At first, she’d struggled to believe her adored friend when Rhiannon warned of the looming supernatural event called the Convergence. In time, she’d grown to share Rhiannon’s fear of what would happen as the Faerie realm drifted ever closer to her own England. With her own eyes, Linnet saw the protective Veil between the worlds grow thinner.
“When the two realms touch,” Rhiannon whispered, “only sorrow and violence will result.”
And how the witch Morrigan yearned for that! At the Faerie court, she spoke openly of her ambition to wear the double crown of mortal and Faerie. She spoke of her son Mordred, the powerful warlock born of her brief dalliance with King Arthur of Camelot—an ill-fated union wrought of disguise and deception, like the son who sprang from it.
Arthur’s only son, and sworn to his downfall.
Rhiannon told her the rest, whispering the old tale while they curled together before the warm hearth in the cozy hidden cubby of her forest retreat. A thousand years past, the old king Arthur—Rhiannon’s father—had defeated the young stag Mordred in a dead city on the shores of a distant sea, and Mordred was banished from the mortal realm. The dead city sank beneath the waves. As for Arthur, a deadly wound plunged the King of Camelot into an enchanted sleep from which he would never wake.
Linnet was warmed by the gift of Rhiannon’s trust, and more than willing to repay her kindness with news of the Tudor realm, where Catholic Queen Mary and her Spanish King bathed sorrowful England in the Inquisition’s blood. Linnet’s Catholic father had told her Mary too was ailing, and all good Catholics must pray for her. Yet even he never guessed that Mary’s half-sister Elizabeth, the secret hope of the Protestant world, was part Fae herself.
Together, Rhiannon and Linnet devised a desperate plan, taking into their confidence Rhiannon’s devoted foster-father Lord Ansgar, once known as Lancelot. If the Tudors and the Fae signed an enchanted treaty, both realms would be bound to a thousand-year peace. Only then could Morrigan’s vengeful plan be thwarted.
Thus, it was sheer desperation that drove Rhiannon through the misty Veil into Catholic England. And it was loyalty to her friend that drove Linnet and Ansgar, with his loyal men, to follow. None of them foresaw the Church Inquisitor named Beltran Nemesto, a rising star from the order of holy enforcers called the Blades of God, who intercepted their retinue in the wild and took Rhiannon captive.
To her everlasting shame, Linnet fled the scene of battle as she’d always fled danger, her heart tripping like a hunted rabbit’s as she slipped into the night-wrapped wood.
When dawn pierced the dark forest with sunrise and the birds stirred and sang in the trees overhead, she found her courage and crept back for her friend. After an agonizing search, she found her eventually at Hatfield, the young Elizabeth’s country estate. By then, Rhiannon had already lost her heart to her captor.
How Linnet struggled to accept the incredible, impossible, blasphemous truth that Beltran was an exiled angel—Uriel, Angel of Vengeance and Archangel of the Presence, banished from Heaven to learn mercy and compassion through a mortal life. But Elizabeth herself proved more versatile in her thinking. Together, Rhiannon and Beltran persuaded Elizabeth to sign the treaty, averting the dreaded Convergence in England.
Linnet thought her problems over when Elizabeth dispatched the couple on a mission to France, where the Convergence still threatened. After all, both her coldhearted father and her brutal brother had died, and Linnet was now Countess of Glencross. It was easy to dismiss her fading memory of the vengeful Morrigan, determined to undo the peace. When Morrigan cast the spell that made her forget her lost years, Linnet had been like a lamb led to the slaughter.
Had Morrigan—with her gift of prophecy—foreseen that Linnet was the key to bring about the downfall of the Tudor Queen? Perhaps she believed if Elizabeth fell, the treaty’s spell could be undone. She must have known or guessed that Linnet, a devoted Catholic with the blood of two royal houses, would be rendered weak and pliable by her haunting fear of madness. No doubt Morrigan saw her now as a ready cat’s paw, a tame lapdog to warm the Tudor throne, while Morrigan herself ruled both realms.
Tossing and fretful in the relentless grip of dreams, Linnet clenched her fists and whispered, “Never.”
Or did Morrigan have a deeper plan, one that required Linnet’s peculiar magick, her seeming ability to open a portal between realms? For Morrigan too had lost someone she loved. How many times, in the glittering splendor of the Faerie court, had the sorceress sworn to the Goddess she would have him back?
* * *
Linnet awoke with a jerk, her body bathed in sweat, heart racing in sudden terror. The dream had frightened her awake...save that it was no dream.
Her memory had returned.
She’d sacrificed her maidenhood to the Goddess of the festival fires, and Morrigan’s spell of forgetting had shattered. She had all of it back, her past laid out before her in an orderly mosaic of shapes and colors.
She even recalled the Faerie tale knight she’d loved with a child’s innocent devotion, no less a personage than Sir Lancelot of the Lake, a kindly guardian who’d thankfully been too honorable to take advantage of her childish infatuation. She’d left the Summer Lands with her maidenhood intact and her heart untouched, pure as when she’d arrived.
Then, in her own time, she’d met Zamiel.
Smiling, Linnet rolled toward the ruddy glow of the dying fire. Overhead the night was far advanced, the stars shifted in their course, the moon sinking behind the spires of Tintagel.
Zamiel lay naked on his stomach, face buried in his bent arm, one hand flung wide in the abandon of slumber. His night-black hair unraveled in a silken banner down his lean back.
The air was cool on her skin. Shivering, she shrugged into the sea-green gown. Zamiel’s cape lay nearby, and she laid it gently across his sleeping form. Cautiously, she climbed to her feet.
She recalled the cataclysm of violence that had riven the land—or seemed to—when Zamiel spoke the tongue of Heaven so near the Veil and the shifting border of the Summer Lands. She would hardly have been surprised to find devastation. Yet the night was still and silent around them, marred only by the distant flicker of dying fires.
Perhaps they’d been firmly in the mortal realm at the critical moment. Perhaps only her Faerie senses, wide open as Midsummer magick coursed between them, had been blasted by the Words.
As she stood swaying near the fire, a voice whispered her name.
She glanced toward Zamiel, but he was sleeping as deeply as ever. He’d shifted position, curling up beneath the cape and drawing a fold of warm fabric over his nose, which made her smile. No doubt he needed his rest. She must have been imagining she’d heard—
“Linnet,” the wind whispered from the beach below the cliff. “Little bird...”
Once she would have feared she was losing her mind, hearing voices. But the return of her memory had cured her of that fear. In its absence, she floated feather-light. She’d broken Morrigan’s spell—and how could she have forgotten Morrigan the terrible, or her dear Rhiannon?
Now, the knowledge of what had been done to her made her burn with righteous outrage.
She was through being afraid, frozen like an insect trapped in amber.
Firing with resolve, she caught up a glowing brand from the fire and strode toward the path that led to the beach—and the cave beyond.
She had little difficulty finding the path, even in darkness, for the sinking moon shed ample light. Once she’d found the winding path, her glowing brand made a fine torch. As she descended, placing her feet carefully to avoid a nasty fall, a tapestry of colorful memories unfurled before her eyes.
The woodland beauty of the Summer Lands and the ruined castle of Camelot, wrapped in the misty Veil.
Excalibur, the sword of fire, clasped by Arthur in his vault, where he dreamed his thousand-year dreams.
Silver-haired Rhiannon, fragile and fleeting as spring, and the stern Angel of Vengeance who loved her.
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Uriel.
“I’m not mad,” she whispered aloud, thrilling with the sheer joy of knowing it.
Sweet Jesus, what Elizabeth Tudor must think of her! She’d known Linnet for Rhiannon’s boon companion, and Linnet had denied ever knowing her. Once she explained to the Queen, surely she would be forgiven.
Of her Tudor heritage, Linnet would say naught. With no real evidence to back her claim, she posed no true threat to Elizabeth’s reign. With the Queen solidly behind her, she could marry a proper laird.
Except for the fact she no longer wanted one.
Zamiel was the man she loved, and he was leaving.
The silver crescent of the rock-strewn beach spread below her. On its fringes, she paused, scanning her surroundings. She saw nothing and no one, but something had called her. Nearby, the dark mystery of the cave beckoned.
Squaring her shoulders, she marched toward it. Time to put an end to this final mystery, the secret of her so-called magick.
She was halfway across the beach when a footfall crunched. Pulse quickening, she glanced up to see a stocky figure detach from the shadowy cliff. The dim glow of her torch played across a dark silhouette—thick shoulders armored in a steel-plated jerkin, the jutting head of a battleaxe strapped across a broad back.
Squinting in the darkness, she lifted her torch higher. For no good reason, her pulse was spiking, the sudden rush of blood to her head making her dizzy.
She cleared her throat, dry as ashes, and called, “Who’s there?”
“Alone at last, are ye, bitch?” a voice grated. Her stomach pitched and dropped to her shoes. “Made me wait long enough, didn’t ye? Ever the little tease. But ye’ll pay for that tonight, little bird. Oh, ye’ll pay.”
Little bird. The mocking endearment the fool in motley had used at the Maid and Minion. The name no one had ever used except in her childhood at Glencross. The name her brother Jasper had panted in her ear, mingled with foul profanity, his hot breath rank on her cheek as he fumbled her budding breasts and bit at her neck, until she managed to twist free and flee him.
Jasper was dead. The rockslide had taken him.
But they’d never found his body.
Sudden terror spurted through her, flowing like icy water over her skin. Gasping, she scrambled back, raising the burning brand between them. The light fell across his face—the out-thrust jaw, the beetling brow, the small pig-eyes set close in his coarse, brutal face.
Perhaps it wasn’t William Cecil who wanted her dead, though he’d sent guards to bring her back to court. How not? She was a Catholic peer who threatened his Queen. But he could have dispatched her any way he liked, with no need to hire fools in motley and French grooms to do his dirty work.
The man who wanted her dead was her own brother.
So many accidents had befallen her family. Colin, James, her wee nephew—and now it was her turn. Jasper had been missing for years, long since declared dead, and the kin who’d known him in his youth had perished. With the anointed Countess of Glencross alive to deny his identity—as Linnet would do in a heartbeat, rather than place herself beneath his authority—her brother would be discredited as an imposter.
With Linnet dead and no other claimants to contest or refute his claim, Jasper would likely inherit the title.
Desperately she strove to hide the frenzied panic that shrieked through her. Always, always, it was the sight of her fear that set him off.
Swallowing hard, she summoned a ghastly smile. “How...how remarkable to see you, brother. We’d all thought you dead. Where—where did you go? Where did you dwell these many years?”
“The same place ye did.” His thick lips parted in a lewd smile. “In the Summer Lands, aye? I followed ye through the waterfall, but I went spinning off to a different place. There’s many a Faerie realm behind the bloody Veil. And I couldn’t steer the way ye did, could I?”
“I suppose not,” she said faintly. “However did you pass the time?”
“How else? I passed it thrusting between the thighs of one willing wench after the next, suckling their sweet little teats, buggering their tight little arses till they squealed. They’d let ye do anything, those Faerie sluts, no Christ or piety or sham modesty to stay them. They’d milk me and swallow it down and beg me on their knees for more. And I’d pretend they were all you.”
Sick to her stomach, she reeled back from him. He grinned at her obvious distress. “Let’s see how ye do at it, shall we?”
She flung the torch at him hard, end over end, and fled without waiting to see where it struck. Behind her, he howled as her makeshift weapon found its mark.
She hiked her skirts around her knees and ran faster, angling across the beach toward the rocky path, feet slipping and sinking in the sand. If only she could come within earshot of the meadow, only so far, there were many who could aid her.
Best of all, there was Zamiel.
She strained to hear behind her, but heard only the ragged rasp of her breath and the sea crashing against the rocks. She’d nearly reached the path when a solid mass hurtled into her back and sent her sprawling, facedown across the sand.
She landed hard, arms out to break her fall. An object heavy as a loaded cart crashed down on her, driving the air from her lungs. Black spots swam before her eyes as she panted, desperate to fill her lungs, her driving imperative to breathe.
Blessed Bride, this was a nightmare. So hideously familiar, his stinking breath in her ear, the foul obscenities he was snarling, the paws fumbling beneath her to crush her breasts. Pain and fear brought tears swimming to her eyes.
“Ye’ve got tits like a cow,” he panted, kneading her, tongue crawling across her cheek like a slug. “Jesus, I can’t wait to get inside yer hot little cunny.”
If she’d had breath in her lungs, she would have vomited. Instead she fought to gather strength and wits for the battle of her life. She’d kill him before she let him do that to her.
As a last resort, she’d even kill herself.
Mistaking her struggle for breath as compliance, he groaned and released one throbbing breast to paw at her skirts. While he was thus diverted, she groped along the ground beneath her for any object she could use in her defense. Frantic, she found and discarded tiny pebbles and a fragment of driftwood, all inadequate for the purpose.
At last, her hand closed around the shell of some long-dead mollusk, wide as her palm, with a sharp jagged edge.
“Now I’ll make ye moan for it,” he panted in her ear, cloth tearing as he dragged her skirt up. Cool air kissed her bare legs. “Just the way ye moaned for that black-haired buck ye bedded up there, didn’t ye? I’ll have ye six ways to Sunday before I slit yer pretty throat.”
Only one of her hands was free, the other twisted and pinned beneath their combined weight. Awkwardly, she fumbled to grip her pitiable weapon, angling the jagged edge away from her, thinking through her limited options how to do the most damage.
Behind her, oblivious, Jasper jammed a hand between her thighs. Linnet sucked in her breath and struck back at him, hard, aiming for his face. The jagged shell raked across him.
He spat a foul curse and finally, blessedly, released her other breast. A glancing blow clubbed her scalp.
“Bitch!” he snarled. “Now I’m going to make it hurt.”
Linnet lifted her head and screamed for Zamiel.
* * *
Zamiel woke with a start. He lay naked, curled under his cape, in a bed of sweet-scented grass beneath an oyster-colored sky. Memories of the night washed over him in a rush.
Joshua’s Trumpet, the way Linnet had felt beneath him! The exquisite bliss of sheathing his aching length in her slick heat at last. Her sweet, tremulous cry when he claimed her.
A primal sense of satisfaction, purely male, surged through him.
Hell’s Bells, if this was how it felt, how did these mortals ever do anything else?
If the other angels knew how extraordinary this was, how glorious this sacrament that was surely
Jehovah’s gift to the mortals He loved, the entire heavenly host would be down here, making the same choice Zamiel just had.
An irreverent image sprang to mind of Metatron—unimaginably vast and tall by any mortal standard—lumbering through the Queen’s London, crushing entire districts beneath his colossal feet with every step.
He forced back a chuckle. He didn’t want to wake Linnet, who undoubtedly needed her restorative slumber after the ride he’d just given her.
Humming with satisfaction, he rolled lazily onto his side, just for the pleasure of watching her sleep.
Linnet wasn’t there.
Hastily he sat, the thick cape sliding down to puddle in his lap. She’d probably stepped away from the fire to attend the usual messy business of a mortal body, and he didn’t want to embarrass her by charging after.
Nor did he wish to leave her alone for long. He needed to warn her what Gabriele had said about that witch Morrigan le Fay and her designs.
Gabriele. He closed his eyes and groaned. He’d missed their rendezvous, and she would surely know why.
He would have liked to explain things to her, say farewell at least. After all, she’d been his only friend in Heaven, and the thought of never seeing her again grieved him to a surprising degree. Too, if pressed to name any angel in Heaven as solitary and alone as he, the Angel of Mercy would get his vote.
Who knew? She too might benefit from a holiday inside a mortal body.
Sighing, he turned back toward the fire. There, lounging comfortably against a fallen log, sprawled the elegant figure of Lucifer.
Zamiel gave a violent start, his heart lurching.
No reason for it, really. The Prince of Devils presented his usual impeccable appearance, the perfect likeness of a well-to-do idler. His lithe frame was encased in a cream velvet doublet gleaming with baroque pearls, his trunk hose slashed with gold. A stiff lace ruff framed his lean, triangular face like a halo. A Venetian pearl the size of his knuckle danced from one earlobe. His black curls were perfumed with a costly fragrance that didn’t quite disguise the acrid scent of scorched wood emanating from his person.
Laura Navarre - [The Magick Trilogy 02] Page 27
