The Demon of Darkling Reach (The Black Prince Book 1)

by P. J. Fox

  They ended up back at the abandoned apple cart, still a sinister sight despite Isla’s changed feelings. Her memories of that night had remained strong. The power he’d had over her had been…oddly thrilling, even as she’d never felt more used, more violated, in her entire life. The implications of that admission disturbed her, and she pushed it away. He smiled slightly, the barest quirk of his lips in the moonlight.

  “You’re beautiful,” he told her, echoing her own thoughts, “inside and out. Now tell me, how many men can make such a claim, and speak from true knowledge?”

  Isla blushed. “I’m not beautiful.”

  “You were running up the stairs to escape your mother, who’d flown into another one of her rages. You prayed that she wouldn’t catch you but she did; you fell down on the flagstones and split open the skin on your knee. You still have a scar.”

  “How did you…?” She’d been six.

  “You were thinking about it, about how much you hate being powerless.”

  Isla stared at him.

  “The soul gaze is the most powerful tool of a true practitioner.”

  “But it….” It had felt like being possessed. Raped, from within. As hard as she tried, she could come up with no words to adequately describe the sensation of feeling another person inside her head. Of knowing that he, and not she, was in control of her mind. And her body. “Is that what it feels like,” she asked, “to be possessed?”

  “I’ve never been possessed,” he replied, “although for a time, after….” And for a minute, she thought that he was going to continue that thought. After…what? After he’d taken Tristan’s—the real Tristan’s—body? “Yes,” he said finally, “I imagine that it is.”

  “Can you force people to…do things?”

  “Yes.”

  “And do you?”

  He studied her. “Yes,” he said.

  “Oh.” She sat down on the edge of the wagon bed.

  “This troubles you?”

  “Yes…no…I don’t know,” she finished. She looked up. “I’m sorry.”

  “You have no need to apologize. I know that we’re…different.”

  “But I don’t want us to be different!” The words were out of Isla’s mouth before she even knew what she was saying. “I want us to be the same. I want to be like you.”

  “You don’t know what you’re asking,” he said, surprisingly gently.

  “Yes I do. Or maybe you’re right, and I don’t. But I do know that I’ll grow old and die and you won’t and—and I don’t care about growing old, and dying, I just don’t want to be without you.” And then, horrified at what she’d just heard herself saying, she got up and stalked off. She didn’t want him to see her face, didn’t want to see his and have to face the fact that he probably thought she was a stupid child. She hadn’t known him for long enough to have these feelings! What was wrong with her?

  “Isla.” His voice was right behind her. She started, shocked. That he could move so quickly, and so soundlessly, still surprised her. She forced herself to stop, feeling his presence behind her, her heart racing as she waited for what would happen next. “Isla,” he said again, a note of command in his voice, “turn around. Look at me.”

  She turned, slowly, but wouldn’t meet his gaze. Instead she stared down at her clasped hands. Slipping one claw-tipped finger under her chin, he raised her head and forced her to look at him. “Tell me,” he said, for the second time.

  And she did. Not because she had to, this time, but because she wanted to. She needed him to understand. “I don’t want power. I don’t want to be beautiful, or to look as I am forever although”—she faltered—“that would be nice.” She hated the idea of being too old to do the things she loved, like Rosie’s grandmother with her arthritic joints and her wandering mind. That, more than anything, was what scared Isla: forgetting, losing who she was, missing out on the chance to do all the things she dreamed of doing in her life, things she’d been discouraged from doing since childhood because she was nothing more than a woman. “I want to leave here, and be with you, and live. And with each passing day, I worry that I never will; that this is all some sort of dream and I’ll wake up and be stuck and having had a taste of real life, and real happiness…before,” she explained, “I could force myself to be content. Now I know I never could, again. Not after this.”

  He dropped his hand. “Do you love me?” he asked quietly.

  “Yes,” she said. “Although I don’t know how.”

  “Because I’m a demon?”

  “Because I’ve only known you for a fortnight!” The frustration of it was enough to make her scream. “And already I can’t—I can’t imagine my life without you and that terrifies me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because sometimes….” She bit her lip. “Because sometimes I feel like you’re playing a part. I don’t know what you feel, or even if you feel, and I….” She trailed off, miserable.

  Tristan wrapped his elegant, aristocratic, clawed hands around her upper arms and drew her to him. “I want you…and I want you to be happy. I’ve Seen inside you, and I want you. I’ll never feel what you feel. I’m not capable of love and I don’t have a soul, as you understand the term. But that doesn’t mean that I feel nothing.”

  “What do you feel?” she asked.

  She was almost afraid of his response, but at the same time she needed to know. She had to force herself to face the truth, whatever the truth turned out to be. The man she loved had just admitted that he didn’t love her, and that was bad enough. Unbearable, in fact. Did that mean that he was, therefore, indifferent?

  His eyes searched hers. “Need. The need to own, to possess. Jealousy, I suppose you might call it, but more than that. I would crush anyone who dared touch you and die to defend you. So if you choose to interpret that as love then yes, you have my love.”

  In a sense, she realized, he was a far better lover than Rudolph. Where Rudolph, or indeed most men, were moved by some genuine impulse on their part Tristan acted out of no such self-interest. He treated her as he did, not because he felt any compulsion to do so but because it was what he knew she wanted. The realization, as it came to her, felt very strange.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and his lips found hers, cold and hard and hungry. She opened her mouth to his, yielding to him, wanting him. His claws dug into the small of her back and the back of her head as he pulled her to him and held her there, giving her barely enough room to breathe. His need, whatever it was, whatever he was, was the same as hers.

  They were both looking for something: for someone to love them, to accept them for who and what they were. For a way to no longer be alone. Isla had only been alive for twenty winters, not even, and already she found the crushing weight of her loneliness unbearable. What must it have been like, to have been alone for three lifetimes?

  He caressed her neck, her cheek, with the tips of his fingers. His whole body was rigid with desire, but his touch was gentle. She sighed, trembling, her eyes half closed. She bit his lip like he’d bitten hers, only not hard enough to draw blood.

  And then there was no more thought as the warm drug of his embrace permeated her system. His lips were cold, but she barely noticed. The other night, they’d been warm; almost as warm as those of a normal man, or so she imagined. Having never kissed any other man and knowing now that she never wanted to. She didn’t know why he was sometimes warm and sometimes not, and right now she didn’t care. His skin was as cold as a marble slab but he was so alive. And he made her feel alive.

  He drew back slightly, resting his forehead on hers. His hands cupped her face as he breathed in, once, and sighed. “This can’t happen. Not now. Not yet.”

  Isla frowned, worried at this sudden withdrawal. Had she upset him? Did he not want her after all? She knew very little of love, or romance, but she’d been led to believe by Hart that if a man even slightly liked a woman, he’d jump at the least opportunity to roll her in the hay. Or in the orchard, as the case
might be. Sometimes, Hart claimed, even if he hated the woman. So long as she was attractive enough. And she and Tristan were betrothed. She paused, regaining some of her own sense as her own blood cooled. What, exactly, was she proposing? Did she want him to take her in the hedgerows like some tavern slut?

  “What—what is it?” she ventured, her voice small.

  “There’s a choice you need to make,” he said inscrutably. “A choice that must be yours, and yours alone. And now…is not that time.”

  “When is?”

  But he didn’t respond.

  FORTY-FOUR

  “What does this mean?” she asked, examining his ring. “This symbol?”

  Isla and Tristan were sitting in the gallery, in front of the fireplace. Apple and her various hangers-on had gone into town, to shop. Up until Tristan’s visit, the gallery had been the almost exclusive domain of the women not because the women needed such a large space so desperately but because in truth there weren’t so many residents at Enzie Hall that anyone needed to share. But Enzie Hall, as depopulated as it was, was still on the smallish side for a manor house and there weren’t many other places to congregate.

  A driving rain pounded the fields flat outside and sprayed in through the windows. There was no glass in most of them; glass was a luxury reserved for the cities, and for the very wealthiest of Morven’s country estates. The entire gallery felt damp, but the fire at least was warm. Steam rose from the rushes on the floor, and from the few pillows and other soft things that lay scattered about. Isla’s cloak, thrown over a chair, looked almost as if it were smoking. She’d dashed inside from the dairy, where she’d been when the clouds finally opened. The clouds had hung low on the horizon, dark and full of the promise of rain, for almost a week. And since no one could get much accomplished in weather like this, everyone was lazing about relaxing.

  It was, Isla thought, a good afternoon.

  She turned Tristan’s hand back and forth, admiring how the gold of the unusually crafted band glinted in the firelight. He let her, a look of amused toleration on his face. He looked, she thought, much the way she would at a kitten playing with a ball of yarn.

  “It’s an ouroboros,” he said.

  The ring was heavy but exceedingly finely crafted and obviously came from the hands of a talented goldsmith. Isla had never examined his ring up close before and now decided that she’d never seen its like in all her life. A serpent-like creature, its wings folded back against its undulate body, was eating its own tail. Almost grotesquely thick lips opened up to receive the appendage. It looked lewd, obscene really, and yet also frightening. The scales on the body, and the veins on the wings were perfectly picked out and shone with a deep, almost red luster.

  “What’s an ouroboros?” She didn’t know what anything was, these days.

  “An ancient symbol,” he replied, “and the mark of my order.” The Order of the Dragon, he meant. “The ouroboros is the symbol of rebirth. Ouroboros is another word for dragon.”

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “It comes from a shop on the River Eamont.” Eamont. The capital, then. One of the many places she’d never been, and desperately wanted to go. Enzie Moor had never felt small before, but it did now. Small, and smaller every day. He described the shop to her, a small, low-ceilinged place built right into the bridge itself. The Golden Hand was one of several hundred such shops, which lined both sides of the bridge and piled on top of each other in haphazard rows. The shops even met at the center of the bridge, forming an unstable-looking arch that stretched almost its entire length. Merchants walked the covered thoroughfare, along with farmers driving livestock into the city for slaughter and sale and young fops running everyone down with their horses.

  The picture he painted was one of a city bursting at the brim with people, a place that was appallingly loud both day and night and that smelled worse. Tall, precariously leaning houses touched each other across most of the streets, most of which in turn were too narrow to support their traffic. Sewage ran in the gutters like runoff from a storm and one always had to be on the lookout for more raining down from upturned chamber pots. The city ordinances stated that a householder should call out a warning three times before emptying the contents onto the passersby below, but few paid attention.

  The couch on which they sat faced the fire, which crackled merrily in its grate as wind howled in through the window slits overhead. Tristan sat with his arm around her, the gesture almost negligent as he sipped his wine.

  “I wish I could go,” Isla said.

  “I spend a great deal of time in the capital,” Tristan replied, resting his cup on his knee as he stared into the flames. “So you will.”

  Isla didn’t reply, although she was secretly pleased; this meant that, when he went to visit his brother, he intended to bring her with him. Unlike so many wives, who were left at home to rot while their husbands gallivanted around and did Gods knew what.

  “And there are some pleasures to be found there,” he added after a moment. “The court has its own amusements, of course. And then there are the gardens, and the palaces…the museums, too. The best bards in the world perform for large crowds and, on occasion, the king and his family in private audiences.”

  Which, Isla had to admit, sounded wonderful. She leaned against his shoulder, as he lapsed back into silence. He wasn’t a man who spoke when he had nothing to say—unlike Rudolph. Isla had seen neither Rudolph nor her sister all day; Rowena seemed to be giving her a wide berth and Rudolph, to the best of her knowledge, had spent most of his time in the practice yard despite the rain. Hart reported that he was, surprisingly, not half bad with a sword.

  She said as much to Tristan, who considered her statement awhile before replying. “Rudolph could be a decent fighter, maybe even a great one, if he had the chance. Which he won’t get, languishing in this backwater. Which,” he added, “might be for the best. The ablest fighters have never been the ablest husbands and fathers.”

  Isla wondered if he was speaking from personal experience. He himself, as well as his father and brother—his real father and brother, from before—had been the ablest fighters of them all. Tristan’s brother, Morin, had married and had children. And Tristan himself had been betrothed…once, to a woman long in her grave. Tristan’s own martial ambitions, if Cariad was to be believed, had been the cause of Tristan’s demise. And that of his relationship.

  “Tristan,” she asked hesitantly, “what did you mean? At the hunt?”

  They were alone and there was no one to overhear what he said, but still he didn’t answer. She’d given up hope of his doing so when he spoke, surprising her. “You and Asher seem to get on well,” he said obliquely.

  “I hope so,” she replied. “He’s a lovely boy. And he thinks very highly of you.”

  “Yes.” It was a statement of fact, not praise, and Tristan accepted it as such.

  Isla wondered, too, what Tristan’s feelings were toward his page—and what his intentions were, as well. She’d been surprised, but also not surprised when Tristan had referred to Asher, to Rowena, as his child. They certainly acted like father and son, although perhaps with a somewhat unusual relationship. Asher was far, far too old for his age and Tristan was nothing if not strict. The situation must, she thought, be terribly confusing for Asher: his new father had killed his old father, and where did that leave him?

  Tristan finished his wine. He spoke without lifting his gaze from the fire. What he saw there, Isla didn’t know. “The child has enemies. And not only the kind who want him dead. There are those who’d use him for their own devices, as his uncle did.”

  “But you thought someone wanted him dead on the hunt.”

  “A great many lives have come to an end during hunting accidents. Even under the best of circumstances, legitimate accidents do happen. Especially when grown men have been drinking like foolhardy squires. And who was to say what had really happened, when a saddle strap comes loose and a young boy, barely able to ride, falls a
nd breaks his neck? Or a rustle in the bushes is mistaken for a deer?”

  “Who?” she asked.

  “Rudolph’s mother.”

  “Rudolph is too stupid for treason,” Isla protested.

  “Yes, perhaps. I’d argue, not too stupid but too noble. He chooses to see the best in everyone and everything, which gives him the appearance of stupidity.” Turning, he glanced down at her. His lips quirked in a brief, wry smile. “I’ve lived a long time, and seen this all before.”

  “You think he’s complicit with his mother…in what?”

  “I think that, although he’d never knowingly betray the crown, or certainly harm a child, he could be all too easily tricked into providing aid to those who would. Where his own family is concerned, he has a blind spot. As many of us do, I’m afraid.” And for the second time, Isla wondered about his family. And wondered if he’d ever tell her about them.

  Tristan had been concerned, it turned out, not that someone would kill Asher but that they’d try to kidnap him. Asher didn’t know it, but he labored at his page’s duties under almost constant supervision. Tristan’s most trusted retainers, his arms master and his master of horse, were responsible for surveilling all of the boy’s movements and keeping him safe. Even on those occasions when Asher had, according to his own belief, crept off into the forest to explore, Tristan had known where he was. Asher’s tutors might have been fooled, but Asher’s guardian would take no chances. And so while Asher continued to believe, as little boys everywhere wanted to believe, that he’d given the world the slip, he in fact lived in a state of security that most kings would envy.