Mortal Heart (38 page)

“I have always been here,” he says. “Waiting.”

My spirits rise at the faint goading in his voice. I fold my arms and take three steps toward him. “Well, you need wait no longer. Here I am.” Then I reach out, put my hands against his chest, and shove. Caught off-guard, he stumbles. I push again, and again, until he is up against the wall. He looks down at me, his face a mask of confusion.

“You’ve wanted me since the night when you first happened upon me. Well, now I am giving myself to you.” I have denied myself so much in the belief that I owed my life to others, but that belief is gone now. If I am nothing other than the most ordinary of mortals, then I may as well roll in the full slop of life.

I want Balthazaar’s arms around me, his lips upon mine. I want to feel something other than this howling nothingness that screams through my soul.

I reach up and wrap my arms around Balthazaar’s neck, rise up on my toes, then plant my lips on his. Or try to.

“Wait.” He pulls away, staring down at me as if I have sprouted antlers. “What is it you want?”

I stare at him steadily. “You. Me. Entwined.” I want him to make me forget. Make me remember. Make me feel extraordinary in this new, mortal way that is all that is left to me.

When he continues to hesitate, I grow incensed. How dare he change his mind now, when I have decided this is what I want? “But if you are not man enough, there are thousands of soldiers wandering the city. I’m sure one of them will oblige.” I turn to leave, holding my breath to see if he will let me go, exalting when he reaches out and grabs my arm. He spins me around so that my back is against the wall. He is angry now. I respond by leaning into it, by letting his fury ignite my own and using it to warm the chill at the very heart of my being.

“Something’s changed you.”

“Yes.” Something has changed me, but it has also freed me. I feel a frantic bubble of laughter rising in my throat. I have always felt torn in two by my opposing desires—to live my own life, or to serve Mortain as He wills it. Well, I have only my own life to live now. And what I want—in this moment—is to
feel.
I want to feel something new and forbidden. I want to feel powerful in some way—as I do when Balthazaar looks at me with heat in his eyes. I want to feel the full force of that heat on my lips, my hands, my entire body. I reach for him again and this time he does not stop me. Slowly, I bring my lips up to his.

“I do not want to take you against the wall.” His lips brush against mine with each word, his gaze boring into me as if plumbing my depths to see what is hidden there.

“But I
want
to be taken against the wall.” I nibble at his lips in the same way I would a sweetmeat. I welcome the bite and chafe of the rough stone against my back.

“You’re angry . . .”

“It’s nothing to do with you.”

“But what if you regret this?”

I pull far enough away that I can glare at him. “For a spawn of the Underworld, you have far too much honor.”

He does not look away but instead waits patiently for my answer.

I sigh. “Trust me, on the long list of regrets I might have, this would be near the bottom.” To convince him, I begin unlacing my gown.

He grabs my hands to still them, but this time he pulls me away from the wall. With my hands still wrapped in his, he leads me down the battlement.

As we draw out of the shadows, I am tempted to keep my head down in case one of the sentries should see us. Except my action shames no one but me, and I am not ashamed of what I am doing. It is perhaps the only thing I am not ashamed of right now. It feels as if it is one of the most honest things I have ever done.

It is comforting, this new knowing where my boundaries lie. Before, it was as if I were still forming, waiting for the edges of my self to fill in. But now I know that this is it. The sum and total of who I am and who I will ever be is already contained within me.

Balthazaar pauses outside a narrow door, listens, then opens it. It is a storage room of sorts, full of extra weapons and unused armor. It is, I think, the perfect place.

He swiftly shuts the door, then pulls me closer. He lifts his hands to my face and cups it, his eyes searching mine. “Are you certain?”

In answer, I put my arms around his neck again and press my entire body along the length of his. “Yes.” The word rings as clear and sharp as a bell, for I am certain of nothing but this. My waiting is over; it is now time to claim the life that I want, even if I must drag it kicking and screaming to a garrison closet.

Then—finally!—he leans down to place his lips on mine.

It is everything I remember. At first, they are surprisingly cool, but within seconds it is as if the heat of my own desire flows into him as he takes what I offer, moving his own mouth so that it completely captures my own. I fall into the kiss, like a stone into a deep pond, sinking deeper and deeper until I am not sure I will ever leave. I let go of everything, everything but the sensations that engulf me.

He has beautiful lips, I realize, running my tongue along the fullness of them. They are shapely and full enough to invite kissing. Best of all, they chase away the taste of bitterness and despair that have threatened to drown me.

The faint rasp of his whiskers. The silky spot of skin my fingers find, just below his ear. His hands, sure and strong, caressing my waist, moving up along my rib cage and then down again to my hip, as if he would memorize the shape of me.

The feel of his heart echoing mine as they both beat too fast.

I step back—just a bit—to give myself room to finish unlacing my gown. I meet his eyes and am thrilled to see no sign of bleakness or despair or grim duty there. They are warm and glowing like sun-warmed stones, and the heat in them causes my heart to race faster and my fingers to falter.

“Here,” he whispers. “Let me.”

And I do.

Afterward, as I lie in his arms, savoring the feel of them around me, savoring the feel of his heart hammering under my hand where it lies upon his chest, I realize that I cannot even pretend our time together was enough. I am more drawn to him than ever, drawn to this meeting of not just our bodies and hearts, but our souls. It is an intimacy that I have hungered for my entire life yet have never been able to name. If I think this is all I will ever have of him, I fear I will weep.

I saw hope in his eyes, and an easing of his bleakness, just as I felt hope in my own heart and no longer felt alone. I promise myself that this is just the beginning. Now that I have no obligation to the convent or the abbess, I can begin to shape the future I want for myself.

A
S
I
MAKE MY WAY
to my chamber, I send out a silent plea to let it be empty. Please let Sybella be visiting her sisters and Ismae be attending to the duchess. Or locked in some private chamber with Duval. With all that has happened in the past few hours, I am feeling far too confused and raw to explain anything to anyone, even my dearest friends.

But my prayers are not answered. When I open the door, both Ismae and Sybella are there. Sybella’s gaze sharpens as her eyes rake over me, her nostrils flaring. If anyone could detect such activity as I have just been engaged in, it would be she. But to my immense relief, she says nothing about her suspicions. “Here.” She shoves a garment at Ismae. “Go put that on.” As Ismae disappears behind the screen, Sybella pours me a cup of wine and hands it to me. I am surprised at the thoughtfulness—just one more way in which she has changed. “Thank you.”

“Are you all right?” she asks under her breath, dispelling any notion I might have had that I fooled her.

I stare at my goblet as if it is the most fascinating thing in the world. “I am fine,” I assure her, then take a gulp of wine. The room is quiet except for the sound of Ismae slipping into her gown.

When she is done changing, Ismae steps out from behind the screen and hurries toward me, a look of concern on her face. I wonder how on earth I am to tell her—tell them both—that that we are not sisters. That we do not share a father and that, indeed, I have no right to the title I have claimed all my life.

When she reaches me, she grabs my arms and squeezes. “How did it go?” she asks. “How furious was the abbess?”

I laugh. “
Furious
does not even begin to do her reaction justice.”

Sybella frowns. “Is she going to punish you?”

That, at least, I can answer honestly. “I do not know; she has not yet said.”

Ismae goes over to Sybella and motions for her to lace up her gown. “What will she do with Crunard?”

At her question, one of Crunard’s assertions comes back to me. “He said that before, when you were in Guérande, you had a chance to kill him and you did not. May I ask why? Was he not marqued then either?”

She glances down at her hands, then back up at me. “He was marqued. However, I had just come from a battlefield where scores were marqued for death, deaths I had no hand in, so my uncertainty of how the convent was interpreting these marques had already begun to form. And now he is no longer marqued.”

Despair fills me as the knowledge that I will never see marques settles over me. “What do you think should be done with him?” I ask Ismae. “You are more familiar with his crimes than either the abbess or I am.”

Sybella smirks. “Notice she does not ask
me.
”

Ismae is silent for a long moment while she puts on her shoes. “I think it should be left to the duchess’s justice. Put him on trial. Have him answer for his crimes. Then, if he is to die, have it be for those crimes he has been convicted of, not some shadow that falls across his forehead that I do not trust the convent to correctly interpret.”

Her honesty has created a safe, almost holy space around us. It is the perfect opportunity to tell her of what I have learned. I take a deep breath, meaning to do precisely that, but find I cannot bend my tongue to my will. Besides, I do not yet know what I will do with my new knowledge.

Leave the convent? Report the abbess—but to whom? The sheer enormity of this revelation and its reverberations forces me to tread cautiously.

More importantly, as I stare into their dear faces, I realize that as strong as I have been, as much as I have endured, I am not strong enough to sever this bond. If I lose that, I fear I will unravel into a pile of tattered threads. “She still has not told me all.” While it is not the whole truth, it does not feel like too great a lie. That is when I notice they are both dressed most strangely. “Why are you wearing servant gowns?”

“Do you like it?” Sybella lifts her skirt and twirls prettily, as if it is some magnificent dress that she wears and not merely sewn-together rags. “I am sneaking out with Beast tonight when he and his men patrol the city. All the various troops and mercenary factions are teeming with pent-up energy and frustration, and they have nothing to fight. Except each other.”

Ismae arches an eyebrow. “I can’t believe he agreed to let you come with him.”

Sybella flashes a cheerful smile. “Oh, he did not. He does not even know that is what I intend. But I shall go mad if I must sit here one more day, twiddling my thumbs with embroidery.”

“And you, Ismae?” I ask. “Are you going out to rein in the mercenaries as well?”

Sybella’s face sobers. “No, she is leaving for Nantes in a few hours.”

“You convinced Duval, then?”

Ismae snorts. “Let us just say that all his arguments were to no avail.”

“Which means,” Sybella says, plucking the wine goblet from my hands, “that you are to attend upon the duchess while we are busy. But not until we get you freshened up.”

“Isn’t that where you’ve been, with the duchess?” Ismae asks.

“No. I . . . needed some time to think, to cool my temper after my meeting with the abbess.”

Sybella begins combing my hair, her fingers gentle and light. I close my eyes and let the sheer comfort of the touch lull me into calmness. Now, I think. Now I will tell them. As I open my mouth to do that, there is a knock on the door. We all stiffen. “If it is the abbess, I’ve not returned,” I warn them.

But when Ismae opens the door, it is Duval’s deep voice that we hear. “I’m not going to argue any more about this,” she tells him.

“Good. I am not here to argue, but would like to see you before you leave.”

“Of course.” Before following him out into the hall, she comes and gives Sybella and me a hug. “Be safe, you two.”

“And you,” Sybella says. “And remember, the abbess at Brigantia will grant you sanctuary if it comes to that.”

“It won’t.” Then it is my turn to hug her before she is gone.

F
OUR DAYS LATER, THE
F
RENCH
ambassador arrives. With the mud of his journey still clinging to his boots, he comes striding into the hall where the duchess is holding court. As he steps through the door, Duval’s head snaps up, and he grows still, like a wolf who has just sensed another predator.

Sybella and I stand just behind the duchess’s chair. We exchange a glance, and, almost as if we have rehearsed it, our hands go to our weapons. Not that we will kill him on sight, but we will simply remind him to step carefully.

The ambassador is tall and leanly muscled, with a great beak of a nose and piercing green eyes. As he draws toward the dais, Duval motions subtly with his hands for the soldiers to begin clearing the others out.

As the people make their way to the door, the duchess looks up from the stolid burgher whose claim she has been adjudicating and sees what is happening. Although she keeps her face serene and composed, I can see the faint trembling in her fingers before she tightens her grip on the arms of her chair.

“Gisors.” Duval’s voice is pleasant, for all that his body is fairly humming with tension. “I did not expect to see you again. Ever.”

Gisors ignores him and executes a flawless bow, his attention ­never wavering from the duchess. “My lady.” There are small gasps from around the room, as he pointedly does not use the respectful form of address her title demands. Sybella’s hand closes around the hilt of her knife, her eyes narrowing in anticipation. The ambassador catches her movement and becomes slightly more circumspect. “I pray my visit finds you in good health.”