Nightbound (36 page)

From the chapel they went to the main hall, where the visiting Kyn lords and ladies offered formal congratulations to Beau, and Alys was embraced by her sisters and students. Before Alex herded the excited interns off to the banquet table set up for the mortal guests, she caught Alys’s arm.

“Korvel and Lucan are over in the gift room having a little chat.” She nodded in that direction. “While you have the chance, you might want to take Beau in there and tell the three of them what Cristophe told you. I’m guessing he let you know exactly who he was.”

Alys almost choked. “How did you know?”

“Genetics, not geology, remember?” Alex winked.

Coaxing Beau away from the visiting Kyn didn’t take much persuasion, although when he saw Korvel and Lucan standing together in the gift room, he gave her a puzzled look. “I thought you wanted a private moment.”

“Oh, we’ll have plenty of those when we get to Lord Jamys’s honeymoon island.” Alys closed the door before she led him over to the other men. “I wanted to thank you both for staying for the wedding. I know it was inconvenient, especially for you, Lord Alenfar.”

“Miss an opportunity to photograph Byrne in a skirt?” Lucan smiled lazily. “I should never.”

“Simone and I never had proper families,” Korvel assured her. “We are delighted to have you and Christian as our sisters, and hope you will someday come and visit us in France.”

“I would love that.” Alys’s smile grew uneasy. “And I hope you don’t mind adding a few more members to the family. There is something that you don’t know. Something Cristophe told me, just before he died.”

Beau put an arm around her. “I have admitted to everyone the truth about my mother, love. You needn’t worry about it.”

“But you don’t know…I’m not even sure how to say this. Cristophe was your father.” She nodded at the other men. “He was also their father. The three of you are half brothers.”

Korvel and Lucan said nothing, and Beau hardly knew what to think.

“You were shot just before Cristophe died, love,” he
said as kindly as he could. “Perhaps you simply imagined this.”

“I think not,” Lucan said. His brows arched. “Unless you consider yourself too good to be my sibling?”

“No, my lord.” Beau eyed his gloves. “But how could this be? I was born in Jerusalem. You and Lord Korvel are Englishmen.”

“I was actually conceived in a slave house in Norway,” Korvel said slowly. “Cristophe gave me a vision of it. It seems he was enslaved with my mother, and they became lovers. When she was ransomed by her family, she returned home pregnant with me.”

“From what I was shown, he was also my mother’s lover,” Lucan said. “I was never claimed as son by any man.” He eyed Beau. “When he was a Templar, Cristophe spent many years in the Holy Land on Crusade. He must have sired you then.”

“He wanted to tell you himself, to claim you as his sons,” Alys said sadly, “but he thought you would be safer if he didn’t. Especially Beau.”

“Richard,” Lucan said, and Korvel nodded.

“The smith is dead,” Beau said, “and the gems destroyed. We are alive, and together with those we love.” He regarded Lucan and Korvel. “What more can we ask?”

Lucan smiled. “Permit me to inform the high lord about the emeralds. Brother.” He bowed to Beau, and Alys, and headed back to the reception.

“I wished to make that call,” Korvel argued as he followed after the suzerain. “You were merely his assassin. I was his second for seven hundred years.”

Beau turned to Alys and took her hands in his. “You have bestowed so much on me. Love, life, your hand in marriage, and now two brothers. What can I possibly give you in return?”

“Oh, I have some ideas.” She reached up and kissed him. “Let’s start with a dance.”

October 12, 2011

Provence, France

D
uring the day the waitresses at La Théière Verte delivered filling but forgettable meals from the cramped kitchen of the restaurant to the table of any hungry tourist who had wandered in through the old green doors. The owner, Madame Eugenie, prepared all the dishes herself, using the cheapest ingredients and as much garlic as she dared. She considered this blatant desecration of God’s bounty an economical measure as well as her patriotic duty.

The tourists, ignorant cretins that they were, never seemed to notice. As long as they were served a plate close to overflowing, they happily handed over their euros.

Only after dark did madame’s chef arrive to cook for the villagers who came to dine, and whose standards were French. The local residents could not be appeased by a stew of shredded lapin smothered beneath a
montagne
of carrots, the blandest of radishes glued by oleo to day-old black bread, or gallons of cheap Spanish wine funneled into empty, French-labeled bottles. If in a moment of madness Eugenie ever dared to serve such swill to her neighbors, they would consider it
their
patriotic duty to lock her and her staff inside the old restaurant before setting fire to the place.

For these reasons madame was not at all pleased when her waitress Marie nudged her and nodded toward a tall, flaxen-haired stranger standing just inside the threshold.

“
Zut
, not a German at this hour. He must have run out of petrol. Unless he is an American.” Eugenie almost spit on the last word. To her, the only thing worse than the Berliners were those loud, nosy imbeciles from across the Atlantic, forever thumbing through their phrase books and mangling her native tongue. Or the ones who waddled in, their rotund bodies shiny with sweat and sunscreen, to demand to know whether she served
low-fat
this and
sugar-free
that.

“Whatever he is, he’s handsome,” Marie said, and shifted to get a better look. “Such a big man, too. Look at those shoulders, and all that hair. It must fall to his waist.”

“Et alors?”
Eugenie gave the girl a hard pinch on the arm. “Forget his hair. Ask if he has a reservation. He will say no, and you will tell him to call for one tomorrow.”

Marie rubbed her arm and said in an absent tone, “We do not take reservations, madame.”

“Does he know this, you goose?” she hissed, and then saw it was too late. “There, now, because you are lazy and stupid, he is already sitting down. Go and see what he
wants. If he asks for the cheeseburger do not tell me. I will choke him with his own hair.”

Korvel stopped listening to the conversation between the women behind the bar and checked the interior of the restaurant. Only a third of the tables were occupied, most by couples and some middle-aged men. One delicate fairy of a schoolgirl sat picking at her food while her parents bickered in half whispers. Apart from sending a few uninterested glances in his direction when he had walked in, no one paid any further attention to him.

As transparent as a bloody specter, but not half as interesting.

When the young, smiling waitress approached his table his empty belly clenched, but years of self-denial quickly dispelled the involuntary response. He listened as the girl stammered through a brief recital of the evening specials before he ordered a bottle of a local Bandol and the vegetable soup. The wine would not satisfy his ever-present hunger, and if he attempted to eat the soup he would puke, but they would buy him a half hour of quiet and rest before he continued his journey.

Or I could have the waitress and be gone in five minutes.

He had no time or particular inclination to give his body what it needed: a woman. There had been a time when any woman would do, for no matter how different they were from one another, they all shared the same soft warmth, the same intense fragility. He had thought mortal women as lovely as an endless meadow of flowers.

So it had been until he had fallen in love with Alexandra Keller. The only woman he had ever truly wanted for
himself, now gone from his life and forever beyond his reach.

For a time, being caught between his physical needs and his broken heart had produced ungodly urges that had nearly driven Korvel out of his head. Fortunately those, too, were now gone. His will, or what remained of it, permitted him to don a brittle mask each day and carry on with this imitation of life.

God in heaven, he had wearied of this charade, of everyone and everything in it. More than that, he was sick unto death of himself.

“Monsieur?”

Korvel glanced up at madame, who had brought a dark bottle to his table, but seemed more interested in examining him than in pouring the wine. She measured every inch of the hair he kept forgetting to cut, and the garments he had tailored to fit his overlarge frame, which cost more than the average tourist spent on ten vacations. Doubtless she could also name his weight to within five kilos’ accuracy.

Her gaze flicked down to dwell with disapproval on the mark that encircled his throat. It resembled a garrote of dark green thorns, and as most mortals did she would assume he had been tattooed. He could not explain that being hanged for weeks in a copper-barbed noose had caused the marks. Copper proved lethal to his kind only when it entered their veins or heart, but its poisonous effects were such that even touching it caused burns. Any extended surface contact with the dark metal left permanent, green scars on immortal flesh; grim reminders, in a sense, of humanity’s loathing of their dark Kyn.

He also doubted she would care.
“S’il vous plaît?”
He
gestured at his glass, earning a mild frown from her before she filled it to the rim.

“You are American?” she asked in English as she wiped a dribble from the bottle’s neck.

Another reminder of what could never be. “No, madame. I am from England.”

“Ah,
les anglais
.” She nodded to herself with some satisfaction, and the lines bracketing her mouth softened. “You come with the caravan,
oui
?”

“I am here on business.” The business of playing courier for his master, for reasons that had never been adequately explained to him. “Thank you for the wine.”

“Il n’y a pas de quoi.”
She bobbed her head and smoothed her hands over the sides of her apron before reluctantly turning away and resuming her post behind the bar. He saw the flicker of confusion that passed over her narrow features before she returned to her task of sorting flatware.

Korvel reached over to open the window a little wider before sampling the glass. Mortals considered Provence a fine-wine void, something the residents likely encouraged to protect their supply of some of the best red and rosé wines in the world. Madame had brought him a Mourvèdre-based red wine with a pleasing amount of spine to it, and Korvel breathed in its tannic perfume while he removed a flask from his jacket. He had to sip some of the wine before discreetly adding a measure of the darker, thicker liquid from the flask to the glass, but his next swallow instantly eliminated the leaden sensation the first swallow had left in his gut.

The mixture of blood and wine went to work, spreading slowly through him to warm his cold flesh and loosen
his stiff muscles. It would tide him over until he reached his destination, where he planned to see to his needs once he retrieved his master’s property. He took out the small GPS device that had been attached to the car’s dashboard to check his current position.

“That no work here, monsieur.”

“Indeed.” Korvel eyed the plump face of the waitress as she set down a steaming bowl of soup. “Why not?”

“The wind very bad Sunday. The tower, send signal?” When he nodded his understanding, she straightened her hand and then let it fall to mimic something toppling over.

So it seemed the GPS was useless, and the French he spoke hadn’t been used in this region for half a millennium or better. He reached out to rest his hand over hers. “Do you know the road to Garbia?”

“Mais oui.”
Her expression brightened. “Go this way”—she pointed north—“until you reach the second turn. Then go this way.” She pointed east, but this time her fingers quivered under his, and her breathing grew fast and uneven. “I come with you. I show you. Madame, she not care.”

Korvel eyed the scowl being directed at them from the bar. “Actually I do believe madame will mind.”

“You take me. With you?” She released one more button of her blouse, which exposed the sweat beading between her full breasts. “I want go with you.”

He knew exactly what she wanted, and carefully removed his hand from hers. “You have been quite helpful,” he said as he deliberately shed more of his scent to bring her under his command. “Thank you. You should return to your work now.”

The light vanilla fragrance of larkspur enveloped the two of them as
l’attrait
caused the waitress’s pupils to dilate.

“Oui.”
She backed away, bumping her ample hip into the edge of another table. The pain released her from Korvel’s control, and she clapped a hand over her giggles as she fled toward the kitchen.

Once he pocketed the GPS, Korvel drank the last of the bloodwine and sat back to let it finish its work on him. While he waited, he checked his mobile for messages. Stefan, the senior lieutenant Korvel had assigned to serve in his place during his absence, had texted him a brief status report before Korvel had left Paris. The men had been drilled, the night patrols assigned, and the high lord had retreated to his study for the night.

All was as it should be, as it would have been if Korvel had never departed. It should have reassured him, but it only made the hollow sensation inside him grow.

Since becoming one of the immortal Darkyn, Korvel had served Richard Tremayne as the high lord’s seneschal as well as the captain of his guard. Seven lifetimes he had devoted himself to his duties and honoring the oath he had made to his master. Eight, if one counted his mortal life.

Now it seemed his absence was not even noticed.

“You look sad, monsieur.”

The ethereal little girl who had been sitting with the bickering couple slipped into the empty chair beside his. Confusion filled her eyes, as if she weren’t quite sure why she was speaking to him.