One level down from the dining hall were the ground floor and the rear exit which led to the emperor’s garden. A few oil lamps burned there, for security purposes more than to illuminate the popular garden. He and Danya walked down a narrow stone path, and she did seem to admire the flowering plants they walked past. He said nothing; neither did she. They walked in complete silence until they reached the far edge of the garden.
Danya stopped near the tall stone wall that surrounded the palace grounds and turned to face him. “I suppose you’re wondering why I asked you to walk with me, after our last unpleasant encounter.”
“Yes,” Rainer said simply.
Danya looked up as if studying the stars. “I’m sorry about that. To be honest, I realized that I liked you more than I should. We would spend time together and I’d find myself thinking . . . thoughts I should not allow.” She looked him in the eye. “You are my only friend here, Rainer, and I have missed you.”
“You might have more friends if you did not make an effort to be difficult,” he said bluntly. “Since coming to the palace you’ve been demanding and often unkind.”
Finely shaped eyebrows arched. “That’s rather bold of you to say.”
“Friends tell the truth,” he responded.
Her lower lip trembled, and he could not tell if that reaction to his comment was an act or not. Was she vulnerable or manipulative? A lost little girl or an ambitious bitch? There had been a time when he’d thought he understood her, but lately—lately he could not be sure.
“What do you want from me, Danya?”
“I want you to be my friend again, and maybe”—she glanced to the side coyly—“maybe you can be more than a friend.” She took his hand and pulled him into darker shadows, and there she threw herself at him and planted a cold kiss on his lips.
Rainer tasted the desperation he’d seen on Danya’s face earlier in the evening. He felt the pounding of her heart, the tremor of her lips. After a moment her lips parted and she slipped her tongue into his mouth, practiced and arousing. A hand grasped at his shirt and she pressed her body closer to his.
In the early days he’d found Danya extraordinarily physically attractive. During their private evenings she’d seemed a different woman, a woman he could care for—not at all the woman she had become. On more than one occasion he had dreamed of kissing her, but this was not the kiss he wanted. He didn’t want to be the man she turned to for solace when she was despondent and forlorn.
Rainer took his mouth from hers. “We can’t do this.”
“I thought you liked me,” she whispered.
So did I. “You are a bridal candidate,” he said, even though he could not imagine that she would win the position.
“Yes, but the emperor’s marriage will be one of politics and convenience,” Danya argued. “Doesn’t a woman deserve more? Don’t I deserve love and passion in my life, even if I win the emperor’s hand?”
“Don’t you believe that you can find love and passion in an arranged marriage?”
“No,” she whispered. “Is there someone else? Do you love another?”
“No.”
“Then love me, for a while,” Danya said seductively. She boldly placed a hand over the evidence that he was not unmoved by her offers or her kiss. She stroked, fingers firm and practiced, palm warm.
Rainer closed his eyes and allowed his mind and his will to drift. The emperor wasn’t going to marry Danya, he knew that. It wasn’t as if he would be taking advantage of a future empress, and it wasn’t as if he hadn’t imagined this very scenario a time or two.
But he would be taking advantage. He grabbed Danya’s wrist and gently pulled her hand away from his body. “I will be your friend without the promise of anything more,” he said.
“I know,” she whispered, sounding defeated and dejected.
He wanted her to be neither. He wanted her to be happy, to be free. His ability to sense energy told him that she was not at all free, not inside or out. He didn’t understand—wasn’t sure he or anyone else could. When the emperor’s contest was over and Danya knew she would not be empress, perhaps they could explore something more. But for now, for tonight . . . “We will take things slowly, you and I,” he said.
“But why . . .”
“Slowly, Danya,” he insisted, and then he kissed her.
This kiss was different from the first. This kiss was slower, and it was full of promise. There was no desperation, no grasping, no surging tongues. Not yet. The kiss was warm and gentle, two mouths barely touching, two mouths learning one another. Danya’s lips barely parted and Rainer’s did the same. She held her breath; her heartbeat slowed. They leaned into one another gently, sharing a breath, stealing a moment in time. When it was done, she swayed on her feet and he had to steady her.
The energy that rolled off her body was different from what he’d felt before. The desperation was gone. No, not gone but dampened, at least for the moment.
“I’ve never been kissed like that before,” she said.
Rainer took her arm and led her back toward the palace. “Good.”
DANYA was almost lightheaded as she allowed Rainer to lead her back to the level of the palace where her quarters were located. When she was empress, she would be on a lower level and would not have to climb so much, but tonight she did not mind. The tedious climb meant Rainer remained with her longer. She did not want to let him go. Still, she said good night long before she reached her door, just in case Kristo was in her chambers waiting for her, as he sometimes was. She did not want her “uncle” anywhere near Angelo.
The deputy minister of magic confused her. He was a man like any other, and she had offered him anything he might desire. He could’ve tossed up her skirt and taken her in the garden, and she would not have uttered a word of protest as he took what every man wanted from a woman. He’d been hard; he desired her well enough—and yet he had taken nothing. He had done nothing more than to offer her a kiss like no other she had ever known, sweet and arousing and deep in ways she could not explain.
When the door to her chamber was closed behind her, Danya leaned against it and sighed. She did not want to kill Rainer. She wanted to hold him, to kiss him again, to see him smile. She did not want to rid the world of one of its truly good men! What a waste that would be.
“I have your poison.”
Danya’s eyes snapped open as Kristo stepped from the shadows. From his hand there swung a small leather bag which bulged with something deadly. Something which would end Rainer’s life and save the life of her child.
“I won’t need it right away,” she said, keeping her back to the door.
“Why not?”
“Before I can get Rainer to eat from my hand, he must trust me,” she snapped impatiently. “At the moment he does not.”
The deadly bag continued to swing from a cold hand. “You play with your child’s life,” Kristo teased.
Realizing that she had some power in this relationship helped Danya to be less afraid of the cold man than she had once been, and still she trembled. “You won’t hurt Ethyn,” she whispered. “You still need me.” She bravely took a step away from the door and toward Kristo. To cower with her back to the wall only made her appear weak. “The plan has changed. Rather than killing Rainer, I’m going to bring him over to my side.”
“He’s annoyingly and unerringly good,” Kristo said. “How could you possibly . . .”
“Sex,” she said boldly. “He wants me, and I am more than willing to give him all that he wants.”
Kristo’s eyebrows arched in amusement. “You cannot wait for your wedding night, Empress Danya? You’re so needful you’ll turn to another man mere days before you’re to take your vows?”
She smiled, though it took great effort. “I know what you want from me, Uncle Kristo. You want a child. You want the next emperor at your command. When we first met, you said as much. You told me that you and those you worked with were pleased that I had the ability to produce a son.
” She wondered if there truly were others, or if he had lied. Perhaps he was just one lonely, evil man, working alone. No, someone had to be watching over Ethyn. “If I have two men at my service, then the event you most desire is doubly likely to happen soon.” She looked Kristo in the eye, glad at this moment that her chamber was dimly lit. “The emperor’s father had several wives and was wed to one or another for many years before he produced an heir. What if Emperor Jahn is like his father? What if you have to wait years for the child you want? Rainer is fair-haired like the emperor, so if the child looks like the man who sired him, no matter who that man might be, then all will be well.”
“You have given this some thought.”
More than he would ever know. “Rainer has magic, you know. Wouldn’t it be nice if the child inherited some of his father’s abilities?”
“I suppose.”
“Emperor Jahn is only a man,” she said with disdain. “He possesses no magic, nothing to offer his offspring. It might actually be best if I’m with child when I wed the emperor.”
“Perhaps that child should be mine.”
Danya held her chin high, hiding her revulsion. “That’s not going to happen. Touch me, and this alliance is over.” She’d made sacrifices and she would make more, but she would not allow this man to get near her.
“You’re quite confident.”
She glared at the cold man. His name was Kristo, she called him uncle for the sake of others, and yet she often thought of him as the hooded man. He should live that way, always in shadow. She had to reach deep to remind herself that he needed her, that she was not entirely at his mercy. “You will get your child and I will get mine. You will have control of the next emperor of Columbyana, and I will have Ethyn. Rainer remains alive.” She reached out and snatched the leather bag from Kristo’s hand. “Until he has served his purpose.”
MORGANA listened diligently to Rainer’s teachings. Her curse was simply a form of energy, he said again and again. It was no different from breath or dance, laughter or tears. Control was not only possible, he insisted, it was necessary.
For this morning’s lesson they had traveled a short distance away from the palace, to a western field. She and her tutor were not alone; Jahn would never allow that. Six sentinels had accompanied them to the field, and though they remained at a distance, they encircled her in a protective—or imprisoning—manner. Six men, all armed and solemn! You would think she was an enemy of the state, the way she was guarded.
At least Jahn himself was not here, watching her lessons and trying in vain to convince her that his lies were not unforgivable.
Still wearing the faded yellow dress she had worn when she’d been Ana Devlyn, Morgana faced the large, empty space before her, where trees and grasses grew wild, and the gentle wind whipped them all about in a rhythm that had a song of its own. The sun shone, and she drank in the rays that reminded her of freedom and better days—days when she had not known of her curse, and later days when she’d traveled with a lying, no-good, conniving emperor who had made her believe he could keep the curse at bay.
Now she knew it would never be at bay. She had to learn how to control her curse—her abilities, Rainer called them—or else she would have no sort of life at all. Not here, not elsewhere. If she did not learn control, she would forever be a prisoner of her cur . . . of her abilities.
All morning they had worked on finding and identifying and claiming the root of her power. The icy energy was not beyond her control. It was a part of her—a gift, he said. Next had been finding how best to direct that energy. It was not enough to harness the beast, she had to know how to steer it. They had found her right hand worked best. All that remained was for her abilities to be tested.
“Find the cold center of the power,” Rainer instructed.
“But I’m not angry or scared,” Morgana argued.
“That doesn’t matter. The power is always there, and you must learn to hold it, or else it will hold you.”
Morgana closed her eyes. Cold. She did know, and had told Rainer, that the destruction began with a sliver of ice at the core of her being. She had worked to deny that sliver, so it was difficult to call to it now. She did not want to search out that chill; she wanted to send it away!
If she could not send it away, she would learn control. She had not been able to learn it for herself, and did not want to stay here so near to Jahn, but for the child that might be within her, she would do whatever was necessary. Her child deserved better than a mother who was constantly afraid of who—or what—she was.
“Find the sliver and contain it,” Rainer said. “Capture it; make it your own.”
Just as Jahn had done to her . . . Captured. Owned. Released.
There it was, that sliver of cold. Instead of pushing it away, as she had attempted to do in the past, Morgana mentally wrapped her hand around that sliver of ice. She felt the power. She claimed it.
“See that one red flower?” Rainer asked.
Morgana followed his gesture and saw the single red flower among the pink. It was taller and brighter and more beautiful than all the rest. “Yes,” she said. “I see it.”
“Freeze that flower but leave all those around it untouched.”
“I can’t . . .”
“Try,” he said gently.
Morgana stared at the red flower for a long time, while Rainer remained silent and patient. She acknowledged the power inside her, rather than trying to push it away, and so it did not explode; it did not overtake her. Eventually she lifted her right hand, as Rainer had taught her to do, and directed her cold power toward that one red flower.
There was a burst similar to the two she had experienced in the past, but instead of encircling her, the blue burst of energy flew forward in a sweeping motion. Her aim was off, and she crystallized not the one red flower but a dozen or so to the left.
“Very good,” Rainer said proudly.
Morgana turned to see that her tutor had retreated to a spot several feet behind her. “Very good? I missed, and you were so worried, you moved well out of the line of fire.”
He smiled. “I am no fool, My Lady,” he responded. “Your power is a mighty one, and you do not yet have complete control.”
No, but in a mere two days she had found, at last, some control. That little bit of mastery gave her hope.
“You’re tired,” he said.
“I am,” she admitted. She had never been one for sleeping during the day, but at the moment she desperately wanted a nap. “Control is exhausting.”
His smile was wide and bright, and Morgana wondered why she could not have fallen in love with such a sweet, uncomplicated man as this. Why did she continue to love a man who had deceived and humiliated her?
Love or no love, she was not going to stay here. She would not marry the emperor! No matter what Jahn said, he could not make her take vows. She glanced behind her at the stalwart guard, as she and Rainer returned to the palace. And one day . . . one day his guard would falter, and when it did, she’d make her escape. She couldn’t wait for Jahn to let her go, as he said he would.
Well beyond the green-clad guards, another contingent sat on horseback. Most of them were dressed in green, as were her sentinels, but at the center there sat one man in crimson, one man with flowing fair hair who sat on his horse and watched her from a distance. He did not approach, he did not ride away. He simply watched.
For a weak moment she wished he were close enough that she could see his face, and then she pushed the weakness away. That was not the man she knew, the man she had come to love. He was a stranger.
KRISTO was called to the window of his too-small room by a power he knew well. It drew him there, it sang to him the way sex or love or laughter sang to other people. He watched for a long while before he finally saw her. His daughter, walking beside a familiar man who really should be dead by now, moved closer to the palace with each step, and with each step Kristo felt the power more clearly. The man who accompanied her and the
guards who walked behind and beside her didn’t feel it, not the way he did. If they sensed even a drop of the power Kristo sensed, they would run for their lives.
He smiled. Morgana looked like her mother, but was stronger than that woman had been. Dressed like a beggar woman and wearing her hair in a simple twist, his daughter walked with the confidence of a lady. Of an empress. He should’ve stolen her away years ago, and might’ve if he’d known their paths would lead them here.
Once Rainer and Morgana were out of sight, once they were in the palace itself, Kristo ran from his chamber with great speed. He headed for the stairway and scampered down. Down and down and down, hoping he was not too slow. Sure enough, he passed the couple just before they reached Level Seven and entered the hallway there. He could not get close, as a contingent of guards was on her tail, but he saw her at last.
Rainer glanced to the side, recognizing Kristo as his lady friend’s uncle. Knowing the man’s powers of perception, Kristo had gone to great lengths to keep his distance, but they had dined in the same hall, smoked in the same gathering rooms. Morgana paid Kristo no mind at all, even though he looked her squarely in the eye and bowed with great respect. She had been hidden from him for a very long time, but being so close to her changed everything. Now that he saw inside her, he knew his plans had not been for nothing.
His daughter was powerful, she was a prisoner, she was angry—and she was already carrying the next emperor of Columbyana in her taut, flat belly.
Level Seven, that was where she’d been imprisoned. Now that Kristo knew exactly where Morgana was, they would not remain apart for much longer.
Chapter Fourteen
SHE should’ve expected the emperor to be persistent, Morgana thought as she once again stared down the man who foolishly claimed to be her husband. Jahn had always been stubborn, no matter who he was or pretended to be.
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