Liandra lifted her chin in the direction of several groups of women who were milling beyond the tables having whispered discussions behind their fans. Mystique had been aware of their attention, but she’d dismissed it as unimportant.
“I can’t be concerned with their judgment,” she said with a convincing shrug. “I’m only concerned that I behave in a manner to make Reule proud.”
“Oh, he is proud. And more. You may not feel it, but I do.” She leaned in with an eager sparkle in her fern eyes. “He’s completely enthralled by you. He barely looks away. How can you stand it? I’d be checking my teeth for bits of food if someone looked at me like that.”
“Lia,” she scolded with a giggle. “You’re incorrigible.”
“Come, let’s see if it’s started to snow yet.” Lia stood and reached for Mystique’s hand, drawing her up as well. “You can tell me all the details about Reule I’ve only gossiped about.”
Mystique adored Liandra’s impudent character instantly. She reminded her of Amando, but she also shined beyond her brother’s personality with her outright audacity and mischief. But her love of breadcakes, a habit she swore was bad for her waistline, she completely blamed on Amando.
Now Mystique obediently followed as Liandra led them on a winding path through the crowded banquet hall. They were just passing when one of the groups of women clustered nearby moved directly into their path. A buxom redhead with a slim waist and round hips stepped forward. She had beautiful blue eyes and her dark lashes had been dusted with gold, making them glitter whenever she blinked. Her wealth was obvious, if a bit overstated, in her adornments.
“Liandra, dearest, so sorry for your loss,” she said in a voice like refined silk. Her bearing, right down to the sympathetic touch of a fan against Lia’s wrist, was all perfection and grace. “Do introduce us to your friend.”
Liandra visibly hesitated, worry ghosting through her frond-colored eyes. Manners seemed to win out and she smiled tentatively. “Mystique, this is Lady Jocelyn. Lady Geneva”—she indicated a proud-looking brunette with a pinched nose—“and this is Lady Theodora.” The final lady was also brunette, but she was clearly much older than the other, her thick hair shot through with gray and silvery white.
“A pleasure,” she responded graciously.
“Is it?” Jocelyn queried with a direct blink of her blue eyes. “Not many outlanders care for the Sánge. I’ve been dying with curiosity all night, wondering what could possibly make you different. But I’m at a loss. Why, I haven’t even a clue what species you hail from.”
“I find the Sánge to be a fascinating culture,” Mystique said carefully, avoiding the rest of the questions left open by Jocelyn’s speculations.
“But then, you should. I hear you were left for dead in the wilderness, with no hope of home or hearth. I suppose mucking around with us is better than the beasts beyond these walls.”
“She’s done more than muck,” Geneva piped in, “if she’s wrapped a male of Prime Reule’s appetites around her pretty fingers.”
“More like she wrapped her fingers around him.” Jocelyn snickered, hiding the graceless laugh behind her fan but keeping her eyes on her target.
“Jocelyn!” Liandra snapped, her hold on Mystique’s hand squeezing tighter.
“Oh, please, Liandra. From rags to riches inside a week? Powerless to Prima? One doesn’t have to think too hard about what she’s done to secure her comfort.”
“Beware, upstart girl.” Theodora spoke up, her warning ominous in its aged tone. “Becoming Prima doesn’t guarantee you the love of the Sánge people. There are those who won’t abide an outlander bride for our Prime.”
“Whether they can abide it or not, it will happen,” Mystique promised her, the steel in her voice sending a chill through the women. “You have warned me, now I will warn you. Speak softly in the future, ladies, if you think to burn me with words. Fire flashes back on her who strikes the match.”
“You have nothing to frighten us with,” Jocelyn whispered venomously. “You aren’t ’pathic as we are. An assassin could be behind you this very instant and you’d be powerless to read his intentions. One so weak as you are won’t survive long if you continue to reach above yourself.”
“Mystique, don’t listen to this bitchiness,” Lia said, tugging on her hand. “They’re just jealous. Jocelyn thought she was woman enough to become Prima and she’s just shocked to find out what everyone else already knew.” Liandra drew Mystique closer. “Reule would rather wed a goat than someone like her.”
“Apparently so,” Jocelyn sneered, looking at Mystique.
The slap seemed to come out of nowhere. The contact was so brutal that Jocelyn crumpled to her knees, cradling the bright red mark on her cheek as she looked up in total shock. Mystique bit her lip to suppress the burst of laughter the expression triggered. Liandra stood over her victim, her bosom heaving with her fury, her gloved hands curled into fists. When Theodora stepped forward, the young blonde snarled out a low, aggressive growl.
“How dare you!” she spat furiously. “How dare you treat your future Prima so disrespectfully! And during my brother’s light and dark mourning! You insult me, my family, and your Prime! You will be lucky if a good slap is all you suffer for your insolence!”
“Lia,” Mystique said softly, laying soothing hands on the petite woman’s shoulders. “I’m certain Jocelyn has just learned the error of her ways. It’s best we leave her to contemplate her actions.”
“She’d better,” Liandra muttered angrily.
Mystique led her out of the hall, ignoring the fact that a great deal of attention had become focused on the altercation. Once they were well away and exiting the keep onto a balcony, Liandra had calmed down enough to at least uncurl her fists. The cold, dark air around them stole their breath and they could smell the imminent snow. Lia paced the long balcony along its stone balustrade, back and forth, her breath clouding wildly around her, her hot cheeks a bright red that set off her sparking eyes.
“Lia, calm down,” Mystique scolded gently. “I didn’t expect everyone would be pleased with a stranger suddenly finding so powerful a niche in their society.”
“You cannot let them treat you like that. She’s right. Any appearance of weakness and they’ll be on you like Jakals. You aren’t like us and they know it. They know that whenever you’re without Reule, they’re free to think and feel against you without fear of reprisal. That means they can plot against you too.”
“Not with Chayne close by,” Mystique reassured her. She stopped her new friend’s pacing with a hand and pointed through the glass of a nearby window. Chayne was leaning against a wall watching them, amusement dancing in his tan eyes.
Lia flushed even darker when she realized the Prima Shadow had likely been right behind them all along. “Oh. I forgot.”
“But I thank you for championing me,” Mystique said softly, leaning in to press a kiss to her companion’s temple. “It meant a great deal to me.”
“Well…I…you’ve been so kind to me. You’ve made a difficult day something better. It’s almost as though Amando brought us together. Which was how he spent his life. As Prime Envoy, he kept peaceful trade flowing between us and those who can’t stand us. It was a great talent.”
“Well, you struck no treaties today.” Mystique chuckled.
“No. But I was quite satisfied with what I did strike.” She giggled. “I’m not generally the violent type, but damn, that woman makes me seethe.”
“I’m afraid you may have made an enemy today.”
“Two. Theodora is Jocelyn’s mother. No doubt you noticed the familial snobbishness. Theodora groomed Jocelyn with aspirations of being Prima Mother. In a way, I feel sorry for Jocelyn. I don’t think she knows how to think of herself as anything but future Prima. She will waste her life striving for the impossible. I’m afraid I’m not going to be the target of her contempt. You are the threat, Mystique. You destroy all she’s been raised to believe for decades. It could make
her quite mad.”
“Well, she’s underestimating me if she thinks I have no strengths or power to protect me. Firstly, Reule will never let harm come to me. He has sworn it to me, and I believe him with all of my heart. And now, apparently, I have you as well.” Mystique squeezed her. “Look. You were right! The snow has begun.”
Both women looked up at the floating white flakes. Liandra laughed as she shivered hard. “The first time I ever saw snow was when I was ten years old. We had traveled through tropics and deserts, rainforests and then woods. So many years. All of my life, in fact, up until that first fall when we came to the Jeth Valley. We had no experience with snow, had never truly known how cold it could possibly get. We had barely been here long enough to make shelters, never mind appropriate ones for something we weren’t expecting. So many of our people died of exposure and sickness. Mostly the elderly who hadn’t already died in the last decade of journeying. I was just a child, but I remember that cold and that snow. Most Sánge despise it. But some of us younger ones, we look on the first snow as a tribute to survival and new beginnings. I know Amando did. And so do I.”
“I can see how you would,” Mystique said, feeling deep admiration for what the Sánge had survived. Liandra turned to look at her very directly, a winsome smile on her lips as they trembled with chill.
“Reule saved our lives, gave us hope. Drove us to survive. He was only twenty-two years old. His parents had died when he was sixteen, making him a boy king. Luckily, he always had Darcio protecting him. Amando…Amando caught his attention three years after we arrived at Jeth.”
“How?”
She laughed. “That’s a story I need to be in a warmer place for.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t feel the cold so much. Let’s go inside.”
They walked inside and Mystique reached out to touch Chayne’s shoulder in acknowledgment as they passed him and he fell into step behind them.
“Amando hated fighting,” his sister reminisced. “Any sort. He would have chastised me fiercely for that slap.”
“True enough,” Chayne agreed from behind them. “He was always making peace.”
“When I was a teenager, we worked the fields as an entity, the entire village, all those of working age and strength. It was a lot of people doing grueling tasks in rough country and unpredictable weather. We were grateful for all we had, but it wasn’t an easy life. Tempers sometimes came up short. Reule was famous for having a short fuse back then. He was a little wild. A lot angry. His parents’ murder had taken its toll. I suppose Darcio just couldn’t defuse his temper that day and he got in a roaring fistfight with Rye.”
“Rye?”
Chayne laughed at that. “Rye and Reule couldn’t possibly count the fistfights they have had. Their personalities conflicted more than you might think. Rye is lighthearted and Reule is too serious sometimes. Unfortunately, Rye knew this too well and liked to goad Reule. Still does, though not so much now that Reule doesn’t rise to the bait as easily. I remember this fight. You’re talking about when Amando sat on Rye’s chest to hold him down and…”
“I was getting to that!” Liandra scolded him. “Don’t ruin the story.”
“Sorry,” he said with an unrepentant chuckle.
The story was full of humor, good memories from both Lia and Chayne, and the magical ability one man had to soothe souls with logical words of calm. This had been Amando’s third ’pathic power. The power to soothe tempers with just the good-natured sound of his voice. Reule had instantly liked the jovial young man, and they’d become fast friends. He’d won over the others just as quickly, and when Reule had begun to add friends to his Pack according to their skills and the needs of the tribe, it had been Amando who had filled the role of Envoy, traveling far and wide with Reule to set up trade routes in what would normally be hostile territory.
“I credit Amando with the success of Jeth almost as much as I do Reule,” Chayne said, making Lia’s eyes mist over with pride. “There were times when it was only his skills that kept us working together, or kept us safe from harm.”
“Mystique.”
The group stopped short as Rye stepped out in front of them. Mystique caught her breath, an instinctive hand going to her throat as she looked up into the Prime Blade’s serious blue eyes.
“I wish to speak with you in private, if you would be so kind,” he said politely. But something about the way he held himself seemed too rigid, too threatening to her. She shook her head in refusal.
“I’m busy at the moment,” she said stiffly. She felt Chayne step up closer to her, but sensed his confusion over their behavior. She dreaded the idea of causing conflicts within the Pack when its members were already torn up over Amando. With a sigh she touched Chayne in reassurance. “Very well. We will speak. Chayne, Lia, excuse us a moment.”
Rye moved aside, holding out a hand to indicate the way to a small room off the corridor. She stopped short inside the door and watched nervously as he closed it. She reminded herself that two ’pathic persons remained right outside and she had nothing to fear.
“Yes, Rye?” she prompted, meeting his cold blue gaze. She could easily sense that the easygoing man she had first known had yet to return.
“I take it you ran crying to Reule about our little encounter?” he speculated. “Is that why he’s so hostile toward me?”
“He’s hostile because he wishes to be. I don’t control his emotions,” she retorted.
“Oh, but I think you do. A man will bend easily to the wishes of a woman who makes him feel the way our Prime felt when he was fucking you this afternoon. My, my, quite the display of affection.”
“How dare you!” she gasped, her cheeks staining red with anger and mortification. She hadn’t realized the Pack would experience her lovemaking with Reule! Or she hadn’t wanted to. Her breasts stung with a chill, as though she’d been stripped naked in front of this dreadful man.
“Listen carefully, my lady,” Rye said, contempt lacing his warning on the “my lady.” “You aren’t Prima yet, so you have no command over me. And I will never allow that to happen. I will never have you deciding life and death for me again.”
“You ungrateful bastard,” she hissed through her teeth. “You curse me for saving your life, and then use that life to threaten me? Is this how you show your love to Reule?”
“Don’t dare speak of my love for my Prime! You sully it with your very breath! I’ve known him all my life! Reule, Darcio, and I were born together, raised together, and became men in hardship together. You, with your overnight passions, can never know what it is to carve a niche of loyalty so deep in your heart as I have.”
“You call this being loyal?” she said, aghast. “He embraces me, cherishes me, raises me up above all other women he has ever known, and you trap me here to insult me and swear vengeance on me? To deny your fealty? This is how you pay him your respects?”
“I will show my respect by prying those wicked claws of yours out of him before you ever become Prima. I’ll be doing Reule a favor!” Rye’s hand darted out before she could react, and he grabbed her by the arm. He drew her up close, his mouth against her ear until she felt the rush of his heated breath. “I’m Prime Blade for a reason, unfortunate girl. I lead armies in a harmony of movement and strategy unlike anything you’ve ever conceived of. If you think I cannot rid myself of one troublesome outlander woman, then you’re mistaken.”
Mystique’s heart was pounding and she grabbed at his fingers, trying to pry them off her arm where they were squeezing so hard it was agonizing. She realized how frail she was in comparison to that big, powerful hand. That he could snap her bone if he desired it. She looked desperately at the door, wondering why Chayne didn’t come and stop this.
“Oh, I’m more powerful than Chayne,” he answered her thoughts. “I can block both of our minds from him…from anyone. I could wring your neck and no one would know until you were dead on the floor. Unfortunately, I was seen entering the room with you. It isn’t my goa
l to alienate my Prime in the process of ridding myself of you. As it is, I’ll have to face his temper come morning because of you.”
“Rye, please,” she begged him, her eyes smarting with tears of pain. “Explain this rage to me. I saved you, but not Amando, and that makes me evil? I don’t understand your logic. Why have you made me a target? Why is this all my fault?”
“Because we never, never lost Pack until you showed up! Suddenly you’re here and Amando is dead! A single drop of water in a pond causes ripples for great distances. You were the drop, and Amando drowned shortly after.” He shook her hard, making her neck crack. “Who are you? What are you? None of us knows. Who’s next? You think I’ll sit back and let you sleep beside my king? That I’ll allow evil to lie next to him?”
“You think I’ll hurt Reule? That I’ll kill him?” She was so horrified by the idea that she gagged. “By the Lady, you’ve gone completely mad! Why would I kill a man who’s making me his queen? Giving me a glorious home? Loving me like I have never known love in all of my life?”
“Protecting you, as promised.”
The statement was followed by a blindsiding punch from a huge fist that landed squarely on Rye’s left cheek. Rye went flying, his gripping hand wrenching Mystique’s arm hard before finally releasing her. The heir hit the ground with a jarring crash and Mystique felt a familiar muscular arm catch her around the waist, keeping her from toppling over onto Rye. That arm drew her back into a beloved body of warmth and strength, and her heart ached with relief as she leaned back into Reule, clutching his biceps. He nuzzled her ear gently.
“Are you all right, baby?” he demanded softly.
“Yes. Yes,” she breathed, turning her face to his until her nose rubbed his cheek and she could draw in the familiar masculine scent of him.
Drink of Me Page 25
