Retribution (9 page)

“Oh yes?” I said.

Niall leaned over to rub his fingers lightly
against my left arm, feeling for the deep scar of the marriage
brand beneath the fabric of my nightgown. “You must stay with him
no matter what, because he’s your lord husband. Between man and
woman, love is entangled with property and families, children and
land. But between men it’s pure, or can be—a love between equals.
And that means honor is everything.”

“But you’re going,” I said. “You’re not
staying to prove your honor.” I knew he wouldn’t hit me and waited
to see what he would do.

He went white with anger. “No,” he said. “It
seems I would rather live as a boy than die like a man.”

“Very sensible,” I said. “But then I’m only a
dishonored woman who tricked my husband into marriage by crying
rape.”

Niall sighed. “That’s why Dominic told me, so
I wouldn’t think that. Look, I have no quarrel with you.” He gave
up on speech.
Lady Amalie, will you grant me the favor of a
kiss?
He was requesting from me the farewell kiss he could not
share with Dominic.

Niall seemed unaware of any effect his
offensive words might have had on me. He was using his
crypta
like a lover, or a husband, compelling me to lift my
head and look into his amber eyes that had grown round and feral
behind the deceptively white inner eyelids.

I couldn’t blame Niall for having the outlook
of every other Eclipsian man. And there was genuine affection
behind the request, a wish to assure me, and perhaps through me,
Dominic, that there had been love between us, that the relationship
had been real even if it had ended.

We were already compromised, alone behind
closed doors; there was no point in behaving innocently. My body
seemed to melt at the physical closeness, the imminent sense of
loss at Niall’s departure. I lifted my face, raised one arm to
bring his head to mine. We touched gingerly, wary of disturbing our
respective
crypta
fields. Yet I felt only a slight buzz and
crackle, a shiver of excitement, as our telepathic auras met and
merged. His hair was soft and fine, his skin so thin the pulse
behind his ear pushed against my fingertips. There was a light
misting of sweat on his upper lip; our sparring emotions and his
outdoor clothes had given Niall the heat of passion. Our lips met
and locked, our tongues darted and tasted, then pressed together.
The communion was immediate and intense.

Locked in the connection, our minds spilling
their secrets into the other like unset custard oozing out of a
cracked bowl, thoughts and recent memories swirled between us. In
the wavering reflection of a large wall mirror, two male bodies
stood in the posture of deadly combat. Niall, naked, beautiful in
his youth and tall, lean body, glorious despite his fear and his
rage, held Dominic off with Dominic’s own sword. I saw Dominic as
Niall had seen him—head back, laughing with cruel delight at his
lover’s distress, reaching without turning his head, feeling around
behind him for a weapon.
Quite a swordsman, cheri,
Dominic
was saying.
On the battlefield or in the bedroom
.

Nothing could have brought us back more
completely to reality. We jerked apart in violent haste. Niall’s
hand had found my breast, the nipple already stiff in anticipation
of his touch, and he snatched his arm away as if from an open
flame. His face was white, his whole body trembling, as he sat with
his back to me, on the bed now, where he had moved from the chair
during the forbidden kiss.

Niall attempted to laugh it off. “Dominic
always said that I could handle his sword, but the scabbard was his
alone.” It was just the kind of thing Dominic would say.

“Now do you see?” I asked. “It’s not
something Dominic is doing deliberately.”

“I see that I should not have kissed you,”
Niall said. “Repaying dishonor with dishonor isn’t the answer.”

Tears stung my eyes and I lowered my head in
shame. I had been used. What had seemed like a strange but mutual
swell of desire had been only another act of vengeance.

Niall moved closer to me, or perhaps it was
only the reappearance of our lingering communion.
No,
beloved
, he thought to me, the same word Dominic used.
That
is not what happened. So gifted a woman, don’t you know I’ve wanted
to do that for a long time?

It is kind of you to say so,
I said,
grateful for the little untruth of courtesy.
But I see what it
was.
Now that he no longer considered himself a man of honor,
Niall felt free to act on his impulses.

“It is the truth,” Niall spoke aloud. “All
those times you shared our love, Dominic’s and mine, made me wish
to be with you myself, just you and me. Of course I would never
have betrayed Dominic until he betrayed me. But never doubt I
desired you.”

I stared at Niall as he stated so
matter-of-factly what had to be an uncomfortable truth. Niall had
been aware of me lurking in communion with Dominic when he made
love to his companion, had apparently accepted the odd threesome.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I never wanted you to know, to feel
uncomfortable or inhibited by my presence.”

Niall shrugged. “I suppose I am a bit of a
showoff, as Dominic thinks. I wasn’t inhibited, or not for long. It
was strange, at first, sensing you there, but I began to enjoy it
soon enough. It made me feel– even more desirable.”

The communion that we had so carelessly
initiated seemed only to have strengthened as we sat, not touching
physically, and talked. Intimate thoughts, feelings inappropriate
to discuss with a man not my husband, came easily to my mind and I
saw no need to suppress them.
Stefan never knew
. I had been
certain of that.

Niall laughed, the first genuinely humorous
moment of the conversation.
Of course Stefan wouldn’t have
known. Not enough crypta to notice if every telepath in La Sapienza
seminary was sharing in the communion. And his dick would have gone
limp as a wet rag if—
He caught himself.
I can safely bet,
even if he had known, that sweet little boy would never have dared
return the favor—

The implication made my thoughts freeze up
for a moment.
It couldn’t be.
“Oh!” My hand went to my mouth
in the kind of embarrassment I had thought never to endure again,
once I had learned to control my gift.

“Lady Amalie,” Niall said, “did you never
look inside your husband when he was with you?” He smirked at my
obvious surprise, his expression a mixture of masculine sexual
triumph and smug superiority that on anyone else would have been
infuriating.

“Always,” I said, daring to meet his eyes.
Somewhere along the way his inner eyelids had changed from the
milky white of fear to the warm silver of affection. Niall had more
talent than I had guessed, able to share in Dominic’s communion of
love with me without my awareness, just as I had thought I was
doing when Dominic was with him. “Oh,” I said again, in a kind of
wonder. After the first shock the knowledge was delicious, an
unexpected gift at the lowest moment of my life. That Niall should
wish to share in Dominic’s passion for his wife was like a breath
of hope, an offering of love. “I’m glad that you wanted to.”

“How could I not?” Niall grinned, his innate
sense of mischief coming through despite everything. “You’ve been
like a mother and a wife to me, what every man wants but can’t
have.” The remark could have been unforgivable, but between Niall
and me now there was only truth, and the beginning of something
else, something that would never have a chance to develop.

We fell silent, contemplating our new secret,
intrigued at our discoveries, saddened that we had made them only
when it was too late to explore them further. Niall stood up to
leave.

“Oh, Niall,” I said, “Don’t go now.”

“Oh, Amalie.” He mimicked my begging tone of
voice, but kindly. “You know I must.” But he didn’t go. He sat on
the chair now, keeping a polite distance, his hands in his lap.

The slight separation made it easier to talk
directly, without confusion. “Just before you came in,” I said, “I
had resolved to tell Dominic that the vengeance has gone too far.
He’ll listen to me, I know he will, and he’ll let Reynaldo die.
Once Dominic is free of that evil influence he’ll be himself
again.”

“Perhaps,” Niall said. “But which self?”

My heart jumped in my chest. W
hat answer
could I give?

“You know what I mean,” Niall said. “When the
madness comes over him, he takes it out on his lover.”

“That’s not true!” I almost shouted,
forgetting the danger of our tête à tête behind closed doors, an
absurd protective feeling for my husband making me speak without
considering my words. “He never did it to Stef—”

Niall sat up very straight. “No,” he said,
“not to Stefan. That delicate little flower would have collapsed
like Jana’s doll if Dominic had so much as kissed him too
hard.”

The strength of Niall’s jealousy could only
be a good sign. “Do you still love him?” I asked.

“You mean, as you do, so that you’ll stay
with him despite—” He wouldn’t finish the thought. “No. That’s a
woman’s love.” He reached toward my left arm again, running the
tips of two manicured fingernails over the branding scar. “I’m not
married to him, thank the gods. I’m free to go, and I want to go,
despite honor, so that I’ll live to see my twentieth birthday, so
that I can find a lover with some claims to sanity.”

Everything I had once feared for Dominic was
coming true. I thought of how people had warned me about him,
before my marriage, how I had laughed off the dire predictions,
gone with Dominic because I felt I had no choice, that we belonged
together.
What would I have done if the people who warned me had
been right?

Niall had been over the same ground himself.
“Yes, me too,” he said. “I got more warnings when Dominic and I
became lovers than a one-man caravan trying to cross the northern
mountains in winter. All it did was make me want him the more. I
thought I was different.” He spoke with fierce contempt, whether
for himself or the others I wasn’t sure. “ ‘Let him try,’ I used to
say. ‘He’ll find out Niall Galloway is nobody’s punching bag.’ But
I am. He’s used me like all the rest.”

“It’s not really him,” I said. “It’s
Reynaldo.”

“Reynaldo?” Niall snorted with sarcastic
laughter. “Oh, please. You can do better than that. He’s more dead
than alive.”

I tried again. “Niall, please don’t take
offense. I’m not saying Reynaldo is doing anything directly. I
think Dominic is behaving like this with you because torturing
Reynaldo, and resurrecting him, is having the same effect on
Dominic now that the telepathic weapon had with me.”

“Lady Amalie, do you think this is just about
rough sex?” Niall’s voice was cold. “I am
vir
—and I was at
that same monastery school. Dominic wasn’t my first lover, and I
can take a few bruises. But the hatred, the desire to humiliate—he
wants
me to challenge him.”

It had taken me so long to understand. The
“honorable solution” that Niall was avoiding was a duel—to the
death. So long as Niall believed Dominic was acting consciously and
deliberately he had little choice. Yet Niall was sincerely
searching for a way out, putting off any fatal action rather than
following the code of honor into tragedy.

“Thank you,” I said, impressed at Niall’s
mature sense of restraint. “Thank you for having the courage to
back down for the sake of peace.”

This time Niall’s voice was like a slap in
the face, although his words were polite. “You see, my lady, if I
truly had courage I would stay and avenge the insult.”

“Before you do anything irrevocable,” I said,
“let me talk to Dominic.”

“About this?” Niall was incredulous. “What
can a woman say about a matter of honor between men?”

“Nothing, obviously,” I said. Now I was
angry. “I wouldn’t use the word ‘honor’ except to quote you. But I
can tell Dominic what has happened, since he must not be aware of
it. He would never let things go this far if he were. I know it
will be difficult, but surely, with the love you share, he’ll find
a way to make things right between you…” I saw further argument was
hopeless.

Niall shifted again in the hard chair. My
empathy, not restricted to Dominic after all, freed by too much
unexpected communion, showed me that, raped or not, Niall was in
pain. He must not have had adequate training in self-healing, and
he would not wish to reveal such intimate injuries to Naomi. It
would be hell for him on horseback, and he had already endured the
ride from Ladakh. “Let me heal you,” I said, reaching for my
prism-handled dagger. I could manage that much.

“Thank you, Amalie, but no,” he said,
standing up to leave. “I want to heal very slowly. I want to remind
myself, as I travel far away from here, why I’m going and why I’m
never coming back.”

I still couldn’t accept it. “Please,” I
whispered, “don’t just run away—”

The choice of words was unfortunate. Niall
spun around, his face more threatening than during the battle with
the bandits, his hand moving instinctively to his sword. “My lady,”
he said between clenched teeth, “I see you share your lord
husband’s opinion of my courage.”

Nothing I could think to say or do could
possibly be right. At a loss, I opened my mind to this vulnerable,
hurt young man who had so little left, only his great pride.
Yes,
I thought to him, quoting Dominic’s words from their
lovemaking after the battle.
I do. I think you are the bravest,
most valiant warrior I have ever known
.

My instinct had been correct. The fight went
out of Niall as the words called up his own memories. He leaned
over me one last time in a loose embrace, careful to leave an inch
or two of air between us. Our crypta fields touched but kept their
borders intact.
I learned something from our shared nights,
he thought.
And I’ll miss them,
almost as much as I’ll
miss Dominic’s love
.