“And you would be a difficult husband, to any so unlucky as to be chosen.”
Jahn chanced a quick glance at Kristo, who was red-faced and confused. This was not in his plan, so what would happen next? Whom would he call to his side?
Jahn moved to an unsteady Lady Danya, who looked more dead than alive. Only her eyes revealed life, and they seemed to burn with fever.
“You are a pretty girl, but you have a sharp tongue that has pierced many of the palace residents in weeks past. You ask much and give little. Do you have any redeeming qualities beyond your beauty?”
“No, My Lord,” she said softly, “I do not.”
He nodded his head. “Well, you’re honest. That is a fine quality in an empress.” For a moment Jahn held onto her arm, as she seemed to need the support. She swayed and then steadied. “I suspect there is more to you than meets the eye, Lady Danya,” he said softly, this time his words for her alone and not for the amusement of the crowd and the enragement of Kristo Stoyan.
She looked him in the eye and answered just as softly. “Perhaps tonight we will find out if that is true.”
Jahn released Lady Danya when he felt she was able to stand alone, then once again studied the six women before him. He occasionally touched a shoulder or a length of hair. None of them looked him in the eye; they kept their gazes straight ahead. Even Bela, who seemed ready and even anxious for a fight. He was happy to see that Morgana had given in and donned one of the new gowns he’d given her. She had chosen the green frock that complemented her eyes, but he could not afford to comment on that fact.
Finally he stood before the six women with his hands in the air. “I can’t decide. I certainly don’t want to send any one of them home rejected. Perhaps I should marry them all and see who gives me a son first. I can always put the rejects out to pasture when that is done.”
Merin’s Bela placed a hand on the hilt of her sword. Melusina stuck out her tongue, and Morgana’s lips went thin and tight. Jahn was supposed to choose her and allow her to reject him, which would send Kristo into a rage and into action. If the rejection was his, no anger would be directed at the woman who carried his child.
“Then again, perhaps I won’t marry any one of them.”
Kristo was backing toward the far side of the room, rather than moving closer to his daughter and his emperor. With any luck, the plan was working. The man who had tried to manipulate both Danya and Morgana would gather whatever assistance he had waiting, and then they would know precisely what they were up against. Kristo and his cohorts would be defeated in short order and then, only then, could Jahn claim Morgana as his own—if she would still have him.
Jahn shrugged his shoulders. “This is all too much for a simple man like me.” He looked at Morgana. “A gluttonous, irreverent simpleton cannot be expected to make such an important choice. This contest was a mistake. It’s over. I will remain unwed.”
Moans and a few squeals broke from the crowd that had gathered to watch the proceedings. And then an unexpected voice rang out in indignation. “There you are! What’s going on here? Where have you been?”
Jahn locked eyes with Almund Ramsden, an angry and rightfully affronted father who had arrived just in time, or so it seemed. Gone was the obedient servant who had willingly—if reluctantly—handed over his daughter many weeks earlier.
The man stalked toward Jahn. “What the hell have you done with my child?”
KRISTO turned and made his way to the window of the ballroom, grabbing an oil lamp from a table as he passed. He had not thought it would come to this, but he would not be denied. Not now. The emperor was playing games. He would play as well. He lifted the oil lamp and waved it across the open window three times.
His men, the mercenaries Rikka had hired and the general who would lead them, were watching and waiting. They were itching for a fight—hoping that all would not go well. The army was small, but they would have the element of surprise. Hydd insisted that Emperor Jahn was weak, and he and his men would not be prepared to fight.
Kristo didn’t know what had happened, but this was not how the evening was supposed to play out. The emperor was supposed to choose Morgana and they’d be married immediately. Soon everyone would know about the child the empress carried, and, as Morgana’s father, Kristo would be an important part of palace life. Soon enough the time would come for the emperor to be dispatched.
But the idiot emperor had not chosen Morgana. He had not chosen any of them! Rikka’s plan to connive and cheat herself a place in the palace had failed. Now Kristo would do things his way. The emperor and those closest to him would be killed, and Kristo would claim the throne himself—with the blood of the emperor in his grandchild to soothe those who could not be convinced by force alone. He would have both military strength and an imperial bloodline on his side.
His men were close; it would not take them long to get here.
“My Lord Emperor,” Kristo said as he left the window after signaling his army. It would be best if the emperor was here when the attack took place, lightly guarded and a part of the crowd. Hydd would know what to do. “If you will indulge me, I have some information to share.” He placed himself between Emperor Jahn and Ramsden, a man who had arrived much too late to save his daughter.
“Don’t listen to him!” Morgana shouted from her place on the dais.
Did she think he would give her away now, when no matter what had happened, she continued to carry the emperor’s only child in her belly? The threat that he would tell others how she had taken a life was one he could hold over her for a very long time—for as long as she continued to be useful, in fact.
“I’m not finished with the emperor,” Ramsden said. “He owes me an explanation about what has happened to my daughter!”
Kristo looked at Ramsden, and he was tempted to stone the man, here and now. “Lady Morgana is not your daughter,” Kristo said coldly. “She is mine. Morgana has always been mine, just as her mother was mine long before she was yours.”
Ramsden went pale. “She said you were dead.”
“I am not dead, obviously,” Kristo said, his voice lowered and meant for Ramsden alone. “I was simply discarded years ago for a man more easily manipulated than I allowed myself to be.” He smiled, and Ramsden took a step back. “That would be you. Go away, you are no longer necessary. Morgana has her real father now. She no longer needs you.”
Kristo dismissed Ramsden and turned again to the emperor, raising his voice so all could hear. “My Lord Emperor, I am a powerful seer, and I can tell you without question that on this night when we celebrate the fat bellies of the goddesses and the bright rays of the sun, five of these women are with child. One of those children is yours.” He looked at Morgana. “And one of these women is a murderer. Yes, there is a vile murderess among your potential brides.”
He held Morgana’s unsteady glare. She was terrified that he would tell all that he knew. Though he would need to hold that threat over her for some time to come, he also needed that power now, as he reminded her to do her part. Kristo was concentrating so intensely on his daughter that he did not realize Danya had left the dais and stood very near.
“Let’s make that two, shall we?” she said, as she shoved a dagger into his flesh, very near to his heart. He looked into her eyes, eyes which were suddenly stronger than they should be, eyes which were determined and sad and as cold as his own. “For Ethyn,” Danya said, as Kristo’s legs went weak and he dropped to the floor.
Chapter Eighteen
RAINER ran toward Danya, but he was too far away and much too late. His hand dropped to his side, where it fell upon an empty sheath. That was his dagger she’d driven into Kristo—she had lifted it from him somewhere between her bedchamber and the ballroom. She’d planned this all along. No wonder she had insisted upon coming here tonight! As Kristo fell to the floor, he lifted a hand and directed an evil, icy energy toward Danya. Rainer could feel that evil power from a distance. He screamed, “No!” But it was too
late. Danya was instantly transformed into a statue of dark stone shot with streaks of crystal.
Even in lifeless stone her face remained peaceful, as though she had known all along what the sacrifice would be for attacking Kristo and she had been willing to make it.
Kristo was wounded, but he was not dead. Not yet. Rainer could feel very strongly that the life was draining from the man who lay bleeding on the ballroom floor, just as he could feel that there was still life in what Danya had become.
But not for long.
He could move water and air, sense power, give pleasure and pain—but he did not know how to bring Danya back.
As Rainer reached out to caress what Danya had become, Lady Morgana screamed, in a screeching voice that carried throughout the ballroom, “Don’t touch her!”
At that moment Rainer made the connection between the power that had turned Danya to stone and the power he had been teaching Morgana to control. Both were cold; both were powers of transformation, though this stone was very different from the crystal Morgana created.
“Can you undo what he’s done?” he asked.
“Even if she could, she would not,” Kristo said, badly wounded, bleeding, and yet still confident. “My daughter would not betray me that way; she would not save the woman who dared to try to kill me.” He looked down at the wound in his chest, and perhaps at that moment he realized that Danya had not just tried to kill him; she’d succeeded.
Calmly, Morgana looked down at the dying man. “You are not my father,” she said with a confidence that more than matched Kristo’s. “My father is Almund Ramsden, the exceptional man who raised me, spoiled me, fed and clothed and housed and loved me all my life. You are nothing. You mean nothing.” She turned to Danya—what was left of Danya—and studied the stone carefully. “Is she alive?”
“Yes,” Rainer said, “but not for long, I fear. Can this be undone?”
“I don’t know,” Morgana whispered. “Warmth always stopped the rising of the curse for me.” Her eyes flitted to the emperor, as she spoke those words. “But I don’t know that it will help at this point. Also, this stone is very different from my own .”
It was the emperor who first noticed that Kristo had lifted his hand and was directing his dastardly energy at Morgana. A handful of men were trying to work their way to the emperor, but the crowd was thick and did not make way. General Merin shouted for those in his way to move. They were slow doing so. Without a second thought, Emperor Jahn threw himself between Kristo and Morgana, shielding her body with his own, wrapping his arms around her and protecting every inch of her from the man who would do to her what he had done to Danya.
JAHN waited for the cold to pierce through him. There had not been time to grab a rope and bind the wounded man’s hands. When he’d realized what Kristo was attempting to do, he could think of nothing but saving Morgana, no matter what the cost. For a moment he did feel that cold, and it hurt. It shot to his core and lingered there.
“I love you,” he whispered.
And then the unearthly cold was gone.
“Jahn, no!” Morgana screamed, trying to extricate herself, trying to protect him the way he protected her. He was stronger than she was, and did not allow her to move.
With the cold threat gone, he turned cautiously to see that Rainer had kicked Kristo’s deadly hand aside and stomped upon the wrist, and that Almund Ramsden had finished the job Danya had begun, running Kristo through with his sword.
Deputy Rainer looked at what remained of Lady Danya with terror in his eyes. Terror and love. Jahn recognized that expression. He recognized the fear of loss and the love. Three months ago he would not have, but tonight he knew both too well.
“Can you do it?” Rainer asked.
“Not alone,” Morgana said.
“Hurry,” the agonized man whispered.
Jahn reluctantly released Morgana, ready to step back and let her do whatever it was she could do. But she grabbed his hand before he could take more than a single step away. “Make me warm, Jahn,” she commanded.
“Here?”
She smiled a little. “Just wrap your arms around me and hold me close.”
“I can do that.” He stood at her back and circled his arms around her. At Morgana’s instruction, Rainer stood beside them. She created a warm transforming energy Jahn could feel pouring off her in sunlike waves, and Rainer, using his own magical powers, helped her to direct that energy gently toward the statue that had once been—and perhaps still was—Lady Danya. It was not a quick and easy task. Morgana and Rainer both trembled, and the partygoers who had not fled the ballroom backed away until there was a large empty circle around Kristo’s body, Lady Danya, and those who were trying to save her. Only Merin and his brother dared to move closer rather than away, and they first made sure that their wives had been escorted to safety.
Almund Ramsden could not be moved. He occasionally stared at Kristo’s body as if he were afraid the man would leap back to life, but for the most part he kept loving eyes on his daughter.
Morgana and Rainer worked hard, in a way Jahn did not entirely understand. He had begun to think that in spite of their efforts, the transformation could not be undone. And then he saw a sign of life. A single tear trickled slowly down a hard stone cheek.
LADY Danya’s resurrection seemed to take forever. Morgana sucked up Jahn’s heat, and with Rainer’s assistance she worked to undo what Kristo had done. She gave off a wave of life in the same way she had, on occasion, given off a wave of cold death. If Rainer had not taught her the art of control, this would not be possible, but gradually Lady Danya came to life. Stone became flesh, an uneasy and ragged breath was taken, and in what was likely a shorter amount of time than Morgana realized, Danya and Rainer were in one another’s arms.
And she was in Jahn’s.
“I can’t believe you would throw yourself between me and Kristo!”
“I can’t believe you’d consider for one moment that I would not,” he responded.
People were moving close again, now that Kristo was dead and Danya had been saved. Jahn ignored them all as he dropped to one knee and said, in a voice that carried throughout the large room, “Lady Morgana, will you marry me? Again?”
“Jahn, not here,” Morgana whispered. “Stand up.”
“Not until I get my answer.”
“But you don’t know everything!” She had been able to tell him about Kristo’s plan and the child within her, but she had never gathered the courage to tell him what had happened to Tomas on the First Night of the Spring Festival.
“I know all I need to know.”
She couldn’t allow him to go on believing she was someone she was not. “Jahn, I killed man.”
“Yes, I know,” he responded calmly.
Morgana blinked hard and would’ve backed away, if he had not taken her hand and held on. “You can’t know . . .”
“Tomas Glyn, who, I have no doubt, earned his fate. Don’t look so surprised, love. First there is the tale of a man turned to glass by a witch, and then I see with my own eyes that you have that power. I also know that you have no malice in you, and that if he roused that power, he deserved his end.”
“But . . .”
“I have killed in war,” Jahn interrupted. “I have taken the lives of monsters and not lost a moment’s sleep over their deaths. Your heart is better than mine, if you torture yourself over the death of a man who intended you harm. He did intend you harm, did he not?”
“Yes,” she whispered, and a weight was lifted from her shoulders.
“If you had not killed him, I would’ve. Now, will you be my empress?” He asked. Then, in a lowered voice, he added, “Please. I beg of you, forgive me for my mistakes and make me your husband again.”
“I promised my mother I would wait for love.”
“And did you?” he asked expectantly, as if he did not know.
“Yes,” she said again, smiling down at the man on his knees before her.
S
he had thought the evening’s excitement was over, but a half dozen sentinels rushed into the ballroom. “My Lord,” Blane called, “you were right. A small army approaches from the west. General Hydd is in the lead.”
Jahn rose and quickly kissed Morgana’s hand. “How many are there?”
“Fifty, perhaps,” Blane answered.
“We have men in position, as I directed?”
“Yes, My Lord.”
“My horse and shield are waiting?”
“Yes, My . . .” Blane began.
Just as Morgana said, “No!” Surely it wasn’t necessary that Jahn put himself in danger!
Her husband smiled down at her. “A fine woman once told me that I had never fought for this palace and all that comes with it.”
“That woman was a thoughtless idiot.”
“That woman was right, and tonight I will fight for the palace, the country, and my empress, just as I ask my sentinels to fight. Don’t worry, love. We have them outnumbered and we are prepared in a way Kristo never expected.”
“Come to my bed wounded, and I will be very unhappy,” she responded, not showing the fear for his safety that grew in her heart, so close to the child they had created.
“I’ll keep that in mind.” With that Jahn bowed to her, then turned on his heel and joined Blane and the others.
SHE was so cold. Danya tried to melt into Angelo’s arms, but she could not. She still felt like stone. “I thought I was dead.”
“So did I,” Angelo said, and she could hear the fear in his voice.
Danya lifted her head and looked him in the eye. “Why did you save me? I deserve death for all I’ve done.”
“You’ve done nothing,” Angelo responded.
“I aligned myself with an evil man and promised to . . .”
“You promised to do as he asked to save your son,” Angelo said sharply, “and yet you harmed no one.”
Tears filled her eyes. “I aligned myself with Kristo because of a lie. Ethyn . . . there is no Ethyn. There never was.” Her heart broke for the son she’d lost, and she wished, for a moment, that she was still made of stone. Then perhaps her heart wouldn’t break.
Bride By Command Page 30
