Not Ian, please Lord, not Ian!
The waterspout sank to the sea as abruptly as it had risen, dragging Ian and Murdoch down with it.
Below, the waves crashed against rocky outcroppings, splintering any debris caught in the sea’s deadly grip. The wind died as abruptly as it had arisen.
Releasing her handhold, Chantal fell weeping to her knees. This had to be a nightmare from which she would surely wake. No storm could behave like that.
Ian couldn’t be gone. He’d been too vital, too alive, too…honorable! She’d scarcely had the opportunity to appreciate all that he was.
Now that she was faced with this sudden black hole in her existence, she was crushed by the realization of how much a part of her he had become. Shaking, sobbing, she knew this was the one death from which she could not recover.
* * *
Ian spluttered and shoved his wet hair out of his face as he climbed up on a tumble of boulders battered by crashing waves. The cliffs of this coast were little different from those of his home. He’d never descended them quite so precipitously, but treading deep water and climbing slippery rocks to escape the sea were second nature to him.
Murdoch emerged from the swirling tide a moment later, snarling and whipping his hair back as he, too, climbed onto the rocky platform. Sitting, he yanked at his boots. “You’ve been practicing diving,” he growled. “It’s a wonder you didn’t split open your fool head.”
Ian ignored his companion’s complaint. He desperately scanned the bluff above, looking for tatters of cloth or the broken body of his amacara. She’d thrown herself off a cliff…to save him. Saving lives was his duty. That she’d undertaken it for him… He rubbed at his suddenly blurry vision and continued his search.
Moments ago, her voice and mind had filled him with animation, helping him command energies he’d never dared release, opening his eyes to a future far wider than he could possibly have imagined, and now…
He couldn’t deal with his soul-devastating grief.
His near-fatal dive had forced him to recognize what he should have seen all along; Chantal’s spirit, her sincerity, integrity, creativity — her love — were her accomplishments. That the chalice had allowed Chantal to obscure its presence meant it trusted her. If the chalice was sentient, it had been telling him that it would welcome the shelter of only a man, or woman, of purity and enlightenment.
And he’d been fretting over worldly assets like Chantal’s physical gifts, not the beauty of her soul!
And because of his selfish carelessness, he’d lost everything.
Shattered, refusing to believe such life and love could be extinguished so uselessly, he continued to search the rocks towering over them. His mind was blank of everything but what his senses told him.
Oddly, instead of feeling her absence, he felt her heartbroken anguish.
She was alive!
Her mind was fully open, but he could not reach her through the storm of her grief.
Hope soared, but decades of experience had taught Ian to restrain foolish emotion. With Chantal by his side, maybe… Someday, please Aelynn, he would dare open his heart again.
“I’ve not performed the waterspout dive since we were foolhardy youths,” Ian replied with only half his mind. He knew better than to ignore Murdoch entirely, but his senses were occupied with searching for Chantal.
For Chantal, he’d learned to coordinate his physical senses with his mental ones, call on his passion as well as his experience. She’d showed him how to be whole again, and he needed her to balance his energies while he continued to learn.
Barefoot and carrying his ruined boots, Murdoch waded through the receding surf to stand beside him. “I’ll pull back the waves,” he said quietly, with what sounded almost like sympathy. “If she’s caught beneath them, perhaps we can still find her.”
The tide began an unnaturally swift ebb.
Unable to utter his gratitude for his friend’s compassion, Ian shook his head. “No, she’s alive. She’s inside my head. I can hear her.” He said it with awe. He heard Chantal. She’d opened herself completely, and the sorrow pouring from her heart was making his ache.
Murdoch shook his head. “That’s not possible. I saw her — ”
Fearful that he would alert any remaining soldiers, Ian couldn’t shout aloud. Instead, he shouted inside his head, calling her name, pleading with her to listen.
He’d never begged in his life, but he was begging now. Without the peaks of Aelynn at his back, he felt abandoned by his gods, but still, he beseeched them.
And they heard. Just when he was beginning to think his mind had cracked with grief… there, in a crevasse to his left, the fluttering of moss green fabric. Without a second thought, Ian began scrambling across the rocks at the bottom of the cliff, looking for a path upward.
In that same moment, he heard Chantal’s startled cry of surprise and relief — in his head. He could hear her; he could see her — His sun would rise again in the morning!
He felt Chantal’s joy the instant she spotted him. Her tender heart had grieved — for him. It was not an experience Ian had ever expected, nor was this elation. Perhaps there was something to be said about giving way to emotion — it opened whole new paths of insight.
* * *
Chantal half slid, half scrambled down the trail to the shore. Ian hastened toward the bottom of the path, climbing over boulders, watching her with a glow on his face that warmed her all over.
He was drenched head to foot from the surf, but he looked very much alive and unbattered. Admiring his straight back, broad shoulders, and wind-whipped, curling queue of hair, Chantal succumbed to an upwelling of love and desire. She had to admit that no man had ever excited her as he did, might never do so again, and now that the time had come for him to sail away, she didn’t want him to leave.
Now that she’d learned what living was really about, she wanted to be with him and ride recklessly at his side. Where no longer mattered.
Abruptly, she shut out the foolish images in her head.
She wasn’t in any position to act on her impossible desires. Her family waited somewhere on the plateau. Ian had not yet intercepted Pierre and reclaimed the chalice, but they had reached the end of the road. The harbor was not far. There, she would be expected to say farewell.
The losses of her mother and grandparents and Jean had left their marks on her. But to lose Ian… Ian had been a breath of life. She wanted to spread her wings and fly.
Which was nonsense. She’d only get herself killed. That she even thought in such fantastical terms told her how close she’d come to the edge of madness. She couldn’t fly away and leave her home and her family. She loved them too much.
As she loved the man wading through the crashing waves to meet her.
Reaching the pebbly beach where she stood, Ian looked on her as if she were his moon and stars, and a frisson of pleasure coursed through her. Wordlessly, he hauled her into his arms and kissed her so thoroughly that she was immediately as soaked as he.
Chantal clung to his neck, weeping, and kissed him back with all the pent-up sorrow, excitement, and longing inside her. It was as if his blood raced through hers, joining them in some inexplicable manner that would be fatal should they be parted. She couldn’t bear it.
But they could not stand there with the undertow threatening to carry them out to sea. Reluctantly, Ian set her down.
“Is there some way to the harbor from here?” he asked, jumping to the next topic of importance, proving he was all male and not swamped with the wild swirl of joy and misgivings that crippled her ability to think sensibly.
She no longer heard his shouts of grief in her head, but he held her tightly as if he could not let her go. He helped her climb over the rocks at the bottom of the cliff, squeezing her waist as if to reassure himself she existed. She clung to him in the same manner. Around the bend, they discovered Murdoch, to their amazement, still waiting on a boulder, looking grumpy and waterlogged.
<
br /> “I saw you dive into a waterspout,” she exclaimed. “I thought you were both dead!”
“Your soldiers would have to burn Ian to kill him,” Murdoch growled, rising from his rocky seat. “You’re the one who ought to be dead. Can you fly?”
Chantal laughed as he echoed her earlier desire. “No, but this is my home. I’ve tumbled down these cliffs countless times. I knew there was a ledge and a path there. I’m sure it’s the same one Pierre took.” She sobered as she glimpsed their faces. “He’ll be far ahead of us by now. Those were his father’s men delaying you so he could catch a ship.”
“We’ll find him,” Ian said without a shred of doubt, lifting her past a rock covered in sharp barnacles.
With the joy of finding him alive ebbing like the tide with her knowledge that soon she must part from him, Chantal shoved away and fought to return to her feet. She gulped back a sob and tried to remain as coolly rational as he.
“The tide is out,” she said, swiping at her eyes. “If Pierre was very quick, he’s already on a ship in the channel. If there was no ship available, he’s still there. We must hurry.”
Ian caught the back of her head and pressed a kiss to her brow. “Thank you.”
She glared at him and refused to ask for what, not in front of Murdoch. If that was his manner of farewell, fine. She would guard her heart and keep it for her family.
Chantal stalked the familiar beach past the slope of the cliffs. A steep path led down a hill to the low terrain of the river valley. She shook out her muddy skirts, but the men didn’t seem in the least concerned about their soaked attire.
“Where are your mercenaries?” she asked Murdoch.
He grimaced and glanced at Ian, who merely lifted his eyebrows in what appeared to be an arrogant challenge.
“I told them to escape any way they could,” Murdoch admitted.
The notes in his voice said he did not speak the entire truth, but Chantal had sensed his confused honesty from the first, so she shrugged this off as one more deception. “I ordered the other two to guard the carriage,” she told him. “My family will be waiting for me. I must find some way back while you look for Pierre.”
“No,” Ian stated simply, pulling her down the dusty path toward the town in the distance. “We will ask after Pierre together, then go back for your family. I won’t abandon them.”
Murdoch looked at him as if he were crazed but said nothing.
Chantal met Ian’s unwavering gaze through eyes blurred with tears of gratitude. He wouldn’t sail away immediately? Because of her?
Still, she had to let them know she wasn’t entirely without help. “Once Pierre is safely on his way, his father’s men will protect Pauline and my father. They’re friends of our family.”
“I don’t suppose you can persuade them to protect us from the National Guard on our heels?” Murdoch asked dryly.
“They aren’t trained as well as the guard,” she admitted. “I wouldn’t wish to see them slaughtered. They might hide us, if we asked.”
“After what they saw us do up there, I don’t think that’s wise,” Ian said. “Perhaps they’ll all think us dead. Come along, let us find Pierre. I am not leaving you here, and that’s final.” Ian caught her elbow to help her down the next steep slope of the path.
* * *
The chalice had all but disappeared from his ability to sense it. Ian knew it had taken sail.
After the terror of almost losing Chantal, the loss did not seem so significant. The chalice would always be somewhere. He could follow it anytime. But he couldn’t bear to be parted from Chantal. If she was the gift of plenty that the chalice had granted him, he would not disrespect the bequest by letting any harm come to her.
What she had done on the cliff, the screaming war cry that had paralyzed an army… The energy that had surged through him at her screams… The way she had called out his rage and directed it safely… Their actions surmounted all the knowledge he’d been taught. He knew Trystan claimed he shared some small portion of his amacara’s gifts, but Trystan and Mariel were formally bound by Aelynn vows.
Ian thought his connection to Chantal was more visceral than that. He couldn’t read her mind as he might others unless she let him, but he’d never uttered a war cry in his life. He hadn’t exploded with such fierce passion since his childhood. It was as if she’d burrowed into his heart and unlocked all he’d hidden there, and together, they’d ignited like fireworks.
Keeping a possessive hand on Chantal’s shoulder so he would not lose her in the bustling port town of Le Havre, Ian let her choose an inn. She assured them that the owner was a friend of the family and would keep quiet about their presence. Ian used his mental ability to verify this and planted a warning that added urgency to her request. Then he commandeered several rooms.
Murdoch disappeared as he was wont to do. Their bargain was over. Ian would soon have to decide what to do about him. For now, he simply hoped Murdoch was discreetly searching for Pierre in a manner his worldly experience prepared him to do better than Ian could.
Perhaps it was a mistake to let Murdoch go, but the man had saved his life, fought beside him, and shared his mind when he could have run. Underneath the bitterness, Murdoch was still the friend Ian had once known.
“You should follow him,” Chantal murmured as if reading his mind, while the innkeeper sorted out their keys. “He cannot be trusted.”
“He could have escaped anytime these last hours. Instead, he protected my back. I think he does not trust himself.”
She tilted her head as if considering the idea. “I suppose that’s possible. He’s very confused in some ways. In others, he’s extremely determined.”
“And how do you know this?” Ian asked in amusement as they followed their host.
“The same way I know you can be trusted, and that our host is loyal to Pauline’s family. I read it in your voices.” They were murmuring so the innkeeper couldn’t hear them, but her answer was defiant.
“Your gift is foreign to me,” he acknowledged, “but nonetheless, I find it amazing. You read voices, not minds?”
She shot him a glance so full of hope and disbelief that he almost kissed her right there on the stairs in front of all. Fortunately or not, the space was too narrow for him to reach up to her.
“I have never thought of it like that,” she admitted, proceeding upward. “I thought it was something musicians noticed. I cannot tell what people think,” she corrected.
“People think a dozen things at a time. That is seldom useful. If you were to read my mind now, you would know that I am watching your wet garments cling to your lovely ankles, while wondering if the bed will be soft, hoping Murdoch returns with information, craving a good dinner, and trying to figure out if I can talk to porpoises. Such a clamor from dozens or hundreds of people around you would quickly drive you mad.”
She waited until the innkeeper had shown them their rooms and departed before responding. To his relief, she did not immediately leave for the larger chamber she’d been assigned but remained in the one he’d chosen for himself.
The minute the door closed, she studied his face. “Talk to porpoises?”
He’d said it deliberately. If she could not accept what he was, she would never be happy on Aelynn. And with her apparent gift for causing all who heard her to feel as she did — An unhappy Chantal would be a disaster for his home.
The differences between them weren’t as vast as the differences between their two countries. He understood her reluctance to leave the security of the familiar, but he wanted her not only to accept the necessity of leaving, but also to act on it of her own free will.
“I am a foreigner in your land,” he said carefully. “I cannot easily explain our differences without showing you where I come from. Where your father comes from.”
Stunned, she stared. “My father is from Le Havre.”
Ian shook his head patiently. “He is not allowed to speak of it, and since he will not admit his weak
ness, he won’t tell you, but your father was born in my land, and for his health he must return there. I will take you both with me, and you will see for yourself that our gifts are natural.”
“My father’s home is here,” she protested. “He married my mother in Le Havre.”
“No, he settled here as a young man. I do not know why he chose to remain. Your mother, perhaps, and then, you. It happens that way sometimes. But those were peaceful times, and these are not. I must take you and your family to safety.”
“Pauline?” She turned eagerly to him. “If we could take her and the children — ”
Ian caressed her cheek and tangled his fingers in the fine hairs that had escaped their pins. “Pauline cannot come with us, mi ama. We will see her settled safely wherever Pierre goes. She will want to be with him, someplace where their parents can go when the time comes.”
Her thick lashes closed over her beautiful eyes as she recognized the truth in his words. And his voice. A single tear trickled down her cheek.
“You tear me in two.”
“I know,” he said sadly. “But we are out of time, and I have no choice.”
Murdoch had told him that he always had choices, but Murdoch was wrong. Ian’s path had been carved from birth. Aelynn was his destiny.
Twenty-eight
With Chantal assuring him that the citizens of her childhood home would not reveal her to the National Guard and could be trusted to quietly fetch the carriage and her family, Ian reluctantly left her at the inn while he went in pursuit of Murdoch. He no longer believed that Murdoch was the reason for the chalice’s disappearance or the means of its return. And while he might trust Murdoch’s word, he could not trust Murdoch’s control over his own powers.
He found his old friend at a tavern, seeking passage to England. Murdoch was highly capable of stealing any of the vessels in the harbor. It was good to know he wasn’t a thief — yet.
Ian sat down on the chair beside him and mentally nudged a swarthy sailor from the table. When the sailor was gone, Murdoch shot him a cryptic glare and lifted his mug without speaking.
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