The Danger of Destiny (39 page)

There were penalties for losing epic quests. Deaths and imprisonments. Sorrow and prisons. I didn't want to spend eternity in Threall any more than I wanted to die at the hands of the Fae. I just wished …

That I could wake up and realize that it had all been a bad dream.

I rechecked the Fae gold's slow progress across the uneven flagstones. Either instinct or intelligence had sent it creeping, inch by inch, toward the hidden doorway in the wall. What would it do when it got there and found its exit sealed?

Could gold weep?

Trowbridge suddenly snorted in his stupor, then sat up, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his palms. Muscles flexed and mud crackled as he stood. He grimaced. “I need to get cleaned up.”

“Gwennie and Mouse brought water and some rags.” I stood and nodded to the bucket set in the corner. “It should be still warm.”

“Where are she and Mouse?”

“They went back out in search of a third uniform.” The Kuskador servant's reluctance to abet and aid the Son of Lukynae's freedom force had been taken care of with one quick session with the Old Mage. He'd snared her frightened gaze, stated what we needed, mumbled five words, and then said, “You'll fetch those for us, won't you, girl? And you'll say nothing to anyone as you do. Not by word, or sign, or thought.”

And she'd blinked, very slowly, and replied in a doll-like voice, “Yes, I'll do that.”

Could the old wizard glamour me into accommodating his wishes as easily as that? I shivered, thinking about it, and moved closer to my man. I put down the blade and burrowed into his arms.

“Scared?”

“Scared spitless. Aren't you?”

“Yeah, but that's normal. Fear keeps you alive.”

“Do you think we'll live?”

“Don't know.”

I nodded. “I guess what will be will be.”

“You're pretty calm for someone who says she's spitless.”

“I can't stop thinking that we were meant to be here. Meant to meet again, meant to love, meant to mate. Ever since we arrived, I've felt it inside my chest—a sense of destiny, acute as d
é
j
à
vu. I'm supposed to be here. There's a reason I was born with the talent to mystwalk and an explanation for the fact that Lexi was given the ability to borrow magic, but not to keep it.”

“So you think this is all a replay, another swing at the bat?”

“Maybe. Maybe in the last life, we lost.”

“Not this time.” Trowbridge smoothed my hair away from my face. Blue eyes, framed with black eyelashes, studied me. “You'll need to take your dose now.”

Would this be the last time I touched him before the next replay of our destinies? The last chance in this life to feel the warmth of his breath on my temple?

“I need to kiss you first,” I said.

The request was simple, but it wiped the warrior from his face. He stilled and there was nothing sexier and more potent in that half moment he stared at me and his eyes spoke of want, and love, and sex, and an emotion nearly indefinable to anyone other than a fellow wolf. The closest to it in human-speak are the words “mine, mine, mine.”

Then he reached for me, but this time I intercepted him, for it suddenly seemed so important that I claimed him before he claimed me. I stood up on my toes, twining my arms above his. My palms ran over his shoulders, enjoying the curves of his muscles, the small hollows between tendons. Up to his neck they traveled, my fate line rasping across the shadow of his beard. I cradled his hard jaw between my hands.

Lean muscle under bristles. Hard bone under skin.

Mine.

He inhaled sharply as my finger ran over his lower lip. “Breathe,” I murmured. He exhaled and hot breath warmed the pads of my fingers.
Delicious
. I touched the moisture rimming the inside of his mouth and wet the full lower lip that I meant to claim as mine.

It glistened slightly, and that was all I could see.

Not the room, not the old man who was witness to our kiss, not the terror, nor the future.

Just Trowbridge's mouth, wet and ready for mine. My breasts flattened as I leaned into him. He was aroused and hard. His legs widened, coaxing me to come closer, and I fit myself to him. Soft belly to hard cock. I pulled his head down and brought those lips to mine.

I kissed him.

Small biting kisses to a mouth so willing to open. A nip to the bottom of a full lip. Desire rolled over me. I lifted my mouth till it hovered a scant centimeter above his. Our noses rested against each other, and we breathed as one.

He's mine. He'll always be mine. Through life, through death, through beyond.

I touched my tongue to his.

At that first touch of wet to wet he turned into the Alpha that he was. His hands moved down to my ass. He cupped my cheeks and pulled me punishingly hard to his length.

He was ready. Pheromones spiced his scent, rutting heat radiated from him.

Then he kissed me. Not softly, not sweetly.

He took; he claimed; he imprinted.

He
memorized.

We could have been lost—the not-here forgotten. And perhaps for a few seconds more we were. Then fresh air cooled the back of my neck and I heard a feminine gasp, followed by the quiet click of the door. I jerked my mouth from his. Twisted my head to check for the source of the noise.

Mouse and Gwennie stood against the door. She looked horrified; he looked fascinated. The old man looked intrigued. They knew. They could smell the sexual want, see it in our flushed faces. Five minutes more and I would have let Trowbridge take me against the wall. In front of
the mage
. With dead bodies on the floor. With Fae gold working its way toward a sealed door.

It is always that way between us.

It always will be
that way.

Trowbridge's hands slid off my ass and tightened into a locked fist at the small of my back. He lifted me, turned so that his back was facing them, and then he walked us over to the corner, barely missing the stream of glinting gold at his feet.

I tightened my arms around his neck.

He lowered his head so that we could talk. “You know what I'd be without you?”

“A very pretty corpse.”

“I was going for heartbroken, but yeah, you had to point out the obvious.”

I issued a faint smile. “Being subtle is for pussies, Trowbridge.”

“I love you,” he said, plain and simple.

And then he kissed me again, except this time tenderly on my forehead. He eased me back to the floor. “Now take your hit.” He pulled out the bottle from his cutoffs' back pocket, uncorked it, and brought it to my lips. I could smell the scent of the other Raha'ells on the rim of its glass neck. Woods, earth, wolf. I smiled for him again—this time showing teeth—and took my medicine.

The potion left a trail of warmth down my throat that warmed my belly. My wolf started to pace, anxious at these new sensations, and my Fae began to nod in happiness, and me? I leaned against my lover and let him hold me as the potion's pleasure swept mildly over me. I was getting too used to it—the high faded faster than an interrupted orgasm.

When I felt relatively normal, I said, “Time to do this.”

The Son of Lukynae released me. He straightened his cutoffs, then walked stiffly to the door. He checked the corridor, then jerked his head at Mouse. “How far to the first staircase?”

It was where we'd part. Trowbridge and his Raha'ells would go their way to face their individual destinies, and the old man and I would head toward ours.

While Lexi would sleep.

“It's close,” said Mouse. “Follow me.”

*   *   *

As it turned out, “close” was an understatement; there was a staircase fifteen feet to the right of the room of riches. It was circular, windowless, and steep. Mouse led the way. Sword in hand, Trowbridge followed, then me, and then the rest of our posse.

Okay, I couldn't help it. I flashed to
The Princess Bride
.

On the ninth stair, the whole file of us came to an abrupt halt when Mouse suddenly flattened himself against the wall. He mouthed something to Trowbridge, then disappeared around the corner. Trowbridge's arm swept backward to press me against the staircase's wall. Danen edged past me, dagger drawn.

“Come back, you!” I heard someone shout.

Mouse came haring back up the staircase, moving so fast past me and the other Raha'ells that I could swear he left a vapor trail. A guard wearing a red uniform came clattering up the stairs in pursuit. Danen's dagger found the guard's heart before he had a chance to do more than widen his eyes.

We left his body there, crumpled on the fifth riser. There seemed little point in hiding his corpse. We had set fire to the jewel room. Already the scent of smoke was wafting its way up the staircase.

Let the mayhem begin.

Four more stairs and we hit the landing. The old man and I were to take a right here, following the corridor until the next staircase, while Trowbridge and his people would continue downward to the ground floor and then part—Mouse and Gwennie taking the disguised Raha'ells to the kitchen; Trowbridge going it alone.

I didn't feel much like the Princess Bride anymore. There's no romance when your stomach spasms in jittery fear, no soft focus against the brightness of blood on Danen's blade.

Besides, Trowbridge and I had had our kiss. I couldn't bear to know that the old man witnessed the intimacy again, noting that this time my hands shook and my lips trembled.

So I said, “Don't get yourself killed.”

And My One True Thing said, “Ditto.”

Then we—the Romeo and Juliet of Creemore—went our separate ways.

Destiny called.

The utter bitch.

 

Chapter Twenty-five

“What is the delay?” inquired the Old Mage as we stood in front of the door to his old lair.

“The door is locked.” The metal flange bit into my palm. I placed my other thumb on top of the one already set on the handle and tried it again. Nada.

Open up, you freakin' door.

I shook the handle. I needed to be inside. Positioned by the window so I could stare down at the Spectacle grounds and witness whatever would happen. Be ready to give the sign. Say the word.

I'll kick you into splinters if I have to.

“It's not locked; it's magicked. Stand aside. I will open it.” The old man moved before I could; the sleeve of his cloak brushed my shoulder and the length of my brother's muscled arm grazed the side of my neck.

Sickness rose.

He flattened his hand on the wooden door and said something low under his breath that I couldn't catch. Sparks—their hue a color-match to the cable of green that streamed from my own hand—flashed between the seam of his fingers.

Me and magic-mine jerked back.

With a small smile the mage worked the handle, and the door swung open as easily as if it had been greased. Pride of possession was stamped by the set of his shoulders. These rooms once belonged to him.

“Enter,” he said quite unnecessarily.

I squeezed in sideways, taking care not to touch him.

The square room was a pack rat's delight. Shelves lined the available space of the mage's lair, and they were filled with bottles, some dusty, some gleaming, and books, some with spines soldier straight, some left cracked open.

Despite the clutter, the furnishings were meager. A hard-used pine table, its wood nearly buried under a haphazard pile of dried herbs. A few baskets on the floor filled with twigs and pinecones. A tall stool, the middle rung of which had been worn by a few centuries of foot use. And in the middle of the room, a wooden lectern, on which a heavy book lay open.

The wizard hurried to the lectern. “The insufferable, ass-sniffing toad,” he muttered, flipping through it. “Helzekiel's perused all but five pages.” His cheeks reddened and his jowls seemed to quiver, an old man enraged. “How dare he claim my work as his?”

He used my brother's voice. And he carried the scent of my blood on him. And the sour stink of Trowbridge's mud shield. And the faint aroma of Danen. And the sweetness of old magic.

I hated him with such a sudden surge of heat that my own face flushed. “Start working on the wards,” I said through my teeth.

“Time,” he murmured. “It is ever your enemy, is it not, nalera?”

I'd like to kill you now,
I thought, watching him push up his sleeves and bend over the book.

Later.

I swung away.

The tower room had two windows. One was full of light, offering a picture of rolling hills. The other was dark, the late-afternoon sun seeming unable to pierce the depths of the mother jinx, whose roiling mass was just visible at its top corner.

Shrugging off the cloak I'd worn to cover my non-Fae-issue jeans, I went to the dark window. It was sealed, and the glass was watery. I found the casement's crank and turned it slowly, inching it open.

Hot air slid into the room and with it the pungent perfume of the Raha'ells.

Their combined smell could be reduced to wolf musk and woods, but Goddess, there was so much more. The scent of the people in those pens spoke to me in a language I no longer needed an interpreter for.

With emotion. Anger. Fear. Desperation.

Maternal grief.

I looked down to the Spectacle grounds.

The area contained by the palisade's towering wall amounted to a patch of land, not much bigger than Trowbridges' front lawn. There were three holding pens, lined up like a row of matchsticks. Each was long and narrow. A press of men had been crammed into the first pen. The next was filled with female Raha'ells and their children. The third was empty.

That's all?

There's so few of them.

Over the last day, I'd grown to think of them as a small army—a hundred strong or more. But now, staring down on them, I realized I'd made the mistake of equating the strength of their reputation with the size of their pack.