by Knox, Kim
So where the hell was the Lady Annaliese Gaute?
Vara arched her spine, air rushing into her body in a raw heave. She rolled onto her side and wretched. “He ate me.” Her hand gripped her mouth and she crushed her eyes shut. She breathed in and out and her whitened fingers eased back from her face. “That bastard started to eat me while I was still alive.”
“Yes.”
Vara stared at him. “You saw.”
He winced and rubbed at his throat. “I felt.” He sank back into the soft padding of the chair. “Annaliese did this. She put you in her body.”
Vara sat up. “What? Why? Did she end up back at the temple?” She wiped at her mouth. “She wanted to die?”
“No.” Kaede pushed himself onto his feet and paced the floor. He stopped at the end of the circle. With a single Word and a wave of his hand, the ash spiralled up and vanished. He twisted his back against the bite of the Word in his flesh. “If she wanted to die, there are noxious plants in her garden. No, what she did took real power and purpose.”
“This makes no sense. Tarou is expecting something from her, but she’s taken herself out of her own body and put me in it.” Vara gave a sour laugh. “And how odd is that to say?”
Kaede snorted. “I didn’t suspect a thing about her. She didn’t feel like a witch.” He ran his hands through his hair, his fingers curling tight. What was he missing? “Annaliese Gaute was a witch…but you said there was no magic in your land.”
“No. Nothing like…” She waved a hand to where he had drawn the ash circle. “There never has been.”
“So we make the assumption that she found her power here.”
“What does a witch need, Kaede?”
“Bodies.” He couldn’t meet her eye. He wasn’t proud of what he did. At least he wasn’t the same as his ancestors, who’d enjoyed the process of breaking down the corpses themselves, dismembering, draining blood and fat. He left that job to the Words. “One a week to maintain the protecting spells around the Lord Tarou and a spare for my own use.” He caught her expression. “It’s sympathetic magic. I use sweat for movement, powdered eyeballs for seeing or finding—”
“Enough, Kaede please.” She held up her hand. “I have a strong stomach, but not for this.” A wry smile cut her mouth. “Not after I’ve just been eaten.” She poured tea into the little cup and sipped it. “So you use bodies. The Words. Where do they come from?”
He shrugged. “My mother taught me, and her father taught her. Our knowledge has passed from parent to child for centuries.” He remembered sitting at the table in the cellars in the lodge and in the larger laboratory at the palace as his mother poured over the heavy tome passed down through the generations.
Kaede closed his eyes and stopped himself from groaning. He needed to sleep, because he was a fool. “Her book. She has to have a book.” He glanced out of the window. The morning was moving on. He let out a slow breath and turned back to his bag. It was dangerous, but he would have to risk another weaving.
He picked up the blackened crown of the skull and tipped more black powder into it. With a pop, it ignited. Soft, warm ash coated his fingers and he redrew his circle.
“What are you doing?”
He didn’t look up, murmuring the protecting Words until the circle was complete. He straightened. “We have to search for her book. Something this precious she would’ve hidden. This is the quickest way to find it.”
He dropped his ingredients in the leather pouch, mixing powdered eyeball, blood, bone and a trickle of his own sweat. Holding a yellowed finger bone in his teeth, he adjusted the silver hood around his face and stepped over the line of ash.
Heat flared and energy surged through his veins.
Kaede spat out the bone. It floated in the air before him and he heard Vara gasp. He ignored her. He had to finish the weaving with no distractions. He painted the air with a throbbing tangle of liquid gold and poured more of his Words into the pulsing web. Throwing the powder, he knotted the weave with the binding Words.
The finger bone quivered, twisting, searching. It shot away from him. Arrowing around the room, it had Vara shrinking back onto her couch. The bone shot into the small garden and disappeared into the undergrowth. Kaede’s eyes narrowed and his Words changed. He winced against the pain as they drew their ingredients from him. The golden web shifted, altered its pattern.
There was a faint rustle as the plants parted, revealing rich black earth. Soil piled up and a stone lifted, hovered. A moment later, a soft, leather-bound book flopped onto the stone path.
Kaede dropped the stone back into its place and urged the soil and plants to surge over the hole. He retraced the spider-thin weaving of gold, drawing it from the air. The bone returned to him, dropping into his palm.
His knees buckled, but he waved Vara away. “Leave me. Don’t step into the circle.” He wiped the sweat from his face and willed the pain from his bones, his flesh. He was stupid to forget the price of his craft.
He stepped out of the circle and flopped onto the couch beside Vara.
“Are you all right?”
“I got carried away,” he muttered, trembling fingers pushing back his thin hood. “Forgot that Words need to feed. And if I change the weave, they feed on me.” He met Vara’s horrified gaze and made a smile lift his mouth. “Get me the book? Please?”
She blinked. “The book. Yes.”
Vara returned with the book, wiping at the soil-stained thin hide of its cover. Kaede ran his hand over the Word-carved surface and a surge of power rushed against his palm.
Cautious, he opened the cover. Neat stitching secured the skin to the thin ebony board. The Lady Annaliese had been busy. He’d worked with cured human skin long enough to recognise it under his fingertips. Annaliese’s neat script covered the first page, listing her first attempts at creating the book to secure her Words. He turned to the back of the fat book.
Word formulae ran side by side with diary entries and experiments. He scanned them quickly, a knot tightening in his gut as he read on. She’d been a quick study, too quick. Her success was terrifying.
“What is it?” Vara asked.
Was his horror so obvious? “Annaliese was clever and powerful.” He skirted one weaving, scared to read it. His memory was too sharp; once read, never forgotten. And some magic he didn’t want to know. “What she attempted…” He turned the page quickly and glanced through more of her diary entries. He stared. “She was insane.” He shut the book and gripped the edges, holding it tight.
“What?”
“If I’m reading this correctly…” He shook his head. “She was playing to Tarou’s ambitions. And his lusts.” He rubbed a thumb over the cover, over protecting Words carved there. They stung his skin. “He is sleeping with the queen. And Annaliese promised to make him king.”
Vara sank to her couch. Her hand slipped to her throat and massaged her skin. “King? How the hell could she do that?”
Kaede still had trouble believing the audacity of the woman. Her skill as a witch must have been incredible. Yet, he had never felt any power from her. How many others had he missed?
Kaede closed his eyes, calmed his heart with deep, even breaths. Vara couldn’t make Tarou king. They were both dead.
“The line of kings is eternal. Tarou wanted his soul put in the current king’s body.”
“Was I a practise run or did something go wrong?”
“I don’t know. But there are hints... I don’t think either of us are here right now by accident.”
Kaede opened the book again and stared at the list of ingredients and the Words written in Annaliese’s own hand. He had all the ingredients. He was a competent witch... No, he was insane to think he could do this; defy his lord. And would the oath burn him to ash in the attempt? He looked up and found Vara staring at him, her hands knotted. One thing was certain, she couldn’t perform the weaving.
But to make Tarou king. The man would kill anyone who knew of his secret. So, he and Vara were de
ad. Again. He closed the book. The Lady Annaliese wasn’t stupid. A wry smile pulled at his mouth. What if the wily lady had fooled Tarou, wanting revenge on her former husband? Kaede blinked.
He stared at Vara. “Annaliese isn’t dead. She moved her own soul. I think she’s the king.”
Vara shook his head. “Tarou’s head would be on a pike by now. If that was her plan, it failed.”
Kaede ran his fingers through his hair, his gaze dropping from her. He fixed on the thin crack in the stone floor. She was right. “This book only has that she planned to move Tarou, nothing about herself. And nothing about us.”
“I can’t weave.” She stood and crossed the floor, her feet silent on the rug. Her hand dropped to the book he held, tracing its edge. “But you can.”
Kaede stared up at her. Determination shone in her eyes. “Put Tarou in the king’s body? We’d both be dead within the hour.”
“No,” she said. “Not the king. Tarou. You pull me into him.”
“No.”
Vara’s sharp blue eyes narrowed. “Don’t want to be attracted to your lord?”
A smile pulled at his mouth. She was quick. He stared at his hands gripping the book. He had hated Tarou for years. To think that his body would react to his lord as it reacted to Vara was…disturbing. “No, I don’t.” He pushed himself to his feet. “There has to be another way.”
“This is our best chance of staying alive. I can’t perform the ritual, so Tarou burns us. You perform the ritual and put his soul inside the king? We know the secret and Tarou burns us.” She took the book from him. “But this way. I’m Tarou. And we leave here very much alive.”
“If it works,” Kaede muttered.
“If it doesn’t, then I’m dead and so are you,” Vara said. “I’ve been dead today already.” She smiled and humour lit her eyes. His heart contracted. Yes, he would miss her. “It’s really not so bad.”
“Except for being eaten alive.”
Vara laughed. “Don’t remind me.” She let out a slow breath and there was a spark to her that had him suddenly nervous. “So…how about my deal now?”
“Vara…”
“Would you want me as Tarou? I know he’s almost handsome in a stark and terrifying way. But really, this body is so much nicer.”
She stepped closer and the book pressed between them, crackling heat over Kaede’s stomach. The soft mixing of her scent slid deep into his lungs. She traced his jaw, her touch light, sure. He saw something else in her eyes and his heart tightened. Fear. Vara was scared. They were going to die. He made himself smile. “Yes, I’d like to know you as a woman first.”
Vara smirked and stood back from him. “You say all the right things.”
Chapter Six
Vara closed the door to the bedroom. Nerves had her leaning back against the cool wood. It was odd when she had propositioned him…twice. She shouldn’t be nervous; she felt deep down in her gut that she didn’t get nervous. It was just sex. Old knowledge burst over her…and as a captain, she took a potion that guarded her against disease and pregnancy.
She stared down at the scarlet robe, its silk shimmering in the light from the narrow window. However, she was not in her body. Was that why she was anxious?
Kaede stood beside the bed, his hands knotted and white. He looked more nervous than she did.
Vara ran the back of her hand over her mouth and wiped off the foul grease the maid painted there. They didn’t have time for this. “Kaede, can you get me out of these clothes?”
His smile was brief and he waved for her to turn around. “I can try.”
With a few deft pulls, the belt loosened and Vara let out her first full breath in hours. The belt dropped to the floor. She had to resist the temptation to stomp on it. “So much better.”
He laughed and slid warm hands over her hips and waist. “Yes.” He unfastened the thin belts under her breasts and pulled apart the robe, sliding it from her shoulders to drop to a puddle of cloth at her feet. “Turn around, Vara.”
The curls of gold in her hair clinked as she turned to face him. His fingers worked at the last knot of her tunic and she smiled at the look of concentration on his face. “I used to be easier to undress.”
Kaede’s mouth twitched, shifting into a grin when the knot slid free. He tugged the hem upward and Vara obediently lifted her arms. She shook her hair free. “I’d say this is fairly easy.” Her trews dropped to the floor. “Yes, very easy.” His hand framed her jaw, his thumb tracing over her lip. “Do you feel undressed enough now?”
She licked his thumb and grinned. “Perhaps.” She pushed Kaede towards the high bed; his legs hit the edge of the mattress and he sank down. Stepping close, she ran her fingers through his hair. He watched her, his dark eyes intense, and Vara had the uneasy feeling he was trying to burn the memory of her into his thoughts. “We have now, Kaede. I know the weaving may not work…and even if it does, I can’t imagine you here with Tarou.”
“No.” A brief smile pulled at his mouth. “His rooms are in the western wing.”
Vara growled at him.
Kaede laughed and slid warm hands around her waist, pulling her to him. He rested his head against her breasts and his slow sigh stirred her skin. “I can’t promise anything, Vara.”
The rhythm of his slow strokes over the hollow of her spine slid an easy heat through her flesh. She closed her eyes. “I know.”
His hands stilled. “He killed my mother.”
Vara’s heart squeezed. “I’m sorry, Kaede.”
He let out a hot breath and it prickled her skin. Kaede looked up and, for a long moment, Vara let herself sink into the liquid black of his gaze. The tug was there between them, an instant lust, perhaps in time something more and there too, the knowledge of the life they should’ve had.
Yet as she’d said, they had now. And now would have to do.
Vara twitched a smile as his fingers curved around her buttocks. With a wink, his tongue curled against her nipple. She gasped, arching into his mouth. “Shouldn’t you lose some clothes?” Kaede didn’t seem to be listening as his fingers slid between her thighs and rubbed in exactly the right way. Vara groaned, pressing his head against her breast. “Clothes, Kaede.”
He pulled his mouth away from her breast with a deliberate pop, yanked his linen tunic over his head, and dropped it to the floor. His undershirt followed. Vara ran a hesitant finger over his collarbone, tracing over the curves of a spiralling tattoo. Kaede’s skin was warm and smooth, but the ink drawn against his flesh pulsed beneath her touch. More tattoos swept over his torso. “They’re beautiful,” she murmured.
“My mark as a witch.” He unstrapped and tugged off his boots and shrugged out of his breeches. Kaede undid the ribbons holding up her long silk socks. “I was tempted to keep these.”
Vara ran her hand over his muscled leg, her thumb pressing his inner thigh. “They look better on me.”
“You’re funny, Vara.”
She smirked at him. “I try.”
The thin cut of light from the narrow window edged his scowl. A rush of lust hit her. Snatches of her past life were still elusive, but she was certain she’d never had anyone quite as pretty as Kaede. Vara shoved him and he flopped back against the mattress. She sat astride him, pressing against his erection in a way that made her bite her lip around a grin.
She leant forward and her teeth caught his bottom lip. Closing her eyes, she covered his mouth, her tongue curling, tangling with his. He tasted of spices, the gentle tang of tea and something else that made her moan soft against him. Heat surged through her body. Vara deepened the kiss.
Kaede’s arms wrapped tight around her. He rolled them and Vara sank deep into the smooth blankets. The hot brush of his skin against hers burst flickers of light behind her eyes. Vara shifted her legs, grabbed his buttocks and he groaned into her mouth. The head of his penis rubbed hard against her in a delicious rhythm. Sweet tension tightened in her pelvis, pulsing through her.
Vara’s mouth b
roke away. “Kaede…”
“You want me?”
She grinned at him. “Maybe.”
“Maybe?” He pushed, sliding deep inside her and she arched to take more of him. Kaede’s laugh was wicked and he pulled free. “Or maybe not?”
Vara glared at him. “Don’t make me smack you.”
“That might be fun. But this,” he buried himself and Vara forgot her anger, forgot everything else, “this is good too.” She linked her legs, urging him hard against her, urging him fast. Fire danced in his gaze. “Is that the way you want it?”
Her answer was to take his mouth. Anticipation burned up through her body and the taste, the scent of him wrapped around her. She wanted him faster, deeper, harder, because the burn of her release had her aching. Light twisted through her mind, seared her.
She was almost…almost…
Vara cried out against the surge of pleasure, the intense wave shaking her mind, her body. Kaede buried his face in her shoulder, smothering his groan against her skin. Her head fell back against the bolster and she let out a slow, satisfied sigh. A smile pulled at her mouth as Kaede pressed a soft kiss against her neck.
“That was…” He lifted his head and something sparked in his eyes, making her start. “Kaede?” His gaze narrowed and he rolled away from her. Air cooled her skin. She shivered and struggled under the rumpled blankets. His eyes had closed and she watched a muscle jump in his cheek. “What was that?”
He let out a slow breath. “What I feared.” His voice was quiet, resigned. He glanced at her, before he looked away. She’d caught a glimpse of bitterness. “You’re the one, Vara.” His mouth twisted. “The one I didn’t want to find.”
“The one who would bind you and make slaves of your children.” Her stomach twisted with unexpected pain and she sucked in a breath. His rejection, his bitterness shouldn’t hurt. She’d only known Kaede for a few hours and in a few hours more she could be dead. Again. It was simply that lust hadn’t hurt her like it before.
