In the confines of a secluded room, with no one but her teacher and lover watching, she could manipulate objects. When she found herself in battle, with distractions all around her and Sian many miles away, would she still be able to concentrate enough to call upon these new gifts? Or would she be helpless as a kitten?
Ariana had told the emperor of her plans, and she’d shared with him the date of her departure. Her army would march on the morning before the next full moon. She had not yet shared that date with Sian. She didn’t want that creeping deadline to come between them.
Now that the date was a mere two days away, she knew it was time to tell him she was leaving. Best to save the news for tonight, when they were lying in bed side by side.
She was going to miss him so much.
Before she left, she would like to have a look at the written Prophesy of the Firstborn Sian protected so fiercely. He said there were words and meanings still to decipher, and dismissed her offers of help. As he was her lover and teacher, she knew his expressions well. Even though he was stoic, his expressions guarded, she saw the light of fear in his eyes. There was something in the prophesy he did not want her to see.
A knock at the doorway interrupted their lessons, just as Ariana was perfecting—or so she hoped—the casting of a field of protective energy around her body. Sian seemed quite excited by the prospect of her making use of this magical armor, and in truth it eased her mind considerably. Not that anything would protect her entirely, but every edge she could find would be helpful.
She dropped the shield, answered the knock with an ordinary, “Enter,” and it opened on one of her brother’s best friends.
Merin was like Duran, in that he was charming, dedicated, and quite popular with the ladies of the palace. He had curling dark hair, nicely shaped dark eyes, and very tanned skin. While he was not as tall as Sian, or as well built, he was definitely a fine example of the male species.
“You asked for me,” Merin said as he closed the door behind him. He cast a suspicious glance at the enchanter. Not only was he, like many of the soldiers, wary of excessive magic, he was also Duran’s good friend. As a good friend, he was obviously experiencing a moment of protective ire.
Did the residents of the palace gossip about Ariana’s relationship with Sian? Once she might’ve cared, but today she had more on her mind than propriety and protective friends.
“Yes,” she responded. “I did ask for you. Thank you for coming.” She glanced over her shoulder to catch a glimpse of Sian. “Enchanter, would you leave us?”
Sian did not hesitate before responding calmly, “No.”
“This does not concern you,” she argued.
His only answer was an imperious lift of his eyebrows.
“Fine.” She had hoped to tell him later, when they were alone, but as he insisted on remaining where he was not needed... now would have to do, she supposed. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know she would be leaving soon.
She faced the sentinel, and gathered to her every speck of confidence she had built in the time Sian had been her teacher. “I have been called to fight a war with a darkness I do not yet understand. In two days, I will leave the palace with an army. We—”
“Two days?” Sian thundered. “We have not discussed this. It is too soon.”
She looked at her lover. “This is why I asked you to wait outside.”
Merin momentarily glanced at the floor. To hide a smile? Or in an embarrassed attempt to completely ignore the exchange? If the sentinel did not already know there was more between Ariana and her teacher than lessons, he knew now.
Sian crossed his arms over his chest and his jaw went hard. His lips thinned. His eyes sparked.
She ignored him, and returned her attentions to Merin. “I will take an army with me when I go. My army, Merin. If you are agreeable, I would like you to lead the men.”
“But... but...” It was out of character for Merin to stammer, but he did so. “I am no general, and... and what of Duran?”
“Duran will not return from his journey until I am well gone, and I want no generals. I want seasoned warriors who will answer the command of a woman. I want good men who will fight evil, no matter what form it presents to us. I trust you, Merin. Will you join me?” She knew it was a request no self-respecting sentinel would refuse. “Will you follow the command of a woman?”
He bowed crisply. “I am at your service.”
She sighed in relief. Next to Duran, she trusted Merin above all other men in the palace. But for Sian, of course, who was no soldier and who had promised more than once that when she left here, he would not be with her.
“Your first task is to raise forty of the best warriors to fight with us.”
“Forty?” Merin asked. “In two days?”
“Yes,” Ariana said confidently. “Forty men, in addition to yourself. Is that task beyond your capabilities?”
“No, of course not,” he answered arrogantly. “What of the emperor? Will he allow me to take his best sentinels for your army?”
“He has promised me anything I need for this journey.”
Merin nodded. “I must proceed immediately if I am to gather all you require in two days.”
He left the room, his step a bit lighter than it had been when he’d entered. A true soldier loved nothing more than a good fight. Good heavens, what was she asking of Merin and the men he would collect?
“Why the pretty boy?” Sian asked softly, his lips very near her ear.
She laughed at his description of Merin. “He’s Duran’s friend, and I trust him.”
“So you said.” A long, strong finger raked across her shoulder. “I’m surprised you would choose someone so young as the leader of your militia. Doesn’t he rather remind you of a puppy, with those lavish curls and those wide, dark eyes? I believe the Minister of Finance’s wife has just such a puppy. Or is it his mistress?”
Ariana spun to face Sian, a smile spreading across her face. “You’re jealous.”
“I am not.”
“You are.” Did he forget that she was an empath? That she could feel what he felt?
“I suppose a woman as passionate as you are will require a suitable young companion for your journey,” he said. As he spoke, he touched her in a possessive way, lightly fondling her breasts as only a man who truly knows a woman can. Her nipples peaked in response, and her inner muscles clenched. “Your trusted friend certainly seems sturdy enough.”
“Do you think me so needy that I would choose a new lover while the old one is still in my bed?”
“As you remind me so often, time is running out. Life is short, and we must make the best of every moment.”
“Yes, we must,” she said. Ariana slipped out of Sian’s grasp too easily, and hopped up on the table so that her rear end touched the edge of the inlaid map of Columbyana. Without taking his eyes from hers, Sian flicked his fingers in the direction of the door, and the latch fell into place.
His purple eyes flashed. Ariana had seen shadows and darkness there, but on occasion she also saw fire. She saw fire now, and he moved toward her, his every step graceful and masculine and strong.
Was it worth a call to battle if that was the only way she could know these days? In the beginning, knowing what was to come had filled her with dread and a certainty that she would not survive, but Sian gave her hope. He walked to the edge of the table, and she wrapped her thighs around him. “When this war is over, how will I find you?”
The length of his body twitched very slightly. “Let’s not speak of what’s to come. Not now.”
“I will find you,” she said, reaching down to caress his erection through the plain black trousers he wore. “I’m a witch, you know,” she teased. “A very powerful one.”
“I’m very well aware.”
“You cannot hide from me.”
“What man would be so foolish as to try?”
He eased her back onto the table, followed her, and pushed up her skirts. Until now, they h
ad cleanly separated the two parts of their relationship. This room, the hours of their days, was strictly for lessons and preparation for war. Her bedroom, the hours of nighttime, was for making love. For touching and laughing and sex.
But now time was truly short, and no opportunity should be wasted.
The table beneath her was hard and cold, unlike her bed, but the kiss Sian gave to her was as wonderful as any other, and when he teased her entrance with his fingers, the reaction was as acute as in any other encounter. Perhaps more so, as she was so very aware that time was slipping away.
This was not a slow seduction, but was instead a fierce act of possession and demand. If he could brand her as his, he would. If she could brand him as hers and hers alone, she would not hesitate.
He was quickly inside her, and she was ready for him. Hungrily, impatiently ready. They mated on this table, not with practiced skill, as lovers who know one another well might, but as animals making their claim and taking what is theirs. Taking. Demanding. Reaching. They were more clothed than not, with only the necessary pieces of clothing moved aside for this connection, but she had never felt so naked and vulnerable before him.
She clutched at his hair and grasped him tight. Her hips rose to demand all of him, and he answered her demand. Mine.
Sweat shone on both of them, and their labored breathing changed dramatically. They were beyond control.
There was nothing else in this world but the places on their bodies where they were joined, and the demand for the completion that remained just out of reach.
She felt that completion tease her. Not yet... not so soon. And yet her body would not slow, would not draw back from its demand.
Sian grasped one of her trembling thighs and shifted it, lifting her leg higher so that he could bury himself inside and touch a new and sensitive place. Ribbons of pleasure unfurled and then burst, and she clutched at him even tighter, rising partway off the table and shuddering around him. He came with her, as if he had been waiting for her, as if he had been holding back and could wait no more.
They collapsed onto the table, sweating and breathing heavily, holding on to one another in the oddest ways. Ariana grasped a handful of Sian’s long, black hair in one hand, and the other rested over his pounding heart. He had made a fist in her skirt, and his other hand rested possessively over one of her heaving breasts.
She could barely breathe, much less speak, and still she managed to say, punctuated with long, necessary gasps of air, “And you think... there is the slightest possibility that I will not... find you when my battle is done?”
For a long moment Sian was silent. He did not laugh, or kiss her, or—even better—tell her precisely where he lived. She was so close to him, it was impossible not to feel the sadness that radiated from him.
Sadness, at a time like this. True, sad moments were surely coming, but this was not one of them.
Sian rolled from the tabletop and straightened his trousers as he walked toward the door. He did not even turn to look at her as he said, “I have some research to do this afternoon. Please, forgive me.” With that, he was gone.
Ariana rolled up slowly, still shaken and not nearly as satisfied as she had been before Sian had made his odd exit. Close as they had become, he was hiding something from her. She knew it.
She lept from the table, and something made her turn to look at the stone map on which she and her lover had engaged in wildly out-of-control sex.
She started in surprise, and tentatively laid one palm over the stone.
Portions of the map of stone and gems glowed, as if the table had somehow drawn in the power she and Sian had just shared. When she had first touched the table, it had been cold. Horribly cold. Now it was warm to the touch, as if it had somehow come alive. Very clearly she saw the outline of a road, a path from the palace to the mountains of the Anwyn. Not very far from the foot of the mountain, where she knew of a village too small to be indicated on the important map, a swirling dot glowed red. It was red, and then black, and then red again.
Her heart hitched. Was her battle to take place there, before she even reached Keelia? Instinctively she touched the cord at her throat.
The unnatural markings on the map vanished quickly. It was as if she blinked and they were gone. The stone beneath her hands grew cold once again. If not for everything else that had happened of late, she might be able to convince herself that what she’d seen had been delusion. No, what she’d seen had been real. Was it a warning or a promise? Was she being guided or warned?
Should she avoid the village of the red-and-black markings—those cryptic symbols which had already disappeared—or should she race toward it?
Chapter Ten
Sian was not an indecisive man. The right path was always clear to him, and he never hesitated in taking it, no matter what the cost.
Until now. If he told Ariana that the prophesy foretold her death, would it increase her strength and will or would she cower with fear and thus make herself more vulnerable? Like it or not, he could not think only of her. She was necessary in this coming war. Something she was to do in the coming months—or perhaps in the coming years—would make a significant difference in the battle which was hers to fight.
Should he warn her of all that awaited her? Or should he allow her the blissfulness of false hope? He didn’t have much time left in which to decide. Her army of forty men had been assembled by Merin. The sentinels had been told that they were going to fight in a battle like no other, that they would fight evil itself with a woman as their leader. Word had traveled through the palace quickly, as he had known it would. Men and women whispered in fear, and they stared at Ariana as if she were a stranger to them. Word of the battle to come was likely now traveling across the land, warning those who would be their adversaries that they would not be allowed to take what they wanted without a fight. It had begun.
In a matter of hours, Ariana and her army would leave Arthes.
She slept at Sian’s side, and he allowed her to sleep. In the past two days, since he’d learned that she’d chosen her date of departure, there had been a strain between them. That strain did not keep him out of her bed, but there was no more laughter here. No more teasing and easy banter. Instead what was between them took on a desperate manner.
Perhaps Ariana didn’t know that she was destined to pass into the Land of the Dead before the battle was over, but somewhere deep inside she realized that what she and Sian had would be over the moment she marched away from the palace. She was not coming back.
Was it Diella, lurking deep and whispering dark truths? The empress, if she remained, had been silent and still, but that did not mean she was gone. Sian could only imagine that more than a quarter of a century in Level Thirteen would make a few days or weeks of sleeping and waiting for the right moment to rise very easy, especially if those days or weeks were spent inside a woman like Ariana, who loved life and lived it well.
Sian drew her sleeping body to his, so that he might better feel the brush of her warm skin against his, so that he could drink in the utter and complete femaleness she wore so well. She was special in so many ways he could not begin to list and appreciate them all, and he knew with everything he possessed that she was not meant for war.
He desperately wanted to change the prophesy, but it took a magic much more powerful than his to do such a thing.
Ariana’s eyes opened, and gentle fingers brushed away a strand of his hair, hair that had fallen across his cheek as he studied her. “You should sleep, enchanter,” she said sleepily. At times like this, that simple word that described his powers sounded like an endearment, as meaningful as the “love” he had tossed so thoughtlessly at Diella.
“We need to talk.”
“No.” Her bare body shifted into his. She was warm. Wonderfully warm and soft. “Our, time for talk is done.” She sighed. “Don’t make me sad, Sian. Don’t whisper revealing words that I will carry with me when I go. A soldier isn’t supposed to cry.”
She tipped her head back and looked him squarely in the eye. “No. Thank you, but no.”
Sian bristled. He had not expected her to refuse. “You’re not ready to go on alone.”
“I am as ready as I will ever be.”
“But—”
“And I’m not entirely alone.” She caressed the cord at her throat.
“That’s hardly sufficient—”
“Don’t make me say it,” she interrupted. “Don’t make me tell you that I am leaving you behind for the same reason I sent Duran to Tryfyn.”
Protection. Worry. Love.
She curled against him and didn’t say another word. Neither did he. He held her close, and rubbed his hand up and down her back. It was the fine, sweet back of a woman, not a warrior.
After a while, he whispered, “If I could take your place, I would do so. If I could carry all your burdens, I would not hesitate.”
The words she did not want to hear were wasted, as she had already fallen into an uneasy sleep.
Eventually Sian slept, too. When he woke, he saw that Ariana had awakened and left the bed without disturbing him. The sun was barely up, and yet she had begun to dress, pulling on a sentinel’s green trousers and a sentinel’s loose-sleeved green shirt. Her vest and weapons sat close by, but she had not yet donned them.
She was too busy reading the prophesy she’d plucked from his coat pocket.
***
Ariana felt like she could melt through the floor. She had always known that death was possible, she had even often thought it was likely. But to see it written this way, not as a possibility but as a certainty...
Sian had known all along. He had purposely hidden the truth from her. He’d trained her, shared her bed, come to care for her... and all that time he’d been lying to her.
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