Untamed Hart

by Kim Faulks

  Over the millennia, the symbol had been used by people like them—people who knew of the Source, who knew how to draw on its strength in their day-to-day life, who knew how a Blood Moon was the chance to gather even more power for incredible feats.

  These days, the double moon symbol was little more than a drawing, its meaning diluted from being used by so many who didn’t know its significance. Zaan himself hadn’t used it in decades, if not longer.

  But Allendra remembered. Allendra still used it as a focus—the proof was right here under his feet, the symbol carved into the stone floor. And the mark on Zaan’s skin, he was sure of it, was a clue that she was his fated mate, and he hers.

  As if he’d needed any such clue.

  The main question was whether she’d marked him the way she’d marked the beings she’d selected for her challenge on purpose, or whether the Source had done it, acting as it sometimes did as it willed rather than as its wielder intended.

  Was he supposed to try to win Allendra’s heart again? Wanting to do it was not an issue; he’d missed her from the moment she’d ended their relationship. He had carried her absence with him everywhere like a heavy burden he couldn’t put down. But as much as he missed her—and loved her—he had his pride. Throwing himself at her feet only to have her reject him was not something he could easily bring himself to do.

  If only she’d given him a hint, anything at all that she, too, had missed him… Instead, she’d all but treated him like a stranger when she'd gathered their children, practically erasing his role in their creation, and she’d left the room with barely a backward look. Even after centuries of estrangement, it still hurt as much as that first moment of realization that she had left for good.

  “Master Zaan?”

  The words startled him out of his thoughts, and Zaan looked up to find a young man standing on the staircase landing. Tall, dark-haired and olive skinned, he wore the same black pants and white shirt the little fae who had welcomed Zaan into the mansion had: formal livery. He was the other presence Zaan had sensed into the house; the other being Allendra kept as companion and staff. Vampire, Zaan now knew for sure, the same way he always knew when he was near a being he’d had a hand in creating.

  “What is it?” Zaan said.

  The vampire’s lips quirked into a sardonic line. He looked young, but his expression and the depth of his eyes told another story.

  “I apologize for… interrupting.” A slight pause made the word mocking. “Mistress Allendra asked that I show you to your suite.”

  Was this the clue Zaan had hoped for? Before leaving the room, she’d said he could stay for the duration of the challenge if he wished, but she’d made it sound like she didn’t care if he did. Surely it had to mean something that she’d already arranged for rooms to be readied for him.

  Or was he reading in her hospitality what he wanted to see there?

  With a light cough, the vampire made his impatience known. It didn’t trouble Zaan in the slightest.

  “In a minute,” he said. “I need to do something here first.”

  Turning his back on the butler, or whatever else his role might be, Zaan came to stand exactly in the center of the carved moon symbol. Closing his eyes, he breathed in deeply and let the Source flow through him, drawing on its power for a few seconds. When he opened his eyes again, he had in his mind the exact image of what he wanted to accomplish.

  Tendrils of light shot from him to weave around the circle. He wielded power with an ease born from century upon century of practice. At regular intervals, right on the periphery of the moon symbol, he created ten mirrors, all as tall and as wide as he was, but each ornate silver frame slightly different.

  One of them was covered in a spattering of stars of all sizes. Another one depicted flames surrounding the entire mirror as though it were being consumed by fire. Yet another one was plain but for a single bird, a swallow, that would move around the frame when no one was looking at it.

  Each frame was customized according to what its mirror would reflect, and with another surge of power Zaan sent his will at all ten mirrors until a different image appeared in each of them. Some of the people depicted were sleeping, back to real dreams now that the one Allendra had imposed on them had ended. Some were still in bed but wide awake, staring straight ahead, in shock. A couple of the beings were trying to erase the mark on their skin that would guide them to their fated mate—as though Allendra’s power could be denied so easily.

  With one last thought, Zaan allowed the images to fade until the mirrors reflected only him. The images would return whenever Allendra stood or sat in the circle, showing her the lives of those she’d chosen as her pawns. Maybe watching these beings find their mates would remind her of what it had been like to fall in love, so long ago. Maybe it would make her long for her own mate.

  Zaan wouldn’t beg, wouldn’t let her toy with him… but if her heart could still open up for him, he wouldn’t let this chance pass to conquer it again.

  Still standing by the door, now with his arms crossed, the vampire showed no reaction toward what Zaan had done. If anything, he looked bored.

  “What is your name?” Zaan asked as he approached him.

  The vampire was a little too long in answering, “John,” and Zaan knew at once that he was lying. Why he would lie about something so basic, Zaan didn’t know. It would have been easy for him to just enter ‘John’s’ mind and pluck his name right out of his thoughts, but he refrained. It wasn’t as though he needed to know the man’s true name.

  “Tell me, John,” Zaan said, stressing the name to make it plain he wasn’t fooled. “Do you know what your lady intends to do at the next Blood Moon?”

  John’s expression remained neutral.

  “It is Mistress Allendra’s business to know her own mind,” he said coolly. “It is not mine to pry into her intentions.”

  Zaan nodded.

  “True enough. But as you will be affected too if she goes through with it, I think you ought to know. Unless some beings she has chosen satisfy the challenge she imposed upon them, she will turn every shifter, every vampire, every magic wielder, every supernatural creature she and I ever had a hand in creating into a plain human being. In four weeks, if she has her way, you might be human again.”

  John’s eyes flicked behind Zaan, taking in the empty mirrors there. His brow furrowed briefly into a frown before his eyebrows lifted in understanding. Smart man. Then again, Allendra always liked to surround herself with smart people.

  Licking his lips in what looked like a nervous habit, John turned his gaze back to Zaan.

  “Why are you telling me this?” he asked, and if he tried to sound just as cool as before, his countenance seemed shaken.

  “Like I said, because it has the potential of affecting you. And because I will spend the next four weeks trying to dissuade her. I might need help to—”

  “You are a guest of Mistress Allendra’s,” John cut in with words of steel. “As such, I will serve you in all manners a guest ought to be served. But if you ask me to betray her only to protect myself, I will seek her permission to challenge you to a duel of honor.”

  While John’s loyalty to Allendra didn’t surprise Zaan—she had always been very good at finding companions who would be fully dedicated to her—the extreme form of his response did. It had been centuries since he’d last heard anyone speak of a duel of honor, and never had the challenge been leveled toward him.

  “I don’t believe you understand who I am,” he said very low. “Every ounce of power Allendra can wield, I can wield as well. The two of us worked together to create your kind, vampire. Immortality was my gift to you, and she was the one who tempered it with your aversion to sunlight.”

  John appeared utterly unfazed by this pronouncement, and Zaan had to push a little more.

  “But maybe you’re part of those vampires who detest what they are? Will you be glad if her actions give you your humanity back?”

  When John’s
eyes turned crimson for a second, it seemed like a much more honest response than his flat reply.

  “I am who I am, and will remain so whether I am human or vampire. And who I am right now is the person tasked with showing you to your suite. This way, if you please.”

  Without waiting for a response from Zaan, he started down the staircase. After glancing back at the mirrors, Zaan followed, unable to quite suppress a grimace. It wasn’t that he needed the vampire’s help, but he’d always liked to count on allies in whatever endeavor he chose for himself.

  It was, after all, why he’d traveled thousands of miles back in an era when most people spent their entire lives within a day’s journey from the place where they’d been born. He’d followed the pull of the Source toward another person he knew would be just like him. She had been like him… but she’d also been much more than he could have ever imagined.

  Back on the first floor of the mansion, he followed John into a wide corridor lined with paintings of all sizes, all in simple wooden frames. Zaan didn’t pay much mind to the first ones, but something in the fourth one caught his eye and he stopped abruptly to take in the painting.

  Right there, on a canvas no wider than his two hands set next to each other, a clearing in a long-gone forest was bathed by the light of a full moon. Someone who’d never been there might not have noticed the pattern of white stones on the ground, but to Zaan the circle was as clear as though he’d been standing in the middle of it. He searched for the artist’s signature, expecting to find Allendra’s name in a corner, but found nothing. His heart sank with the weight of the memories and guilt the painting evoked.

  A not so discreet cough brought him back to the present. John was once again growing impatient. Zaan could hardly have cared less.

  “Do you know who created this painting?” he asked, though in truth he already knew the answer and only wanted confirmation. Approaching the next painting and recognizing the scene it depicted as well, he added, “Do you know who painted all of those?”

  John’s barely concealed sigh made it clear he didn’t see the relevance of the question.

  “I have served Mistress Allendra for many years,” he said. “It was never part of my duty to question where she acquires her art. Now, if you please?”

  Without further ado, he started walking again. Zaan reluctantly walked away from the canvas depicting the inside of a small house, its simple wooden furnishings brightened by a bouquet of red flowers. He remembered picking each of these flowers for its bright color—simply because they reminded him of Allendra’s hair.

  Later, he promised himself. Later he’d walk through the corridor again and stop in front of each painting. For now, he quickened his steps to catch up with John. He was already holding a door open toward the end of the corridor, the same edginess radiating from him. He inclined his head ever so slightly when Zaan walked in, and entered the suite after him.

  “The sitting room,” John said, quite unnecessarily, indicating with a wide gesture the two fainting chairs set across from each other, then the wall-wide bookcase filled to the brim with ancient volumes as well as recent ones. “Mistress Allendra chose the books personally.”

  Walking across the room to an open door, John waited by it for Zaan to go through first.

  “The bedroom,” he announced, once more stating the obvious. “The bathing room is behind that door. There are clothes that ought to fit you in the wardrobe. Will you require your bed to be turned down in the evening?”

  The question, coming straight out of another age, might have sounded casual, but John’s expression almost challenged Zaan to dare accept. He might see it as his duty as a butler to offer the service, but that didn’t mean he wanted to do it.

  “I think I’ll be fine,” Zaan said, swallowing back his amusement as he looked around the room. “I’ll be sure to let you know if I become suddenly unable to draw back the covers on my own.”

  “As you say, sir,” John replied dryly. “Mistress Allendra takes her breakfast promptly at eight in the dining room. Lunch is at noon and dinner at seven-thirty. Do you require anything right now?”

  What Zaan needed was to know whether she’d asked John to tell him this or whether John had taken it upon himself to share the information. Was it an invitation to join her and talk, or nothing more than a butler’s obligation toward a guest? The mansion was large enough that they could live there together until the end of the challenge without seeing much of each other if that was what she wanted.

  Having walked past the four poster bed on his way to the imposing wardrobe chest, Zaan was about to answer in the negative when yet another painting drew his attention—the only painting in the entire suite.

  He took in the scene it presented on a canvas at least four feet tall and almost twice as wide, swallowing hard before he managed to say, “I don’t need anything, but I do have a question. Has anyone ever stayed in this suite since you’ve been working for Allendra?”

  After the briefest of pauses, John gave the answer Zaan had expected.

  “Not to my knowledge, no. Will that be all?”

  Dismissing him with a gesture, Zaan continued to stare at the painting—at the ruins laid out across the entire canvas, each upturned stone like a fresh wound. Of course no one had ever stayed here; Allendra had furnished the room especially for him. The painting was proof of that. Whether that meant she hoped he would come back someday, or wanted to make sure he’d know she hadn’t forgotten, he wasn’t sure, though he was beginning to suspect it was the latter.

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