Blood Witch

by Thea Atkinson

  "I could feel the shift in your breathing."

  She reached to touch his fingers with her own, and thought better of it. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt him any more. She was finally beginning to understand the pain of loss and love and it was too much to stand against; she couldn't offer him false hope knowing he'd grieve later.

  "Gael," she started to say but his palm moved to cup her chin.

  "I hated this tattau before," he murmured. "Now it haunts me."

  She reached to take his hand from her face gently. "Please," she said, not sure what she meant by it, but hoping he'd understand her hesitation.

  "I'm fine," he said. "We've made our choices, and I understand them."

  "You don't sound fine."

  The only sound for a short time was Aedus's soft snoring, but when he did speak it was with a voice thick with emotion. "It's only because I still ache for you. I worry for you."

  Two very different emotions, and yet Alaysha understood them both. The worry, the lust, the sense that both could become so tangled together. She thought of Yenic and felt a stab of regret, then of longing. Still, knowing he was so completely his mother's tool, she loved him.

  She knew she would be lying to herself if she didn't admit to feeling a similar want for Gael. There was something primal about having another person want you so badly they would offer their body in protection for your own, about another's willingness to take even a shadow of you if you would offer it. It was a different need than the one she felt for Yenic, but it was no less strong. She reached for his hand in the dark and held it. The flesh of his palm was hot and callused, so much so that she couldn't stop imagining how it would feel smoothing out her skin, catching against the fine hairs of her body.

  She might know she wanted him as much as he did her, but she also knew it wasn't companioned by love. Only desire.

  His voice was in her hair, the heat of his breath tickling her earlobe. "The air is cooler down the tunnel," he whispered.

  "I can't do that to you," she murmured and felt his arm wrap over her stomach.

  "I can live without you if I can have just one memory to fill the loneliness."

  His hand slipped beneath her tunic and brushed against her thigh. His touch was so light, she doubted he felt anything against the hardness of his callused skin, but when his breathing grew shorter and he cupped her from behind, pulling her against him, she knew he didn't need to feel her skin to know her response.

  She felt his lips on her eyelids, small fluttering kisses as silent as the darkness, then brushing against her cheek, seeking her mouth until she parted for him and tasted his tongue.

  She thought again, briefly, of Yenic, poor Yenic, and wondered where he was, then felt such shame she didn't dare breathe until the grief of it all would just go away.

  Gael's arms encircled her and then she was airborne, lifted against his chest so effortlessly she could be flying of her own accord as he stood. His mouth went to her neck, then nipped against her ear.

  "It's a kindness you're showing me, Alaysha. No more. Let me be yours just this once and I'll be yours until my death."

  She wanted him; they both knew it, and she would be a fool to pretend she wasn't responding, but it was selfish. Too selfish. "It's not fair to you."

  His response to her protest was to claim her mouth, devouring every inch of it, teasing her tongue. She was weightless in his arms; he dropped her legs so that she hung against him, not touching the ground, feeling every measure of him against her. She realized her arms had wound past his neck and her fingers were in his hair, that he had somehow managed to pull her legs around his waist and was holding them there captive. That his heart was beating against her own in a terrified, primal staccato.

  She realized they were moving, that he was striding with her through the cooler air of the tunnel with such ease he could have carried no burden at all, and when they had gone far enough out of Aedus's earshot, only then did he speak again, pulling his lips from hers and burying them in her neck.

  "I would never force you. You decide what's best for you, but know if I have you no more than this one night it will be enough for me."

  If she could have found a way to speak through the tightness in her throat, she might have protested. She might have reminded herself she was bound to the youth who thought her dead, but then she remembered the grief of why he thought it so and all she could do was search for Gael's mouth with hers to stop herself from recalling the pain.

  He gasped like a man finding air after a long spell underwater. She thought she heard him moan but she couldn't be sure. He seemed almost afraid she'd change her mind as he let her to her feet; his hands roamed her skin in every place it was free of linen or hide, and when they weren't on her, they were peeling at his own leathers.

  He reached for her hand and used it to trace the pattern of scars on his chest. His voice came to her in a hoarse whisper. "I'd take all of these and more for you," he said. "Know that."

  She could only nod before his mouth was on hers again, his tongue invading her in ways she was too ignorant to respond to. She let him explore where he would without resistance. He guided her to his pile of leathers and tunics where he methodically peeled away her clothes and added them to the impromptu bed. If it was cool in the tunnel, she'd never know it; his body was warm and his breath a hot draft that touched the hairs on her skin and left them laying low in submission.

  He at once began to take his time with her, letting his breath touch her skin before his lips, his tongue, sometimes his hands. She knew each time he put a callous to her flesh that it felt sacred to him, somehow, that his kisses and the way he tasted her skin might have been his opportunity to imbibe finally from a forbidden wine. She felt like a fine libation in his hands; she felt like the fleshly altar of a goddess.

  More than that, he made her feel as though his heated roaming of her skin wasn't enough, that she had to touch him in return. She found she wanted to trace each scar to its origin and feel the veins throb beneath his skin.

  Once, he put his ear to her heart and let it lie there for several heartbeats. He put her hand on his. When he was satisfied of something only he understood, he reached to kiss her, long and torturously slow, with a thoroughness that made her arch against him in need. She had to let go a pleading moan before he took her, finally, with a masterful but tender plunge.

  His gasp sounded like a prayer.

  Chapter 23

  When she woke next, she was beside Aedus again, but she didn't feel Gael next to her. She groped for him in the darkness, afraid suddenly that something might have happened to him. She bolted up only to see a light sputtering its way toward her in the tunnel, a large shadow hulking along with it. When it edged around the curve, she saw Gael's face in the light it cast. She had never seen him as peaceful, and she felt a flush overtake her face and neck.

  "Where did you go?" she asked him as he settled down next to her, his great muscled thigh touching her own.

  "To see how far the tunnel goes."

  "You should've slept, reserved your strength."

  "I didn't want to sleep."

  "You should get some rest."

  He reached across her to shake Aedus, who still snored lightly. She felt a tension at his touch, as though he were restraining himself, but he said nothing about the night they'd spent. "There's a room, not bigger, but more air. Lots of old oil lamps."

  "Very far?"

  Aedus moaned and rolled away, leaving Alaysha feeling chilly on that side.

  Gael pushed himself to a stand and bent to pick Aedus up.

  "Leave me be," the girl grumbled. "I dreamed of cats growling all night and barely slept a wink."

  Gael chuckled. "You'll have a better pillow against my chest. Calm, little one. You know we have to keep moving."

  "Some pillow," she said. "Just as hard as the stone floor."

  "But far warmer," he told her, and she mumbled her agreement.

  Alaysha fell into step with
him, holding onto the torch so they could both see. "What do you think will happen, Gael?" She asked.

  "I think whoever woke first will have put the other to torture."

  Alaysha thought about that. If Yuri came to first, she knew the one place he would think of that could contain a witch without concern for his own welfare. If Aislin awoke first, she'd undoubtedly bring Yuri to the same place: a cavern filled with all sorts of torture devices.

  "The bathhouse," she murmured, and Gael grunted.

  "Neither will give up the other," he said. "The Emir will die trying to get his son back."

  It hurt, that short, truthful statement, but it also made her wonder how far Aislin would go to save Yenic. She thought there might still be hope for him.

  "I don't understand what's going on," she admitted.

  "Your father has lost Sarum."

  "I don't care about that."

  "You should. Do you think the witch lets him live because she's afraid of him?"

  "Lets him live?"

  Gael turned to look over his shoulder at her. His face looked haunted in the play of torchlight. "For a warrior you are young in the ways of war."

  "Then explain it."

  "If she wanted the city, she could just take it. If she wanted him dead, she would've killed him. She wants something else. Something he has that she doesn't."

  "What could that be?"

  She saw his shoulders move in a shrug. "Information."

  "But what could he know?"

  By now they had reached the room. It was small and cramped, filled with spent oil lamps and dusty amphorae stacked against one wall and tumbling into a crevice further into the dark. It was far more dry in this tiny room that she could have believed possible. It astounded her that a mountain she had lived in and so close to all these years could have so many secrets.

  She touched one of the oil lamps, rubbing what looked like centuries of dust from the surface. "So what could he know, Gael?"

  "What have you been doing these last few moons?"

  "Besides being sick? Killing." The words stuck in her throat. She'd always hated using that word, truthful as it was.

  "Killing who? Enemies? Warriors?"

  The mud village had been a peaceful one. "No." She wanted to squirm. "Not the last one."

  "No. Not the last."

  "So what, what does he know?" She had the feeling she was missing something, something Gael wanted her to realize.

  He smiled at her so smugly, she thought for a moment he would have made an excellent leader – if he knew the secret, he certainly hadn't made her think before now that he was privy to it.

  "The witch of the Earth," she said, unable to stand the amazement in her own voice as she realized the truth.

  Once Yuri had realized he'd managed to assassinate the elders, and that the other witches still lived, he'd obviously suspected what Alaysha had not until she'd gone back to the village: that the elders had made a sacrifice of themselves to save the others. Aislin lived still. The air witch, though lost, had obviously been saved. Why not the Earth witch?

  "But surely Aislin would know, too, Gael. Surely if Yenic was spared as she was, that Aislin would know where her peers were." She didn't want to say that she thought she knew where this witch of earth might be.

  "What if none of them knew? What if they didn't trust each other?"

  "But they must have. They work in harmony. They worked together to protect Yenic from me and from Yuri."

  He gave her a steely look. "What if it wasn't Yuri they were protecting themselves from? What if their act was not one of defence, but of subtle assault?"

  "That's ludicrous."

  "His silver brow lifted. "Truly? Do not think, powerful as you are, that the three of them together couldn't stand against you?"

  She thought about that, and the thought that her ego had been so great that she had never assumed anyone could stand against her, made her feel embarrassed. Gael adjusted Aedus in his arms, and took a few steps toward the wall where he eased himself down and against it. When he was sitting, Aedus in his lap, her head against his chest, he looked back at Alaysha.

  "I think their plan was far grander than we believed. They're out to trap someone. Someone powerful. Or they have an agenda I can't decipher. But it involves Aislin. I know it does."

  She shook her head, confused. "Why not the earth witch? Why couldn't it be her?"

  He sighed heavily. "Because the earth witch is of my tribe."

  It was such a bold statement, Alaysha thought she heard her job click open and hang there. She searched his face for signs of untruth and finding none, sat on a stone to mull it over.

  "How close," she finally asked.

  Again he shrugged. "Close enough I suppose that Saxon provides some protection."

  "Protection for who?"

  "Haven't you guessed?"

  She was tired of having to guess. She was tired of knowing nothing. She leaned forward, holding the torch high enough that she could see his face clearly. "How much do you know? Tell me everything."

  "Precious little. Only those things Theron told me when I returned to the city."

  "What does Theron have to do with this?"

  "Apparently he's from my tribe." Gael sounded uncertain, confused, and angry that he had only just come into information that changed what he believed about himself for all this time. She could see him look down at Aedus and only then did his face soften.

  He sighed heavily. "Theron has been leeching Saxon and adding the collected blood to drafts he's been giving to the Emir."

  "You've known about this?"

  "Yes. For a few fortnights. I assumed he believed the same as Saxa, that Yuri was ill and that he was doing his part in keeping him healthy."

  "So you never questioned it."

  He sent her a scornful look. "Have you ever questioned your father?"

  She had to admit that questioning the Emir was out of the question for any warrior let alone his witch.

  "But he could have been poisoning him."

  Gael chuckled. "Only a fool would take his time murdering a man like Yuri. And Theron is no fool."

  "What else did Theron tell you?"

  "There wasn't much time to tell me anything. Just that you had to be saved above all else, even above Yuri or the witch – in spite of Yuri and the witch."

  "And?"

  "And that Saxa and I – our father was the youngest brother to the last witch."

  "So if Yuri knows where she is, why is he not sending for her?"

  "I never said he knew. I said only that Aislin believes he knows."

  "And so far that is keeping him alive."

  "That and the fact that Bodiccia has Yenic."

  "Fortunate for him," she said sourly.

  "Fortunate indeed, for a man who knows so little. He believes he has control but he has been played by the forces around him. Much as we have been."

  "Then what's this all about, Gael?"

  "I don't know. I truly don't. But Theron seemed to believe that war is coming, and it will be a war the likes of which we've not yet seen. Subtle and covert, but it is coming."

  "Edulph."

  Gael nodded. "Edulph is mad, yes. But he speaks the same truth that Theron does."

  She wanted to snort, but kept her depressive thoughts to herself. "Theron himself is mad."

  "Theron is mad when the wind is Nor'south. He was taken in the first campaign; did you know that?"

  She shook her head.

  "Well he was. While Saxa and I were born in Sarum, Theron has always been here. If he says war is coming, it's coming."

  Then I'd say we best get Edulph out of that pit before he decides to tell Aislin where the baby is."

  Chapter 24

  It would be easier if they knew what was truly going on, what her father and Aislin wanted, or even Edulph. One thing was for certain: Yuri and Edulph were mere men and could be controlled if necessary. The fire witch could not.

  Alaysha so wante
d to believe Yenic's mother was at the mercy of Yuri and not the other way around. It would be so much easier. She hated that the man who could show her only contempt and pain might be totally ignorant of the machinations going on about him.

  Still. When it was all over, his ignorance would not spare him from her wrath.

  They trod through the tunnels, hoping to come out somewhere that they'd recognize. The difficult thing then would be to re-enter the city, the Keep, and then find the crystal room again in time to get Edulph out. While she thought they had been walking into the mountain, small alcoves broke open here and there to reveal light, and she realized that they were close to the outside. When they came upon a small cavern with ages of layers of bat guano, she knew they'd reached the end. They darted through a haze of wings and furry bodies furious and frightened at being disturbed.

  The fresh air smelled divine.

  "Where do you think we are?" she asked Gael as he prodded Aedus awake and set her on her feet in the early morning sunlight.

  "My guess would be the southern forest at the back of the mountain."

  It would've taken days to travel up or around the hulking stone from one end to the other, but somehow they gone clear through in a night.

  "Does Yuri know about these tunnels?" she asked him.

  "Some. It's why he didn't build on top. He didn't want to leave them open for attack."

  "Or investigation."

  Gael nodded. "There are many. Although I only thought there were the tunnels that opened from the Keep. If he'd known about all of them, he would have extended the city. You can bet on that." He seemed to be looking at her with fresh eyes. His own hair was coming unplaited, the brows that were usually smoke and silver mixed, were streaked with dirt. She remembered how he'd buried that unshaven and beautiful face into her neck and left a trail of masterful kisses down to her navel. When she recalled what happened next, she had to look away.

  "Aedus do you still have some of your sleeping potion?"

  The girl fumbled into the pouch she had tied her waist. Out she pulled a small knife, stolen obviously, a dried apple, and a roll of leather. She passed the roll to Alaysha, who peeled it open.