. She knows what she wants, and her enormous self-confidence ensures that she’ll get it or die trying.
She didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry, so she did both. “That was ... me. You were talking about me.”
His voice was gentle as he said, “It was you. It was always you.”
“Rodin ...”
She hugged him, her heart about to burst with the fullness of the emotions filling her. His arms were tight around her, so tight she felt smothered but, at the same time, overwhelmingly cherished and loved.
“You should have asked me sooner,” he chided in a gruff voice. “Is that what’s bothering you?”
She laughed in sheer joy. “No.”
“You’re happy.”
“Can’t you tell?” She laughed again.
“I’m glad I can make you that happy.”
His solemn voice cooled down the giddiness that was sweeping through her. “You can.” She leaned her forehead against his. She remembered her violent feelings toward the women Rodin had ever touched or even looked at. “And you can also make me so sad.”
“Never intentionally, I can assure you.” He dropped a kiss on her mouth. “Now what’s bothering you?”
“Oh.” She did some rapid back-thinking. “I was thinking how it looked as though the tests were set up for me. But I didn’t like the way Amber’s and Lila’s fates were dependent on me. Or the fact that they could have been enchanted to provide the needed players for my test.”
Rodin was silent for so long that Giselda started to think that maybe she had thought too much and said the wrong thing. When he spoke, she was startled, for it was not something she had thought he would say.
“What happens when you throw a pebble into the pond?”
She thought a moment. “It -- it sends out ripples in ever-widening circles.”
“Right.” She noted that he was caressing her body in an absentminded manner. “Whatever action we take has an effect on another person or event, though we may not know about it. Sometimes, an action ends with you, and sometimes it reaches out to touch another. If we could see things from a bird’s-eye view, maybe we would see that we are all connected in a chain of events. It just so happened that in this situation, you were in the position to know how your decision directly affected Amber and Lila.
“As to the other ...” He paused and sighed. “I cannot say with any certainty, Giselda. The acts of the gods are something that mortals like us can never understand. But I don’t think that any person would fall afoul of an enchantment just to serve as a player in someone else’s test. These things have a way of coming about in a magical, non-human way. I like to think that the little bit we have played in both castles was but a step in the grand scheme of things. Hopefully, a step in the right direction.”
Giselda suddenly bolted upright. “Didn’t Merry say that she was going to erase our memory? How come I can still remember that Firelight is really Amber, and that Lila had been enchanted in the Castle of Night?”
“I don’t know.” Rodin sat up with her and wrapped his arms around her. His voice was a husky whisper against her ear as he said, “That has worried me, too. I don’t think Merry is the type of person to forget such an important detail as this. I think, though, that whatever her reason, we shouldn’t mention any of it to anyone, not even your father.”
She leaned against him. “I’m glad, though. I don’t want ever to forget what I’ve learned about myself.”
“I doubt that you will. You have changed, Giselda, though you may not be aware of it.”
“I am. I am aware of it. When I think back to the person that I was, I don’t see how you could --”
“You weren’t as bad as you thought yourself to be.”
“Maybe so. But you saw the best in me.” She turned to face him, though their tent didn’t allow much of the waning light to shine in. “And even dared me to be better than I am. In the Castle of Night, I saw what I had become, and it was you who held me back from continuing down that road of destruction. All that I am becoming now is because of you.”
“Damn! I wish I could see you,” he muttered just before his lips touched hers. About a lifetime was spent in renewed mutual exploration and whispered endearments. “I want you again.”
“And again and again.” Her hand slid down his chest in slow motion and caressed his hips before coming forward to cup that part of him that grew hard at her touch. Desire flamed in her veins. She was that easy.
His hand covered hers, stilling her movements. “Is it only passion, Giselda?”
She knew what he was asking and how much it meant to him to hear her answer. “Remember that maid I discovered you with? I wanted to tear out her hair and teeth. I wanted to cut off her limbs and hack her to pieces. The thought of you with any woman made me so sick, the only way I could recover was to remember that you’re here now, with me. So tell me, Rodin, is it only passion?”
“Gods, I hope not. I hope I am not interpreting it wrongly.” The fervent sound of hope rang in his voice and touched a deep core within her.
Her other hand reached up to caress his face. “I want to live where you live, go where you go. I will follow you to the ends of the earth.”
“Giselda --”
A raucous sound from outside the tent stopped him. “Hey, look what we have there!”
A second voice joined the first. “It’s glinting, master. It may be gold.”
Coarse laughter erupted. “Good, good! Gold for one more night of drinking and wenching --”
The voice was drowned out by the loud sound of big things crashing through the narrow path that led from the wide main road to the camp they had made. From the moment Rodin heard the sound, he moved with alacrity and grabbed their clothes, quickly helping Giselda to put on hers before dressing himself.
“Stay here,” he whispered before slipping out of the tent.
“Be careful,” she whispered back, but he was already gone. Her heart in her throat, she found herself clasping her hands together and her mouth muttering words she had never uttered before.
She heard Rodin’s calm, strong voice asking, “Who are you? We don’t have any gold, if that is what you are looking for.”
“No?” A challenging voice answered. “What’s this -- By the gods, it’s not gold!”
“What do you mean, it’s not --”
That voice. There was something familiar about it ...
“Your highness.” It was Rodin’s stilted voice that made the greeting.
Frederick? But it didn’t sound like Frederick --
Her heart gave a leap. She jumped up and ran to the entrance of the tent. “Michael!”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Rodin felt sick straight to his gut.
Why did the bastard have to come now? Couldn’t he have waited until a later time -- say, ten years later -- when Giselda’s feelings for Rodin had solidified? Although she had implied that she cared for him, she’d never said that she did or that she loved him. He could be interpreting her words wrongly --
No. The real reason for this desperate, hopeless feeling that seemed to be lodged permanently in his heart and somewhere lower was the look of utter gladness on Giselda’s face when she had flown out of the tent and hugged him. Then, she had dragged him into the tent, which was where they had been until now.
The deepening gloom had reached them, and they were now in total darkness except for the weak light of the moon, the campfire, and the distant fires of Halcyon. The prince’s two bodyguards were lounging beside the dying campfire, where their conversation was interrupted intermittently with short bursts of raucous laughter.
When he had gone out of the tent, his first thought was that they had been set upon by brigands, notorious thieves who preyed on helpless women or children. Though they were reported to be skilled with a sword, Rodin had no doubt that even if the three before him were to attack him simultaneously, they were no match for him.
He had not recognized the prince’s close retainer, a skilled bodyguard who had first served under the prince’s father, in the non-liveried clothes that he wore. It was only when the prince had appeared that recognition had struck. He would remember the prince’s smarmy face forever because Rodin had longed to rearrange the prince’s features into something that resembled nothing even vaguely human.
All right, stop prevaricating. Was this how he taught his men a true warrior should act?
She doesn’t love me.
He felt the pain of that statement straight to his guts.
It was all wishful thinking on his part. All she probably wanted was just more sex, and she was using his weakness for her to get what she wanted. He remembered that she’d had her hand on his cock before he’d stopped her.
He groaned and dropped his head against the nearest tree.
He remembered her impassioned declaration, how she desired to be free of the trappings of poverty. He recalled her desperation and her determined resolve, and knew that even if she did agree to spend the rest of her life with him willingly, he could never subject her to such a fate again.
In managing the ranch for Frederick, he would be by no means poor, but neither would he be rich, at least not in the style and comfort that Giselda was accustomed to. No, she would be better off with the prince, who could provide her the material security that her soul seemed to crave. She also seemed to have a lot of things to say to the man, judging from the long period of time they had been ensconced in the tent.
Rodin found that he was clenching his fists. His jaw hurt from gritting his teeth.
No, he would never be free of this. His love for Giselda was a burning fire that consumed him every day. But as he loved her, he also wanted her to be happy. If the prince could bring her that happiness, he would not take it away from her.
He would not.
He would not interfere.
No, he would not.
Even if it killed him.
He whirled around sharply and crashed through the underbrush, the loud noise sure to attract lurking predators on the hunt for unwary prey. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered anymore. His life had been over from the moment she had chosen Michael over him.
He bowed under the weight of his grief. He sank to his knees when he reached the riverbank. So lost was he in regrets and what-ifs that when the slight sound of twigs cracking underfoot registered in his brain, it was too late.
Something heavy smashed into the back of his skull, causing his vision to waver and black spots to appear in front of his eyes. He fell to the ground.
His training took over. He twisted to catch the foot of his assailant, hoping to bring the person down with him before he totally lost consciousness.
Heavy blows hammered his body. He grunted and doubled over, relaxing his hold on the boots. The black spots grew larger as his assailants landed another blow to his skull and dragged him somewhere.
Two. There were at least two of them.
His last thought was of Giselda before he hit the water.
Then ...
Darkness.
* * * * *
“You’re so brave, my love, for coming to rescue me,” Prince Michael murmured as his head began its slow descent.
Giselda turned her head at the last possible second, so that his lips landed on her cheek.
“Do you forget our passion so quickly?” He laughed. “My little bride is suddenly shy after an absence of what -- fifteen, twenty days?”
A lifetime. So much had happened, and so many things had changed. She had dragged him into the tent for one reason and one reason only: to talk. To tell him that she had changed her mind about marrying him, and to compensate
him for his troubles. She was sure her father wouldn’t mind paying whatever it was Michael asked for, within reasonable limits, of course.
“Michael, we need to talk.”
“Talk? There’s plenty of time for talk later.”
And it has been thus for the past many minutes. She lost count of the number of times she had started a conversation, only to have him brush it aside with his eager urgings for a physical union.
A scene from her past flashed before her eyes, of the time when she had tried to talk with him, to share with him about Randalin and the important things in her life, and he had brushed it aside. He hadn’t been interested in her, not at all. How had she thought that this marriage would work?
Giselda struggled to be free, but as he was holding her by her arms, it was easy for him to stretch her arms toward her back and anchor them there with one hand. He brushed a finger across her lips and held her chin steady as he kissed her.
His eyes gleamed when he lifted his head. “Still as sweet as ever, I see.” He started to unbutton her blouse with his free hand.
She screamed and thrashed and kicked at his feet to prevent him from undoing all her buttons. She hit him once on his thigh, near his groin.
“You little bitch!”
The slap came as a surprise. Her face stung as she looked at Michael with renewed eyes. Has she ever known him at all?
“Michael, why are you doing this?”
“Why?” He laughed. “I’ve been without a woman for many days because of you, because of this stupid quest your father sent me on! Don’t you think it’s time you show your gratitude in more tangible ways?” His eyes reflected a dark lust as he gazed at her exposed upper body. “I seem to remember once upon a time when you were eager for me to get into your panties.”
“Really?” With scorn in her voice, she called him a liar. “What about those nights of wenching and carousing that I heard about in Halcyon?”
She had not expected him to admit it.
His gaze was calculating as he said, “So you heard about that. If you know, my dear, I was just testing out a theory.”
