Unlaced

by Jaci Burton

  He makes you look fat.

  Don’t be obvious. For the first time, Meg met it head-on. Bitch.

  Utter silence.

  The only warning was the slither of laces. With a vicious jerk they tightened, so brutally all the air whooshed out of Meg on a pained grunt.

  “Shit!”

  Two strides and John loomed over her. He held up the long dagger he carried, so close to Meg’s nose that her eyes crossed. “Try that again,” he growled, “and I’ll cut her loose. As many times as it takes.” Glaring, he lowered the blade until the tip rested against the center ruby. “I’m bigger, stronger, faster. Understand?”

  The laces loosened, and suddenly, Meg could breathe again. “That wasn’t too bad,” she wheezed, her hands on her knees.

  “All we did was surprise it.” John turned to lock the door. “It overreacted. It knows it’s fighting for its life.”

  “Her,” said Meg, irritated. “A sorceress.”

  John scowled. “You see?” he said. “There are three of us in here.” He pointed to the corset with the dagger. “And one’s a demon.”

  “Demons are stupid,” said Meg. “They come when you call them. Like dogs.”

  Like men.

  Meg flicked a furtive glance around the room.

  Nothing to use as a weapon.

  She and John had worked together to remove almost every object, including her crystal vase, her comb, and her brush. All that was left was the bed, the dresser, and a man the size of a house.

  Oh. And the mirror.

  He’d been following her gaze. “Dammit, I forgot.” As if she’d spoken her thought aloud, John lifted the mirror down from the wall. Swiftly, he opened the door and carried it into the sitting room. He was back before Meg could move, the door locked behind him.

  He even grinned a little, the insufferable . . .

  Meg squeezed her eyes shut. Merciful Sister, give me strength.

  She moistened her lips. “Remember what we agreed. Don’t touch me. The Sister only knows what it might do.” Putting her hands on her hips, she brushed her thumbs over the opened seams. Was it her imagination or had they split another half-inch?

  John picked up the small illuminated hymnal from the end of the bed and turned to the page she’d marked. “This is beautiful,” he said, his big fingers gentle on the yellowed pages, the dagger gleaming in the other fist.

  Meg drew a steadying breath. “It was my mother’s.”

  She left you, too.

  She was still coping with that one when John began. “From ‘The Bridal Gift of the Sister,’ Verse one: Courage is the gift of the Brother . . .”

  He looked up. “Come on, Meggie love. Say it. Courage is the gift of the Brother . . . ”

  Eleven

  “But love . . . love is the gift of the Sister,” said Meg, obediently enough. Her throat was lined with sand. She coughed. “I need a drink of water.”

  “No,” John said cruelly. “Keep going. On the night They were wed . . . ”

  Bastard. What do you care? You ran away.

  “On the night They were wed, the Sister knelt before Him—Brother, Husband, Lord.” He should be pleased with that. She’d got it out in a single breath.

  “Wait,” he said suddenly. “I think you should do it. Kneel.”

  “What?” Meg choked.

  “Do you love me, Meggie?” Gods, his dark gaze was dark enough, deep enough to drown in. The rush of anger floundered and spun in her head.

  Meg opened her mouth. Yes. Yes, I do. Instead, all that emerged was a low-pitched growl. This time, she pinched the tender flesh of her inner thigh, using the bite of the pain to drop to her knees.

  Get his knife and all pain ends.

  Her tongue flapped around, too big for her mouth. “ ‘True l-love is My gift to You, B-beloved,’ the Sister said. John, it hurts.”

  “Hurts? How?”

  “The words. Don’t make me say the words.” Tears streamed down her face. “They’re not true.” She shuffled a little closer on her knees, her eyes on the gleaming blade, so sharp it had cut her laces like butter.

  “How can they not be true?”

  “It’s all self-interest, comfort, habit.” Meg tossed her head. “Tedium.” She spat the last word, her mouth twisting in a bitter ugly shape.

  “Getting desperate, are we?” said John with a lift of the brows. “Trust me, Meggie love, life with you will never be tedious.”

  A giggle bubbled out of her, underpinned with a snarl of rage. A stitch released, one on each side. Meg clutched her head. “I’m going mad.”

  “No, you’re not, you’ve never been more sane. Second verse, sweetheart. Go on, I’ll start you off. She touched Her starry eyes. She said, ‘True love sees what is . . . ’ ”

  It was all hollow, a sham, he knew that. Hell, what did it matter? “She touched Her starry eyes. She said, ‘True l-love sees what is—the good, the bad, and all that is between. Because, because—’ ”

  Shit, swallowing razors would be easier. Longingly, Meg gazed at the knife in John’s fist. Only an arm’s length now.

  Despair swamped her, a tide of freezing dark. Love didn’t exist. He’d gone away, left her looking like the fool she was.

  “You can do it,” he was saying. “I know this bit’s hard, but you can do it. Meggie.”

  Whimpering, she struggled. There must be a reason he wanted her to say these stupid verses, but she could no longer recall what it was. Sister, she was hard put to remember her own name!

  Oh yes. It swam up out of the murk. She was . . . Meg. Margaret May Mackie. No one could say Meg Mackie didn’t finish what she started. She hauled in a breath.

  “Because love l-loves. Aaargh!” She fell face forward on the floor, writhing, her throat and mouth burning as if she’d gargled with acid.

  He didn’t touch her, the cold bastard. “Look what you did, Meggie!” His voice stung like a lash. “Sit up and look!”

  Groaning, she pushed herself upright. There was a sprinkle of dust on her hip, her thigh, black dust. Next to the seam, now open another inch, a small section of black velvet had unraveled. Disintegrated.

  For a split-second, her head cleared. Sweet Sister, it was working! She’d been right!

  The eldritch scream of rage rattled her bones. Spots danced and spun before her eyes. They began to coalesce. Meg swayed.

  “Don’t faint, Meggie. Hang on, love. Hang on.” A direct order, she thought muzzily. In his commander’s voice. “Verse three: The Sister offered Her wrists . . .”

  Never free again. A concubine, helpless. Property.

  Gods, she’d worked so hard, saved every spare coin. An image flashed behind her eyelids. John, breaking open her strong box, his long fingers sifting through her savings, his face avid.

  Greedy bastard. Stealing. All that effort wasted, come to nothing! NOTHING!

  Meg set her teeth. “The Sister offered Her wrists and cruel ropes appeared, chafing Her silky skin. ‘True l-love can bear . . . anything, endure . . . anything.’ ”

  Her spine was on fire, the corset flexing threateningly against her ribs like a living, breathing creature.

  John pointed with the blade. “Don’t,” he growled.

  The constriction eased, but as if to compensate, nausea roiled through Meg’s stomach, slow, thick, and disabling. Even her bones ached. She had to grind the words out, one by one, with desperate gulps for air in between. “Love . . . goes on . . . hoping to the edge . . . edge of forever. It . . . never . . .”

  She had to break off to dry retch. Cold sweat broke out on her brow, dripped into her eyes. Gods, this was dissolution, nerve by nerve, cell by cell. She’d never survive it. But at least it was purely a physical attack. Between the waves of pain, her mind was her own again. If she hadn’t hurt so much, she would have been triumphant. She could feel the demon’s terror and confusion, taste the foul stench of its desperation. It was utterly determined on victory, its hatred a palpable force. Defeat wasn’t possible. No male c
ould be permitted to defy the demon and survive—even if the cost of victory was an eternity pinned like an insect beneath the thumb of the Dark Lord.

  Fuck it, Meg felt much the same. If she was going down, the demon was going with her, one syllable at a time. Meg wrapped both arms around her middle. I’ve got you now, parasite. Listen and die.

  “It . . . never . . . gives up. Because . . .” Pause for breath. Her vision was tinged with red. “Love . . . loves.”

  The seam on the left ripped two inches, accompanied by shrill screams that made the bones in her skull feel as brittle as glass. Surely John could hear them? Meg cranked one eye open.

  Gods, he was overwhelming, so dark and purposeful! So magnificently solid. He stood with his legs spread, the hymnal in one hand, dagger in the other. Intensity rolled off him in waves. He was vibrating with the force of his concentration, his eyes as black as pitch, every muscle tense and ready.

  “Don’t stop, Meggie. Don’t give the bitch a chance, go on.”

  “Verse four,” she gasped. “The Sister . . . touched . . . Her sweet breast.” Meg pressed a shaking palm to her chest, feeling her heart flutter like a caged bird. “She said—” She broke off.

  John’s voice was rumbling along beneath hers, giving the words a different emphasis from the one she was accustomed to. They sounded sonorous, deeply significant, delivered in that rich bass baritone.

  They said the next line together, slightly out of time, their voices overlapping, because Meg was still breathing in great heaving gasps, as if she’d been running. “ ‘True love . . . is . . . is patient and kind. It seeks not . . . to alter the . . . beloved.’ ”

  She met John’s eyes. “ ‘Because love loves.’ ”

  In the ensuing silence, all she could hear was her own rasping breath and thundering heart. From somewhere a long way off, a small thin voice wailed with rage and grief. More black dust drifted to the floor.

  “Last verse,” said John softly. “Finish it, Meggie love. Put the demon out of its misery.”

  Meg said, “Reaching out, She took His hand and placed it upon Her head.” John tossed the hymnal onto the bed. Meg grasped his hand and bowed her head beneath it. His fingers trembled on her hair.

  She’d expected a last-ditch defense, but when it came, it was shockingly strong. A mailed fist closed over her heart, squeezing and crushing. “J-John,” she managed. Gods, it was excruciating! Her lips went numb. “L-love . . . love . . . you.”

  “ ‘Faith is mighty,’ ” he said. He dropped to his knees before her and cradled her cheek in his rough palm. “Stay with me, Meggie.”

  “ ‘Hope is great.’ ” Meg mouthed the words against John’s lips, his breath puffing warm against her chin as he said them with her. “ ‘But when . . . all else is . . . gone—sense and . . .’ ” The right-hand seam of the corset split, almost the whole way to the top. The crushing pressure eased.

  “ ‘. . . sense and knowledge, and life itself . . .’ ” Meg’s voice meshed with John’s. A woman’s voice keened, sustained on a long wavering, howling note, as if her very soul was tearing loose. A hot, ashy wind swirled around the chamber. The bed hangings flapped and the lamp rocked.

  “ ‘True Love alone remains,’ ” they said in chorus.

  “Me,” gasped Meg. “I can—Let me.”

  John pressed a kiss to her forehead and pulled back to watch her face. He was smiling, the tattoo shining a deep blue. Never had she loved him more.

  “Rising, She clasped the Brother to Her breast and His tears dampened Her hair.” With each successive word, speech grew easier and Meg’s voice rose. By the time she reached the final line, they could probably hear her in the farthest pavilion. “ ‘Because love . . . LOVES!’ ”

  The wind dropped. Meg’s shout echoed, bouncing off the walls. John froze, listening, the blade poised.

  She’d expected a bone-rattling shriek of fury. What she got was a prolonged grating rasp of a noise, horrible and pathetic at once. A death rattle.

  A heartbeat later the corset dissolved, falling about Meg’s feet in a drifting rain of silky black particles. The rubies tumbled to the floor, five tinkling glassy impacts, each separate and distinct.

  Meg gazed at them in dismay. Gods, how were they supposed to destroy rubies? She leaned forward to touch, but a brawny arm blocked the way.

  “Wait,” he said.

  The stones were such an arterial red. Sergeant Rhiomard had been right about them. Heartsblood rubies. Meg wrinkled her nose. They even smelled like blood, that distinctive coppery-sweet odor—

  She blinked. Five large drops of blood lay gleaming on the floor in a perfect semicircle.

  “Where do you keep your cleaning supplies?’ asked John.

  “Downstairs, but I have . . .” Naked, Meg stumbled to the old dresser and rummaged in the bottom drawer. “Here.” She tossed him an old shift, threadbare with many washings. “This do?”

  John’s lips pulled back from his teeth in a wild grin. “Oh yes.” Effortlessly, he ripped the garment in two and wiped up the blood in a couple of sweeps. Then he walked away, into the other room. “Don’t move. Back in a minute.”

  Meg shook herself out of her daze, reaching the sitting room door in time to see him shrug on a robe and disappear down the passage.

  She was standing in the same place when he returned, her mind a pleasant blank, her knees still trembling. John was carrying a dust-pan and brush. “What did you do with it?” she asked.

  John’s grin grew positively feral. “Tossed it down the privy.” He advanced on the drift of black dust, brush and pan at the ready.

  Though Meg had fallen almost immediately into an exhausted sleep, it was a restless, uneasy slumber. When she thrashed on the pillow, her brow creased and her lips tight with remembered pain, John had murmured to her, foolish words he hadn’t realized he even remembered, loving nonsense. He’d kissed and cuddled and soothed until she dropped off again, smiling, her head on his shoulder where she belonged.

  The hours tiptoed past. Finally, well after Sistersrise, a long sigh whispered out of her and she relaxed completely, turning toward him and curving her body into the shelter of his waiting arms, one palm laid squarely over his heart. Whether it was in supplication or ownership, he didn’t know and he didn’t care. Either or both were fine with him.

  Thank the gods for the moonlight that streamed in the open window, the Sister bathing the bed in her silvery-blue. It meant he could lie and watch Meg sleep, his fingertips drifting across warm, silky skin—her shoulder, the tender swell of her breast, the complex line of her collarbone—marveling at the miracle that was his Steady Meggie.

  What a warrior she was! He’d seldom seen anything to equal it for cold-blooded courage. Gooseflesh paraded all down John’s spine and the arm around her flexed. In this quiet bed, with dawn slowly brightening the room, he could admit to himself how frightened he’d been.

  Keeping his distance was the hardest thing he’d ever done, standing with the book in one hand and a naked blade in the other, two feet away. Every cell in his body had screamed at him to scoop her up and get her to safety. Now, now, now!

  Gods, the alien expressions that had flitted across her face, other features swimming beneath her fair, freckled beauty. At times, he’d even been able to discern a narrower jaw and thinner nose, dark eyes veiled with crimson.

  John shivered. He pressed his mouth to Meg’s shoulder, inhaling again and again, until the shudders eased.

  In the end, he’d had to trust to her judgment and her strength. There’d been no other way. For either of them.

  His heart gave a great bound, so violent he had to press his palm over Meggie’s hand on his chest. He buried his nose in her hair, breathing in painful open-mouthed gulps.

  Shit, it was over!

  All of it.

  The stinking galley, the agony of slavery, of knowing she was lost to him forever. The impotent fury that had burned behind his breastbone like a bonfire, his life wrenched from his co
ntrol.

  All gone.

  He’d barely had time to recover from the dizzying joy of finding her again, his Meggie, and the fucking corset—

  Shit, shit, shit!

  He was shaking again, so hard the whole bed vibrated with it. John’s vision blurred, and when he rubbed his eyes, hot salty drops splashed down, beading on the inner curve of Meg’s sweet breast. Something hard and crusted broke inside him.

  He slid down, wrapping his arms around her the way a child hugged a furrybear toy. Desperately, he pressed his face into soft breastflesh, willing the tears away. He’d almost succeeded when her fingers moved in his hair and a sleepy voice murmured, “Sshh, love. It’s all right. I’ve got you.”

  For a second, he hesitated. Fuck, he was safe, safe. He could let go and know he was held. Loved. They had a future together, a lifetime, he and his Steady Meggie.

  John surrendered to the storm, all the rage and grief and fear draining out of him in a great flood, while Meg lay in silence and stroked his shoulders, over and over. His soul relaxed into the comfort of that touch, taking shelter in the shining light of her the way he’d done as a boy. How he’d missed her!

  It was probably fortunate such a degree of intensity couldn’t last long. He raised his head and cleared his throat. “Your breasts are all wet. Sorry.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Meg tranquilly, rubbing the back of his neck.

  There was his favorite spray of freckles, all shiny with tears. John licked the salty moisture away. He was very thorough.

  “Mmm.” Meg wriggled, her eyes half-closing with pleasure.

  “Meggie?”

  “Mmm?”

  “Put your hands over your head.”

  “Like this?” She lifted her arms in a sinuous stretch, gazing at him from under dark gold lashes. “Why?” Her lips twitched.

  John took a velvety nipple between his lips and tugged, very gently. Releasing it, he blew a stream of warm air and watched it ruche into a crinkled bud, begging for more. “This,” he said with a satisfaction that went bone-deep, “is going to take a very long time.”