Shadowborn (34 page)

She shook her head. “As I said, they exchanged not a word after you spoke.”

But by the set of her shoulders, there was more. He was already learning to read her. “What is it, Floria? You said they mostly concentrated on me. What did they do to you?”

“Raised the memory of my ensorcellment,” she said, rising to stand with her back to him.

He waited. “A lover?” he said, finding the question unexpectedly difficult to ask.

She turned, eyes narrowing.

“You are not the first,” he said, turning his face a little to the side, so that he would not seem to be probing or challenging her. “It seems to have been the way they liked to turn people.”

“Curse him,”
he heard her whisper.

Hands upturned on his lap, he sighed. “We can but hope.”

She sat down beside him on the bed, the slump on her shoulders betraying her weariness. He remembered this was night for her and that she would not have shown her vulnerability to anyone. “He was one of the men in the companion house. I’ve always been so careful, as my father insisted. . . .”

It seems a bleak approach to intimacy,
he thought, as he had thought before. The promiscuity did not trouble him as much as the lovelessness. “I’m sorry,” he said.

She gave a twisted little smile. “Nothing to do with you, Bal. You always urged me to find a true partner—a husband, in your terms. You could be quite insufferable on the subject.”

He supposed he had been, happy as he himself was then. “You deserve to be loved, Floria,” he said, quietly. “No doubt you will tell me that my Darkborn prejudices are showing, but what was right for a man is not right for a woman. What was right for your father was not right for you.”

She turned her head, a smile gentling that hard, beautiful face. “You’ve said that to me before.”

This close, he could sonn the slight thickening and change in texture of her skin, and realized that her face was bruised badly. Her voice had sounded husky, which he had put down to strain. “You’re hurt,” he said, shocked that he had not realized.

She shrugged. “Met with a mob outside Bolingbroke Station on the way back from the palace. Did something stupid and needed to be fished out of the fountain.”

He touched her face gently, but the pretense that it was a clinician’s touch failed as soon as he felt the silken warmth of her skin. There was no wall between them now. Their weight on the mesh of the bed created a subtle, in-falling force. It took no effort for him to tilt sideways, to close the distance between his lips and hers; the effort would have been in resisting. Her lips were cool and firm at first, then softened as they parted. Her breath stroked against his lip, quickening with her breathing. Her hand caught the back of his neck hard, and her fingers spread in his hair.

Then that moment of abandonment passed, and he pulled back. She held him briefly, and then yielded, her hand sliding away. His sensitized skin remembered the track; his sensitized mouth, her lips.

“I’m sorry, Floria,” he muttered, deeply ashamed of his behavior. “This is not right.”

“You’ll notice,” she said after a moment, “that you are not sitting on the floor, wondering what hit you. Which you would be if I objected.”

He opened his mouth to say “I’m sorry” again, and closed it. Nine years of marriage had taught him that a wise man did not apologize for doing something a woman wanted, no matter how foolish or wrong that thing might be.

“It would have been strange,” she said, “if we had met and this had not happened.”

“I’m not myself,” he said, inadequately. “Everything that has happened . . . Telmaine . . .” Remorse mingled with his grief now, that he had come so near to betraying both the women he cared most for. “It’s too soon. Maybe . . .”

“Yes,” she said, in a tone he could not interpret. “Telmaine. I had a conversation with her just before I left the palace. She told me it was very important that I tell you we had spoken.”

“Thank you,” he whispered. “But I’m not . . . sure I’m up to hearing her message at the moment.”

“That
was
the message. When Telmaine returned to the palace and was taken prisoner, it was night. When she spoke to me, it was daylight. Why would her jailors let her speak to me? Why would they let her release me when they’d shown no sign of caring that I’d have been dead when my light failed? Balthasar, she’s a mage—a strong mage. Unless she
wanted
to stay in that cell and die, it would not hold her.” She paused. “All she said was that it was very important that I tell you she and I had spoken, not
what
I should tell you. I did not make the connection immediately myself, and then I waited to tell you because I needed you to hold together before the court.” She waited, stoically, for his response, her face like a carved mask.

So stupidly simple a chain of reasoning. He had held most of the links himself—he
knew
what Ishmael had told him about Telmaine’s strength as a mage, and he
knew
she would not submit tamely to death. He should have connected them, would have connected him, but for the abomination of the ensorcellment. In a raw whisper, he said, “Floria, even if you’d told me before, I
couldn’t
have believed you.”

A moment for understanding to come, and then she swore, softly.

He put a hand over his face, dislodging the spectacles. If his loss of composure disturbed her, he was going to shock her now. “Could you please . . . give me a few minutes to myself?”

He felt her rise, the netting release. She touched his cheek, her fingertips callused, scratchy, and warm—except for the warmth, unlike Telmaine’s. To his lowered head, she said, “I would lie with you, Balthasar, for the asking. All these years demand more than a kiss. I would never have made you my enemy by deceiving you on something that important. . . . But I’ll leave you now.”

<
T
ammorn.>

He had known this contact would come ever since he spoke to Lady Telmaine. Indeed, he had known it would come since he recovered enough to think clearly. Though he had not expected the archmage himself, there was no mistaking that immense strength. The archmage’s replenishing touch across distance had the healing warmth of sunlight. Tam all but groaned in relief as his pain and leaden exhaustion dissipated. He sat up: one did not address the master of the Temple while supine in bed.

<
Why?
> He cut to the essence. <
Why release me?
>