22 Nights (40 page)

Tomas’s eyes narrowed in obvious disapproval. “You should not defy Almund. He’s been very good to you.”

“Yes, he has.”

Tomas could not accept that agreement and move on. He had to elaborate. “Almund gave you his name, raised you as his own, and even now, he allows you to have more freedom than any woman should.”

Morgana’s chin came up. They had had this conversation before, too many times. “I suppose you are speaking of my unwillingness to marry?”

“Yes,” Tomas said softly.

Before her death seven years earlier Morgana’s mother, the lovely Awel Ramsden, had made her husband, Almund, promise that he would not force their only child to take a husband she did not love. Awel had been frantically insistent, in fact. Caught up in the emotion of the moment, a grieving husband had agreed to his wife’s last request, and so far had stuck with that promise, even though he was openly weary of Morgana’s constant refusals of offers. What Almund Ramsden did not know was that his wife had also begged her daughter not to give in to marriage until she discovered a love she could trust. Awel’s first marriage, her short-lived union with Morgana’s long-deceased father, had been an arranged one. Though Awel had never offered Morgana details, she had made it clear that to marry without love was a terrible mistake.

Real love was worth waiting for, Awel Ramsden had insisted fervently not long before she took her last breath.

Morgana was taken by surprise when Tomas reached out and caressed her hair. He’d offered himself as husband more than once, and she’d always refused, just as she refused all others. Unlike her stepfather and the other men who no longer called upon her, Tomas displayed quite a lot of patience. He was persistent to a fault.

“Marry me,” he said, not for the first time.

“No.”

“I know you’re uncertain about me, but if it’s love you want, as so many women seem to do, then be assured that love will come, in time,” he said. “Even if it does not, we can be great friends for a lifetime. Are the best of marriages not between friends?”

“My answer remains no.” She did not know if the kind of love her mother had spoken of existed for her—it certainly had not shown itself thus far—but she did understand that she didn’t love Tomas and never would.

In the darkness she could not see his face well. Shadows from the forest which surrounded her home and the village not far beyond hid his expression from her. But she saw too well the tightening of his lips, the tick of his jaw. “Are you too good for me, Lady Morgana, is that it? Are you too pretty? Too rich? Too pure?”

“No! That’s not it at all.”

“Then what is your problem? Why do you constantly refuse me when I have done everything to win you to my side?” Tomas’s frustration was clear in his voice and in the alarming balling of his fists.

Morgana instinctively stepped back, wondering if Tomas would catch her if she tried to escape. Of course he would. His legs were longer than hers and he was not impeded by a heavy, cumbersome skirt.

He looked into her eyes, and something in his expression softened. “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he said, and he reached out to boldly caress her breast with the tips of his fingers, much in the same casual way he had caressed her hair moments earlier. When Morgana stepped away once more, when she tried to move away from his touch, Tomas grabbed the fabric of her dark blue gown, chosen for this night so she could blend into the shadows, and forcefully pulled her to him. Stitches popped, fabric ripped, and Morgana felt a growing chill inside her, as if a seed of fear took root in her heart.

“Stop,” she whispered.

“I’ll show you there’s nothing to be afraid of,” Tomas said, and then he grabbed her chin and with unkind fingers forced her face up. He planted his mouth over hers for what she supposed was meant to be a kiss which would sway her. As if his forcefulness would make her desire to take him as a husband! Morgana pursed her lips and tried to push him away, but he was too strong. The chill grew colder and larger. It reached deep, like shards of ice, as Tomas forced his tongue into her mouth.

She had never felt so cold, and the chill at the center of her being scared her almost as much as Tomas’s insistent touch. “Stop right now or you will be sorry,” Morgana said when she was able to turn her mouth from his and take a deep, ragged breath.

“I don’t think so,” Tomas said with confidence. “Until now I have been very tolerant of your quirks and demands. I have asked nicely, and I’ve waited for you to come to your senses. I’m not going to wait anymore. Almund has spoiled you, but I will not. I see now that tolerance is not what you need from a man. Perhaps you have simply been waiting for a man to take what he requires from you. You need a man to command you, a man to own you. I’m man enough to take what I want, Morgana. When I saw you slip out of your window, I knew this would be the night.”

The chill inside Morgana grew and seemed to move throughout her body, traveling through the blood in her veins. She was struck by the certainty that this chill was not normal. Something was very wrong. “You followed me?”

“You’re mine,” Tomas said in a threatening voice. “Stop fighting what is meant to be.”

Like the others who had pursued her, what was “meant to be” was a partnership with the Ramsden family fortune and lands. One day her stepfather would be gone and the house and the land would all be hers. It was an elegant, finely crafted house and there was a lot of land. Tomas was greedy like all the rest, not a friend at all. “Stop this while you can,” Morgana said softly.

Maybe Tomas heard something he did not like in her voice, because for a moment he did stop. He went very still, but unfortunately that stillness did not last. He foolishly continued, clumsily lifting her skirt and poking at her with his fingers.

“Do you like that?” he asked.

“No,” Morgana whispered, trying to contain the frostiness that made her feel as if her heart was literally made of ice. Her fingers tingled, and it seemed that icy water flowed through her veins as cold as a winter’s snow. Tomas’s hand slipped between her legs and he grabbed. It hurt; his rough touch terrified her. She tried to slip from his grasp; she slapped his hands and pushed against him, hoping to free herself from his hold on her and
run
, taking the chance that she could lose him in the dark shadows, but he held her tightly.

“You will like me well enough before I’m done. Relax, and you will like it very well.”

Unable to escape, Morgana attempted to contain the iciness inside her, to push it down. She didn’t understand the growing coldness which was coursing through her, but she knew instinctively that it was bad. No good could come of it. But the excitement of the moment, the danger, the rush of vulnerability and anger had awakened a dark power she did not wish to possess. There was no turning back. Still, she tried. She reached for calmness, for peace, and found only coldness. She reached deep inside herself for control and found only chaos. Never in her life had she experienced pure panic, a complete loss of control and peace, not until now.

“You will marry me, Morgana,” Tomas said. “After tonight, you will have no choice. No other suitable man will have you once everyone knows we’ve become lovers beneath the moon of the First Night of the Spring Festival.”

“There is no love in this, Tomas. Please stop.”

He slapped her once and threw her to the ground and then quickly dropped down to press his heavy body atop her. That was a terrible mistake. With his violence he made it impossible for her to contain the horror he had awakened. What Morgana had so hoped to control was now unleashed, and there was no turning back. Tears stung her eyes, trailing down her cheeks and turning to ice that clung to her skin. Her body went rigid and a scream rose in her chest. She fought to contain that scream.

“You truly are cold,” Tomas said as he reached down to unfasten his trousers so he could take by force what he considered to be his. “Cold to the bone. Cold skin, cold eyes . . . cold heart, I suspect. Stop fighting, Morgana. Relax. Do you not know that this is the season of carnal initiation? Never fear, woman. What I’m about to teach you will warm you up quite well.”

What she had attempted to still was unleashed, and Morgana screamed. The sound which tore from her throat was foreign and frightening, even to her own ears. Surely only a wounded animal would screech so.

Tomas backed away from her, falling to the side and rolling away, coming up on his knees. “What the hell was that? ”

He was no longer on top of her, no longer an immediate danger, but it was too late for her to stop what had begun as a simple chill. The unearthly coldness that had been building inside Morgana escaped from her body in one pulse, coloring a circle around her in blue and white light, and transforming everything within that circle—everything but Morgana herself—to crystal clear glass.

The grass, the fallen leaves, the trees, and Tomas, all clear and lifeless. Moonlight glimmered on what had once been life and was now cold, hard death. Lying on the ground in the midst of it all, Morgana reached out and touched what had once been a long blade of grass growing in the forest. It looked sharp but crumbled beneath her fingers, turning to dust without even marking her skin.

This should not be possible. It was wrong, unnatural, and wicked. What was she? What had she become? Was this destruction the result of a curse? Whatever the reason for her ghastly act, Morgana knew she had to escape before anyone found her here. She longed for the safety and warmth of home; she craved the heat of a fire in the hearth and a warm blanket and a locked door which would keep men like Tomas away from her.

As she stood, rising to her feet as carefully as possible, crystal grass and leaves beneath her feet broke into tiny pieces. The crystal was as fragile as the thinnest piece of glass but did not pierce her slippers to cut her feet. No, instead it simply crumbled into dust, more fragile than any ice or stone could ever be. The substance everything in the path of her rage had become was unknown to her; it was not stone nor was it crystal.

For a moment she stared at what was left of Tomas. The statue before her looked like the man she knew, but he had been sculpted of ice, down to the shape of his lips and the crease in his jacket and his halfway unfastened trousers. Moonlight gleamed on his frozen face; he looked so scared, as if in his last moment of life he’d realized what was happening, what he’d awakened, what a monster she was.

Morgana felt a surge of hope. If she had the power to transform everything in her path to this strange substance, perhaps she also had the power to undo it. A deep chill had preceded the burst of power. Perhaps warmth would turn Tomas to a man again. She reached out and touched his cold, hard face gently, hoping to give him some of the warmth which had returned to her. She leaned forward and blew a warm breath upon him, hoping all the while that he would become a man again.

Then she would run.

But Tomas did not transform; he remained a crystal statue in the shadows of the forest. A sob escaped Morgana’s throat. Tomas was a bad person, a greedy man who was willing to take what he wanted if it was not offered to him, but that didn’t mean he deserved to die this way. Was he entirely cold? Was there any life left in the form before her?

If only she had stayed in her room tonight, as her stepfather had commanded, Tomas would still be alive. Too soon Morgana heard the villagers approaching, their voices carrying sharply. She looked toward the bonfire to see that at least half of the men there were headed her way. They had been lured by her screech or the flash of light, and they could not find her here with what was left of Tomas. If they found her here in the midst of destruction, they would know she was to blame—they would know she was cursed.

“I’m sorry,” Morgana whispered, and then she ran, crystal crunching easily beneath her feet until she left the circle of destruction she had created. Long before she reached her bedroom window, she heard the first villager’s scream.