Marissa Day (35 page)

Thomas’s mouth was on hers, hard and devouring, without mercy but equally without passion. Jane stiffened against his stabbing tongue. She could not help it. And in the distance, as if from farther away than the sounds of battle on the hill, she felt his heart break.

“What do you think of your lover now, Lady Jane?” inquired the queen. Her tone cut at Jane, a knife across her flesh. “How shall it be when I command him to do far more than steal one kiss?”

“Enough,” snapped the queen impatiently, and Thomas stepped back, his face still a mask, his eyes still fixed and distant, but there was something, some thaw in his despair. Jane felt it.

“Thomas has never hurt me,” Jane did not bother to look at Tatiana. She spoke directly to Thomas. All their games, all the times he had held her helpless in his arms and in his bed, he had not once used his strength against her. Not once, even when he had brought himself into her thoughts and dreams, had he misused her. “He will not hurt me now.”

Thomas could not move, but Jane could, and she moved forward. She put her arms around Thomas, enclosing him in her embrace.

“Stupid woman! He is mine! Even to his flesh and form, he is mine!”

Jane felt the sting of magic, and impossibly, Thomas began to swell in her arms. The shape of his limbs and torso shifted beneath her hands. He threw back his head and cried out, but that human cry stretched and deepened, becoming an animal roar.

It was not Thomas she held any longer. It was a lion. Huge, heavy-maned, utterly inhuman, its fangs snapped inches from her face and its paws crushed down her shoulders. Her fingers knotted in its living pelt. Too stunned to scream, every instinct Jane possessed cried at her to run. But she did not run.

Because the lion looked at her with Thomas’s green eyes.

The lion roared out in animal despair. The sound cut through her and Jane shuddered. But that roar stretched again, taught and high, turning from roar to screech and as the sound changed, so did Thomas’s bestial form.

I . . .
She heard Thomas’s voice in her mind, faint, but real.

Thomas shrank and withered. His arms, which had been paws broadened and flattened. Fur became feathers. The snout tightened and curved to become a cruel beak. Wicked talons shot out of his drastically shortened legs. The lion was gone, replaced by a golden eagle that flapped its great wings and shrieked a hunting cry like torn metal, and still Jane held on.

And then something new happened. The eagle that had been Thomas Lynne ceased its maddened flapping. Jane could feel its frantic heartbeat as she clasped its feathered breast, aware that despite its predatory strength of beak and talon she might break any of its bones with a careless touch.

The air crackled with anger and menace, and the sting of magic once more. The eagle shrank again, stretched again, becoming long and lithe and smooth, a living rope of brown and white in her hand. Its hood spread out like the eagle’s wings had and its fangs glistened more cruel than beak or claw. Jane had seen illustrations of the king cobra of India and knew what she held now. But even the serpent had Thomas’s green eyes and it was those eyes she looked into now.

The serpent’s hood closed. It curled its body around her wrist.

Tatiana’s scream of pure rage split the air around them. Hatred blurred the very air around her. Her face no longer seemed young or fair, but instead was brown and withered as if she wore a mask of tree bark. Something else was missing. It took Jane a moment to realize.

The cold was gone. The snow was gone. Whatever magic that was had vanished, and Jane stood on the grass of Hyde Park again. But Thomas was still a serpent coiled around her arm, hissing at his former queen.

Tatiana raised her hand once more. Her ever-changing eyes glowed the purple-black of storm clouds, and Jane felt the magic stab deep through her, and again Thomas’s form twisted in her hands, shrinking down, smaller and smaller until she cried out for fear he was being stolen from her altogether.

The light and heat hit her together. This was no wild creature now. It was fire. Jane cupped a live coal in her palms. The heat assailed her face, she smelled the burning and her mind cried out at the danger, reflex urged her to drop it. There were no eyes now, no way to see Thomas, and yet, and yet, she felt him, and the heat did not sear her. It hurt, it hurt, but she could bear the pain and she did not let go.

“Hold on, Jane!” called a voice, a human voice, a woman’s voice. “We’re coming!”

Tatiana screamed and wheeled around. In a flash, Jane saw a stag charging down the hill, its antlers lowered. A white owl the size of an eagle flew overhead. The queen held a spear in her hand and the words she cursed seemed to split the night with their power.

Jane did not wait to see what would happen. She turned on her heel and fled. Pain filled her palms. She could smell the stench of burning flesh, and she knew it was hers. Thomas was losing control, giving in to the form forced upon him.

The river, Jane,
she heard him whisper in her heart.
The water.

Yes. Yes. The Serpentine. It glimmered silver in the light of the spring moon. Another few yards, another few feet. A dreadful scream tumbled over her, pushing on her back, tripping her feet.

With all the strength she possessed, Jane hurled herself headfirst into the slowly moving water.

It was a plunge into icy blackness. Jane’s skirts billowed and tangled around her legs. They caught her like water weeds and dragged her down. Her lungs strained and her hands flailed as she twisted. Thomas was gone. She was alone and the current tugged and tumbled her. She didn’t know which way was up any longer, and she’d lost Thomas. She fought to swim but she could not get her legs free.

Strong arms encircled her waist. Jane felt herself lifted up, and she burst thought the surface of the water. Air rushed into her lungs as she gasped and coughed and gasped again. She twisted in her rescuer’s arms, but she already knew who she would see.

Thomas. Whole and well, entirely naked, and fully himself, Thomas held her in his arms.

“Thomas!” She fought to turn in his grip so she could throw hers about him.

“Hush, love, hush. I have not the strength if you struggle.”

Her heart swelled with love and fear, Jane held still. Thomas shifted so his arm slanted across her breasts. With a strong but awkward one-armed stroke, he pulled them both to shore.

Slowly, both shaking for the effort, they clambered to shore and fell face first upon the grass.

“Jane,” he breathed. “My Jane . . .”

“Now you hush,” Jane rolled toward him, twining her weak fingers into his. He was too pale, his breath coming short and his skin was cold as ice. At once, she threw her cloak over him, sodden as it was.

“My God, Jane, she’s gone.”

“What?”

“The queen. She’s no more in my heart. You’ve banished her.”

“None banish me.”

She stood before them, power crackling in a dreadful aureole about her. She was pale as death and moonlight and her eyes were storm and lightning. Trembling, Jane got to her feet, a gesture as absurd as the cloak had been. She had no strength left. Her hands were empty. She could not have fended off a kitten.

But the queen did not even see her. She looked straight past Jane to Thomas on his knees. “I trusted you, Thomas Lynne. I gave you my heart and my charge. I should have instead plucked out your eyes and heart and given you wooden ones in their place.” Only then did she turn to Jane. “You’ve won your knight, Lady Jane. Very well. I relinquish my hold hereby and wish you joy of him.”

She vanished and thunder clapped in the place where she stood. Jane reeled backward. Slowly, it sank into her that the queen was gone. Gone. They’d won. She spun around to shout their victory to Thomas.

But Thomas still lay on the grass. Her sodden cloak had fallen open to show the awful rush of blood pouring from his side.

“No!” Jane dropped to the ground. Blood, there was blood everywhere. Thomas’s life poured out onto the trampled grass.

He laid his hand into its warmth and gazed numbly at his darkened fingers. “I feared this would happen,” he whispered.

“No! It cannot! Not now!” Jane bunched up her cloak, trying to staunch the blood, but it poured out over her hands.

“They cannot truly heal,” Thomas was saying with a dreadful calm. “They can only suspend hurt, and grant illusion. Without her magics . . .”

“Lady Jane!” cried Darius’s voice from somewhere behind. “Thomas Lynne!”

“Here!” shouted Jane. “We are here! We need help! They will help you.” She bunched the cloak more tightly against his wound and pressed harder. Thomas coughed, and a trickle of blood ran across his lips. “You will not leave me!”

“Hold me, Jane,” he whispered. “This last time.”

“No!” she screamed. “I will not! Not if you are going to give up!”

The three magic wielders topped the bank and galloped toward them.

“Gods all,” whispered Corwin as they came up beside her and Thomas.

“Help him,” begged Jane. “Please, you must help him!”

Corwin knelt at once beside Thomas and pushed Jane’s hands gently away so he could lift up the cloak. He laid his hand on the other man’s wounded side and went very still. He looked at his fellows and Jane was sure a moment of anxious and silent communication passed between them.

“Quickly, Miranda,” said Darius.

Miranda at once stepped between the two men and took a hand of each. Her face went taut with concentration as she closed her eyes. Jane could see nothing, but she felt something stirring, some deep and restless force drawing itself up from the earth. The Sorcerers held out their hands, palms down flat over Thomas. Thomas writhed and cried out.

“You’re hurting him!” shouted Jane.

They did not seem to hear. The men began to tremble, and the color fled Miranda’s cheeks

“Too much, too far,” Corwin gasped.

“We’re losing him,” said Darius.

“No!” Jane threw her arms around Thomas’s shoulders. He felt as light as reeds and papers to her touch. He felt like he was dying.

Thomas!
She reached out with heart and mind.
Thomas, you must hold on!

He did answer, but it was so slow, as if from the depths of great pain. Farther even than he had gone when still in the Fae queen’s grasp.

It was worth it.
The faint words reached her.
To love you, even for a moment. It was worth it.

You forbid?
She heard the spark of his familiar mischief and she did not know if hope or fear would break her heart first.

Yes!
She returned the thought, struggling to concentrate, to press closer.
I forbid! You have mastered me long enough. Now I have a thing or two to teach you, sir!

In her mind’s eye she searched for him, but it seemed she traveled through darkness. So lonely; this place inside was as lonely and bitter as a winter field.

I have brought you only danger and darkness, Jane.
The words came soft and cold as falling snow.

A child?
Wonder colored his fading voice.
How . . . ?

But they both knew. She felt the memory of his hand in hers, strong and warm, of sunlight on skin and the smell of the spring breeze as they held each other in the garden. She seized on that memory with her whole heart, willing him to feel her hand, her fingers twined in his, to feel her pulling him close into her embrace so she could wrap her arms around him, press herself close to him so that he could feel her heart beat and she could feel his. She remembered him strong, she remembered the heat of his skin against her, the love and enticement in all his tender kisses.

She remembered Thomas with her and beside her, closer than anyone had ever been. She remembered love, and she held on.

“By all that’s holy, he’s coming round,” breathed Darius.

“Hold on, Miranda!” said Corwin through clenched teeth.

“Hold on, Jane!” Miranda retorted.

But she was melting away and she knew it. The darkness and the cold and the sheltering love, her sense and dream of self were all falling away into the darkness. Down to where Thomas was. Her Thomas.

Too far!
Someone was saying.
She’s gone too far !