Fyne Sisters - The Star Witch Part 22

The sentinel's gray face went white. "There were too many of them, my lord, and they took us by

surprise." The man swallowed hard. "And they were not all unarmed."

Sebestyen took a step toward the young soldier. "Stop dancing around the facts of the matter and tell me what happened!"

"It was the Tryfynian captain," the sentinel said. "And his manservant. They had swords and wielded

them quite well as they led some of the prisoners out of the palace. There were women among that group of escapees, my lord."

Women? As in... more than one? Impossible. Someone had mistaken a long-haired, weakened prisoner for a woman, perhaps. And if she'd survived, Isadora was certainly one of those Hern had rescued.

So much for his alliance with the Circle of Bacwyr. It was Isadora's fault that Hern had turned. If Hern and his men joined with the rebels... if Isadora survived and told the world that there were two heirs to the throne...

"I want a doubled guard on the empress and on the baby who is being cared for on Level Two. Preserve them with your lives. Nothing else matters."

"Your guard will be doubled as well, my lord," the sentinel said with a curt and respectful bow. Some small hint of color had returned to his face. Apparently he was grateful to find himself still alive.

"That's not necessary." Sebestyen touched the knife that was sheathed at his waist, and the sentinel's eyes flitted there with a touch of fear.

But he did not draw the knife, and the sentinel left to do as he had been instructed.

Sebestyen chased his personal guards from the room, slamming the doors behind them. He bolted the door and crossed the room at a run, tearing a tapestry from the wall to reveal the hidden doorway beneath. It swung open, and he ran down two flights of dimly lit stairs. The door he found his way to opened on a small interior room that was not easy to find from the hallways of Level Three.

Mahri lifted her head as the door swung open. Skittish girl, she had not been happy with her new confinement. She'd actually found her way out of this room once, and had wandered the halls looking for someone to help her. But of course, no one had dared to offer a.s.sistance.

He had planned to do away with her, too, as he had done away with Isadora. The nosy girl had found her way into the chamber where the twins had been born, and she knew too much. But apparently he'd lost his heart for handling such matters. Isadora was different. She was a witch, and she was dangerous, and she had killed. She deserved Level Thirteen.

Mahri did not.

The other woman sat in the corner, rocking and knitting. As usual, she did not even lift her head.

Sebestyen crossed the room to the cradle that had been placed against one wall.

"He is sleeping," Mahri said in a soft voice.

"He's well?" Sebestyen asked as he glanced into the cradle. His second-born was healthy, and he was quite sure the baby looked much as he had as a child. Alixandyr had a healthy smattering of dark hair and remarkable blue eyes. Sebestyen reached down into the cradle to touch the baby's head.

"Very well, my lord," Mahri answered.

He should have killed the baby, and if the priests knew there were two, that's what they would do. But Sebestyen had not been able even to conceive of doing such a thing or allowing it to be done. This child was his and Liane's. Alixandyr was a miracle, and miracles should not be lightly undone.

"There are those who would harm him just for being who he is," Sebestyen said, reluctantly withdrawing his hand from the cradle. "I know you do not want to be here."

Mahri swallowed hard. "I do not like being a prisoner, my lord."

"No one does." The nursemaid who continued to knit did not so much as lift her eyes or fumble in her st.i.tching, though she was as much a prisoner as Mahri. Sebestyen needed the wet nurse, but he did not trust her. She had dead eyes, and he had never heard her speak a word of protest or submission. She just existed, and fed his child, and knitted. Did she have a hidden allegiance with someone in the palace? Someone who would do Alix harm? Even though she was his servant, anything was possible.

Sebestyen did not trust the dead-eyed, meek wet nurse. Mahri, at least, had been loyal to Liane. Mahri, a servant who had been invisible to his eyes until that night when all had changed, had the courage to protest her imprisonment.

He flipped the knife from his waist, and a startled Mahri jumped back and gasped.

"I'm not going to harm you," Sebestyen said, flipping the knife and catching it by the blade to offer it to the girl. "Take it."

Mahri was reluctant. How foolish was it to offer a sharp blade to a prisoner? Very. Still, what choice did he have? After a moment of studying the bejeweled handle, she took the weapon.

"Guard my son," Sebestyen said. "Can you do that?"

Mahri studied the blade. "I don't know if I can stab..."

"If someone means harm to an innocent child, would you not do whatever you could to protect him?"

The girl studied the blade a while longer, turning it this way and that. Eventually, her grip grew steadier. Sebestyen wondered for a moment if she was about to stab him.

But she did not. "I will, my lord," Mahri said, a touch of vigor in her normally weak voice.

WHEN EVERYONE HAD been fed, and all but a handful of the camping party were asleep, Lucan took Isadora's hand and led her away from the campfire and into the wood. The former empresses and the wizard-Isadora's father-slept, as did most of the others. Franco and Bannon would keep watch for now.

He had come very close to losing Isadora. How odd that the very thought of losing a woman he had known for such a short time had the power to cut him to the core. He had never been in love; in fact, he had often claimed that love was for women and old men. But surely this was love.

If he returned to Tryfyn without the Star of Bacwyr, he would not be Prince of Swords. If he were not Prince, he would be free to choose his own wife.

And the strife in Tryfyn would continue until another was called to be Prince. How long? A few years, a hundred, more... He could not put his own happiness above the needs of an entire country. But when it came to Isadora's happiness...

When they were deep into the woods, he stopped walking, turned, and took Isadora in his arms. She fell against him and rested there, fitting well as she always did, burrowing into him as if only he could protect her.

"I should have known that you would find me," she whispered against his chest. He felt her warm breath there, and her steady heartbeat in the chest he held so close, and the desperation of the small, warm hands at his back.

"Yes, you should have," he said.

"For a while, I thought..." She choked on the words.

"You thought that I would leave you there," he finished in a low voice.

"Yes," she whispered.

He smoothed a strand of dark hair away from her cheek. "For a few terrible days, I thought you had truly left me. I mourned, and I was angry, and I was hurt. And then I saw the ring you always wore on Emperor Sebestyen's finger, and I knew he had taken it from you." He did not tell her that he had reached for her and found her. He did not tell her that they were connected in a way that went beyond the needs of their bodies. "What happened?"

At first she was reluctant to speak, but soon the story was pouring out of her. Twins. A sentinel's death. The witch Gadhra. A newborn baby disposed of because it was inconvenient to have two heirs. He'd wondered if he had the right to break his word of allegiance to Sebestyen, but the story Isadora told made it clear that he had no choice.

"Sebestyen locked you away because you knew what he'd done."

"Yes."

The Circle wizards had said Lucan would have a son during his thirty-eighth year. He wanted Isadora to be that child's mother, and he wanted to save his country from the war that had torn it asunder for so very long. Why could he not have both?

"Marry me," he said, the words pouring out of him.

She kept her head down so he could not see even a glimpse of the expression on her face. "You said you could not marry me," she said softly.

"And you said that you did not want to be my wife," he countered. "All things can change. If the path of our lives is not to our liking, we can make the path we desire by the decisions that we make." If he were wed to Isadora when he returned to the Circle wizards, they could not undo what had already been done. And if he returned as the rightful Prince of Swords, no one but those most highly placed in the Circle would dare to say a word. The wizards would complain, and they would try to convince him to undo the marriage, but they could not command him to follow their edicts. "Marry me," he said again.

"I don't know that I can," she whispered so softly he could barely make out her words.

"Of course you can. What can stop you?"

Her hands slipped beneath his vest and settled on bare skin. "Can we talk about this in the morning? My head is spinning. I'm tired. Right now all I want is for you to make love to me."

"Here?" he searched the ground for a soft spot, but saw nothing suitable for a bed for the woman he loved to lie upon.

"Here, Lucan. I don't need a soft mattress and fine sheets and scented candles. I never have. What I need is you. Your arms around me, your mouth on mine, your body and mine linked... that is what I need." She laid her hand over his erection and stroked, and pressed her mouth to his throat. "Please don't ask me to think beyond tonight," she whispered against his skin.

He would not lay the woman he loved in the cold dirt, so he raised her skirt and lifted her off the ground, and in the broken shafts of moonlight that slanted through the trees, he gave her what she needed. They had been apart too long, and they reached fulfillment quickly, and with a power that brought tears to Isadora's eyes. As she quaked around him, Lucan muttered the words he had never thought to speak.

"I love you."

It would be right and proper for her to answer in kind, and he wanted to hear those words more than he should want anything in this life. But with their bodies still joined and broken moonlight s.h.i.+ning down upon them, she remained silent.

JULIET STOOD ON the gentle rise of the hill, one hand resting over her swollen stomach, the other caught in Ryn's. The body heat that came with being Anwyn caused her to dress much as her husband did: in little or nothing, depending on who else was present. Tonight she wore a sleeveless and thin gold frock that was generously cut to allow for her pregnancy. The hem-torn by her own hands on a particularly warm day-did not quite touch her knees. Such a garment would be considered scandalous in Shandley, but she was nowhere near that small village, and she no longer cared what anyone in Shandley thought of her.

"They are so close," she said, excitement creeping into her heart. "Sophie is to the south, just a few days' march away. Isadora is west, just a day or two beyond Sophie. They do not realize that they are so near to one another."

Ryn squeezed her hand. "So, we will go south to collect Sophie, and then west to Isadora?"

Juliet shook her head. "No. We will travel to Isadora first, and then we'll all head south to find Sophie. I know it isn't the most logical course, but..." Her head pounded with knowledge. She would soon need to put an end to this vision, or it would bring on a headache and pounding heart that might not be good for the baby.

Sophie was distressed, but safe. She was surrounded by men who would die for her, if need be. No danger was near the youngest Fyne sister, at the moment. The eldest was another matter entirely.

"For the first time I can recall, Isadora needs me more than Sophie does. Much more." Juliet looked up at her husband. His face was strong and beautiful in the moonlight, and having him beside her gave her strength. "My goodness, she's about to do something incredibly foolish."

ALL NIGHT AND into the cool, crisp morning, Isadora tried to convince herself that Lucan had said something other than those horrible words. Unfortunately, he'd spoken much too clearly for her to make such a mistake.

The camp came alive slowly. Thayne and Lucan were already plotting the safest route to Tryfyn, and the empresses were anxious enough to be on their way. They wanted to get as far from Arthes, the palace, and Emperor Sebestyen as possible.

Isadora remained silent. She ate the tasteless tubers Franco collected and distributed. She combed her hair with her fingers and braided it snugly. She did her best not to look at Lucan as he made plans for travel.

She didn't know how to tell Lucan that she wasn't going with him.

It was a nice fantasy, to think that she could walk away from all her troubles for the easy life as Lucan Hern's wife. But that's all it was: fantasy. For a moment or two, when she'd first seen him in Level Thirteen, she'd actually believed that they could have some time together. Not a lifetime; maybe not even a year. But even that one imagined year of happiness was no more than fantasy.

The curse her father a.s.sured her could be ended was still powerful. It had taken one love from her; she would not allow it to take another.

As the group began their travels, hiking into the woods where they would be sheltered from view for much of the journey, Isadora hung back. She watched them walk away, all of them gladly headed for safety. The empresses would contact their families-families who believed them to be dead-after they were safely housed in Tryfyn. Thayne would make contact with the wizards of the Circle and perhaps join them. Franco and Lucan were ready to go home, and none of the former prisoners had anything left in Columbyana to keep them here.

Isadora took a few steps, acting as if she intended to follow, and then she stopped. She had never in her life felt as alone as she did as she watched one refugee after another disappear into the forest where last night Lucan had made love to her for the last time. Where he had said that he loved her.

It would not be so easy to separate herself from them, of course. Lucan looked back at her, frowned, and stopped. He lifted his hand and motioned for her to join him, and after a moment Isadora shook her head. He hurried back toward her, as the last of the travelers melted into the forest.

"Come," Lucan said as he approached. "We don't want to fall too far behind."

"You go on," she said.

He frowned. "Not without you."

Isadora lifted her chin haughtily. "I'm not going to Tryfyn. If you will search your memory, you will realize that I never agreed to your proposal. Neither of them." Wife or mistress... she had never promised him anything beyond the next encounter.

"What are you planning to do?" he snapped. "Go back into the palace?"

"Yes."

His shocked expression was enough to tell her what he thought of her plan. "I won't allow you to do such an imprudent thing."

She had been accused of much in her life, but never imprudence. "I promised to protect Liane and her babies, and if I don't go back to them, then I have failed miserably."

"Liane and one baby are likely beyond saving," Lucan said gently. "You know that."

"Perhaps that's true. Perhaps not." No one knew, as she did, how much the emperor loved his wife. She'd been deeply affected by the Panwyr when he'd pushed her into Level Thirteen, but she remembered what she had seen on his face as he'd given her that final shove. Not anger... well, not entirely anger. She had seen the pain of betrayal in his eyes, not blind rage. It was possible... possible ... that Liane and both babies were alive and well.

She expected Lucan to argue with her a while longer. She did not expect him to lift her off her feet and carry her toward the forest. "We shouldn't fall too far behind."

"Put me down!" she ordered.

"Not until you come to your senses," he said in a logical tone of voice.

"I'm not the one who has lost my senses," she grumbled.

"Apparently, you are. Going back into the palace," he muttered beneath his breath.

She knew what would happen, sooner or later. Like it or not, she did love Lucan. Not as she had loved

Will, with a girl's idealistic romanticism, but as a woman loves a man. This love for Lucan was more real than what she'd felt for Will, in a way she was just beginning to understand. Given a chance, it could survive bad times and good, arguments and war and prophesies and stubbornness-his and hers.

It could not survive the curse, however, and she knew how this would end. Lucan would love her, she would love him, and eventually she would begin to believe that they could make what they had last. She could let loose the love she protected, giving him her heart and her soul. And then he would discover that she was a witch, and he'd despise her.

She would lose one love to death and the other to hate.

The longer she waited, the more she loved Lucan, the harder it would be. Were there varying degrees of heartbreak? Could she weather what was sure to come more easily now, when she had not yet fooled