Heart of the Flame

by Lara Adrian

  "There has been an incident in the village, my lord. The villeins have apprehended a man--"

  "'Tis a poacher, m'lord," interrupted the cottar as though excitement prevented him from holding his tongue a moment longer. Puffing out his chest as he spoke, his ruddy face and narrow-set eyes beamed with pride. "My boy Ralph got 'em with a pitchfork when the bastard tried to escape with one of the new lambs."

  "He is dead?"

  "Nay, m'lord. He lives, but he's hurtin'. My boy stuck 'em good in the belly, he did."

  "Where is this poacher now?"

  "Down in the barn at the village, m'lord. Ralph and some of the other lads are holding 'em there for ye. He's a mean one--spittin' angry to be caught."

  "Poacher, my arse," Braedon snorted under his breath at Kenrick's side. "There is treachery here. It smacks of de Mortaine's influence."

  Kenrick nodded. "My thoughts exactly. Shall we go question this trespasser and see if our suspicions are confirmed?"

  "Lead the way," Braedon said, his hand resting on the pommel of his sword.

  * * *

  The dining hall was nearly filled with Clairmont's folk as Haven and Ariana made their way toward the dais. Ariana greeted those they passed, her kind smiles and cheerful demeanor not unlike a candle reaching light and warmth into a dank, dreary room.

  Ariana's left hand rested lightly on her abdomen, a loving cradle for the babe that slumbered there. On her finger, her golden wedding band sparkled in the flicker of torches and the pale illumination of the morning sun that slanted down from the high windows of the hall.

  "Have you been feeling unwell anymore when you wake?" Haven asked as they continued on through the shuttling throng of castle folk.

  "Nay," she replied, smiling. "I am feeling better every day. The babe is strong, and I think 'tis time that Braedon knows he is to be a father. In fact, I intend to tell him this evening."

  "He will be naught but pleased, I'm sure," Haven assured her.

  Ariana beamed. "I hope so."

  Haven walked along at the lady's side, truly excited for her joy. But she was not quite able to ignore the shadow of anxiety that dogged her steps at the prospect of seeing Kenrick that morning.

  Where Ariana and Braedon were immersed in the bliss of their union, with happy news of the babe to come, Kenrick and Haven could claim only confusion and obstacles between them.

  And desire, she thought with a pained twist of her heart.

  She yearned for him with a fierceness she could hardly comprehend.

  And there was more to the feeling.

  Something that went deeper than the physical ache he conjured in her with a mere glance...with a simple touch of his sensual hands. As much as she wanted to deny it, she could not dismiss the awakening Kenrick stirred in her very soul.

  A forbidden stirring that she feared to acknowledge, let alone embrace.

  It was dangerous, this feeling she had for him, of that she was certain.

  "...his leman, do ye say?"

  Up ahead of her a few paces, Haven caught the murmured hush of gossiping voices. Two servant girls whispered back and forth, giggling as they shuffled along with the crowd gathering for breakfast.

  "I swear it," hissed the second maid behind her hand. It was Mary, Haven realized once she heard her shrill voice and saw the freckles that spattered her cheeks. "I've seen them alone more than once. Why, just last night she came creeping out of the lord's chamber--"

  Ariana cleared her throat in a pointed warning behind the tittering girls.

  "To your table, Mary. That is quite enough."

  "Aye, milady," the maid gasped, red-faced as she turned around and saw them standing there. Her companion and she slunk away to find their seats without another word.

  "I am sorry," Ariana said to Haven. "I will speak with her later."

  Before Haven could confess that nothing Mary said was untrue, a disruption caught her attention at the back of the feasting hall. A knight had come in from his watch with news that had the other guards talking amongst themselves in cautious voices.

  "What is it?" Ariana asked of a passing servant who had just returned from their table. "What is going on?"

  "A poacher, my lady. He's been caught down in the village. The men say word arrived not a moment ago."

  Ariana blew out a troubled sigh. "And my husband? Where is Lord Braedon?"

  "I understand he and my lord Kenrick have both gone down to see about the matter, my lady."

  As the news of the intruder was dispensed, Haven weathered a gnawing pang of dread. "Oh, no. Something is wrong here. Ariana, last night...I was in my chamber when I felt the queerest sensation. It was evil, and I felt it staring up at me from outside the castle."

  Ariana's blue gaze took on a worried sheen. "What are you saying?"

  "I'm not sure. But Kenrick and Braedon--they're in danger, I know it. I have to warn them!"

  * * *

  The lambing barn stood an unassuming structure amid the timber outbuildings of Clairmont's village. Beyond its battered wooden door, huddled beneath low-ceilinged rafters lit with only the barest shafts of morning light from outside, easily a dozen cottars had crowded together to observe the morning's unusual arrival. The motley group of men talked amongst themselves, low murmurs and speculative wagers on how long the poacher might live with the gut wound that was slowly bleeding him dead in one of the stalls.

  Kenrick strode through the assembled knot of villeins, followed close by Braedon and the old cottar whose son was responsible for apprehending the would-be thief.

  "There be my boy," he crowed, pointing a gnarled finger toward a tow-headed young man who stood guard outside the berth, pitchfork still in hand. His ruddy face took on higher color as Kenrick approached, his fingers going a little whiter where they gripped the long handle of the pitchfork. "The bastard ain't died yet, has 'e, Ralphie?"

  A rather sickened look came over the young cottar's face as he shook his head in answer to his father. The expression of remorse and shock deepened at the sound of pained moaning and thrashing that rolled out from within the stall.

  It was obvious the boy had never drawn another man's blood before, let alone inflicted a mortal wound. A visible shudder worked its way along his lanky limbs. If he were made to endure his post a moment longer, the poor lad would probably either piss himself or lose his stomach on the spot.

  Kenrick nodded at him in grave understanding as he came to stand beside him. Inside the stall, slumped against the timber wall and clutching a bleeding midsection, was a swarthy man with shaggy black hair and a thick growth of beard. He was panting like an animal, his teeth bared in a grimace of agony. A slivered eye rolled in Kenrick's direction, glinting with pain and, did he not mistake it, something darker.

  Something malevolent, if the prickling of Kenrick's nape--and Braedon's low growl of warning were any indication.

  The cottar's son nervously rushed to explain what had happened. "He sneaked in here 'fore dawn, m'lord. At first I thought a wolf broke in to take one of the lambs, for all the snarling and bleating I heard in here. I grabbed this fork thinkin' to drive it off. Didn't see 'til after I stuck him that 'tweren't no wolf, but a man. God forgive me--he's dyin', I think."

  "You did right," he told the anxious youth. "You did only what you had to, Ralph."

  "Aye, m'lord." The young man stood there, staring as though unable to move.

  "Set down the pitchfork and take the rest of these gawkers outside," Kenrick calmly commanded him. A glance to the knight who had accompanied them down to the village brought the soldier to his side. "Stand guard at the door. No one enters. Understand?"

  The knight nodded, then helped corral the curious villeins and escorted them out of the barn.

  Kenrick stood at the head of the open stall, listening to the small crowd disperse, his gaze trained on the bleeding man who crouched low in the shadows. Braedon flanked Kenrick's left arm, his expression rigid, hand twitching in readiness where it hovered above his she
athed weapon. When the folk were gone, the barn door having creaked to a close, Kenrick spoke.

  "I suppose it was only a matter of time before de Mortaine sent his hounds to sniff around my keep. What were your orders?"

  The man said nothing. He kept his head down, his barrel chest heaving, wheezing belaboredly with the effort to breathe.

  "Who commands you--de Mortaine, or Draec le Nantres?"

  No response, save the rasping pull of his lungs.

  "I admit, I am surprised they would send just one of you--a dullard at that, if a stripling cottar could fell you with a field tool."

  A curse rolled between tightly clenched teeth, but the mercenary said no more.

  "Not of a mind to talk, are you?"

  Braedon's sword came out of its sheath with a slow, lethal-sounding hiss. "I imagine I could loosen this cur's tongue."

  The man slanted a narrow glare on the blade now poised a hairbreadth from his nose. "Go ahead and cut me. I don't fear death, and I am already dying."

  Kenrick spared him only the briefest lift of his brow. "Yes, you are."

  "Aye," the swarthy mercenary agreed, "and sooner than later. So why should I tell you anything? Unless you mean to staunch this river of blood, I've nothing to gain from helping you."

  "I cannot stop the bleeding, no."

  The man snorted smugly.

  "I can slow it, however," Kenrick added. "I could have you bandaged up and held under my watch for the next few days--more than that, perhaps a couple of weeks. Long enough to get the word out to de Mortaine that you have betrayed him to ally with us in the quest for the Chalice."

  "I have no idea what you're talking about."

  "No? You expect we believe you are merely a vagrant, poaching lambs from my village and deer from my woods?"

  "I care not what you think."

  "Mayhap you'd like to see what you really came here looking for," Kenrick drawled, a menacing edge in his voice.

  Braedon snapped an askance look at him, unspoken caution for Kenrick to take care in what he divulged. Dying or nay, this 'poacher' bore the stamp of de Mortaine's control. Worse, the oxlike bulk and sinister mien bespoke an even greater threat.

  An otherworldly one, borne of the same dark magic that wrought the Dragon Chalice itself.

  But Kenrick knew precisely what he offered, and to whom.

  "The death that awaits you here in this barn is an easy one, that is true. But unless you tell me what de Mortaine is up to, I've a mind to show you another end. One that will be aught but easy, I promise you." Kenrick narrowed his gaze on the dulling eyes of the Anavrin warrior. "Talk," he said, "or I will see that you meet your death amid fire and pain unlike anything you've ever known."

  The big head pivoted at the coolly issued threat. Understanding dawned in the slitted look the mercenary fixed on Kenrick.

  "Calasaar," he whispered, his pale tongue curling around the word in obvious, reverent wonder. The thick black beard split to reveal a grin of sharp yellowed teeth. "So, it is here after all. Le Nantres' guess was right."

  "Where is Draec now?" Kenrick demanded.

  "Closer than you could know." The man's ensuing chortle dissipated into a deep, wheezing cough. He spat blood onto the already red-stained straw.

  "Tell us," Braedon snarled, pressing his blade to within a hairbreadth of the miscreant's throat. "What is the bastard up to?"

  The man cursed them low under his breath, his string of black oaths swallowed up by a sudden commotion brewing up outside the lambing barn.

  The guard posted there issued a stern order, but a female voice rose above it.

  "I will not be turned away. You must let me in there!"

  Dear God.

  Haven.

  "Keep her out," Kenrick called, hoping the sentry would obey him. "Do not permit her in here."

  The sounds of struggle--of stubborn female determination--rang on the other side of the rickety barn door.

  "You do not understand! Please, I must warn him. He could be in danger--"

  In a confusion of creaking hinges and hasty scrambling, the panel burst open and Haven dashed into the gloom of the small outbuilding. She was breathless, her face flushed. She must have run on foot from the castle to the village. Her eyes were wild as she searched the dimness of the cramped space and found Kenrick.

  Braedon's choice oath was echoed by Kenrick's own.

  "God's blood," he shouted to his flummoxed guard. "Get her out of here!"

  But it was too late. Haven was already running to his side.

  And out of the corner of his eye, Kenrick saw the injured man begin to lunge to his feet in the stall. He leaped forth, snarling like the beast he truly was--a blur of seething darkness and biting talons that sunk into the bulk of Kenrick's shoulder.

  Chapter 18

  Haven's scream tore from her throat. The cry of shock, of bone-deep horror, rent the musty stillness of the barn as she saw Kenrick come under surprise attack from behind. The man who leaped on him--for she had been certain he was a man in the moment it took for her eyes to adjust to the gloom of the small barn--now bore the shape and manner of a beast.

  Shifter.

  The word was a hiss of memory that skated across her mind like a razor-sharp lance.

  Night-black, bristly with a coat as thick as any wolf's, the creature seemed to possess an immense, otherworldly strength. It clung to Kenrick with sharp claws, its sudden writhing weight on his back driving him down on one knee. Savage jaws flashed bright and frenzied as the wolf sought to rip through the chain mail to the flesh of Kenrick's shoulder and neck.

  The beast meant to kill him.

  Shifter.

  Haven shook away the pull of recall that seized her, all her focus--her very heart--rooted on Kenrick. She jolted forward, running the three steps that separated her from the spot where he struggled, but Braedon's stern voice halted her before she could reach him.

  "Stay back!"

  Braedon's sword was already swinging down in a punishing arc. The long blade of steel sunk into the side of the wolfish creature. It howled and thrashed, recoiling in pain.

  Kenrick twisted out from under the bulky black body and threw it to the ground. His own blade sang a metallic shriek as he drew the weapon and drove it home.

  Everything had happened so fast.

  Haven looked to Kenrick, relief spilling over her to see that he was alive. He stood before her, torn and bloodied from the fight, his face hard, as unforgiving as his sword, which was gripped in his hand and dripping with the lifeblood of the creature who would have killed him in those frenzied moments. At his feet, lay the beast.

  Save that it was no longer beast, but man.

  Dark, dying eyes stared back at her from a face gone slack with the coming of the end. One large hand lay stretched out in her direction, hard fingers reaching toward her as though to entreat her while those dulling eyes held her in unspoken contempt.

  In that moment, her gaze compelled by all she had seen--by what was rippling into her mind like a returning tide--Haven could not move.

  She knew him.

  Faith...she had seen this man before.

  His breath rattled out of him in a slow, broken wheeze. And in the moment before life dimmed from his glittering gaze, the thick black beard split into a leering, bloody grin.

  This man--this vile creature--had recognized her, too.

  He had been at Greycliff that night, she was certain of it.

  He had stood near her in the smoke-filled darkness of the keep as it went up in flames. Heaven above, but she could hear his growling voice grating in her ear--a shout gone up to spare no one, not even the smallest child.

  Horrific words.

  A hellish command.

  "Haven." Kenrick's voice sifted past the jolting awareness that had so suddenly overcome her. He took a step toward where she stood. "Haven, it is all right now. 'Tis over."

  She shook her head, an unconscious denial that she felt to her very marrow.

&
nbsp; "No," she murmured, knowing for certain whatever had transpired there was not over.

  The danger she had sensed the night before was only intensifying. It was brushing up against her, twisting around her legs like a cat. She saw it in the sightless gaze of the man who stared at her even now, his dead but leering grin chilling her like ice at her nape.

  "I have to get out of here," she gasped.

  "Haven."

  "No." Kenrick held out his hand to her, but she flinched away from him, taking a few careless steps in retreat. "I have to...get out of this place. I cannot...Oh, faith, I cannot breathe."

  Pivoting on her heel, she stumbled forward, back toward the open door of the barn. She pushed away the sentry's hand as he tried to catch her, to hold her at his lord's command. With a wordless cry, Haven righted herself and bolted into the blinding sunlight outside.

  Kenrick called out to her, but she could not bring herself to halt or turn back. She flew out of the barn and began running.

  Running from the disturbing truth of what she had witnessed in the barn--and from the sudden flood of memories that rose to choke her when she thought of the horror that had transpired at Greycliff Castle some weeks ago.

  * * *

  Kenrick saw the look of distress in Haven's eyes in the instant before she fled the barn. While few sane people would credit what had occurred--the incredible transformation that had played out as the Anavrin shifter vaulted into his attack--Kenrick felt certain that in some way, Haven did understand. There had been a flicker of recognition behind her astonishment, a reflexive jolt of awareness that said this had not been the first time she had witnessed the dark doings of Silas de Mortaine's henchmen.

  Haven might have recognized the evil at work, but she could not be expected to cope with the stunning horror of it, certainly not alone.

  And if any of de Mortaine's minions yet lurked about Clairmont's grounds, the very last thing Kenrick wanted was to think of Haven unwittingly meeting up with them in her current state of panic.