by Jaide Fox
He hurt. She could only begin to imagine what torment his existence had been to him. He needed her as badly as she needed him.
“I do not know,” she lied.
He knew instantly that she was lying. Pain flickered in his eyes, contorted his features. “I can not help the beast I am,” he snarled, staring down at his hands as if he hardly recognized them as his own.
Bronwyn stared at his hands, as well, and then glanced down at herself, spying the deep red marks from their rough lovemaking, the beginnings of bruises. “Nay! You are no beast to me!”
He shook his head. Turning, he strode to the window and leapt upon the sill.
Bronwyn’s heart seemed to stand still in her chest. She couldn’t allow him to leave believing he had hurt her! Scrambling from the bed, she raced toward him. “I was weeping for us, beloved!” she cried, grasping his hand in both of hers and demanding that he look at her. “I love you, Nightshade,” she gasped breathlessly when his gaze met hers.
He snatched his hand back as if hers had burned him, stared at her wordlessly in shock for a split second and then his face contorted as if he were in terrible pain and he tumbled from her window.
Stunned, Bronwyn stared blankly at the thick snow falling beyond the window for many moments before she gathered her wits to look out. She could see nothing but the falling snow however and after a moment, shivering with both the cold from the storm and the coldness that had begun to creep inside of her, she closed the window and retreated to her bed, cursing herself for ten kinds of fool.
* * * *
Pain tore through him, pain such as he could not recall feeling in his memory. It blinded him, clawed at his mind so that he could not think. It was instinct that guided him to try to catch the air currents with his wings as he felt himself plummeting toward the ground below, but he had no control. Briefly, he felt an uplift of his body as if his wings had caught a strong updraft, felt the slowing of his descent, and then nothing.
He struck the ground with stunning force, a force that punched the air from his lungs and shut down thought for an unaccountable time. As he lay stunned, staring up at the white flakes fluttering down to powder his face, tangling in his eyelashes, he began to feel as if his skin was on fire. His teeth began to chatter together so loudly that the sound finally penetrated his preoccupation with the burning.
He was cold!
Stunned by that realization, he struggled in the shifting drift and finally managed to push himself upright. His hands, he discovered when he lifted them to see why they were stinging, were scraped and cut. He stared in disbelief at the abrasions as the bright red blood seeped to the surface and dripped to the snow.
Finally, he dropped his hands and pushed himself to his feet, looking around to get his bearings. A frown of puzzlement knit his brows when he realized that he could scarcely see for the dark and the pelting snow.
After a moment, he lifted his head and stared upward. Dimly, he could see the glow of light from a window high above him.
He’d fallen.
He’d injured himself in the fall.
He pondered that, staring at his palms again, trying to ignore the cold that was rattling his bones as he stood naked in the snow.
He’d felt the pain of transformation, and yet it was night. There was no sign at all that the sun would soon break the horizon.
And the pain had been like nothing he had felt before, not like it was each morning when his body transformed once more from flesh to stone.
Contemptuous, spiteful laughter rose in his memory, seemed to ring in his, for he had memorized long ago every word from Gaelzeroth’s lips that had sealed his fate forever. Until the day a woman looks upon you with love in her heart, you will guard my keep from my enemies, keep watch over me and mine like the good little watch dog you are!
Warmth flooded him in spite of the cold. She loved him!
A tentative smile curled his lips. His little rose, his Bronwyn loved him!
A shaky laugh escaped him, a sound that had not emerged from him in …. He broke off the thought, sobering.
He was going to freeze to death. “Beloved,” he muttered wryly. “You picked a hell of a time to free me!”
The full impact of his predicament began to settle inside of him. He had nothing--no clothes, no weapon--no wealth, no estate, no chance to win his beloved Bronwyn.
“Evil bastard!” he snarled, looking around again and trying to formulate a plan since his wits was all he had and the strength of his arms.
Any curse can be broken, Gaelzeroth had said. The trick is to formulate one so cleverly diabolical that it is unlikely to ever be broken!
It would not have been either, if not for the fact that he had become so enamored of Bronwyn that he had not counted the cost to himself, that he had not been able to stay away even knowing she must be revolted or, more likely, terrified by his beastly form. He would have been perched still on his prison ledge to guard the knave’s keep forever.
And he had been stripped of everything.
Fury began to boil inside of him as the realization sank into him fully that he was still cursed, for he had no way to take his lady to wife.
Stalking purposefully across the keep, his hands balled into fists, he headed straight for the guard room. He knew that few would be on watch on such a night as this and those few would most likely be as drunk as the king’s man who’d been sent to oversee them but preferred to keep his fat ass warm before the hearth in the great room.
There were three men-at-arms he discovered when he pushed the door open and entered. They looked up from the game of chance they were playing half-heartedly and there mouths slowly slid to half-mast. Stalking purposefully toward them, he grabbed the nearest, hauled him from his seat and punched him squarely in the jaw. Pain exploded in his hand, but he ignored it as he had the cold, flinging the unconscious man toward the others. One sprang away from the body as it flew toward. The other went down beneath the weight of the unconscious man. He slammed his fist into the second man’s belly as the soldier grabbed for his sword. Off balance already, the blow doubled him over, sending him further off balance. He sprawled in the floor. Before he could get up, Nightshade had the blade at his throat. “Don’t,” he growled warningly.
The man subsided and Nightshade turned his attention to the third man. Seeing he was still struggling to crawl out from under the first man, Nightshade whipped the sword in his direction. “Slowly, unless you’re of a mind to be spitted on my blade.”
The man subsided and Nightshade looked them over one by one. “You! Get up and tie these two up.”
The man stared at him blankly for a moment but rose cautiously to his feet when Nightshade backed up a few paces. The two men still conscious exchanged a speaking glance as the man who’d been order to tie the other two moved slowly to obey. “It will cost you your life,” Nightshade growled warningly.
The man sent him a startled glance, tensed for a moment and finally relaxed again, conceding defeat. “Ye look familiar. Who are ye, then?” he asked sullenly as he searched the room and finally brought a coil of rope and proceeded to tie the other two men as Nightshade directed.
“It would mean nothing to you if I told you.”
“How’d ye get into the keep?”
Nightshade ignored that, watching the man through narrowed eyes until he’d tied the other two men and then motioning him aside so that he could check the bindings. His lips tightened and he sent the man a menacing glare. “Tighter--or I could simply slit their throats and eliminate the problem.”
The man’s face reddened with fury but he returned to his comrades and tied the rope more securely. “There’s only one reason I can think a man’d be running about bare arsed in weather like this,” he muttered. “An’ that’s on account of the woman he was fuckin’ tossed him out--Or he got caught plowin’ some maid he ought not.”
Uttering a snarl of fury, Nightshade caught the man square on the jaw with the hilt of his sword. Grasping the
man’s tunic as he fell to the floor, he dragged the man up by the fistful of fabric until they were almost nose to nose. “Dangerous thoughts and a loose tongue,” he snarled. “Should I slit your throat, I wonder? Or cut out your tongue?”
The man’s eyes, still rolling about in his head from the blow, bulged. As he stared at the rage contorting Nightshade’s face, however, his fear deepened and his expression became a look of purest horror. “Nightshade,” he whispered hoarsely.
Nightshade shook him and released him. “The clothes. Take them off.”
Shaking like a leaf blowing in a strong wind, the man nodded jerkily and began to snatch his clothing off and toss it until he stood shivering in his chausses. Nightshade looked the garment over with distaste. “Those too.”
The man gaped at him but hastened to comply, dropping his undergarments beside the rest.
“Thank you,” Nightshade said almost pleasantly and then slammed his fist into the man’s jaw. The soldier’s eyes rolled back in his head and he crumpled to the floor.
Setting the sword aside, Nightshade pulled the clothes on, trying to ignore the stench that clung to them. He’d judged the man closest to his size, but the clothing was still far too tight, the sleeves of the tunic and legs of the breeches too short. Muttering curses under his breath, he tugged the stockings on and shoved his feet into the boots.
He’d be crippled, he thought wryly, if he had to walk far in the things for he had to curl his toes to get them on. It still beat the hell out of frozen feet and toes.
When he’d finished, he dragged the naked man over to the others and tied him up, as well, then settled in a chair before the room’s small brazier to warm himself and think.
He would need an army to reclaim what was rightfully his and he must take what was rightfully his before he claimed Bronwyn as his wife, else he would not have the wherewithal to hold her against the king.
Fortunately, he had an advantage no one else had.
He had built Raventhorne. He knew all of its secrets.
Chapter Nine
Bronwyn had had a good deal of time to regret her emotional outburst. Indeed, she could not fathom what had come over her. She had managed to remain stoic in the face of William’s cruelties, even the beatings.
And yet Nightshade’s gentleness had undone her!
She could only think that he had believed nothing that she had said for weeks had past and she had seen nothing of him.
It was impossible to keep her fears at bay. She had imagined so many reasons for his absence that she was nigh sick with worrying herself. The worst fear was that she had, somehow, done or said something that had altered the curse upon him in some terrible way, but she could not dismiss that as pure imagination.
He no longer guarded the front gate of the keep. Trapped inside by the blizzard that had held Raventhorne in its grip for weeks, she had not discovered that until the servants began to whisper that Raventhorne’s guardian had vanished. Fear had gripped everyone within the castle from lowliest servant to the highest. The absence of the guardian of the keep filled them all with a deep foreboding that they were perched on the eve of disaster. Everywhere she went there were whispers of all sort of disasters that would befall Raventhorne and the people within in the event the keep lost its guardian.
Bronwyn did not know whether the tales she heard were a part of the original curse or if everyone was making them up out of fear.
There were whispers that he had attacked soldiers of the keep and then cursed them and flown away.
She did not know what to think, but she found she could not quake over some unnamed, possible disaster. To her mind nothing could be much worse than the marriage the king would force upon her when she loved Nightshade. Nothing could be worse than the fact that he had left her thinking terrible things, she was certain, and she might never get the chance to make him understand that she cared for him.
* * * *
At any other time, the troupe of men that appeared at Raventhorne’s gates would have caused some consternation, but it would not have put the entire keep into a panic. Weeks of speculation about the ‘curse’ had severely undermined morale, however, particularly since the winter had been more violent than anyone recalled and stores had already begun to run low since the heavy and frequent snowfall made it impossible for men to go out and hunt to replenish the meat supply.
The banner displayed only added to the uneasiness, for it depicted a great black bird perched upon a thorny vine.
It was not the husband the king had promised. Bronwyn was certain of that even before Sir Fitzhugh had ordered the gates closed and routed the men from the great hall to man the walls of the keep.
The king had promised her six months. Moreover, few traveled at such an ungodly time of the year unless they had very good reason to do so, and the snow only meant less likelihood that the troupe of men would have stirred to brave the elements.
The banner piqued her curiosity, however, and Bronwyn found she couldn’t resist the urge to bundle up and see for herself what the men outside the gates were about--whether they represented a threat or were only travelers seeking shelter from the weather.
Fortunately, Fitzhugh was too intent himself on discovering the intentions of the men beyond the gates to pay her any mind as she made her way up onto the battlements and peered down at the strangers.
It was a rather large troupe of men, Bronwyn discovered, feeling uneasiness begin to tingle along her nerve endings even before she spied the banner. Her heart seemed to stand still in her chest when a sudden gust of wind lifted it, unfurling it. She knew that banner. She did not know how, but she was suddenly certain she did.
Raventhorne.
The leader nudged his horse forward as Fitzhugh called out a demand to know their business.
The man lifted his head, scanning the walls above him and, despite the helmet that obscured his face, Bronwyn had the uncanny sense that his gaze had settled upon her.
“I am Marcus Raventhorne … And I have come to claim what is mine.”
Stunned silence greeted the bold announcement for several moments before Sir Fitzhugh broke it with a bark of a laugh that held no humor at all. “I hold these lands in the name of the king, for the Lady of Raventhorne,” he growled finally. “You expect to besiege this keep with no more than a handful of men?”
“Nay. I expect to take this keep and its lady,” the knight retorted, lifting his arm into the air and bringing it down again in a sharp chopping motion. “Now!”
Still completely stunned by the man’s audacity, expecting an attack from the men beyond the walls, it took many moments for the defenders to assimilate the fact that the sudden burst of action all along the walls was an attack and by that time the battle was all but lost.
Too frozen with fear and shock to flee, Bronwyn merely stared in complete incomprehension as the castle’s defenders seemed to turn upon each other all along the wall. By the time she grasped that the castle had somehow been infiltrated by the stranger’s army and whirled to flee, the portcullis was rising and the drawbridge falling to admit their attackers.
Whirling the moment her mind finally assimilated the threat, Bronwyn darted between the knots of battling men and rushed down the stairs. Even as she reached the courtyard, however, men mounted upon war horses had begun to spill through the gates. Uttering a gasp of fright, she gathered her skirts higher and ran faster, too panicked to realize she had no hope of outrunning mounted men.
A mailed arm snagged her around the waist, snatching her off her feet and crushing the air from her lungs as she was jerked against an armor plated chest. Fear not common sense inspired her to fight for her freedom, but she quickly discovered that she had neither the strength nor the leverage to offer much in the way of resistance.
“Be still, little rose,” he growled as he locked his arm tightly around her. “I mean you no harm.”
His words penetrated her fear and Bronwyn glanced up at him sharply, trying to see the face of th
e man who held her. Her heart skipped several beats as her gaze met his for there was something hauntingly familiar about those eyes.
“Who are you?” she demanded in a hoarse whisper.
Something flickered in his eyes. “Am I so different now that you do not know me?”
Bronwyn felt the color drain from her face, but she could not accept that what she believed was truth. It couldn’t be. It must be no more than her imagination, spawned by the hope that had never died, but the desire that had never been far from her thoughts. She ceased to struggle though, as much from hope as from the realization that fighting was useless.
