The Lady of the Storm - 2 (3 page)

His devil of a sword thrummed in his hand, reminding him that he did indeed possess a similar gift, although not one he would have chosen. Unlike the inferior swords of the officers, Giles’s blade could withstand almost any magical spell. Cecily would find it nearly impossible to entrap him with her powers. Giles suspected his sword might even surprise an elven lord bereft of a scepter.

The villagers ran past Cecily. Giles cursed. They had brought the officers right to them. He swung his blade in a warning pass and the closest soldier came to an abrupt stop. Seemingly unaware of the danger, Cecily continued to weave her magic with her hands. She lifted her palms to the sky, raised them above her head. The cyclones surrounding the trapped officers rose in unison, drifted toward the ocean. Cecily turned to watch her creations, and as each one reached a point that Giles judged to be over deep water, she made a fist then quickly splayed her fingers. The cyclone disintegrated into thousands of droplets, releasing the man trapped inside to plunge downward with a scream of terror that Giles heard even from this distance.

He could not determine if they would survive the fall.

The officer who had halted a few paces beyond where they stood narrowed his eyes at Cecily’s hands, suddenly threw back his head and screamed, “To me, men! To me!”

Giles did not wait for anyone to answer that cry. He lunged forward, forcing the other man to raise his sword in defense, and with a spin of his wrist and a twist, he quickly disarmed the officer and ran him through. Giles risked a brief glance around as the man fell to his knees, but none of his troops remained to answer his call.

Old Man Hugh stood over the other officer’s body, one bare foot of gnarly toes placed firmly on the back of the blue uniform. He gave Giles a crooked grin as Giles yanked his sword free of the fallen man and half-turned toward Cecily. But Hugh’s eyes widened and Giles turned back just in time to see a pistol pointed at her. He had no time to consider if it had already been discharged or gotten water-soaked. He removed the arm from the soldier who pointed the barrel at the Rebellion’s coveted treasure.

Despite the horrors Cecily had witnessed already, or perhaps because of it, a sob of dismay ripped from her throat as the severed appendage flew through the air. Giles turned, his chest contracting for a moment at the expression on Cecily’s face. The dreamy haze had faded from those blue eyes and now each individual facet sparkled with hypnotizing flashes.

“How could you do that?” she demanded.

“I had to.” Giles bent down and cleaned his hands on a blue coat. “He would have shot you.”

Cecily waved her hands wildly about her. “I cannot believe this is happening.” With a sudden slash of her arms, a curve of water arced over their heads to crash onto the bloody battle site, washing it clean before curling upwards and returning to wherever it had come from. The surviving villagers released a gasp of terror despite the cyclones she’d already conjured, and as one, they backed away from her.

Giles stood, shoved his sword back into his scabbard. Or at least, he tried to. The damn blade resisted and nudged the tip away from the opening, causing Giles to nearly impale his own boot. Faith, not only did he have to endure the hysterics of the battle-scarred young woman, but he couldn’t even manage to sheath his own weapon.

“Get in there, you bastard, or I swear I’ll melt you down for horseshoes,” muttered Giles as he slammed the blade into the scabbard again. This time it settled into the leather with a satisfied hum.

If he had not vowed to avenge the deaths of his father and brother, Giles would have abandoned the magical sword long ago. But the enchanted blade had the power to aid him in his revenge against the elven lords, in his goal to one day become an important leader in the Rebellion. He hated the necessity of its thirst for blood—and needed it, all at the same time.

“You talk to it—you are mad,” hissed Cecily.

“Me? Aren’t you the one who just dropped a troop of Breden’s soldiers into the ocean?”

“They killed my mother.”

Giles wiped his bloody palm down his breeches, took a deep breath of patience and strode forward, placing his fingers on her cheek, as if now that he’d touched her, he could not stop from doing so again. “I’m sorry. Many more would have died if you had not called your magic to defend us, and I am grateful. But we have no time for your fit of vapors. If any soldiers survive, they will tell the story of what happened here and the elven lord will come with an even larger army. You must leave the village.”

“Now I know you’re demented,” she said. But she did not pull away from his touch. “I do not understand your sudden concern for me. You… you do not know that I am alive. And I… I despise you. That’s the way it has always been.”

“Has it?” Giles found this revelation of her inner thoughts startling, but he didn’t have time to dwell upon it. “Listen. I promised your father I would look out for you while he was gone, and since he has not returned, that makes you my responsibility.”

“You? You would be the last person I would ever want to watch over me.”

“Apparently Thomas did not care what you thought.” Giles noticed the women had emerged from their hiding places, had started to tend to the wounds of the injured. His own bullet wound suddenly began to ache, and his vision swam for a moment as his hand dropped to Cecily’s shoulder to steady himself. He didn’t have the patience to reason with her, but he would have to try. “You are no longer safe here. Even if word of this scuffle does not reach Breden of Dewhame’s ears, more soldiers will come. Thomas has been gone too long and the spell that has hidden this village has faded. The Rebellion cannot let you fall into enemy hands.”

Cecily’s enormous eyes glittered. “Now I understand. You aren’t just a friend of my father’s. You are part of this Rebellion—how long have you been spying on me? No, no, don’t answer. I’m sure it will be a lie. Fie, you almost had me believing… never mind. Your concern is for me as a tool, not a person.”

She stepped away from him, dislodging his hand. Giles swayed.

“I’m not going anywhere with you, Giles Beaumont… if that’s even your real name.”

His vision developed odd black specks and he blinked to try to clear it. “I assure you, lady, that
is
my name. And after nine years of protecting you I think you could at least trust me for the next few…” The ground suddenly flew up to meet his face, but before he felt the impact the black specks exploded and the world disappeared.

Two

At first Cecily could do nothing more than stare down in confusion at the large man. Indeed, she’d felt nothing but confusion since she’d emerged from the ocean to find the blacksmith waiting for her. His concern for her safety had astonished her and her foolish heart had thought…

Fie, she’d found out the truth of it soon enough.

Perhaps she should take the opportunity to get as far away from him as she could. He seemed awfully determined to take control of her life. And she had tried so hard, for so long, to plan her future the way she wanted it.

And certainly not as some weapon for the Rebellion.

Cecily raised her trembling hands, stared at them in dawning horror. What had she done? Years of hiding the true strength of her power—all destroyed in one day. How could she have allowed this to happen? And yet, how could she stand by and do nothing while her friends and neighbors were being slaughtered?

Her entire world had suddenly changed and Cecily couldn’t quite grasp the full extent of it yet. Especially the revelation that the man at her feet had been spying on her for years.

She huffed and bent down, rolled Giles over. So much blood covered his chest that she couldn’t determine how much of it was his. She unbuttoned his shirt with shaking fingers, trying not to look at his beautiful face. He had too much of the elven’s beautiful features for her not to be affected by them.

She spread open the blood-soaked cloth, pushing it over his muscular shoulders. The wound did not look very large but it still bled prodigiously. Cecily tore off a strip from her chemise and balled it up, pushing it against the hole in that otherwise perfect skin.

“Somebody help me,” she cried.

“I’m here, Cecily.”

She looked up into Will’s warm brown gaze and suddenly the horrible things she’d seen and done today caught up with her. She didn’t fight the tears that stung her eyes, trailed down her cheeks. “He needs a healer.”

“Aye, that he does. But it’s not a mortal wound, me girl, so he can wait a bit. I daresay that elven blood of his will have him healed before any of the others.”

Cecily gave him a wondering look. He’d said “elven blood” with a touch of scorn in his voice, and she could not forget she carried even more than the blacksmith. Indeed, she’d tried very hard to keep her odd eyes lowered to hide that damning trait, for despite Giles’s pointed ears and pale blond hair, he still had the ordinary eyes of a human.

“He does look very elven, Will. Is that why you don’t like him?”

William hunched down and laid his arm about Cecily’s shoulders. “Nay. I don’t like him because he’s a strange man, with strange ways. He’s been here nigh on nine years and we still don’t know nuthin’ about him.” He gave her a slight squeeze. “Ye know yer blood has never bothered me, Cecily. Nor yer swimming with all manner of creatures. But ye should have told me about this magic of yers. ’Tis enough to make a man shake in his very boots.”

“I’m sorry, Will. I just hoped that if I ignored it, it would go away.”

Will laughed at that. “No more’n the crystal in yer eyes would fade, me girl. But ye have managed it well, and I don’t see why ye can’t continue to do so.”

Cecily hoped she understood the meaning behind his words. She’d had every intention of marrying Will, had waited only for him to gather the courage to ask her. For the past few years she’d dreamt of a little cottage of her own, filled with freckled babies and Will’s gentle contented sort of love.

It did not concern her that her dreams did not include passion. She had experienced the madness of infatuation once, and never wanted to have her heart crushed like that again.

“Does that mean,” whispered Cecily, “that you still care for me?”

“Ach, me dear girl, I would never let a bit of magic come between us.”

Giles moaned. Cecily focused her attention back on him. She peeked under the cloth and reduced the pressure when she saw that the bleeding had slowed. “That bullet needs to be removed before his skin heals over it.”

Will scratched his head. “Do ye reckon he can heal that fast?”

“I can, Will.”

“And ye have proved to carry more elven blood than even this sword-gifted fiend. Ach, now don’t look at me that way. I told ye it doesn’t change the way I feel.”

But Cecily noticed none of the other villagers had come near them, and realized Will might be the only one of them who felt that way. The few who had the gift of healing had chosen others to care for, the women tending to their own men. Yet if it hadn’t been for Giles, none of them would have survived. He had fought so valiantly for them, yet they now seemed to fear him.

Or perhaps they avoided
her
.

When Giles’s current lover hurried by with nary a glance at the fallen man, Cecily wanted to scream at the young woman to help him. She wished the blacksmith would wake up and see what a self-centered chit he’d chosen to bed when he could have had—

No, best not follow that thought.

“I once pulled a splinter from little Ralph’s finger with my magic,” she told Will. “Do you think it would work with a bullet?”

“I dunno. But I don’t see the harm in tryin’.” Will glanced up and frowned. “It seems it may be awhile before someone else can tend to him.”

Cecily gathered the power to her again, her blood thrumming in response until it felt as if her very skin shivered with the force of it. Will jerked his arm from about her shoulders. Perhaps it truly did.

Several healers had already started pots of water to boil, and she called thin streams of it to her, the air cooling it by the time it reached her. Cecily guided it with her fingers, washing off Giles’s chest, noting a thin wound across that perfect skin, but otherwise no injuries except for the bullet hole. She angled the liquid into a point and swirled it to make it strong enough to penetrate that opening, then allowed it to trickle back out with red, then a tint of pink. She continued to force the water into the wound until the musket ball popped out.

Cecily heaved a sigh of relief.

“Well done,” whispered Will.

She nodded at his words, ignoring the awe that had crept into his voice. She tore more cloth from her chemise and bound the blacksmith’s shoulder.

“What shall we do with him?”

Will rose to his feet, grabbed Giles’s ankles, attempting to drag him. “I’ll take him over with the rest of the injured—damn, the man must weigh a hundred stone.”

“Do stop, Will. You’re likely to hurt him.” Cecily curled her arms beneath the blacksmith’s back and knees, lifting him with a grunt. Despite her elven strength, all that muscle of his made him heavy. And her smaller height allowed his head to nearly touch the ground, his feet to drag through the mud. But it was better than Will tugging him about like one of his sheep. “Where?”

Will just gaped at her.

Cecily inwardly groaned. For years she’d hidden her elven strength just as much as she’d hidden her magic, longing to fit in with her fellow villagers. Well, except for the time that beam had fallen on Gregory—but she’d been careful that no one had seen her move it. And once, when Becca’s little sister had wandered near the cliffs, Cecily had used her elven speed to catch the girl before she tumbled over the edge. Isolated incidences with few witnesses. Quickly forgotten because for most of the time she appeared entirely human. But today…

Today’s events had destroyed all of her diligent subterfuge.

“Where do I take him, Will? He’s heavy.”

He snapped his mouth shut and led her to Old Man Hugh’s cottage, which already held several other wounded men. Cecily laid the blacksmith down on a clean pallet just beyond the doorway, her muscles trembling with relief as she settled him. Despite everything, she felt hesitant to leave him. What if he’d lost so much blood he’d never manage to wake up?

She broke another habit she’d developed to protect herself. She looked into his face.

Merciful heavens. Cecily stroked his thick white hair off his brow. The pale strands lacked the sparkle of silver that marked the elven lords, but it only made him appear more human. Made his beauty more real. The sculpted cheekbones, the perfectly formed nose and chin. His skin also lacked the paleness attributed to the pure elven—a light golden color that, along with his ordinary-shaped eyes, betrayed his more human blood.

But he’d inherited entirely too much of the elven beauty for any woman to be unaffected by the mere sight of him.

Cecily had been but nine years old when Giles had come to apprentice to the old blacksmith. At the age of fifteen, Giles had already reached his manhood, while she had been nothing but a scrawny child. Within a few years Giles had taken over the forge and seduced half the maidens in the village.

And like all the rest, Cecily had imagined herself in love with him.

She could not look into his eyes without feeling as if she’d swoon, so she had avoided his gaze. His mere presence left her breathless, heart hammering and palms sweating, so she could not gather the nerve to speak to him. But she took to hanging out about the smithy with all the rest of the young girls, until Giles lost patience and shooed them away.

She’d fought with her best friend, Becca, over who loved him the most. The stupid girl thought she did, and that argument had strained their friendship.

Cecily might have continued to moon after him in quiet adoration if she hadn’t accidentally stumbled across him on the beach one night.

She’d managed to hide most of her peculiar elven traits. She felt grateful she hadn’t inherited the pale locks that were a telltale sign of the blood. Indeed, her black hair helped, and she took to wearing it long over her forehead to hide her freakishly large eyes. She had even managed to suppress her magic until she almost forgot she had it.

All in the attempt to erase the memory of the knowledge that her magic could kill.

But she could not fight the attraction for the ocean. She longed for it like a flower longs for the sun. So she took to the water at night, to swim with the dolphins and become one with the waves. And she’d stumbled across Giles and his lover, their bodies entwined at the edge of the tide, the moonlight highlighting the muscles in Giles’s back and shoulders… in his shapely legs… in his firm buttocks… as he moved atop the woman beneath him. Cecily stared in wonder at the beauty of his face when he arched his back and moaned, his eyes closed in some sort of bliss.

Even the mere thought of how she’d reacted years ago made her face heat with shame now.

For she should have been frightened, or appalled, or even disgusted. She’d never seen such a sight before. She had only a girlish inkling of what went on between a man and a woman when they were alone together, much of it involving kissing.

She had not believed Will when he’d told her it was much like what sheep did.

So witnessing the act should have sent her running in the other direction. Instead, she watched. And studied. And tingled in places she’d never thought of before.

And longed to be that woman beneath him.

Cecily had gone to bed that night, touching herself in those new places of interest, imagining his hands upon her body.

And her determination had grown beyond her shyness.

When her body had finally developed enough curves that she felt the admiring glances of the village boys and a sense of the power she could wield with just a sway of her hips, she had snuck into his private rooms behind the smithy and waited for him.

She could still remember the way he looked when he entered his bedroom. The way he smelled. He must have just come from his bath—another habit of his that marked him as an oddity in the village—for he smelled of spring water and soap, and his naked chest gleamed from scrubbing. His pale hair still dripped sparkling droplets of water about his shoulders and down his back. He wore nothing but his drawers, wet and plastered to his body.

Cecily stared in fascination at what they revealed, forgetting for the moment her rehearsed seduction.

But she must have made some noise, for he swung round toward the bed, his eyes narrowed, and he groaned, “Not again.”

The firelight played across the smooth planes of his chest, the ridged curves in his stomach. He had little body hair marring that expanse, just a bit in the center of his chest, creating a light line straight down into his drawers.

“Lud, woman. Are you married?”

Cecily blinked. Of course, in the dim light he hadn’t recognized her. “No.”

A sigh. “Widowed, perhaps?”

“Um, no.”

“Known for offering your favors freely?”

“Certainly not!”

He strode toward the bed and ripped the covers off her. “Then, my dear, I’m afraid I have to ask you to leave.”

Cecily squeaked and tried to cover herself with her hands. She had disrobed, hoping the sight of her new curves would be more than he could resist. But, fie, he hadn’t even given her a chance to appear… tempting.

Something flickered in his eyes as they traveled over her body, but his face froze into a sort of dispassionate boredom. “Get dressed. Before I do something we shall both regret.”

“But… but…” Cecily tried to gather her wits. He didn’t understand. He thought she was some foolish girl who didn’t know what she was about. Who wanted to use him for his good looks, and nothing more. “But I love you,” she managed to whisper. There, she’d done it. Confessed her secret longings, let him know that she desired him beyond what his other lovers surely did.