Hers to Claim (Verdantia Book 4)

by Patricia A. Knight

  One of Hel’s arms lay heavily across her waist. His breathing came even and regular. Adonia thought he slept. Just as well. She couldn’t remember when she’d felt such uncertainty about what she intended to say, but she needed to tell him. For good or bad, her painful honesty drove her to speak the words that revealed her changed motivation.

  “I’m in love with you.”

  There. Her breathy whisper was hardly a resounding declaration, but she’d given vocal life to the feelings of her heart. Hel shifted slightly and his breathing pattern changed. His sleep-heavy rumble disturbed the hair across her cheek.

  “I love you, too. Now, get some sleep.” He snugged her closer to him.

  Dumbfounded, she lay inert while her heart darted to and fro in her chest like a herd of startled chital. He. Loves. Me. She’d little doubt Hel meant what he said. He loves me. Other men were careless with their words—not this man. He loves me! She wanted to spring up, to shake him and insist he explain how he meant for them to go on. She didn’t. Adonia gnawed on her thoughts and stared at the opposite wall until fatigue beat her undisciplined, extravagant emotions into somnolence.

  ~~~

  She’s mine. She has claimed me, and I will never let her go. The predator within Hel roared in triumph and a violent surge of possessiveness rocked him. Mine. When her screams had awoken him, he’d meant only to soothe her fears. The words that had slipped unplanned from his lips in response to her whisper of love had been sincere even though spontaneous. She is mine. His mouth curved in a satisfied smile. Now, more than ever before, he must ensure they remained alive. He had a future to fulfill—with her.

  Chapter Sixteen

  When Adonia awoke, the sun stood high in the sky; a bedside tray bore a cold, congealed breakfast, and she was the lone occupant in Hel’s great bed. He loves me. The warm, golden joy of that thought licked lazily up her insides and curled around her heart like a purring cat. As Adonia sat up, the figure of her maid roused from a chair in the corner. Maddie laid aside the book she’d been reading and stretched.

  “My lady, let me help you get dressed. Prince DeHelios said he would join you in the sickroom after you rose. You are to send word for him to Torre Bianca.”

  This time as Adonia stood in front of her closet, a strange feeling accompanied her examination of each elegant article of clothing. What style of gown set off her mannish shape? What color flattered her? Her ignorance about such matters left her vulnerable. With a soft huff of embarrassed appeal, she turned to Maddie and held a rich gown of lilac shot through with golden thread and deep violet trim against her body.

  “Will this one favor me? I…ah…I want to look…” Adonia dropped her eyes to the floor. “I want him to…” Her shoulders fell. The arm holding the luxurious garment sagged. “I don’t know how to begin to do this.” She looked up when Maddie placed a warm hand on her forearm.

  “You will look like a delicate sylph in that dress, my lady. You will pull every male eye in the city—especially his. There is a lovely set of topaz and amethyst hair clips that will complement the gown and if I may suggest some light cosmetics? Your skin is so clear it needs very little…but perhaps a berry lip-stain and some enhancement of your beautiful eyes?”

  Adonia put herself in Maddie’s capable hands and blessed the young woman for neither laughing at her pathetic desire to look pretty—if such a thing were even possible—nor asking who “him” was. When she rose to leave a mere half hour later, she stopped and gave the young woman a hug. “Thank you. You have managed to transform a gawkish stick figure into something approaching a lady.”

  Maddie returned her hug and drew back, shaking her head. “You are a lady, mistress—and I transformed nothing. We merely gave you a proper setting.”

  “Well…ah...thank you.”

  Maddie nodded and grinned as Adonia walked through the door and turned down the hall toward the sickroom. The sickroom. For a brief moment, her nightmare returned and her steps faltered as fear of a second confrontation with the dark corruption threatened to unnerve her. Memories of the past night banished that fear, however, and replaced it with a steady serenity based on one miraculous thought. Hel loves me. So armored, Adonia calmly walked down the hall to join Sara.

  She spent her time tending the everyday ailments among her patients as she waited for Hel. Her results with the young laborer with a broken hand from a poorly aimed hammer blow reassured her of her competence. Withdrawing onto a level of metaphysical plane more shallow than that she’d achieved with her patient stricken with the fading, Adonia readily identified the broken bones in his hand. Using the power within the diaman crystals she’d placed around him, she entered his body as spiritual energy and then temporarily blocked the nerves that sent signals of pain to his brain. With a surge of thought, she pushed the bloodstream to rush healing nourishment to the area.

  Using physical energy, she straightened his fractured metatarsals and prompted his body’s cells to accelerate the healing process. When she had done all she could to speed his recovery, Adonia returned to herself. His face swam into her consciousness, and she was once again in Nyth Uchel’s sickroom with Sara hovering anxiously.

  “I’ve set your bones but keep your hand still while Sara wraps it in a cast.” Adonia glanced toward Sara and she nodded in understanding. “I’m afraid you won’t have use of it for about six weeks. Come see me in another two weeks and let me check on your healing. How does it feel?”

  Her young patient flexed his hand cautiously and waggled his fingers. “Her blessings on you, my lady.” The tow-headed young man nodded with a thankful expression. “It feels marvelous. Very little pain.”

  “Good. You will tell me if that changes.” She directed a steady gaze toward the young man.

  “Yes, my lady.”

  Adonia smiled at her patient and then turned toward the doorway where Hel stood propped in careless masculine splendor. His black hair hung down his back past his shoulders. She was glad he hadn’t cut it. He had continued to shave—though at this time of day a dark shadow covered his chiseled jaw. His elegant features never failed to start her heart racing.

  The corners of her mouth tipped up shyly. She’d known he was there. She’d felt his presence several minutes ago, but didn’t want to distract herself from her patient.

  This man loves me, but what does that mean?

  Words of welcome died unborn. Thoughts crashed against her mind like waves in a stormy sea of uncertainty. She’d thought she had the confidence to accept that Hel could love her…but then those damn insecurities from her past washed ashore like so much jetsam and once more she fought doubt. Perhaps she should take her cue on how they would go on from him. If he chose to ignore the whispers exchanged in the night—so would she.

  She ran sweaty palms down her dress and then straightened and walked to him. His gray eyes told her with silent honesty how desirable he found her. Adonia blessed Maddie for her skills. She almost felt beautiful—almost. “Thank you for coming,” she murmured. “I’m sorry I took you from your search of Torre Bianca.”

  “A welcome interruption of what I am coming to believe an exercise in futility.” His knuckle stroked her cheek gently as his eyes considered her. “You’ve taken extra care with your appearance today, Beauty. I approve.”

  Heat flooded her face and she examined her toes. For some reason, she found it hard to catch her breath and her statement came out more breathy than she’d planned. “I would like to see what can be accomplished with two of our most sick. Like the woman yesterday, they suffer from the fading.”

  “Nia.”

  She shifted and wrapped her arms around her waist. “Umm, yes?” she whispered.

  His arms enveloped her and pulled her into him. “Look at me.”

  Her head fell back, and her eyes met his.

  “I wasn’t asleep. I heard you quite clearly.” His expression softened and his voice lowered to include only the two of them. “When you face the void, the brutal desolation…reme
mber, you are the beloved of DeHelios. No power, natural or unnatural, can stand against us. Use that as your lodestar.”

  “Oh!” Joy catapulted her onto her toes, and she kissed him with all the passion and exultation in her heart. He returned her kiss and the firestorm of their joined heat wiped all thought from her mind—until he drew back with a low chuckle.

  “I think we’ve scandalized the sickroom, Beauty. We should probably tend to business now.” His eyes held apology and humor. His whispered, “Later,” contained a promise.

  Adonia dropped from her toes with a thud and cautiously scanned the room from over her shoulder. Sara looked on, beaming approval, but those others who still maintained their mental faculties wore expressions that ranged from bemusement to shock to disapproval. Heat flushed her cheeks.

  She surreptitiously dabbed at her mouth with the back of her sleeve. “Ah, yes, yes.” Standing straight, she took one of Hel’s hands and led him to chairs placed next to a pair of pallets laid side-by-side. This time, as she mentally chanted the focusing mantras that would take her to the high aetheric plane necessary to delve deeply into her patients, Adonia felt a presence join her. As she slipped the final tether binding her spirit to her physical self, the aether around her shimmered luminous and golden. A star-bright sphere pulsed in Adonia’s awareness.

  Daughter of our blood, beloved of the light-bringer, we greet you.

  “Who are you?”

  Isolde, the first of the greatest. My most-beloved Agentio stands beside me.

  “I doubt my sanity. You are long dead.”

  None who live through our Great Mother die.

  “You shielded me from the worst of the horror. Thank you. How is it that I can speak to you?”

  We are linked through the ages by blood, daughter of my daughters. There used to be many but now, only you.

  “Will you help me again?” Already Adonia could “see” black corruption pulsing in the bodies of the two men below her—not as formidable as that which had enveloped the woman of yesterday, but still frightening.

  You have the ability to unite and draw upon vast powers, daughter. But the enemy now knows its opponent and its strength is building. We will hold back as much of the dark as we can.

  Adonia reached out and placed a hand above the breastbone of each man and, as before, frozen bleakness enveloped her. As it had done the day prior, the pulsating blackness sucked Adonia toward it as if it were a black hole absorbing all light. With a shrill cry of agony, she relived each hurtful moment of her life, every mean and spiteful word cast at her, every humiliation and physical pain. She wallowed in the helpless grief and sense of abandonment she’d felt at the death of her mother and father. She relived the horrendous evening she had parted from Klaran.

  His mouth pulled back in a sneer. “I am done with you.”

  “What are you saying? You love me. We’re to be married in two months.”

  “Mere words. I never cared. Your dried-up cunt served a purpose.” Disgust dripped from his lips. “Really, Adonia, look at yourself. You are a pathetic excuse for a woman.”

  “I am a warrior, like you.”

  “You are unnatural. There is nothing feminine or soft about you. From your body to your soul, you are a hard creature. Why would I take such as you for a wife? No man will want you. No man will ever love you. You will be alone until you die.”

  Alone. Never loved. Always alone. It seemed she drowned in despair for an eternity. Somehow, the words spitting from between his lips were distortions—twisted untruths—not what he’d really said. She kept telling herself this memory was a lie. Klaran hadn’t used those words. He’d been hurtful but not…not like that.

  A sliver of light pierced through her blindness. A shred of memory tugged at her consciousness. Gray eyes held hers. “…remember, you are the beloved of DeHelios.”

  She clutched at that memory as a drowning man clings to a lifeline and clawed her way toward an ever-expanding brightness. With a ferocity she hadn’t known she possessed, Adonia smashed against the encroaching desolation, shattering the cancerous entity into motes of black pustulence. With a guttural scream from her soul—“I am not alone. I am the beloved of DeHelios! Love is the truth! Death is the lie!”—Adonia blazed, a ball of golden light, her radiance consuming the diseased particles in bursts of living flame.

  As showers of burning specks fell about her, Adonia sank back into her physical self. Again, she returned from the aetheric plane to find herself on Hel’s lap. Her eyelids fluttered open and she raised a limp hand to his face. He turned his face into her palm and kissed it.

  “I am loved. I am not alone,” she whispered, then lost consciousness.

  ~~~

  The fine sheets and warm blankets of Hel’s bed were tucked up to her chin. Maddie sat bedside and read by the light of a diaman lamp. The soft golden radiance lit the chamber. Full dark had fallen.

  “What time is it, Maddie?”

  The young woman looked up. Relief and gladness filled her features. “You’re awake. Thank the Goddess. I was worried.” She glanced across the room at the timekeeper. “It is eight and one-half of the clock, ma’am. Can you eat something? Drink something? How do you feel?”

  Adonia pushed up to a sitting position. Her arms trembled, barely able to hold her. Someone had put her in a sleeping gown. Now that Maddie suggested food, her mouth watered at even the thought of another potato. “I’m fine. Something to eat, please! And Maddie…where is Prince DeHelios?”

  Maddie poured her an elegant tumbler of amber drink from a lavishly engraved decanter. “After he put you to bed, he stayed for some time but then left to continue his search of Torre Bianca. I assume Prince DeHelios is still at the tower. He issued orders you are to drink all of this.”

  Adonia took the glass and wrinkled her nose at its contents. “Orders?”

  Maddie lifted her eyebrows and nodded once. “Orders.”

  With a shudder at the smell, Adonia took a large gulp and after a tortured inhale sputtered in a coughing fit. “By the Mother…what is that?” She sipped cautiously, wincing each time the burning liquid passed her tongue.

  Maddie grinned. “Pottsdim Likor from off-planet. It’s the prince’s private reserve. He said it would raise the dead.”

  With asthmatic heaves, Adonia wheezed, “I agree. Was I that bad?”

  “Yes, my Lady. We knew you weren’t dead—you still breathed…but he was quite concerned. Let me call for a tray and then I’ll help you dress.”

  With an audible clunk, Adonia put the now empty tumbler on her bedside table, swept her coverings off and rose. She stumbled the few steps to her closet, pulled out the dress she’d worn earlier that day and then stripped off her nightgown. She threw out an arm and braced it on the wall to steady herself. “I feel like I’ve fallen down the gallery stairs.”

  ~~~

  Adonia had satisfied her hunger and then announced she would take Hel his dinner, eager to thank him for his care of her. “Actually, you are just eager to see him,” the painfully honest part of her had corrected.

  “Hel, I’ve brought your dinner.” Adonia peered cautiously through the doorway, past the open “game room” door. As her eyes searched the softly lit chamber for Hel, her eyes consciously avoided the racks of implements on the walls. “Over here.” His deep baritone preceded his massive shape emerging from behind a row of cabinets. He moved to a low table, pulled out a chair and sat. His eyes fixed on her as she entered. The welcome in them filled her with quiet joy. She crossed the room to the table and emptied the basket of its contents. She pulled up a chair beside him and began to sit.

  Hel reached over and clasped her wrist gently. “No. Here.” She followed the steady pull until she sat on his lap. Her gaze met his and she held it for as long as she could before she had to drop her eyes overwhelmed by the blaze of emotion in his steady stare.

  “How do you feel?” A broad hand swept the hair off her cheek and cupped her jaw.

  She leaned into t
he pressure and closed her eyes. In spite of her rest, exhaustion wrecked her and she couldn’t shake a persistent, inner chill. “I feel like someone dragged me by my heels down the hall to the bed, but I know you must have carried me.” At his small snort, she opened her eyes and lifted both arms around his neck. “I’m fine, really. Just tired.”

  His forehead descended to rest on hers. His warm breath washed her cheeks. “I’m pushing you too hard. Asking too much of you.”

  “You don’t request one-half the things of me that you demand from yourself. I want to do this. I can do this.”

  He pulled back and his eyes searched hers. “I hope so or I’m no better than the corruption that we battle. I’ll have destroyed something beautiful and fine.”

  His words did much toward dispelling the chill that permeated her, but she dropped her eyes shyly. “I’ll say again...what I give is given freely.”

  “I know, Nia. I know. But I think, without speaking a single word of protest, you would allow me to empty you of all life.”

  At that, she lifted her eyes to his and considered his words. “Yes.” A small smile tilted the corners of her mouth at the worry and concern she saw there. She lifted a delicate shoulder in a slight shrug. “If that is what you need.”

  “Oh, Nia,” he groaned. “You are so precious. Our need is desperate, Beauty. Of that, I am certain. But I’m equally certain that a future without you is of little value to me. It seems as if I tempt fate, but, Nia…you have given me hope for a life I thought lost to me…children…a home...a loving partner. When this evil is driven from our planet, stay in Nyth Uchel—as my wife.”