Nicholas: The Lords of Satyr (21 page)

J
ane sat amid the trees of Satyr forest, feeling excited and afraid.

She was coming to love this land and its owner. Emma would join her here one day. And if she allowed him to, Nick would give her a child to love as well. The makings of a true family seemed within her grasp.

But if she couldn’t shake her curse—and soon—it would all fall apart.

She broke the brittle stems she carried in her basket, letting the dried herbs flutter into the bowl she’d placed on a flat rock. Over the weeks, she’d managed to gather all the ingredients the curative had specified. Several had proven difficult to obtain, and then she’d had to wait for them to dry.

One by one, the herbs found their way into her mortar. With her pestle, she crushed them together, watching their rainbow colors mix.

Carefully she lifted the prime ingredient from her basket—allium moly. She had plucked it from her garden and wrapped its roots in damp cloth just prior to coming here. Her reading indicated it must be served fresh.

She tore off the flowers and dropped them into the bowl, grinding them with her pestle into a smear of yellow.

Last of all, she added dewdrops collected that morning from the leaves of a plant known as flowering lady’s mantle. She mashed the entire concoction into a paste.

When the potion was ready, she took it all, finding it bitter on her tongue.

Afterward, no thunder sounded. No crack of illumination filled the forest. There was nothing to mark the occasion.

All had been done according to the ancient book, she reassured herself. The philter would banish her evil taint. She had to believe it.

The book had said the effect of the curative would take several hours. She could only wait. Jumping to her feet, she decided to walk the perimeter of the grotto.

Stepping close to one of the caryatids, she studied its graceful contours. She wasn’t certain why she had come here to take the potion. It was the place where she’d once seen that trio of lights take female shape. This place had frightened her then but no longer.

She yawned, growing sleepy—a side effect of the potion she’d taken. She sat beneath a tree in the well of a natural chair formed by its root structure.

It was afternoon when she woke. She straightened, remembering. Hoping. Hastily and with little care for her gown, she lowered its sleeve. Her hand trembled as she reached, seeking along a shoulder blade.

When soft fluff tickled her fingertips and quills pricked, her heart stilled and then wrenched with the agony of failure. The curative hadn’t worked.

She yanked at the quills, whimpering at the pain, trying to rip them away. But she had tried that before and only succeeded in bloodying herself. They would only sprout again.

With a cry, she flung the basket and its remaining ingredients across the path. She tore through the trees, stumbled down hillsides, falling here and there and scrabbling across fields, then the lawn, then pave stones and mosaic. Finally she let herself into the castello.

She rushed to her chamber and fell on the bedcovers, her mind racing. She wouldn’t give up. There was too much at stake. She would have to begin again. Find a new curative. She had to, if only for Emma’s sake.

She could remain with Nick, she told herself, even tainted as she was. She’d hidden what she was from him this long.

But one day soon they might produce a child despite her efforts to prevent it. And any child she bore might also be freakish, forced to grow up holding herself or himself apart from the world in fear of discovery.

No! She couldn’t take the chance.

She would have to leave here. Leave Nick. Search for a cure elsewhere.

She curled into a ball and wept at the pain of impending loss.

N
ick entered her bedchamber that night as she sat in a tufted chair, reading. With resigned calm, she folded her book shut and set it on the side table. Her last-minute study of an herbal from his library hadn’t offered a glimmer of hope.

She knew what she must do.

Nick strolled aimlessly about the room. He’d been agitated about something all afternoon. She’d only just noticed because her mind had been preoccupied with searching for a way to inform him of her intentions.

“You’re restless. What disturbs you?” she asked.

His glance was hooded. “I’m attempting to make a difficult decision. And I’m not inclined to make the choice that considers your best interest. It troubles me.”

“If the matter concerns me, may I assist in the process of the decision making?”

Nick studied her, so beautiful and ethereal, so prim. Determination rose within him. Tonight was the Calling. A special one—that of the second May moon. A blue moon, the villagers called it when a single month had two moonfuls.

The time had come to beget an heir. How best to approach it?

He’d originally planned to take her to the glen tonight without her knowing. To subdue her with an ancient spell so she would cooperate but afterward remember nothing. It was what his father had done in order to sire his three sons. It was what his brothers expected him to do.

So where did this notion come from that she should be given a choice in the matter? Where did this need come from to have her with him tonight, in body and spirit, reveling in the full experience of the Calling?

Would knowing the truth of what he was repulse her? Send her screaming into the night?

Within minutes, he would know.

Jane drank in the sight of him, dreaded seeing his desire for her turn to disgust. Months ago at her aunt’s home, he’d informed her in no uncertain terms that he expected a child of her. And she’d agreed. He would be angry when he learned she’d changed her mind.

He would tell her to go, she knew. To leave him and his home. For Emma’s sake, she would lower herself to plead with him for funds enough to help her and her sister to make a home for themselves elsewhere. Surely her service to him thus far was worth that concession.

How she longed to go on as they had been. But she must not. The herbs she took each morning would fail her eventually. Coupling with him tonight or in the nights to come could result in a child. One tainted with whatever unearthly plague she carried. Leaving him was the only decision she could make in good conscience. He would have to accept it.

Her lips parted, to tell him.

“I wish to leave you with child tonight,” Nick said before she could speak.

“I know you want an heir above all things,” she said, contrite. “And I’m hopeful that you will have the child you desire someday soon. However—” She took a breath and stood, willing herself to say things that would forever sever their ties.

He brushed her words aside. “You misunderstand. I’m asking your permission to leave you with child.”

“You speak as though my permission is all that stands in the way of conception.”

“If you wish it, I can make conception happen. Tonight.”

Something in his eyes frightened her. “You can’t know that.”

“Yes, it’s something I know with absolute certainty,” he said. His voice was calm, sure. “If I lie with you tonight, you will conceive. You can turn me away, Jane. I won’t force this on you if you aren’t ready.”

“I’ve wanted your child—” she began.

“Even if I can’t guarantee it will be Human?” he challenged.

“What?” She took an involuntary step away from him, a sudden chill skittering down her spine. “What else would it be?”

“Part Human. Part—something else.”

Their eyes locked. He knew. Somehow he knew.

Blood and oxygen ebbed within her and then gushed through her tissues in a wild, erratic dance. The sudden exposure of her closely guarded secret left her raw. Needing to escape.

When she backed away, he followed.

She licked her lips. “How did you—?”

“Did you think I wouldn’t guess your secrets?” he chided. “I had hoped you would confide in me.”

“Don’t. Please.” Fear and humiliation washed over her in waves. She held her hands toward him, palms outward as though to halt the onward march of his body and his words.

But both continued to stalk her.

“I know of your uncanny insights, your unusual abilities, and your physical abnormalities. I’ve seen your breasts glow with a passion not of this world, and I suspect I know the reason you keep your back turned from me.”

“Stop!” she whispered. His every syllable was a dagger in her heart. She took a step toward the door, but a heavy hand flattened on it, cutting off escape.

She wrapped her fingers around the doorknob and yanked, knowing it was futile. “Let me go. I’ll get Emma from my aunt’s and go.”

He grasped her shoulders from behind and gave her a little shake. “You’re going nowhere.”

Though she tried to wriggle free, a hand tugged the material at her back lower, ripping the fabric of her soul until her shoulder blades were exposed.

She curled into herself, dying a thousand silent deaths, biting her lip to keep from crying out with shame. She held herself brittle and distant as he surveyed her back, waiting for him to shatter her with condemnation.

But he only stroked the hideous, delicate down. Petted its fragile snowy softness.

“I know the origins of your secrets. Of this,” he said in a voice as gentle as rain. “Shall I tell you?”

“No!” she breathed, twisting in his hold to face him. “How can you know?” She pulled her sleeve higher, covering herself.

“You can’t run from what you are, Jane. I’ll tell you whether you think you’re ready to hear it or not.”

“What then!” she shouted, hitting his chest with a fist. “Go on. Kill me with your words. Tell me the origin of my wicked strangeness. If you know. If you must.”

Nick pulled her close, stilling her fury. “You’re neither wicked nor strange. And don’t ever speak such again.”

“Whatever the case, I only beg of you this one thing. Don’t tell anyone else what you know, for my taint doesn’t affect only me. Think of Emma.”

“What you are doesn’t touch Emma.”

Her eyes came up to meet his, a question in them.

His grip on her tightened as though he expected his next words to set her struggling again.

“You’re Faerie, Jane. Born of a Fey father.”

“What?” She laughed at him. “That’s ridiculous. My father—and Emma’s—is a drunk. A Human man. And this isn’t Ireland. There are no faeries here. Nor anywhere else.”

“Faeries no longer inhabit Ireland, though I assure you they once did and were freer with their magic there than in other places. More to the point: Signore Cova is indeed Emma’s sire. However, your father was of the same world as mine. A place called ElseWorld.”

“You make fun of me. What I am is repulsive to me and must be to you as well.”

“Know this, Jane. Believe it. My knowledge of your heritage doesn’t repulse or frighten me. It’s because of it I searched you out.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was no accident we married. Shortly before we met, I received a letter from your father informing me of your existence and that of your two half sisters.”

“Sisters?”

He nodded. “Raine searches for one of them even now. Lyon will eventually seek out the third. They will be brought here as you were and placed under Satyr protection.”

“I don’t want this.” Jane tried to shrug him off, but he caught her wrists and held her.

“It is truth. Inescapable.”

“Are you saying you and your brothers are like me?” She gestured toward her quills. “I’ve seen no evidence of it.”

He shook his head. “Our abilities are different. You have Faerie blood as well as the Human blood of your mother in your veins. Both Satyr and Human blood flow in mine. A mix of the three strains will fill the veins of our children. You once said you desired those children. Does this change your mind?”

Jane rubbed her forehead, willing her brain to work more efficiently. “I don’t know. I had thought to leave you when we spoke tonight.”

His head jerked back. “Seven hells!”

“Not because I wished to, but because I thought my strangeness abhorrent.”

“And now?”

She stepped away from him, shaking her head. “Now I think that this is too much to consider at once. I need time.”

Nick’s gaze shifted to the window. When his attention returned to her, he seemed to loom larger and more dangerous, as though he’d been concealing the reality of himself until now.

“Do you know of the Calling?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“It afflicts the Satyr once a month. At Moonful.”

Her eyes darted to the window and its glowing night eye. “You mean at the full moon? Tonight then?”

He nodded. “When the moon is heavy and round with light, the Calling occurs. It engenders within me and those of my kind a desperate desire to mate. Our bodies alter. Our carnal needs grow more robust.”

Jane’s mind clicked back over the past two months. “But while I have been married to you, at least one full moon has passed. How did you hide this from me?”

“I left you and went to a place in the forest. There’s a gathering ground there ringed with statues built by my ancestors.”

“I’ve seen it, or at least its outskirts,” she admitted. “Lyon was there.”

“Yes, he told me,” Nick went on. “In the same way as you saw him that day, I have gone there and mated with Shimmerskins.”

Jane crossed her arms as jealousy rose. “Mated?”

He waved a negligent hand. “Don’t concern yourself. Shimmerskins are merely pleasure women conjured from the mist to perform as Satyr desires dictate. If we were to take Human women in the Calling, we would reveal the strangeness of our natures. It would put us and our land at risk.”

“What sort of strangeness is it that must be kept so secret? I don’t understand,” she said.

“You’re capable of understanding, of accepting my ways—my needs—if you are willing. Now that we’re wed, I am driven to mate with you during the Calling. Each Moonful, it grows more difficult to keep myself from you.”

“I didn’t ask you to do so,” she told him.

He took her hands and flattened them on his chest under his.

“I had planned to take you tonight as my father mated my Human mother, by first bespelling her. But I’ve discovered a desire to have you accept me with full knowledge of what transpires between us. So I offer you the choice. Shall I go to Shimmerskins tonight, or shall we make a child together?”

“I’ve been taking herbs.” The confession blurted from her, surprising them both. “To prevent conception.”

His eyes darkened, withdrawing.

She grabbed his shirtfront, willing him to understand. “Not because I didn’t want your child. But out of worry over what sort of children I might give you. I didn’t want our offspring to live as I have, never daring to touch the skin of another human being.”

His reply was forestalled when a shaft of moonlight struck him. His voice turned urgent. “My childseed will overcome any preventive potions. The hour of Calling grows near. Tell me—am I to leave you for the forest, or do you offer yourself?”

Tense silence fell between them.

Would his strangeness unleash more of her own? Would he then find her objectionable? Would she find him so tonight?

Nick moved as if to leave her.

“I offer myself,” Jane said quickly, not knowing from where the words came but knowing they felt right. “Don’t search out others to give you pleasure.”

His hands cupped her jaw, and he gazed down at her, the mirrors of his eyes becoming pools of desire. Softly he asked her, “Shall I tell you what is to come, or shall we take it a step at a time?”

“The latter,” she whispered. “I want you, need you. Stay.”

He pulled her close, his cheek pressed to hers.

“No matter what passes between us this night, remember that I’ll take care of you. You’ll suffer no permanent harm,” his velvet voice promised.

“You begin to frighten me,” Jane said, pulling back with a nervous laugh.

“’Tis not my wish to.” Nick flicked another glance at the waning daylight. The thick vein along the side of his neck pulsed. “My time draws near. Come.”

He led her to his bedchamber. Closed the door.

Inside, a young maid wearing a crown of leaves awaited them, her face ethereally beautiful.

When the creature approached her, Jane instinctively shied away. “A—are you one of the night servants?”

“Si,” the maid replied. Her voice was melodious, soothing. “Do not fear me. I am dryad, here to serve.”

“Let her help you with your toilette,” Nick coaxed. “Time grows short.”

Jane backed against a wall. The dryad’s fingertips were cool and insistent as it began to undress her.

“Are you from ElseWorld?” Jane asked her.

The leaves in her hair rustled as the girl slowly shook her head. “From the forest. I was once hawthorn but no more.”

Beyond them, Nick went to a cabinet and thrust an ornate key into the lock. He removed a bottle and poured a measure of liquid into two goblets.

When her dress had been removed and a robe donned, the dryad stepped away. Jane’s thanks was met with a placid expression.

As the creature slipped from the room, Nick handed one of the glasses he’d poured to Jane.

“Drink.”

He threw his back and was quickly done, setting his goblet aside.

Jane took a hesitant sip and wrinkled her nose. “Wine?”

“Of a sort.” He nudged her glass. “Take more of it.”

She held it away, shaking her head. “You know I don’t drink spirits.”

“It’s necessary. ’Tis a special elixir with magic properties that won’t addle your mind but will aid you in performing as I require.”

Jane’s eyes widened, her pupils dilating. “Now you are frightening me, Nick. Maybe you should explain what’s going to happen between us after all.”

Again he glanced toward the blackened window, and his voice turned rough and urgent.

“It’s too late to renege. I need you. Drink. It will make you desire what I offer.”