Captivity (30 page)

Val was crying louder than ever. “Hush,” I
said, rubbing his back. “Papa’s bringing us milk, just as soon as
he finds us some.”

Val was convinced we had all gone mad. “Papa
doesn’t have milk.
You
have milk. I’m hungry.”

“I’m sorry, love,” I said, “I don’t have milk
anymore.”

“You’re my mama,” he said. “You
have
to have milk.”

Dominic had returned with a brimming bucket
of warm milk. He snorted with laughter at Val’s forceful assertion.
“Not forever, little man,” he said. “It’s time for you to
relinquish the breast at last.”

I leaned against Dominic’s strong arms as he
supported my shoulders, giving me swig after swig of the milk from
a small wooden bowl. It tasted magical, running into me like a
stream of liquid energy, warm and sparkling with life. I couldn’t
get enough it seemed, but Dominic knew when I was ready to lie back
and catch my breath, smacking my lips, and watch Jana finish her
own bowl, holding it out for a refill.

Val continued to protest. “
No!
” he
shook his head, clamping his lips shut as the rim of the bowl was
held to his mouth. “
No! No! No!
I want
Mama’s
milk! I
don’t like this milk. It’s yucky!”

Dominic took the rejection calmly. “Then you
won’t mind if I have some,” he said, and drained a bowl in one long
gulp. He handed the bowl to Niall, who drank quickly and passed the
bucket along to the Aranyi men, the wounded first, then Ranulf and
the others. It was a hard and fast rule that whatever Dominic
enjoyed of food or comfort on a campaign, his men must have a
share. It was part of the reason it had been wrong for him and
Niall to indulge in love, when the other men had no women or lovers
with them.

The bucket was twice replenished and drained
before everyone had drunk his fill. Dominic winked at the men, who
understood the last bowlful was to be reserved for Val, when he
woke up to the fact that he must drink this yucky stuff or go
without.

The rest of the evening passed happily
enough. Val continued to complain, but he was too hungry and weak
from fever to let loose in the real tantrum he would otherwise have
enacted. He consented to eat some bread and nibble some cheese, and
he decided he could drink water from a skin because, as he
explained in the face of our obstinate ignorance, “Water
comes
this way.”

As night began to fall, I discovered that
indeed all my body’s systems were functioning. “Dominic,” I
whispered, had merely to think my needs to receive his prompt
assistance. He carried me and Val, Jana following, to the latrine,
a series of holes dug far from the camp’s living area, where the
smells and the insects would not trouble us. Dominic braced me
while I relieved myself, and watched Jana open and refasten her
breeches as if she had never worn anything else. He convinced Val
by demonstration that urinating standing up was the manly thing to
do and would make his entire family very proud. “It’s true,”
Dominic sighed, not unhappily, as he shoveled earth over our
leavings, “a soldiers’ camp is not designed for women.”

When it was almost full dark everyone was
ready for early bed. The night’s snow had begun to fall, large
fluffy flakes drifting down in air that was only just cold enough
to keep the soft, wet snow from turning to raindrops. The men left
off drinking and polishing weapons around the campfire and crawled
into tents, moving the wounded men in first. Dominic and Niall
lifted me, Dominic at my head, Niall at my feet and, shuffling on
their knees, maneuvered me into the largest tent. There was a thick
groundsheet for a floor, sturdy canvas above. My blankets provided
bedroll and pillow. Jana quickly made her own bed, nestled beside
me back to back, while Val rested naturally in the curve of my
arm.

Dominic and Niall kissed us all goodnight and
crawled into a smaller tent next to mine. The fire was banked down
for the night, the crackling sound reduced to a low muffled sizzle.
Its faint glow shone through the wall of the tent like the earth’s
inner flame, a sign of life’s eternal renewal. The murmur of low
voices faded, replaced by hoots and the scurrying of nocturnal
animals. It is the natural sound of the woods and, to humans,
peaceful. Jana and Val were asleep at once, and I was not far
behind.

Something woke me in the small hours: a
shock, a loss, an absence. I sat up in a panic and I fumbled at my
waist for the sheath with my prism-handled dagger. All was silent,
dark and still. From the safety of the tent I sent my mind to
investigate.

Reynaldo was gone!
Left out in the
cold, not fed or watered, my enemy had died, loss of blood and
exposure completing what his terrorized mind could long for and
imagine, but not accomplish on its own.

Footsteps crunched in the damp snow.
No,
Dominic
, I thought.
Wait, please, for my sake
.

Dominic examined the still-warm body,
reported to me in thought what I already knew. His mind wrapped
mine in comfort, any madness or cruelty undetectable, smothered by
our love.
What do you want, beloved?
he asked, guessing my
choice but careful to hear it for himself.
What is your
pleasure?

I didn’t have to think.
Revenge
, I
said, as a crushing weight lifted from me. Saying the word, knowing
the longed-for desire was become reality, drained the horror of the
past days from me like infection from an opened wound.
Give me
revenge, Dominic. Don’t let him die so soon
. I am ‘Gravina
Aranyi, wife of Dominic-Leandro and mother of his children. We
belong together, locked in unbreakable union, because we have found
in the other what we see in ourselves.

Even as he asked the question, Dominic had
his dagger out, the prism in the handle facing up. He bent
moonlight and starlight and the light from the campfire into his
eyes, leaning over his prey that had almost escaped, and
resurrected the bloody corpse that had known ultimate freedom for
so short a time.

Dominic has a strong gift, if
unconventionally trained, and so difficult an operation did not
pose a great problem for him. He asked me only one or two technical
questions, but he did the work himself. Reynaldo had been brain
dead less than five minutes, and he retained his full mental
faculties on his return to life. The dreadful moans as Reynaldo
understood that even his death would be at our pleasure threatened
to make further sleep impossible, but Dominic took pity on me and
the rest of the camp and gave his victim unconsciousness until
morning.

Still I could not go back to sleep, but
shivered and chafed my icy feet. Dominic, unable to escape my
discomfort, kissed Niall in apology and spent the rest of the night
with me, pressing close, chest and hips against my back, his arms
wrapped tightly around me and Val, his thighs parted to accept and
thaw my frozen feet, until my shaking slowly eased. Jana worked
herself slowly and sinuously into a position somewhere on top and
between us. Eventually Niall, too cold all by himself, joined the
huddled group on Dominic’s other side, and the five of us crammed
the tent, fogging the air with our breath and condensing the
moisture on the taut fabric walls.

The morning dawned bright and warm, the scant
snow melting quickly. The tents were struck and folded, the camp
dismantled, the fire extinguished and the ashes buried. The men ate
a hurried breakfast while feeding and watering the horses and
saddling them for travel. Dominic helped me as before. This morning
I could manage not only milk, but some bread and cheese as well.
Val, astonished to find that the cruel privations we had forced on
him last night still prevailed, consented to drink some sheep’s
milk, making it clear he did not expect to have to put up with this
sorry state of affairs once we returned to Aranyi.

Dominic jabbed Reynaldo awake with
crypta
, a slash of jagged edge against exposed raw flesh,
and the body was loaded back onto the animal that would bear him
down the trail. The sobbing and moaning rose and fell in my mind,
but I was learning now how to adjust the volume. My husband had
done as I asked, would always consult my wishes. I entered his
mind—the honorable ‘Graven lord and Royal Guards officer in the
front and the gloating torturer in the back—and found I could
recognize in both places the man I had married.
My love,
I
thought to him, hearing his affectionate reply to me simultaneously
with his goading of Reynaldo and his controlled commands to his
men.

Litters had been made up, with blankets and
carrying straps, for the two wounded men and me and Val, and we
were bundled into them, ready to set off within an hour of sunrise.
“Home,” I said to Val. “We’re going home.”

Can’t wait to find out what happens next? Here’s a
preview of
Retribution
, Book Six in
the
Eclipsis
series of Lady Amalie’s
memoirs:

I opened my eyes to soft light. It was the evening of
my third day after my rescue. Dominic sat on a chair beside my bed
in Lady Ladakh’s guestroom. He knew when I woke, felt the change in
my mind immediately.
Amalie,
he thought to me.
Amalie, do
you know me?
He thought the words; I could sense his
consciousness so close to mine, but it was Reynaldo’s mind and
voice that I felt and heard.

I shut my eyes against the horror, as if that
would help. “Dominic,” I said, feeling for his hand to form
communion. “Don’t send thoughts. Speak to me instead.”

Dominic obeyed me without question, clasping
my hand. “What terrible dreams were you having?”

The temptation to unburden myself, to relax,
as I was used to, in Dominic’s strength, was too great to be
resisted. “The shithead,” I said, refusing to use a name that would
give him a semblance of humanity. “The shithead keeps speaking to
me. With
crypta
. In my mind.” Surely Dominic would have
prevented that if he had known.

Dominic’s stood up at my words, striding
across the room, his hand on the hilt of his sword. The image he
projected to anyone with the least telepathic ability was
terrifying. His hair stood on end, electricity shooting out and
creating a halo of blue fire. The red of his retinas’ blood vessels
showed through the clear glass of his inner eyelids like fire
engulfing the walls of a stormed castle. From my position on the
bed his great height seemed extended, his head almost touching the
ceiling. The sword he brandished at arm’s length was dripping
blood, and white fireballs of rage shot from him to explode
noiselessly against the stone walls. Yet he was, in reality, merely
pacing softly in the room, his sword clean and safely sheathed.

“I warned him,” Dominic said, coming to a
stop near the head of the bed. There was the hint of a smile, a
leaping of flame behind the clear eyelids. “He will pay dearly for
such an insult.” The words came out through lips that barely moved.
He was excited in an anticipatory, almost sexual way. The fact did
not displease me.

Dominic drew his prism-handled dagger and
returned to the chair at my bedside, sitting straight and still,
all his energy of his gift focused through the prism, touching the
bandit mentally. His mind formed a series of rapid images—first the
notched blade of a dull knife, then a flaming torch, next a
many-tailed whip with leaded knots, and finally a skewer, the tip
glowing red from being heated in the fire.
That was stupid,
insulting ‘Gravina Aranyi
, Dominic thought to Reynaldo.
Every stupid thing you do will increase your pain. We will try
the effects of all of these implements, see which you enjoy the
most, and which the least
.

I reached for Dominic’s consciousness,
feeling carefully before entering so dark and forbidding a place as
it had become, yet responding as always to my husband’s arousal.
Dominic-Leandro
, I thought to him,
my love, take me with
you—

The knock on the door shook me out of the
violent communion I was not yet ready for. Lady Ladakh had come to
check on me, but seeing Dominic with me she moved to withdraw.

Before she could leave, Val burst in through
the open door, pursued by a harassed nursemaid, and climbed up
beside me. “I’ve been resurrected!” he said. “I was dead and now
I’m resurrected.”

Lady Ladakh shut her eyes in pain and
gestured with her left hand, touching her forehead and chest, then
each shoulder in turn—the sign of a devout Christian.

“Hush, Val,” I said, stroking his flushed
face. “I was forced to use the
crypta
-death on my son and
myself,” I said to Lady Ladakh. “I used the word with him the other
day. I’m sorry; I meant no offense to your religion.”

Lady Ladakh opened her eyes and looked, not
at me, but at Dominic. “Margrave,” she said, “my faith has been put
to the test. Not by the innocent words of a child, but by the sins
of adults.”

She paused. I could feel the strong moral
sense in her, compelling her to do what she saw as her duty.
Confronting Dominic, her lord and her guest, was a greater trial
than all the uncomplicated dangers she had faced alone over the
last fifteen years of her widowhood. When she spoke next it was in
the harsh voice of conviction. “My faith teaches many things, but
the most important lesson is this: to love our enemies. And I can
no longer ignore what has been going on under my roof, or allow it
to continue.”

Dominic had risen politely when Lady Ladakh
entered the room. After her outburst Dominic stood looking down at
her, a sympathetic expression on his face. “It’s that thing in the
barn,” he said, one person of sensibility to another. “It would
upset a vulture’s stomach to be within smelling distance of such
filth, and I sincerely apologize for inflicting it on you and your
household.”