I would have griped about the apparent total lack of concern for me, the person they were all purportedly protecting, but the reason for their abandonment—and likely their sudden desire to sleep, stood waiting in the middle of the road, arms folded, black hair loose in a shining cape around him, dark blue eyes steady on me.
I reined up and Rogue took Felicity’s bridle, holding up a hand to assist me down.
“Fancy meeting you here.” I raised an eyebrow at him, declining to dismount for the moment.
“I’m not in the mood for games,” he replied, cool and remote. “You and I need to talk.”
“I thought you once said talk is the death of romance?”
He studied me and I quickly quieted my thoughts. Too late, it seemed.
“In this case, what you are already thinking can cause us a far deadlier wound. Get down, Gwynn.”
Ignoring his hand, I did, taking a moment to straighten my skirts and brush them off—and plan my strategy. Darling leaped from his saddle pad to my shoulder, sinking in his claws and making me huff out a breath at his sudden weight. His teeth fastened on one of the dangling earrings, reminding me. Rogue narrowed his eyes at the cat in glittering threat.
“You want to talk?” I gave Rogue my sweetest smile. “I want these earrings off.”
I’d surprised him with that. How interesting.
“After we talk, we’ll discuss the earrings. They look so lovely on you, my Gwynn.”
“Cut the crap, Rogue. I want them off and I want them off now. Nonnegotiable.”
He tucked his hair behind his ear, letting the golden horseshoe I’d affixed there wink in the afternoon sun.
“And will you take back your gift as well?”
“If you like. Fair’s fair.”
“Fine.” He nodded once, in curt agreement and held out an imperious hand. “Come with me.”
Unwilling to fight another battle just yet, I took his hand this time. Darling swiped a claw at him.
“You—” he pointed at Darling, “—are not invited.”
Darling hissed.
“Control your Familiar, Lady Sorceress. If you can.”
I mentally nudged Darling along and allowed Rogue to draw me into the woods. Okay, that was understating it. He practically dragged me and I stumbled after. Maybe I was still in a bit of emotional shock over Nancy’s story, because I didn’t really feel anger over his pisser of a mood or his snotty remarks about Darling.
In fact, I felt remote. Walled off. As I’d done back under Marquise and Scourge’s torturous training. Really not charming at all if any emotional shock would send me reeling back into my mental PTSD cell.
It was protecting me, I supposed—and the world. For me, strong emotion had become high-octane gasoline. That deep subconscious training had likely kicked in, isolating my wishes from that explosive fuel, icing it down, separating the trigger from the dynamite. Maybe the rage in me had reached such a level of heat, then was forced down under extreme pressure, so that it had sublimated into another emotion entirely.
That explained the fine hissing sound in my ears. Steam escaping.
Rogue stopped suddenly, so that I nearly crashed into him. We stood at a break in the forest, a stream babbling past, golden sunshine pouring through the leaves to land on the emerald moss with sparkling motes of light. He pushed my back against a massive tree and raised our joined hands above my head, commanding my attention.
I observed the cracks in his composure with detached interest. Something vicious, nearly desperate roiled in him. His fingers drifted near my cheek, as if he wanted to cup it.
“I can’t lose you now.” He said the words more to himself than to me, but I answered anyway.
“You can’t lose what you never had in the first place.”
It was cruel, yes. I felt cruel saying it, a sharp claw, slicing. But I also couldn’t shake the image of Cecily, her flapper’s body splayed obscenely open, bleeding out while her lover strode away to sacrifice her infant to a monster. I wanted to take Fafnir and Incandescence apart with my bare hands. I struck at Rogue in their stead.
“You condemn me for a crime I didn’t commit.”
“Yet. If I waited for empirical evidence I might find myself shit out of luck to take precautionary steps.”
“Had I known what that slattern intended to tell you...” Rogue’s jaw clenched on the rest.
“What? You would have prevented me from knowing? You would keep me wrapped up, imprisoned and impregnated in happy ignorance so that I can’t ruin all your carefully laid plans?”
“It would be infinitely easier,” he snapped back. “Have you considered why I haven’t done so?”
“All. The. Time.”
The blue in his eyes seemed to boil and we stared at each other, forever at our impasse, never quite communicating what we needed to.
With a growl of frustration, Rogue gestured and the little egg timer, absurd in its perkiness, appeared to hang in midair. I glanced at it, shocked.
“You have got to be kidding.”
“No. I’m not. I need this, so shut up.”
I couldn’t have spoken if I wanted to, because his mouth descended on mine, feral, demanding, full of that desperate seeking that had shot over his face like a night creature ducking the light of day. Though I thought I’d become accustomed to his kisses, this one affected me in a different way. The sheer heat of him thawed that icy shell that had clamped over me. With an animal cry of longing, I kissed him back, twining my fingers with his. I was utterly lost to him and he was the only one who didn’t know it. If only it could work between us. I truly wished for that.
I didn’t dare wish for that.
Carefully, I eased off the mental trigger and let those feelings flow away. Be oh so careful what you wish for.
The final grain of sand fell with an inaudible ping that nevertheless resonated through us both. Rogue pulled back just enough so that our lips no longer touched. He paused there, regaining his breath, gathering himself.
“I am not Fafnir,” he finally said, so quietly that someone standing next to us would not have heard.
“But you play the same game.”
His gaze flicked up to mine. “The game, as you call it, changes. I do not make the rules.”
“I don’t know what to believe.” My words came out as a plea. “I’m not this person who just rolls with the magic and the pretty stories. I rely on facts, on empirical evidence. The past does not lie, and a keen observer of what has already occurred can reliably predict the future. Numbers add up. Demonstrable evidence leads to reliable hypotheses, which assemble into theories.”
“Very little of what you just said made sense to me.” He breathed out a laugh that fluttered over my lips. We’d stayed close, as if the physical proximity might bridge the gulf between us.
“That’s because here, none of that is true. The physical laws of the universe I’ve always known no longer apply. I’m adrift, with no framework to base decisions on.”
“Then trust me, doubting Gwynn. Give me that. Believe in that reality.”
“How did you know what Mistress Nancy said to me?”
He leaned back a little, grimaced and lifted the hand he’d fisted against the tree beside my head, flicked one of the earrings.
“I thought so. You ask me to trust you, but you reveal your own lack of trust by spying on me. Forever trying to control me.”
“Protecting you.”
“So says every abuser that ever lived.”
“The stakes are high. Far higher than you know.”
“Then tell me.”
“If only I could.”
“Can you tell me why you can’t?” This felt like playing Twenty Questions. I nearly asked “animal, vegetable or mineral?” Flip, but better than cruel. Asking him to play warmer or colder would be just asking for trouble.
Rogue considered the question, lowering our hands and rubbing mine with one thumb, thoughtfully. For the first time I considered that how h
e abided by these unknown rules was entirely up to him. I’d imagined some sort of geas that bound him from speaking, like the character who couldn’t tell what happened, but could nod yes or no, or write it out.
Instead, he navigated his way through a complex set of regulations, perhaps accruing points here and losing them elsewhere. Every move that skirted a certain line put him in danger of losing. Though I often felt we were opposed—after all, he’d clearly told me that he was not my friend—I could most likely rely on his loss being mine also.
It was also tremendously likely, given the evidence, that my ignorance of the rules was one of the factors he dealt with. At least he gave me glimpses into what I didn’t know, where Fafnir had played it another way with poor, blissful Cecily.
I hadn’t tried to keep these thoughts quiet and he watched my face, clearly listening. He didn’t nod or tell me that I was warmer. But, deep inside, on this level where those coils between us intertwined, I knew.
It wasn’t logical. I had no evidence to support it.
I had nothing else to go on.
“Fine.” I stopped short of saying I’d trust him, but the tension shuddered out of him and he smiled, with just a trace of his usual insouciance. I thought he might embrace me, but he restrained himself. Always the utmost care to observe the boundaries I set. I wondered if Cecily had even known she could do that. In a way, Rogue himself had led me toward that understanding. That and my astonishing introduction to my own magic.
“Did you know that I would be a sorceress when I arrived here? I mean, I know you don’t control the Dog, and he’s the one who brought me through the Veil. Who showed me how to connect my subconscious wish for a different life to the power he brought with him. But if he’s part of your subconscious, did you somehow direct him to find someone like me? Not a Nancy or a Cecily, but...”
“Gwynn.” Rogue released my hand and stroked my cheek with long fingers. “You should know by now that I stack the deck whenever I can.”
I laughed and laid my hand over his. “I do know that.”
He sobered. “Do you still want the earrings off?”
“Yes.”
To his credit, he did not flinch, but reached up and pulled them gently, one by one, from my earlobes. They released my flesh with a tingle of regret, a faint sigh of loss. I held out my hand, palm up, and he raised a sharp eyebrow, the thorns around it spiking.
“I’ll keep them.”
Bemused—how I loved to take him by surprise—he laid them in my hand, iridescent and lovely, glowing as blue as his midnight eyes.
“I’ll be angry if you lose them,” he warned, which told me this was a measure of trust from him. It might be taking me a while, but I was learning to understand his coded messages to me. I tucked them in my pocket, the bag holding the dragon’s blood bumping my fingertips. Good thing I’d shielded that puppy or Rogue would surely have sensed it.
“I’ll keep them close. And if I need you, I’ll put them on again.”
“Be sure to do that, my Gwynn. You are more vulnerable than you know.”
I should have been chilled by his words, but the sheer delight in feeling that I’d cracked part of the puzzle—and that the PTSD had released its dreadful grip—gave me a bright and cheerful confidence.
Any scientist could tell you that this was always the sign of a false breakthrough. Those promising first results just never seemed to pan out.
I put my hand up to take back the horseshoe and he gripped my wrist. “Will you let me keep it, my Gwynn?”
“If that’s what you want.”
“I can think of only three things I want more.”
* * *
Of course he wouldn’t—or couldn’t—tell me what the three things were, though I teased him about it as we walked. It turned out we were quite close to Castle Brightness. Which didn’t seem possible, given what I thought I knew about the landscape, but I was going to have to give up some of my attachment to the physical laws that had governed my previous world. A leap of faith into the absurd had to be full immersion. No picking and choosing. Accept the precepts of the new working hypothesis. Anything less was counterproductive.
Rogue led me along the banks of the stream, assuring me the others would meet up with us. Gradually what appeared to be old-growth forest gave way to younger trees, and then to the ordered apple orchard I recognized as the one I’d seen from my room at the castle when I’d stayed there.
I pointed to the round fruits that hung glowing with rosy gold allure, heavy on the branches. “What do you call these fruits?”
Rogue barely glanced at them. “They’re poisonous—don’t touch them.”
Astonished, I surveyed the rows upon rows of the trees, clearly tended, yielding a bountiful harvest. “Why grow poisonous fruit—and so much of it?”
He shrugged, uninterested. “I don’t spend my time doing it. Blackbird comes from a strange family. They’ve long dabbled in odd practices.”
“You don’t wonder at all?”
Rogue snorted, squeezing our interlaced fingers. “You have more than enough curiosity to get us both destroyed, my Gwynn. I endeavor not to add to it.”
“I thought you couldn’t die.”
“There are worse things that death.”
A sudden thought occurred to me. “Is Fafnir still alive?”
He went deadly still. Without looking at me, he spoke. “I will say this once. Don’t go there.”
Funny how my mind translated the expression he used. It carried all the unutterable implications of a curse. Doomed all ye who enter here.
Without another word, he resumed walking through the idyllic grove of deadly fruit.
We emerged from the orchard to find Castle Brightness rearing above us, in all its alabaster gilded magnificence, colorful pennants flapping gaily in the breeze. Looking up, I spotted what had been my room and a frisson passed over me. I was circling back upon myself, it seemed and a small, endlessly terrified part of myself quailed at the thought that my prison might be next.
Rogue released my hand and pushed his under my hair to grasp the base of my neck, steadying me.
I nodded in answer to his unasked question and looped my hand through his arm for our grand entrance. Blackbird, along with her staff, waited for us with grand formality. They all sank into deep obeisances that likely said more about Rogue’s status than mine. Still, I was struck by how much I’d come up in the world since my last visit. At least I looked a hell of a lot better, which was something.
“Greetings, Lord Rogue, Lady Sorceress Gwynn. You honor Castle Brightness with your presence.” Blackbird looked the same as always, dark hair drawn back into a smooth knot, black eyes keen, hands folded neatly under her maternal bosom. I couldn’t quite picture her as the sultry trophy princess languishing in a tower.
“It’s good to see you too, Blackbird. Has everyone else arrived?” I felt blunt for asking, but it bothered me that none of the party was in sight.
“Oh yes, Starling is having a bit of a lie down. Lord Darling is, I believe, hunting mice.” That seemed likely, as I recalled his penchant for the castle’s fat and lazy rodent population. “And your servants are either preparing your suite or pitching in for the feast.”
“The feast?” I echoed.
“Of course.” She beamed at me. “To celebrate your betroth—” She cut herself off, though I didn’t hear or feel Rogue warn her in anyway. Her thoughts skittered on insect legs and her gaze flicked to my empty earlobes and away again. “—surprise visit!”
“We’re just here to talk.”
“And talk we shall!” She clapped her hands as gaily as the pennants fluttered, and abruptly I saw through her elaborate dance. Fear resonated from her, a tuning fork of high emotion. “But for now, let’s get you tucked in.”
Her butler, a type of fae I hadn’t seen before, led us to our rooms. He seemed to be a gray broomstick with a long head and spindly limbs. My fingers itched for my grimoire, or my lowly notepad, so I could add
him to my list. But I was being polite and gracious Lady Arm Candy for the moment. A limiting role, indeed.
We could have found the rooms on our own, because the Brownie/dragonfly girl song echoed down the halls to nearly the front doors. The butler never spoke, simply gazed at us with cobwebby eyes and gestured to the grand brass double doors that led apparently to our suite.
“We’re sharing?”
“Are you ashamed of our arrangement?”
“Some seem to think I should be.”
“And you?”
“No, no—perish the thought.”
The rooms, which seemed to go on and on with one sitting area leading to an opulent bedroom leading to a decadent bathing chamber, were full of life and spinning color as the Brownies and dragonfly girls made short work of the unpacking—despite the amazing volume of stuff. I explored while they worked, returning to the main sitting room to find Rogue sitting in a fussy chair, long legs splayed out. In a breath, all the servants disappeared, leaving us alone.
Uncertain what to do with myself, I stepped over to the windows that looked out over the front entrance, with the fanciful drawbridge crossing the sparkling moat and pointing to the winding road beyond. Rogue drew up beside me, gazing out the crystal mullioned panes, then tucked my hair behind my ear in an affectionately absent gesture and handed me a glass of wine.
He rarely seemed this relaxed. Perversely, it unsettled me. I knew where I stood with him as my opponent.
I probably needed to break this habit of thinking that any time it seemed that things were going his way, it boded ill for me. I sipped at the wine and grimaced. Way too sweet. Alas.
“Why does there always have to be a feast?” I complained.
He laughed and leaned against the window ledge, all enticing indolence. The sun set behind him, setting fire to the horizon in a display worthy of a sweeping soundtrack and a grand dramatic scene. Crimson and gold shone on his midnight black hair, lighting the unmarked right side of his face so that he looked like some noble prince, the marked side in shadow, so none of the dark fae lines that revealed his inner nature showed. The gold earring gleamed, a spot of light on the sinister face. For a moment I glimpsed him as he might have been before the Black Dog started growing in his heart.
Rogue’s Possession Page 14
