Claire Delacroix (17 page)

Gods and goddesses, but this juice had an unexpected power!

She lifted her chin proudly all the same. “I am Aurelia, daughter of Hekod the Fifth, King of Dunhelm and Lord of Fyordskar over the Sea, princess to the royal house and sole heiress to the throne of Dunhelm.” She met the invader’s considering gaze squarely and arched a brow. “Who else could I possibly be?”

Bard glanced to a bound volume by his foot and then back to Aurelia, his brow pulling together in a frown.

“Anyone you can imagine, obviously,” Marissa said tartly.

“Marissa, that’s enough.” Bard’s voice was stern.

“Hardly!” Marissa snorted and fired a lethal glance at Aurelia when no one responded. “Well, it’s obvious that no one has any interest in my perspective about all of this!” She stormed toward the door, clearly expecting someone to stop her.

But Aurelia was snared by the intense green of Bard’s concerned gaze and could not look away. They stared at each other, the whore’s displeasure a distant annoyance.

The power of Bard’s effect upon Aurelia was astonishing. She was sorely tempted to trust Dunhelm’s new king, even knowing all she did about him.

Aurelia was vaguely aware that Marissa sniffed with displeasure before stalking through the portal.

“Good riddance,” Julian muttered. He conquered the cork and splashed wine into all three goblets, taking a hearty swallow himself.

Bard leaned closer and Aurelia’s heart began to pound. “Princess, you can tell me the truth, you know,” he said in a low sympathetic voice. His gaze was mesmerizing, his low words hypnotic.

Aurelia was horrified to find her will bending to mesh with his own. “But you know the truth!” she retorted. “Why else did you imprison me in the well?”

Bard laced his fingers together and held her regard, his voice low and authoritative. “No one imprisoned you, Aurelia. We simply found you in that room, the well as you say. How did you get in?”

Aurelia did not know what to say to that.

Bard’s tone was so gentle that a less worldly woman than herself might have been fooled into believing he cared for her welfare. “Aurelia, your father is not the king...”

“He was, before you came,” she said tightly.

Bard’s lips thinned, but his tone did not change. “Did your father abandon you here at Dunhelm?”

Aurelia was appalled that he would try to twist the truth to leave her honorable father looking responsible. “No!” she retorted hotly. “My sire loves me! He would never abandon me. We are each all the other have left in this world!”

Bard’s expression turned grim. “Did your father die, Aurelia?”

How could Bard not know her sire’s fate?

Aurelia’s heart leapt. Her father had escaped Bard’s vengeance, no doubt with the aid of the old woman on the rocks.

Then her heart fell like a stone. Because Bard knew Hekod had evaded him. She was the one who had been fool enough to lead Bard to the sea caves! Aurelia groaned inwardly, hating that she found herself in a predicament of her own making yet again.

Clearly Bard thought Aurelia knew her father’s hiding place. That was why he was treating her so kindly. Oh, she had made a mess and a half of this!

And what else had she revealed this evening? Aurelia knew all too well that she had talked overmuch, but her recollection was already fogged.

Aurelia looked to the goblet of wine and suddenly understood what had loosened her unruly tongue.

The drink had been enchanted!

* * *

Baird stared into Aurelia’s magnificent eyes, once again certain that her mind was whirling. He could almost hear the wheels turning - and wished desperately that he knew what she was thinking.

Julian chose that moment to end his contest with Aurelia.

The lawyer hesitated uncharacteristically in the act of taking a sip of Chianti. When Baird glanced his way, Julian wavered for a moment, his eyes rolled back, then he slid bonelessly to the floor.

Aurelia waved her goblet over her head, a flush not purely from victory staining her cheeks. “I win!” she crowed and danced to her feet. “He could not face his own brew!”

Her change of mood was breathtakingly quick and Baird eyed her uncertainly. Aurelia changed from woman to child in the blink of an eye - and usually right after she got that look of terror in her eyes.

Her strong response to the idea of her father being dead made Baird think he had hit a nerve. That Aurelia, who faced life full-out, couldn’t bring herself to confront the idea of her father’s death was obviously important.

She was such a strong person that her vulnerability over even one issue tugged at his heartstrings. Baird resolved that he should be more gentle with Aurelia in his search for the truth. If her father was dead, that wouldn’t be easy for her to face.

And Baird was oddly determined to protect his princess from hurt.

A less-than-festive Julian groaned from the floor and his glass slipped from his limp fingers. It rolled across the floor, spilling its ruby contents, but the lawyer did not move.

Baird suddenly saw disaster in the making.

“The new tiles!” He swore and ducked his head under the table to wipe up the wine, Aurelia following suit. They bumped heads and she sat back on her heels with a giggle. She clapped a hand over her mouth, fell back on her butt with a thump, and watched him with twinkling eyes.

She was just so damned cute. Baird had to admit that he liked how enthusiastically Aurelia had met Julian’s challenge and liked even better that she had beaten the lawyer soundly.

Julian would never live this down.

At least, if Baird had his way.

And if Baird could do anything about it, he’d have Aurelia’s eyes sparkling routinely. Baird had to help Aurelia face the truth, however painful it might be.

But right now, he had to ease away the shadows he had unwittingly put in her eyes.

“What do you seek beneath the board?” she asked.

“I was looking to see where you hid all that pizza and wine.” Baird met her gaze solemnly. “Are you sure you don’t have a hollow leg?”

“Not me!” Aurelia laughed heartily, a far cry from the contrived trill that Marissa periodically let herself utter. “You have seen my legs enough to know the truth!”

Oh, that he had. Baird snuck a glance at her dancing toes and told himself that the heat in his veins was because of the wine.

“What about a dog?” he demanded with mock skepticism. “Have you been slipping all your pizza to some hungry mutt?”

“No! There are no dogs in your hall.”

“Hmm.” Baird stood and propped his hands on his hips, making a great show of looking around the room. He fixed a stern eye on Aurelia. “But you’re too small to eat more than me and drink more than Julian, let alone at the same time. Are you sure you don’t have big pockets in that dress?”

Aurelia scrambled to her feet and lifted her chin proudly. “Do you doubt the word of a Pictish princess?”

“No, just her capacity.” Baird closed the distance between them, fighting against a playful smile. “Maybe I should check,” he suggested wickedly and snatched at her.

“Oh, ho! You will not touch me!” Aurelia danced away evasively, holding up her left hand to ward Baird off.

It worked.

Three delicate, very blue whorls uncoiled on Aurelia’s left palm, the trio radiating from an ornate spiraled core. Each curve as graceful as a fern in the spring forest. It almost reminded Baird of drawings of galaxies, before he realized exactly where he had seen this pattern before.

It was in Talorc’s book.

The hair on the back of Baird’s neck rose right on cue.

“What’s that?” he asked, and his voice was unusually strained.

Aurelia looked to her hand, as though it was no big deal. “It is the mark of the onset of my courses and the pledge of my vows. Surely you have seen one like it before.”

Oh, he had, but how could she know that? Baird refused to even look towards the book. He took a step backwards, his gaze locked on the tattoo. An eerie tingle danced over his flesh.

It couldn’t be a Pictish tattoo!

Baird must have drunk more than he thought he had, to even be considering such a possibility! Anyone could have a tattoo made in any city in the world. It wasn’t hard to do - and if Aurelia had wanted to play the Pictish princess with conviction, she might have deliberately chosen this design.

If nothing else, Aurelia had done her homework.

But all the logical explanations in the world couldn’t undermine Baird’s intuitive certainty that this was the real thing.

Which was not the way Baird thought, at all. He wasn’t intuitive, he didn’t have any use for instinct, he certainly put no value in emotion. Only logic served a man well.

Even if logic was coming up a bit short in this circumstance. Maybe it wasn’t Dunhelm that had cast a spell over him, after all.

Maybe it had been Aurelia.

His blood ran cold at the thought. “It can’t be real,” Baird argued, but there was no conviction in his voice.

“It most certainly is real,” Aurelia scoffed. “I still recall the pain.”

“Then why do it?”

Aurelia lifted her chin proudly now as though insulted. “I am half Viking blood, by my sire, and unafraid of anything laid before me. A Viking neither backs away from a challenge, nor forgets obligation, nor leaves the field in defeat.”

She cast a scathing glance at Julian, now snoring on the floor. “Tell your Roman priest that the power of the old ones is yet strong.”

There was that talk about Julian being a priest again. Baird shifted his weight uneasily and refused to look to Talorc’s book.

Aurelia would have strolled from the room regally, no doubt, but she stumbled on the hem of her dress. She did an intricate little two-step towards the stairs and she caught her balance before Baird could even move to help her.

Then, she took a deep breath and pivoted to stare Baird right in the eye. “And tell him that the spell he laid on the fruit juice was weak indeed.”

Spell?

Before Baird could ask, Aurelia turned away. She must have done so a little too quickly, for she wobbled on her feet, then gripped the doorframe for a long moment. She crossed the foyer without looking back, the faint sound of a hiccup carrying to his ears.

Baird stood and stared after her for a long moment. She didn’t know what wine or pizza was, she drank mead, she didn’t understand indoor plumbing. Aurelia couldn’t really be from the eighth century.

She just couldn’t.

Baird eyed his snoring lawyer and realized that although one contestant had made it to her room under her own steam, the other one would need a little assistance.

And he was the only one left to provide it.

* * *

Chapter Eleven

Aurelia peeled off her clothes and cast them impatiently on the floor when she reached her room. She knew it was not her imagination that the whore’s chemise nearly burned her skin. The woman’s malevolence was powerful enough to have a life of its own.

The moonlight was spilling through the window in her chambers and Aurelia pressed against the clear pane to look. The moon was waxing towards full.

It had been the last new moon before the Moon of Eostre when Baird attacked Dunhelm, she remembered. And it was still early spring, she could tell by the growth around her.

Aurelia guessed that she had slept for at least seven nights. Which could only mean that the priest had drugged her.

And that his power to see great buildings rise from the ground was beyond anything Aurelia had ever seen before.

But she had bested him in a simple contest of will. Aurelia rubbed her temple in confusion. Clearly, Julian had bewitched this wine to prove the strength of his power over hers.

But he had fallen prey to his own spell. It was a sign of incredible incompetence. Just like his spell on her room door.

Though both were odd contrast with the other signs of his power.

And where had her sire gone?

The moonlight splayed across the tapestry on the chamber floor, painting an inviting square of silver light. Aurelia tugged the draperies back and made the square into a large rectangle.

Aurelia’s second gift was the ability to see her way most clearly when she beckoned prophetic dreams to her sleep. On this night, in Bard’s dangerous den, she needed that gift’s aid more than she ever had in all her days.

Aurelia stood in the rays of the glowing moon, her flesh bare to its cool light. She closed her eyes and began to chant the words her mother had taught her from the cradle.

The chant surrounded and embraced her, lifting her above the limitations of the earth. Deep in a hidden corner of her mind, Aurelia reached into a deep well of shadows and pulled to light the dreaming stone.

Aurelia felt its smoothness as though she held it within her hands, knew that it was magically wrought of the spittle of countless snakes. In her mind’s eye, she stroked the veined red and gray of the stone, and urged its power into herself.

The stone began to glow. Aurelia felt its strength build within her, felt the tide rise in her favor, and smiled with certainty that this night’s dream would be powerful in its insight.

In the peril confronting her, Aurelia needed no less. She tipped back her head, stretched her arms wide to embrace the moon’s silver light, and boldly beckoned to the Dreaming.

* * *

Baird tossed restlessly in his sleep. He saw himself descending the stone stairs, cutting back the thorns as he had this very morning.

But Baird never dreamed.

Never had, never would. Dreams were for other people. Even in sleep, a part of his mind pointed out logical inconsistencies.

But the dream continued, all the same, apparently unaware that it was unwelcome on this foreign turf.

Baird noticed suddenly that the light was different than it had been that morning. He saw the flaming torch held high in his own hand, the golden firelight dancing off every surface and making intriguing shadows. The night pressed against him from all sides.

And despite himself, his attention was snared.

Baird caught a glimpse of a long, full ostrich feather bobbing in his peripheral vision, and knew it must adorn his hat. A long sword with an elaborate handguard bumped against his leg, his feet, when he looked, were shod in high cuffed leather boots.