Master of the Shadows

Page 25

He held her that way, watching her face as he moved, sliding out and then gliding in, a slow and elegant dance of advance and retreat. The delicate movements became a forge, his hammer to her heat, and he shaped her with every stroke, bringing her to the edge and then turning her back and working her again. Her mortal body was no match for his strength, but he tempered it, his muscles locking and his jaw setting as he kept at her, until passion blinded her and her hands clawed at him.
“Will.”
“Yes, there you are.” He whispered that and other things to her, spilling dark words against her hair, his chest stroking the swollen ache in her breasts. He turned her onto her back and wedged himself between her thighs, burying himself in her before drawing out again and again. She wrapped her legs around his, pinning herself to him, and took everything he gave her, returning it with softness and pleading, wordless sounds, until he pushed her over the edge and she fell, trembling and breathless, into the velvet darkness that spread inside her from the clenching ellipse of her sex to the pounding rhythm of her heart.
Will held her against his chest, soothing her with gentle kisses until she came back to her senses, and then began the dance again.
The sweat from her skin made them both slick by the time he lifted her and put her astride him. Her fingers slipped down his shoulders and dug into the muscles of his arms as she worked her body against his. He took her by the waist and spun her, pushing her to her hands and knees as he knelt behind her, forging so deep inside her she felt him pressing against her womb. He reached around her hip and pressed his hand between her thighs, parting her with the edge of his palm and using that to stroke her there, where the friction made her swell and cry out as she went over again. He kept rubbing at her sex as he fucked her, his shaft a swollen, rigid spike of need, and when she pressed her face into the blankets to muffle her cries he took hold of her hips, pounding himself into her in long, deep strokes, until the last he held himself inside her and groaned as his body spilled into her.
When she could think again, Reese found herself on her side, curled up tightly against him, his arm clamped around her waist. His hand moved over her belly in absentminded circles, his thumb brushing over the dent of her navel, his mouth at her shoulder, kissing the curve between it and her neck. She put a hand to her own cheek and felt the warmth and dampness there, divided by a single cool tear that slid aimlessly across her face.
Will murmured something, and only when he repeated it did she hear the words. “My God, what was that?”
“Love, Will.” She entwined her fingers with his. “It was love.”
Rebecca stayed in the camper, drinking some of the blood wine Will Scarlet had sent for her. The rest she had taken in the camper had helped her regain some of her senses, but it had also given her talent time to grow. Without Sylas to help her keep it in check, she didn’t know how much longer she could hold on to her sanity.
I can wait. I can reach him through our bond. He can help me.
Concentrating, she tried over and over to reach Sylas. Gradually she became aware of his body, still and unfeeling, strapped to some hard surface. The only sight she saw was the ceiling above him, and the faces of the men shouting questions at him. They wanted to know where the prisoners had gone. They struck him, but he did not respond. He could not; his soul had left his flesh.
She understood that he felt no pain now, but when he returned to his body he would be in agony. Every blow she felt through him did not harm her, but still she flinched, gripping her skirts until she tore great rents in the fabric.
Do not tear your pretty dress, wife, Sylas whispered inside her mind. I am here.
His presence, as thin and insubstantial as smoke, almost slipped away before she could answer. Sylas, you must go back to your body. Tell them what they wish to know, or they will kill you.
I cannot betray my men. A cold, mindless rage lashed around him. The shadows are so deep here. I never realized how deep.
She was losing him to the darkness. Sylas, come back to me.
When I hear your voice call my name, he promised her, I will come back. Only then.
Rebecca opened her eyes but didn’t recognize her surroundings. She was somewhere near Sylas but not close enough to call him. Her skin crawled, alive with nerves that writhed and tightened and burned with need. She knew what she needed, and she would have it.
She found a small door and kicked it open. Outside was the night, a small camp of tents, and the woods beyond Rosethorn. She could walk to the stronghold from here, she thought as she climbed down and started toward the house.
Some faceless male came toward her. “My lady Rebecca, you must not…” His voice stopped as he choked out blood and fell to his knees. As she limped past, he fell onto his side, pressing his hands to his face as the blood poured from between his fingers.
Rebecca limped into the trees, tugging at her skirts when they became snagged. Two more males, both holding swords, came at her from different sides. She released her talent and they dropped into the shrubs. All around her small bodies began dropping from the trees and thumping to the ground. She stepped over a robin and a squirrel, and around the twitching death throes of a red fox. As she made her way past the first of the enemy’s lines, she left a trail of dead bodies and the scent of clover on fire.
Reese woke with Will to the sound of men shouting and cries for help. She handed him his trousers before she jerked on her clothes, but when she tried to follow him he shook his head.
“Stay here until I see what has happened.” He glanced down at the small pile of ropes he had torn from her wrists.
“I won’t try to escape,” she told him.
“There will be a guard outside if you do,” he said, and then ducked out of the tent.
He had no reason to trust her, but still, it hurt. She had given herself to him. She had told him about the book—violating her pledge to her father in the process—and put herself into his hands. As before, he had abandoned her without a second thought.
She took her case out of her bag and removed one of the vials. As Will came back into the tent, she drank it and slipped the empty vial in her pocket. “Is it Rebecca?”
“Come here.” When she did, he pushed her against the tent pole and pulled her arms around behind her to tie her wrists.
“You don’t have to tie me up,” she said. “I have nowhere to go.”
“I would like to keep it that way, sweetheart.” He came around and stopped, staring at her face. “Who are you?”
“I’m not your sweetheart.” Reese turned her arms, snapping the cords binding her wrists.
“I can see that.” Will didn’t blink. “You’re a man, for one thing.” He breathed in. “And you’re Kyn.”
“For the moment,” she agreed.
“The woman in my dreams could change her shape. But how?”
“You know exactly how. You changed me with that kiss.” She stepped away from the pole and handed him the torn ropes. “I went back to the kitchens feeling the weight of it on me. Then, that night, I fell sick.”
“Claris.”
“I died in the cottage, but no one came to look for me for three days. I woke from death in a cart filled with dead bodies.” She pulled her long black hair over one shoulder and began to braid it. “Do you know what it’s like to wake up in a pile of corpses, alone and starving? No, of course you don’t.” She turned her back on him. “You made the change in the jail.”
“You lived.” He jerked her around. “All this time you were alive, and you came to me only once, in a dream? You never looked?”
“Do you remember what I told you in that dream? What they do with a dead girl who crawls out of a mass grave?” She tilted her head. “No? I can tell you again.”
“No.” His hands fell away from her. “I remember.”
She walked around him and went to look out at the camp. “Through all of it, in that cage, the one thing I could not understand was what I had done to deserve such a wretched fate. I’d always been a good girl, worked hard, looked after my mother. I prayed for forgiveness for my sins, though they were hardly worth confessing. I’d never harmed anyone. It had to be a mistake. I told them that again and again. Whenever I did, they would just hurt me more.”
“How long did they torture you?”
“I don’t know. Months. A year, perhaps.” She let the tent flap slip from her fingers. “Time had no meaning for me. I tried to count the sunsets, but then they put boards over the windows so no one would discover me.”
“Everything else you said?”
“That I went mad? That I killed them? All true.” Reese rubbed a hand against her cheek, the roughness and strange flatness of it slightly disturbing. She avoided changing into a male when she could; the physical differences between the genders made it feel uncomfortable and alien. “I escaped and I went into the woods. I lived like the animal they made me. No mortal was safe from me.”
“Something made you stop.”
She nodded. “Father came for me.”
“Clary, your father died before you could walk.”
“God was merciful and gave me another one.” She finished her braid and used a tie from her bag to bind the end. “He brought me out of hell and cared for me until the madness passed. He taught me that my life, cursed as it is, could have some meaning. I could use what had befallen me to help the world and protect the innocent.”
“By betraying your own kind?” Will scowled at her. “I don’t know who this man was, but he did you no kindness. He deceived you. He used you.”
She smiled. “You know nothing about Father.”
“I cannot talk to you like this.” He gestured at her. “Take back your real shape.”
“I can’t, not without blood.” She showed him her case of vials, then removed one filled with Reese’s blood and drank from it. Immediately her body shifted from that of a Kyn male to the mortal tresora.
Lucan stepped into the tent. “Scarlet, do you mean to keep everyone waiting until dawn?” He glanced at Reese. “Shouldn’t you be tied to something?”