Heart of the Flame

by Lara Adrian

  "That will not be necessary," she replied, her ire directed at the cool blue gaze of Clairmont's arrogant lord. "I can find my way on my own. And you needn't worry--I won't venture out of my bounds."

  Chapter 11

  "Are you not hungry, Haven? You hardly ate at all yesterday and now you've barely had enough to break your fast this morning."

  With mild disinterest, Haven eyed the lump of yellow cheese and broken loaf of bread that sat on the table near the bed.

  "You should eat some of it," Ariana insisted, concern etching her fine brow. "You need to build your strength."

  "Pray tell, what for? Your brother has informed me that he will keep me here so long as he wishes, whether I am fit or failing. My chamber door may be unbarred, but I cannot take a step within or without and not feel him watching me--forever judging me in that maddening way of his."

  Ariana settled in beside her, seating herself on the edge of the bed. "What has happened, Haven? 'Twas clear that you and Kenrick had words before the sup yesterday. What is it? What went between you?"

  At first, she thought to deny that Kenrick had upset her. Why admit such a weakness? Why acknowledge that he held any sway over her at all? But she was still angered from their conversation in the hall, and there was no denying that her encounter with him in the tower had left her confused and angry throughout the duration of last eve's meal.

  She tried not to consider what else had passed between them, nor to credit her unwilling response to his touch...to his very presence.

  She would be mortified to confess that he affected her in that manner, even to Ariana. Worse and worse, should Kenrick somehow hear of the admission and mock Haven for her reaction to him.

  "It was nothing," she said at last, hoping to dismiss the subject. "I had been walking about the tower corridors, merely stretching my limbs. I was doing naught more than wandering when I discovered myself on the uppermost floor."

  Lady Ariana let out a small sigh. "Kenrick allows no one up there. The chamber is his alone."

  "So he was quick to inform me. He made it very clear that I was trespassing there, and that I would be well warned to leave at once."

  "Ah, I see. I am sorry, Haven. I fear Kenrick can be a bit..."

  "Brutish?" she offered. "Surly? Overbearing?"

  "Intense," Ariana said with a sympathetic smile. "You must understand, he is a very private man, very much involved in his work. I'm afraid he is not terribly skilled when it comes to being around other people--more and more, as of late. If he has said anything--or done anything--to cause you discomfort or upset, I am sure he did not mean it."

  Haven wanted to maintain her outrage, but found it difficult to hold when it meant turning her anger on Ariana. Instead she gave a little shrug, begrudgingly accepting the offered excuses. "You will pardon me for saying so, but your brother is a boorish, infuriatingly broody man."

  "At times." A smile teased at the corners of the lady's lips. "I wager the same can be said of all men from time to time, can it not?"

  "Quite," Haven agreed, sharing the jest in spite of herself.

  "Kenrick wasn't always like this--the way he is now. Years ago, when we were growing up, he was very thoughtful and kind. There was a sensitivity to him, a compassion fueled by his desire for learning and understanding. When my mother was ailing and near the end of her life, she made my father promise to allow Kenrick to pursue his scholarly interests."

  "Your father did not wish for him to do so?"

  Ariana shook her head. "Kenrick was heir to Clairmont, you see, and his duties to the demesne could not be shirked. My father honored my mother's wishes once she was gone, but he made a separate agreement with Kenrick. He could go to the church and learn, but he had to come back to Clairmont when the time came for him to be lord. Kenrick had hoped to one day be a priest."

  "A priest?" Haven nearly choked to hear such an unlikely notion. "That is a calling that requires humility, is it not? And a kind disposition? From what I have seen, he has neither of those qualities."

  "He had, once. A long time ago. It might surprise you to know that he was often called 'Saint' by those who knew him. Randwulf of Greycliff coined the name when the two of them were boys. Rand fostered here at Clairmont. He is--was--Kenrick's closest friend."

  At the mention of Greycliff, Haven grew quiet. She could hardly think of the place or its folk without also returning to the carnage of the night the holding was destroyed. Visions that had been confined to the dark hours between dusk and dawn had since begun to haunt her in the daytime as well. They came unannounced, and with increasing clarity, although the visions lasted only moments and were gone as quickly as they had come.

  This time, she felt the heat of fire too close to her skin. She was choking, struggling for every breath, hurting everywhere at once...desperate to escape. She was running, she realized, seeing the inferno blazing at her back. The night was dark as pitch save the blinding orange of flames leaping into the sky from Greycliff's tower and its surrounding buildings.

  She was stumbling, lightheaded. Unable to maintain her balance. She threw a glance over her shoulder, her vision bleary, breath panting with exhaustion. Three shadowed figures were suddenly at her heels. One of the men went down with a howl, felled by a length of polished steel protruding from the center of him. A beastly, murderous roar shook the night. She would be next to fall. She knew it with stunned certainty.

  Faith, but she did not want to die!

  "Haven?"

  The soft summons broke through the onslaught of memories, carrying her swiftly back to the present. When she glanced up, she met Ariana's concerned frown.

  "What is it, Haven? You have grown so pale."

  "'Tis nothing. I am...I am fine."

  Ariana took her hand and pressed it between her palms. It was a caring gesture, but Haven felt unaccustomed to such displays.

  The contact unsettled her, and she pulled away. "I am fine."

  "No, you are not. What happened to you at Greycliff? I know you are beginning to remember. I can see the horror of it in your eyes."

  Could that be true? Was she so easily read? Haven got up from her chair and strode to the window across the room. "I do not recall everything. What I do remember makes little sense."

  "But it is coming back," Ariana replied.

  Her intuitive observation gave Haven pause. Although her memory was yet elusive, presenting only quick, confusing snatches of the truth, it was slowly returning.

  Part of her wanted to push it back to the darkened corners of her mind, for what she saw was increasingly troubling and violent. But there was another part of her--the part that sought its own self-preservation--that urged her to embrace the full truth. To welcome it back with all haste, for with it would come a certain understanding.

  And a certain power that currently eluded her.

  "I realize my brother has done little to win your esteem since you've been here, but you should know that if anyone can understand what you have been through--what you might have witnessed in the attack on Greycliff--it is him. Kenrick will protect you if you let him, Haven."

  "I don't need protection."

  "Do you not? Are you so confident that whoever assaulted you will not be ready for the chance again? Have you any idea what these people are capable of?" When Haven said nothing, Ariana exhaled a small sigh. "Well, Kenrick knows firsthand. So do I. And so does my husband, Braedon. We lived through it--though only barely."

  "What happened?"

  "We survived. That's all anyone can hope for when it comes to the villain I speak of. His evil seems to know no bounds."

  "And now you think I am at risk by this same danger?"

  "I fear you may be, yes." Lady Ariana smoothed her palm over her trim abdomen and something shadowed her otherwise bright gaze. "I fear the evil we encountered all those months ago in France may revisit us here, at Clairmont. Unless we take steps to thwart it. You can help, Haven. Anything you might have seen or heard that night--anything at
all--you must make Kenrick aware."

  Haven turned her gaze back to the open window and the hill that rolled beyond. She knew not what to make of Lady Ariana or her fervent plea. It seemed a reasonable enough request and yet she felt a reluctance to comply.

  She knew not what to make of Kenrick of Clairmont either, all the more so now that she had spoken with his sister, a kind, intelligent woman who clearly loved him. Haven did not appreciate the feeling of beholdenness she experienced when she thought of how Kenrick had spared her life by tending her wound and bringing her into his home.

  She owed him nothing.

  Surely she owed nothing to any of these people. They had shown her kindness in her need, and for that she was appreciative. Still, it hardly meant she needed to get involved in their troubles.

  Haven startled when a gentle hand came to rest on her shoulder.

  "I will leave you in peace," Ariana said. "Perhaps tomorrow, if you like, you can accompany me outside in the garden. Cook is making capons in cream sauce, and I offered to gather him some fresh herbs."

  Haven gave her a small nod. "I would enjoy being out of doors."

  "Good." Ariana's smile was brilliant. "Tomorrow it is, then."

  Chapter 12

  Sleep proved more than elusive to Haven that evening. Each time her eyes closed, she was assailed by troubling images--memories surging stronger, brushing ever closer to the surface of her conscious mind. Unfolding like a dark dream, the night of the attack replayed behind her heavy eyelids. She thrashed on the bed, trying to shut out the vision, but it seemed her struggles only brought it into clearer focus.

  She saw the smoke and flames, the shadowed rush of raiders pouring into the keep from all sides. She heard a scream, and a bellowed oath rife with fury. She smelled unsheathed steel, and, not long afterward, the coppery stench of spilled blood.

  It's not too late!

  The words echoed in her ears, rough and commanding. Familiar to her somehow.

  Tell us where to find it!

  In her fitful sleep, Haven tossed to and fro, the soft weave of the coverlet wrapping about her legs like ropes. She fought her bonds the same as she fought the onslaught of the dream that was no dream, but memory. Burning brighter now--as bright as the flames that rose to devour Greycliff Castle and those who had dwelled there.

  Tell us!

  Faith, but she did not want to be there--did not want to see any more...

  "It's not too late to save them!"

  It was the sound of her own voice that finally woke her. Confused, Haven jolted upright in her bed. She sat there panting, shaky, her brow sheened with perspiration. By all that was holy, was she going mad?

  What did it mean, this gripping nightmare--these shrill, shouted words that still rang in her ears like thunderclaps?

  There was more, she knew. More that would come from behind the veiled but parting corners of her recall. She did not think she could bear any further dreams this night.

  No more memories.

  The air in the chamber was stifling. The four walls were too confining. Haven threw aside the tangled bed sheets and slid her feet to the floor. One of Ariana's borrowed mantles hung on a hook fixed to the far wall. Haven slipped it around her shoulders and fastened its ribbon closure with a hastily tied knot.

  The door to her chamber was closed, but no lock barred her from opening it. She pulled the latch and stepped out into the quiet corridor. All in the keep were abed at this late hour. Haven walked quickly but carefully and without sound, navigating her way down the curving hallway toward the rear stairwell of the tower fortress. She needed space. She needed to breathe, and to cleanse her head of the terrible thoughts that plagued her dreams.

  Barefoot, she climbed the narrow stairs to the top of the tower roof. The wooden panel that held back the wind pushed against her with a great deal of force as she exited the stone portal and crept outside. She closed it as gently as she could, loath to reveal herself to any of the dozen guards who patrolled the battlements at any given hour.

  Her heart was still racing from her disrupted sleep, her breath still rolling fast between her lips. She rested her back against the portal door and willed herself to calm. It was easier now that the night wind surrounded her. The bracing cold of a late spring evening breeze whipped at her hair and tugged at the loose hem of her chemise and cloak. She let the air buffet her, relishing in the crisp chill that nipped her cheeks as she put her face full in the wind.

  The memories no longer clattered in her head. They slowed, muted, faded to darkness with every deep breath she took into her lungs. But as the nightmarish visions slid back to the recesses of her recall, something new began to take shape inside of her.

  It started slowly, a seductive whisper that compelled her feet to move. She stepped away from the sheltering wall of the tower portal behind her. The breeze grew stronger the closer she got to the roof's perimeter. Three more steps and she was there, her bare toes halted at the base of the waist-high wall.

  Beyond the steep ledge was naught but air and empty space.

  Freedom, said the whisper in her head.

  Haven glanced around, observing the knots of watchmen stationed on the parapet and along Clairmont's curtain wall. None of them noticed her there.

  Escape, came the hissed command of her subconscious. Leave this place tonight...this very moment. It would be so easy.

  Easy? she thought, disbelieving her own madness to permit such a queer idea. Why, she would need sprout wings and fly from here like a bird to escape this rooftop intact.

  Impossible! What insanity was this?

  And yet, she could picture it so effortlessly--climbing onto the narrow ledge of the wall, standing there with only air to hold her, gripping her toes over the cold stone.

  Leaping into the wind...and soaring as though her arms were spread wide as an eagle's strong wings.

  With the notion came a peculiar tingling in Haven's fingertips. She felt warmth bloom, felt an uncanny strength begin to surge from somewhere deep inside her. She blinked and her vision was suddenly and astonishingly acute...unhindered by the opaque darkness of the midnight landscape surrounding her.

  Movements caught her eye from all directions: sentries shifting and shuffling at their posts; tall grasses soughing in the dark, distant meadow; small night creatures foraging in the garden below, while an owl perched in the peripheral woods, silently observing its prey.

  Near the barbican of the curtain wall, the guards were talking, voices low and muffled but becoming clearer. One complained of a nagging ache in his shoulder; another was busy boasting to his bored companions of his conquests on and off the battlefield.

  Even from this fair distance, she could smell the nectar of Ariana's flowers blooming in the garden below the tower, the sweet perfumes laced with the loamy richness of fertile brown soil. She could scent the oiled metal of the sentries' swords and chain mail, the breath of a few men carrying the tang of overmuch ale.

  In that moment, Haven's every sense seemed sharper, keener.

  And the urge to leap--to reach for freedom--began to fill every fiber of her being.

  "Oh, faith," she gasped. "What is happening to me?"

  She shook herself out of the dangerous impulse and backed away from the wall.

  "What is wrong with me?"

  The tower door pressed against her spine. With grasping fingers, she searched the cold iron latch and pulled the door open. The wind swirled as though to bar her exit, but desperation gave her strength. She yanked the rooftop panel ajar and slipped inside, heedless of the fact that it banged shut behind her.

  She had no idea what nearly overtook her out there. She knew only that something dark was closing in, and she was not at all sure she would be prepared to face it when it did.

  If allying herself with Kenrick of Clairmont might help, perhaps it was time she stop fighting him.

  * * *

  A fire waned on the large hearth of Kenrick's solar in the tower. The warmth was all
but gone, naught but embers keeping the small flames alive. He paid the cold no mind. Bent over his desk, goose-quill pen bobbing madly, he jotted his thoughts down into one of his many journals. The records he had made on behalf of the Templars had led him to visit several locations, two of which eventually yielded pieces of the Dragon Chalice. A third site, a chapel located in the wilds of Scotland, had been on his mind for a long while, although he had yet to venture so far north to investigate. But it was the question of the possible fourth that vexed him now. He felt he was so close to seeing the pattern, yet it eluded him.

  He flipped through more of his written reports, then went back to his writing. Halfway down the page, an idea struck him. His hand paused, then the quill dropped to the book with a soft thud.

  "Yes, of course," he murmured, abandoning the journal for a text that had been folded into the pages of another heavy tome. He withdrew the sheet of parchment and held it to the light of a candle at the center of the large working space. The writing on it was better than a year old, and faded. Kenrick read the coded Latin with a shrewd eye, unhindered by its complexity for the language employed was one of his own creations. "How did I not see it before? The location was all wrong."

  He went back to his writing, utterly immersed in his work. He had no notion of the hour, nor did he care when his mind was racing with thoughts. Very often, more nights than not, he forfeited sleep for the benefit of further time devoted to his study of the Dragon Chalice. Time he dearly needed, now that he was all but certain Silas de Mortaine and his cohorts were sniffing around England.

  He had beaten the bastard at his game once; he was determined to do so again. Permanently, if he had aught to say about it.

  With a low-voiced oath, Kenrick scratched his quill along the page, intent on his work. He was scarcely aware of his surroundings--until the careless bang of the tower's roof door reverberated down the stairwell to the lord's chambers. Then he was attuned entirely. Frowning, suspicious of who might be awake and prowling at this late hour, he stealthily crossed the room and pulled open the solar door to the corridor outside.