“You’re a shade!” I gasped, clutching my chest. “You’re a dark vision sent to break me.”
“It’s me, Ada. I’m real. I’m here. That’s why the oath still affects you.”
The pain in my chest pressed against my heart. I reached up, and stroked Ulrich’s cheek. I could feel his warm skin beneath my fingers, the rough stubble that ran along his jaw. His eyes bore into mine, dark and brooding – the same eyes that had watched me from my dreams.
It was him.
I opened my mouth to speak, but I was so stunned that no sound came. I had so much I wanted to say to him, so many emotions welling up inside of me, but I didn’t know how to articulate them. What do you say when your lover comes back from the dead?
An overwhelming desire claimed my body. I flung myself across the room, leaping into Ulrich’s arms. He wrapped his body around me, and claimed my mouth in his. I matched his intensity, entwining my tongue in his, gulping down the taste of him. Too long had I been starved of his touch. My body hungered for his, and I pressed myself against him, desperate to get closer to him, to fall into him completely.
Ulrich was like a wild beast. For a man that so craved control, he lost all sense of it. He threw me down on the furs, tore my skirt away, and plunged his tongue into my depths, attacking my most sensitive areas with brutal, delicious force. The heat swelled within me and I threw my head back as within seconds his touch sent me over the edge.
The orgasm was still tearing through me when Ulrich leapt on top of me, pulled my legs apart, and entered me, his immense length sliding easily inside. This was different to any other time we’d made love, this time he was like an animal, unrestrained in his lust as he bucked against me
My chest tightened as the pain squeezed against my heart. No, I screamed inwardly at Clarissa. You will not rob me of this. I pushed with my mind, picturing a swirling mist of energy leaving my chest and sailing straight at Clarissa’s smug face. To my surprise and delight, the pain in my chest eased off, and all I could feel was Ulrich’s hot, hard skin against mine and the thickness of his shaft as it pounded inside me.
I wrapped my legs around him, drawing him in deeper, losing myself completely in his scent and his touch. He cupped my face in his hands, pressing his lips hard against mine. He dug his teeth into my lip and pulled, the pain sending shivers of delight through my body.
With every thrust I pushed my hips up to meet him, so our bodies slammed together with such force the wall behind the bed creaked. As he slid into me with increasing ferocity, I felt the first wave of heat pulse through my body. The heat intensified, and as Ulrich pounded against me, my walls contracted around him and my body was rocked with another powerful orgasm.
“Oooh!” I cried out as wave after wave of pleasure pulsed through my veins. Ulrich bit down on my neck as I struggled for control, my body shaking with ecstasy as he wrapped his powerful arms around me and crushed me against him.
With a cry, Ulrich came too. He shuddered against me, throwing his head back, the muscles in his chest tensing and releasing. Sweat poured down his back. I felt his cock stiffen as he pulsed the last of his juices inside of me, and then his body slackened.
Ulrich rolled off me, and pulled me against him, so that my back rested against his chest. The pain in my chest returned, but now it was just a dull ache, nothing I couldn’t handle. Ulrich’s skin felt cool from the sweat that still clung to it, and his hands rested on mine, the roughness of them strange against my skin. He pulled one of the furs over us, keeping me warm as the heat of our lovemaking left my body and the crisp night air seeped in through the damaged door.
“You are real,” I whispered into the darkness. “You are real, and you came back to me.”
“I am flesh and blood, Ada. And of course I came back for you. I made you a promise.” He ran his fingers down my side, causing delicious shivers to shoot through my naked skin. The amulet around his neck gleamed in the moonlight. “What I don’t understand is how we managed to do this. I am still bound to Clarissa by the oath, so how did you manage to overcome it?”
“While you’ve been away, I haven’t been idle.” I grinned. “I’ve learned much about my abilities and my magical lineage, and I have been trying to learn to harness and channel my power. When first you came at me, I felt the burning in my chest. Clarissa’s face came into my mind, and I thought of her and what she had done to us, and I pushed with my mind, and the burning was gone.”
“Ada, that’s incredible.”
“I know. It’s the first piece of magic I’ve done by myself, intentionally.” I rolled over so that I faced him, and stroked my fingers across the skin on his chest. Now I noticed the cuts and burns that crisscrossed it like a map. Many of the cuts had opened during our lovemaking, and now oozed blood onto the furs. “What has happened to you?”
“Later, please. I don’t want to frighten you. For now I have enough questions for you. Why were you so certain I was dead, Ada?” He wiped a stray strand of hair from my face. “When I turned around, I expected you to leap into my arms, but instead, you were afraid. Someone had convinced you I was dead. Who?”
“No one convinced me. I saw it for myself. You were fighting your father in Lord Benedict’s castle, and several men rushed in and cut you down. I saw one plunge a sword right through your chest. I felt the life leave your body, as though it were my own ebbing away.”
“I fought with many soldiers there, and I was hit. You saw the cut on my shoulder just before? One of the guards gave that to me, but I was not killed. Luckily, Tjard knows much of healing. But how do you know of this? How could you see this?”
“I performed a spell,” I said. “It’s called scrying, for when you wish to know of events happening far from you. I wished to see what you were doing, how you progressed in your plans. Maerwynn showed me how to do it, but I must’ve done something incorrectly, for it has showed me a false vision.”
“You saw me cut down by my father’s guards? Where did this happen?”
“It was in a dark room. It looked like a dungeon, for it had bare stone walls, and your father was there. I couldn’t see very well, but I thought there might have been a rack in the background, and a St. Andrew’s Cross, and racks of shackles and clamps.”
“That was no false vision.” Ulrich said gravely. “It happened, just as you said. Only I did not die, and yet you saw me die for certain?” He rolled on to his back, and pointed to a wound. I gasped as I saw the long, ragged cut along his abdomen. There was another deep one across his shoulder blade. They were nearly covered with other bruises and welts and cuts. He had been gravely wounded.
“I did. As I said, I more than saw it. I felt it.” I ran my fingers along that terrible gash. “This is a deep cut. Who healed you?”
“My father,” Ulrich snarled. He yanked his vest down. “He saved me, only so that he might torture me. I’ve been trapped in his dungeon for days, enduring the full brutality of his tortures, all so that he might be excise the demon he believes you implanted within me.”
“The demon?”
“Damon is pious beyond understanding,” Ulrich gripped the edge of the fur, his eyes flashing with pain. “He believes in the lies the church tells about the nature of witches, that a witch is really a demon possessing the body of an innocent woman, manipulating her to do its bidding. He knows that we lay together, and as he understands it, you have passed into me a demon that now corrupts my mind. Damon hopes to use torture to drive out the demon, so that I once again may hunt witches by his side.”
“He tortures his own son?” I couldn’t understand the man who would do this.
‘He has done everything short of crippling me or leading me too close to death,” Ulrich said. “For if he breaks me, I am no use to him once my demon is free.” Ulrich turned over, and pointed to his lower back. I gasped when I saw the blackened mark burned into his flesh. A brand. The shape was familiar … I realised that it matched the crest on the amulet he was wearing. The skin around it was re
d and raw, and from a corner I could see a green viscous fluid dripping from the wound. When I placed the back of my hand against it, it felt hot to the touch. Ulrich winced.
“There have been many nights over the past days that I have thought of taking my own life, if only to rob him of his hope.” Ulrich turned over again, his eyes boring into mine. “But I had hope of my own keeping me alive. Hope that I would see you again.”
I wrapped my arms around him, unable to believe that he had endured such pain, and all so he could return to me. My cheeks burned with shame as I thought of the way I had acted over the past weeks, wallowing in self-pity, and all the while Ulrich was making his way to me.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, tears streaking my cheeks. “I have failed you. I am not worthy of your love.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I am useless!” I balled my hands into fists, and punched my stomach, my arms, and my hips. I felt such anger and shame at myself.
“Ada, stop.” He pulled my fists away, clasping his hands over them so that I couldn’t hurt myself further. “What is troubling you?”
“You came so close to killing your father, and you endured all this. But I have done nothing. I’ve been living with Maerwynn’s coven for two months now, and I’ve learned nothing that can help us. I’m still as useless as ever. I am a poor match for you.”
“But Ada, you have not been idle. You told me that you performed a spell with Maerwynn. You saw me when I was in danger, and just now you pushed away Clarissa’s curse. And, back in the torture chamber…” he paused. “I had believed that it was just my mind being driven mad from the pain, but now I’m not so sure.”
“What?”
“I saw you. Not just in my mind. You came to me sometimes, while I was strapped into the machines, or in my cell at night. You stood before me, and although you never touched me your presence felt so real. Your lips were just a moment away from touching mine, and you said—”
“—be strong.” I whispered. My skin tingled with a strange kind of energy. I remembered the night well, when Ulrich had appeared in the mists, and I’d tried to reach him, but there had been that invisible wall between us. I’d thought it just a dream, a conjuring of my distressed mind. But then, how had I appeared to him at the same time?
“I think your magic is more powerful than you know.” Ulrich replied. “Which means you need to be careful. There is something else I have to tell you.”
“More good news, I presume.”
He grinned at that. “I see you’ve been spending too much time with Bernadine. When I was in the dungeon, I had a visitor.”
“The Pope?”
“Clarissa.”
I shivered at the sound of her name on his tongue. How had she found him there? What was she doing back again?
“She wore a very fancy dress made from dyed silks and embroidered with golden thread, and slippers with jewels in the toes. She is to marry Lord Benedict, and apparently she is feeding him all the information she knows about the witches who inhabit this land. All the information she has overheard in the dungeon all these years she can give to him. They will be unstoppable. She even has men who fight under her own banner.” He grimaced as he pointed to the brand on his back. “That symbol belongs to her.”
“What? But how?”
“I don’t know how she’s done it. With all her cunning and wiles, I presume. But that’s not all. Clarissa said she had followed us all the way to Haven, and that she was in Stuttgart to give my father all the information about the coven.”
My blood turned cold. “Your father and his men are on the way to Haven?”
Ulrich nodded, his expression grave. “That’s why I’ve returned, to warn Maerwynn, to take you and your aunts to safety, and to lend my sword. Well, it’s not my sword any longer, but the sword I stole from my father’s löwe. I think it’s even finer than my last weapon.”
I stood up. “Then we must return to the village and warn them immediately.”
Ulrich laughed, and pulled me back down beside him in the furs. “Tjard and I rode nonstop from Stuttgart. We passed my father’s party some six days ago, and they are still two days from reaching you, even granting them a lightning pace. I’ve sent Tjard on to Haven to speak with Maerwynn, but it is absolutely impossible for them to arrive here until the day after tomorrow. We have been given this short window of time, and you can now fight back Clarissa’s oath, and so we must use it while we have it.”
My thoughts drifted to my aunts and Maerwynn, and how they had been so callous about the curse, following Ulrich’s death. Let Tjard bring them the news of Ulrich’s return and the imminent arrival of his father. Let them worry about me, and sit with their own guilt for a time.
I leaned over Ulrich and kissed him, driving my tongue forcefully against his. “Then let us make use of this time we’ve been given.”
* * *
As the morning sun peeked through the jagged holes in the cabin door, Ulrich rose from his sleep and made love to me again, slowly and tenderly, my body still cupped against his. The squeezing pain crept into my chest, but I pushed it back out again, although it took more effort to hold it back. His fingers dancing all over my body as he pushed himself inside me from behind, sighing with pleasure as he moved in and out in a slow, languid rhythm.
When Ulrich was finished, he rose from the bed, washed himself with water from one of the skins he had lined up beside the hearth, and pulled on his trousers and vambraces. I watched him move about the cabin, his movements jerky and slow, and the muscles in his back straining and moving as he dressed himself.
“I will make you a poultice for the wounds,” I said.
“Later, first we should get back to the camp. Your aunts will be worried about you.”
“I don’t care.”
“I know you don’t, but there’s something we need to find out. Ada, something you said has been troubling me. Tell me again about this vision you had,” he explained. “And leave nothing out, no matter how unimportant.”
I did this, explaining again about everything I’d seen, of the swords entering Ulrich’s body, of his blood pooling out across the floor, of his head lolling back and the life flowing out of him. Ulrich made me return to the same parts of the vision again and again and explain them in great detail, his frown deepening with each retelling.
“What is it, Ulrich? What’s wrong?”
“You’ve been lied to,” he told me, his voice grave. “I do not understand the world of magic as you do, but I believe that you have been given a false vision.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The vision you describe is not true to what happened. First of all, the dungeon did not look as you describe. The implement racks were placed on the right of the cross, not the left. There was no candelabra in the corner. Even the stone walls you describe were different – you speak of dressed, square stone, whereas the dungeon walls were rough, almost rubble.”
“I could be remembering wrong. My grief might have clouded my memory.” But even as I spoke those words, I knew them to be false. The images I’d seen that night had been burned into my mind forever.
“You speak of men stabbing me. You said their swords punctured my body here, and here, and here.” Ulrich placed his hands on his tunic. I nodded. “You clearly see the weapons entering me and my blood being spilled?” I nodded again.
Ulrich lifted his shirt and once again pointed to the areas I’d seen him being stabbed. The nasty gash on his side was healing well, and the wound on his shoulder had closed up nicely. But he was right, something didn’t match up. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed before.
Ulrich bore no wounds from the other cuts, and there was no way even magic could have healed him that fast. He had never been stabbed in those places.
I ran my fingers over the bare skin of his chest, just beneath his other shoulder, where I had clearly seen the sword enter. “So what I saw was false. It had to be. But how is this so?”
>
“I don’t know enough about magic to understand it, but my guess is that someone wanted you to believe I was dead. Perhaps they saw the vision of me being stabbed at another time, and then invented this new image, and somehow projected it so that you would see it when you were scrying.”
I frantically counted back the days in my head. “What day did you enter the dungeon?” I asked. “What time?”
“It was two weeks ago, on Sunday. The moon was high, but I don’t think it was completely full.”
I gasped. “Maerwynn and I performed the ritual on Monday. The scrying image is live, it is meant to show what happens at that exact time. You are right. I was shown a false vision. But by whom?”
“It had to be one of the witches in the coven. I do not believe there is another witch powerful enough to project a vision that powerful over a great distance. Plus, whoever gave you the vision would have needed to know when you were scrying.”
“Aunt Bernadine!” I cried, my chest flaring with anger. “It must be her. She always has it out for me, and for you. She wanted me to forget you, and gave me this vision—”
“I do not believe it was Bernadine,” said Ulrich.
“Then who? Surely not Maerwynn?”
“It makes the most sense,” said Ulrich. “Maerwynn craves power, and that is something you have in abundance. If you believe me to be dead, then you will stay with the coven, and she would have access to your powers.”
“That doesn’t make any sense to me,” I said. “For I wasn’t thinking of leaving the coven. Where would I go, when the whole land is in a witch-hunting frenzy? Besides, her vision would have proved false when you returned.”
Ulrich nodded. “You are correct. But maybe she didn’t believe I would return.”
“I do not think Maerwynn is the one,” I said. “There are others who do not seem to like me, especially now that Brunhild is dead.”
As quickly as I could, I told him about how the ritual to break the curse had gone wrong, and Brunhild had been killed. Ulrich nodded, taking the news stoically. “We should hurry back,” he said. “Tjard and Maerwynn will have already started to prepare the village for Damon’s attack. We must join them.”
Coven: a dark medieval paranormal romance (Witches of the Woods Book 2) Page 19
