Soul of Fire (32 page)

Peter hadn’t known himself till the moment when he’d
almost killed the were-tiger. Oh, he knew he was upsetting Sofie Warington dreadfully. He could hear her scream, even as he was torturing the young tiger prince, but he’d told himself it was necessary. He’d told himself it must be done. He’d told himself, too, that he was a fool to even care what she thought.

She was not for him. And he could attribute his infatuation to nothing less than how lonely he’d been, and for how long—so that now, on the threshold of thirty, he was ripe to fall for the first pretty face that came along. Not that she was just a pretty face, and even if just in his own mind, he apologized for implying she was such. However, Sofie Warington being what she was, his fall was guaranteed, and all that much harder.

But it would be criminal of him to stain her life with something such as himself. No, worse than that. It would be a horror to attach himself to her. And besides, he was sure she would never have him. He’d been sure of it before, and he was more sure of it now as he faced her, his face covered in gore and his mouth tasting of human blood, and looked at the horror in her eyes. And the doubt—the terrible doubt—that distorted her gaze at the words of the tiger.

And yet, was he a fool? Was he insane? Because having accepted that she wasn’t for him, knowing that he must no more attempt to defile her than he would attempt to defile Summercourt—as much as it called at him from the past, as much as his heart and soul longed for the ancestral house and the familiar landscape—he still could not leave her in the full certainty that he’d intended to kill her, or to steal from her.

He couldn’t do that for the same reason he couldn’t—not even knowing it would save her life—consider taking her virginity. Not when he couldn’t marry her. Not when the result might be a child with his propensities. Or even a child without his propensities. She’d have no reputation, no standing, no hope of an honorable life after such a fall.

He couldn’t, because he couldn’t stand injuring her. Or having her think ill of him.

“Miss Warington,” he said, “I beg you to believe . . . never would I hurt a hair on your head. I have no intentions of getting Heart of Light. Indeed, if I did—”He caught himself as he was about to reveal that a friend of his had the jewel and that he could have got it before this, had that been his intent. “No, truly. I did not intend it, nor dream on it. I did search for Heart of Light six months ago, in what now feels like another life.” And yet, here he was, torturing a man, just as he had done six months ago in his attempt at getting the first stone. “I was looking for the ruby not to get power for myself, but because I thought I could destroy it and that would suck power from the noblemen in the world and redistribute it to everyone, so that no one had too much and no one had too little. . . .

“I thought at the time that I was doing it out of altruism, that it was my sworn mission to redistribute power in the world and make everyone equal and equally strong so that there was no injustice and no suffering. I was a fool. I now see the only thing I truly wanted was to reduce the power I was born with, because I hoped . . .” Something tore through his lips that sounded like half a sob, half mad laughter. “You see, I hoped that without power I would lack the morphic energy to turn into a dragon. That was all. Once I realized the only way to do that would be to destroy the whole world, I thought it would be easier to simply destroy myself. And that, my dear lady, I lacked the strength to do. I still do.” He bowed slightly to her, aware that he presented a ridiculous aspect, naked and covered in blood. He was aware, too, that the tiger-prince’s eyes were intent on him, and it seemed to him there were other people, barely noticeable at the corner of his eye. He didn’t know and he didn’t care who they might be. They were—he thought—not were-tigers, or they would have rushed to free their compatriot or to take revenge on Peter, weak as he was in his human form. So they didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he wouldn’t leave Sofie Warington with a bad impression of his character. He couldn’t stand that she should be alive in the world and thinking ill of him.

In her eyes, blue and deep and unreflective, he found no echo of his argument, and he thought that of course she wouldn’t be able to take any of this in, not after what she’d seen him do. Not while he was still covered in blood. He looked away from her white and set face and said, slowly, “I am aware that I am a beast. But I beg you to believe that the only reason I acted bestially today was because you . . . because I wanted to protect you. Now you at least know what they wish of you and I . . . I will take you to Meerut, if you’ll allow me, and in Meerut you can tell your captain that he should protect you from the tigers. Though, perforce . . .” He felt a blush overcome his cheeks, and he forced a smile. “Perforce you won’t be at such a great danger once you have become a wife.”

She watched him a while longer, and her hands clenched and unclenched on her skirt. He thought she was very far away, and then he thought, with sudden shock, that he might very well have pushed her over the edge, forced her to lose her mind. But at length, her gaze returned to him, and she looked him over, head to toe. It was a curiously dispassionate look, and oddly old, coming from one so young. It was also a strange look, when they’d been friends, travel companions . . . almost a couple these days alone together. It was a look as she might have given a dumb beast condemned to slaughter.

There was no hatred in it, and in fact something very much like mercy might have shone at the back of it, but it was not the look of a fellow human being, much less of a woman who would ever think of him as a man.

“I would prefer,” she said, her voice small and distant and giving, somehow, the impression that she was cold and marooned on an island of ice, “if you would not, in fact, take me to Meerut. I will . . . I will make it there on my own.”

He opened his mouth to protest, to explain that she was as unlikely to make it there alive as she’d been to make it there alive from Calcutta, when someone spoke from the side—a young woman’s voice. “You don’t need to make it there alone, miss. We will escort you. And we have a flying rug.”

Turning his head slightly—for the first time fully aware of that presence that had been there, just at the edge of his vision—Peter saw three natives. And one was an uncommonly pretty girl, with an impish face that seemed to smile even though he would guess she was trying to make it still and serious. He hesitated. What had they seen? What had they heard? Who were they?

Sofie turned to the girl and gave a deep sigh. “Lalita,” she said. And then, like someone very confused, but also very relieved, “You found me.”

“Yes, miss, I found you. I have been tracking you for days, with the flying rug. These are my . . . my cousins.” She indicated the two native males who seemed, between them, to be sharing a single outfit, as one of them wore long pantaloons that left his chest uncovered. He also wore, incongruously, two bright gold earrings. To his left, the other man wore a long tunic that left the impression he wore nothing else underneath.

This was not unusual attire, not in this land where many people would go about naked, and others partially clad as a matter of course, but it was odd that they seemed to have shared a single outfit between them. However, whatever suspicions Peter had, they were not shared by Sofie Warington, who looked from the girl she’d called Lalita to the two men, then back at Lalita again. “You’ve not . . . come to take me to my parents?” she asked.

The girl shook her head.

“You promise?”

“I promise, miss. Besides, I’m afraid I’m in trouble with them myself, having left after your mother slapped me and blamed me for allowing you to escape out the veranda door.”

This seemed to make sense to Sofie, who nodded but said, still in that tiny, cold voice, “Then, my parents didn’t . . . repent? They didn’t fetch you to collect me?”

The girl shook her head. “No. We came because . . . Well, you’d told me, miss, that you intended to go to Captain Blacklock, who used to be so besotted with you in London. And I thought that perhaps you would need an escort, and . . . and a means of transportation, since the country is strange to you, as it is to me, after all the time we spent in England. And so I got my cousins, and Hanuman here,” a quick, voluble gesture toward the one who wore the pants, “borrowed a rug from his employer. And we will escort you to Meerut. You have nothing to fear.”

For a moment, Peter thought of objecting. He didn’t know these people at all. How could he know that they would take care of Sofie? How did he know they’d protect her as he would have protected her? But this Lalita must be the maid that Sofie Warington had talked about in passing once or twice—the one who’d gone with Sofie to England. And if so, then she was the closest thing—or so it had sounded to him at the time—that Sofie had to a friend. And she’d shown herself quite sensible in bringing her cousins with her to protect them both on the trip.

So while he hesitated to let her out of his sight, at the same time he had to admit she had asked him to leave her alone, and also that after what he had done—and after almost killing the tiger-boy in the heat of passion—he’d shown himself quite unworthy of her. Perhaps it was better to let her go, just like it was best for him to let go of Summercourt and of the family reputation—both of which his presence and his curse could only hurt. Yes, it was best if he let go of Sofie and let her depart into the great world beyond, where she had a chance to find happiness.

But there was one more thing he could do, one risk he could rid them of before he left. He stepped swiftly to the bound tiger-prince. An exclamation escaped Sofie’s throat, and he realized she thought he was going to kill the boy. Well, that, too, he could dispel—and perhaps she would go from him with a better idea of his morals and character than he’d given her so far.

He knelt swiftly and, ignoring the young prince’s look of abject terror, untied his hands and feet, then sprang back, ready to change and face him, should the boy attack. With weres, you never knew—and it was quite likely that the young man, weakened by blood loss though he was, would come at Peter with fang and claw. The dragon had been known to hunt after an evening in which it had been injured more seriously than the boy had been.

But the prince only looked confused for a moment, and then stood up, shrinking away from Peter as he did so. He stepped away—one step, two, three—without turning his back on Peter, and then, suddenly, as though deciding he was far enough away, turned and shambled at a stumbling run into the line of the trees. Before he reached them, he’d started to change, and then he was leaping away, running very fast toward the trees.

Peter, in his turn, faced Sofie once more. “I would leave quickly,” he told her. “He will go and tell his tiger friends where you are, and you can’t allow that to happen. He will tell them where I am, too, and also what I look like in my nondragon form, and I imagine that his father will be none too pleased with my continued existence. And so I must away.” He turned toward Lalita and the two men. “Is your rug distant from here?”

Both Lalita and the men looked as though in awe of him, as though he had been doing something terrible or scary. He realized they’d probably seen him in both forms, and possibly what he’d done to the young tiger. It didn’t matter. None of their opinions mattered. He’d disappointed the hopes of people who loved him before. What did it matter if he now disappointed the views of strangers? Sofie . . . Well, Sofie mattered, and part of him would ache forever that they’d had to part like this, without her knowing that he’d done the things that repelled her for her sake only. But it could not be helped.

He wished, with a mad, overpowering desire, that he could kiss her hand as he left. He wished, just once, to have his lips touch that skin only his fingers had touched, and even then lightly and constrained. Something to remember, and to carry with him all the years of his life—or however long his curse allowed him to carry on in the land of the living.

But he was not so lost to all propriety that he imagined he had the right to kiss her hand while he was smeared head to toe in human blood. And he would not further disgust her. He bowed stiffly, then let the change come. He was tired and there was a taste of blood in his mouth. He had to allow the dragon to feed, but not here, and not anywhere she might see him. He would go back to where they’d left their luggage and collect his own. He would eat. He would wash. And after that . . .

After that, his entire life seemed to stretch, a panoply of gray sameness. It no longer mattered to him whether he found Soul of Fire. It had been in Sofie’s family. Was it now with the tigers? It did not matter. Nothing mattered. He felt like he imagined people must when they were very close to death—as though the whole vision of the world and everything in it had no consequence because they would have no part of anything in that bright future to which others were hastening.

The pain of change seemed less than normal. As he stretched his wings to the sky, he noted that Sofie and the natives were no longer in the vicinity. And as he gained altitude, he could see the four of them still on the ground, sitting on a little flying rug that looked barely large enough to accommodate them.

They’d not make very good time on that, but it didn’t matter. After all, she would not make much better time with a dragon that must stop at intervals to feed. And they would fly faster than the tigers could run, which was probably the heart of the matter. Still, even as he felt despondent and disconnected from the world, he’d spoken the truth when he’d said he was too cowardly, too attached to his life to commit outright suicide. He could not bring himself to do anything so foolish.