Trinity Rising: Book Two of the Wild Hunt (Wild Hunt Trilogy 2) (34 page)

‘You saw me yesterday. That wasn’t very long ago.’

We still missed you
.

Tanith couldn’t help but smile. The saelkies had no more sense of time than small children: to them an hour was as long as a week, and a year as short as a day.

Kneeling on the dew-damp stone, she held out her hands to them. ‘Then I missed you too, little ones.’ The saelkies jostled each other to be the first to be petted, pushing their heads into her hands like kittens and chirring happily. ‘No pretties today. Another time, eh? But I have something that’s even better than pretties. Do you know what it is?’

Sweets!
they chorused, bobbing up and down in the water.

She pushed herself back to her feet and went to the table that had been so carefully set for her to break her fast. On her plate was a sweet cinnamon roll which she broke into pieces, one for each saelkie, and threw them out into the lake. Sleek dark bodies dived after the scraps, supple as otters.

‘You should not encourage them.’

Ailric’s voice was rich and liquid as a cup of buttered rum, warming her from the inside out. In the three years since she’d last heard it, it had lost none of its power to intoxicate. Willing herself to stay clear-headed, she turned to look at him.

The high collar and nipped-in waist of his long coat accentuated his lithe frame, and House Vairene’s cool jade green suited his golden Astolan skin. His pale-blond hair was still long, but swept back from his face and barbered into neatness. The unkempt, heart-stoppingly beautiful boy-poet was gone. The man framed by her screen doors was as polished and perfectly sculpted as one of the statues in the palace gardens.

Only his eyes were unchanged. The colour of fire, they danced and sparked and promised to burn her again if she got too close.

‘I like the saelkies,’ she said, amazed at the steadiness of her voice. ‘I find them diverting.’

‘I find them a nuisance.’

She smiled. ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t scold them, and then they wouldn’t leave dead fish in your shoes.’

‘If they did not leave dead fish in my shoes, there would be no need for scolding.’ He came towards her, holding out his hands to take hers. ‘I am pleased to find you amongst us once more. Astolar has felt empty without you.’

‘It’s good to be home.’ Tanith tilted her cheek for his kiss. ‘You look well.’

‘And you are even more lovely than I remember,’ he said, squeezing her fingers. ‘Please forgive me for not being here to greet you when you arrived. I had business on our estates in the north that could not be postponed.’ He leaned to kiss her other cheek and his face lingered next to hers. ‘I have waited so long for your return,’ he whispered. His breath caressed her ear, sending a familiar tingle skittering up her arms.

‘Events conspired to delay me, I’m afraid.’ Tanith stepped back, increasing the distance between them.

In the corner of her eye the soft-footed housekeeper reappeared to set an additional place at the table before vanishing into the house, discreetly closing the screens after her.

‘Ah yes. Your father told me about the one who was riven.’ Ailric drew out a chair for her and saw her comfortably seated before taking a seat for himself, folding his long coat carefully around his elegant frame. ‘A human.’ He made it sound like
peasant
.

‘A patient,’ Tanith corrected him gently. ‘To be a Healer is to treat all as equals, without fear or favour, regardless of race. Tea?’

‘Thank you.’

She busied herself with cups and teapot, aware of his gaze on her, moulding the robe to her body like rain, or as if his long-fingered lutenist’s hands were on her.
No
. That was in the past now. It was pointless to breathe new life into ashes best left cold. But her body remembered his touch and ached for its loss.

She settled back in her chair, teacup cradled in her lap. ‘So, what brings you out this early in the day?’

He picked up his own cup but did not drink. ‘I wanted to see you as soon as I returned to Carantuil. I was hoping to escort you to the Hall for your presentation to the Court next week.’

Keeping her voice light to mask her sudden unease, she said, ‘You think the Ten are so daunting that I need an escort? I used to play with dolls in the Great Hall as a child. Berec carved a wooden horse for me with his own hands when I was four.’ She sipped her tea.

‘But you are not four any more, with your mother still beside you and the Succession as distant as the moons. Your mother is gone, and you are House Elindorien’s only heir.’ Amber eyes watched her through a wreath of steam rising from his cup. ‘Would you not welcome the company of a friend?’

If she walked into the Great Hall on his arm he would appear to be her consort, and the Ten would expect her to give him her troth. She could not allow that.

‘Friends are always welcome, but I must face the Ten alone. As High Seat of House Elindorien I cannot appear to be leaning on anyone.’

‘Not even a friend?’

‘Not even a friend.’

Ailric lowered his cup to its saucer untouched and looked out across the lake. ‘I spoke with your father before I left for the north. He gave me his blessing to ask for your hand.’

Tanith’s tea suddenly tasted bitter; when she swallowed it left her mouth dry. ‘It’s too soon for me to think about marriage.’

‘I will wait.’ Putting his cup aside on the table he leaned towards her, reaching for her hand. ‘Only let me love you, the way I have loved you since I first saw you, swimming in the Mere.’

Memories assailed her like a storm of flower petals, each one bright and tender. Hours lost in music, lost in each other. Kisses that felt as if they would never end; fingers twining together as if they would never let go.

Swallowing another pang, she said carefully, ‘That was a long time ago.’

‘Not so long! My feelings are unchanged.’

Oh, spirits keep me
. ‘We were little more than children then. It was wrong of us to let things develop as they did – we both knew it.’

Her words struck home like arrows plunging into his flesh, crumpling his earnest expression. It
had
been wrong – she’d simply been too young, too drunk on each kiss to heed the words of caution wiser heads had given her at the time. Leaving him behind to go to the Isles to pursue her dream of becoming a Healer had almost broken her heart, but she’d promised to return whenever her studies permitted, and he’d promised to wait for her. But each time she’d come home, full of stories of the people she’d met and the things she’d learned, the more selfish and impatient he’d become.

Why do you waste your time and talent on those humans? You belong here in Astolar, with me
.

In the end, it had been that more than the distance that drove them apart. Now there could be no going back for either of them.

She stood and walked to the edge of the terrace to stare across the Mere to the distant hills, outlined in thread-of-gold by the dawn. A step sounded behind her. His hands came to rest on her shoulders, then caressed them.

‘I love you, Tanith. I always have.’

She shut her eyes, drew a deep breath for strength.

‘I told you three years ago that it was over between us. In truth, it should never have begun.’

Opening her eyes again, she watched the first sun burning through the mist, the saelkies leaping into the light as they chased each other through an endless game.

‘You know that is not true.’ The caress moved down her arms to her waist, his embrace folding around her. His body pressed against her back, his lips against her hair. ‘Let me love you again and you will remember.’

He kissed her neck. His breath stirred the tiniest hairs on her skin, his Song stroking over her just as delicately. Desire yawned and stretched in the depths of her belly and she had to stiffen her knees or surrender herself into his arms again.

‘Please. Don’t.’

‘Who else can touch you like this?’ he whispered. ‘Who else knows your body as I know it?’

Kisses roamed down her neck to her shoulder; his Song curled around hers and left it thrumming. Tanith’s teacup fell from her hands and smashed on the flagstones at her feet.

‘Let me love you. Be my bride and we can rule Astolar together.’

To lean back into Ailric’s embrace would be so easy. To let his caresses steal under her guard and disarm her, let him fulfil her promise to her father that Astolan seed would bear fruit on Astolan soil. Except in growing up they’d grown apart, and the boy she’d once loved had become a man she didn’t recognise, all polished court manners and cool disdain, and her heart was filled with longing for someone else.

With a gasp she twisted out of his arms. Shards of porcelain crunched under her bare feet, sharply painful.

Ailric stared at her, face gilded by the new sun, hands open towards her in appeal. ‘Tanith—’

‘There’s no future in this,’ she said, ashamed that her voice quavered. ‘What we had . . . it ran its course years ago. It’s over.’

He lowered his hands, eyes still fixed on her. ‘Your body says something different.’

With every quick, shallow breath Tanith was conscious of the treacherous points of her nipples beneath her silk robe. She straightened it uncomfortably and refastened the sash. ‘I think you should leave.’

Flame-coloured eyes slid over her as intimately as any caress, knowing her as surely as his lips or his hands had ever done. ‘Is that really what you want?’ he asked softly.

‘Go, Ailric! Please.’

He smiled. ‘Of course. Forgive me – I have overwhelmed you. This is an important time for House Elindorien, and for you. I cannot expect you to give your answer now.’ Gathering her unresisting hands in his, he raised them to his lips. ‘Until later, my love.’

Then he bowed and left her alone on the terrace.

Tanith stared at the carved screens long after they had snicked closed behind him. Had Ailric heard a word she’d said to him? Or had he simply chosen to ignore her? She could never marry him – she would never – yet he’d brushed her refusal aside as if he knew better than she what she thought and felt.

How dare he?

As soon as she moved towards the house pain stabbed through her foot. The broken teacup. She hobbled to a chair and sat to lift her foot onto her other knee. A shard of porcelain, curved like a claw, had been driven into her flesh. Gritting her teeth, she pulled it out; scarlet welled from the wound and she fumbled for a napkin to staunch it.

Blood shed on a parting made a poor omen. Division. Estrangement. Loss. Tanith winced and applied more pressure as the pale fabric turned crimson between her fingers. Spirits forfend that it was not an omen for her presentation to the White Court.

20

ONE THROW OF THE BONES

Ytha watched impassively as Teia summoned a flame above her outstretched palm. The music of it was insubstantial as a whisper yet she could feel its heat on her skin. That always amazed her, no matter how many times she practised it. She let the flame grow until it was as long as her finger, then held it steady. Perfect.

With a snap of her fingers, the Speaker snuffed it out. ‘Again.’

Dipping into her magic, Teia brought forth another flame. Again Ytha extinguished it and Teia winced as the power snapped back at her.

‘Again.’

This had been the pattern for the entire lesson. Ytha demanded that she complete the simplest tasks over and over again and taught her nothing new. And nothing satisfied her. Teia was either too slow or too sloppy; the flame was too small, too large or else had some other flaw only the Speaker could see. The one time she had dared to speak up and ask what she had done wrong, she had earned an open hand across her cheek hard enough to make the stars spin. Her lip still felt fat and bruised.

She summoned a new flame and held it until she felt Ytha’s magic draw in, then let go of her own accord to spare herself the sting as it was severed.

One sandy brow rose. ‘Do not defy me, child. Again!’

Teia dipped her head, misery thick in her throat. She should never have tried to dissuade Ytha from her pact with Maegern. She had learned nothing new from her in the two weeks since then. She had simply been made to repeat the same trivial exercises, over and over like a slow-learning child, and been punished arbitrarily for her trouble.

Once, she had tried to complain to Drwyn, but he had barely even heard her. With the snows too deep now for hunting and more falling every day, he was interested only in the growing roundness of her belly, which he loved to stroke and talk to as if the child within could hear him. He remained convinced she would bear him a son, whereas she had grown more and more certain it would be a daughter. She saw colours in the baby’s sleeping mind every time she so much as thought of it, and they responded to her touch the way the power inside her rose up to her call. It would be a girl. It would be the end of her, by summer’s trinity moon.

‘Attend, Teia!’ Ytha snapped.

With a start Teia realised the flame over her hand had blazed up high enough to threaten the hangings on the wall. Macha’s ears, she had to concentrate! Quickly she drew it down to a more modest size. Her palm stung from the heat.