by Kallysten
He was still trying to figure out what to do as he waited for their return, when a one-note chime rang throughout the castle. Energy surged through Aedan at once, and he was running before he knew it, one knife in each hand. Someone had just Passed Through in the Passing Room.
* * * *
In all those years, and in spite of his feelings for Vivien, Bradan had never imagined this, never tried to guess how sweet her lips would taste, how soft they would be against his, how warm her skin would feel everywhere he touched her. He’d sometimes wondered what her body might look like under the plain tee-shirts and jeans she favored, but he’d always chastised himself right away. She was Dame Vivien, and she was heir to the throne of Foh’Ran. What right did he have to fantasize about her?
Everything changed with a few quiet words from her lips.
“Kiss me. Touch me.”
Earlier, he’d been too surprised to pull back when she kissed him. Then the Quickening had taken hold of them, and he’d had little control over himself. When she’d started kissing him again—when she had given him rules about the words he couldn’t use—he’d let her do as she pleased, wondering how much of her desire was left from the Quickening, and how much was simply and purely her. Now, he didn’t hesitate anymore. He’d offered to pull away from her. He’d heard her repeat that she wanted him and ask for his touch.
It wasn’t proper. He shouldn’t have touched her this way. But he had told her he loved her, and she had answered with a kiss rather than with reproaches. Who cared about proper anyway?
Kissing her again was easy. She’d shown him, after all: gentle lips at first, caresses of mouth on mouth, then a bit of tongue—and then fire. Her kisses were intoxicating, and Bradan didn’t think he’d ever get enough of them, of the way she opened for him or the quiet little noises she made when he pushed her back into the blanket of petals he had summoned for her. She clutched at his shoulders and back, her nails leaving trails of sensation against his skin.
Touching her in return was more complicated. He knew the theory. He might even have explored the Internet, once or twice, in the privacy of his apartment, purely for research purposes. He sorely lacked practice, however, and to have Vivien in his arms, her body pressed tight along his, made him feel uncoordinated and clumsy.
When her moans turned needy and she started arching her body up toward his, he told himself he had to do something, start somewhere. He was a QuickSilver guard. He wouldn’t back away from a challenge, and it didn’t matter what kind of challenge it was.
Caught between his excitement and a bit of apprehension that he wouldn’t be good enough for her, he brushed the very tips of his fingers up her arm, over her shoulder, then down her chest. With the barest pressure, he caressed her right breast through her blouse. Her moan emboldened him and he cupped it in his palm, feeling the weight of warm, soft flesh.
Pulling away from the kiss, he looked at her eyes and face, trying to guess what she was feeling. Her smile reassured him, and he dipped toward her lips again—and froze an inch away, his eyes widening, his desire drained right out of him by the alarm ringing so loudly through his bond with Aedan.
Earlier, fear had permeated the bond, and Bradan had known why: he, too, had been scared for Vivien’s safety until he found her. The fear had faded, but by then Bradan had been too caught up in his own feelings—in Vivien’s—to examine Aedan’s too closely. Now though... Fear flashed through the bond, as quick and blinding as lightning. Immediately, determination replaced it, the same determination Aedan always exuded when he marched into a fight.
Bradan jerked away from Vivien and stood, his eyes darting everywhere around them, searching for a possible enemy. He saw nothing but a few birds. Channeling through the same determination Aedan felt, he closed his hand over the familiar hilt of a Quickening sword.
“Brad?” Vivien was still panting as she sat up, confusion etched on her features. “What... what’s going on?”
He picked up his shirt and held that same hand out to her, and after a beat, she took it, allowing him to pull her to her feet. Petals were clinging to her hair, and he had the urge to run his fingers through it, draw her closer to him, and kiss her some more. They had no time for that, however.
“Something happened. At the castle.” Holding on tight to her hand, he pulled her toward the place where they had left their shoes. “Aedan is preparing to fight. I need to get you to safety.”
He let go of the sword to hurriedly slip his shirt and low boots on. Vivien was frowning at him, one sandal forgotten in her hand. He gently took it from her and bent down to slide it on her foot. They needed to be fast...but where should he take her? If the fight was at the castle, he could hardly go back there.
“How do you know?” she asked. “Preparing to fight who?”
“I know because he’s my twin,” Bradan answered absently, looking around again, this time for shelter. The sword was back in his hand, familiar and comforting. “I can feel what he feels. And right now he feels...”
Bradan paused, now turned in the direction of the castle although he couldn’t see it from where he stood. Aedan’s readiness had faded again, and now he was...relieved? Why by all the Quickening would he be relieved? What was going on?
“Brad?” Vivien sounded worried. Her hand slipped into Bradan’s and squeezed gently.
“I think... I think we should go back. Something happened, but I don’t think you’re in danger.” He smiled to reassure her, and even let the sword dissipate, though he held on to the Quickening, ready to channel again at a second’s notice.
They started up the slope and toward the castle when it appeared, its familiar towers rising up toward the shimmer of the shields and the sky beyond them. The sun was high; it had to be close to noon, and in the full light of the day the walls of the castle seemed more brightly white than usual. Long strands of Blooming Moonlight crept up here and there around windows, the pale flowers fading against the walls.
“I don’t understand,” Vivien said after a moment. “Explain to me again why you thought Aedan was fighting?”
Bradan kept his eyes ahead of him as he answered, searching for something, anything out of the ordinary—anything that might have signified trouble. By now, Aedan’s feelings were too jumbled for Bradan to make much sense of them.
“The Quickening affects many things in this world,” he explained. “One of them is twins. There is a link between us, a bond. Haven’t you ever heard those stories about twins on Earth? Where one knows when the other is in trouble even if they’re miles away?”
He saw her nod from the corner of his eye. “I’ve heard of it.”
“Here, that bond goes beyond that. I can tell what Aedan is feeling, wherever he is in Foh’Ran, and he knows what I feel, too. Joy or sadness. Fear or determination. I can tell when he’s in pain, or when he...”
He cleared his throat. He didn’t need to tell her quite so bluntly that Aedan had known how excited Bradan had been only minutes earlier—that he had known, undoubtedly, what Vivien and Bradan were up to.
“So...you felt him prepare to fight,” she said slowly. “But not anymore?”
“Not anymore. Now he’s...” Bradan focused, trying to pinpoint exactly what Aedan felt. Worried was his best guess, but there was no sense of urgency about it. “Concerned.”
She didn’t say another word until they were almost at the front door, and when she did, it was in a whisper. “If he knows what you feel...he knows you and I almost...”
Her hand tightened on his for a second. She didn’t finish. When he glanced at her, even with the Quickening turning her skin a pale, almost silvery color, he could tell she was blushing. She hadn’t asked a question, but Bradan supposed she wanted an answer. He wished he could have lied to her, a little white lie that would have made it much easier for all of them.
“He knows, yes.” He took a deep breath and added as they reached the doors, “Maybe it’s better this way. That we only almost did this, I mean. We w
ere both caught in the heat of the moment, and we weren’t thinking right...”
His voice trailed off when he looked at her again and saw how pained she looked. She let go of his hand.
“Maybe,” she repeated. Her voice grew colder with every word. “Better that than you regretting it as soon as it was over.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Painful Truths
As she followed Brad down the first floor corridors to the staircase, one thought continued to bounce through Vivien’s mind: if Aedan had wanted to interrupt them, he couldn’t have found a better way. And of course he would have wanted to stop them from sleeping together. He was the one who continued to call her ‘dame,’ who treated her like the royalty they claimed she was. She’d thought Brad could see her, the Vivien he knew from Earth; after his declaration of love, she’d been all but certain of it. Now, though, she wasn’t sure anymore.
“Maybe you should stay here,” he said as they reached the second floor and he paused on the landing.
“You said there was no danger,” she shot back.
“I think there isn’t, but let me check with Aedan—”
In answer, Vivien strode past him. She wanted to see Aedan first and know if he’d made up this supposed alarm for no good reason, as she believed. If he thought he could continue to treat her like a child and dictate what she could or couldn’t do, she’d have to teach him better.
With Brad now at her side, she marched toward the faint voices she could hear at the end of the corridor. One was Aedan’s, but the other... Her heart jumped when she recognized it, and she couldn’t help blurting out, “It’s Ana!”
Brad started to say her name, but Vivien didn’t wait to hear what he had to say. She rushed forward, sheer joy bursting through her. Anabel was there, out of danger! Everything would be all right now.
Or so Vivien thought until she reached the open door from which the voices were still rising. She was beaming when she entered the bedroom, but her smile faded as soon as she saw Anabel on the bed. Two days had passed since Anabel had been taken. Her ashen skin, the deep circles under her eyes, even the way her hands lay utterly still on the blanket that covered her to her waist—all of it made her appear twenty years older than when Vivien had last seen her.
Guilt slammed through Vivien as she slowly crossed the last few steps to the bed, barely aware that Aedan was rising from the chair by the bedside and moving back. To think not that long ago she and Brad had been splashing water on each other like kids, laughing, then losing themselves in one another, and meanwhile Anabel...
Vivien’s knees buckled, and she collapsed rather than sat in the chair Aedan had vacated.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost, child,” Anabel said with that same warm smile Vivien knew so well, but with a tremor in her voice that was entirely new.
“Not a ghost,” Vivien murmured. “Just someone I missed very much.”
Anabel’s hand rose toward Vivien’s head, and for a moment Vivien thought she wanted to caress her hair. Instead, she plucked a petal from Vivien’s tangled hair and brought it close to her face to look at it. When she lowered her hand again, the petal still between her fingers, she pinched her lips together to hold back words. Vivien could imagine them quite well, and she felt her cheeks heat up in embarrassment.
“What happened?” she asked. “Did they let you go?”
Anabel wheezed out a laugh. She made as though to sit up, and Vivien helped her at once, pushing a pillow behind her back to prop her up.
“Rhuinn let me go, yes,” she said in a more somber tone. “A gesture of good will, he said, to show you he means you no harm.”
Behind Vivien, someone made a sound like a stifled snort. When she turned, Vivien couldn’t say if it had been Aedan or Brad, both of them straight and immobile, side by side like soldiers awaiting orders. Anabel clucked her tongue and continued on the same tone.
“He will send a messenger soon to invite you to come talk to him. He’s very curious about you.” She coughed once, her entire body shaking. “He had many questions.”
Vivien swallowed hard. She wanted to ask if Rhuinn’s questioning had involved violence, but she couldn’t make herself say the words. Besides, she didn’t need to; she only had to look at Anabel to know. Maybe her long sleeves or the blankets hid injuries, but her eyes gave it away. They’d always sparkled with an inner life; now, they seemed dull, as though an opaque film were blocking the light.
“Do you think I should go?” she asked instead. “If all he wants is to talk, maybe it’d be better if I just—”
“No.”
The word resonated through the room with more strength than Anabel seemed to possess. She took Vivien’s hand and held it tight between both of hers, even as her gaze drifted to the two men at her back.
“Give us a moment, boys,” she demanded. “There are things I need to tell our dame.”
A chill went through Vivien as she heard Anabel call her by the title that was beginning to irk her. She’d have given a lot to be nothing more than ‘child’ again, to be back in their kitchen and listening to Anabel tell her how Brad was wrong for her.
The door closed behind Aedan and Brad with a scrapping of wood against wood. Vivien realized she was holding her breath, a little scared of what Anabel might tell her. She didn’t want to be anyone’s dame, didn’t want to fight a man she didn’t know for a throne that was supposedly hers. Why couldn’t she just be Vivien, she wanted to ask. Why couldn’t she just go home?
She was about to blurt all of this out when Anabel met her gaze and said in a low, intense voice, “You need to go home, Vivien.”
Air rushed out of Vivien’s lungs, leaving her unable to do more than whisper, “What?”
“Forget whatever those boys told you. You need to get as far away from Rhuinn as you can. Go back to the Otherworld, to Earth. Bradan will go with you if you order him to. You can move somewhere else, where Rhuinn won’t find you.”
“But I don’t even know how he found me this time,” Vivien said.
“He found you because we were fools.” Regret tinted Anabel’s words, and she tightened her hands over Vivien’s. “We channeled, Bradan and I. Me for my readings and shields over our home, and he Passing Through back and forth between Earth and Foh’Ran. Someone noticed. Reported to the false king. That’s how he knew. But if you don’t channel, if you and Bradan don’t use the Quickening at all, you’ll be safe.”
It struck Vivien, at that moment, that Anabel kept saying ‘you’ and mentioning Vivien and Brad, as though she herself were not going to come. Vivien felt ice creeping over her, stilling her tongue, keeping her frozen and immobile. She shattered the ice and leaned forward, encircling Anabel’s frail form with both her arms, laying her head in her lap like she had done as a child.
* * * *
Aedan looked at Bradan as he closed the door, leaving Vivien alone with Anabel. They had a lot to talk about, but before they did, he wanted to make sure of something. He didn’t need to focus much to hear what they were saying. As he had thought, Anabel was urging Vivien to go back to the Otherworld.
“Why did you bring her here?” she had berated him earlier when he helped her to what had once been her room. “Right under Rhuinn’s nose! I knew your brother was a dreamer, but I thought you, at least, had more sense than that. Don’t you know what he’s capable of?”
Aedan did know, and that was why he had not tried to argue with Anabel; why argue with the dying? Now gesturing for Bradan to come with him to the end of the hallway, he wondered how much he should share—and immediately chastised himself for the thought. He had no reason to hide anything from Bradan.
“She’s going to die,” he said in a low voice, holding Bradan’s eyes so he would know the truth of his words. “If the king wanted to give a message when he sent her back, it was a warning. Resist me, and this is what will happen to you, too.”
The same shock Aedan could read on Bradan’s features reverberated through their
bond.
“Are you sure?” For a moment, he sounded more like a child than a grown man. “She’s just tired. She’s been through a lot. But she’s tough.”
“I’ve seen it before.” Aedan leaned back against the wall. He felt tired suddenly, old, but he had no time for either feeling. “It’s a particular channeling trick the king mastered. It only works on channelers. Their body weakens, or sometimes their mind. Within a few days, they pass away. He has done it before with high families that protested his rule. He’d summon a few of them, tell them how disappointed he was, channeling the entire time to magnify his voice and aura. It disguises that he’s channeling toward them, too, so when they leave they don’t know if one of them is going to die, and if so who. The perfect tool to strike terror in his opponents’ hearts.”
Bradan’s fists closed tight on either side of him. “But why do they even go if they know the risks?”
Sometimes, Aedan forgot that Bradan did not know everything he did. He had shared a lot of what he had learned as a king’s guard, but there had always been too much to explain, and some things Aedan himself wished he didn’t know.
“Because it’s even riskier to refuse. Not everyone has shields as good as this castle’s.”
“So if they don’t go, he sends his guards,” Bradan finished the thought. His eyebrows started to draw together, and he looked away.
Aedan wished he hadn’t known exactly what Bradan was thinking. Yes, the king had ordered Aedan on missions such as that one. It was what being a king’s guard entailed. And it had been worth it: had Aedan not been a trusted guard, he’d never have had the opportunity to save Vivien.
“When they’re done talking, I’ll try to heal her.” Bradan’s determination was already strong enough to channel, as strong as his need had been earlier, and probably for the same reason.
“And when you do,” Aedan asked, his voice colder than he meant it to be, “will it be for Anabel’s sake or to impress Dame Vivien?”
