Bound (31 page)

"Then tell me that. Where are we going?"

"How can I tell you that? How can I trust you, when you won't trust me in return?"

She thought she saw a hint of a smile around the corners of his mouth as she felt the sting of her own words turned back on her. Marcius straightened then and walked to the other bedroll, crouching there for a minute. Fay stood up and looked around the clearing, trying to find anything familiar. She knew most of the land around Iondis, but the trees were too close around them and she could find no identifiable features.

She jumped as she felt his hand slid along the inside of her waist. He'd returned while she'd been trying to decide what to do. His other slid gently down her arm, left bare by her sleeveless tunic. A subtle warmth tingled in her skin where his fingertips touched her, but she could sense the magic that caused it. When he reached her elbow, he raised his hand and pulled her hair gently back over her shoulder, placing a light kiss on the spot where her neck joined her shoulder. His hand trailed down her arm again as he whispered, "Faylanna, we were made for each other."

She closed her eyes, trying not to flinch as his hand on her waist shifted, reaching for the knot in the tie that held her tunic securely closed at the bottom. His lips moved up her neck to plant another kiss, this one just below her ear, and she shivered. "We were always meant for each other. If you would only surrender to me, you'd see. I could show you, if you asked."

His hand on her arm shifted, gripping her shoulder and turning her around. His hands dropped away from her for a moment, then returned to grasp her hips and pull her forward. His full lips pressed down on hers and the tears that had begun to well up overflowed her eyes, leaking down the sides of her face. All she could think of was Tavis' kiss as they stood in the sitting room at Keari's manor, wishing she could go back to that moment and do it all again, but differently. It felt like Marcius was consciously trying to imitate her memory of that day, and the one of her dream the night before they arrived at Iondis, but with him, everything felt empty, pale. Marcius couldn't create the true fire of Tavis' touch on her skin and she felt so stupid to have missed the difference before.

Marcius, clearly growing frustrated, opened his lips slightly against hers but she didn't respond to that anymore than she did the kiss itself. As she felt his desperation mounting, she realized that he wasn't forcing her to move or respond, though some of his earlier words might have been commands. The tether was gone, she realized. The magic had at last recognized the pact as broken. His head drew back as her eyes fluttered open in shock at this realization.

He wiped away one of her tears, the sympathy and unhappiness she saw in his face making what he was doing especially bitter to her. "Give me a chance, Faylanna. You hardly know me. All you've even heard of me are lies told by the envious. They are jealous of what we will be together. I could teach you such things as no one else can. None would be a more fitting match for your strength, not even that farmer."

He started kissing her again, more insistently this time, his lips pressing hers back into her teeth and still she refused to respond. For a moment, she felt something else, something familiar that filled her with longing. Tavis, she thought, then dismissed it as wishful thinking brought on by Marcius' mention of him. But the sense grew stronger, reminding her of arms enfolding her and her mind flashed back to her dream. As Marcius slid his hand under the hem of her tunic and along the bare skin of her torso to her breast, she remembered the words Tavis had spoken, the ones she could make out. He was coming for her.

"Let me show you the value of experience," Marcius whispered against her lips as he cupped her breast. "Let me show you all that you've been missing. I don't want to hurt you. I have watched you too long to want that."

But you will if you have to, she thought. The rage that exploded through her cleared her thoughts. She felt Tavis out there more clearly still, could feel his rapid approach. But it was dangerous for him to confront Marcius, who was stronger and more knowledgeable. The thought that she had to protect Tavis blazed in her mind as she put her hands on Marcius' chest and pushed, letting her magic add force to it. He flew from her, crashing into the side of the carriage as she heard hooves drumming the ground frantically behind her. Before she could look around, the hooves skidded to a stop and she heard another impact. Marcius was still trying to pick himself up off the ground, clearly dazed.

Fay turned and ran to Tavis, who was rushing to meet her. He pulled her into an embrace and she felt his relief as deeply as her own. Her arms wrapped around him, though she knew she had to turn, to be ready to hold Marcius off him.

"You can't choose him! You can't chose some ignorant peasant over me, Faylanna," Marcius cried out, having recovered faster even than she had feared he would. She felt a feathery touch around the edge of her mind, but it slid away from her, unable to find a way to take hold now. She turned to see his eyes wide with disbelief.

"You can't force me, you can't make me do things I don't wish to, Marcius. I won’t even listen to your lies and half-truths anymore. You've lost," she called, hoping her defiance would push him into doing something reckless.

"But I need you," and she heard the truth of it in his voice, a real longing for her. It didn't move her. He pulled himself to his feet, holding his hands out to her. "We need each other. He can't give you any of the things I can. He can’t even understand what we are, what we were always meant to be to each other. How can you want him?"

"How could you think I would chose you over him? He doesn't lie to me, doesn't ask things of me I'm not prepared to give. He offers me truth and freedom. Those are the things that I choose."

Marcius' reaction to these words was the last thing she expected. He began to laugh, and she heard in it an echo of the wild madness from the mind storm in the maze. It was several moments before he was able to speak. His tone dripped derision when he said, "I supposed that ignorance can masquerade as honesty easily enough. But my dearest, did you know he was in contact with Calder before you went to Iondis? Do you know why? Can you be sure you really know what that peasant is after?"

"I- He said-" She hesitated, confused. She realized that he never had told them why he tried to send a letter to her father. The touches on her mind grew firmer, as if they sensed her resolve weakening.

Behind her, Tavis' voice spoke calmly and confidently. "Calder sent me a letter. It came when you and Lydia and Ki were out that night, after we talked in Ki's study. Your father said that he had made a terrible mistake but he couldn’t undo it. He asked me to protect you, as I had in the Gardensia, from everyone, even himself. He said that he loved you and knew you would be safe with me. I wrote him a response. I told him that only you could make the choices in your life. I said that no one should ever try to make them for you, and that I would do all I could to keep you free to make them yourself. That's what I was trying to send him, Faylanna."

Tavis' words fit into place in the tapestry of everything she knew, had heard or been told, and her heart heard the truth in them. She reached back and grasped his hand firmly. As if feeling her determination return, Marcius took a step forward. "Faylanna, please. Come to me, I need you, I've told you. Neither of us can be complete without the other. You are meant to be with me. Why won't you see that?"

"What are you hiding from her, Marcius," Tavis asked and his voice was hard, determined as he addressed his rival. "I know you've been invading her sleep, her dreams and you forced her to come here with you against her will. Even now, I can hear it, the way you're trying to manipulate her. You think that if you apply enough power, distract her enough, she'll think she doesn't have a choice. You think you can force her to chose you, but if you actually cared about her, you wouldn't want that."

"You have no idea what lies between Faylanna and myself. An ignorant country farmer like you knows nothing of true magic," Marcius sneered. "You can put on fancy clothes and prance around, but you'll never rise above the hovel you grew up in."

Tavis ignored these taunts. "You say you need her. Is it the same way you needed your partner? Is it for the same thing you did to Landra?" He dropped his voice and went on, "No one ever explained to you what he did to his partner, did they, Faylanna? Before we left, Eliar told me the crime that was beyond any doubt, the real reason they put him in the Mirror. He consumed Landra's power, made it his own somehow as she lay dying in his arms. He did that instead of getting her help that might have saved her life. When she was dead, he became far more powerful than he had been before, his magic more potent than anyone they had ever known. What if that's what he wants from you, to do it again?"

Revulsion rippled through her, and she understood what Marcius had meant when he'd told her she didn't want to know what had happened to Landra. She saw Marcius snarl and felt him reach out and grasp Tavis with magic, using it to hurl him away from her. His hand was ripped from hers so fast that her whole arm hurt. She heard him hit a tree at the edge of the clearing before she could even think. She turned and her eyes widened. A few thick branches had broken off completely four feet above the ground, where he had impacted the tree. He lay in a heap among the gnarled roots that peeked through the surrounding grass, the branches on top of him, struggling to rise. Her horror immobilized her.

She heard Marcius' boots on the ground as he approached behind her. She turned back, ready to fight him off but he was less than a foot away. His blue eyes captured her again and he reached up to stroke her jaw with his thumb. Only her shock kept her from flinching away. "All the power in the world can be yours," he said softly, his voice nearly identical to the one from her dreams now, "I will be yours. I will love you as it was always meant to be and we will be stronger together than anyone has ever been in all of the histories of the world. They will all bow down to us. I showed you. Remember the vision I showed you, Faylanna."

As his thumb continued to stroke along her face, the image he had built for her on the ride to Iondis rose again in her mind. But she saw something about it she had missed before. When the whole of it had come to her before, she had thought she was standing beside Marcius, his equal, but now she realized that she was standing behind him, giving to him and he was taking from her. He wasn't offering her partnership, only enslavement. The thought unlocked the truth in the rest of the image, others looking up to him, not them, and in terror, not awe. The Emperor bowed under the weight of chains. All of it was a horrible existence and she saw something else. Somehow, she knew it would go on nearly forever if she became his partner.

She glared up at him. "You threatened me with slavery before, and said you meant to save me from it. But that's all you ever offered, all you ever wanted. I see that now, you wanted me to wear your chains. You never even wanted me to have a choice, because you can't accept the idea of me being free. I don't know what else you might have wanted from me, but I will never choose you!"

With her last word, she gathered the same pure force she had used to free herself to enter the maze and directed it all at Marcius. It blasted him straight back, through the fire and out the far side of the carriage this time. Fay turned and ran to Tavis, who was just getting to his feet, surprisingly unhurt. She held him as gently as her enthusiasm and worry would permit, burying her face in his chest. He drew an arm around her but then tensed as an explosion ripped the day behind her.

She heard Marcius scream, "No, you cannot have her! I will not allow her to choose you over me, not ever."

She felt something flying through the air at them, a spell with deadly consequences, but before she could turn or cast a shield, she felt Tavis' magic swell with his own spellwork. She turned to see. The incoming spell was nearly on them when it abruptly changed direction, reflected by Tavis. She saw it rocket back and hit Marcius, slicing him cleanly in two through the chest, and then through the remnants of the exploded carriage, scattering the pieces around the clearing.

Chapter 20

Fay stared at the body in the wreckage of wood without speaking for several minutes. The wind moved in the trees and Swift took a step, her shoe striking against a stone. Fay thought about how close she had been to becoming Marcius' slave. She was sure he would have found a way, if he'd been given time enough, because she was almost sure that subservience was all he had wanted from her. She thought about the pendant, still hanging around her neck, but decided removing it didn't matter anymore. Marcius was gone and couldn't use it to influence her anymore. She was free of that forever, free to make her own choices. This thought led her to others and she turned at last to face forward. She stared at Tavis' dark blue sleeveless shirt for a while, trying to work up the courage to say what she wanted.

"I'm sorry," he said, his words so soft that she barely heard them. They were so counter to what she had expected that she looked up into his eyes. Their intense green struck her again and for a moment she lost the train of her thoughts before giving her head a little shake. He misinterpreted the gesture though, and his voice was miserable as he went on. "I am, though. Faylanna, I'm sorry I didn't stop him, I'm sorry that you had to go through this. It's my fau-"

She raised a finger to his lips to stop him and shook her head again, more emphatically this time. "No, it's not. If it is anyone's fault, it's mine, but I'm not even convinced of that. I was stupid, I spoke without thinking. I was heedless, when I should have listened to the advice and warnings of others." He tried to argue, but she put a second finger down across his lips. "That doesn't make it my fault though. Even if I hadn't been so careless, I think they would have found a way. I don't really know what my father did, and with both Marcius and him dead-"