HeartMate

by Robin D. Owens

  "The HollyHeir is named Holm. And he considers you a friend. He told me that he gave you leave to call him Holm; you should do it."

  Danith bit her lip. "Tell me about your project."

  T'Ash shrugged, turned, and walked to the door. "I'm funding several Downwind centers for boys, where they can come to be safe, be Tested for Flair, learn skills that will make them more than their fathers."

  She couldn't see his face, and his voice was matter-of-fact, but his shoulders looked stiff. "That's wonderful!"

  He spun to her, his hand on the doorknob, his expression tense. "You really think so."

  She lifted her chin. "Yes. It's a wonderful idea, in keeping with your honorable character."

  He looked startled, shook his head as if to clear it of some notion, and offered his arm. "Are you coming?"

  She smiled a wicked little smile. "With you? I always do." She was pleased when a touch of red appeared under his skin.

  He hated the HealingHall. Hated the sights, and especially hated the smell—acrid herbs and incense to promote cleanliness and healing, wounded bodies, pain.

  All the beds were small and narrow, made of cheap standardmetal, with thin white linens that showed various colored stains. Raw wood tables sat next to the beds with a minimum glowsphere and chipped china scrybowls.

  The place had no charm, hardly any comfort. His Downwind centers would be comfortable, he suddenly decided, no matter what the cost. Downwind scruffs of boys should know the solace of a home.

  He met a small woman with fine blue-black hair and delicate features. She sent him an icy smile. Larkspur was a formidable Healer, a GreatHouse Hawthorn daughter who had fallen in love with and married a Downwind man while her Family had been negotiating her marriage to another House. Her husband had died in a street fight between two noble Families, and Larkspur held a deep bitterness for her class.

  When she turned to Danith, her smile became warm and generous, and was returned in kind. T'Ash knew Danith prized new friends who ignored her Nobility and valued her Flair. He wondered if she understood that this lady was so friendly because of some warped reverse snobbery. He narrowed his eyes and compressed his lips. If Larkspur hurt Danith, she would pay. If anyone hurt Danith, they would pay.

  Only a few of the wounded remained. A couple of the teenagers had agreed to be placed in the Maidens of Saille House of Orphans, some had been released to vanish back into Downwind rubble. Or to try and vanish—T'Ash and the Healers had attached a small findspell to them, to ensure continued care.

  Larkspur looked up at him and sent him a condescending smile. "The boy you have finally decided to see is the third bed on the left. His name is Nightshade, Shade." Her expression became more genuine, she shook her head. "The wounds he suffered in the battle are all healed, except for the cat scratches from Zanthoxyl. I don't know what your Fam had beneath his claws, but I suspect something filthy. Those scratches will scar the boy for life."

  T'Ash grimaced. "Zanth likes to hunt sewer rats and celtaroons."

  "Well, no wonder the scratches became infected. If there was vestiges of celtaroon, it's amazing Shade survived."

  "Indeed," T'Ash said.

  "Please note that Shade has a DepressFlair bracelet that smothers anything but ordinary Flair. He doesn't like it, but he became violent and we had to leave it on."

  "Not surprising."

  Larkspur raised fine, arched brows at him. "What's not surprising?"

  "That he doesn't like the DepressFlair cuff, who would? That he's violent, that should be expected, too."

  Anger stirred in her eyes. "Just because he's Downwind—"

  "The scru—the boy, Shade is one of a perverted triad. I'm sure you noticed the glisten-coated, filed teeth. He fought me and threatened Danith. Don't tell me about Downwind youths. I know. Some rise above their background."

  "Like you?" Her tone was as cutting as her eyes.

  "Larkspur!" Danith protested.

  T'Ash reached out and squeezed her hand but kept his gaze on Larkspur. "Like your husband, Ethyn Collinson. He was a good man with a Flair for Healing. I knew him slightly Downwind. His loss is felt, especially in these times."

  Danith lifted her chin. "Men bridging Downwind and Noble are sorely needed."

  Larkspur looked away. She touched Danith on the shoulder. "I have a small problem for you." Her voice sounded thick. "Or, rather, it has been a small problem for the HealingHall. It seems Zanthoxyl smuggled a kitten into the building for one of our patients. The boy, Antenn Moss, is doing fine, but I'm not sure about the little cat. Antenn hides it from us, and I think you should look at the kitten."

  Danith brightened. Her Flair nearly glowed around her. T'Ash saw her strong pink aura clearly. The sight banished all his irritation. He lifted her hand and kissed it with all the caring he was capable of, then released her fingers.

  Danith smiled and stroked his cheek.

  Larkspur looked astounded, then drew Danith away.

  T'Ash felt a prickle on his neck and turned to face a hate-filled stare from the boy, Shade. T'Ash squared his shoulders and walked over to confront the teenager. He looked to be a year or two younger than the triad-leader of the gang, but resembled him closely. Trouble.

  "You T'Ash." Shade's lip curled in contempt.

  "Yes."

  "You should be dead. My triad-brother, Slash, should have killed. I should have killed. Me or Nettle will kill." He narrowed his eyes. "You not fair. Not honorable GreatLord."

  The words stabbed T'Ash. Right on target. He struggled against anger, forced himself not to reply in short Downwind words.

  "You outnumbered us, tracking and attacking a young noble friend of mine. You battled my Fam. You threatened my HeartMate."

  The boy's eyes widened at that, and he glanced at Danith. T'Ash cursed his tongue and the mistake he'd made. He leaned over the bed and oozed intimidation. "Neither you nor your triad-brother will hurt what is mine."

  Shade glared at him. His fist with the armband locking his Flair clutched the bedclothes. T'Ash was sure they were the only bedcoverings the boy had ever slept in.

  "You think you good. Not me." Sneering, he jerked his chin up. "You stay Downwind, you nothing. You got out."

  Shade continued. "You know Nobles, your friends." He made the word a blasphemy. "You kill my brother, so you die. I take your rep." His gaze shifted to Danith, stooping over another bed, muttering soft phrases, smiling at another boy.

  "But first me and Nettle take pretty lady. You kill Slash, triad-brother, we kill her. After play."

  His gaze fastened on Danith's breasts, outlined against her tunic as she held a kitten eye level, bathing it in healing light. Her face was soft with tenderness.

  "You have pretty lady, but you no good." Shade smiled viciously, showing broken teeth and filed incisors. "We'll get pretty lady. Take her. Make ours."

  Cold warning hit T'Ash's stomach. He grabbed the boy's DepressFlair manacle tightly. He melded the metal inside the soft covering together. With all his powerful Flair, he chanted a chaining spell, binding it to the cuff. The energy made Shade stiffen, arch off the bed. No one would be able to remove the cuff except T'Ash.

  "You cannot take the cuff off. You cannot hurt my woman." He'd make sure Danith had additional protection that would keep her from any harm. "You dare, and I will make sure you die slowly, screaming."

  Redoubled hatred mixed with defeat in Shade's glare. He bared his teeth again, rubbed the wrist around the cuff with his other hand. "You big. You use force. You just like me."

  "T'Ash?" Danith touched his shoulder.

  "This boy's not worth saving," T'Ash gritted out.

  She looked shocked. The pleasurable glow surrounding her disappeared, raising T'Ash's anger. He blamed the change in her on Shade. "Let's go. I've summoned my glider and it waits outside the main entrance. I'll take you home." His home.

  She stilled him, touched his cheek. He felt the residue of loving healing in the tips of her fingers and he warmed.
When he looked into her eyes, he saw that she meant him to be soothed by the last effects of her power. She was growing very knowledgeable about the uses of her Flair.

  Then she dropped her gaze and a nervous smile came and went on her lips. "I'm due in SweetGrass Grove. The Clovers are having a party in my honor to celebrate my ascent to the Nobility. It's a wonderful gesture for them. Please, come."

  "No," T'Ash said.

  They left the hospital with courteous farewells to Larkspur, then lapsed into silence.

  T'Ash mulled over the boy's words that had wounded him, making him doubt himself, as usual. The words had resonated with truth.

  Once in his glider, Danith glanced at him. "T'Ash?"

  "Yes?"

  "You are invited, also." She laid a hand on his thigh. "Please come with me."

  The offer pulled him from his brooding about Shade. He stiffened and frowned; he'd wanted her in his home, at last.

  "That boy disturbed you. Is it because you think he reminds you of yourself when you were young?" she said softly.

  T'Ash shivered at her insight. "I don't want to talk about—"

  She stared at him with heated green eyes with golden specks. "Of course you don't. You never do. How are we to become closer if you never want to speak to me about yourself and your past?"

  HeartBond! Then he would have her forever, and his old failings would not matter to her.

  She sighed. "You were never like that boy, back there. You may have been tough, and ruthless sometimes, and—" She took a breath. "I sense in him a viciousness that never lived in you."

  "Because I got out of Downwind."

  "Really? I don't think so. Everyone knows the Nobility has bred for Flair, and certain qualities. Perhaps true cruelty and sadism is beyond you, bred from you," she mused.

  He strangled on a disbelieving noise. The flesh-eating firespell Flametree had crafted, and the use Rue had put it to made a mockery of that theory.

  "Tell me of your boyhood," she whispered, not looking at him.

  He almost dared, but didn't. "No."

  She sighed again. "Very well." She turned her head and glanced out the curving forceglass window of the glider.

  He thought of something else. "You need to stop by your house for food for this picnic?" He was beginning to learn common customs as practiced by Danith and the Clovers. "Perhaps you would like to take something from the T'Ash chef, stored in no-time."

  She smiled. "The Lady forfend that I raid your cocoa mousse. Zanth would never forgive me."

  "He would just show up at the Clovers and eat it anyway. He will probably be there, won't he, for the free food?"

  "Probably. Will you come with me?"

  "Will you come with me to the FirstFamilies Council, tomorrow afternoon?"

  "A NobleCouncil is not a picnic."

  "They are both stressful, for each of us."

  Danith worried her lip with her teeth.

  "I'll stop at your house and you can get food, then I'll drop you off at the picnic." He kept his tone even.

  She sent him a glance. "Please?"

  "No."

  Her shoulders curved and she angled herself away from him. T'Ash cursed inwardly but refused to budge on the issue.

  She continued to run away from her responsibilities as his mate.

  Despite the feelings between them, she refused to let him initiate the HeartBond.

  She wouldn't marry him.

  It was getting worse. At first, when he'd taken Danith as his lover, he'd thought that nothing would prevent them from becoming HeartMates. He thought that he'd be able to convince her to move to T'Ash Residence, slough off the Clovers, and become his bride. Hadn't he proven how much he cared for her by fighting for her—both physically and emotionally?

  She'd been so lost and confused. She'd asked for time.

  And he'd given her time.

  And now she was growing away from him, not toward him. She was finding her feet in her new profession, mastering her Flair with admirable ease. She was combining her very different past life with her present and future in a way he had never been able to reconcile his own. He envied her that.

  And the Clovers were still her Family, not he and Zanth.

  He and Zanth were only outsiders in her life, just as they had always been outsiders in everyone else's. He was only her gallant, her lover. Zanth was only another pet.

  T'Ash didn't think he could bear it.

  He waited in the glider while she hurried into her home to get her food offering. He glanced at the little house with yearning. His Residence seemed colder and emptier and darker every time he stepped inside it. Only Danith made it habitable.

  If she wouldn't stay with him, she needed more protection. Closing his eyes, he searched his Residence vault for a protection stone he'd made for himself on the vengeance stalk. After his reinstatement, he'd drained the stone of any detrimental emotions. He found it, summoned it.

  A tiger's-eye. He'd forgotten. How appropriate. He caressed the chain with a finger and uttered the brilliance spell.

  Danith ran out of her door, a pan in her hands. She threw a powerful Guarding Word to surround and shield her house, a measure of her new skill with Flair.

  She'd changed into an amber gown. She looked wonderful—curvaceous and generous, bright and optimistic and brimming with life. He stared at her, memorizing her appearance, knowing his black brooding made her withdraw from him.

  When she came near, the glider door slid open and she slipped in. Now he saw that her cheer merely masked an underlying strain. He was doing this to her, making her sad, and nervous, and unsure of herself just when she should be experiencing the happiest moments of her life.

  They didn't speak as he powered the vehicle to full townglide and guided it to the public park where the Clovers gathered for their picnic.

  She looked at him once more, with pleading in her eyes.

  "One last gift," he said, placing the chain and tiger's-eye over her head. It fell between her breasts, complementing the gown.

  He wanted to kiss her, take her, keep her forever.

  He tried a smile. She stared at him.

  "Go." He waved. "Have fun."

  "Please join us, T'Ash—"

  He tried another smile; from her expression, it was no more successful. "I can't. They are not for me. They don't even like me."

  She put a hand on his shoulder, and he shuddered at her touch, wanting it to sink into his very bones so he could remember it forever. "They don't know you yet. They're really very good people."

  He didn't dare cover her hand with his own, didn't dare touch her. "I'm sure they are. Go, Danith."

  She frowned at him. A chorus outside the glider called her name. She looked to the Clovers, then back to him. With a quick brush of her lips against his, she left. "Later," she said.

  The glider door slid shut softly. T'Ash clenched his hands around the guide ball. "I'm not a good person," he muttered.

  A laughing group immediately converged around Danith, petting her, joking with her, teasing her, and peering into her food dish. Acting like they loved her.

  And she laughed in return.

  She never laughed with him, not like that, though she made him laugh.

  He looked at her, dancing an impromptu jig with Mitchella. If she bonded as HeartMate with him, he would be forcing her into high society and rituals, all the rules a GreatHouse demanded, all the laws a GreatLady must follow. And all she would get in return was him.

  She would be much better off without him.

  She deserved a true Noble, a man as sterling in character as she herself. If he let her go, she could marry a Nobleman when she was ready, a man who would not have any doubts about his background or his character or his honor.

  A scream shattered the air.

  A boy ran toward Danith, knife held high. The sun shone on both the raised dagger and his teeth bared by grimacing feral lips.

  Danith and the Clovers stood, stunned.

  T
'Ash 'ported from the glider.

  Nettle moved in jerky strides, then leaped at Danith.

  T'Ash's blaser cut him down midstride.

  They stared at him in shocked silence, at the dead Downwind scruff huddled at his feet. Horror radiated from them, the common Clovers.

  The men frowned, as if knowing that they should do something, but at a loss.

  T'Ash set his jaw and flung the boy to Downwind DeathGrove. A collective gasp came from the gaily clad Clovers.

  He glanced down at himself, dressed in black and ash brown, as usual. Utilitarian trous and shirt, without even a hint of embroidery at his cuffs, scuffed boots.

  He could not look like them. He could not act like them. He would never be naive and easy like them.

  The children recovered quickly enough, rushing to Danith, high, piping voices full of questions. They surrounded her, plucking at her gown.

  Staring at T'Ash, she tried to detach them. One who was hopping about in excitement fell and Danith's gaze was pulled from T'Ash as she bent down to straighten the toddler and brush him off.

  Claif joined her and scooped up a child, pointedly ignoring T'Ash. With a few gestures and casual words, he turned the others' attention away from T'Ash and drew them back into the grove.

  Danith could marry into the Clovers, marry Claif, the outgoing, easy sort of man she had said she wanted.

  She had never said she wanted to marry T'Ash.

  He only brought her trouble and pain, and nearly got her killed.

  Danith had suffered life-threatening danger. She had been a woman surrounded by blasers. And all because of her association with him.

  She deserved someone better. She was his HeartMate, but she could never love the real T'Ash. No one could love him now. Only the HeartBond would make her love him.

  He had been balancing on the thin edge of restraint for two weeks and now knew he could not spend one more night with her without performing the HeartBond. And he was incapable of binding them together forever without her consent.

  He had to let her go.

  She would have a better life without him.

  Blood drained from him. Pressure built at the back of his eyes. His heart lay like a cold, hard lump inside him. Now, after his decision to let her go, it was too painful to watch her and he set the glider in motion, not looking back.