Tor (Women of Earth Book 2) (33 page)

"You're too late for that, Orax. Honarie's already dead. I killed him just like I'm going to kill you."

Wynne's hands grasped the rail. She slid a little further and gripped it firmly.

"Shoot!" she screamed and both men did.

Orax tumbled back, flipped over the side, and fell screaming. Wynne tried to push up, her hand slipped off the rail and her other elbow buckled. Her hips shifted an inch too far and she was sliding over the rail with no way to stop. She screamed and swung suspended in the air. Tor had her ankle and began to pull her up.

Voices were shouting. Tor kept pulling. Her hips slid over and then she was falling again, this time to the safety of the floor as a red streak of light whizzed past her. Tor spun like a top as blazers beams hit him, one after another.

"Got him," someone yelled as Tor hit the ground.

"No, no, no!" Wynne screamed as she crawled to him. Kneeling at his side, she held his face in her hands. He opened his eyes and smiled.

"Don't worry, Princess, Hadrid's Harem has nothing to offer now that you hold my heart." He closed his eyes and his head fell limp against her hand.

She threw her head back and screamed to the heavens "I didn't mean this! I didn't mean I'd sacrifice my heart!

And once she started screaming, she couldn't stop and they were pulling her away. She fought them, but it was no use.

Chapter 33

She'd continued to fight and scream as she was half carried, half dragged through the hotel hallway to the main bank of access tubes. The fight left her and the screaming stopped as the first tube shot them forward through the building to another bank that carried them down. She barely noticed and if she had, she wouldn't have cared. She became a lifeless automaton that followed instructions without understanding.

Tor was gone.

The street was filled with flashing lights and annoying mechanical announcements that Wynne didn't understand. Faceless in their helmets and full combat gear, a line of soldiers cordoned off the area and held the crowd back. Other soldiers carried out the dead and wounded. Medical personnel scurried from one body to the next. Life went on. No one seemed to notice that the world had crashed to a halt.

They covered her shoulders with a blanket that did nothing to relieve the cold, hard pain that suffused her body. The women of the Brides Brigade were huddled together in the street. Wynne didn't try to join them. She wasn't one of them. They were rescued. She was lost.

Tor was gone.

She saw Truca, hands pressed against the glass on the inside of another emergency vehicle. Her face was a grotesque mask of reflected red and blue light and pain. So much pain. Wynne knew she should try to offer the girl some comfort, but she had none to give. She was empty.

Tor was gone.

The only sign of life she could muster came when she saw Adjutant Yatos standing amidst a group of peacekeepers, smiling and puffing out his chest with pride.

Her blanket fell to the ground and she pointed with a shaking finger. "Him," she said to a nearby peacekeeper, "He's one of them. He and, and Riegard, Senator Riegard." The words were so hard to speak. "They were with Honarie and Orax. They killed Senator Plincoff."

No one moved on Yatos, but Wynne was whisked away. She was asked questions and she answered, over and over, and over. Five minutes after giving them, she couldn't remember her responses.

She asked her own questions over, and over, and over, too, though she had only one. "What have you done with Tor?"

She remembered their response because there was none.

She was escorted to a ship where she clung to her bunk. She cried and slept and refused to eat. By the time she arrived on Mishra, she had herself under control, though she had to constantly remind herself.

"You can do this. You can do this. Put one foot in front of the other. You can do this."

Time passed, days that felt like years. After a joyous reception by Mira and Roark's family that was filled with hugs and kisses, and assuring her sister that she was shaken but fine, life turned to the coming festivities and the birth of her sister's child. Wynne played her sisterly role.

She was there for the birth of her nephew, a golden child that took his eyes and hair from his mother, and winged brows, tiny pointed ears, and golden skin from his father. She held him on the rare occasion when Mira would let him go. She smiled with the others when he squinched up his face with the discomfort of gas and laughed when his tiny lips puckered to blow baby bubbles. She spent a great deal of time watching him sleep.

Roark's parents were gracious hosts and Wynne graciously accepted their hospitality. His mother provided her with clothing. She smiled at his father's jokes. She heard the gossip about the rescue of the brides, but people stopped talking when they saw she was listening. They were being kind. Little by little, she put the story together. She spoke little at the dinner table, but there were other guests to cover her silences. No one expected her to join in. After all, she was Wynne, shy and thoughtful Wynne.

She played the role she was born to, the one she knew by rote. It was only at night when she was alone that she brought out the stolen bracelet he'd given her and sobbed out what was left of her heart until she cried herself to sleep.

She put one foot in front of the other and did what needed to be done.

She was holding it together until Mohawk arrived. He'd stayed behind as part of the investigation, but she knew he was alive. She thought she was prepared to see him, but when he opened the door to the music room where she was hiding out to avoid yet another tea, she lost it.

"Wynne, it's over."

"Over? You think it's over?" Wynne didn't know where the hostility came from. She'd thought her emotions had died with Tor, but here they were, boiling over in anger. "Great. Find a bottle. Let's have a drink. What's a little betrayal between friends? I asked you to send a message telling them we were fine, not telling them where we were. You didn't do it just once. No, you had to do it twice. Tor had it handled. It would have worked out fine, but you had your duty to Roark, so you betrayed Tor, and you betrayed me."

"Wynne, I'm sorry. It wasn't supposed to end that way. Let me explain."

"No," she shouted. "I don't want your explanations. I don't want your apology. I don't want to forgive. God can send me to hell, but I won't forgive the man who got Tor killed."

She ran to the door that opened out onto the gardens and she kept running until she could no longer hear him calling her name. She ran until she couldn't breathe and she collapsed beside the pond where an assortment of rainbow colored fish reflected the colors of the surrounding flowers.

The cheerfulness of the setting offended her. The flowers should be brown in death. The fish should be blackened with grief. Wynne curled on her side and buried her face in her arms.

She did not bellow or scream as her heart demanded. She wept. She could no longer keep her brave public face. She wasn't brave. She never had been. She needed to leave this place and the joy it held. She had no right to dampen Mira's happiness. She needed to go home and gather the comfort of her children into her arms. She needed to work. She needed to keep her hands and mind busy with day to day tasks that would keep her from falling into the depths of her grief and her shame in resenting her sister's happiness.

"Dear God," she whispered. "Take this burden from me. Mira's happiness should have no bearing on my lack of it. Her joy can't make my grief more or less. I've never been jealous of what she is. Envious, yes, but never jealous. Don't let my bitterness color my feelings for her. I couldn't bear to lose her, too."

"Maybe we should talk about it." Mira knelt behind Wynne and stroked her hair. "I've known since you got here that something was very wrong. You're quiet with others, but never with me. I've been waiting for you to open up and it looks like that time has arrived. You don't have to ask God, Wynne. That prayer was answered the day you were born. You'll never lose me, just like I'll never lose you. We're stuck with each other. We're sisters."

Wynne sat up and reached for her sister's hand. "Please don't misunderstand. Please," she begged. "I love you, Mira, I always have. From the first moments I remember, I loved you and wanted to be like you; pretty and outgoing and daring. I think I envied that most of all. Nothing ever stopped you. You were what, twelve when the boys started coming around? Someday that will be me, I thought, but it never was. In Junior High, it seemed like you had a new boyfriend every month and in High School not a weekend went by that you didn't have a date except when you were grounded for staying out too late the weekend before. By then I knew I'd never be like you, but still, I thought someday, someday, but instead of someday, I got the war, and Mom and Daddy were gone, and my life was set.

"I was happy when you found Roark and happy that he was the one to make your dreams come true. I never resented it. Please believe that. You have to believe that."

Mira scooted closer and put her arms around Wynne. She laid her head on Wynne's shoulder. "I do, honey, I do, but there's a 'but' in there somewhere, isn't there?"

Wynne nodded and the tears came afresh. "Why you and not me?" Wynne sobbed. "Why you and not me? I found him, you know. I found the one, or he found me. Like Snow White in her coffin, he kissed me awake. I touched his heart. Me, quiet and frumpy Wynne. I touched his heart, Mira, and he touched mine. And now he's gone and I can't see a future without him and I can't go back to the past. I'm lost, Mira, and I don't think I'll ever be able to find my way."

Mira, bless her, didn't give Wynne the pep talk about how this, too, shall pass. She didn't hand her platitudes or tell her she would fall in love again. She traded shoulders, pressing Wynne's head down against hers and kissed the top of her sister's hair.

"Tell me about him," she said. "You've listened to all my stories. It's time I listened to yours."

"He had eyes that heated my insides with just a look," Wynne sniffed. "He made me laugh. He thought I was beautiful..."

"Because you are. Haven't I always said so? Now tell me the rest."

Wynne sniffed again and tried to sit up. "You don't have time for this. You have guests coming and a ceremony to prepare for."

Mira laughed at her excuses and pulled her head back down. "I have all the time in the world. My sister fell in love and needs to tell me about it. Don't worry about the rest. I have my priorities straight. My kid's going to have a name with or without a ceremony. To hell with it's bad luck to name him without one. With me as his mother and you as his aunt, he's already got it made, and with Roark for a daddy, he'll have every advantage."

"Tor has no money. Had no money," Wynne corrected. Even verb tenses were a reminder.

"Tor, so that's his name. I wasn't talking about money, kiddo. I meant the important things, like loyalty and honor."

"Tor had those things, too. Oh, Mira, I wish you could have met him and his crew."

"I'm about to meet them through you, honey, so let's begin. Where did you meet this Tor?"

Wynne told Mira everything.

~*~

Mira wasn't late for the Naming Ceremony and neither was Wynne. She was glad she came. Unburdening her heart and sharing her love for Tor with Mira had done her good. She still mourned him and always would, but she no longer had to keep her grief bottled up inside.

She laughed when Roark held his son aloft and declared him to be Salvatore, son of Roark of the House of Kronak, and all the rest of it, and the baby bellowed in protest. She thought it was sweet that they'd named the boy after his grandfather and wise of the child to complain about the length of the rest of it.

Cheers and toasts were made and she raised her glass along with them. If her eyes misted over with thoughts of the son she might have given Tor, no one noticed.

Baby Sal continued to bellow as he was passed from hand to hand for each person's blessing. When it was her turn, she held him against her chest and cooed softly, "May you someday find a woman with such love in her eyes that she touches your heart."

Behind her, a deeper voice murmured, "I was lucky enough to find a princess. May you, young Salvatore, find your princess, too."

This wasn't the first time Wynne thought she heard his voice, though usually it was when she first awakened or as she drifted off to sleep. Her mind had played these tricks before, but never when she was fully alert or in a crowded room. She was afraid to turn, afraid she'd find an empty space behind her, or worse, the specter of lost love come to haunt her waking hours as well as her dreams.

"I think I'd better take my little guy back. You're looking a little wobbly." Mira held out her arms for the baby.

"Is he real?" Wynne knew how foolish the whispered question sounded, but she had to know. If this was some figment of her imagination, she had to be prepared for the fresh heartbreak it would bring.

Mira grinned. "Looks pretty solid to me."

"Kushma."

The roughened hand on her shoulder had her spinning in place. "It's you. It's you. Oh, Tor, it's really you." She burst into tears. "Oh God, oh God, Thank you. Thank you." She threw herself into him, arms around his neck, and with enough force that he staggered back.

"As real as it gets," he said once he'd regained his balance, and then he bent to kiss her, and it was as he said, as real as it gets.

The room and the people disappeared. The baby's cries faded. All Wynne felt was Tor's lips on hers, warm and welcoming. Alive and real. She couldn't get close enough to him.

"Easy there," Tor told her, "I'm not quite ready for the rough stuff."

"Yeah, there'll be no four-legged frolickin' for a while yet, so don't get your hopes up. Healers didn't even want him out of bed. I had to steal one of them death carts out of the morgue to sneak him out past that old harpy at the desk."

"You had that old harpy in the storage closet for almost an hour," Tor said with a roll of his eyes.

"Yeah, she got her fancy tickled and I got a big fat nothing. The old bitch wouldn't budge."

Tor laughed and then coughed with his arm wrapped around his middle and in obvious pain. He was so pale and his eyes had dark circles beneath them.

Wynne had been so happy to see him, she hadn't noticed the details, only that he was alive and she was in his arms. She hadn't seen how thin and weak he was. She saw it clearly now, and reached for a chair and when Tor went to take it from her, she slapped his hand.