Rogue's Pawn

by Jeffe Kennedy

  I remembered who had all the power.

  “No!” I screamed.

  The crashing surf swallowed the sound.

  But Rogue looked up at me. His eyes captured the moonlight and shone with an impossible cobalt reflection. He cast Liam aside, a rag doll on the sand.

  He strode toward me, an avenging demon, the wind whipping his long black hair, those eyes shining as bright as the sword he carried.

  I lost all breath.

  He seized me by the throat with his left hand, firm but not hurting me. Even now, one hand only.

  “Why?” he thundered in my face. His skin gleamed glacier-cold in the moonlight. The black pattern of his face looked larger, more complex. As if it were visibly growing. “All the time I watched you, waited for you. How is it that you don’t feel what is between us? You drive me to despair, Gwynn. How could you deny me the least crumb and offer that dreg of a human everything?”

  Not even a squeak escaped my throat. I had no ability to answer.

  Oh, but I did.

  So I showed him. My terror and desire. The rage I felt at his betrayal. How I was still spiraling down the rabbit hole he’d shoved me into. The sickening fear of what he might do to a child I bore. What Titania might do. I threw all my thoughts and emotions at Rogue, fierce and as loud as I could make it.

  He threw back his head and howled to the sky. Despair, yes. It raked cold claws through my heart.

  Spikes of ebony lines crawled up his chest, over his neck and spread across his face like a virus.

  His hand clenched convulsively on my throat and I scrabbled at it, suddenly desperate for air. Through the crack of the surf, another wet splitting noise filled my ears. The sound of bones snapping, the sickening snap of flesh rending.

  Rogue’s howl of pain sharpened into true anguish, physical and emotional. I felt it more keenly than if it happened to me.

  His hand released and I fell to the chill sand, staring up in utter horror as Rogue’s body bent back into a crescent, splitting open in a spray of midnight blood.

  Glossy black, the blood fountained impossibly up, arcing to fall on the sand. Rogue’s body collapsed back, shredded and empty, more blood than any body could hold, creating a grotesque rainbow, gathering, coalescing into a shape.

  Until, shining in the moonlight, the Dog crouched with me on the sand, the shattered remnants of Rogue and the silver sword between us. My heart shattered, too.

  Amber eyes shone.

  He cocked his head at me, that square head massive in the moonlight. He stood, stretching, languid as a cat, and paced to me. The smell of bloody flesh caught his attention, and he paused to sniff at the fleshy bits that had been Rogue.

  “Goddammit, no!”

  The snarl burst out of me and I found myself launching at the Dog. In fury, I slammed into it. Rage at myself for not seeing the truth. At Rogue for not telling me. We rolled on the sand, snarling and grappling. Its growls mixed with the surf. I shrieked and pounded its hot sleek hide.

  A wild thing.

  Cold saltwater hit me, swamped my lungs. The Dog was abruptly gone and I struggled to hold on to the sand. Singing filled my ears, far off in the distance. The waves tugged at my dress, begging me to come out to sea. The old passions of infinite souls poured through me. So easy to go, to fall under and away. Succumb to the cold waters of the despair that had dragged Rogue under.

  All my fault.

  The sharp grains of sand bit under my nails as I crawled out of the water.

  A chill breeze hit me. Thunder rumbled in the distance. The clouds dashing around the sky gathered together, competing to hide the moon.

  Dark streaks of blood marred my arms and breasts where the Dog’s fangs had snagged me. The fragile spaghetti straps of my dress had snapped. Too much strain. I tugged at the soaked bodice, managing to wrestle it back in place somewhat. The salt stung in my wounds.

  I crawled up the sand, sodden hair in snarled threads around my face. I found Rogue’s body. Impossibly rent. A small keening noise escaped me. And I’d thought he was indestructible. Had counted on it, somewhere deep inside. But I’d turned out to be his weakness. I wondered why he hadn’t carried out his threat to kill me. The Dog crouched over him. Guardian. Crosser of boundaries. Would he escort Rogue’s spirit to yet another realm? Or was Rogue in there, somewhere, trapped by his own subconscious?

  The wind tugged at my wet dress, slapping the soaked tendrils of my hair against my stinging skin. This world was just as real as the one I’d left. More real, in many ways. Just as Rogue connected with me more vividly, more viscerally than any man I’d known. Surely that meant something.

  It couldn’t be too late.

  I stared down the Dog. Oh no. I had no intention of losing now.

  Or, maybe losing was what it took to win.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  In Which I Find a Way to Surrender

  “Lady Sorceress—don’t move.”

  I sagged at the sound of Liam’s voice behind me. A miracle that he wasn’t dead already, but he would get himself killed for sure now.

  The Dog turned, growled, eyes bleeding into red. He bared his teeth, flashing in the night.

  “Liam,” I said in an even voice. “You need to back away. Go back to your horse and ride to camp.”

  “I cannot leave you. I’ll protect you with my life. That creature, you don’t know—”

  “Yes, I do.”

  The Black Dog blinked, one slow, satisfied gesture of agreement.

  I stood, keeping an eye on the Dog. Liam laid a warm hand on my bare arm. The Dog’s hackles shot up, and the low growl grew into an openmouthed roar. I shook Liam off. Stepped back and laid a hand on the Dog’s glossy head.

  The Dog’s hackles lowered and he rubbed his head against my hand with a soft whimper.

  “Go, Liam.” I thought it at him, too. Fairly loud.

  Liam was covered in sand, bleeding from nicks in a few places. He stared at me, astonished. Horrified, even.

  “What are you?” he breathed.

  I didn’t bother to point out that I was the same woman he’d put his mouth on. It wouldn’t change what he now saw. I wasn’t really human anymore. Time to face what Rogue had known. I stroked the Dog.

  “Just go.”

  Liam backed away. I watched his careful retreat up the sand until his dark shape disappeared into the shrouding shadows of the grass-covered dunes. I listened to the frantic whirl of his thoughts as he found the horse and rode away.

  I could see myself there, soaked, the dress barely hanging off my breasts, my hair in ropes, spattered with seawater and Rogue’s black blood, my face wild with tears, the massive Dog beside me, my eyes glowing with unnatural light. I couldn’t go back to being what I’d been, mild-mannered professor, frozen in my own life. The changes I’d gone through were too deep, too wrenching. You can’t go home again, they say. Now I knew what they meant. More. I knew I didn’t want to.

  It couldn’t be too late.

  I knelt beside the Dog. He tilted his head at me, eyes shadowed. Clouds were gathering around the moon, deepening the night.

  “Rogue?” I whispered it, reaching for any sense of him inside.

  The Dog’s tongue lolled out, pleased as any puppy. I let my hand slide around to his thick chest, feeling the strong heart beating beneath.

  The Dog’s thoughts flowed formless, like Felicity’s or the hawk’s. They swirled with fierce motion. The surf, the smell of blood and me. The race of aggression and the hunger for the shreds of flesh beside us. Veils between worlds shredding, flying into tattered remnants. I dug deeper, the Dog still under my hand.

  Raven’s wings swept across my vision, shrieking whispers. Hot blood in my mouth, tearing flesh and tears, howls and water. Rogue, drowning in black and blue
magic, the Dog tearing scarlet chunks out of his chest until Rogue’s howls became blood themselves. I wrenched myself away.

  I had seen this before, in Rogue’s mind. Before the fireplace. But I couldn’t find Rogue himself.

  Thunder rumbled again. The moon shot through the tumbling clouds, now lighting them, then succumbing to their dark whirl. Legs of lighting walked across the ocean’s horizon.

  Falcon’s transformation hadn’t been like this. It seemed gentle in comparison. I felt a sickening fear that Rogue had somehow irrevocably lost himself.

  The fear that had ridden him. The hope that had surrounded the idea of me. The despair that finally dragged him under.

  This was the center of why I was here. The Dog had brought me, chasing me through nightmares until I ran to Devils Tower, helping me to cross that boundary. But it was Rogue’s need that drove it. Watching me. Waiting for me.

  Somehow I hadn’t seen that he was at the center of it. I had made the blood sacrifice to reach him, understanding on a subconscious level what my conscious mind had never grasped. He was the one I’d been looking for all this time. Not a happy, easy love. But one who recognized me for who I was.

  I pulled the glass marble out of my pocket.

  Had I forgotten it was there? Perhaps. And yet, part of me held on to it, had reached for it as I left the tent and brought it out now. The same part of me that had driven the knife into my finger half a year ago. The part of me who belonged here. With him.

  I focused on the sphere, dipping into it, allowing the macabre dance inside to entrance me. It was inimitably Rogue in a way the Dog was not. Sharp, sensuous, deadly seductive. Obsidian through sapphire.

  I rolled the marble in the cooling blood of Rogue’s remains, then wrapped my left hand around the sword lying on the sand, just like Liam had shown me not to do. My blood welled up, hot against my chilled skin. I held the crystal in my hand, letting our spirits mingle.

  I sank into memory. Of how I felt when Rogue held me. I know who you are, he’d told me, but I hadn’t believed. The touch of his skin, the sardonic twist of his eyebrow. The scent of mace and Stargazers. The lily I’d destroyed in order to tear myself away from this connection. My stubbornness and fear.

  Instead I let the lust boil up. The sex and magic filled me.

  I gave it all up and let myself drift.

  I stood at the edge of the pool. Naked, my hair flowing down my back and sliding over my shoulders in a silky caress. I knew it was black now. Even in my dreams. Shining like the inky water before me. The arches of my feet were warmed and stretched by the curve of the worn stones, just at the edge of the water, not quite touching.

  The angel hairs on the back of my neck lifted, so I knew the Dog had arrived. That he sat behind me on the stairs, as if carved from obsidian, but alive with hunger.

  There he sat. Glossy, shimmering night against the paler shadows. Flash of white fang, glistening with saliva. He shimmered. Shifted.

  And Rogue uncoiled. Long hair streaming like ink spilled on leather. Cloak swirling around him.

  He descended the steps with that uncanny elegance, stalking on long legs, effulgent eyes so intense that the sapphire was lost in ebony. As he paced toward me, he held something in his hand. The green silk cord. Longing in his beautiful face.

  I quailed but held the marble in the palm of my hand. An offering.

  Rogue stopped in front of me, sleek as a cobra, the pattern on his face once again still and cool. He slid the bloody sphere from my unresisting fingers. The eyebrow on the clear side of his face arched, Rogue held the glass sphere up to the misty light, turning it to see the bruised swirling within.

  His eyes glittered like mica as they ran over my face. His elegant fingers folded around it. When he opened his hand again, it was gone.

  Then he held his other hand up to me, the green silk cord trailing across it. A challenge. A question.

  My breath caught and a tremor ran through me. I couldn’t bear it.

  “Do I have to?” I whispered. I searched his eyes. Regret and triumph chased each other through their depths. He trailed a long finger down my cheek and I shuddered.

  “Beautiful Gwynhwyvar. You are both the omen and the fulfillment of it. You have seen how fighting this will only shatter us. Please. I need you.”

  Rogue sank to one knee, his cloak settling in a sensuous swirl. He held up the silken cord like an engagement ring.

  “Gwynn, I cannot survive without you. Will you accept my bonds?”

  My heart thundered, my brain swimming in heated blood, my breasts tight and sex throbbing. I couldn’t think. But I didn’t need to. I’d already made the choice.

  It mattered that it was my choice.

  I held out my wrists.

  Without rising, Rogue knotted the green silk. First around one wrist, then the other. I trembled to feel it tighten around my skin. The sensation arrowed through me in helpless arousal. The ends dangled down, a twisted bridal bouquet.

  My breath escalated. Excitement spiraling out of control.

  Thrilled to the core, I let it go.

  Weaving the dangling cords between his fingers, Rogue drew me down to bend over him. He offered his mouth to me and I kissed him, starving, insatiable. I dropped into his hot, sweet lips, my wrists tethered to his hands.

  I sank to my knees, reveling in the heat of him against my naked skin, my nipples unbearably teased by the velvet he wore. I let him plunder my mouth.

  When he raised his head, brilliant eyes fired, I tilted my head back, exposing my throat to his teeth in surrender.

  With a growl, he slid his lips along my throat. I moaned, my thighs slick with moisture. He trailed nipping kisses down my neck and I sparked to his touch.

  When he sank his teeth into the junction between my neck and shoulder, I convulsed. Rogue released my wrists, pulled me tight against him with one arm, slid his elegant fingers between my thighs into my swollen sex.

  I convulsed again, screaming, and his mouth closed over mine.

  My climax poured into him and he drank me in. Inhaled me, and poured it back.

  This was right. This was how it should go.

  Drowning in the volcanic tide, I was filled with Rogue. My heart swelled, pounding through me, burning through the sky in supernova.

  On a crescendo of longing, I wished for him to live.

  And collapsed into darkness.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  In Which It Rains

  I awoke in Rogue’s arms.

  Dawn was breaking in a gray light. A misting rain fell over us, where we lay on the sand, wrapped in his cloak.

  Rogue gazed at me, eyes quiet. The black pattern spiked over the left side of his face in more branches, more complex swirls, a thicket of blackthorn twining around his exotic indigo eye. But it seemed docile again, still and quiet. No longer feral. I trailed my fingers over it and felt only his skin.

  Then I raised my hand to see no cord bound my wrist.

  He raised an eyebrow at me, waiting for me to ask the question. Unaccountably, I blushed. Did he remember it all?

  “What now?” I asked, instead.

  “Whatever you wish for, beautiful Gwynn.”

  “I’ve learned to be careful of that.”

  “And in this case?”

  “I think I don’t know what to wish for.”

  “Wish for simple things. That’s best.”

  Rogue shrugged and sat up. I shivered, bereft of his cloak and warm presence. The sodden dress still barely clung to me. He uncoiled to his feet and held a long hand down to me, just as he had under the dryad’s tree. I slid my hand into his, trying not to think of how those elegant fingers had driven into me. Then and in the dream last night.

  Tried not to think about how much I wanted all
of him inside me.

  “Dreams are just a different reality, lovely Gwynn. You should understand that by now.”

  “But our bargain…”

  “Valid still.” His lips twisted. “You are still safe from having my child. For the moment. Or until you change your mind.”

  I wrapped my clammy arms around myself.

  “Allow me.” With a flourish, Rogue produced a dark cloak out of thin air and wrapped it around my shoulders. The cords on it were knotted green silk.

  I studied the shockingly gorgeous planes of his face, the dianthus-edge of his lips. The inky lines on the patterned side of his face seemed as if they could run in the rain.

  “Why?” I finally asked him.

  He sighed. Taking my hand, he drew me beside him. We walked along the sand, the soft rain falling, the surf quiet. The beach curved around the grassy bluff, disappearing in the mist. I felt curiously at peace, despite it all. As if we might head back to a cozy home soon and settle in with a glass of wine before the fire.

  “You gave me the gift of your trust last night.”

  “Did I?”

  Rogue glanced at me and wrapped his fingers around my wrist. I shuddered and he smiled.

  “So I’m putting myself in your power. To balance the scales.” He drew in a breath and laced his finger with mine again. “I need you.”

  “To fight Titania?”

  “One doesn’t fight Titania. One struggles not to be consumed by her. She drives us, pushes us toward our darkest natures until we have nothing to resist with.” His profile was stark against the gray sky. With the unmarked side of his face toward me, he could be almost human. “So I called you. I dreamed about you, in your world. I needed you to keep me from losing myself. If you hadn’t been close to losing yourself, too, you wouldn’t have heard me.”

  I pondered that.

  “But it was the Dog who came to me.”

  “I can’t control him.” Rogue said it quietly. State secret.

  “Isn’t the Dog, well, you?”