Adrian

by Heather Grothaus

  He gained her side then and set the remains of his belongings in the seat of the chair before leaning over the only object in the room besides the candle and wooden furnishings. He slid the flame closer so that he could make out the marks on the cover, but there were no words—only swirls of age-softened black.

  “What’s in it?” he asked, his fingertips skimming the designs, his eyes seeking to form a logical pattern from the marks.

  “Everything,” Maisie said simply and quietly.

  He turned his head to look at her. Her eyes were raking over his skin, and he could feel the twist of his guts with the intimacy wrapped around them. In that instant, the library—if one were so generous as to refer to the chamber as such—ceased to matter.

  “Everything?” he prompted, more sharply than he’d intended, but he needed to distract himself from his desire for her.

  “Wyldonna’s history. Stories. The lineage of the crown.” Then, to his amazement, she actually stepped closer to him, placing her hand on the curve of his shoulder to urge him to stand upright.

  He did so, turning toward her, and she reached out her hands, her fingers skimming the marks on his chest and stomach, his forearms, much in the same manner as he had been stroking the now forgotten tome on the table. It was as if she was coming to him in a dream once more, touching him as he’d wished she would.

  “Maisie,” he said in a low voice, wanting to warn her.

  “I canna help it,” she said, and indeed her voice sounded mystified. “I’ve wanted to look at you, to touch you, since first seeing your marks on the crawler. Doona deny me, Adrian. I’m the queen, after all. I must see. You must let me. It’s the magic.”

  He reached up and grasped both her wrists in his hands and then jerked her to him. If he wasn’t very careful now, he would lose control. “It’s not magic. And you mustn’t be so bold. I have been without a woman for a long time. Where is your fear of me now, in this room with no one to protect you?”

  “I still fear you,” she confessed, and then her tongue wet her lips as she looked up at him. “But nae for the reasons you hope. You are the only one who will protect me.”

  “Shall I kiss you, then?” he challenged. “Will that give you reason to fear me?”

  She shook her head and turned her face up, daring him. “In truth, it’s the only thing that shall make me feel safe.”

  Adrian felt his brows draw together even as his left hand released her wrist to pull her against him fully. “That isn’t logical, Maisie. For should I dare, I shan’t stop with only a kiss.”

  “I know,” she breathed and let her hand slide over his ribs to his spine. “It’s meant to be, though, Adrian. Let it.”

  He tasted her bottom lip and sensation exploded behind his eyes. “We are meant to make love?” he pressed, feeling his control slipping away like silk through a keyhole. “You can’t believe that.”

  Maisie nodded. “Your marks,” she said, and then pressed her lips to each side of his mouth before whispering against his lips, “Match the book.”

  A hint of alarm went through his body then, even as Maisie kissed him fully and his will to deny her disappeared. He grasped her tiny waist and returned her attention even as his mind rioted.

  It was impossible.

  He wanted her so badly.

  The island was rotting his brain.

  She wanted him just as badly.

  Maisie pulled away from him only far enough to speak again. “Come with me to my room.”

  He shook his head. “I suspect you’ve a dragon in your room. And mine is closer.” Then he kissed her again.

  When he pulled away from her next, it was to bend and sweep her legs over his arm. He strode to the door and turned so that she could reach behind her and open it, and then he was carrying her through the corridor as she ran her hands through this hair, pressing her mouth to his jaw.

  Adrian’s vison had blurred at the edges, and only a small circle of the way before him was clear. He didn’t know how he navigated the castle, but he made the turns instinctively, bounding up stairs with Maisie in his arms as if she weighed no more than a feather. He felt stronger then than he ever had the whole of his life, as if he could carry her to the ends of the earth if that was where their bed lay.

  But in only moments they were in his borrowed chamber. He kicked the door closed behind him and then crossed to his bed, where he lay her down on the mattress and followed. She was already reaching for him as he bent his face to her décolleté, his lips running over her perfect skin, breathing deeply of her scent, his nostrils flaring like a wild beast.

  No sooner had the likeness occurred to him than he was tearing at her beautiful gown, snapping the closure of her cape with both hands rather than attend to the delicate frog. And Maisie did not protest.

  For a brief moment, he wondered whether he had gone mad. Or if some strange magic had indeed taken hold of him, rendering him incapable of coherent thought. The woman beneath him was not some cheap fancy to use for his ease; he would not leave her in the morn with a coin and a friendly farewell. She was a queen, and they would be in each other’s proximity until the business Adrian had been summoned to attend to was finished. But that thought only increased his desire as it occurred to him that he could have her again on the morrow, and the day after, and the next. . . .

  She pulled his head down so that their mouths met, and Adrian continued to pull at her clothes while they kissed, his hands pressing the flesh he found, smooth and warm and soft. He’d not felt such base urgency in years—perhaps he’d never felt it to such an extreme. All he knew was that he must possess this woman soon—now.

  He didn’t bother to remove the little clothing he was still wearing, or his boots. Rather, he removed his hand from her while their mouths were still joined and loosened the laces of his chausses as she made little anxious sounds in the back of her throat, urging him on. In an instant he had freed himself and then jerked her leg higher, climbing over her. He entered her with little caution, pulling away from her mouth and giving a shout at her readiness, even as he pushed at the resistance he felt.

  He was her first.

  And so he stroked her face, kissed her temple tenderly, but still she did not protest or refuse him. Instead, she urged him in his race, her fingernails raking the skin over his buttocks, but he doubted he could have stopped had the room been afire. Her scent, the scent of their joining, enveloped him, set off shuddering white light behind his eyes, which only grew brighter and brighter until it was also a roar of noise in his ears like an ever-falling wave. He was drowning in her body, in the feel of her around him, and in that moment, he would have forsaken anything he had ever held dear for what he was experiencing.

  He could feel his time rushing over him, his pace increasing, and still Maisie encouraged him, her delicate fingers running up his stomach and over his chest, locking together around his neck and pulling herself up against him. He looked down at her and saw that her eyes were open, watching him brazenly, her lips parted as her head rocked on the coverlet.

  “Adrian,” she whispered.

  It pushed him over the edge and he hung there suspended, joined with Maisie Lindsey in a space that was neither of the earth or the heavens but somehow existed apart from even time. The roar in his brain faded like rain moving away over the land, to be replaced with his loud, pounding heartbeat and another similar thrum but smaller, like a bird’s wings.

  He realized it was her heart, and he could hear it—feel it—in his own veins.

  It startled him so that he slid from her and backed off the bed, swaying on his feet and panting as he looked at her, so bedraggled and nude before him. It was only his own heartbeat that jarred his vision now, but he was not soothed. She was watching him solemnly, and in that moment, Adrian Hailsworth was unable to access his logic, his reason. He could not explain what had just happened between him and Maisie; he could not explain what he felt even now, looking at the queen whose virginity he’d taken so swiftly and
callously.

  But he knew he wanted her again already. And if he continued to stand at her bedside, it would perhaps only be a moment before he was atop her once more.

  Adrian began retying his chausses.

  She didn’t say anything, and neither did Adrian as he turned and left the chamber, closing the door behind him.

  Chapter 15

  The candle had not even spent itself a quarter of the way when Adrian returned to Wyldonna’s pathetic library. He shut himself inside and moved to the chair to slide his arms into the sleeves of his destroyed shirt. It couldn’t cover his chest, but it gave him some measure of warmth against the chill that had overcome him since leaving Maisie Lindsey’s warm body.

  He wondered suddenly—absurdly—if, in the moment he donned his shirt, she had pulled his coverlet over her body, feeling the chill as he had.

  He sought to push the image of her lying on his bed, ready for him to take her again, from his mind. He couldn’t process what had happened between them now; his thoughts were a jumble. The only thing he knew to do when in that state was to order his ideas with fact.

  Adrian piled the scraps of his satchel and belongings on a far corner of the table before pulling the thick, dusty tome toward him and sitting on the chair. He adjusted the candle’s position and ran his left palm over the leather cover of the book, studying the designs for a moment, reading them with his fingertips. And then he looked down at his abdomen.

  Maisie was right—the patterns were remarkably similar. He held out his arms, sliding what was left of the sleeves to his elbows; there, too, the lines and swirls matched. He knew a moment of unease but shook it off. Nothing was proven yet. The designs could be of ancient origin, well known and widely used at one time but forgotten now.

  He took hold of the edge of the book’s cover—it appeared to be wood wrapped in leather—and pulled it open. The first page was creamy tinged vellum, covered in a rendering of a large castle, boasting six turrets that appeared to be perched at the top of a mountain. But even for the similarity of construction, this could not be Wyldonna Castle; the palace in the drawing stretched to either side of the main structure in two massive wings ringed with smaller towers, and a gatehouse complete with portcullis in the foreground.

  Adrian’s eyes went to a small bit of Latin text beneath the drawing.

  For the good of all living things, both in spirit and in flesh.

  He turned the page and was presented with a small colorful drawing of what appeared to be a red cat inside a little square in the upper left corner of the page. He translated the text next to the image: of the Cat Sìth, from the Eastern tribes, creature of revenge. Red of skin, black innards. Feeds on warm flesh. Protector of the crown. Prideful. Loyal unto death.

  Adrian’s eyes studied the little drawing once more. It could only be an afternhanger.

  He scanned the next page, where another small rendering decorated the corner—this one of a brown hairy-looking creature, accompanied by another description of origin, traits.

  Adrian flipped through several thick pages: centaur, elf, dragon, giant, griffin, kelpie—Adrian saw countless creatures he was familiar with only through myth, and even more descriptions and likenesses of those he’d never even heard of before.

  It was like a bestiary of sorts. But that was only the first part of the book. Midway through, it seemed the tome was taken over by poetry, mythology, parables. He skimmed and turned pages mindlessly, taking in a word or two along with the intricate illustrations, until his eyes caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a drawing of a man.

  A nude man with a shock of dark hair, his skin covered in swirling patterns of black. Adrian swallowed the lump in his throat as he read the words beneath the sketch.

  A stranger came to fall the Towers

  And scatter all the Kin.

  The King met battle with the foes

  But naught could he win.

  For his crown was flung across the seas,

  Stolen in the Blue.

  The imprisoned Man so took her hand

  And commanded that she rule.

  Out of the mist she returned unseen,

  And none could ken where she had been.

  Beware the Painted Man, my child,

  Who trades the death of the Queen . . .

  This was the legend the people of Wyldonna held him to. Adrian had to admit he could see the correlation—even down to the idea that he had been a man imprisoned. Now the gasp he’d heard upon taking Maisie’s hand and quitting the village made sense. But how long ago had this rhyme been set down? A hundred years or more? Surely Malcolm and the rest of the folk didn’t actually think he had come to Wyldonna to kill Maisie so that rule could be returned to her brother?

  Adrian frowned and turned the page so that he would not have to look at the crude drawing of the man whose skin was decorated so similarly to his own.

  What he discovered next in the book appeared to be a lineage of sorts rendered in art, with another drawing of a six-turreted castle and a web of names leading from windows and doors, from stone to stone. He looked closely at the names, noting that the dates shared similar patterns. Coronations, perhaps? They all seemed to occur exclusively during four months of the year.

  The months of the solstices and equinoxes.

  Adrian turned the page and saw yet another castle, but this one was missing the gatehouse, although the names continued.

  The next page—the east wing was smaller by half.

  The next page—the turrets grew taller, as it seemed two entire floors had been removed from the uppermost levels of the castle.

  Adrian kept going—page after page after page—until he came to the last drawing and realized it was an accurate depiction of what Wyldonna looked like at that very moment. He thought the lineage contained only one name—Malcolm—until he saw the parenthesis after the king’s title.

  Maighread, d.

  Adrian looked up from the page again with a shiver. If anyone could attest that Maisie Lindsey’s blood ran hot in her veins that day, it was Adrian. He looked back at her name closely and realized the date.

  It was the spring equinox, yet more proof that the legend was false. It was almost exactly a year since the last spring festival, and Maighread Lindsey was still very much alive. The next would mark Glayer Felsteppe’s return to Wyldonna.

  He thought for a moment. Maisie had taken the throne from Malcolm on one of the only days Felsteppe could have found the island, the winter solstice.

  Perhaps the lineage was not a history but a foretelling?

  Adrian shut the book with a dusty slam.

  That was impossible. There were no such things as prophecies, magic predictions—fate.

  But what of the things he had seen on the island that he would have heretofore pronounced impossible? The creatures and beings here; they couldn’t really exist in the manner that everyone claimed, could they? They were nothing more than an anomaly of breeding. Of isolation.

  Weren’t they?

  Adrian stood from the chair and looked down at the dusty book as if it might at once come alive and attack him. What of the changes he had felt coming over himself since arriving at Wyldonna? His increase in strength and health, his immunity to the elements. His boldness in confronting the wild beasts of the island. Nothing more than him regaining his manhood after such mental torture and physical injury of course.

  But what if they weren’t? What if everything Maisie Lindsey had ever told him, shown him, was true?

  What if Adrian’s presence insured that the queen of Wyldonna would die?

  Saving Wyldonna is the legacy I will leave for Malcolm and for our people.

  His mind could not accept it. He had spent the bulk of his life gathering the knowledge to dispel such superstitions. There were undeniable laws that governed the actions and characteristics of every living thing on earth—and of the elements, of nature itself. It was the old ways that sought to explain away what was yet unknown by attributing it to
magic or fate or some ancient curse, not the learned way. Not Adrian’s way.

  Why had it been he who had come to Wyldonna and not Roman Berg, as was originally intended?

  How could the marks Song had applied so painstakingly on Adrian’s skin over the course of months match so precisely to an ancient tome found on a forgotten Scots isle?

  What of the mythical creatures contained in Wyldonna’s bestiary—some of which Adrian had read about during his courses of study in mythology? He had always thought them parables or weak attempts to explain that which the ancients had not yet discovered, but were those scholars of old then fools? The great minds of history who had laid the groundwork for modern academics—were they naught but superstitious alchemists? Magicians?

  Of course not, Adrian thought to himself. They were geniuses. Forerunners in the art of science.

  Why, then, was Adrian so very certain that Wyldonna’s ways were impossible, while at the same time he could not come up with a logical explanation for them? Why was the light of the sun warm? He didn’t know. Some thought it was magic, but that was impossible because it couldn’t be proven.

  But Adrian realized he could not disprove it either.

  If he was truly the scholar he claimed to be, the only logical thing to do was to consider the evidence as it was presented. By ignoring what his own eyes could see before him, what he could touch and study, he was behaving exactly as the superstitious fools whom he held in contempt. He had been unable to explain Wyldonna’s mysterious characteristics, and so he had dismissed them as impossible even when their existence was undeniable by his own standards.

  Could he forgive himself if he continued to pretend that the events that were unfolding around him were impossible and Maisie Lindsey died because of it?

  Adrian gathered the remnants of his satchel and its contents beneath one arm and then took Wyldonna’s history from the table. He had reached the door and opened it before realizing he’d forgotten to blow out the candle, and so he turned back.