His Lordship Possessed (16 page)

pocket until I produced the blue stone Dredmore had

used to bespell me, and hoped Zarath wouldn’t be able

to do the same. Holding it made me want to weep, and

to add to the eff ect I let the tears well up into my eyes.

“As soon as I picked up the stone everything became clear

again.”

His eyebrows rose. “Th e stone made you think clearly.”

“Oh, yes.” I pressed myself against him. “It made me

remember what was important. You, Lucien. I would do

anything for you. Anything at all. It’s just as you’ve always said. I belong to you. I love you.” I ran my fi ngertips

along the front seams of his jacket. “Please, let me show

you how much.”

“Show me.” His black eyes glowed red, and he latched

on to my wrist. “Yes. I would enjoy a show.”

“My lord,” Celestino said, “this is a charade. Th e only

reason this female came here is to harm you.”

“Perhaps she did. It matters not.” Dredmore lifted

my chin to study my face. “Did the old one not tell you,

woman? Your power cannot drive me out. I am tethered

by the spirit stone.”

Th e damn stone they’d made Lucien swallow; I’d

forgotten about it. “I don’t understand your magic,

Lucien. I never have, and don’t need to. I only want to

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be with you.”

Behind my simper I thought frantically. Th ere was one

more thing I could do, and I wasn’t even sure it would

work. But it was that or have relations with this thing,

and I’d stab myself in the heart before I did that willingly or otherwise.

Dredmore dragged me back to the cargo master’s

offi ce, where he closed the door in Celestino’s face. “Take off those rags. From this day forth, when you are with me

you will wear nothing but your skin.”

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“Nothing would make me happier,” I cooed as I reached

behind me. “I’ll never again have to launder anything but

our bed linens. Unless you hire a laundress for us. Th at

would give me more time to attend to your every want and

need, you know.”

Undoing my buttons also gave me time to tear open

the packet I had tucked in the back band of my waister. I

fi lled my hand with the powder, closing my fi ngers over it as I shrugged out of my bodice and let it fall to the fl oor.

“You are taking too long.” His gaze dropped. “Undress

faster.”

“Th e buttons are so small and slippery, and the

excitement is making me all thumbs. Could you help

with the rest?” I presented my back to him. “Pretty, pretty

please?”

I felt him approach, but instead of unfastening my

waister he grabbed a fi stful of my hair and used it to drag me back against him. “I will fi ll your belly with my seed,”

he muttered against my ear. “Again and again, until you

swell like a ripe, fat date.”

Cloaked as he was in Dredmore’s body, I should have

felt some small comfort. Over the last few days I had

become embarrassingly fond of Lucien’s touch. Yet even

the brush of this imposter’s breath on my skin nauseated

me. I didn’t bother to suppress my shudder, knowing that

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Zarath’s ego would have him assuming I was shivering

with delight or some other such nonsense.

“I can hardly wait to see myself become so, ah,

fi ggish.” Of course if I turned and vomited all over his

chest, he might begin to doubt the veracity of my ardor.

“I have something for you, too.”

He jerked me round. “I need nothing from you but

silent obedience, woman.”

Emphasis on
silent
, naturally. “Of course you don’t.

But this is something that you
wanted
from me that

should keep me quiet for a time. You remember, you

wanted me to . . .” I let my voice trail off as I brushed my knuckles lightly over the front of his trousers and artfully puckered my lips. “Now close your eyes, my love.” When

he didn’t, I pouted. “Lucien, please. I can’t do it if you’re staring at me like that. I’m a good gel.”

He smirked a little before his eyelids dropped.

I held my breath and fl ung the powder in my hand

directly into his face. With my clean hand covering my

nose and mouth I scurried backward until my shoulders

slammed into a wall.

Dredmore coughed and choked, swatting at the cloud

about his head. “What is the meaning of this?”

“I forgot to mention, I borrowed some sleeping

powder from that awful inspector.” I watched him

stumble. “Which means you’re going to have a nice, long

nap.”

He fell to his knees, and tears rolled down his cheeks

from his reddening eyes.

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“Followed by a very massive headache,” I added,

feeling quite satisfi ed to see him slump forward into a

limp mound.

My suspicions proved correct; Zarath might eat

spirits, control armies, and command an invasion, but

Dredmore’s drugged body was as good as a gaol cell. I

took the dagger he carried and looked down at his still

form. Trapped as he was, I could kill Zarath now. Cut

him open, reach into his belly, rip out the stone, and it

would be fi nished.

Lucien could rest in peace.

Lucien.

I crouched down beside him, pulling his shirt free of

his trousers to bare his fl at, hard belly. I lifted the blade—

Which decided to fall out of my hand. I couldn’t do

this to Lucien. I’d held his body in my arms; I’d covered

great stretches of it with my kisses. Stabbing him in the

heart would be like doing it to myself. Somehow I found

my cheek pressed against his skin, and tears rolling over

the bridge of my nose to plop down and slide into his

navel.

Behaving like a silly female cost me as soon as I took

in my fi rst shuddering, sobbing breath, and a lungful of

sleeping powder along with it. In one corner of my heart I

knew I’d done it on purpose. Th e sad truth of it was that I couldn’t stop Zarath because I didn’t really care anymore.

Now that Lucien was dead, the world no longer held

anything of interest for me. I reached for my pendant, for

the comfort it gave me whenever I touched it, and then

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I went still.

Th e pendant. Lucien had never given it back to me.

I staggered to the door and fumbled with the knob

until it opened. Outside the offi ce Celestino came at

me, and in a dreamy haze I saw the blade fl y from my

hand and bury itself in his shoulder. I wandered past

the writhing, shrieking mound of him on the fl oor,

and shuffl ed my way down a long row of large crates.

One stood open, half-fi lled with straw, and it looked so

comfortable that I chose it as my hiding place.

I had enough sense to pile the straw atop me and pull

the slatted lid back in place before I closed my eyes and

surrendered to a sleep from which I might never awake.

I dreamed of the maze at Morehaven, where I walked

through the hedges looking for my pendant and my lover.

I had the notion that Lucien had hidden it somewhere

there, as I could feel it, like him, very near to me. Yet no matter where I looked neither he nor the pendant were

to be found.

I gave up the search when I reached the center of the

maze, where his mechanized statues lay in pieces round

the refl ecting pool. Sitting down in the exact spot where

I had given him my virtue, I thought of all that had

happened since I’d come to Rumsen.

It should have taken some time for my life to parade

before my eyes, but it had gone so quickly. I’d only lived

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as my lost childhood. Now that I faced the end, I could

only imagine how disappointed in me my mother would

have been. I had survived losing her and my father, my

home, and nearly all that I had owned in the world. I’d

tried to spit in the eye of Fate by helping others, and

perhaps I had, but in the end I had nothing left to show

for it.

I might have another chance when the powder wore

off . If I survived Zarath and the Reaper invasion, I might

fl ee Rumsen and start over somewhere else, but I would

do it alone.

All at once I understood how wrong I had been to

spare Zarath.

“Lucien,” I said out loud. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t . . .

if I have another chance, I’ll try again.”

Th e refl ecting pool began to bubble, and from it a

column of water rose and shaped itself into Dredmore’s

form.

“You were fated to be the end of me, to release me,”

the man made of water said. “I saw it over and over in

my dreams. Now that you have defi ed the portents, I am

neither alive nor dead.”

Even in spiritform he was annoying. “I did say I was

sorry.”

He sloshed over to the side of the pool and sat down

on the edge. “If you hadn’t been so damnably stubborn,

Charmian, I might have prevented this and saved us

both.”

“If I’d been a docile, obedient gel, you’d have never

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looked twice at me,” I told him, ignoring the way his face

was dripping onto my shoulder. “So here we are. I’m a

failure and you’re a fountain. Th e city is about to fall to the Reapers. Everyone I care about will die.” I glanced at

him. “Why are you still here? Zarath said you’d gone over

to the netherside.”

“I have not gone, not yet, but it is a struggle to keep

myself . . . intact.” He glanced at his broken mechs before

he reached out as if to touch my face. “As I am I cannot

be with you in this world or the next. Nor can I escape my

prison. I would bear it for you if I could.” He drew back

his shimmering hand. “But you must release me.”

I nodded. “Tell me what to do.”

“Th at can wait. Come here.” Dredmore off ered me

his hand and drew me down into the pool, where he

melted away into the water. I lay back, fl oating on the

surface, and the soft coolness sank into me, permeating

every corner of my mind and spirit with all that had been

Lucien. I saw his life, how dark and cold it had been.

His mind power to charm had appalled his parents, who

had sent him away to spend his entire childhood at the

strictest of schools. Upon gaining his degree, Dredmore

had been given a small fortune by his mother, on the

condition that he leave England and never return.

Making the crossing had been a wretched ordeal for

Lucien. He feared the sea, for it was his only weakness.

It prevented him from using his mind power, but worse,

it terrifi ed him. He couldn’t even swim.

Once in Toriana, a spiteful relation had made public

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his illegitimacy and the name of his commoner father,

rendering Lucien an instant outcast among the blues.

He might have used his gift to make a place for himself

among the ton through his ability to charm, but instead

he walled himself up in Morehaven to learn all he could

about the dark arts. For ten years no one but his servants

had even acknowledged his existence.

Becoming a deathmage had gained him the entry

into society that his unfortunate birth had denied him,

and his grateful clients had certainly made him rich, but

behind his practiced cynicism Dredmore remained a

lonely, wretched pariah. Until the day Connell had driven

him through the market and a shaft of sunlight had

illuminated the face of a common gel buying peaches.

And in that moment, the torrents of passion and longing

had fl ooded Lucien Dredmore’s cold heart, bringing with

them the fi rst hope he’d ever known.

It seemed ironic that for all his magic he had been

made powerless against me, thanks to my pendant.

Th e pendant.

Something Harry had said the fi rst time he’d appeared

echoed through my thoughts:
After twenty years of

waiting and watching, I’m here. I’m free.
And the curious thing Hedger had spat at him:
Without that ginny bauble

hanging about her neck she glows like a right black beacon.

If Dredmore were to be believed, I was a spell-breaker.

Which meant magic had no power over me, nor could it

be used in my presence. It explained why Rina’s teller had

been powerless to read for me. Th e snuff mages’ balls had

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been rendered useless the moment they came near me.