Heart Duel (27 page)

He was cool enough now not to tell her the truth. “We have a special bond.” Though she might not let him in, she could do nothing when he enveloped her in a field of tenderness. For her, he'd dig inside himself for emotions. In her presence he could experience feelings in spite of his own great wound of his injured Mamá. So he gently settled a cloak of soft love, unthreatening love devoid of passion, around Bélla.

She turned her head away from him and sniffed. Her lips trembled. “Find another woman, Holm,” she whispered.

“The bond between us is strong and good. And right. Can't you tell how right it is?” he, too, whispered.

Her mouth curved down. “The bond is right, the time is wrong. Let it go, Holm.”

“I can't. They promised.”

Her chin came up in passion. “How could you hold them to such a promise now?”

He didn't know if he could, but it seemed like the only thread of hope he could hang on to.

At that moment Tinne appeared, carrying a pair of drooping kittens. A ring of white rimmed his mouth. “Meserv and Phyll insisted on trying to help.” He stepped between Lark and Holm, facing her. Tinne sucked in a breath of air and blinked rapidly. “They did well. Both of them.” He handed Meserv to Holm and Phyll to Lark with a bow.

Tinne continued to keep his body between them. “I think you must be very weary, FirstLevel Healer,” he said evenly.

“Yes.” A small, sad smile flickered across her face. “It's time for me to go. I'll be here tomorrow to—to help.”

“Tinne—” Holm started.

Tinne didn't turn to him. “Father is asking for you.”

“Blessed be, Holm HollyHeir and GreatSir Tinne Holly,” Lark said, and Holm knew her retreat into formal manners was to put as much distance between them as she could. Reluctantly he dissipated the field around her. She shivered, then shrugged and hurried away down the hallway.

“Don't say anything, Tinne,” Holm warned his brother's back. “I don't want to hear a word.”

“You wouldn't listen anyway.” Tinne sounded muffled.

“Damnable situation,” Holm smacked his fist against the nearest wall, hard enough to make a satisfactory sound and sting, but not do any damage.

“Yes,” Tinne said.

 
 
Lark took a shortcut through a Healer's corridor to the
chapel. On her way, she stopped by her den and found Laev huddled in the twoseat.

“Laev?”

He lifted his face, this time not pretending he hadn't been crying, though the tracks of his tears showed only faintly in the dim light. “I stayed in the chapel a while, it smelled nice and felt good, but there's a holo of the Lady, and she looks just like the one I hurt—” His voice cracked.

Lark winced inwardly. She'd forgotten that a woman of the Apple Family had posed for the portrait, some ancestor of the present Passiflora D'Holly, no doubt.

Lark shut the door behind her and advanced into the shabbily furnished little room.

“So I came here,” Laev said. He hauled a softleaf from his pocket and blew his nose. Since the tissue was a pale peach color, Lark knew he'd gotten it from the bowl on her desk.

“You have fash music.” He waved to the entertainment slot. Lark shivered. He'd spelled the system to play several of Passiflora D'Holly's pieces. She didn't know until Holm had left her apartment that morning how many flexistrips of D'Holly's music she'd collected.

“Will she live?” Laev asked with the bluntness of youth and guilt.

Lark petted the sleeping Fam in her arms. “I don't know. No one knows. It seems your blade had a propulsion and poison spell.”

He turned very white and shuddered. “I didn't put it there. I didn't. I didn't know. I wouldn't have used the knife if I'd known!”

“Where did you get it?”

Now color raced to his cheeks. “I picked it up in the street, about three years ago outside the Guildhall, but it was a real gang knife. It had symbols and everything.”

“Oh. I think someone needs to look at it. GrandLord T'Culpeper or T'Heather.”

Taking a chance, she went to the twoseat and sat, placing Phyll in her lap and putting her arm around Laev. He stiffened, then leaned into her. She stroked his hair. His mother, bless her, had been an unusually demonstrative person to marry into the Family and had taught her son how to touch and be touched.

After a few moments he said. “She might die.”

“Yes,” agreed Lark.

“And if she dies,
he
dies. They're HeartMates, aren't they?”

“Yes.”

A racking shudder went through him at the thought of killing the great T'Holly, even indirectly. Laev had spoken the words no one in the HealingHall had wanted even to think, let alone say aloud. If D'Holly died, T'Holly would follow within a year, since HeartMates were so bound together.

“That's bad. That's horrible. I don't ever want to be a HeartMate,” Laev said.

She ruffled his hair again. “I hear there are compensations. And it's a few years before you'll know yet.”

Once more the silence stretched between them. Laev wrestled with some thoughts. Another time she believed they'd get on well together, something she and her brother had never managed. She liked this boy, and could come to love him as one should love Family.

“You know what's the worst?” he whispered.

“What?”

“Papa and FatherSire are
proud
of me. And FatherSire, he's
glad
that T'Holly might die, and that I did it by mistake. It makes me feel sick.”

Bitterness welled up in her, but not surprise. Lark wondered how to handle this. She didn't want to criticize their Family, no matter how wrong they were, that might make Laev react out of loyalty and stop him from thinking. “What would your mother have said about this?”

Tremors rocked him, and she took his hands and put Phyll in them. “Here, pet my kitten, Phyll. It will help both of you.”

“Mama would have said I was stupid and now I'm suffering the consequences of my own foolish actions. But the results shouldn't have been as bad as this.” He snuffled and laid Phyll on his lap to use the softleaf again.

“She sounds like she was a wise woman.”

“She was a Grove.”

“Then she was wise.”

“I don't think I like feuding.”

“Hawthorns aren't very good at the fighting part,” Lark said carefully. “Groves and Heathers aren't even good at the grudge part. I've never heard of either a Grove or a Heather feud.”

“Before I did this, Papa and FatherSire said the feud was just business. It seemed exciting.”

“And now?”

“How can it be just business if people die? That's not what business is about, is it?”

“Not to me. But I don't think Tryskel Pass is worth dying for, either. There's enough land on Celta. I'm not sure I know what is worth dying for.”

“I don't, either,” he said miserably. “We could die, too.”

“That's right. I worry about you, your father, FatherSire—and Cratag.”

“Cratag fights all the time.” Laev petted Phyll faster. “He's been Healed twice. He says he fights to keep his place in T'Hawthorn Residence, but I wouldn't make him fight. I like him.”

“I like him, too.”

This time the quiet that spun between them was companionable, and Lark treasured the notion that she finally connected with her nephew and found in him someone she could feel affection for.

“When I'm T'Hawthorn, I won't feud,” Laev announced.

“There are better ways of settling disputes,” Lark agreed. “From what you've already suffered, that's a wise decision.”

His expression tensed with fear. “What can they do to me?”

“Who?”

“The NobleCouncil.”

Lark raised her eyebrows. “Your FatherSire will never let anything happen to you, and the informal laws of the feud protect you, as well as your youth. It was an accident.”

He jerked his head in the direction of Intake. “Do
they
know?”

“The Hollys? That it was an accident? Yes, Eryngi told them he taunted you.”

“He did, but I should have been able to ignore it.”

Lark hid a smile at his too-high-minded tone, encouraged that his teenage sense of drama had returned.

“Hindsight.” She sighed. “How are you feeling?”

His face lightened a little as if at any other time he might have smiled. “Not good. But better. Thank you for helping me in the Intake and speaking with me.”

Lark inclined her head. “I know you have some Heathers living at T'Hawthorn Residence . . . if you have nightmares—”

“Nightmares!” Laev shivered. “I hadn't thought of that. How am I supposed to sleep?”

Lark 'ported packets of chamomile tea and tucked them in his shirt pocket. “This tea will help you. If you need to talk further, go to Garis. He's a good, solid Healer and won't tell anyone of your conversations.”

Laev slid his eyes in her direction. “Vera Aloe is cuter.”

Lark chuckled. She took his hand and offered a mental-emotional link he immediately accepted. “Anytime you want to talk, or anything else, just call me mind-to-mind.”

His spirits lightened a little. “Yes.” Laev lifted a now-purring Phyll and put him back on Lark's lap. “I channeled some energy to him. Papa comes, time for me to go.” He said a small spell, and his clothes were tidied and face and hands cleansed.

Lark pressed her lips together at a pang of memory. Everyone in T'Hawthorn Household learned that spell as soon as they could speak—the one that would always make them presentable to their elders.

When Lark caught sound of her brother Huathe's heavy footsteps on the floor outside her office, she straightened her spine and practiced her mantra: calm, and breathe, and serenity, and shield, and breathe, and acceptance.

Seventeen

The door opened and Lark's brother, the younger Huathe
Hawthorn, walked in. “Sulking in the dark? Lights on.”

Both Lark and Laev blinked.

“Oh, it's you, Mayblossom.”

Lark gritted her teeth. “It's my den.”

Huathe nodded and shut the door behind him.

Laev stood and bowed formally. “Greetyou, Father.”

“Son. This trip was unnecessary. I hope you realize that.”

“As you say,” Laev replied.

A spurt of pride in the boy warmed Lark. He'd be able to stand up to his father, and someday his FatherSire. She wondered if it was because he knew he would be T'Hawthorn, being a male, or being half-Grove. She only wished she'd learned the trick at his age.

As Huathe put a hand on his son's shoulder, Lark thought it might be that her brother was—slightly—less intimidating than her father.

Still, when he turned a cool, purple-eyed gaze on her, she raised her chin.

“How does D'Holly?” Huathe asked.

“I don't know. I haven't seen her for a while. You should speak to T'Heather.” She wouldn't give him any information to plot the damn feud.

Huathe raised his brows. “I've never known you to be so uncertain of your Heather skills, Mayblossom.”

She shrugged. “D'Holly is T'Heather's patient.”

“Give me an estimate of her condition.”

“I'll do better. I'll take you to her, so you can see how a woman with a poison knife wound looks. I'll give you an inner view of the disease inside her—the color, the morbidity, the effect on her organs—”

A strangled cry came from Laev. Lark bit her lip.

“That was uncalled for,” Huathe said.

“I'm sorry, Laev,” Lark apologized.

“No need.” But Laev brushed a hand across his eyes. “I saw her. Father, if you want a report—”

“Not right now,” Huathe said, quickly enough for Lark to wonder if he was in the habit of receiving reports from his son, and on what issues. She suppressed another sigh, remembering her own childhood when she stood before her father every evening to detail her septhours.

“Laev should go to bed. He's had a long day,” Lark said.

“So have you, I imagine,” Huathe said in subtle question.

“It was my restday. I was called in.” No need to say how. She hunched a shoulder. “The days will be long for all Healers for a while.”

Huathe narrowed his eyes, and the quiet now was like bitemites, invisible and stinging with challenge.

“Father, is Cratag with you?” asked Laev.

“Yes. HealingHalls are neutral ground, he's just outside the door.”