"Megwyn, please."
Body tensing, a sigh escaped him when her warm fingers skimmed his chest, tracing the scars incised into his skin. He moved restlessly, her touch weakening the fiercely held self-control that kept him functioning.
"If only you had accepted sooner, you would not wear these hateful marks." When he made no further protest, she pressed her palm to his heart, lowering her eyelids to attune herself to his body and its rhythms. "You were near your end." She made an odd sound, half-gasp, half-whimper. Her face betrayed conflicting emotions. "Very close."
His hand rose to cover hers. He closed his eyes, and another brick crumbled from the wall of his inner reserve. He felt limp, heavy, breathing with forced endurance. "It has been a long time…"
"Since we have been together," she finished with a rasp. Tears began to fall, tracking down her pale cheeks. She blinked, wanting to hide her reaction from him, but anguish overwhelmed her and she blurted, "You didn't have to leave."
"I had to. You know that."
"Nisidia--" she began.
"Do not speak her name. That past…what happened then…it will never be settled between Xavier and me, no matter the truce called."
"She was your downfall," she said bitterly. "She destroyed you." She paused. "I know about your mate, the mortal woman. Her death is regrettable."
He shook his head. "I do not wish to think of that." His voice faltered, and he could barely say the words. Remorse was sharp and painful, cutting deeper than any blade. He drew away, turning his back on her.
"Morgan," she began, with a questioning unhappiness, "can't we repair this?"
"Just leave me."
"I can't do that." Megwyn sniffed, running her hands over her face, wiping away stray tears. "Don't turn away now, please."
Her voice was tinged with an intense longing.
Morgan remained motionless. He sensed her approach, her light step upon the floor. Her arms circled his waist. She laced her fingers together, determined her hold would not be easily broken. He felt the pressure of her cheek coming to rest on his shoulder. Her touch ushered forth a tide of confusion.
"You want to stay in your own dark place," she whispered. "Deep in your mind, keeping to yourself where no one can reach you, hurt you. It doesn't work that way when there's two of us, brother."
"I have felt you reaching for me." It was not in his nature to reveal his innermost feelings. He had learned from an early age to keep his emotions hidden. It was safer that way, spared him the pain of grief and loss. As far as people might manage to delve, they could not touch his deepest feelings. Megwyn, more than anyone, knew his foibles, his vulnerabilities. She was his twin, his other half. For a moment his trembling lessened, the tension between them temporarily at bay.
"You need to come back."
"No!" Somewhat regaining his self-control, he pulled away. Her embrace was becoming too comfortable. He untangled himself from her hold. Stay longer in her arms, and he would be tempted to give in to her pleading.
She lifted a hand to caress his cheek, deep concern chiseled into her features. "Your time in exile is over. I know the hunger is in you."
"I do hear the calling…" he admitted, a bit hesitant. His words trailed away, and he wavered. Damn the pain! He could hardly think through the blazing agony. His sense of judgment was distorted by his inability to reason through the haze overtaking his mind.
"Until you do, you will know no peace," she whispered.
"Is it wrong to want it again?" He wondered if he should have said the words the moment they were out of his mouth. He had thought of it often during his exile.
We are waiting… The voices within the sepulcher commenced to chime anew, louder, stronger.
"It isn't wrong. It's what you are. You can't deny it and expect it not to punish you." Megwyn traced along his temples. Strands of his hair fell through her combing fingers. Watching it, a gentle smile tugged at one corner of her mouth.
"I remember a time when there was no liath, no gray." She began to massage his temples. Lips moist, slightly parted, a soft, cooing presence, she was the picture of womanly supplication: exquisite, vital, bursting with the life's energy that had long ago abandoned him. Her nearness, her touch, were drawing him toward resolution.
Accept, the voices said, and you could have her at your side. Together you will be formidable. Together you will be whole.
"I do not know why I have gone so wrong," he murmured. He closed his eyes. Was it his imagination or did her touch still the desperate pounding in his head? "I have been so lost since I turned away."
"You don't have to be alone any longer." Her voice grew tender, sympathy in its quavering. "Come back. Claim what is yours, what is ours. Open your mind to me, share with me again."
Morgan caught her slender waist and drew her closer. His hand slid up her back, his fingers passing through her hair to curl around the nape of her neck in an intimate and accepting gesture. At his touch, she inclined her head. Her arms encircled his neck. Her upturned mouth invited a kiss. She closed her eyes. Her lips, red and ripe as sun-warmed cherries begging to be tasted, brushed his. She made it clear she desired him, would lead him as their father had led their mother.
He was close to giving body and soul to her when a movement at the edge of the chamber caught his attention. On the walls around them, the shadows reflected their interplay. More than mimicry, however, they began to assume animation of their own.
As though observing actors perform on a stage, he watched in fascination as his shadow-self accepted her kiss. She drew him closer, and he watched himself lift his hand to cup her breast. Kisses between them deepened, their sexual foreplay growing heated in its intensity. He pushed her shadow-self toward the altar, lifting her up on it even as her legs parted to receive him.
Appalled by the incestuous affection played out in the shadows, he looked down at the woman in his arms, pulling away from her in disgust. She'd played him expertly, preyed on his vulnerability, his confusion. Nothing was beyond her, not even sex, if she felt it would gain her desired results. He became aware of the scent clinging to her skin, the strange spicy fragrance of a flower known only to Sclyd. But under the perfume lingered an overpowering odor of putrefaction. His imagination? Perhaps his perceptions were still distorted. But, no--it permeated her clothes, her hair. Without doubt, she'd been with Xavier before gracing him with her presence.
Before she could stop him, he yanked the dress away from her shoulder, revealing the newly etched tattoo above her left breast.
"You wear his brand. You belong to him." She has been leading me like a sheep. Truly her father's daughter.
Sour bile rose from his gut, burning his throat. He swallowed hard to stay the sickness that welled up in his soul. Always, lies and deceit were at the core of her plotting.
She tore herself away, tugging up her dress to cover the tattoo. "Yes. Just this very day."
"That you would embrace the Dragon sickens me." He went after her, pushing her back against the wall. His hand rose to her pale neck. "I did not believe the warnings that you had turned. Now I see why he asked for the assassination of the council. They are in his way--and yours. This peace is surely an uneasy, untrustworthy one. I suspect not all are in agreement."
His hold tightened into a merciless grip at the base of her throat. It would be easy to strangle her. He wanted to kill her, wipe away the obscene leer her smile morphed into.
She did not lift her hands to defend herself, silently daring him to take the next move. "You can't do it."
He increased the pressure on her throat. He was so infuriated he believed he could easily snuff out her life and smile as he did it.
"Kialgeyr galla! Deceitful bitch!" he flung viciously. "How dare you try to bewitch me?" He dug his fingers deeper, bruising her soft, delicate skin.
But there was no fear in the depths of her ice-blue eyes. Instead, they sparked with defiance, as if challenging him to murder her.
Go ahead, her gaze dar
ed him. Try.
He did, and the pain returned full force, roaring through his head with an intensity threatening to stagger him. The more anger he fed his desire to kill her, the worse it attacked him. If he carried his threat further, he would be driven to unconsciousness.
He let his hand drop, trembling when he stepped away from her. Some force within her--or was it within himself?--aborted her murder at his hands.
"I knew you couldn't kill me," she spat. Her words cut deeply into his psyche "You're weak. You always were. And weakness isn't to be pitied. It's to be exterminated."
Her words fell like scalding acid, clutching him in the grip of a hatred so intense that murder-suicide seemed a reasonable--a welcome--escape from the hell that was his life.
"I turned away because the occult takes what you value and rips it to shreds!" Ashen, incensed, he felt a shudder creep through his entire body until his every nerve quivered from the strain to remain conscious.
She smirked. "Lhig lhiam. Spare me this talk. I see your dilemma. Go back and you lose the last of your self." She began to laugh. "Refuse it, and you'll never be whole. That's what's destroying you. You're incomplete. You always have been."
He drew back his shoulders in resolution. "What few pieces of my mind I still have, I intend to keep."
He had to remember that not only was his twin a liar and a schemer, but she was insane in the worst way. Few recognized her madness until it was far too late to stop her. Compared to her, he was quite lucid, sane and sensible.
She shook her head as if in sorrow, clicking her tongue in mock sympathy.
"We are opposites." A scornful look crumpled her face. "I light, blond and untouched by troubles. You dark, black and burdened by an intense weight. How could we have shared the same womb?"
"Appearances are as deceiving as the shadows on the wall. And where light falls, so does it reveal the presence of hovering evil. After the dark war, I realized your spirit to be corrupt. It is unfortunate my realization came after your investiture as the ard-corrym. The council will soon know your intent to betray them, if they do not already suspect. You are just as hungry to take the mortal world as Ouroborous's legions.
"If you will not stand with us," she lashed out, harsh and stern, "then I will see you destroyed.
He shook his head. "Unlike you, I serve no false gods."
"Heed my words, brother, when I say I will not stumble as that old fool did. He offered you many chances. I offer you none. I know your weaknesses, what they are and how to use them against you. If you fear anything, I warn you to fear me now."
He did not flinch. "Fear left me long ago. If you think there is anything that can scare me now, think again."
Megwyn's rage consumed her. The ball of light wavered, throwing their shadowy counterparts grotesquely out of proportion. A maelstrom of silvery-blue lightning bolts materialized in its center.
She drew her sharp thumbnail across the pad of her index finger; blood welled from the cut she effortlessly made in her skin. She lifted her finger and quickly smeared her blood across his lips.
"I've given you a chance to make amends, and I'll beg no more. Xavier and I do stand together, and you shall be only one of many who'll be devoured. Not even the mortal world will offer you an easy asylum this time." Her eyes were slits, twin pools of hostility in which dwelled black irises as empty as her soul.
He wordlessly scrubbed his mouth, wiping away her blood. Lowering his hand, he could see its stain on his fingers. By the gods, she has marked my soul as hers to absorb. It was an act of revenge he never would have considered, no matter their estrangement.
Megwyn's face twisted with leering mockery. "I'll leave you in the mire of your own making." She turned to leave. Over her shoulder, she laughed as she summoned the misty veils that would allow her to take leave. Her last words were faint but audible as she vanished into the center of the haze.
"Guard yourself carefully. You won't be alone long. I'll pay a lot of gold to have you brought to me in chains. And when you belong to me, I'll take what I want from you. And when I am done, I'll enjoy sending your soul into an unending limbo."
The ball of light vanished, plunging the chamber into darkness. The silence lengthened, rushing in like a tide, then receding, suggesting the vast, dark grip of an endless eclipse. No light, no sound, no sense of self. Only empty, dreaded stillness.
Chapter Eleven
Lost in the puzzling maze, Julienne looked around. Light provided by torches embedded into the wall filtered through the great stone tunnels. The atmosphere they created was thick with smoke, coating the ceiling with layers of oily soot.
"I don't like this place." Her words were barely a whisper. You don't have much choice now, her inner voice snapped back.
"No choice," she answered herself. An outrush of breath, almost a sigh, escaped her.
She turned in all directions, searching for a sign of where--which way--to go. She drew her hand along the wall, leaving a gaping bare spot in the spider webs she brushed aside. She wished the ceiling wasn't so low. She hated being closed into so small a place. Her breath was beginning to come in shallow, rapid pants.
She made her choice. Once the decision was made, she experienced a great sense of relief. Forward. She knew on one level that she was lifting her feet, that she was walking, yet it seemed as if she were going nowhere, moving no farther from the death chamber. The gray walls appeared unchanged.
"Breathe!" she told herself, panicking as she was overcome by a swirling darkness that hovered just behind her line of vision. She felt herself slipping away. She stood still. Intuition warned her that to fight the sensation would send her into unconsciousness. Instead, she concentrated, forcing herself to inhale deeply through her mouth like a dog.
"I can get out of here." Her hoarsely spoken words were filled with a sense of wonder; they affirmed what had really been driving her. It all revolved around Morgan. Even if she got out of Xavier's sanctuary, she could not survive here without him.
Through her deep tide of grief, she resolved with a fierce determination to find Morgan again. She would keep his name, his image in her mind like a talisman. She squeezed her eyes shut, fighting back the feeling of sickness in the pit of her stomach. This time it wasn't the mutant inside her that caused her to reel.
Unbidden, tears trickled down her cheeks and stung the deep wounds in her face. She quickly swiped away the wetness. Morgan gave scant consideration to human emotion.
My hero by default. Damn it, I wish I hadn't been so inexperienced and Grandmother could've taught me more. Morgan knew I had ability. He stonewalled me, never letting me sense what he was really feeling. I see now I rarely caught him with his guard down. He never wanted me to learn to use my gifts, to come into the occult. Well, I'm here now. If I live through this, I will learn to be a priestess…
A furrowing of her forehead and a knitting of her delicate brows drew their unhappy mark across her features. Her shoulders sagged in a downward slope. Suddenly, she felt unbearably sad. She felt as if she had lost something. Or was it that she had never possessed it to begin with?
"Fight it. Fight it," she urged herself. Her heart began thudding unpleasantly, launching a hungry spear of pain to consume her. She tried to ignore it, failed then tried harder. Giving in to it would finish her. "I'll get out of here if I have to crawl."
Driven on by mortality's ever-desperate reach for preservation, she began to walk again, slower, with careful steps. Her journey seemed endless; the underground paths extended through several miles, a maze that would confuse even one who knew them well. Several times she had to stop and rest, kneel down for a few minutes to ease the ache in her chest, back and legs.
Exhaustion and thirst made her acutely aware of the danger she was in if she sat immobile too long. The urge to succumb to a long rest was enticing, yet she knew if she drifted off that she would lose more than a few hours. She might sacrifice her life to the hungry mutant.
Advancing another quarter-mile
, she found her journey at its end. The tunnel became a flight of stone steps leading up a steep incline. Coming from the top of the stairs she detected the sound of female voices, smelled food being prepared. Mouth watering, stomach rumbling, she had not eaten in many days and was nearly starved.
I wonder if I can eat, she thought. The mutant inside her kicked, knocking against her breastbone, bending her double as the pain clawed through her. She gasped, pressing her hand to her mouth. Do I stay down here and try another way? Her gaze rose to the top of the stairs. Or do I take my chances up there? I can't stay down here forever. Hunger was a powerful motivator. As long as the food wasn't crawling with bugs, she would probably eat it.
Forcing her breathing even, she climbed the stairway, almost on hands and knees. At the top, she unsheathed her dagger. It's now or never, she told herself and stepped under the lintel.
Her grip on the weapon tightened. She scanned the chamber and the people around her. Within seconds she recognized these women could do her little harm. Not the well-nourished whores or the harder-worked eunuchs, these were the non-people, women who did the menial labor of the sanctuary. Theirs was dirty work; and they were the dregs of the society, holding no rank and no worth.
She was in their living quarters. Kneeling on straw mats around a huge stone hearth, several women worked to prepare the day's meal, leftovers from the sorcerer's feast. Black iron kettles hung over an open fire. Its contents boiled, a vegetable concoction more a gruel than any sort of stew. The aroma pervaded the air, a tantalizing scent to those for whom food was scarce. This single meal, along with shared bread and cheese, had to last them through a twenty-four-hour period.
Their dirty skirts and blouses were worn, patched several times over. The stink of unwashed bodies hung heavy, an odor almost as bad as that in the charnel rooms.
All the women turned wary eyes to the intruder. No one made a move. Indeed, they seemed as surprised to see her as she was to see them. A tense moment crackled, and she quailed. Would they scream, give away her presence? Like deer in the headlights, the women froze. They were clearly frightened.
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