Kinshield's Redemption (Book 4) (12 page)

Feanna frowned, considering the notion of dark days. These last few days had been unpleasant because of her imprisonment, though she wouldn’t have said they were dark. Something had changed in her. Gavin and others had told her she’d changed, but more than that, she felt it. Inside, she was the same person, but her outlook had changed. Things she cared little about before were now foremost in her mind. What had recently been her passion was now trite and dull. In her opinion, she was better now. Stronger. She felt free in a way she’d never experienced before. If Lilalian had been like this during her time with Brodas Ravenkind, then why would she think of those days as her darkest? Had she not felt the freedom from the petty morality that kept other people prisoner?

“You must be quite angry with Gavin,” she said, nodding.

“No, he freed me from Ravenkind’s influence,” Lila said. “He has my gratitude.”

“But Ravenkind set you free from morals. Gavin made you their prisoner again.”

“That’s not true,” Lila said, scowling. “I knew what I was doing was wrong even as I did it, but I had no power to refuse his will. I was truly his puppet in every sense. The conflict inside me was slowly driving me mad.”

Losing interest, Feanna waved her hand dismissively at the battler. Lila wasn’t the same as Feanna. She was imperfect. If Lila moved closer, Feanna could reach out and feel the cowardice and submissiveness. Damn Gavin for imprisoning her good and loyal guards, Anya, Hennah, Mirrah and Adro.

Adro. She warmed at the thought of his boyish dimples and deft fingers. He hadn’t managed to consummate their affair before Gavin started beating down the door, but everything about him had promised it would have been a memorable experience. Ah well, there was no chance of that happening now. Gavin had been angry enough to tear his head off and eat it raw. Feanna giggled to herself. What an amusing sight that would’ve been.

Tennara called for a halt, and the carriage slowed to a stop, as if they weren’t already taking a horrendously long time to reach Tern. Feanna leaned her head out the window to see what was happening. “Why have we stopped?”

“Stay in the carriage, Your Majesty,” Tennara called.

How dare she command me?
Feanna pulled the latch on the carriage door, ready to demand an apology, but before she pushed the door open, Lilalian leaned over and slapped one of those hideous wooden gargoyles on the door. A jolt of pain snapped up her arm. “Ouch! You wretched whore. Let me out this instant or I swear I’ll have your head.”

“It’s for your safety, Your Majesty,” Lilalian said. She rode ahead to where the four guards gathered, talking in hushed tones.

“What are you doing? Tell me right now.” Unable to get their attention, unable to get out of the carriage, Feanna let out a scream of frustration and pounded the seat with both fists. That hurt, too, which only made her angrier.

Tennara rode back to the carriage door. “I’m sorry for the delay, Your Majesty. We saw an alarming vision in the road and didn’t want to take any actions that might risk your well-being.”

“Well, what was it?”

“It looked like a creature not of this world.”

Feanna pursed her lips and twitched them side to side. “What did it look like? Where did it go?”

“I didn’t get a good look at it before it disappeared, Your Majesty. One minute it was there, and the next it was gone. There’s no cause for concern at the moment, but we’ll remain watchful. If this being means you harm, we’ll stop it.”

Lilalian took up her position beside the carriage, and they started off again. Feanna watched out the window, hoping for a glimpse of this being from another world. A mile went by, and then another, and she was bored again. She huffed out her breath, directed upward to blow a stray strand of hair out of her face. This incessant journey through the land of boring and dull was far more dangerous than any otherworldly being.

She stood, bracing herself against the front wall of the carriage while she poked through her bags to look for something to occupy her time. Her fingers brushed something familiar—a thin leather thong. She hooked one finger around it and pulled it out, a flicker of excitement quickening her pulse.

Gavin’s warrant tag.

It was the rectangular, wooden tag that had once granted him the right to mete out justice in the name of the Lordover Lalorian. It was inscribed on one side with the image of a wolf and on the other with his name and the lordover’s official emblem. She’d taken to keeping it with her wherever she went so that she could always stay in touch with what he was feeling, but with everything she’d needed to do in Ambryce, she’d forgotten about it.
Let’s catch up, shall we, darling?

Sinking back down onto her seat, she clutched it in her right hand. With her eyes closed, she
shifted
. His feelings of excitement and hope filled her. “Ick!” she said, flinging the tag away as if it had turned into a cockroach in her palm. Being an empath had never been easy, but it had been useful. Now the feelings she’d once cherished revolted her. Excitement was a good, strong emotion, but she never wanted to feel hope again. It was an emotion of weakness, for a truly powerful person would be in control of his life and have no use for hope. Gavin Kinshield was many things, admirable things. He’d never struck her as weak until now. Now she saw him for what he truly was: a hapless wretch. He disgusted her, as did the thought of being trapped in a marriage to such a man.

And she carried his pathetic son, surely another weakling like his father.

If only there was a way to get it out of her without risking injury to herself. Perhaps the herbs that whores mixed into their tea would kill the princeling and leave her unharmed. Oh, but she’d waited too long. The thing had already ruined her figure and had to be hidden beneath gowns with fuller skirts.

She punched her belly in frustration. Pain bored into her, clenching her insides like they were caught in the jaws of a starving jackal. She sucked in a breath, hunching over reflexively. So the Gavin-seed could fight back. She would see about that.

She glared at the warrant tag lying on the opposite seat. This was all Gavin’s fault. She picked up the wooden tag, intending to throw it out the window, knowing it would upset him when he found out. With her arm cocked back and ready to let it fly, she paused, wondering whether she could double-
shift
through the tag like when touching the subject directly.

There wasn’t any reason it wouldn’t work. In the past, she used her skill to know whether a missing person was alive or not simply by
shifting
and touching an article of their clothing, tool, or toy. The warrant tag had been more than that to him. It had represented his livelihood, his morals, his very identity. Until the day he’d given it to her, he had never taken it off.

She grinned, pleased with the maliciousness of her idea. Of course, she wouldn’t know whether it worked until he returned home and she saw the change reflected on his face, but it would provide amusement during the journey. Actually, she thought, perhaps that wasn’t entirely true.

She looked up as she pondered what to try first. What would disrupt the party going on in that thick head of his? Despair would be nice, but she couldn’t push an emotion she didn’t feel, and despair was as weak as hope was. She thought about the germ growing in her belly. Babies were, by their very definition, weak. She didn’t know how, as its mother, she could be expected to care for it or let it suckle from her. For the being growing in her womb, she felt no affection, no connection, no excitement or joy about its impending arrival. Perhaps she would hand it over to Gavin and let him take care of it. After all, he put it in her.

With a satisfied smirk, she fluffed her cushion once more, settled into the seat, and focused on her feelings for the princeling and the man who put it there. She shifted and then shifted again quickly, pushing her disgust, anger, and loathing into the warrant tag. The more she thought about the soft, squishy blob in her belly, the more repulsed she felt, the more livid she became. Those feelings flowed into the tag. She hated this awful baby with every fiber of her essence.

Chapter 14

“Now comes whack on your head,” Jennalia said, smiling, as she rose from her seat. “I can reach you sitting down.”

Daia chuckled as she pushed her chair back to stand.

Gavin smiled and opened his mouth to make a jest, but then a force of rage and loathing blasted through his mind. Without thinking, he put two hands on Jennalia’s chest and shoved her away. The tiny woman flew limply through the air and struck the opposite wall of the cottage. She fell onto the bed and tumbled off, landing with a sickening thud on the floor and a terrible wail of pain.

“Gavin!” Daia rushed to her aid. “What have you done?”

The anger, disgust, and hatred made him tremble with the urge to stomp the Farthan mage to a pulp with his heel. He bent over, clutched his head and rocked, knowing that what he’d done was wrong but acutely feeling the emotions like they were daggers in his mind. These weren’t his feelings. He knew this, yet he couldn’t help it. “I—I don’t know.”

“I am all right now,” Jennalia said. She took a deep, raspy breath and let it out slowly. “With
vusar
’s help, healing magic takes only moment to repair broken ribs.”

Gavin looked at his hands as though they were alien things, controlled by someone else. What the hell had he done? The mage had given him so much without asking for anything in return, and she was merely making a jest. Why had he responded so violently and without thinking? “I’m sorry,” he said through gritted teeth, knowing how insincere it sounded. He heard the repulsion in his voice, the threatening growl, but he had no control, no way to temper his tone. “I don’t know what came over me.”

The rage, disgust and loathing left him as quickly as they’d come, leaving him with only shame and remorse for what he’d done. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

Jennalia shuffled towards him. He cringed, expecting retaliation, if not by magic, then by tongue. “You have a powerful enemy with a fetish of yours.”

“A what?”

“A fetish is a charm, made from one of your belongings. I saw the kho infect your haze like the venom of a viper.”

He felt his leather pouch for the signet ring and the ring of binding that he used to connect with Daia across time and the boundaries of the realms. Both were still there. There was only one person who would’ve wanted to hurt him and only one who could’ve done it with emotion—she’d done it before leaving Ambryce. “Feanna did this,” he said with certainty. She was the only empath he knew with the power to push her own feelings into others.

“She made you attack Jennalia?” Daia asked. “How? She’s got to be almost to Tern by now.”

A clammy chill licked the back of his neck and slithered down his arms, raising his skin to gooseflesh. “She has my warrant tag.”

“She still has it?” Daia asked, alarmed.

Jennalia kept her distance from him. “It is gone now, but your enemy will strike again.”

“Is there a way to protect myself?” he asked.

“You’ve got to send word to Edan,” Daia said, “and have him confiscate it when she reaches Tern.”

“Yes, the
vusar
is right,” Jennalia said, lapsing back into Farthan. “Only by getting the fetish back. You must destroy it with fire to keep it from being used against you again.”

Gavin nodded. If Feanna knew she’d affected him through the warrant tag, she might not be so willing to part with it.

“Until then,” Jennalia said, “you must be on your guard. This enemy is powerful and fierce.”

“That enemy is my wife.”

“Oh, dear. Why did you marry a woman who means you harm?”

“She wasn’t like that until she drank the water from the wellspring. The Guardians’ essence reversed her khozhi balance.”

Jennalia nodded slowly. “Khozhi. I’ve never heard it called that, but I understand your meaning. And drinking it again does nothing?”

“Right. Have you ever heard of a way to swap the essences o’two people?”

“No, King. Why would you do such a foul thing?”

“Imagine there’s a criminal who’s been sentenced to death for his crimes,” Gavin said. “If he’s already got a kho-bent essence, and if I can swap that essence with my wife’s afore he’s executed, she can drink the water again.”

“His essence, now in her body, would be reversed?”

“Right. She’d go back to the way she was. That would work, wouldn’t it?”

“And the criminal would get executed anyway,” Daia said. “It’s brilliant.”

“In theory,” Jennalia said. “I’ve never heard of anyone exchanging their essence with another person. I’m afraid I cannot counsel you on that matter, King.”

He nodded, knowing it hadn’t been likely she would have such knowledge but needing to ask all the same.

“Meantime,” Jennalia said in the common language, “you are vulnerable to her assails.
Vusar
, you must help him resist if you can. Attacks will not last long. It takes much effort to push across long distance, but it will get easier as you get near to her. You refuse it the way you do illusions, by pushing.”