Spirit Binder (13 page)

Then a bolt of pain lanced though her arm, over her shoulder, and up the back of her skull, so intensely that it tore completely through the protective cocoon they’d been building around them. She raised a hand to the back of her head, and swayed away from Hugh.

“What is it?”

She opened her eyes and found her vision momentarily unfocused. Hugh’s hands were so hot they felt like they were burning through the fabric that covered her shoulders. She pressed back against the wood door, and was suddenly very grateful for the coolness it provided.

“My head. A pain.”

“I’ll get Peony back right away.”

“No. I think it is one of those things that is beyond her healing. It has seemed to have eased now.”

He dropped his hands from her shoulders and ran one of them through his hair. “That got a little —”

“I cannot bring myself to feel at all regretful about it.”

He grinned, but the smooth coolness of the door seemed like a much calmer place, so instead of moving forward into his arms, Theo chose to step back into her room. She looked at Hugh, who was so serious once again.

“You will call me,” he insisted.

“I am certain all will be well.”

“But you will call.”

“Yes.”

He nodded and turned away to stride down the hall, and she found she was a little disappointed that he’d walked away so easily.

There were more than the two people she’d expected in her mother’s library.
 

He was there, slumped against the far window, gazing out while her mother and uncle bickered quietly but fiercely by the desk. Suddenly, she was inexplicably pleased she’d allowed her mother’s maid to comb her hair until it shined and fell in soft waves down her back.

He’d straightened his rather long frame when she entered, and a grin overwhelmed the cold chisel of his features. He stepped toward her, but faltered when she didn’t return his smile. If she hadn’t been looking at him with her own two eyes, she wouldn’t have known he was in the room. He didn’t register magically … not that he was a void or even very well shielded. He, according to her magical senses, just didn’t exist.

She glanced over to her mother for confirmation, who was actually watching her rather intently. Her mother nodded and cast a sidelong look at him. “Disconcerting, isn’t it?” She continued to stare at him, even when her mother and uncle began to quietly argue once again.

Ren.

The man from her dreams was currently standing in her mother’s library. His smile had eased off, but there was still a hint of it around his eyes.

“You’re taller in person.”

“Am I? Perhaps my physical presence is just overwhelming,” he teased.

“No. I don’t feel you at all,” she replied, and unintentionally wiped the smile right off his face.

“You know this man, Theodora?” Her mother didn’t like surprises.

“He’s been visiting my dreams.”

“What!” Her mother turned on her uncle. “You’ve been sending a dreamwalker through my wards? With the boy here as an anchor? Do you know how dreadfully dangerous that could have been? I would have thought you’d compromised Theodora enough for one lifetime.”

“There is a soft spot in the wards around the ballroom windows,” her uncle shrugged in her peripheral vision; she hadn’t looked at him directly yet, and was somewhat reluctant to do so. “The dreamwalker is talented. She would have to be to use Ren, given his obvious gifts, but he was our best chance to find Theodora. We didn’t know if she was alive or not.”

“There is only a soft spot in the wards because you damaged them while snatching my child, my heir, from her sixteenth birthday party. And you wouldn’t have needed to worry for Theodora’s safety if you hadn’t have sent her to attack me.”

“It was a training exercise, a reconnaissance mission. And snatched isn’t quite the right word, is it, Theodora?”

She slowly looked at her uncle. A thousand questions tumbled around her head, most of which centered around Ren, and why he would be the best chance of finding her.

Her uncle stood broad-shouldered and impossibly strong next to his twin sister, her mother. The resemblance between them was almost chilling, even though Dougal towered over her mother by a head, and his naturally pale skin was reddened and weathered from a life spent outdoors while her mother’s was creamy and smooth. It was the hair, more sun streaked, rather like her own actually, that declared them all related.

Her mother lifted a hand and, as if nervous, touched the large ruby that never left her neck. Dougal wore a matching stone on his ring. Theo had never noticed the connection before.

“Greet your uncle,” her mother stiffly insisted, as if the formality in which she usually delighted, chafed her.

“You are looking well, Theodora.”

“Compared to how you evidently treated her,” Rhea snapped.

“Everything was just a lesson,” Dougal mildly replied.

She locked eyes with her uncle and offered him her bare hand and forearm. “Shall we arm clasp, Uncle?”

He almost, as if she’d triggered some instinct, reached for her. Almost allowed her access to his impressive shielding. She almost caught him out. But he paused mid-stride and stared at her. She felt the false smile she’d presented settle onto her face as if she now claimed it. He was assessing her.

“You’ve given her the mind mage powers back.”

“Evidently,” her mother sniffed.

“All at once! You could have killed her. Ten years of power? I’m surprised her mind hasn’t melted. What were you thinking?” Dougal thundered.

“Mind mage?” Ren whispered behind her, as if it was news to him.

“I had no idea you’d blocked them in the first place!” Rhea yelled back, and her mother never yelled. “The ward conflicted with your shoddy magic and stripped her back!”

“And you haven’t bothered restoring those ten years,” Dougal’s tone was mild once more.

Her mother didn’t answer.

“She doesn’t know me. She doesn’t know Ren. I can tell just by looking at her she has limited or no access to her wielder powers.”
 

Halfway through Dougal’s speech, she shifted her gaze to her mother, who stared impassively back at her. Wielder powers? Like the ability to rip a wooden arm off a chair? “What wielder powers, Mother?”

Her mother swallowed — once, and then blinked — once, and Theo knew, knew that she’d lost more than ten years of memories.

“Like the telekinesis?” She pursued the subject beyond the ache of betrayal that was now attempting to settle into her chest right above her heart.

“Telekinesis?” Dougal’s interest was very piqued.

Her mother closed her eyes. “I … I … cannot.” She didn’t continue the thought, and Theo felt the betrayal slowly curling into anger, just minute wisps of it …

“I offered you a choice that afternoon in the ballroom,” Dougal said.

“The wielder powers,” she guessed.

“Yes. If you’d stayed here, Rhea would have never trained you in The Ways of the Sword. You would have never known you were meant to be more than some false spiritual figurehead.”

Rhea pursed her lips so tightly that the skin of her face pulled tautly over her jaw and cheekbones. It looked painful, this attempt to conceal the truth. Or perhaps it was just that her mother was too angry to speak.

Ren stepped forward, which caused Theo to flinch when she hadn’t felt his approach. Tension rippled through him; she could see that at least and he was careful to step around her the rest of the way to the desk, where he laid a black velvet-wrapped package.

Dougal reached forward and flipped the edges of the fabric open to reveal a short sword. Theo didn’t know weapons, but even she could tell this was a fine one; it bore a ruby in the shoulder just above the cross-guard that matched the ones Rhea and Dougal wore. It was a thin, double-edged blade, perhaps the length of her forearm. Its guard and blade were unadorned, though the hilt was twined with runes.

“Rowen’s sword,” her mother breathed reverently.

“Who better to wield it, Rhea?” Dougal asked, almost gently, and Rhea looked away from the sword.

So … Theo was a mind mage and a magic wielder, for that was certainly a sword imbued with spirit; it practically sang to her.

“You should see her on the field, Rhea. Like Rowen reborn. So strong and agile, with natural invulnerability and healing factors. She is a magnificent warrior.”

“Rowen died wielding that sword, and you give it to my daughter?”

“You got what you wanted from our little sister’s death, didn’t you? Sitting here secure in the castle and the position her slaughter cemented.”

“I would never have asked for such a sacrifice.”

“I believe it was freely given, just as I, too, fought by your side, just as I believed in your truth. Just as Theodora’s father also believed and sacrificed. I have no doubt you will use Theodora in the same way.”

“This isn’t the time for a history lesson, Dougal, or for a religious debate. You’ve brought an army to my gates.”

“For Theodora.”

“Who is my daughter.”

“But not your prisoner. Nor does it give you ownership of her, Rhea. And you cannot even protect her. How many days was she here before the Preacher found her?”

“Stop it!” Theo yelled, surprised at the edge of terror in her voice. It was too much information, delivered too disjointedly, to access and process all at once. Her hand had instinctively sought and found the hilt of the sword while her mother and Dougal were fighting, and she lifted it from the velvet wrapping.

Her mind whirled as it attempted to piece together all the information being inadequately discussed by people in the know. Rowen’s sword … her dead aunt, her mother and uncle’s triplet, which was information plucked from her mother’s unshielded thoughts … Rowen’s death a rift between the siblings … each blamed the other. Dougal’s inference that she’d chosen to go with him that afternoon in the ballroom, and the sinking feeling that her own mother could have helped her access her missing ten years at any time. And through all that, there was Ren …

She spun the sword in her hand, just slightly lifted … it seemed she was left-handed. Holding the sword felt a little like coming home with its power in complete harmony with her own.
 

“It’s too much all at once,” she heard her mother whisper, and she realized she’d closed her eyes.

“Theodora, I gave you the choice, and you chose to come, you chose to become a Warrior of Spirit rather than —”

“But the mind mage powers, the ones that could have killed me coming back, as you mentioned. You took those away, didn’t you?”

“You had to train. Those powers were a hindrance, even useless.”

“They were me!” she screamed, and her mother and uncle actually stumbled back as if she’d pushed them. The sword was singing to her again. It wanted to express her anger, wanted to soothe it —
 

“She is more powerful than I thought,” Dougal murmured to her smug mother. He was surprised Theo had made him stumble with mere words.

“I could have told you. We could have had a conversation.”

“We talked. You refused my requests to train her. You had her betrothed at sixteen!”

“At birth actually, but that was Spirit’s choice, not mine.”

“Betrothed at birth?” Ren croaked. It seemed Dougal was not the only one who was startled by this extra piece of information.

Everyone continued to ignore Theo … their voices rose higher and higher, each talking about her instead of answering her questions, instead of helping her.

“Did I agree, Uncle? To have you block the mind mage powers?” The hand-carved glass vase on her mother’s desk cracked, and the water and flowers tumbled to the floor. That got the attention back on her.

“Your mother had been repressing the wielder parts of your spirit.”

“Did I agree?”

“No.”

“So what else did you take?”

Her uncle looked to her mother, worried for the first time since Theo had entered the room, but her mother refused to help him. Ren was frozen with his hand on his head, as if he’d been running it through his hair and forgotten it there.

“What else did you have to take to block the mind mage powers? All of it? All of me?”

“Yes, but I —”

“What?” Ren roared. “What are you saying?”

“He’s saying, Ren, to make me the warrior he wanted me to be, he took my powers, took my childhood, and what? Rebuilt me? Who did I think I was?”

“You, still you. My niece. Just with an alternate past. I did it for your protection. You are a skilled warrior. I’ve only ever seen you matched by Ren.”

“And you, Uncle? Am I your match?”

The sword in her hand quivered in anticipation. Its singing escalated, though she was fairly certain no one could hear it but her.

“No,” her uncle laughed. “I am unmatched.”

“Theodora!” her mother called in warning, but it was too late; Theo’s sword was already arcing toward her uncle’s midriff.

Steel met her steel, but it wasn’t her uncle who raised his sword in his own defense. Ren stood between her and her target.

Ren didn’t wait for her next move. His sword, a broad, double-edged, unadorned blade except for the “R” carved into the pommel, was already twisting out and toward her.

She moved and met him. They danced back to where there was more room to turn and lunge. She met him blow for blow. Her sword swung as if it knew what to do. Even hampered by skirts, she could feel her body react like it was articulating some well-worn, well-loved pattern. Her body had been missing this swordplay, even though her mind had no idea she was capable of it.

Ren was grinning again, as if it was all a game to him. She realized he wasn’t even really trying to beat her, though she felt pushed to the edge.

She swung wildly for his head, and he slid sideways and tapped — just tapped — her on her waist with the flat shoulder of his blade, just above the cross-guard.

Then he laughed.

She stumbled backward at the sound of pure joy emanating from him. She’d heard that sound before; she’d delighted in that sound, in making him laugh, once upon a time.