Bride by Midnight (2 page)

Alone?

Never.

Vellance leaned closer and lowered her voice. “Perhaps I should speak more plainly.” She held up a gnarled finger. “By the age of twenty-three you must be a proper wife, well-bedded and properly claimed, one half of a couple. If you take heed and ensure the path you take is the right one, all will be well.

“But if you ignore my warning you will have no one, and your powers will shift to darkness. The dark part of this world wants you, Lyssa. The darkness that surrounds all of us wants your power.”

Power? She didn’t have any power, nor did she want any. “There is no darkness,” Lyssa argued. “The Isen Demon was defeated, and the children he left behind are just that.
Children
.” She ignored the rumors of powerful magic wielded by demon daughters, and concentrated on the more pleasant stories of perfectly ordinary little girls. She could pick and choose what she wished to believe until her own eyes proved her wrong.

Oh, she did wish the old woman wouldn’t smile! A smile on Vellance’s face was a terrifying sight.

“Do you think the Isen Demon is the only darkness that blights Columbyana and the lands beyond? There is more darkness than light in this world, girl. The light must fight to remain the stronger of the two.” She waved a dismissive hand. “Heed my warning, or don’t.” The disturbing smile disappeared. “Your life, your path, is your own. Choose well, or you will pay dearly for your foolishness.”

It was too much. Lyssa spun around and ran toward her father, her heart pounding, her mouth dry with fear. Why was the fear so strong? Why did her heart beat so hard? She had no magical gifts of any kind. Not dark, not light. She was just a girl with simple dreams of an ordinary life, and Vellance was just an old woman who took sick delight in scaring people she met on the road.

When she glanced back, fearful that Vellance might be following her with more alarming news to impart, the old witch was gone.

Chapter One

Seven years and eleven months later...

The stone wall was slimy and cold and unpleasant, but still Lyssa kept her hand pressed against it. She cherished the feel of the stone because it was solid. It was real. Complete darkness surrounded her, and complete silence took on a sound of its own—the horrifying sound of nothing and no one.

Her heart pounded, her mouth went dry. “Hello?” she whispered. “Is anyone there?”
Someone, anyone. Please, dear God, let me not be alone.

Though she could still feel the cold stone floor beneath her feet, she began to sink rapidly, as if the dark room—walls and floor and all—was dropping out from beneath her. Her stomach flipped, she could not find purchase anywhere, and then the floor and the cold wall were gone, and she fell into a pit of nothingness that had no end. She fell and fell, and she screamed....

Lyssa’s head popped off the pillow. She was breathing too hard, and beads of perspiration covered her face. Her nightgown was damp with sweat and her palms were sticky. She clutched the sheet beneath her, hanging on for dear life as if she were still falling. The door to her small bedchamber opened, and her stepmother, the still-pretty Sinmora Tempest, stuck her head inside.

“Another bad dream, dear?” Though her voice was light, concern was clear in Sinmora’s eyes.

“Yes,” Lyssa answered.

“What was it about this time? Do you remember?”

Lyssa sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She rotated her ankles, turned her head and lifted her shoulders, one and then the other.

“No. I don’t recall.” She hated to lie to her stepmother, but to tell everything would end in frustration for them both. Sinmora Tempest was a woman with her feet planted firmly on the ground. Lyssa had learned long ago that Sinmora had no real patience for concerns about bad dreams or a witch’s prophecy. Burned bread. A ripped hem. Too much rain, or not enough. To her stepmother those worries were solid and real, while nightmares were just dreams. A witch’s prophecies were allowed even less weight, even when it could be argued that they had, so far, been true. “I’ll be in to help you in just a few minutes.”

The early morning sun shone softly, breaking through the curtains that hung over an eastern-facing window, washing the small room with a yellowish, warm light. It was not dark here. A dream was just a dream....

She forced her thoughts forward. There was much to do in the next few hours, and she began to check off the chores ahead of her. Such a mental list would often drive the memory of the nightmare that plagued her so deep she could barely remember the details.

Sinmora smiled. “There is no need for you to work in the kitchen with me today. After all, it’s your wedding day.”

Lyssa refrained from adding “
Again
” in a voice that would surely betray her disappointment.

Sinmora did not mention the old prophecy; she ignored that worry, as always. “You can help your father today, if you’d like. He’ll be making a delivery to the palace this afternoon.”

Lyssa leaped off the bed and headed for her wardrobe, trying her best to leave the nightmare behind. She didn’t have to work on her wedding day, but she liked the palace. It was sprawling and magnificent, and filled with laughter and the high voices of children. She’d heard tales of a time when the palace had been a frightening place, a pile of stones infused with dark magic, a place where people often simply disappeared. But no more. The emperor and empress and their children had turned the palace into a sunny, loving place.

Perhaps a trip there would wipe the nightmare—and the memories—from her mind.

She couldn’t help but remember the words Vellance had spoken to her almost eight years earlier. At that time Lyssa had been certain she would be a wife long before the age of twenty-three. But on her first wedding day, not much more than two years after that meeting, Atman Rybar had run off with another woman; his father’s insanely beautiful housemaid. Lyssa’s heart had been broken, for she had convinced herself that she loved the handsome Atman, and her feelings had been horribly hurt. It was embarrassing to be left for another woman. And a housemaid, at that! Her pride had been wounded; her young heart had been broken.

At the very least, Atman should have made his decision
before
she had made her way to the chapel in her best dress. Being left at the altar had been humiliating; afterward she hadn’t left the house for weeks.

Of course, she’d been young, and her heart had mended soon enough. Within a year she’d set another wedding date, this time with the duller and less handsome yet infinitely more stable Tanni Onund, a suitable and unexciting fellow who had managed to get himself trampled by a runaway horse on his way to the chapel.

The third potential groom, the barely adequate Neron Lew, had caught a fever a few days before their wedding date and had died while dragging himself to the chapel, where Lyssa had been waiting anxiously even though marriage would change her name to the entirely unacceptable Lyssa Lew. After losing three grooms, in one manner or another, even her sunny nature couldn’t stand the steady barrage of calamity. The nightmares had started. She’d tried to remain optimistic, but she too often felt anxious. Desperate.

After Neron’s death, she had not been particularly sought after. In truth, she had not been sought after
at all
. Even those she had initially dismissed as unsuitable prospective husbands avoided her. She knew there were those who called her Bad Luck Lyssa, or Terrible Tempest. Some men actually looked the other way in fear when she caught their eye, as if her very glance might strike them dead.

And all the while she remembered that dreadful witch’s words. She refused to give much credence to the talk of magic and darkness and light, because if she did she might lose all hope. If she possessed magic, if there was an unnatural power within her, wouldn’t she be aware of it? The one word that she could never shake from her too-vivid memory of that day was
alone
.

She would have liked to think that the man she was to marry today was braver than most, but the truth of the matter was, he was simply as desperate to marry as she was. Kyran Verrel was handsome enough, not particularly smart nor particularly dull. He was average, ordinary. Just what she wanted from life. He came from a poor family who worked a farm not far from Arthes, and he wished for the easier life of a merchant. Marrying a merchant’s only child must have seemed like a dream come true to him, even though there were times when Lyssa was almost certain he didn’t like her very much. He would learn to like her. She was almost certain he didn’t
dislike
her, but now and then she noted an awkwardness between them, an uneasy feeling she could not identify.

But never mind that. She could be very pleasant, when pleasantness was required. She would be a good wife, and Kyran would be glad to claim her as his bride. And she would be married before her twenty-third birthday.

Barely.

They weren’t going to bother with the chapel this time around. The priest who’d attempted to preside over her previous three weddings, the thin and often sour Father Kiril, was coming to the house this afternoon. In front of a very small gathering of family and perhaps a friend or two, Lyssa would become a wife. And just in time.

Tomorrow was her twenty-third birthday.

***

After nearly four years, Blade was finally so close he could smell and taste the culmination of the need for revenge that had driven him to this place. He looked up, taking in the tall palace with its stone walls, solid defenses of impenetrable rock, and its armed sentinels. Somewhere inside that palace was the man who had killed Runa.

Standing on the street, he tried to blend in, to remain unnoticed. His only weapon, a dagger seated in a sheath at his side, was covered by a well worn dark cloak. His boots were dusty, his black beard and hair needed trimming. To anyone who bothered to look, he probably appeared to be a traveler, a new visitor to Arthes who was in awe of the palace before him.

Miron Volker—once a rancher, once a thief, once a soldier, once a murderer—had somehow gotten himself named Minister of Foreign Affairs. Volker was almost as protected as the emperor himself, though he deserved no man’s protection. He deserved a dagger through the heart, strong hands choking the last breath out of him or the pain of a poison that would rip apart his insides. The method of death wasn’t important. All that mattered was that Volker take his last breath. Soon.

Some might say that Blade should take his complaint to Emperor Jahn, who was, by all accounts, a fair ruler who surely knew nothing of Volker’s true past and murderous nature. But Blade didn’t trust others to do what had to be done. He didn’t trust anyone, not anymore. The emperor was
too
fair, perhaps, and Blade had no proof of his allegations to present. All others who knew for a fact that Volker had killed the young Runa Renshaw were already dead. Blade knew this to be true, because he’d been the one to kill them.

Murderers. Thieves. Unworthy, greedy men. They should all rot in a hellish afterlife, eternally burning, suffering as Runa had suffered. She had been so afraid....

No, the emperor would not take the word of the thief and murderer that Blade had become over that of his own minister. Taking his claim to the authorities, hoping for someone else to deliver justice, was a chance Blade could not,
would not
, take.

Blade realized—had accepted long ago—that in his pursuit of vengeance he had become too much like the men he’d hunted down. He had blood on his hands, and he was not yet done. The end was near, though. So very near.

He had to pull his mind from the pains of the past and what he could not do, and concentrate on the task before him. Getting into the palace wouldn’t be easy, but it could be done. He watched people coming and going. He paid attention to who was granted admittance and when.

A pretty girl and an older man exited the palace, eliciting no attention from the guards at the entrance. Father and daughter, he would guess, though it was not impossible that they were wed. Many an older man took a younger woman to wife, especially if he had money, as this man obviously did. His clothing was not official, and while his suit of clothes was fine, it was not that of a wealthy man. Same for the girl with the brown hair and womanly shape, who wore a dress the color of mud. The man was a successful tradesman, perhaps, making a delivery, perhaps taking an order as well. Blade had watched the pair enter a short while earlier, their arms laden with packages wrapped in linen and tied with string. The man and his daughter—or wife—had no trouble getting into, or out of, the palace.

A purpose. Blade needed a purpose—one other than justice—to get him past the guards and through those doors. He had waited long enough. To be so close and not be able to finish the job to which he’d devoted the last four years...

The pretty woman and her old man companion headed his way. She was chattering nervously, urging the man to increase his step. “Come along, Papa,” she said in a bright voice. “I don’t want to be late for my own wedding.” She sounded more anxious than happy, more worried than giddy.

Blade didn’t move as they came near, even though the woman was so distracted that she wasn’t paying proper attention to those around her. Perhaps she thought if she barreled along without a care in the world anyone who was in her way would clear a path. Blade did not move. He stared at the woman, noting the swell of her breasts and the sway of her hips. The dull color of her clothing made her cheeks seem more pink and her eyes more green.

Did she... shimmer? Just a bit? He blinked hard. No, the momentary glow was an illusion, a trick of the afternoon sunlight.

A moment before she was about to run him down, she veered smoothly, instinctively altering her path. Her skirt brushed against his leg. She was so close her sweet scent filled his nose, his head, and more. The flesh of her face and throat was pale and perfect, and would surely be soft to the touch. The soon-to-be bride glanced up, and their eyes met for a brief moment. Hers were wide and, surprisingly, touched with fear. Why would a bride be fearful? Perhaps her groom was not to her liking. Perhaps she feared the night and the initiation to come.