by Anne Bishop
He rocked furiously, petting her hair with one hand while his other arm tightened protectively around her. Her yip of pain when he accidentally pinched her arm snapped him out of a red haze. He muttered an apology, resettled her in his lap, and began rocking at a more soothing tempo. After a couple of minutes, he shook his head.
"Frigid," he said with a snort of disgust. "Well, Cat, if objecting to having someone slobber on you or grope and squeeze you is their definition of frigid, then I'm frigid, too. They have no right to use you, no matter what they say. Any man who tells you otherwise deserves a knife between the ribs." He gave her a considering look, then shook his head. "You'd probably find it hard to gut a man. That's all right. I don't."
Jaenelle stared at him, wide-eyed.
He wrapped his hand around the back of her neck and massaged gently. "Listen to me, Cat, because I'll only say this once. You're the finest Lady I've ever met and the dearest friend I've ever had. Besides that, I love you like
a brother, and any bastard who hurts my little sister is going to answer to me."
"Y-you can't," she whispered. "The agreement-'" "I'm not part of that damn agreement." He gave her a little shake, wondering how he could get that frail, bruised look out of her eyes. Then he squelched a grin. He'd do what he'd do with any feline he wanted to spark – rub her the wrong way. "Besides, Lady," he said in a courteous snarl, "you broke a solemn promise to me, and breaking a promise to a Warlord Prince is a serious offense."
Her eyes flashed fire. He could almost feel her back arch and the nonexistent fur stand on end. Maybe he wouldn't have to dig that hard to bring a little of her temper to the surface. "I never did!"
"Yes, you did. I distinctly remember teaching you what to do-"
"They weren't standing behind me!" Lucivar narrowed his eyes. "You don't have any human male friends?" "Of course I do!"
"And not one of them has ever taken you behind the barn and taught you what to do with your knee?" Her fingernails suddenly required her attention. "That's what I thought," Lucivar said dryly. "So I'll give you a choice. If one of those fine, rutting aristo males does something you don't like, you can give him a hard knee in the balls or I can start with his feet and end with his neck and break every bone in between." "You couldn't."
"It's not that difficult. I've done it before." He waited a minute, then tapped her chin. She closed her mouth.
Then she seemed to shrink into herself. "But, Lucivar," she said weakly, "what if it's my fault that he's aroused and needs relief?"
He snorted, amused. "You didn't actually fall for that, did you?"
Her eyes narrowed to slits.
"I don't know how things are in Kaeleer, but it used to
be, in Terreille, that a young man could register at a Red Moon house and not only get his 'relief but also learn how to do more than a thirty-second poke and hump."
She made a choking sound that might have been a suppressed laugh.
"And if they can't afford a Red Moon house, they can i> get their own 'relief easily enough."
"How?"
Lucivar suppressed a grin. Sometimes catching her interest was as easy as rolling a ball of yarn in front of a kitten. "I'm not sure an older brother is the right person to explain that," he said primly.
She studied him. "You don't like sex, do you?"
"Not my experience of it, no." He traced her fingers, needing to be honest. "But I've always thought that if I cared about a woman, it would be wonderful to give her that kind of pleasure." He shook himself and set her on her feet. "Enough of this. You need to eat and get your strength back. There's beef soup and a loaf of fresh bread."
Jaenelle paled. "It won't stay down. It never does after. ."
"Try."
When they sat down to eat, she managed three spoonfuls of soup and one mouthful of bread before she bolted into the bathroom.
His own appetite gone, Lucivar cleared the table. He was pouring the soup back into the pan when Smoke slunk into the kitchen.
*Lucivar?*
Lucivar lifted his bowl of soup. "You want some of this?"
Smoke ignored the offer. *Bad dreams come now. Hurt the Lady. She not talk to us, not see us, not want males near. Not eat, not sleep, walk walk walk, snarl at us. Bad dreams now, Lucivar.*
*Do the bad dreams always come after one of these visits?* Lucivar asked, narrowing his thoughts to a spear thread.
Smoke bared his teeth in a silent snarl. * Always.*
Lucivar's stomach clenched. So it didn't end once she got
away from Little Terreille. *How long?* The kindred had a fluid sense of time, but Smoke, at least, understood basic divisions of day and night.
Smoke cocked his head. *Night, day, night, day. . maybe night.*
So she'd spend tonight and the next two days trying to outrun the nightmares hovering at the edge of her vision by depleting an already exhausted body that she would mercilessly flog until it collapsed under the strain of no food, no water, no rest. What kind of dreams could drive a young woman to such masochistic cruelty?
He found out that night.
The change in her breathing snapped him out of a light sleep. Propping himself up on one arm, he reached for her shoulder.
*Can't wake when bad dreams come.* Standing at the foot of the bed, Smoke's eyes caught the moonlight.
*Why?*
*Not see us. Not know us. All dreams.*
Lucivar swore under his breath. If every sound, every touch got sucked into the dreamscape. *.
Jaenelle's body arched like a tightly strung bow.
He studied the clenched, straining muscles and swore again. She'd be hurting sore in the morning.
The tension went out of her body. She collapsed against the mattress, twitching, moaning, sweat-soaked.
He had to wake her up. If it took throwing her into a cold shower or walking her around the meadow for the rest of the night, he was going to wake her up.
He reached out again. . and she began to talk.
Every word was a physical blow as the memories poured out.
His head bowed, his body flinching, he listened as she talked about and to Marjane, Myrol and Rebecca, Dannie, and, especially, Rose. He listened to the horrors a child had witnessed and endured in a place called Briarwood. He listened to the names of the men who had hurt her, hurt them all. And he suffered with her as she relived the rape that had torn her apart physically and had shattered her
mind, the rape that had made her desperately try to sever the link between body and spirit.
As she plunged once again into an abyss beyond reach, she took a deep, ragged breath, murmured a name, and was still.
He watched her for several minutes until he felt reasonably sure she was just sleeping deeply. Then he went into the bathroom and was quietly, but thoroughly, sick.
He rinsed out his mouth, padded into the kitchen, and poured a generous dose of whiskey. Naked, he stepped onto the porch and let the night air dry the sweat from his skin while he sipped his drink.
Smoke came out of the cabin, standing so close his fur tickled Lucivar's bare leg. The two young wolves remained huddled at the far end of the porch.
*She never remembers, does she?* Lucivar asked Smoke.
*No. The Darkness is kind.*
Maybe she just wasn't ready to face those memories. He certainly wasn't going to push her. But he had the uneasy feeling that the day would come when someone or something would force that door open and she would have to face her past. Until then, there were some things he would hold in silence – and he hoped she would forgive him.
He'd heard pain when she'd talked about the men who had hurt her. He'd heard pain when she'd talked about the man who had raped her.
But the only time she'd mentioned Daemon, his name had sounded like a promise, like a caress.
Blinking back tears and leashing his guilt, Lucivar finished the whiskey and turned to go back inside.
2 / Kaeleer
Lucivar settled on the tree stum
p that marked the usual halfway point for walkies. Summer was over. The healing was complete. Two days ago, he had successfully made the Khaldharon Run. Yesterday, he and Jaenelle had gone to the Fyreborn Islands to play with the small dragons who lived there. He would have happily spent today being lazy,
but something had pushed Jaenelle out of the cabin the moment they'd returned this morning, and the way she shied away from his questions told him it had to do with him.
Well, if you couldn't entice the kitten with a ball of yarn, you certainly could provoke her with a fast dunk in a tub of cold water.
"You could have warned me, Cat."
Jaenelle bristled. "I told you to watch your angle when you whomped that wave." Her eyes flicked to his right side. She chewed her lower lip. "Lucivar, that bruise looks awfully nasty. Are you sure-"
"I wasn't talking about the wave," Lucivar said through his teeth. "I was talking about the pickle berries."
"Oh." Jaenelle sat down near the tree stump. She gave him a slanty-eyed look. "Well, I did think the name was sufficient warning so that a person wouldn't just sink his teeth into one."
"I was thirsty. You said they were juicy."
"They are," Jaenelle pointed out so reasonably that he wanted to belt her. She wrapped her arms around her knees. "The dragons were extremely impressed by the sounds you made. They wondered if you were demonstrating territorial claims or a mating challenge."
Lucivar shuddered at the memory of biting into that aptly named fruit. Juicy, yes. When he'd bitten into it, the juice had flooded his mouth with golden sweetness for a moment before the tartness made his teeth curl and his throat close. He'd stomped and howled so much he could understand why the dragons thought he'd been showing them examples of Eyrien display. To add to the insult, the dragons had chomped on pickle berries throughout that whole damn performance while Jaenelle had nibbled daintily and watched with wide-eyed apprehension.
The little traitor. She was sitting close enough to reach, the trusting little fool. No weapons. He wanted his bare hands on her. Strangling would be too quick, too permanent. Pulling her across his lap and whacking her ass until his hand got hot. .
She shifted her hips, putting her just out of reach.
Lucivar bared his teeth in a smile, acknowledging the movement.
Shifting a little farther, she began to pluck grass. "I gave Mrs. Beale a pickle berry once," she said in a small voice.
Lucivar stared at the meadow. Over the past three months, he'd heard plenty of stories about the cook who worked for Jaenelle's family. "Did you tell her what it's called?"
"No." A small, pleased smile curved Jaenelle's lips.
He clenched his teeth. "What happened?"
"Well, Papa asked me if I had any idea why those sounds were coming from the kitchen and I said I did have some idea and he said 'I see,' stuffed me into one of our private Coaches, and told Khary to take me to Morghann's house since Scelt was on the other side of the Realm."
Struggling to keep a straight face, Lucivar clamped his right hand over his left wrist hard enough to hurt. It helped.
"The next morning, Mrs. Beale cornered Papa in his study and told him that I'd given her a sample of a new kind of fruit and, having thought about it, she'd decided that it would enhance the flavor of a number of common dishes and she'd appreciate having some. Then she set a wicker basket on Papa's desk and Papa had to tell her that he didn't know where the fruit came from and Mrs. Beale pointed out that, obviously, I did, and Papa just as politely pointed out that I was not at home at the moment and Mrs. Beale suggested that he and her wicker basket go find me and bring back the desired fruit. So he did and we did and because the Fyreborn Islands are a closed Territory, Mrs. Beale is envied by other cooks for her ability to produce this unique taste in the food she prepares."
Lucivar rubbed his head vigorously, then smoothed back his shoulder-length black hair. "Does Mrs. Beale outrank your father?"
"Not by a long shot," Jaenelle said tartly, and then added plaintively, "It's just that she's rather. . large."
"I'd like to meet Mrs. Beale. I think I'm in love." He looked at Jaenelle's horrified expression, fell off the stump, and laughed himself silly. He laughed even harder when
she poked him, and said worriedly, "You were joking, weren't you, Lucivar? Lucivar?"
With a whoop, he yanked her down on top of him and wrapped his arms around her tight enough to hold her and loose enough not to panic her. "You should have been Eyrien," he said once his laughter had settled to a quiet simmer. "You've got the brass for it."
Then he smoothed her hair away from her face. "What is it, Cat?" he asked quietly. "What am I going to find so bitter to swallow that you wanted to give me this burst of sweetness first?"
Jaenelle traced his collarbone. "You're healed now."
He could almost taste her reluctance. "So?"
She rolled away from him and leaped to her feet, a movement so graceful nothing tame could have made it.
He rose more slowly, snapped his wings open to clear away the dust and bits of grass, settled on the tree stump again, and waited.
"Even after the war between Terreille and Kaeleer, people came through the Gates," Jaenelle said quietly, her eyes fixed on the horizon. "Mostly those who'd been born in the wrong place and were seeking 'home.' And there's always been some trading between Terreille and Little Terreille.
"A couple of years ago, the Dark Council decided to allow more open contact with Terreille, and aristo Blood began pouring in to see the Shadow Realm. The number of lower-ranking Blood wanting to immigrate to Kaeleer should have warned the Council about what courts are like in Terreille, but Little Terreille opened its arms to embrace the kinship ties. However, Kaeleer is not Terreille. Blood Law and Protocol can be… understood differently.
"Too many Terreilleans refused to understand that what they could get away with in Terreille isn't tolerated in Kaeleer, and they died.
"A year ago, in Dharo, three Terreillean males raped a young witch for sport. Raped her until her mind was so broken there was no one left to sing back to the body. She was my age."
Lucivar concentrated on his clenched hands, forcing them to open. "Did they catch the bastards who did it?"
Jaenelle smiled grimly. "The Dharo males executed those men. Then they banished the rest of the Terreilleans in Dharo, sending them back to Little Terreille. Within six months, the fatality rate for Terreilleans in most Territories was over ninety percent. Even in tittle Terreille it was over half. Since the slaughter strained good feelings between the Realms, the Dark Council passed some rules of immigration. Now, a Terreillean who wants to immigrate has to serve a Kaeleer witch to her satisfaction for a specified time. Non-Jeweled Blood have to serve for eighteen months. The lighter Jewels have to serve three years, the darker Jewels five. Queens and Warlord Princes of any rank have to serve five years."
Lucivar felt sick. His body shook. He felt detached sympathy for it. To her satisfaction. That meant the bitch could do anything to him and he would have to allow it if he wanted to stay in Kaeleer.
He tried to laugh. It sounded panicked.
She knelt beside him and petted him anxiously. "Lucivar, it won't be so bad. Truly. The Queens. . Serving in Kaeleer isn't like serving in Terreille. I know all of the Territory Queens. I'll help you find someone who suits you, someone you'll enjoy serving."
"Why can't I serve you?" He spread his hands over her shoulders, needing her to be his anchor as he fought against hurt and panic. "You like me – at least some of the time. And we work well together."
"Oh, Lucivar," Jaenelle said gently, cupping his face in her hands. "I always like you. Even when you're being a pain in the ass. But you should have the experience of serving in a Kaeleer court."
"You'll be setting up your court in a year or two."
"I'm not going to have a court. I don't want to have that kind of power over someone else's life. Besides, you don't want to serve me. You don't know about me, don't understand
-"
He lost patience. "What? That you're Witch?"
She looked shocked.
He rubbed her shoulders, and said dryly, "Wearing the Black at your age makes it rather obvious, Cat. Anyway, I've known who, and what, you were since I met you." He tried to smile. "The night we met, I'd asked the Darkness for a strong Queen I'd be proud to serve, and there you were. Of course, you were a bit younger than I'd imagined, but I wasn't going to be picky about it. Cat, please. I've waited a lifetime to serve you. I'll do anything you want. Please don't send me away."
Jaenelle closed her eyes and rested her head against his chest. "It's not that easy, Lucivar. Even if you can accept what I am-"
"I do accept what you are."
"There are other reasons why you might not be willing to serve me."
Something inside him settled. He understood the custom of passing tests or challenges in order to earn a privilege. Whether she realized it or not, she was offering him a chance. "How many?"
She looked at him blankly.
"How many reasons? Set a number, now. If I can accept them, then I can choose to serve you. That's fair."
She gave him a strange look. "And will you be honest with yourself as well as with me about whether you can really accept them?"
"Yes."
She pulled away from him, sitting just out of reach. After several minutes of tense silence, she said, "Three."
Three. Not a dozen or so to natter about. Just three. Which meant he had to take them seriously. "All right. When?"
Jaenelle flowed to her feet. "Now. Pack a bag and plan to stay overnight." She headed for the cabin at a swift pace.
Lucivar followed her but didn't try to catch up. Three tests would determine the next five years of his life.
She'd be fair. Whether she liked the end result or not, she'd be fair. And so would he.
As he approached the cabin, the wolves ran out to greet him, offering furry comfort to the adopted member of their pack.
Lucivar buried his hands in their fur. If he had to serve someone else, would he ever see them again? He would be honest. He wouldn't abuse her trust in him. But he was going to win.
