by Lara Adrian
Marriage.
The word had meant little to her until Kenrick had said it that morning. He wanted her to be his bride! For all the murkiness and uncertainty of her past, her future at least seemed bright with promise.
Hope bloomed within her, as colorful as the silks that spread out before her on the vendor's table. Giddy with thoughts of her life to come, Haven picked up a length of wispy red sendal and held it out before her to watch it catch the light. The sun was blazing high in the noontide sky; through the swatch of rich cloth, it glowed like gemstone fire, dazzling her vision.
"'Tis a beautiful bit of fluff," said a low voice that was tinged with a queer sense of familiarity.
Haven lowered her arms, feeling a knot of cold dread form in her stomach.
A man stood next to her at the vendor's stall, his longish black hair gleaming like polished jet, his smile deadly cool in his profanely handsome face. He wore a dark cloak that could not quite hide the dragon that snarled in rampant pose on the breast of his tunic. He was a menacing figure, clearly graced with the devil's own arrogance.
Although she did not know him--prayed she did not--Haven sensed at once that he was dangerous. He hung back with obvious deliberateness, standing in the shade of the canopy with no wish to call attention to himself. In reflex, Haven threw an anxious glance over her shoulder to see who might spy them together.
"Lady Ariana has her husband's full attention in another stall," the cunning stranger informed her. "Your guard is out of earshot. He will take no notice unless you give him cause to come over here, Haven."
Faith.
He knew her name.
"I had heard you might have found your way inside Clairmont's own keep, but I scarce could credit it until I saw you with my own eyes."
"Who are you?" she whispered, needing to know what he was about even while she waited in dread of the answer. "How do you know me?"
The hawkish brow furrowed, his dragon green eyes narrowing. "Do you jest?"
"Tell me," she said. "Should I know you?"
He tipped his head back and let out a low, disbelieving chuckle. "That is rich, indeed, when we have taken orders from the same man for nigh on a year. What is your game here, vixen?"
"I'd say you are the one playing games, sirrah."
Haven let the ruby cloth fall back on the table and made to pivot away.
When she would have alerted the Clairmont guard to her distress, the dark-haired warrior hissed a warning. "Not so fast, lady. You and I needs have ourselves a talk. Unless you'd like word to reach our mutual employer, Silas de Mortaine, that you are not dead in the Greycliff raid as he presumes."
At the mention of the villain's name, Haven froze.
Their employer? The very man who inspired such contempt and wariness at Clairmont was somehow tied to her?
Nay. She refused to accept what she was hearing. She needed answers that made sense to her, and felt with growing dread that this man could give them to her.
"What do you know of that night?"
He stared at her long and hard, then breathed a wry oath. "What do I know of it? Evidently more than you recall. Is it all lost to you?"
She gave him a small nod. "Please. You must tell me everything."
* * *
Someone--or something--followed him.
Kenrick had felt the weight of watching eyes on his back nearly since leaving Clairmont's gates. His observer was stealthy, keeping out of sight and just far enough behind as to not betray his position. But he was there nonetheless.
Kenrick had taken a forest path that day instead of the road, intending to shortcut his travel distance at the expense of a slower ride. He had also tired of the cat-and-mouse dance playing out between him and the cur who stalked him too doggedly to be careful.
When the opportunity arose, Kenrick veered off the woodland trail and plunged his mount into the thick spring growth of the forest. He rode with haste, using the cover of the greenery and his knowledge of these woods to aid him as he made a circle in his course and came up a short distance behind his pursuer.
The rider was a large man, doubtless a knight by the way he sat the saddle and no mean commoner despite his humble clothing. His mount was a well-bred palfrey that balked a bit when its reins were pulled back and the beast was made to halt on the path.
Kenrick hung back, the observed now the observer, and waited as the rogue with the earth brown hair and hulking shoulders swung his leg over the cantle and dismounted without a sound.
Kenrick, too, left his saddle on silent feet that crushed not even the smallest pine needle as he then crept a stealthy path toward the stranger. He drew a small blade from his baldric sheath and moved quickly, carefully through the ferns and bracken.
In no time at all he was standing behind him but an arm's length away.
"Turn around knave, and show yourself."
The man's spine stiffened, then straightened, his shaggy head swiveling but a fraction to mark the threat at his back.
"Slowly," Kenrick advised, pressing the dagger none too gently through the tousled, dullish brown hair until it rested against the base of the miscreant's skull. "Your game is up; I have let you dog my steps long enough. Face me as a man, or I will run you through where you stand."
The broad shoulders gave no sign of resistance or intent to fight. On the contrary, they slumped a mild degree, then lifted in a resigned shrug. "I should have found a better way to approach you, Saint. But too much is at stake. I had to be sure."
Hearing his old nickname--hearing the voice that spoke it, a resonating baritone that he knew too well--Kenrick scowled.
"Turn around," he demanded, not trusting his ears.
The man did as instructed, carefully pivoting under the pressing threat of the dagger until he was facing Kenrick straight on.
"God's blood--Rand."
"I saw you outside the village in Devon," his friend said. "You and some men had come upon a fresh campsite in the woods."
"You were there?" Kenrick asked, stunned to think it.
"From under the cover of the thicket, I watched you and your group leave."
"You said nothing. Why? Did you not trust me?"
"I had to be sure. You see, I'd been tracking the shifters, too. It was I who spilled some of their blood that day. Though not enough."
Dark-bearded, begrimed, unkempt from what had surely been weeks on the run, Randwulf of Greycliff stared back at Kenrick with hardened hazel eyes. Lines of tension bracketed a mouth that had so often been upturned in laughter or the telling of a bawdy jest. His face was lean and grim now, lifeless, the horror of what he must have endured these many days stamped in the bleakness of his expression.
"Good Christ," Kenrick swore, sheathing his dagger in a state of astonishment. "I thought you dead. After what I saw at Greycliff a fortnight ago..."
Rand winced nearly imperceptibly. When he next spoke, his voice had a sharp edge, black with a simmering fury. "They killed my family, Saint. Elspeth, my beloved, is gone. Jesu, even little Tod. Bloody devil's minions--they slaughtered my wife and son before my very eyes."
"I know." Kenrick's gut twisted sickly. "I am sorry, Rand--more than you know. I brought this on you. I am wholly to blame for involving you in my quest. If I had known what it would cost you--"
Rand dismissively shook his head. "It was my choice to aid you, Saint. I would do it no differently now. The blame for what occurred at Greycliff rests on one man: Silas de Mortaine. It was his band of changeling beasts who sacked my home and slew my family. I live, only to see every last one of them dead at the end of my blade, and to send de Mortaine to the depths of the hell that spawned him."
It was a sentiment Kenrick well understood, and shared. "De Mortaine grows bolder every day. His shifters have even found their way to Clairmont. Just the other morn, one of them was killed in a barn in our village while poaching livestock."
"Shifters," Rand spat. "They and all their devil's kin are good for naught but the grave. So
ulless wraiths, all of them, for that is how they descended on Greycliff the night of the attack, aided by one of their own who wormed into my keep through lies and trickery. We never saw them coming, Saint. They never gave us the chance--six of them at least, pouring in amid the dead of night, armed with steel and fire and demons' magic. They descended as wolves on my few guards, tearing out their throats, moving through the keep as a pestilence to consume all in their path. I killed a few, but not all. They were after the seal you entrusted to me," Rand said grimly.
"I know. I feared as much when I saw the empty hiding place and the three fresh graves in Greycliff's yard."
"I tried to keep it from them, but to save Elspeth and Tod--"
"Say no more, Rand. You did only what you had to do."
"It mattered naught. They killed them anyway." Rand swore an oath. "After the raid had ended, when the shifters left and I awoke in the smoking ruins of my home, I buried my family. My wife and son in two of the graves, a dead guard in a third to pretend my own death, and then I left Greycliff. I cannot go back there, Saint. Not until this is done. Mayhap not even then."
"There will always be a place for you at Clairmont. My home is yours, Rand."
Emotion stormed through Rand's hazel gaze as he gave a grim tilt of his chin. "I want vengeance for what has been done. I have come because I am the one in need of your help now. Will you give it, Kenrick?"
"Anything."
His old friend's mouth curved in the ghost of a smile, but it was with a bleak look that he accepted Kenrick's offered hand. The two men briefly embraced, Rand as rigid and cool as the sword that rode in a sheath at his hip.
"These are treacherous times," Kenrick said as they parted. "Few can be trusted when it comes to the Dragon Chalice."
"Aye," Rand agreed. "Would that the lesson did not come at so great a price for my loved ones. I knew the wench who came to Elspeth with her witchy herbs was peculiar, but I never thought--Jesu, not even in my darkest dreams did I think she would prove so deadly."
Fingers of icy cold suddenly traveled down Kenrick's neck. "A healer, did you say?"
"Healer," Rand scoffed. "Nay. A shifter bitch who pretended friendship and betrayed us to the others of her kind--may she rot. I never knew a greater satisfaction than when I turned her dagger on her own heartless breast and ran her through."
* * *
Haven was still standing at the silk vendor's stall, numb with shock, when Ariana approached. Braedon was with her, a fresh wrapped goose tucked under his strong arm.
"Have you decided on any of them?" Ariana asked with bright cheer as she came to stand beside her at the table of pretty fabrics. She picked up the crimson swatch with an admiring eye. "This one would make a lovely garland for the dais. Don't you think so, Haven?"
She could not answer, merely acknowledging with a vague nod of her head.
The dragon knight was gone some time before, having delivered his troubling revelations--and an impossible, all but unthinkable proposition. Haven's mind was reeling from the encounter, her memory now mercilessly clear and unbroken. The darkness of her recall had been thrown into starkest light by everything she had heard.
She remembered it all--everything Draec le Nantres had told her.
Ariana's hand came to rest over hers in concern, the gentle contact jolting her out of her dark musings.
"Haven? What is it--are you all right?"
"Oh. Yes, I'm fine. The sun is a bit warm, is all. I think I would like to return to the castle, if we might."
"Of course," Ariana agreed.
"I'll tell the guards to ready our mounts," Braedon said, scowling, his eyes cutting from Haven's pale face to his wife. "We have stayed too long as it is. I don't like the feel of this place much."
When he turned to summon one of the knights who accompanied them to the market, Ariana moved in closer to Haven and wrapped her arm around her shoulders. "You're sure 'tis just the sun that has you so peaked?"
Haven looked into the honest and caring blue gaze of Kenrick's sister--a woman who would recoil in terror if she knew who she truly was--and perpetrated a further deception.
"Nothing is wrong at all. You have no cause to worry."
Chapter 22
Nothing was the same to Haven when she returned from the market with Ariana and Braedon. She looked upon Clairmont, and her kind, unwitting hosts, with new eyes.
Shifter's eyes.
How she wanted to deny what Draec le Nantres had told her--about her role in Greycliff's attack, her forsworn fealty to the villainous Silas de Mortaine, her duty to her clan and her kingdom to see that the Dragon Chalice was returned...no matter the cost in the mortal lives of these Outsiders.
Her enemies.
She wanted to deny it all, most especially the knowledge of the queer and powerful gift that set her apart from these folk. She had felt it moving within her for days now--the twisting, shimmering prickle of change that ran beneath the surface of her skin.
Her glamour.
It had been slumbering until now, weakened by her fever and the scorching of her memory, but no more. She felt its strength coursing within her now, alive and awaiting her summons.
There had been a time not long ago, she recalled, that her glamour had given her great pride. To walk among the Outsiders, simple people who possessed no such magic--indeed, not even the ability to understand it, much less recognize its superiority--had made her feel unstoppable. It had made her feel immortal in many ways, although that was a gift denied her race.
Where shifters enjoyed the unregulated power of their magic on the Outside, in Anavrin the shapeshifting glamour of the Magics was arrested, kept on short leash by the ruling class of the Immortals, who possessed no conjuring skills. It was an age-old war, one that would come to a head again if the Dragon Chalice remained lost to the mystical realm that required it for survival.
This was Haven's legacy, and now, her curse.
As she paced the floor of her chamber, she contemplated the terrible turn her life had taken in so short a time. That morning she had been filled with a joy she had never known. Now she felt the fragile pieces of her world crumbling around her feet.
A selfish part of her wanted to pretend she had never seen Draec le Nantres that day. She wanted to deny everything she had heard--including the brazen offer he had made her, to ally herself with him instead of Silas de Mortaine.
Le Nantres was a man with his own secret ambitions. He had the seal that the raiding shifters had stolen from Greycliff; he needed Haven to help him determine how--and where--to use it.
She had been a spy once for Silas de Mortaine, when she'd been sent to befriend Rand and his family. Now Draec wanted her to report to him instead, delivering what she could of Kenrick's further findings about the locations of the remaining Chalice stones.
Draec's offer was clear: help him, and he would see that Haven returned to Anavrin safely. Cross him, and she knowingly put in jeopardy all she held dear.
For in permitting herself to care for these Outsiders at Clairmont--indeed, by allowing herself to warm to Greycliff's family when she had been covertly sent to the keep to spy on Kenrick's friends--Haven had committed the highest sort of crime against her clan. Her heart was opened to the enemy and she therefore branded a traitor to her kind.
She was Shadow now, a state of existence that was rare among the shifter warriors dispatched from Anavrin to seek the Dragon Chalice. To turn Shadow was to turn traitor.
Her life was forfeit if they found her, her fealty to her clan's mission now compromised by her love for Kenrick. The other shifters would sense her change on sight. They would hunt her with the same ferocity with which they hunted the errant pieces of the Dragon Chalice.
Haven had heard of others in her clan who'd been weakened by mortal emotion. A scant few were rumored to be in hiding somewhere on the Continent; the rest had been mercilessly hunted and executed.
With the shifters getting closer to Clairmont all the time, Haven knew s
he could not last long before they came for her. They would kill her. And then they would kill those she loved.
Faith, but she could not bear to so much as think it.
She could not permit another horror like the one unleashed on Greycliff Castle.
Siding with le Nantres was no more noble--no less treacherous--than an alliance with Silas de Mortaine himself, but her other alternatives held too many risks, too much pain. Not the least of which being her thoughts toward Kenrick.
As difficult as it would be, her heart urged her to go to him at once and tell him everything. She owed it to him, even if he would hate her for it.
According to the servants, Kenrick had returned to Clairmont with a guest a short while ago, but retired to his solar immediately upon arrival. With the feast yet a few hours away, Haven knew not how she would endure the time alone with her thoughts. For certain, she would not be able to bear the entire meal with so great a weight hanging between them.
If only she could see him--if only she could have one moment to determine what his reaction might be to her terrible truth that burned like acid in her belly. She had to do something, for pacing the confines of her chamber was like to drive her mad.
With a sense of resolve, and a dread that threatened to consume her, Haven quit her tower room and headed for the lord's solar on the main level of the keep.
She was surprised to find the door left ajar, no one within the meeting chamber at all. Kenrick had been there but a moment ago, for a healthy fire burned in the large grate and on a table situated between a pair of cushioned chairs, two empty tankards sat alongside a drained wine decanter.
Something else lay there as well. The glint of flat, hammered steel reflecting the firelight drew her attention as she cautiously entered the chamber.
It was a blade, she realized when she had taken but the first step toward it. The tooled dagger compelled her with its stunning familiarity, with its bewitching dance of light on the dragon hilt and engraved blade of exquisitely rare Anavrin steel.
