The Wolf's Captive (6 page)

And then there was the awful, splintering crash of the front door falling to an expertly wielded battering ram.

A harsh voice echoed up the stairs. “By order of the Duke, you are under arrest!”

Lucia bolted upright, eyes wide. How could they know? She hadn’t even left the house with the Duke’s Blend! Slowly, reason returned: of course they didn’t know. This was something else.

That thought, however, was not comforting. Lucia stumbled out of bed and knelt beside the flue, listening for whatever stray words happened to float up, but it was difficult to hear anything above the sounds of crashing equipment and breaking bottles. It began to dawn on her: this was real.

They were ruining her father’s still.

She threw on a dress and opened her door, but the sudden silence, after all that chaos, gave her pause.

“Of course there’s no one else here!” her father suddenly shouted, his voice breaking. Even to Lucia it sounded like a lie. “My wife is dead, my daughter is away. You can’t just barge in here like this, I have the Duke’s contract!”

Lucia’s head was foggy from the previous night. She was still puzzling over her father’s obvious lie when she heard a strange step on the stairs.

“I told you: no one else is here!” her father screamed. “Get out of my house!”

With slow horror, Lucia realized that her father wasn’t trying to deceive these soldiers. He was trying to warn his daughter.

Fear seeped into Lucia’s mind and sobered it right up. She grabbed what little money she could and a small purse and, at the last moment, the bottle of the forbidden Duke’s Blend, for no other reason than it was the most precious thing in her possession.

The last words she heard as she hauled herself out of the window and down to the ancient trellis below were, “Vintner Lyselle, by the authority of Duke Lupin, Ruler of J’Amel, I place you under arrest.”

~  ~  ~

Lucia ran all the way to David’s house, keeping to back streets and little-known alleyways, possessed by a primal sort of fear. She forced herself to slow down as she approached the large, corner house where David lived with his parents and six sisters. She was still wary. She would have to think things through.

Sitting on a back stoop, just out of sight of the main road, Lucia wondered why she’d never felt wary around David’s family before. His father, Vintner Clavel, was technically their competition. But somehow it had never mattered that Clavel had maneuvered into positions of power within the Vintner’s Guild; he’d always been a friend to the Lyselles. It helped that Clavel catered to the common taste, with inferior but inexpensive amberwine, and left the more delicate, high-end palates to the Lyselles. What Clavel lacked in her own father’s genius for alchemy, he made up for in business acumen. The two vintners were opposite images of each other in temperament, as well, and always had been; where Lucia’s father was awkward and shy, David’s was gregarious and charismatic, the sort of man who knew how to make anyone feel at ease.

Except, of course, for his son. There was a reason they spent most of their time at Lucia’s house.

Lucia had thought she was running to David’s house as a place of safety. But that wasn’t quite right; it was
David
who was safe. If the Duke’s soldiers were arresting vintners from some insane reason, there was no telling when they might come for Vintner Clavel.

Lucia stiffened with fear. They might even already be there.

Grow a backbone
, she admonished herself.
You have no choice.

She gathered a few dirty bits of gravel and some small, brown things that she very much hoped were gravel, and sneaked up to David’s house. His window was high, and the angle was steep. She got lucky with her aim and hit his window on the first try.

After a moment, the glass slid aside and David’s unruly head popped out. “Lucia?”

Lucia opened her mouth, then closed it again. She hadn’t thought this far ahead. It seemed somehow unwise to shout, ‘My father’s been arrested, and I ran from the soldiers,’ in the middle of the street.

“Stay where you are,” David whispered down at her. “I’m coming down.”

She knew this was the smart thing to do, and she’d known she had to keep a low profile—Why else would she throw rocks at his window rather than knock on the door? Why else would she creep through back alley streets?—but somehow David’s caution made it all the more real. It was no longer just her own irrational fears. David was afraid for her, too.

All at once, Lucia felt very alone.

David came out the servant’s door on the side of the building, and hurried her back to the alley. He’d brought with him a hastily packed bag containing some food, some money, and, most importantly, the Bacchanal outfit, complete with mask, that she’d made with him the previous week.

“You think I have to hide?” She asked him.

“Soldiers came by to ask about your father, Lucia. He’s been arrested?”

She nodded, dumb.

“Do you know what for?”

“No. Do you?”

He shook his head. “It must be something to do with the Guild, or they wouldn’t have come round to my dad.”

Lucia began to gnaw at one fingernail, and David pulled her hand away. “Luce, I have an idea of who could help.”

Lucia grimaced. She knew what he was going to say, but she’d been hoping that the obvious answer was not, in fact, the right answer.

“You know the Ramoras handle the Guild banking. They know everything that happens with the Guild, even before my dad does. They have connections. Paolo might be able to help.”

Lucia collapsed back onto the now-familiar stoop. This was very bad. She thought of Paolo dangling helplessly from Lord Cesare’s strong hand, thought of the way he’d been so totally humiliated, thought of how she’d told him, “I don’t want you.” A bottle of the Duke’s Blend might not be enough to earn his good will
and
her father’s freedom. The stolen bottle weighed heavily in her satchel.

“I don’t think Paolo will want to help, David.”

“It wasn’t as bad as you think.”

She looked up at her best friend sharply. “You saw?”

He sat next to her and leaned his head into hers. They had been best friends as long as either of them could remember. Everyone had assumed that they’d get married, until Lucia started to tell people she wanted to be a warrior queen instead, and David realized he wanted a husband of his own.

David said, “He better apologize. He was awfully close to…”

“Don’t say it.”

“He knows all you’d have to do is find an
oscario
. There were witnesses. He’s lucky Lord Cesare—” David looked at Lucia’s face and promptly dropped that line of thought. “When I say I think he’ll want to apologize, Luce, I mean he sent me a note, telling me which party he’d be at tonight, and that he’d like to talk to you.
Before
the soldiers came around.”

Lucia wrapped her arms around her knees, her body involuntarily recalling all of the confusing sensations of the previous night. She’d been so full in the throes of Bacchanal, brimming with life, and she might have let Paolo do what he wanted, had it not been for the man in the mask of Winter. Just the thought of Lord Cesare tightened her belly, and the sudden pleasure was chased by the familiar fear of what motivated it. Now she couldn’t imagine anyone else touching her in that way, let alone Paolo, burgeoning monster and torturer of street boys. But none of that mattered. It was time to stop thinking about herself. Her father had been arrested, and most likely he was being held in the dank, dark pit of the dreaded Basiglia.

“Which party?” she asked, a flash of steel in her voice.

“We’re going to the Dance with the Dead,” David grinned, and handed her a delicate white mask.

C
HAPTER 4

Lord Cesare was trapped. It was his own fault: he’d paused. This wasn’t something he would normally do en route to a secret rendezvous, but he’d been stunned by some chalked graffiti on the ancient walls of the catacomb, and had stopped mid-stride to stare at it dumbly. It was only just visible in the flickering light of a single mounted torch, but the longer he studied it, the more significant it seemed. It was a crude drawing of a wolf. He’d only just wrenched himself away with a reminder of how vital his current mission was, when he’d heard them coming down the tunnel.

Two sets of footsteps.

Disaster. If he were seen, word would get out.

Cesare hated hiding, but was thankful for a youth spent exploring the catacombs. He’d found one of the hollows he remembered from childhood, which had been used for assassinations and escapes in the darker days of J’Amel, and wedged himself in.

It was a
lot
smaller than he remembered. Still, it was better than being discovered. He couldn’t be sure who had been responsible for what had happened in the mountains. If anyone had been responsible. If anyone could be trusted.

He thought of his dead men, and gritted his teeth.

Very quickly he realized that whomever had invaded his catacombs was not there for diplomacy, or even conspiracy. He recognized the man’s voice: one of Rickle’s men. The other voice, high and slurred with amberwine, was unmistakably female. Silently Cesare urged the couple on, but no luck; he heard the soft
thump
of flesh pressed against a stone wall.

“Michael, not
here
,” the woman said, laughing into the dark, but the sounds of wet lips and urgent breaths continued.

Damn Bacchanal
, Cesare thought. He would be stuck here for a while, listening to them. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise in a wave. His pulse grew strong, thudding in his veins with a relentless insistence, and Cesare realized he could actually smell them.
Not here
, he thought, half desperate.
Not now.
It had already been too long since he’d had a woman, less than a day after the rite, and he only wanted the woman who wouldn’t even give him her name. He was a man under a great deal of pressure. The least bit of heat…

Not so long ago, he would have fucked his way through all of Bacchanal, looking in vain for a woman with whom he could share all of himself, even his darker desires. But all of that was before the last mountain raid. Now he had a responsibility to make sure he never shared what he’d become with anyone at all.

And that…
thing
…that he had carried inside him since that raid wanted to fuck. Wanted to be free. He felt it stirring inside him at the scent of sex, felt it ache to come forth, felt the desire build within him: to fuck, or kill—to dominate
something.

A low growl gathered in his throat. He clenched his fists and willed it down.

“Michael,” the woman breathed. There was the rustle of fabric, and the rhythms of breathing quickened. Cesare pressed his forehead into the rock. His dick swelled against his trousers.

“Michael,
no
,” she said again.

Cesare’s eyes flew open. Somehow, he could now see in the dark of his hollow, could make out the tiniest detail in the rough-hewn rock. And he could hear them, could hear the woman breathing as if she were by his side, could almost swear he could hear her
pulse
as though his head lay on her chest. It was fast, very fast. Because she was afraid?

“Stop,” she said. Her voice was urgent, but was it fear? Cesare’s senses were bombarded by sex; the scent was like a roar, a bright color that filled his mind to bursting. It was difficult to think past that. “
Don’t…
” he heard again, and what little remained of his critical mind seized upon that one clear detail: she had said no.

He stepped out of the hollow, intending to kill.

“…
stop
,” the girl said again, and Cesare saw the man she’d called Michael kneeling, his head buried under yards of heavy skirts, and the woman pinned helplessly, and happily, to the wall of the catacomb with her leg thrown over his shoulder. “Don’t…stop,” she breathed again, her eyes closed in concentration.

Cesare forced himself back into the hollow. He gasped, slamming his back into the solid rock, glad for the shock of it. It felt like a demon rode his back, had taken up residence in his chest, was driving him to do something terrible. He tore at his trousers, and his dick, already hard, sprang forth and demanded attention.

But that would only risk the worst.

The darkest part of him whispered that it wouldn’t matter if he let the beast out. He was the Duke’s heir. If anybody could kill a soldier and take a serving wench in a dark, lonely catacomb without fear of consequence, it would be him, demon possession or no.

“Shut up,” he growled to himself, and dug the fingers of one hand into the rock. The other gripped his dick like a vise, afraid to move.

The serving girl moaned, and Cesare thought he was lost.

Then he thought of
her
.

The girl from the Dance of Seasons. The nameless girl, probably some merchant’s daughter, a nothing, except to him, and the rich banker’s boy who’d brought her. The one who reminded him of his peregrines, his beautiful, deadly birds. The one who’d fought back, bare-breasted and vulnerable, who’d had the nerve to defy even him, who ran from him in a way that tore at his heart and made him want to chase.

To hunt.

And, just as it had during the Dance, the thought of her…she didn’t quell the beast; she didn’t silence it. She made it stronger. But instead of something he fought from the outside, she tucked it away inside of him, made it flow, made it whole. Made it something that was part of him, instead of something he had to fight.

He held the thought of her high in his mind as his hand began to move of its own volition, hard and fast, and when he came hard against the ancient rock, he slumped back into his hollow, barely conscious, and fully spent for the first time since the Dance of Seasons. By the time he came back to himself and remembered the urgent task at hand, the couple was long gone.