The Charmer (12 page)

Jasmine gave her a look, but slowly lifted
her spoon and tasted the treat.

Rihlia asked Jayems to refill her
wineglass.

Noting her friend’s distress and eager to
lift the tension that had settled over the table, Jasmine snatched
the glass before it could make it to Rihlia’s trembling lips. She
gave her a roguish smile. “Royalty really ought to have a taste
tester, don’t you think?” Grinning, she took a large swallow of the
golden wine.

Rihlia laughed in grateful relief and looked
down, shaking her head. “Are you sure it’s not the job of court
jester you’re after?” When there was no answer, she looked up and
saw Jasmine frozen with an odd look on her face. “Jasmine?”

Jasmine blinked, but didn’t move.

Rihlia touched her arm. It was rigid with
strain. “Jasmine? Are you okay?”

Colors swam before Jasmine’s frozen eyes. Her
muscles went weak and then spasmed without warning, shattering the
glass in her hand. Someone screamed. Male voices cursed as strong
arms wrapped around her, giving her support. She felt the blood and
wine flow over her hand, but could neither unclench her fist from
the shards nor see, for the room began to blacken. Past the roaring
in her ears she dimly heard Rihlia shouting...something…

And then the screaming began.

Chapter 10

Keilor swore and leapt over the table the
moment the glass shattered, but in spite of his best efforts and
Fallon holding Jasmine steady, he could not unclench her hand,
short of breaking it. Her body shuddered and the cords of her neck
stood out with the strain as her muscles contracted, driving the
shards deeper into her hand. Fresh blood flowed.

Rihlia screamed and fought against Jayems’
hold as she struggled to reach her friend. In the background Keilor
heard him telling her, “They are helping her! We have to stay out
of their way.”

“She’s hurting!” she shrieked, nearly wild,
and he dragged her back even farther.

“Love, sweet love…” he soothed, and his words
faded into a murmur as Keilor pressed the tendons in Jasmine’s hand
to force it open. He worked quickly to pick out the largest
fragments.

Jasmine moaned, a low, tortured sound. She
rolled into a tight ball.

The first shriek caught him off guard. He saw
Fallon pale and press his lips tightly together. Vengeance took up
a war drum in his blood. He saw the same need mirrored in Fallon’s
hard eyes. Someone would pay for harming this woman, and pay
dearly.

“She’ll live,” The medic announced as he
entered the clinic waiting room. He nodded respectfully to the
party of four who’d been waiting more than two hours for his
verdict.

Keilor had just sat down from his last
circuit of the room. He closed his eyes as some of the tension
drained from him.

Rihlia lifted her head from her hands,
exposing tear-swollen eyes. Her voice hoarse, she asked, “Will she
be all right?”

The medic sighed and crossed his arms,
rocking back on his heels. “There is unlikely to be brain damage,
and I believe that most of her organs will make a full recovery,
but it’s bound to be slow. The chemical we found in her blood is
most deadly to humans. Frankly, I’m surprised she survived it.”

Keilor sucked in a breath. Fallon swore
softly and Jayems put a supporting arm around his wife. She allowed
him to hold her as he kissed her hair and murmured soothing words,
slowly shaking her head.

“What was it?” Keilor demanded.

The medic’s lips tightened as he stared at
the polished stone floor. “Its scientific name is Libran, but you
might know it better as Sweet Surrender.” He smiled without humor.
“It would seem someone tried to slip your charmer an aphrodisiac,
and ended up with a nasty surprise instead.”

Keilor turned lethal eyes on Fallon, who was
watching him with an equally savage expression. Each assessed and
dismissed the other as suspects. Fallon was far too proud to resort
to such an underhanded scheme, and as for Keilor...he held no love
for Libran.

“But...it happened after she drank from my
glass,” Rihlia ventured uncertainly.

“The dessert,” Jayems said with grim
conviction. “She took a bite of the dessert just before she drank
form your cup, Rihlia. If you hadn‘t been distracting her….” He
glanced at Keilor. “But who and why? No one was going to get past
the guards at her door without my permission first. And if it
wasn’t one of us…”

Keilor frowned at Fallon. “Your mother does
want you to wed.” There was a silence as they considered just how
far the manipulative Portae would go to secure a daughter-in-law.
Considering the lengths she’d gone to in the past to manage her
only son’s life, there was no telling what she was capable of, and
Jasmine was the first woman he’d ever shown a serious interest
in.

“Had the drug been in your dessert, Keilor, I
would have suspected Urseya.” Jayems smiled faintly. “Under the
circumstances, I can’t see her wishing to inflame Jasmine, lest she
be forced to toast the pair of you at your wedding feast.”

His cousin gave him a sardonic smile.

“You give up on me too soon, Jayems,” Fallon
interjected smoothly. “The lady might have preferred to spend the
night in my bed.”

Rihlia stood up, fists clenched. “You leave
her alone!”

Surprised by the fury of her command, the
three men regarded her with uncertainty.

Fallon tried to soothe her. “We jest,
cousin,” he assured her. “No one is going to treat Jasmine with
less than honor and courtesy. Surely Jayems has explained to
you—”

“Just this morning you told me, Keilor, that
the only thing you men feel for Jasmine is lust.” When he didn’t
respond to her challenge, she continued tightly, “Well, I’m taking
you at your word, and I’m telling you,
commanding
you, to
leave her alone. She deserves far better than a man whose only
interest in her is as a one night stand.”

“Keilor speaks for himself if he said such
things, Rihlia.” Fallon glowered Keilor, who said nothing to defend
himself. “I admire your friend, respect her, and I—”

“Admiration is not enough,” she answered him
coldly. “She deserves a lot more.”

Fallon was silent for a moment. His jaw
ticked when he said, “If you are looking to know my heart, it’s not
yours to know.” The expression on his face when she made to
interrupt him was so savage, she stopped before uttering a word.
“If your friend wishes to know, I will speak truthfully with her.
Until then…” He softened his voice a little. “Be satisfied that she
is in good hands.”

Rihlia stared at one of the many potted
plants dotting the room. “What about the other? What will you do
when she finds out about the Haunt?” Silence followed her
comment.

All three men had been there the night Rihlia
had been found. She had been wary from the beginning of the three
strangers who had suddenly appeared in her camp, emerging from the
shadows as if they owned the night, and she had not gone willingly
to the Dark Lands. Worse than that, when she had attempted to use
the only weapon she had left on them, the one thing that they now
knew she feared above all else, Jayems had shown her the true
nature of the Haunt.

Tonight had been the first night since that
she had willingly suffered his touch.

Keilor waved a hand irritably, dismissing her
fears. “Jasmine’s made of stern stuff, Rihlia, and loyal. I think
she’d settle down quickly after she became used to the idea.” He
gave her a level look. “Your friend is the type to face her
problems, not to turn and run.”

“Have you seen how she looks at the
soldiers?” she countered. “She’s never relaxed around them, never
forgets their presence for a moment. If one of them makes an
unexpected move, she tenses and watches him as if she expects him
to try and eat her.” Keilor winced, and she nodded, vindicated.
“How do you think she’d react to the announcement that you were
one?”

Rihlia was curled up in a fat chair beside
Jasmine’s bed, knitting, when Jasmine finally woke up. She
immediately set aside her needles and came to sit on the big
bed.

“How are you doing, Jas?” she asked softly.
She felt Jasmine’s forehead with the back of her fingers and
smiled. “You look better, and your skin’s not clammy anymore.”

Jasmine frowned, sifting details through her
sleepy brain. She lifted her bandaged hand, staring as memories
trickled through her awakening brain. “The glass,” she croaked. Her
throat was still sore from screaming.

“Yes. It took the medics a long while to get
all the pieces out.” Rihlia helped her take a sip of water,
adjusting the straw so she could drink without sitting up.

Jasmine closed her eyes and relaxed back into
the pillows. Her whole body hurt. “Did they figure out who tried to
poison you?”

There was a pause. “It wasn’t poison.”

One eye opened and looked at her.

“It was an aphrodisiac.”

Jasmine’s eyes opened wide and she started to
sit up. She groaned when her sore muscles and tender stomach
protested. Temporarily defeated, she flopped back down, allowing
Rihlia to fluff the pillows behind her head. “Someone gave you an
aphrodisiac?”

Rihlia sighed. “Someone gave
you
an
aphrodisiac, Jas, only it backfired. It acted on your body like a
poison.”

Jasmine stared at her for a long moment. Her
face darkened.

Before she could explode, Rihlia hastily
said, “It wasn’t one of the men. You should have seen their faces—”
She paused. “Nobody has any proof, but we think it might have been
Fallon’s mother.” A queer look passed over Jasmine’s face, and
Rihlia smirked. “Not for herself, silly! Apparently she wants
Fallon to get married pretty badly. She might have used the stuff
for that, never dreaming she might kill her future
daughter-in-law.”

There wasn’t much Jasmine could say to that
without a great deal of thought, and she felt too drained at the
moment to engage in lengthy internal debates. Instead she grumbled,
“So I’m going to be all right? There’s no lasting effect to this
stuff?”

Rihlia studied the quilt. “The medic said
that you’ll be all right, except for…” She cleared her throat
uncomfortably and shifted on the bed. “You might have a few
hormonal problems at first.”

Jasmine narrowed her eyes. “Like what?”
Sudden visions of sprouting facial hair taunted her. If Wiley’s
aunt had made her into a bearded lady, Jas was going to have to
hurt her.

“Your sex drive.” Rihlia waffled a hand in
the air uncomfortably. “Uh, you may not be able to feel, er,
arousal for a while.”

Jasmine squinted one eye. This was getting
worse and worse. Not that she wasn’t grateful to be alive, and
she’d never been a sexual dynamo, but not to feel any desire at
all? Sheesh! “How long?”

“A few weeks, maybe. Or months.” Rihlia
cringed. “Or maybe never.”

“Never!” Jasmine tried to shout, but it came
out more of a croak.
Never?

“Don’t worry!” her friend hastened to assure
her, laying her hand on her arm. “They can give you hormone therapy
if it doesn’t come back on its own, which your doctor is almost
sure it will. You’ll be fine.”

“Great,” Jasmine rasped, furious. “Viagra for
women.” She smacked her damaged hand on the bed and yowled with the
pain. She’d forgotten it was injured.

While she was still mouthing curses and
holding her wrist, the door tone sounded, and Rihlia went to answer
it. “All right. Bring it on in.” Jasmine glanced in irritation at
the doors as Rihlia swung them wide and stood back. A man pushed a
wheeled platform into the room. A giant granite pot rested on the
platform, and inside it grew a six-foot fruit tree, loaded with
ripe avocados.

She looked at Rihlia in bewilderment.
“What—”

The deliveryman stepped forward and nodded
his head respectfully. “Lady Jasmine, may I present a gift from the
cadet Marcus Bustos? He sends his hopes that you might recover
swiftly and prays that his gift will cheer you in your
convalescence.”

When she only blinked stupidly at him, Rihlia
apologized, “Jasmine’s voice is almost gone at the moment, but if
she could speak I’m certain that she would say thank you, the tree
is very lovely. Why don’t you set it right at the foot of the bed,
where she can have a good view of it?”

She grinned at Jasmine while the man slid the
heavy pot off the platform. “They’ve been arriving all morning.”
She gestured to the window, where three other potted plants and a
small waterfall surrounded by mushrooms formed a miniature grove.
“So far you’ve collected a banana, an
ulu ristu
fruit and an
apple tree, and I can’t wait to see what shows up next.” She rubbed
her hands gleefully. “Apparently, instead of ‘say it with flowers’,
here they say it with fruit.”

“It’s an old tradition,” Jayems said,
entering the room as the deliveryman left. He walked to Rihlia.
Jasmine’s eyes widened as he slid an arm around her friend’s waist
and then kissed her neck in greeting. Rihlia blushed and avoided
her eyes.

“Your suitors are very organized, Jasmine.
I’ve heard they have a list going at the barracks to avoid
duplicating any gifts.” He smiled in good humor and she reflected
with surprise that she’d never seen him so relaxed.

It could only mean one thing.

Before she could speculate further, he
continued, “Keilor searches every gift to be certain that it is
safe and Fallon scowls every time another delivery is made.” He
flashed her a wicked grin. “I haven’t had so much fun just watching
them in years.”

Jayems, wicked?
Feeling a little
disoriented, Jasmine just grunted a reply. How much had she missed
while she’d been sleeping, anyway? “I guess I’ll have to see them
and tell them thank you.” She blinked sleepily at her hand. “Thank
you notes are out of the question.”