Heart Choice (36 page)

“I should have kept a better eye on him.”

“You gave the job to Antenn, and the boy is not as experienced as you are.”

“I'll reimburse—” Mitchella started stiffly.

“That wasn't a complaint. It was well done of you. From the models I've now reviewed of the ballroom, which don't look like your style, I'd say that Antenn made the samples and that he has a good amount of talent and Flair. I like the new look.” He kissed her fingers before releasing them to seat her. He took a chair next to her.

Glancing at the open door to make sure the cook wasn't near, he said lowly, “Mitchella, I'm sorry I hurt you.”

Equally quiet, she said, “I'm sorry you hurt both of us.” She shrugged. “We let our emotions deepen when we shouldn't—”

“Don't tell me you're reconsidering me as a lover! I won't let you go.” He gripped her hand.

She smiled sadly. “This intensity of yours isn't helping. No, I haven't reconsidered. I want you. I intend to live my life to the fullest. If that means the hurt of living without you comes after the joy of being with you, I accept that. I—” She broke off as the cook cut and served a delicate puff pastry of fancy mushrooms embedded in melted cheese. Mitchella savored the combination of tastes and textures and swallowed and sighed with pleasure. “I'll miss the food when this project ends, too.”

“Don't—”

“Don't what? Talk about the end? We
must
accept that this will end, Straif. You are a FirstFamily GrandLord, nothing permanent can come of a liaison with a sterile woman. Especially since you have a HeartMate.”

His expression looked as if he were eating ashes instead of a delectable dish. “I don't want to discuss this topic further.”

Probably didn't want to think about it—feel the pain of inevitable loss. Neither did she. She willed her damp eyes to dry, managed a smile. “Eat, Straif. And follow my lead—keep the rest of the time we have together light and happy.”

He scowled. “I'm not a very lighthearted man.”

“Try.”

She went with him to his bed that night. After a bout of incredible sex where Mitchella had ravished him, Straif held her while she slid into sleep. He knew she worried about Antenn and tried to soothe her. But she'd wanted sex, and Straif had wanted more . . . but he also knew that since that time when he'd turned away, she wouldn't trust him with her soul-deep feelings. Like she trusted Antenn.

Straif was a temporary item in her life. A temporary priority. And that bit sharp. It was the way it should be—the way he'd intended, but somehow his emotions had gotten entangled around her, had started building more than his mind had deemed wise. She'd done the same thing, opening herself so much to him. Encouraging the bond between them. It would be hard to let go.

Sleep wouldn't come. Beyond the matter of his relationship with Mitchella was the simple fact that he had been in the ballroom that evening. He'd heard the angry voices, felt the throb of anxiety and fear from Mitchella and Antenn—but most of all had been a darkening of the atmosphere, like a plume of soot issuing from the room.

He hadn't hesitated to intervene, and it had been the right action, but he
had
been in the ballroom, the setting of his worst memories, most hideous nightmares. If he could stand to be there once, he could do so again. Time to confront the ghost of his lost and grief-stricken self that still lingered in the room.

So he got up slowly, put on soft trous, and padded down to the room. Lights brightened at his approach, but with the renewed energy of the Residence, they were now automatic. The Residence didn't speak.

Without hesitation, he opened the door to the ballroom and walked inside. Six small nightglobes lit the room. The rectangular chamber had been shaped into an oval, with curving wooden panels masking the corners. Of course, his brain prodded. That had been the basis of the argument, one of the panels was of cheaper wood than the rest.

“Maximum lights.” The five chandeliers, dripping with crystal, shone, dazzling. His gut tightened. He remembered those chandeliers all too well. Not much for a dying boy flat on his back to look at except the chandeliers and the ceiling. He would have to look up at the ceiling. Acid pitched in his stomach, bringing rising nausea. He glanced up. And didn't see the colorful mural he'd expected. No colonists descending the ramp of the Ship,
Arianrhod's Wheel
, at the east end of the room, no building of Druida at the west end of the ceiling. No solemn GreatRitual Circle in the middle.

How he'd hated that Circle. It had blurred in his sick eyes, but he'd known it was there. He'd prayed with every breath of his cracked lips that he would live, his mother, father, Fasha. In the delirium of his second Passage, he'd cried out to those painted people to help him, them. Nothing had happened.

Hands fisted at his side, he groaned, and it was almost loud enough to cover the moans of the dying that always sounded in his memory of this place, and the time. The time of his second Passage and the perishing of his Family.

He sucked in a breath, and the fragrance of newly cut and shaped wood came with it. His vision of the past cleared, and he saw the new ceiling again, a sunrise, radiating pastel color in all directions. It had to be a sunrise, Mitchella wasn't one to ever tint a room with a sunset. And below the ceiling, faint clouds formed, wisped across the room, dispersed.

He choked on a sob or a laugh, cleared his throat. “I'd have hated that when I was sick. It was hard enough to see clearly, to try and see the ceiling through clouds would have been maddening.”

“But you can live with it now?” Mitchella asked softly.

He pivoted to see her hovering near the door. His heart pounded hard and fast. She was so lovely in the white lace nightgown, fiery hair tumbled over her shoulders. He didn't want her touched by this place, the old, horrible emotions it held. Himself.

But he wanted her in his arms, close, where he could warm himself in her unstinting comfort. He was always torn between emotions with her.

She took a hesitant step in, another, scanned the room, and Straif noted with surprise that her look was all professional, weighing the work that had been done, that which would be done, comparing the room to the finished mental image in her head. She wasn't being bombarded by negative vibrations.

So he examined the place. The curved panels were fine, the ceiling with its misty clouds, the French doors that led out to the terrace were covered with long swathes of material he thought was temporary. The floor had been restored and polished and whitewashed and—

A shudder took him. Step-by-step he crossed to the windows, drawn by the dark marks incised in the wooden ballroom floor. He stopped where he'd lain as a youngster, gaze fixed on the wood. Horror thundered through him. He'd forgotten. Had never recalled that he'd done this.

Close to the wall, next to the molding, he'd carved “Straif.” His name. To the left of where he stood, he read the small, dark letters. “T'Blackthorn died here.” To the left of that was the name, Leea Holly Blackthorn, his mother. To the right of his name was Fasha Blackthorn.

All along the border of the room, he'd incised names. A cry ripped from his throat.

Mitchella grabbed his hand, and the warmth of her flooded through his fingers, but was not enough to banish the icy revulsion. “Come away,” she ordered.

He shook, but he didn't move. “No,” he said. “No.” He had to finally accept their deaths, move through the horror and grief, move on. Or die himself.

“I did that. I couldn't believe they were all gone, not even when I carved their names in the floor. Not everyone. And I lived. Then ran away.” His voice was hoarse.

“You were seventeen!”

“Yes, I was seventeen, and dying of the virus. And experiencing my second Passage.”

“No!” She lifted teary eyes to him; wet tracks rippled down her face.

“Yes.”

She wrapped herself around him, comforting him. For the first time in this room, his emotions calmed. Perhaps now he could admit what he'd hidden from himself, from everyone.

“We were all dying. Fasha went first that night. I was eaten by my Flair, terrible dreams, illusions. My father and mother tried to help, but they were dying, too. It was only a matter of time. Father was the weakest. He'd spent huge amounts of Flair trying to keep everyone strong for the Healers to do their work. But the Healers couldn't save us.”

He licked his lips that were dry as they'd been that night. “So Father and Mother agreed. They would guide me through Passage, send me all their strength. They died. I lived.”

“They wanted to save their son.”

“And they did, but for what?”

She shook him. “Life! For life! To live! They loved you.”

“Yes. And I loved them, but I didn't want their sacrifice.”

Her soft hands stroked his face. “No one would. No one.”

He looked down at all the names. “In the morning everyone was dead. But not me. Because my parents sent me all their energy.”

He couldn't bear to walk down the wall, looking at familiar names that would conjure up the image of the person. So he put his arms around Mitchella, rested his head on hers. “I carved every name I could, crawling along with my whittling knife. Perhaps it was still the fever, maybe it was grief. I collapsed, then my cuz Holm Holly was there, more people, and I was gone from here, and it was all over.”

Mitchella trembled in his arms. “A terrible story.”

“Yes, one I've done my best to forget. But a sacrifice like that—how can a boy or a man live up to it?”

Silence shrouded the room.

“If they were HeartMates and your father was dying . . .”

“Yes, Mother would have followed, probably that night. Instead they went together. They were cradled in each other's arms when I last saw them.”

Mitchella cried, and a hideous weight in his chest began to break, like a chunk of ice cracking.

Straif looked around the chamber. “It's a pretty room. Perhaps it can be a good place, now.”

She sobbed, quivering in his arms.

“Come away,” he said. “Come away. This was a dancing room, Mother's favorite. It's not a place to be sad.”

But Mitchella didn't move. So he picked her up. Small dots of wetness showed on the floor, her tears. They glowed, gathering bits of dark smoke—the negativity in this room, his guilt he'd never acknowledged—and vanquished it.

Twenty-four

Work bell woke Mitchella and as she stretched, the rec
ollection of the whole dreadful night rushed through her mind. Straif looked pale beside her, but peaceful. She stroked back a lock of his light brown hair with tenderness.

Then she thought of Antenn and fear punched. She slipped from bed, put on a green silkeen robe, and padded to the other side of the huge bed to the nightstand where an elegant china scrybowl sat. She eyed it uneasily. She didn't want to leave Straif, didn't want to wake him, but needed to check on Antenn.

Straif reached out a long, tanned arm. His strong fingers wrapped her wrist. “I'm awake.”

She met his eyes, and they were blue, blue. Her heart turned over with love.

He shut his eyes, then sent her a stream of feeling that stopped her breath—affection, passion, love? Most of all, gratitude. When he spoke again, his voice was rough. “Last night—my wounds ripped open and let the poison out.” He went white around the lips. “Now I can heal.”

His fingers tightened around her wrist, wave after wave of immense emotions, too tangled for her to sort out, radiated from him. He took a deep breath, opened his eyes, and said, “Thank you.” Letting her wrist go, he stretched to flick the scrybowl with a fingernail. “Clover Compound—”

“Mel and Pratty,” Mitchella said. She'd have had to circle the bowl with her finger and say a couple of spellwords to connect it. She sighed. Straif and she were so far apart in Flair.

He tilted his head, and she knew he'd heard her thought. “We may be ‘far apart' in Flair, but your emotional strength—it awes me. Antenn is lucky to have you as a guardian.”

“He's more than a ward to me. He's the child of my heart,” she said.

At that moment, Pratty Clover answered the scry. When she saw Mitchella, her face crumpled. “Oh, Mitchella! Antenn's gone!”

A huge fist squeezed Mitchella's chest. “What do you mean he's gone?” She tried to sound cool, calm, reasonable, but was suddenly cold, and her teeth wanted to chatter.

Aunt Pratty flushed, fluttered her hands. “You know how many boys there are in the family, Mitchella. We aren't used to keeping an eye on him and all the others were covering for him, and—” She broke out in noisy tears. “We've lost him. We've lost a child!”