Once Upon a Kiss

by Nora Roberts

  Erinn could scarcely breathe for the fear racing through her. The knife felt cold, so cold against her skin. An eerie silence fell over the chamber. As if through a haze, she saw the other two outlaws grinning at their comrade who held her, and then Red-beard edged slowly toward Tynon.

  But Tynon didn’t see him. He didn’t even seem to notice or care that blood streamed down his arm from the knife wound. His gaze was fixed on her, and for a moment as their eyes met she saw a flash of fear in their depths. Fear…for her? Impossible.

  Yet, a determination to survive or some other instinct must have spurred her to warn him. “Behind you!” She gasped, and the man holding her tightened his grip so painfully that she cried out.

  Tynon wheeled around, leveling his sword at his advancing enemy. Red-beard halted, his tongue circling his lips as he eyed the glittering blade.

  “Put it down, quick-like,” the outlaw holding Erinn barked out. “Kick it over to them, or I’ll slit the wench’s throat.”

  Tynon looked at Erinn, his stomach clenching at her white face, her eyes vivid with terror. Then his gaze centered on the man who held the knife to her throat. He let his sword clatter to the ground.

  “Ah, do you see this?” The long-haired outlaw loped forward. “I always fancied me a jeweled sword,” he crowed and bent toward the weapon.

  Erinn pushed the terror away and fixed her gaze on Tynon’s sword, desperately concentrating all of her attention on it.

  She’d been able to move that sconce, hadn’t she? Not precisely the way she’d wanted to, but she had moved it.

  The blade of the knife tingled against her cheek as she kept her gaze focused on the sword and willed it to obey with every ounce of her being.

  Nothing happened.

  Fly, she implored silently. Her brows drew together in fierce concentration as the outlaw’s grimy fingers closed around the hilt.

  Fly to Tynon!

  The sword never moved. The outlaw smiled to himself, rubbing a finger over the encrusted emeralds and rubies glittering in the candlelight.

  “By the stars and the moon—fly!” she shouted, and the outlaw jumped as the sword tore itself from his grasp and sailed upward through the air.

  It swerved and angled, shooting straight toward Tynon of Bordmoor at a blinding speed. It nearly sliced off his head, but the llachlander ducked just in time.

  Then the sword swung around and streaked toward Erinn and the man who imprisoned her. He cursed, releasing her as he dove toward the floor in his haste, and Erinn dodged the sword in time, shouting, “Stop! Stop!”

  It slowed, and hovered, then began spinning about above their heads in a wild, careening circle—until suddenly Tynon stuck up his hand, grasped the hilt, and yanked it down.

  Eyes bulging, Red-beard and the long-haired outlaw lunged toward him. Erinn whirled around to find that her former captor had dropped his knife. She scooped it up and brandished it before her.

  “Don’t move or I’ll kill you, you filthy coward!” she warned him as she tried to keep her hands from shaking.

  “You don’t have the stomach for it, wench.” Blood pooled at his feet as he dodged toward her, making a grab for the knife, but Erinn stabbed at him and managed to cut his hand. He jumped back, nearly slipping in the blood, then his eyes narrowed. He crept toward her again, more slowly, a cunning light in his eyes.

  “You’ll be sorry you did that, my lady,” he gasped. “Sorry as you can be.”

  Behind her Erinn heard grunts and a crash and a curious gurgling sound, and she wondered how Tynon was faring against his attackers, but she dared not take her eyes off the man coming toward her.

  He dashed in so suddenly that she gasped and struck out with the knife, but this time he caught her arm and twisted the knife away. Then he had it turned against her and came at her fast, but suddenly Erinn was tossed sideways and the room went spinning. When she glanced up from the floor where she’d landed, she saw Tynon standing over her attacker, who was sprawled in his own blood. Dead.

  Tynon of Bordmoor wasn’t even breathing hard, and his eyes were so cold that Erinn shivered.

  Slowly, filled with horror, she struggled to her knees and glanced around the chamber where a short while ago she had eaten supper. Three bodies lay upon the cold stone floor, and blood flowed like a crimson river, soaking the stone beneath them.

  “It’s over.” Tynon set down his bloodied sword and came to her. He reached down and raised her to her feet. She was trembling, this princess of Marlbury, and he knew she had never seen a man killed before, much less three of them.

  “Are you hurt?” There was blood on her cloak and for a moment his heart stopped beating.

  “N-no. But you are.” Her dazed gaze turned to the blood still streaming down his arm.

  “A scratch, nothing more.”

  “I must…tend it.”

  “Not here. This is no place for a woman.”

  Erinn had no wish to argue with him over this point; she longed to be away from here.

  As he led her from the chamber, she carefully averted her gaze from the fallen outlaws. She felt oddly light-headed, and there was a sickening roiling in her stomach that made her long to lie down upon a soft bed and blot out this nightmare.

  But she had a job to do first. A debt to repay.

  The room he brought her to was down the corridor—a chamber somewhat smaller than the last—and nearly as sparse, but for the old bronze-framed mirror mounted upon the wall opposite the windows and the animal pelt draped upon a settle in the corner. He left her briefly, to retrieve his pack, which held salve, he told her, and while he was gone, Erinn made her way to the window, pushing the decrepit shutters open, breathing deeply of the cool night air.

  She shivered as it touched her skin and blew her hair across her cheeks, but the chill of it helped to revive her from the sick sensation.

  She gazed out at the land that surrounded the keep—peaceful-looking land, frosted silver by moonlight. In the distance there were meadows and fields, and the gleam of a great gray river. Near its banks she saw smoke curling from the roofs of a village.

  The night sky gleamed with stars, hot blue stars that seemed to taunt her. These same stars, this same full moon, blazed above Marlbury, her home. Yet it was so far away.

  She wondered with an ache in her throat if she would ever see it again.

  At the sound of footsteps behind her, she whirled around. Tynon had returned, and he held a pouch that she guessed contained the salve and bandages that she would need to tend his wound. But he appeared to be in no hurry as he watched her from the doorway, despite the blood that soaked his sleeve.

  “Plotting an escape?”

  She lifted her chin. “Perhaps. Though I hope you’ll have the decency to let me go, now that you know I’m of no use to you.”

  “But you are of use to me. The daughter of King Vort is a prize worth keeping. Or should I say a pawn worth keeping?”

  She gritted her teeth. The cool air had revived not only her body but also something of her spirit, and she swept toward him with close to her usual composure. Snatching the pouch from him, she spoke in a low tone.

  “Don’t you think your time would be better spent finding whoever did enchant your keep instead of bothering with me?”

  “It’s no bother, princess.”

  “It will be. I assure you I can prove extremely bothersome if I put my mind to it.”

  His brows lifted at the challenging gleam in her eyes. “I don’t doubt it. But I am a fearless warrior and will somehow endure.”

  “Don’t be so certain!” Erinn retorted.

  The way her eyes sparked green fire at him almost made him smile, but he caught himself in time. Bothersome, he thought with a sudden twinge of irritation. That was a perfect word for this princess of Marlbury. It was particularly annoying that she could appear so elegant, so assured, and so effortlessly beautiful after all she’d been through, even with her hair wild and tumbled around her face, even wrapped in a
bloodstained cloak.

  He wondered how she managed it.

  Setting his jaw, he began stripping off his tunic and the chain mail beneath it, trying to focus on the throbbing pain in his arm and not on this golden-haired witch with the face of an angel.

  Erinn dug the salve out of the pouch, far more disturbed about his threat to use her as a pawn than she had allowed him to see. But she nearly forgot about even that as she looked up and saw him standing bare-chested before her in the moonlit chamber.

  By the stars and the heavens, he was splendid. More than splendid—mesmerizing, she thought in awe. His arms were corded with ropy muscle, and his wide chest and shoulders robbed her of breath. His stomach was flat and taut and, like the rest of him, bore many scars, she noticed on a gulp. Now the newest one would be the wound upon his right arm, a red, raw gash that had at last ceased to bleed. The knife had apparently not pierced as deeply as she’d feared, though the cut was ugly.

  But the rest of him, Erinn observed, swallowing hard, was utterly magnificent.

  Something fluttered deep and warm inside her, something she’d never felt before. Heat flooded her cheeks as she hurriedly raised her gaze to his once again, only to be confronted by those piercing blue eyes.

  He wants to use you as a pawn, she reminded herself sternly, trying to focus solely on that. He is despicable.

  But why couldn’t he have been homely and despicable?

  “My brothers were raised to believe it was wrong for men to use women as pawns in matters of war,” she managed to remark with asperity. “Surely even you would not do such a thing.”

  “I’ll do whatever I must to bring down my enemies.”

  “But your sole purpose in taking me from my home was to lift the spell, and it’s clear I can’t do that. So by all that is decent you must let me go.”

  “But perhaps you can lift the spell.” He studied her thoughtfully. “From what I’ve seen, you have some magic in you. You’re just not very good at controlling it. True,” he added as she flushed, “you almost killed yourself and me, along with those scoundrels, but you did manage to send that sword flying. That’s something. If you could develop those skills of yours a bit more,” he went on with a gleam of speculation in his eyes, “it’s possible you might find a way to restore the keep.”

  “I told you, I wouldn’t help you even if I could. So kindly don’t mention it again.”

  He watched that soft, full lower lip of hers push forward in a pout. An adorable pout. Unexpectedly, desire, hot and fierce, surged through him. He fought it even as he watched her dip her fingers into the salve. And as she began rubbing the balm briskly across his wound, it took all of his self-control not to seize her in his arms and kiss that sweet pout right off her lips.

  The salve burned like hellfire, but as she rubbed it into the wound, the wound was not what hurt. The beautiful, sculpted features of his captive somehow seemed to blunt the pain—while creating an entirely different kind of torment.

  Erinn deliberately ignored him, keeping her gaze focused on the wound. She pressed down hard, hoping to draw an exclamation of pain from him, to show him that even though he had saved her life, she had no sympathy for him, none whatsoever. She would tend his injury, thereby repaying her debt, and nothing more. Not one more measure of aid or comfort would she give him. Yet as she touched him, it was she who felt a kind of pain, an ache deep inside her. The tips of her fingers tingled. It must be the salve, she told herself. The ointment is strong. Biting her lips, she pressed even harder upon the raw center of the wound.

  He drew in his breath, but made no sound no matter how hard she rubbed. His blue eyes were unfathomable. She knew the salve must burn, but she guessed that if he was like Braden and Cadur and most other men she’d observed, he’d rather bite off his tongue than admit weakness to a female.

  “Does it hurt?” she asked innocently.

  He smiled. “Your touch is too weak to hurt a warrior. Perhaps if you applied a bit of pressure.”

  “I am applying pressure,” she snapped, then bit her lip as his smile slowly widened.

  She yanked her hand away, but to her shock, he caught her wrist and held it.

  “You said you would never help me, and yet you’ve just applied healing salve to my wound. The wound of your father’s enemy.”

  “And of my enemy.” Her eyes darkened with anger. “Make no mistake about that.”

  “Then why did you tend me?”

  “You saved my life back there as well as…as…” Her voice trailed off as she recalled the vileness of the outlaws he had killed.

  “As well as your virtue?” he finished for her.

  “Yes, that, too.” She flushed and favored him with a scowl. “So I owed you a debt. Now it has been discharged.” She yanked her arm away, surprised when he let her. Dropping the salve back into the pouch, she pushed it against his chest.

  “Here!”

  Her fingers brushed his skin, encountering the rock-solid muscles beneath the dark mat of hair, and a jolt of something hot and wild ran through her.

  Tynon seized her wrist again, imprisoning her hand as it rested against his chest.

  “Your debt isn’t yet discharged, little witch, much as you might wish. I saved your life; now you must save my home. That is a fair exchange, a fair repayment of your debt.”

  “Are you mad or merely a fool? I can’t save your home. I don’t know how. And even if I did, I wouldn’t. What you ask is impossible!”

  “Impossible, eh? When I was a boy, and Marlbury had twice the soldiers of my father, and twice the weapons and destriers, as well as friends and allies in all the kingdoms, my father was advised by a counselor from Ranue to cease the fighting, to sign a treaty with Marlbury and agree to whatever terms the king should demand. He was told that victory was impossible. But my father didn’t believe that. He fought on, fought with every man and steed he could muster, every sword, stick, and arrow. He fought to avenge all that had come before, and to protect those under his care. And now, he has been killed—killed by your father’s troops, no less. Cut down little more than a year ago.”

  Tynon’s eyes were the color of a storm-lashed sea, dark and furious. In them Erinn saw wrath, but also pain. The pain of loss.

  “Yet he won many victories in his life, and so have I. Now it is we llachlanders who have the upper hand—and Marlbury that sees that victory is impossible.”

  “That is not true.” She shook her head. “We will destroy you.” But she feared he could see the doubt in her eyes. The tide had indeed turned against Marlbury. That was her fault…if only she could be of more use…

  He laughed then, not a pleasant laugh but one that was harsh and mirthless. He released her so abruptly that she nearly stumbled.

  But he didn’t release her for long.

  He only took the pouch from her and dropped it into his pack, then he drew out a length of rope.

  Erinn backed away. But Tynon advanced with the rope, his mouth set.

  “There is no need—” she began, a catch of fear in her throat, but he cut her off.

  “There is every need. I must go and remove those stinking carcasses from my home. And tend to my horse. And I won’t have you running off while I’m gone.”

  “I won’t—I wouldn’t—”

  He laughed again, a sharp, cynical sound, and seized her even as she tried to dart away. With frustrating ease he bound her wrists behind her, then dragged her toward the settle, pushed her down to sit upon it, and tied the rope to one of its legs.

  “I won’t be long.” He tossed the animal pelt over her and strode toward the chamber door, leaving her in the flickering darkness.

  “You needn’t ever return!” Erinn cried after him, fighting back tears of frustration.

  “That wouldn’t bode well for you,” he called without looking back over his shoulder. She heard his boots stamping through the empty corridor, then the silence of the darkened keep enclosed her.

  She struggled futilely against t
he bonds, testing them, but they would not give. Oh, she thought, gritting her teeth, why did I even touch Tynon of Bordmoor? He is a savage!

  Yet, she had to admit that though he had trussed her like an animal, the bonds were not overly tight. And never once, in all the times that he had seized her since the moment he’d taken her from the garden, had he hurt her with his strength, though well he could have.

  And he had saved her life.

  But only because he thinks you might be useful to him—if not as a witch, as a pawn. A shiver ran through her as she imagined her father’s and brothers’ desperation to get her back safely. They must be frantic, and even now organizing an army. But it would take time to bring together a force powerful enough to storm Bordmoor Keep—or what they imagined Bordmoor Keep to be. Days, perhaps weeks, to recall troops from Kaylantium and the ports. Tynon would anticipate that, of course. And Marlbury’s forces would be blocked, perhaps ambushed. How many would die?

  The only alternative was a ransom of some sort. But what would Tynon demand? How much would it cost Marlbury?

  If only I could escape him and make my own way home, Erinn thought in despair.

  But that possibility seemed hopelessly remote now, as she sat in the darkened chamber, shivering even beneath the animal pelt her captor had tossed over her. Tynon was a formidable adversary. He was far stronger than she, he was shrewd, careful, and he knew the llachlands well, while she was as lost and adrift here as a lamb in the center of the ocean.

  Erinn closed her eyes, weariness creeping over her even as she pondered the futility of the situation, the dearth of choices available to her.

  Her fate truly rested in the hands of Tynon of Bordmoor. Unless she could think of something…some way…

  Her eyes closed, and her body, pushed beyond exhaustion, drifted into sleep. She never even heard Tynon return, never knew of the long moments he stood gazing down at her as the moonlight played softly over her face and set her hair shimmering like golden fire.

  “You’re not what I expected, Erinn of Marlbury,” he muttered as he studied the delicate shape of her chin, the sweep of long silky eyelashes against cheeks as smooth and pale as cream.