Once Upon a Castle

by Nora Roberts

  Her heart beat thickly, the sun warmed her closed lids as pleasure swamped her. And love held so long in her heart bloomed like wild roses.

  “Calin.”

  His name shuddered through her lips when he cupped her. He watched her eyes fly open, saw the deep-blue irises go glassy and blind in speechless arousal. He sent her over the edge, viciously delighted when she cried out, shuddered, when her hands fell weakly.

  His, was all he could think as he blazed a hot trail down her thigh. His. His.

  Blood thundered in his head as he slipped inside her, as she moaned in pleasure, arched in welcome. Now her eyes were open, vivid blue and intense. Now her arms were around him, a circle of possession. She mated with him, their rhythm ancient and sure.

  His strokes went deep, deeper, and his mouth crushed down on hers in breathless, mutual pleasure. She flew, as she had waited a lifetime to fly, as he emptied himself into her.

  She held him close as the tension drained from his body. Stroked his hair as he rested his head between her breasts. “It’s new,” she said quietly. “Ours. I didn’t know it could be. Knowing so much, yet this I never knew.”

  He shifted, lifted his head so that he could see her face. Her skin was soft, dewy, her eyes slumberous, her mouth rosy and swollen. “None of this should be possible.” He cupped a hand under her chin, turned her profile just slightly, already seeing it in frame, in just that light. Black and white. And he would title it Aftermath. “I’m probably having a breakdown.”

  Her laugh was a quick, silly snort. Carefree, careless. “Well, your engine seemed to be running fine, Calin, if you’re after asking me.”

  His mouth twitched in response. “We’re pushing into the twenty-first century. I have a fax built into my car phone, a computer in my office that does everything but make my bed, and I’m supposed to believe I’ve just made love to a witch. A witch who makes fire burn out of thin air, calls up winds where there isn’t a breeze in sight.”

  She combed her fingers through his hair as she’d dreamed of doing countless times. “Magic and technology aren’t mutually exclusive. It’s only that the second so rarely takes the first into account. Normality is only in the perspective.” She watched his eyes cloud at that. “You had visions, Calin. As a child you had them.”

  “And I put away childish things.”

  “Visions? Childish?” Her eyes snapped once, then she closed them on a sigh. “Why must you think so? A child’s mind and heart are perhaps more open to such matters. But you saw and you felt and you knew things that others didn’t. It was a gift you were given.”

  “I’m no witch.”

  “No, that only makes the gift more special. Calin—“

  “No.” He sat up, shaking his head. “It’s too much. Let it be for a while. I don’t know what I feel.” He scrubbed his hands over his face, into his hair. “All I know is that here was where I had to be—and you’re who I had to be with. Let the rest alone for a while.”

  They had so little time. She nearly said it before she stopped herself. If time was so short, then what they had was precious. If she was damned for taking it for only the two of them, then she was damned.

  “Then let it rest we will.” She lay back, stretched out a hand for his. “Come kiss me again. Come lie with me.”

  He skimmed a hand up her thigh, watched her smile bloom slow. And the light. Oh, the light. “Stay right there.” He bounded out of bed, grabbing his jeans on the run.

  She blinked. “What? Where are you going?”

  “Be right back. Don’t move. Stay right there.”

  She huffed out a breath at the ceiling. Then her face softened again and she stretched her arms high. Oh, she felt well loved. Like a cat thoroughly stroked. Chuckling, she glanced over at Hecate, curled in front of the hearth and watching her.

  “Aye, you know the feeling, don’t you? Well, I like it.” The cat only stared, unblinking. Ten seconds. Twenty. Bryna closed her eyes. “I need the time. Damn it, we need it. A few hours after so many years. Why should we be denied it? Why must there be a price for every joy? Go then, leave me be. If the fare comes due, I’ll pay it freely.”

  With a swish of her tail, the cat rose and padded out of the room. Calin’s footsteps sounded on the steps seconds later. Prepared to smile, Bryna widened her eyes instead. He’d snapped two quick pictures before she could push herself up and cross her arms over her breast.

  “What do you think you’re about? Taking photographs of me without my clothes. Put it away. You won’t be hanging me on some art gallery wall.”

  “You’re beautiful.” He circled the bed, changing angles. “A masterpiece. Drop your left shoulder just a little.”

  “I’ll do no such thing. It’s outrageous.” Shocked to the core, she tugged at the rumpled spread, pulled it up—and to Cal’s mind succeeded only in looking more alluring and rumpled.

  But he lowered the camera. “I thought witches were supposed to like to dance naked under the full moon.”

  “Going skyclad isn’t an exhibition. And there’s a time and place for such things. No one snaps pictures of private matters nor of rituals.”

  “Bryna.” Using all his charm, he stepped closer, tugged gently at the sheet she’d pulled over her breasts. “You have a beautiful body, your coloring is exquisite, and the light in here is perfect. Unbelievable.” He skimmed the back of his fingers over her nipple, felt her tremble. “I’ll show them to you first.”

  She barely felt the sheet slip to her waist. “I know what I look like.”

  “You don’t know how I see you. But I’ll show you. Lie back for me. Relax.” Murmuring, he spread her hair over the pillows as he wanted it. “No, don’t cover yourself. Just look at me.” He shot straight down, then moved back. “Turn your head, just a little. I’m touching you. Imagine my hands on you, moving over you. There. And there.” He braced a knee on the foot of the bed, working quickly. “If I had a darkroom handy, I’d develop these tonight and you’d see what I see.”

  “I have one.” Her voice was breathless, aroused.

  “What?”

  “I had one put in for you, off the kitchen.” Her smile was hesitant when he lowered the camera and stared at her. “I knew you would come, and I wanted you to have what you needed, what would make you comfortable.”

  So you would stay with me, she thought, but didn’t say it.

  “You put in a darkroom? Here?”

  “Aye, I did.”

  With a laugh, he shook his head. “Amazing. Absolutely amazing.” Rising, he set the camera down on the bureau. “I think you need to be a little more…mussed before I shoot the rest of that roll.” He climbed onto the bed. “The things I do for my art,” he murmured and covered her laughing mouth with his.

  6

  Later, in the breezy evening when the sun gilded the sky and polished the air, he walked with her toward the cliffs. Both his mind and his body were relaxed, limber.

  Logically he knew he should be racing to the nearest psychiatric ward for a full workup. But a lonely cliffside, a ruined castle, a beautiful woman who claimed to be a witch—visions and sex and legends. It was a time and place to set logic aside, at least for a while.

  “It’s a beautiful country,” he commented. “I’m still trying to adjust that I’ve only been here since this morning. Barely twelve hours.”

  “Your heart’s been here longer.” It was so simple to walk with him, fingers linked. So simple. So ordinary. So miraculous. “Tell me about New York. All the movies, the pictures I’ve seen have only made me wonder more. Is it like that, really? So fast and crowded and exciting?”

  “It can be.” And at that moment it seemed a world away. A thousand years away.

  “And your house?”

  “It’s an apartment. It looks out over the park. I wanted a big space so I could have my studio right there. It’s got good light.”

  “You like to stand on the balcony,” she began, then rolled her eyes when he shot her a quick look. “I�
��ve peeked now and then.”

  “Peeked.” He caught her chin in his hand before she could turn away. “At what? Exactly?”

  “I wanted to see how you lived, how you worked.”

  She eased away and walked along the rocks, where the water spewed up, showered like diamonds in the sunlight. Then she turned her head, tilting it in an eerily feline movement.

  “You’ve had a lot of women, Calin Farrell—coming and going at all hours in all manner of dress. And undress.”

  He hunched his shoulders as if he had an itch he couldn’t scratch. “You watched me with other women?”

  “I peeked,” she corrected primly. “And never watched for long in any case. But it seemed to me that you often chose women who were lacking in the area of intelligence.”

  He ran his tongue around his teeth. “Did it?”

  “Well…” A shrug, dismissing. “Well, so it seemed.” Bending, she plucked a wildflower that had forced its way through a split in the rock. Twirled it gaily under her nose. “Is it worrying you that I know of them?”

  He hooked his thumbs in his pockets. “Not particularly.”

  “That’s fine, then. Now, if I were the vindictive sort, I might turn you into an ass. Just for a short time.”

  “An ass?”

  “Just for a short time.”

  “Can you do that sort of thing?” He realized when he asked it that he was ready to believe anything.

  She laughed, the sound carrying rich music over wind and sea. “If I were the vindictive sort.” She walked to him, handed him the flower, then smiled when he tucked it into her hair. “But I think you’d look darling with long ears and a tail.”

  “I’d just as soon keep my anatomy as it is. What else did you…peek at?”

  “Oh, this and that, here and there.” She linked her fingers with his and walked again. “I watched you work in your darkroom—the little one in the house where you grew up. Your parents were so proud of you. Startled by your talent, but very proud. I saw your first exhibition, at that odd wee gallery where everyone wore black—like at a wake.”

  “SoHo,” he murmured. “Christ, that was nearly ten years ago.”

  “You’ve done brilliant things since. I could look through your eyes when I looked at your pictures. And felt close to you.”

  The thought came abruptly, stunning him. He turned her quickly to face him, stared hard into her eyes. “You didn’t have anything to do with…you haven’t made what I can do?”

  “Oh, Calin, no.” She lifted her hands to cover the ones on her shoulders. “No, I promise you. It’s yours. From you. You mustn’t doubt it,” she said, sensing that he did. “I can tell you nothing that isn’t true. I’m bound by that. On my oath, everything you’ve accomplished is yours alone.”

  “All right.” He rubbed his hands up and down her arms absently. “You’re shivering. Are you cold?”

  “I was for a moment.” Bone-deep, harrowing. Alasdair. She cast it out, gripped his hand tightly and led him over the gentle slope of the hill. “Even as a child I would come here and stand and look out.” Content again, she leaned her head against his shoulder, scanning hill and valley, the bright flash of river, the dark shadows cast by twisted trees. “To Ireland spread out before me, green and gold. A dreaming place.”

  “Ireland, or this spot?”

  “Both. We’re proud of our dreamers here. I would show you Ireland, Calin. The bank where the columbine grows, the pub where a story is always waiting to be told, the narrow lane flanked close with hedges that bloom with red fuchsia. The simple Ireland.”

  Tossing her hair back, she turned to him. “And more. I would show you more. The circle of stones where power sleeps, the quiet hillock where the faeries dance of an evening, the high cliff where a wizard once ruled. I would give it to you, if you’d take it.”

  “And what would you take in return, Bryna?”

  “That’s for you to say.” She felt the chill again. The warning. “Now I have something else to show you, Calin.” She glanced uneasily over her shoulder, toward the ruins. Shivered. “He’s close,” she whispered. “And watching. Come into the house.”

  He held her back. He was beginning to see that he had run from a good many things in his life. Too many things. “Isn’t it better to face him now, be done with it?”

  “You can’t choose the time. It’s already set.” She gripped his hand, pulled. “Please. Into the house.”

  Reluctantly, Cal went with her. “Look, Bryna, it seems to me that a bully’s a bully whatever else he might be. The longer you duck a bully, the worse he gets. Believe me, I’ve dealt with my share.”

  “Oh, aye, and had a fine bloody nose, as I remember, from one. The two of you, pounding on each other on the street corner. Like hoodlums.”

  “Hey, he started it. He tried to shake me down once too often, so I…” Cal trailed off, blew out a long breath. “Whoa. Too weird. I haven’t thought about Henry Belinski in twenty years. Anyway, he may have bloodied my nose, but I broke his.”

  “Oh, and you’re proud of that, are you now? Breaking the nose of an eight-year-old boy.”

  “I was eight too.” He realized that she had maneuvered him neatly into the house, turned the subject, and gotten her own way. “Very clever, Bryna. I don’t see that you need magic when you can twist a conversation around like that.”

  “Just a small talent.” She smiled and touched his cheek. “I was glad you broke his nose. I wanted to turn him into a toad—I had already started the charm when you dealt with it yourself.”

  “A toad?” He couldn’t help it, the grin just popped out. “Really?”

  “It would have been wrong. But I was only four, and such things are forgiven in the child.” Then her smile faded, and her eyes went dark. “Alasdair is no child, Calin. He wants more than to wound your pride, skin your knees. Don’t take him lightly.”

  Then she stepped back, lifting both hands. I call the wind around my house to swirl. She twisted a wrist and brought the wind howling against the windows. Fists of fog against my windows curl. Deafen his ears and blind his eyes. Come aid me with this disguise. Help me guard what was trusted to me. As I will, so mote it be.

  He’d stepped back from her, gaping. Fog crawled over the windows, the wind howled like wolves. The woman before him glowed like a candle, shimmering with a power he couldn’t understand. The fire she’d made out of air was nothing compared with this.

  “How much am I supposed to believe? Accept?”

  She lowered her hands slowly. “Only what you will. The choice will always be yours, Calin. Will you come with me and see what I would show you?”

  “Fine.” He blew out a breath. “And after, if you don’t mind, I’d like a glass of that Irish of yours. Straight up.”

  She managed a small smile. “Then you’ll have it. Come.” As she started toward the stairs, she chose her words carefully. “We have little time. He’ll work to break the spell. His pride will demand it, and my powers are more…limited than they were.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s part of it,” was all she would say. “And so is what I have to show you. It isn’t just me he wants, you see. He wants everything I have. And he wants the most precious treasure of the Castle of Secrets.”

  She stopped in front of a door, thick with carving. There was no knob, no lock, just glossy wood and that ornate pattern on it that resembled ancient writing. “This room is barred to him by power greater than mine.” She passed a hand over the wood, and slowly, soundlessly, the door crept open.

  “‘Open locks,’ “Cal murmured, “‘whoever knocks.’ “

  “No, only I. And now you.” She stepped inside, and after a brief hesitation, he crossed the threshold behind her.

  Instantly the room filled with the light of a hundred candles. Their flames burned straight and true, illuminating a small, windowless chamber. The walls were wood, thickly carved like the door, the ceiling low, nearly brushing the top of his head.

  “A
humble place for such a thing,” Bryna murmured.

  He saw nothing but a simple wooden pedestal standing in a white circle in the center of the room. Atop the column was a globe, clear as glass.

  “A crystal ball?”

  Saying nothing, she crossed the room. “Come closer.” She waited, kept her hands at her side until he’d walked up and put the globe between them.

  “Alasdair lusts for me, envies you, and covets this. For all his power, for all his trickery, he has never gained what he craves the most. This has been guarded by a member of my blood since before time. Believe me, Calin, wizards walked this land while men without vision still huddled in caves, fearing the night. And this ancient ball was conjured by one of my blood and passed down generation to generation. Bryna the Wise held this in her hands a thousand years past and through her power, and her love, concealed it from Alasdair at the last. And so it remained hidden. No one outside my blood has cast eyes on it since.”

  Gently, she lifted the globe from its perch, raised it high above her head. Candlelight flickered over it, into it, seemed to trap itself inside until the ball burned bright. When she lowered it, it glowed still, colors dazzling, pulsing, beating.

  “Look, my love.” Bryna opened her hand so that the globe rolled to her fingertips, clung there in defiance of gravity. “Look, and see.”

  He couldn’t stop his hands from reaching out, cupping it. Its surface was smooth, almost silky, and warmed in his hands like flesh. The pulse of it, the life of it, seemed to swim up his arms.

  Colors shifted. The bright clouds they formed parted, a magic sea. He saw dragons spewing fire and a silver sword cleaving through scales. A man bedding a woman in a flower-strewn meadow under a bright white sun. A farmer plowing a rocky field behind swaybacked horses. A babe suckling at his mother’s breast.

  On and on it went, image after image in a blur of life. Dark oceans, wild stars, a quiet village as still as a photograph. An old woman’s face, ravaged with tears. A small boy sleeping under the shade of a chestnut tree.

  And even when the images faded into color and light, the power sang. It flooded him, a river of wine. Cool and clean. It hummed still when the globe was clear again, tossing the flames of the candles into his eyes.