That was the secret that everyone who knew of it kept hidden. Avellana could bring back the dead, but at a massive cost.
Nor could Vinni gauge the future path revealed by such a motive. He couldn’t even find the wake a terrible chain of events should show. It was like trying to grab a quick and slippery water snake by the tip of its tail. Unlike most of the FirstFamilies Council, he didn’t believe they’d caught all the Traditionalist Stance fanatics. He thought one or two more might lurk hidden within the Residences of the highest Nobles.
Avellana trailed fingers down his cheek, and just that touch had him hard and ready for her again. “You went away in your head, Muin.”
“I don’t want to talk about this now.”
Again she frowned. “You rarely want to talk about our marriage.”
“It’s boring.”
She raised her brows and he conceded, “The ritual itself might be all right, and the result is highly anticipated and desired.”
“The rituals—we will be blessed by my spiritual advisers, too.”
“Yes, and that slowed down the pace of our joining considerably.” Just the notion depressed his lust.
“Muin,” she warned.
“I accept that we will spend days of ritual on the wedding.”
“And after each of the formal ceremonies, we will have a big party,” she pointed out in a satisfied tone. “With food and dancing and cheerful conversation and blessings. The blessings of many people who love us and wish us happy.”
“That is a plus.” His gaze wandered down, but she wore an opaque nightshirt and he couldn’t see her breasts or the rosy nipples he liked so much.
“You agree?” she pressed.
“Huh?”
“Our handfasting and wedding, within two and a half months.”
Now he concentrated on her mouth, watched the movement of her lips, barely heard her words. His body satiated, his mind began to drift into sleep, and he sensed her thoughts slowing, too.
Though the bond between them stayed throbbing and solid and profound, her dream self began to thin as she slipped into sleep, her eyes blinking slowly at him.
“One . . . last . . . question, Muin.”
“Yes, dear heart?”
As always the affectionate term made her smile.
“Are you trying to control me by sex? So I will stay here on Mona Island? And you’ll come and we’ll make love and HeartBond and all?”
The questions sharpened his brain. He hadn’t made all those promises, had he? “Could I control you with sex?”
“No.” Her eyes narrowed. “I should be angry with you, but I am too tired. I will be later.”
“I know,” he murmured, and watched her vanish, and didn’t know if she’d heard him or not.
Four
Thirty-five minutes after the dream loving with Muin, Avellana had awakened. The more she thought of the past, the more irritated she became, the anger she had suppressed for so long beginning to break free. She loved him, but he hurt her. Time and again.
She examined every situation she could remember. Vaguely she recalled the first time her Family packed up and left due to Muin’s fear for her—when she had been five years old. That threat had come from the Black Magic Cult. Her parents had not listened to Muin, but to the guardsman in charge.
Since that guardsman also had a prophetic Flair, she believed that threat had been solid and predictable, and extremely dangerous to her.
She recalled the series of accidents during the time of her first Passage, those dreamquests to free her psychic power, her Flair. Those incidents must be the basis of Muin’s fear. He had not told her, at that time, that danger threatened, and she had escaped death by the slimmest of margins . . . twice.
Perhaps every time he had experienced a vision since, it had come with the same intensity, so he could not truly differentiate between what might be minor or major. It all felt the same to him.
So now every time he felt a twinge of peril for her, he overreacted and overprotected? That could be a viable theory.
She rose and began to pace. Her FamCat gave her a dirty look, then abandoned her to hunt . . . or at least sleep in beds of flowers that did not grow in Druida City.
All night she thought and paced. She considered her relationship with her HeartMate and how she and Muin would work through all the problems that seemed to multiply in her mind. He had not agreed to marry within the two and a half months she wanted. Perhaps she should have doubts about that, also, and rebalancing their relationship so she felt like an equal to him.
The next morning, still confused about her future with Muin, Avellana kept a pleasant expression on her face as she said farewells to her friends before leaving for the ferry from Mona Island to Druida City.
A few meters away from the town and tromping down the road to the ferry, wanting so much to be home, Avellana freed the rein she had kept on her resurging emotions.
She had never been so angry at Muin. Irritated, yes, there were bound to be clashes when you grew up with a loved one. And in every one of those clashes that regarded her safety, she had given in. Because she believed he had seen danger to her and helped her avoid it. She had been so very grateful.
Now she constricted the bond between them to as narrow as—as narrow as one of Flora’s whiskers. She didn’t want to share her anger with him, or want him to be able to gauge her emotions and find some way to talk her around to his view of matters.
He had not taken her “no” for an answer in the temple, had come to her in her dreams not only for a loving connection but to try to make her reconsider her decision.
Nor did she want to feel his fear or anger.
Flora, Vinni’s Fam, says he dreams of your lifeless body often, her FamCat, Rhyz, said mentally as he walked before her, waving his tail. That is not enjoyable for him or her. You know this because you feel it, too, his sense of the danger to you. The ginger tabby stopped and looked back at her. We FEEL this, too, his nightmares and his danger. Rhyz’s muzzle had scrunched. Don’t we?
Shifting her shoulders and releasing some irritation, she replied telepathically, Yes, we do. But he took all those nightmares as TRUE, fact, when he did not KNOW whether the harm to me might be a hurt cuticle or death by the plague. Every single instance he treated as if he KNEW I would perish when he could not ascertain how great the danger to me might be.
Rhyz sat in the middle of the path and rumbled. It is a bad thing, thinking you will lose a companion.
“Oh, Rhyz!” She stuck her satchel over her shoulder with a spell and picked up the heavy cat. He purred and licked the underside of her chin. She did not forget that he had been FamCat to Gib Ginger. Whom the Black Magic Cult had drained and murdered. They had drained Rhyz, too.
Avellana buried her face in his fur, smelled the thyme he had slept in the night before.
I do not want to lose another Fam! her cat shouted in her mind. He rubbed his head against her face. I have put much effort in keeping you safe, he scolded. I was there all three times you suffered Passage to free your Flair. I experienced some of the dreamquests with you. He huffed and his whiskers tickled her.
“I know you did,” she said, her voice muffled against him.
I do fear for you, also, he said in a matter-of-fact voice. FamMan Vinni fears for you, too.
He fears too much and knows too little and guesses too wrong.
Does he? We are awake this morning before him and he is in that nightmare again, is he not?
Oh, yes, now that she opened her link with Muin, choking fear poured through their bond. Fear for her.
We cannot live like this, Avellana said. Muin and Flora and you and me. We must control and mitigate this fear.
I spoke to him harsh and true last night. Like I talk to you now. But he is the Prophet of Celta, how wrong can he be? asked Rhyz. He hopped fro
m her arms and ran down the trail to the dock and onto the ferry. There he paused and sniffed at the people who had already boarded.
She should have known everyone on that ferry, as she knew everyone in the town on Mona Island and had even met those artists who preferred a hermit’s life away from the village. But a stranger stood near the rail, with his head turned toward the road. She and Rhyz had split off from that road and taken the closer footpath. Now she faded back into the deep shadows of the trees and waited and watched.
The unknown man grinned down at Rhyz, stooped and petted him, but continued to stare up the road to the ferry, as if scanning for . . . her? Then his gaze shifted to the less well-defined path and he peered in her direction. Her heart had picked up pace—due to Muin’s fear as he thrashed in a dream, due to Rhyz’s anxiety. She touched the lock of her hair that had gone white during her Passage. That marked her as different. Easy to see.
She had wanted to take the ferry to Druida City, as most people did. She liked feeling normal and tried to put herself in as many experiences as she could to do that. And she enjoyed sailing, being on the ocean.
Traveling by ferry no longer seemed wise. No one in her Family, nor Muin, knew her teleportation range. Even she did not. She did not like taking risks and had not experimented to see how far she might teleport. But she knew she could reach D’Hazel Residence in Druida City, carrying Rhyz. Or even Muin’s castle outside the city.
Her Fam teleported into her arms. I don’t like that man. He smells bad! And he snuck on the ferry in Druida City and came here this morning. I smelled it on him. Druida City bar and liquor. Let’s go home!
She thought she heard an angry shout, and the man ran off the ferry. So she teleported away, landing on the pad in the bottom of the square tower of T’Vine Residence that held Muin’s suite. Avellana stood there, considering the situation, heart pounding hard from the whiff of fear Rhyz had transmuted to her and the exertion of teleporting so far so quickly, without the preparation of recalling the light of the chamber and the new furniture arrangement and counting down . . .
Before she stepped off the pad, the private door to Muin’s apartments upstairs opened with a near-explosive rush and he strode to her, his face forbidding. “What happened?”
Yowl! That came from Rhyz, starting at a low rumble and rising to a high shriek that no doubt sounded beyond human hearing. Her FamCat leapt from her arms, raced around the room. We are home. We are home. He stopped in front of Muin and jumped to his shoulder, licked his ear. I smelled a bad man on the ferry, so we came right here!
“A bad man,” Muin said in a too-even tone.
Curving her fingers around the strap of her satchel, she said, “He did seem to show an interest in me.”
“Can you describe this person?” His voice remained still too uninflected.
With a sniff, Avellana flicked her fingers and created a three-dimensional mural that hung in the dim light.
I saw him closer, Rhyz said, then formed a picture in his mind and sent it to them both. With a few alterations, Avellana modified the holo and muttered a word to finalize and save the image. “I have set the call Word of the hologram to Suspect,” she stated stiffly. “The mural itself is attached to where your fingers are on the door frame this moment.”
With narrowed eyes, Muin studied the holo. “It appears this person has some sort of enhancement spell on his features. In fact, he looks like the recently deceased Arvense Equisetum.”
“The Equisetums belonged to the Traditionalist Stance movement.”
“Most of them, yes.” Muin seemed to be speaking through clenched teeth. “So this guy might know them well enough to copy their features.”
“Oh.” She practiced her breathing. “The man’s frame would be the same, though.”
“Not much to go on.”
The bad man came from here, Druida City, on the first ferry to dock at Mona Island, Rhyz informed Muin.
His gaze flashed to hers, smoldering. “Mona Island is small and everyone knows everyone else, and the artists are of a more progressive bent and less likely to harbor secret Traditionalist Stance fanatics.”
“I am sure you had every single person on Mona Island investigated before you sent me there,” Avellana shot back.
All GreatLord manner, Muin inclined his head.
“I will not go away again.” She hissed out a breath, felt her expression solidify to stony. “If they, whoever my enemies—”
“Our enemies.”
“—our enemies are, they apparently had no difficulty finding me at Mona Island.”
“But they waited to strike on the ferry. They didn’t try to infiltrate the small island artistic community. You could be safe there. I could hire a bodyguard—”
“You are not listening to me. I will not be told ‘go there, come here’ anymore.” She gained more height as each vertebra of her spine snapped into place, stiff with anger. “I want my home. You have never lived anywhere other than your home, have you? You do not know how it is to learn a new area, put yourself out for new people and understand their differences, sleep on a different bedsponge. You do not know what it is to ache for your own rooms in the house you were born in, to wish to see your Family every day.” She sent him a furious glance. “To wish to see your HeartMate every day.”
“You’re wrong in that. The ache for my HeartMate is in my blood and bone. I long to see her every day.”
The heat of his yearning, at this moment, shocked her, but she set it aside, leaned forward as if she could impress her words on him as she locked gazes with him. She expanded the link, mental, emotional to the fullest and sent him all her emotions: the anger, the feeling of betrayal, the hint of despair that she would have to fight him, pitting her wish to organize her own life against his fear for her.
“There is no Hopeful chapel on Mona Island, no spiritual community of like minds. I answered thousands of curious questions from the creatives there, but not one person expressed an interest in joining the Intersection of Hope. I want to be here, in Druida City, where there is a goodly congregation of Hopefuls. Where there is a gorgeous Cathedral of my faith just outside the city. I want to work on and finish my holo murals for my faith that I left unfinished. The most important work of my life and I left it. I am done listening to you, Muin.”
She took a big breath and said something she had never imagined she would. “I do not wish to see you for a while, Muin. Not until I am less angry with you.”
Their bond roiled with wildness, with the wish from them both to act rashly, accuse each other, say nasty things. She must leave before either of them did or said something that would send cracks through their relationship and make it harder to mend.
Meeting his gaze, she said, “Do not contact me for a week, so that we might cool down from our rage with each other, Muin. And absolutely do not tell my Family of this latest feeling of yours.”
“Don’t mock my feelings, Avellana.”
She bit her lip. “I am not. I do not wish you to speak to my parents ever again about any danger you sense to me.”
“Or?” He stayed stiff and still. “Are you issuing an ultimatum, Avellana? What will you do?”
Her head jerked aside but she knew he had noted the tears in her eyes. “You,” she replied. “You are the one who does the ultimatums, makes the hard lines in our relationship that I have not been able to gainsay or cross.”
She waved her arms, understood she would shortly lose control and shriek at her beloved. Not acceptable behavior.
“Rhyz?” she asked in a choked voice.
With a growl and his own irritated emotions pummeling her, the cat leapt to her shoulder and the spell-shelf there to hold him. In another instant, she teleported home.
And sank into her favorite chair that smelled of her and no one else, saw the deliberately calm tinted pale-blue walls of her sitting room, all th
e small treasures she had collected over the years and could not take with her.
The tears she had held back for long minutes trickled down her face. Rhyz hopped to the fat curved top of the plump chair and rumbled a loud purr. We are HOME!
Avellana sniffed, picked up a tapestry pillow her sister had made her last year since she had lost the original on her travels, and squeezed it. Lavender scent wafted around her.
“Welcome home, SecondDaughter Avellana,” D’Hazel Residence said in his deep male voice.
“Thank you, Residence,” she sniffled.
“We have been notified that a suspicious person might have been awaiting you on the ferry, and we have the holo of him, which we forwarded to the guardsmen of Druida City, along with the fact that the facial features were modeled after the late Arvense Equisetum.”
Muin. She had asked him not to tell her Family, and when had he ever put her wants over her safety? Wait, no, she had not requested that he ignore the man on the ferry. She had asked that he would not inform her Family of his premonitions. His unknown percentages feelings.
Rhyz dropped his paw from the top of the chair to her shoulder, extending his claws so they went straight through the material to prick her skin.
She understood his gesture. Yes, Muin might be right that they had enemies who targeted her.
Because she was different and some people considered her a freak.
Because of her powerful Flair that had led to the huge secret.
Because of her religion, which the Traditionalist Stance did not like, simply because the founder of that movement had coveted what a Hopeful member had. Had sent a mob after the Family of that member.
Now through sheer stupidity, all who continued to stand with the discredited members of the Traditionalist Stance felt that people who did not believe like they did were evil.
She would always be different.
Would she be killed because she was?
Five
Heart Sight Page 4
