Embers (29 page)

This time she could not stop the movement of his arm. It flicked up with a trained warrior's strength and then his hand caught her, held her in the same grip. It hurt.

"You will not have to bear with me much longer," she said to his black shadow. "Maol has agreed I may go to Strath-Clòta." She spoke very evenly through the deliberate pain of his grip. She was not afraid.

"Do you not have it in you to wish me Godspeed?"

He moved, one pool of blackness forming and reshaping itself out of another.

"Yes. I have that in me."

His voice was lightless as his shape. Black as she felt. His breath hissed past her ear.

"Then do so."

She raised her head, but the hissing sound against her frozen skin was laughter, mirthless, striking at both of them.

"Nay. I will not. There are limits, Alina, even for me. I would have thought there should be for you. It was not Maol I believed you were with this day."

Her heart thudded.

"Where else could I be?" The thin laughter hissed like daggers through her skin. She gathered her breath. "You do not know. You cannot know what he has done. It was he who made my father let me go to Strath-Clòta."

"So he did. I was there when he asked. I grant that you were not, but even so… I thought you were at least beginning to discern the difference between what people say and what people want."

"But—" The beating of her heart would choke her. "I do not believe you."

"No, indeed. Lack of belief, my dear…sister. Lack of belief. Were we not both blinded by it? You may continue to be so if you wish. I give you your choice. Call it payment."

"Payment? For what?"

"A life-price."

The blackness of him was swallowed up by the clear air of Bernicia.

She contemplated crawling back into his bed.

There was no light in his chamber now, not even a candle glow. Not even a fire.

That should not be.

She passed through the doorway. There had been no king's man outside it, no guard with red-and-white insignia, just a small heap that was a proper thane with a silver arm ring. It chose not to move when she stepped over it.

That had to be a good sign. She shut the door.

The blackness inside was complete.

Cunan, the hellhound, the true brother, had to be wrong.

A life-price.

That was what she owed. Just like Maol. Just like Cunan.

No one had more debts than she did.

She took a step into the unknown.

It was so dark. Night's cold stabbed at her. Why did he not have a fire? She crept forward, trying to remember the layout of the bower, where the table was, the wall bench, the ridiculously extravagant chair with embroidered cushions.

She stopped at the black bulk of the bed. The curtains were drawn across it. She touched heavy cloth embroidered with silk, pulled it back.

Cold air swirled across her face. So dark, so very dark. Her senses strained in the blackness to see that familiar form, to hear his breath, the faintest rustle of movement, anything but this blackness that froze her blood.

"I can never understand how you get as far as you manage to." Her fist closed over the embroidered material, nearly dragging it down on the bed.

"What did you do, break Duda's nose again?"

He was by the window. She realized for the first time that there was actually a small shaft of moonlight breaking the clouds in the wind-driven sky, finding the partly open shutters. That was where the cold air was coming from.

"You will freeze." The words were out of her mouth before she had time to stop them. Then through the fierce beating of her heart, "Did I really break his nose before?"

"Hard to tell with Duda. It does not seem to worry him."

"He showed me all that you gave him, the silver and the clothes."

"Did he so?"

"Aye."

There was the kind of silence that went fathoms deep and was not touched by words that glided on the surface.

"Why are you sitting there?"

"Because it is cold. Why were you trying to get into my bed?"

She looked at the dark, formidable bulk gathered in beside the window, blocking out the thin thread of moonlight, seeking the same coldness that was in his voice.

Cunan was wrong.

The difference between what people say and what people want.

"I was getting into your bed because it is what I wanted. I thought you might like it. I thought we had some—" she made the next words come out"—unfinished business." Her skin started to shiver and her heart beat like a savage's.

"I thought you might show me…the rest." She spoke it in Celtic, softly. The black shadow that was him never moved, except to draw coldness round it like a shroud. The moonlight vanished, blocked by the clouds outside in the Bernician sky.

"Nay." The English word shook her. "We have gone past that, Alina. It is far too late."

You are wrong, Cunan, wrong.

"Is that why you wanted me to go back to Strath-Clota?"

The black bulk did not move. She could not see his face, could guess at nothing, only the coldness.

"Aye."

She took a step forward.

Wrong.

"Suppose I do not wish to go?"

"Then you will go back to Pictland and sooner or later Nechtan will make another match for you, and your father will not be able to prevent it, even if he should wish to."

She could feel the coldness gripping round her heart, the coldness of the room, of his voice, of her future without him.

"There is naught else, Alina. Nothing left."

The coldness would surely kill her. She took another step, but her foot would not move. There was no strength in it. She had no right to be here. There was nothing she could say or do that had any power over the future, or the past.

Moonlight struck through the blackness and just for a moment she could guess his face.

The space between them vanished.

"I will not go." Her voice was as strong as steel. "Not to Strath-Clòta, not to Pictland, not anywhere. Not yet."

"What do you mean?" The steel was met in kind. She struggled for her breath, to hold on to that one glimpse she had had of his face.
What people want
.

"I mean that I have somewhere else to go first."

"What are you saying?" The dark bulk rearranged itself with a suddenness that drew crawling fright down her backbone. He was naked. She could sense all the power of him, leashed, burning through his fine supple skin. She closed her mind against the memory of the way he had looked when he was baiting Cunan, poised and ready to strike. ,

Cunan the hellhound, who for once in his life had to be right.

She tilted her head.

"I have told you already." She undid her girdle with a speed that defied sight. "Your bed."

"You—"

She ignored the danger and stepped into the twisting serpent shadows of the moonlight. The girdle hit the floor.

Duda had said his master was not as good at being impulsive as one might wish. This was her test. She undid the ties of her gown.

"If I am going to be another marriage sacrifice, or if I am going to live out my own life at Alcluyd, I will not go without knowing all there is to know about you, about…" Her voice failed over the word. She swallowed. There were only moments. That was how life was. But sometimes moments could hold eternity.

"I want to know all about love," she said. "Not just the pleasure, but all there is, whatever it means and whatever the consequences."

She dragged the gown over her head, in one sweeping movement. Her shift was of Byzantine silk, woven so thinly it was almost transparent. All the curves and hollows of her body must be visible in the moonlight.

Coldness struck at her skin like claws. There was no protection from it.

He did not move.

She said the last piece of truth.

"I am afraid."

She burned him, inside and out. The touch of her skin on his was like fire. Because he was some frozen creature out of the depths of hell. But she burned it away.

His mouth took hers, crushed it, crushed her. Because she was the only thing that could drag him out of the freezing dark. He heard the sound of her breath and felt the hot softness of her flesh cleave to his and there was nothing in the world except that, and he was falling, with her, joined, his own body twisting beneath her like a rolling battle fall to take her weight. Shoulder and hip touched not the rush-strewn floor but the softness of the overstuffed bed. He had no recollection of carrying her there.

No recollection.

Which only showed what a
hell-thane
he was. And she had said she was afraid.

His hands froze on her body.

"Alina, do not try and do this." The words were harsh blackness against the deeper night dark of her hair. "I am not worth it." His breath rasped. "I cannot—" The word he never said choked off in his throat. There was darkness. And the small brutal sound of her sobbing breath.

He rolled away and that movement brought all the pain he should have felt before and had not. He kept his body and his mind utterly still, staring at the blackness above.

He had to speak.

"I cannot—"

"I understand what you would say and I understand why." Her voice cut across his, clear and bright as a blade. She was still speaking in Celtic.

"You cannot forgive me for all that happened."

Her words struck through him.

No, it is not that
. The denial, instant, blood-searing, beat against his mouth with a force beyond thought. But it was the abandonment of the mind's power that held hell's torments.

"I understand why," said the brilliant clearness of her voice. If he said
yes
she would leave him. She would go back to Strath-Clòta and she would be safe. Always.

"It is because it is my fault." She was shaking. He knew that, even though he was not touching her. He did not have to touch Alina with his body. "I understand that—"

The untruth of it would eat through bone. It was beyond him to let her believe it.

"It is not true." His voice obliterated hers. "What happened was not your fault, none of it."

"But—"

"The blame lies with Hun's brutality and Goadel's ambition." He tried to master the black fury at the damage that had been done, the thought of the far greater harm that had so nearly happened.

"They are dead now, both of them—" He could not think of yesterday.

He turned back to face her in the dark and the bruised bones jarred with a pain that made him grit his teeth. But it was ordinary. Quite ordinary.

"They are gone and the only way they can cause more harm is if you allow them to. Let them lie."

He heard the long drawn-out thread of her breath.

"But they should not have had the power to harm you or your brother when all this began."

"We were Cenred's kin. Harm would always have come to us. That harm should not have touched you."

"But if I had not gone away with you, if I had not done something so madly reckless, made you do it—"

"The decision was mine."

"It was madness."

"No. What I did was no fleeting impulse to be disavowed later." He caught his breath on such dangerous ground, but he could see the small restless movements of her body, like a soul that can find no peace.

"You cannot mean that."

He could not watch that sort of pain.

"It is true. I tried to tell you so that day when I spoke to Cunan. It was you I wanted to speak to. Your understanding I wanted."

But the agitated movements increased. He wanted to still them with his touch, to take that small fragile body in his arms and take its pain and its hurts with all the dammed-up force of love inside him. But his love was not right for her and it was her very fragility which defeated him.

"You do not have to tell me why you rescued me from Hun," she said. "I know that. You did it because of what you are. Because you see too much and understand too much about people and why they do all the helpless, selfish, inadequate things that they do. And you are not put off by it You have too much pity and too much…too much kindness for people. For me. Because when it came down to it, I was as helpless and inadequate as all the rest."

"That is why you thought I took you from Hun? Because I felt sorry for your…your helplessness and inadequacy?" He tried to get breath through the battered wreck of his ribs. But all the air in the room, all the cold piercing freshness of Bamburgh had vanished, leaving nothing in the pain-struck mass of his chest

"Yes. And that is why I left you. Because you had too much honour and too much pity and I could not stand it. I could not stand the price I had made you pay for me. I took everything from you—the life that you lived, your honour, your home, all that you owned. I thought I had killed your brother. That is why I went"

"You—you left me for my sake?"

"Yes. But perhaps there was a thread of selfishness even in that." The bitterness in her voice tore through all that was left of himself.

"Perhaps in my heart I would rather that you hated me for leaving you than for staying. And yet despite all the…the helplessness and inadequacy in me, I would have walked barefoot the length of Britain if I could have taken any of that pain away from you."

"To take the pain away? Do you have any idea what it was like to think that you were dead? To believe that being with me was so insupportable to you that it forced you into a flight back to a creature who would destroy people for greed, or for enjoyment? That your flight was so wild and so desperate that it caused your death?"

He felt her move in the stifling engulfing blackness of the bed. He stopped his voice. What he said belonged to that blackness, intensified it. He fought for control over voice and breathing and all the wildly pressing feelings of his heart.

"I thought you had left me because of all I had lost, because I had nothing left to give, not even adequate protection. You asked why I was so ready to believe you were dead, that you would not come back. But I knew it would happen, somehow. It was almost as though part of me expected it, as though your leaving had to happen. Because what we had could not last. Because such things never do."