by Lynn Viehl
Korvel sensed she was once more giving him a tailored version of the truth. “Your father is the reason you gave up your life at the château to become a housemaid in a convent.”
“I could not be what he wanted.” She glanced at him. “Did your father expect you to become a warrior-priest?”
“I never knew my father.” That was the most Korvel had ever said about him, and then he heard himself telling her the rest. “My mother was the only daughter of an important Saxon baron. One night raiders from the north attacked the keep and abducted my mother, holding her hostage in their country for many months. After my grandfather paid the ransom, she was brought back. The raiders had used her as a slave, and she was pregnant with me.”
“Oh, no,” she murmured.
“In my time bearing a bastard, even one conceived by rape, ruined a woman forever. My mother knew no man of her rank would marry her after that, but my grandfather still needed an heir to keep his lands from being escheated to the crown after his death. That is the only reason she didn’t strangle me at birth.”
“Was it your mother who left that mark on your neck?”
“No. That came much later, at the hands of mortals who wished me dead.” He rubbed the scar on his throat. “Sometimes, when I was a boy, I did wish that she would put an end to me. My mortal life was not a happy one.”
She slipped her hand into his. “Korvel, you were not to blame for what was done to her.”
“I served as the daily reminder of it.” Idly he rubbed his thumb across her knuckles. “She saw to it that I was fed and clothed and schooled, but she never spoke a gentle word to me; nor was I ever permitted to forget that I was a raider’s bastard. If I did anything to anger her or my grandfather, she had me beaten. There were days when just looking upon my countenance could send her into a rage.”
“So you became a Templar to escape them.”
“My family was all I knew; given a choice I would never have left them,” he admitted. “But my status changed in an unexpected fashion. My grandmother died of lung fever when I was fifteen, which left my grandfather free to remarry. He took a much younger woman to wife. I didn’t understand why until he got her with child.”
She caught her breath. “He had his legitimate heir.”
He nodded. “As soon as my uncle was born, they no longer had any use for me. My grandfather allowed me to live at the keep until the night my mother died. Then he threw me out in the snow, with only the clothes on my back. When I would not leave, he had the servants drive me away.”
“How could he do such a thing?” She sounded angry. “You were only a boy.”
“Mortals did not live so long in my time,” he reminded her. “Most could not expect more than thirty years. In the eyes of that world, I was a man, responsible for myself. I walked for three days to beg an audience with the king. Although my grandfather was his vassal, Richard could do nothing to restore me as heir. Just as I imagined myself joining the beggars at his gates, he offered me a place among his garrison. He had no reason to do so, but it was the first kindness I had ever known. For that, I swore to serve him until the end of my days.”
Simone drew her hand from his. “You are a good man, Captain.”
Her compliment pleased him, but at the same time he sensed her withdrawing from him. He also realized she had once again changed the subject to avoid talking about her own father. “Was your father an invalid?”
She made a small, choked sound. “No, Captain. Until he fell ill, he was in excellent health.”
“You said that no one had seen him since he was a boy,” he pointed out. “How did he manage that? Did he suffer from some phobia?”
Her mouth grew tight. “My father considered fear a weakness. He wasn’t afraid of anything.”
“Not even death?”
Her throat burned, and she pulled off to the side of the road, stopping the car and climbing out to run down to the brush, where she dropped to her knees.
“Simone.” Korvel reached her in time to support her with his arms as she emptied her belly into the grass. “That idiot doctor promised me that the drugs would have worn off by now.”
Once the spasms had passed, Simone straightened and accepted his handkerchief to wipe her mouth and blow her nose. “It’s not the drugs.”
He frowned. “Then this is my doing. I should not have reminded you of the loss of your father. I had not realized you were so close to him.”
“I hated my father.” She staggered to her feet. “The day I buried him in the garden was the happiest of my life.”
The hatred in her voice matched the truth burning in her scent. “So he was your abuser.”
“He never touched me. If he had, I would be the one in the ground.” She started back toward the car.
A father whom she hated, who had never been seen, who could kill with a touch, and who had left her to guard the scroll. Korvel knew of only one man who could fit that description.
He got into the car, but when Simone reached for the key he put his hand over hers. “I must tell you something. I believe your father’s pretense went far beyond concealing his death. The identity he used is very well-known among the Kyn. I cannot say why he deceived you, but in doing so he has made you believe certain things about him that could not possibly be true.”
She turned to face him. “My father did many terrible things while he was alive, but he never lied to me.”
“He convinced you that he was the guardian of the scroll,” he reminded her. “As well as a killer who had never been seen. He told you that he was Helada, didn’t he?”
She nodded.
“Simone, it couldn’t be. Helada has been the scroll’s guardian since the time it was made,” Korvel continued. “One of the Kyn, called Cristophe, was a master smith before he was changed. After the Crusades he retreated to a Spanish monastery to live as a monk. When the Kyn broke with the Templars, the high lord called upon him to forge the scroll. It was Cristophe who chose the immortal master assassin Helada to be the scroll’s guardian. That was more than seven hundred years ago.” When she didn’t react, he added, “The Kyn cannot sire or bear children. If your father were Helada, as he led you to believe, you would not exist.”
“My father was Helada.” She stared through the windshield at nothing. “Just as his uncle was Helada before him, as was his grandfather, and his grandfather’s eldest brother, and their father before them. That is how Helada became an immortal, Captain. The legendary Helada is reborn in every generation of my family.”
Chapter 12
I
n all the centuries Korvel had existed he had deceived many mortals, but never had he known any who had done the same to the Kyn. Humans were too simple in their motives, and constantly were made transparent by their actions; they never lived long enough to sustain their deceptions. That Simone and her family could perpetuate such a myth for so many generations staggered him.
He wanted to believe she was lying to him now, but her scent hadn’t changed. “How could the men in your family do this without ever being discovered? The changes in age and appearance—”
“—were never noticed,” Simone finished for him. “Why do you think my family spread the rumor that anyone who saw Helada would die?”
“So that no one would ever attempt to see him.” He glanced at her. “Is that why your father allowed you to join the convent? Because the women there were all blind?”
“That is the reason he had me educated there,” she said. “But I chose to go to the convent.”
Korvel thought of how Richard Tremayne would react to learning the legendary Helada was a complete fabrication. “Do you know what the high lord would do if he knew only mortals were guarding the scroll?”
She nodded. “He would take it from my family. But my ancestor was determined that no immortal should possess the scroll, so they would not be tempted to use it to create immortal armies, or wipe out humanity altogether. That is why we never told the high lord.”
“I’ve told you.”
So she had, and realizing how much trust that must have required made him feel a strange satisfaction. “I will keep your secret.” He dragged a hand through his short hair. “You’ve lived among nuns, and yet you’re the daughter of one of the most feared assassins of all time. Christ, I can hardly believe it.”
“We believe what we want,” was all she said.
Once they reached Marseilles, Simone left the car in a reserved lot a block away from the town house.
“You have been living at the convent for the last ten years,” Korvel said as he took the case for her. “So how is it that you have a flat—and parking—in the city?”
“I am also a sentinel, and the council maintains a number of properties here.” She reached into a side pocket of the case to retrieve the key to the door. “This one is used now primarily for storage purposes.”
As they walked in and she turned on the lights, Korvel inspected the front room. “What do they store here? Air?”
“The illusion of vacancy is for the benefit of the neighbors.” She nodded toward the staircase. “Everything is kept on the second floor.”
At the top of the stairs, he watched her input the code on the keypad to release the electronic locks. “Is there a self-destruct button on that?”
“No, but if you put in the wrong code, it sends a silent alarm to the council’s security company. Just before it electrocutes you.” She pulled open the steel door, which activated the lighting inside the flat. “We take safety measures very seriously.”
“I see why.”
She watched as Korvel made a circuit of the room, inspecting the racks of weapons and shelves of field supplies interspersed among the old apartment’s shabby furnishings. “If you need blood, fresh supplies are stored in the kitchen. The satellite phones will need charging before we can use them, but the landline in the bedroom is safeguarded.”
He picked up a small book from the window seat. “They store children here as well?”
“Oh, that belonged to me.” The sight of the old storybook made her heart twist. “My father used this property as a flat when I was young.”
“He brought you here?”
“It was the safest place in the city.” Feeling awkward now, she added, “I’m going to wash up. Please make yourself at home.”
Simone retreated to the adjoining room, where she opened the doors to the large walk-in closet. On one side a long rack of fashionable garments in a variety of styles hung grouped by sizes ranging from petite to giant; on the other, stacks of body armor and other protective gear had been shelved. She chose from the clothing a pair of black leather leggings and a matching long-sleeved cashmere pullover. After she retrieved black lingerie from the drawers beneath the rack, she carried the stack of fresh clothing into the bath so she could change.
Simone turned on the sink taps to warm the water before she stripped out of her trousers, stopping only when she smelled a faint vanilla fragrance.
Larkspur.
She looked over her shoulder, but saw no sign of Korvel. As she pulled the shirt over her head the scent grew stronger, until she realized it was coming from her own body.
Of course she still smelled of him. He had been all over her, inside her. She would have to scrub every inch of her body to be rid of him.
Slowly Simone turned off the taps.
At the hotel she had behaved out of anger and jealousy, and she still didn’t understand from where it had come. Why had seeing him with those women enraged her? Korvel had to use mortals for blood. She knew that. What he’d done was nothing out of the ordinary. If anything he’d been clever about it.
Why had it felt so different when she’d seen him with those women?
Simone had known from the moment she’d begun to flirt with the man at the bar that Korvel would see her as well. She’d made certain of it, even choosing the Spaniard because he was within the captain’s line of sight. She’d also known Korvel would recognize her, even dressed and made up as she had been. And when she had left the hotel with that whiskey-soaked fumbler, she had known Korvel would follow. That was why she had taken the Spaniard’s keys out of the ignition, and fended off his clumsy embraces. She had only wanted to show the captain that she could be just as beautiful and desirable as the women he had gathered to him in the club.
All of it simply so he would see her.
From there everything had raced out of control, so fast and so far the rest of the world had faded away. He had been so angry, but so had she, and they had somehow become mirrors of each other, with their furious tempers exploding into outrageous passion. Her own behavior had shamed her into leaving him, but he had followed her again, and cornered her, gently urging her to face what burned between them. And then he had her under him, the pleasure had come over her, and nothing more mattered than giving the same to him.
Time had melted into Dalí’s pocket watch as she lost herself in his hands, in the exquisite invasion, his flesh into hers. She remembered the splintering sensation of her orgasm, the hard urgency of his, and how, for the briefest moment, it had merged them into one. It had frightened her to feel so destroyed and utterly remade by him.
Even more shameful, Simone wanted to feel it again. Her desire for him was stronger than ever.
She removed the last of her clothing before she walked out into the bedroom, unsure of what she meant to do. Somewhere in the city Pájaro had hidden with the scroll as bait for a dead man. In Italy the council waited for word that Simone had successfully retrieved it. In Ireland, the high lord expected Korvel to return and deliver it into his hands. Men, good men who had devoted their entire lives to preserving the peace between the mortal and immortal worlds, had been tortured and murdered.
In the next few hours, the future of the Darkyn and humanity might be forever altered, even obliterated. Simone knew the weight of it, the massive, crushing responsibility of it, was a burden she had to carry alone.
“This I would take as an invitation.” Korvel’s hands curved over her shoulders. “If I thought it was for me that you were standing here, naked in the dark.”
As his thumbs followed the outer curves of her breasts, an unnerving heat flared up in her. He had only to touch her and she was his. Just as all women were. “Who is Alexandra?”
His hands stilled. “How do you know that name?”
“You called for her just after you collapsed in the greenhouse.” She turned around. “Who is she? Your sygkenis? Your tresora in Ireland?”
His hands fell away from her. “She is no one of consequence.”
The small changes in his musculature made her heart clench. “You’re lying to me.” When he went toward the door, she darted in front of him. “If she means nothing to you, then why can’t you talk about her?”
His expression turned to stone. “I have no tresora or sygkenis, and Lady Alexandra is not your concern. You should get dressed now.”
The soft way with which he said the other woman’s name made her stand her ground. “Do you love her?”
“Simone.”
“Yes or no?”
“She belonged to another man, and I tried to take her from him. She would not have me.” Regret echoed behind the words, but he also sounded strangely relieved.
The truth made less sense than his lie. “I thought no woman could resist you.”
“Alexandra is different,” he admitted. “She was the first mortal in five hundred years to survive being made Kyn.”
Of course, the woman he loved would be one of his own kind. There were few females among the Darkyn, but Flavia had described how strong and beautiful they were. Nothing like Simone, with her human imperfections and scarred body.
“Thank you for telling me.” Sh
e went to the bathroom and began to dress.
Korvel appeared in the doorway. “Why did you ask me about Alexandra, Simone?”
“Tresori are not permitted to violate the boundaries of a Kyn bond.” She reached behind her back to fasten her bra. “If this Lady Alexandra were your sygkenis, she would be within her rights to kill me for having sex with you.”
He studied her face. “Now you lie.”
“When you were in pain, you called out for her.” She glared at him. “I was right there, saving you, dragging you to a horse, and you wanted another woman.” Aware of how ridiculous she sounded, she shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. Tomorrow you will be on your way back to Ireland, and I will return to the convent, and we will forget each other.”
“Will we?”
“We have to.” He wasn’t listening to her; he was staring at her bottom. “Captain.” She saw his pupils had turned to splinters. “Captain. You need blood.”
His eyes shifted to hers. “I need many things.”
So did she, but the night would not last forever. “My contact is waiting down at the docks.”
Reluctantly he withdrew, and she finished dressing. Knowing she would be searched at the docks, she didn’t bother arming herself when she rejoined Korvel.
“I’m leaving now,” she told him. “I’ll be back in an hour.”
He frowned. “Where are you going?”
“I have to meet my contact alone. He agreed to help me only because he owed a debt to my father.” As Korvel scowled, she added, “He will not give me any information in front of you.”
“You are not going there alone.” When she began to protest, he said, “I will wait in the car.”
Korvel was a good man. He would never allow her to go unguarded into a dangerous situation. But once she obtained the information from Lechance, she would know the location of the scroll. Once the scroll was in their possession, her orders were to destroy it and kill Korvel.
