Adrian (16 page)

For a brief moment, he wondered whether he had gone mad. Or if some strange magic had indeed taken hold of him, rendering him incapable of coherent thought. The woman beneath him was not some cheap fancy to use for his ease; he would not leave her in the morn with a coin and a friendly farewell. She was a queen, and they would be in each other's proximity until the business Adrian had been summoned to attend to was finished. But that thought only increased his desire as it occurred to him that he could have her again on the morrow, and the day after, and the next. . . .

She pulled his head down so that their mouths met, and Adrian continued to pull at her clothes while they kissed, his hands pressing the flesh he found, smooth and warm and soft. He'd not felt such base urgency in years—perhaps he'd never felt it to such an extreme. All he knew was that he must possess this woman soon—now.

He didn't bother to remove the little clothing he was still wearing, or his boots. Rather, he removed his hand from her while their mouths were still joined and loosened the laces of his chausses as she made little anxious sounds in the back of her throat, urging him on. In an instant he had freed himself and then jerked her leg higher, climbing over her. He entered her with little caution, pulling away from her mouth and giving a shout at her readiness, even as he pushed at the resistance he felt.

He was her first.

And so he stroked her face, kissed her temple tenderly, but still she did not protest or refuse him. Instead, she urged him in his race, her fingernails raking the skin over his buttocks, but he doubted he could have stopped had the room been afire. Her scent, the scent of their joining, enveloped him, set off shuddering white light behind his eyes, which only grew brighter and brighter until it was also a roar of noise in his ears like an ever-falling wave. He was drowning in her body, in the feel of her around him, and in that moment, he would have forsaken anything he had ever held dear for what he was experiencing.

He could feel his time rushing over him, his pace increasing, and still Maisie encouraged him, her delicate fingers running up his stomach and over his chest, locking together around his neck and pulling herself up against him. He looked down at her and saw that her eyes were open, watching him brazenly, her lips parted as her head rocked on the coverlet.

“Adrian,” she whispered.

It pushed him over the edge and he hung there suspended, joined with Maisie Lindsey in a space that was neither of the earth or the heavens but somehow existed apart from even time. The roar in his brain faded like rain moving away over the land, to be replaced with his loud, pounding heartbeat and another similar thrum but smaller, like a bird's wings.

He realized it was her heart, and he could hear it—feel it—in his own veins.

It startled him so that he slid from her and backed off the bed, swaying on his feet and panting as he looked at her, so bedraggled and nude before him. It was only his own heartbeat that jarred his vision now, but he was not soothed. She was watching him solemnly, and in that moment, Adrian Hailsworth was unable to access his logic, his reason. He could not explain what had just happened between him and Maisie; he could not explain what he felt even now, looking at the queen whose virginity he'd taken so swiftly and callously.

But he knew he wanted her again already. And if he continued to stand at her bedside, it would perhaps only be a moment before he was atop her once more.

Adrian began retying his chausses.

She didn't say anything, and neither did Adrian as he turned and left the chamber, closing the door behind him.

T
he candle had not even spent itself a quarter of the way when Adrian returned to Wyldonna's pathetic library. He shut himself inside and moved to the chair to slide his arms into the sleeves of his destroyed shirt. It couldn't cover his chest, but it gave him some measure of warmth against the chill that had overcome him since leaving Maisie Lindsey's warm body.

He wondered suddenly—absurdly—if, in the moment he donned his shirt, she had pulled his coverlet over her body, feeling the chill as he had.

He sought to push the image of her lying on his bed, ready for him to take her again, from his mind. He couldn't process what had happened between them now; his thoughts were a jumble. The only thing he knew to do when in that state was to order his ideas with fact.

Adrian piled the scraps of his satchel and belongings on a far corner of the table before pulling the thick, dusty tome toward him and sitting on the chair. He adjusted the candle's position and ran his left palm over the leather cover of the book, studying the designs for a moment, reading them with his fingertips. And then he looked down at his abdomen.

Maisie was right—the patterns were remarkably similar. He held out his arms, sliding what was left of the sleeves to his elbows; there, too, the lines and swirls matched. He knew a moment of unease but shook it off. Nothing was proven yet. The designs could be of ancient origin, well known and widely used at one time but forgotten now.

He took hold of the edge of the book's cover—it appeared to be wood wrapped in leather—and pulled it open. The first page was creamy tinged vellum, covered in a rendering of a large castle, boasting six turrets that appeared to be perched at the top of a mountain. But even for the similarity of construction, this could not be Wyldonna Castle; the palace in the drawing stretched to either side of the main structure in two massive wings ringed with smaller towers, and a gatehouse complete with portcullis in the foreground.

Adrian's eyes went to a small bit of Latin text beneath the drawing.

He turned the page and was presented with a small colorful drawing of what appeared to be a red cat inside a little square in the upper left corner of the page. He translated the text next to the image: of the Cat Sìth, from the Eastern tribes, creature of revenge. Red of skin, black innards. Feeds on warm flesh. Protector of the crown. Prideful. Loyal unto death.

Adrian's eyes studied the little drawing once more. It could only be an afternhanger.

He scanned the next page, where another small rendering decorated the corner—this one of a brown hairy-looking creature, accompanied by another description of origin, traits.

Adrian flipped through several thick pages: centaur, elf, dragon, giant, griffin, kelpie—Adrian saw countless creatures he was familiar with only through myth, and even more descriptions and likenesses of those he'd never even heard of before.

It was like a bestiary of sorts. But that was only the first part of the book. Midway through, it seemed the tome was taken over by poetry, mythology, parables. He skimmed and turned pages mindlessly, taking in a word or two along with the intricate illustrations, until his eyes caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a drawing of a man.

A nude man with a shock of dark hair, his skin covered in swirling patterns of black. Adrian swallowed the lump in his throat as he read the words beneath the sketch.

This was the legend the people of Wyldonna held him to. Adrian had to admit he could see the correlation—even down to the idea that he had been a man imprisoned. Now the gasp he'd heard upon taking Maisie's hand and quitting the village made sense. But how long ago had this rhyme been set down? A hundred years or more? Surely Malcolm and the rest of the folk didn't actually think he had come to Wyldonna to kill Maisie so that rule could be returned to her brother?

Adrian frowned and turned the page so that he would not have to look at the crude drawing of the man whose skin was decorated so similarly to his own.

What he discovered next in the book appeared to be a lineage of sorts rendered in art, with another drawing of a six-turreted castle and a web of names leading from windows and doors, from stone to stone. He looked closely at the names, noting that the dates shared similar patterns. Coronations, perhaps? They all seemed to occur exclusively during four months of the year.

The months of the solstices and equinoxes.

Adrian turned the page and saw yet another castle, but this one was missing the gatehouse, although the names continued.

The next page—the east wing was smaller by half.

The next page—the turrets grew taller, as it seemed two entire floors had been removed from the uppermost levels of the castle.

Adrian kept going—page after page after page—until he came to the last drawing and realized it was an accurate depiction of what Wyldonna looked like at that very moment. He thought the lineage contained only one name—Malcolm—until he saw the parenthesis after the king's title.

 

Maighread, d.

 

Adrian looked up from the page again with a shiver. If anyone could attest that Maisie Lindsey's blood ran hot in her veins that day, it was Adrian. He looked back at her name closely and realized the date.

It was the spring equinox, yet more proof that the legend was false. It was almost exactly a year since the last spring festival, and Maighread Lindsey was still very much alive. The next would mark Glayer Felsteppe's return to Wyldonna.

He thought for a moment. Maisie had taken the throne from Malcolm on one of the only days Felsteppe could have found the island, the winter solstice.

Perhaps the lineage was not a history but a foretelling?

Adrian shut the book with a dusty slam.

That was impossible. There were no such things as prophecies, magic predictions—fate.

But what of the things he had seen on the island that he would have heretofore pronounced impossible? The creatures and beings here; they couldn't really exist in the manner that everyone claimed, could they? They were nothing more than an anomaly of breeding. Of isolation.

Weren't they?

Adrian stood from the chair and looked down at the dusty book as if it might at once come alive and attack him. What of the changes he had felt coming over himself since arriving at Wyldonna? His increase in strength and health, his immunity to the elements. His boldness in confronting the wild beasts of the island. Nothing more than him regaining his manhood after such mental torture and physical injury of course.

But what if they weren't? What if everything Maisie Lindsey had ever told him, shown him, was true?

What if Adrian's presence insured that the queen of Wyldonna would die?

His mind could not accept it. He had spent the bulk of his life gathering the knowledge to dispel such superstitions. There were undeniable laws that governed the actions and characteristics of every living thing on earth—and of the elements, of nature itself. It was the old ways that sought to explain away what was yet unknown by attributing it to magic or fate or some ancient curse, not the learned way. Not Adrian's way.

Why had it been he who had come to Wyldonna and not Roman Berg, as was originally intended?

How could the marks Song had applied so painstakingly on Adrian's skin over the course of months match so precisely to an ancient tome found on a forgotten Scots isle?

What of the mythical creatures contained in Wyldonna's bestiary—some of which Adrian had read about during his courses of study in mythology? He had always thought them parables or weak attempts to explain that which the ancients had not yet discovered, but were those scholars of old then fools? The great minds of history who had laid the groundwork for modern academics—were they naught but superstitious alchemists? Magicians?

Of course not, Adrian thought to himself. They were geniuses. Forerunners in the art of science.

Why, then, was Adrian so very certain that Wyldonna's ways were impossible, while at the same time he could not come up with a logical explanation for them? Why was the light of the sun warm? He didn't know. Some thought it was magic, but that was impossible because it couldn't be proven.

But Adrian realized he could not disprove it either.

If he was truly the scholar he claimed to be, the only logical thing to do was to consider the evidence as it was presented. By ignoring what his own eyes could see before him, what he could touch and study, he was behaving exactly as the superstitious fools whom he held in contempt. He had been unable to explain Wyldonna's mysterious characteristics, and so he had dismissed them as impossible even when their existence was undeniable by his own standards.

Could he forgive himself if he continued to pretend that the events that were unfolding around him were impossible and Maisie Lindsey died because of it?

Adrian gathered the remnants of his satchel and its contents beneath one arm and then took Wyldonna's history from the table. He had reached the door and opened it before realizing he'd forgotten to blow out the candle, and so he turned back.

But the flame was already extinguished, the wick sending up a curl of black smoke.

For the first time since arriving on Wyldonna, Adrian applied the logic of the island: He was finished in the library, he was taking the only book it contained, so there was no need for the flame. It had ceased to exist because it was unnecessary.

What else might cease to exist once its usefulness had been met?

The drawings of the ever-diminishing castles contained in the book beneath his arm came to mind.

Not if the Painted Man could help it.

 

Maisie swept her hand beneath the murky surface of the warm water of her bath, watching the ripples as they broke against her knees and chest. The fragrant steam soothed her as much as anything could. The fire in her hearth crackled, and Dragon rested in her usual place, as still as the stones that she so resembled. Maisie's chamber should have been peaceful to her.

But beneath the curls piled atop her head, Maisie's mind was a whirlwind.

Adrian Hailsworth was still somewhere in the castle, of that she was certain. But what he intended to do since they had made love hours ago she did not know, and it was that uncertainty that caused her unease.

Her chamber door opened then, without even the small courtesy of a warning knock, and he appeared as if she had summoned him by mere thought. Which wasn't true, because she had thought of nothing but him since he'd left her on his bed, and she'd not managed to catch sight of him the rest of the day. It was late now; everyone else had retired. He closed the door behind him and stood there looking at her in the bath, her nakedness concealed by the water, Wyldonna's book cradled in one elbow, a roll of parchment in his other hand.

“Good evening,” he said at last.

“Good evening,” she returned. Her eyes went to the unknown documents he held. “I see Reid was able to supply you with what you needed. He told me before supper that you had requested his assistance.”

“The afternhangers destroyed your plans,” he said, motioning with the parchment. “I had need to redraw them as best I could.”

She waved her hand through the water again, continuing to watch him.

“Thank you for the shirt.”

“You're welcome to it.” Maisie let a little smile come over her mouth. “Although I prefer you without it, I fear I would soon be without female servants of any sort were I to allow you about the castle unclothed.”

He returned her smile, and Maisie's heart skipped a beat.

“The marks disconcert them.”

She chuckled. “I doona think it's the marks that disconcert them but the chest that bears them. I canna blame them when I am so affected by it myself.”

Adrian's jaw clenched. “Would that you refrain from such talk until I have told you what I came here for. The sight of you so bare has me already at my limits.”

“You didna come here just for me?” Maisie smiled at him. “State your intentions then, so that we might converse quickly and have it over with.”

He walked to her bed and put down the items he carried, and Maisie heard the scrape of Dragon as she rose from her post. Maisie couldn't see the long, low creature beneath the high sides of her tub, but she could guess at her location by the way Adrian's eyes tracked along the floor. She was going under the bed.

He seemed to struggle with something for a moment, as if debating what he would next say and how he would say it. “How old is it?” Adrian asked at last.

“She,” Maisie clarified. “Verra old.”

“Older than you?”

Maisie laughed. “Older than anything living today, I'd wager. Dragon is the last of her tribe as well.”