Temptress Unbound (5 page)

I didn't care about the danger, or the cold, or the pain as I wedged my bare toes into a crevice and started to climb, losing long strands of hair as it snagged and I jerked it free. I felt possessed by some half-mad druidic spirit, determined to reach the mistletoe. Possessed, too, by the past and the pleasure I'd been trained to feel upon submission.

I felt a break in the rain and body heat, and glanced over my shoulder to find Maerlin coming up behind me. I found a hidden reserve of agility and scrambled faster, gaining several feet and then lunging outward for a thinner branch with mistletoe clouding its ends.

Maerlin grasped me around the chest with one long, strong arm. “Don't make me do this!”

If you can't conquer me, you're not worthy of me.

“That makes no sense!” he shouted against the storm.

I gathered my power and shoved it at him, pushing into his mind and making him release his hold on me. The moment his arm fell I leapt outward and caught a thin branch at shoulder height that just held my weight. I bent at the hips, intent on swinging my legs up onto the branch, but Maerlin got hold of one of my legs and pulled it back toward him. I prepared another burst of power, loosed it at him—

—and had it deflect into the flint-gray clouds overhead where it struck like pyrite, sparking a great jagged bolt of lightning that throbbed through the air. Thunder shook my bones.

I don't have to overpower you,
Maerlin said.
You've overpowered yourself.
He grabbed my other leg, lifting both of them.

I clung to my branch, my chin over its top and my arms around its paltry girth. A moment of sanity pierced my mind and I looked down, a feeling of sickness hitting me as I saw that there was nothing beneath me except the distant ground. Rain blew into my face and I felt it sliding along my skin, seeking to drain the warmth and strength from my muscles. Maerlin held my legs, doing nothing, until my arms began to tremble under the strain of my hold. If he let go, leaving all my weight on my arms, I would fall.

Let go, Nimia.

No.

He tugged on my legs and my grip slipped; my chin scraped against the branch.
This is dangerous. Let go.

No!

Something moved through me then, a force I recognized as
him
. My arms released the branch and for one dizzying moment I dropped downward, falling headfirst toward that sloping ground so far below. Then I was jerked back, his arm under my hips, and hauled back to the trunk of the tree and shoved face-first against it, his body pressing against mine.

You told me you didn't want this,
he said.
To be invaded. To have control taken from you.

I didn't want it when the conquering was against my will.

I don't understand!

Neither do I.

He hesitated; I could feel him thinking, analyzing, deciding.

I gathered my energies and fought against him in a mad flurry, in both body and mind. He clamped down instinctively, immediately, his power flooding into me and meshing with my own, guiding it to hold me in place. With one hand he brought both my wrists above my head and pinned them to the tree. With his other he dragged my hair aside, baring the tender bend where neck met shoulder; he kissed the skin there, tenderly, and then suddenly bit down.

I cried out at the pain, but he didn't let go. He held me in place as if we were wild animals, any shift on my part met with a digging in of his teeth.

The hot-cool fluid rush of sexual receptiveness washed down my body. My legs relaxed, parting slightly; my back arched, shoving my buttocks toward his loins. I could feel his rigid control of his own body, balanced perfectly on the branch we shared. His free hand stroked down over my hip and then vanished; a moment later I felt him guiding his cock toward my entrance, rubbing it against my gates until they parted in invitation.

He thrust hard, without warning, the force of it lifting me to my toes. I shrieked like a wildcat, my breasts scraping on the tree bark.
More,
I begged.

He moved in slow, deep thrusts; far slower than I wanted. I relaxed against the tree, all my consciousness focused on where our bodies joined; on where his teeth met my flesh with such tender pain; on the feel of his body pressed up against mine, shielding me from the storm. I let him flow into me and corral my power, using it as his own as he sent it out into the storm. The pocket of protective air formed again, and outside it I could hear the howling of the wind like the souls of a thousand sailors lost at sea.

All that existed was the oak, the storm, and the joining between us. I don't know how long we stayed there, clinging to the tree, Maerlin moving with infinite patience within me. It was only when he reached down to stroke my stamen that I came back to myself, realizing his release was near, and our task complete.

I opened my eyes to see that the full dark of winter had descended upon us. I cast my gaze up the hill toward the forge hidden beyond its ridge, and as our climax came, the heavens lit with sheet lightning.

And in the stark white light I saw Arthur, his cloak blowing straight out behind him from the force of the wind, his face a mask of anguish as he looked down upon us.

4

T
he day after we called the storm, Arthur left Corinium without a word to me.

I was given no chance to explain, no chance to justify an action that to him must have appeared the worst of betrayals. Terix told me that Arthur had come to the forge worried about me. He had known about the nest high in the tree and accepted Maerlin's assurances that we would be safe, but when the storm descended with such violent fury, he grew alarmed. Despite every attempt to stop him, he had gone out to check that I was in no danger.

Maerlin had spoken with him briefly before Arthur left, had—he told me afterward—tried to make Arthur understand that this was the shape Phanne powers took, and that it meant nothing about my heart. “He was too upset to hear me,” Maerlin told me. “When he returns, we'll try again. Time will calm him.”

But it had been nearly three months since he left, and he had not come back. Worse still was that he had gone to Calleva, to renew his bid for Wynnetha's hand. I could only think that we had driven him to it.

For the first couple of weeks I wandered in a nightmare from which I could not wake, where I would relive again and again the feeling of Maerlin moving inside me, reaching his release at the same moment as my own, just as that white flash of lightning revealed Arthur's face.

What have I done? What have I done?
I'd cried over and over again to myself, guilt and regret washing over me. The pain of loss was so great that sometimes it felt unreal, and for an instant I'd feel a sweep of relief as I thought, “I'm dreaming. It didn't really happen. Having sex in a tree in a storm? No. All I have to do is wake up and it will be the night of the solstice again, and I'll feel Arthur's lips on mine.”

Only I never woke up.

As time eroded my panic and grief, anger began to seep in. Why did he not return? Why did he not give me the chance to speak? If he truly loved me, why did he not fight for me instead of slinking away like a beaten dog? Was his love so fragile, so easily broken?

I complained as much to Terix at one point. “You were the two people he loved best in the world,” Terix said, “and he thought you were his. What was there to know, beyond what he saw?”

“
You
understand about the powers. About how sex is not the same for the Phanne, and how it can have nothing to do with love.”

“Understanding it won't stop it from hurting.”

Which had shut me up, because I didn't want to think about Terix hurting.

I almost wished that I had Tanwen to talk to. She would have had something shockingly frank and funny to say about this mess. As it was, all I could do was hope she had survived the storm at sea and had reached Constantinople. I'd rather think of her wrecking lives all along a crooked, winding path to the emperor's throne than being eaten by bottom-dwelling creatures in the dark depths of the sea, though the latter was what she deserved.

Terix had often warned me that I had too much sympathy for bad people. It's true I was drawn to those who pursued their own ends with heartless determination; they had a vitality of mind, a sharp brightness in the eye that was lacking in those hoping only to get by. They survived, where others perished. They persevered, when others gave up. They weren't content with who they had been born as, and would tear down the world to better their lot.

Perhaps I feared that from the outside, I seemed bad like them; that no one beyond Terix, Maerlin, and wise Sidonius Apollinaris would ever see me as other than a former slave who had lied, spied, abandoned her child, brought a once-great leader to his death, and slept with men for nearly any reason except love. And why? Because, above all else, I wanted to discover who I was and who I could grow to be. The only thing that had ever distracted me from my course was the temptation of love.

Arthur's absence had left me alone with this dark mirror, and I didn't like the reflection I saw. It made it hard to remember if there was anything good about me, what anyone ever saw in me that was likable. I found myself eyeing Terix askance, wondering what was wrong with him that would make him stick by me for so long. I even questioned Bone's affection. Weren't dogs supposed to have better taste in people?

As the weeks dragged on, my self-loathing settled into a dull distaste. I didn't know if I could change, didn't know where I'd start if I tried, and worst of all, I wasn't certain that I wanted to. Everything I'd done had seemed to make sense at the time, and to be motivated more by right than wrong.

That's the trouble with age. The vision clouds, and nothing is so clearly right or wrong as it was in one's youth
,
Sidonius Apollinaris had said. I hadn't understood then how true those words were.

“Those look like dark thoughts,” Brenn said, riding up beside me now. “Care to drag them into the light?”

“They're too monstrous for daytime.”

“That's only what they want you to think. Pull them out of their cave, and you'll find that what looked like a great black shadow was only cast by a wee mousey dancing in front of a lamp.”

I chuckled. “Then give me a stable full of cats to clean them out.”

We were riding with Una and Maerlin into Corinium to pick up Skalibur. After weeks of work to forge, grind, and polish the blade it had been brought into town for craftsmen to work on the hilt, the grip, the engraving, the setting of the green stone, and the making of a worthy scabbard. Maerlin and Brenn had designed the sword, but it had taken a legion of men and women to bring their idea into being. From leather tanners to miners to traders to jewelers, they had all had a part in it, and as it was put together, whispers and rumors had spread.

Daella had told me that it had become a common boast in town to claim that you had played a part in its creation. “They sense it's special,” she'd said. “They say the stone glows with the green heart-blood of Britannia, and that the steel fell from a star. They say that if you put your ear close to the blade when moonlight strikes it, you can hear the murmur of druids chanting.”

Or maybe you could hear the hum of Phannic bees.

“Young Una is coming along with her training,” Brenn said, nodding back toward where she followed us. “She's learning to control her temper.”

“The men don't mind her practicing with them?” While Maer­lin had given Una the Phanne tattoos she'd demanded, their relationship was still chary. When I'd seen how hurt Una was by Maer­lin's unwillingness to teach her anything of fighting, I'd asked Brenn to take her on. To our surprise she'd taken to him like a baby duck to its mother, following him everywhere, hanging on his words, practicing whatever drill he set her until she was soaked with sweat and near fainting with fatigue.

“They knock her flat when they get the chance, but those chances are coming less and less often. As long as she keeps her temper, she can sneak up and have a blade at their belly before they see her.” Brenn laughed at the mental picture. “They're getting wild-eyed, like nervous horses; they don't want the shame of being her next victim, so they keep alert. It's good for them. Keeps them from getting lazy.”

“It sounds like you're training her to be more of an assassin than a warrior.”

He scratched his nose with his hook. “Course I am. She's a girl, and will never wield a sword with the strength of a man. I'm not stupid enough to waste her on battle when she has such a gift for stealth. She could slip into an enemy camp and bite the general's nose before he knew she was there, and be gone again before he rubbed it. No brute who can swing a double-headed battle-axe with one hand and a sword in the other is ever going to be able to do what she does. One of the secrets to building a strong army, Nimia, is knowing which men suit best where.”

“I'll remember that, for when I'm building mine.”

He grinned. “I wouldn't put it past you. You do what needs doing, and to Hades with the consequences.” At my sharp glance, his grin dimmed. “Hit a sore spot there, did I? I didn't mean anything bad by it, girl. I blame Maerlin for what happened between you and Arthur, though doing so is like blaming the rain for falling.”

I knew Maerlin had told Brenn what had happened; they shared a bond of friendship that was nearly as deep as the one Maerlin had with Arthur. “I'm not sure Maerlin even understands why Arthur got so upset,” I said. “He was surprised by the depth of it; he thought it irrational.”

“That's blind even for Maerlin. Maybe a little
too
blind.”

“What do you mean?”

“Even Maerlin knows a man is going to be upset if his brother sleeps with his woman—even if the sleeping's done in an oak tree during some strange ritual I won't pretend to understand and don't really want to think about.”

My cheeks burned. “No, better that you don't,” I murmured. “You think he feels too guilty to admit to himself that what we did was hurtful to Arthur?”

“I think he might have wanted to be with you too much to care about the hurt it caused.”

“Maerlin?” I laughed. “No, you misunderstand. There's attraction, yes, but it's all physical, all part of being Phanne.”

“Maybe you wanted to be with him, too.”

“Yes, but only for this . . . this . . .” I waved my hand in the air, searching for words to make him understand. “The power—it's something that must be explored.”

“I won't deny that the winds grew stronger while you were . . . in the tree.” Plainly he'd rather not say exactly what we were doing in the tree.

“You know there's more to the power than that.”

“Do I? I've never felt it. How, then, can it be real to me? I'm a man of the solid earth; I know nothing of ‘powers.' And neither does Arthur.”

I knew he was trying to make me feel better, in a strange, backward way; that he meant to have me understand how impossible it was for Arthur to make the necessary mental leap to accept what had happened. For all that Maerlin and I could do, there was very little of it that could be seen and proved to be real. Most of Maerlin's gifts were products of his own ferocious intelligence. Even the prophecies we made were so vague that some might argue they were more imagination than real.

I thrashed about in my mind, searching for something that could make him understand, some words that would speak of my experience of being Phanne, and Maerlin's. And Una's, too, though she was just coming into her powers.

But what were words? Hollowness that could speak lies or truth, and the speaker might not even know which left her mouth. She could be as ignorant of what was real as the listener.

That only left one course: showing.

“We share blood,” I said.

Brenn lowered his chin in an accepting half nod. His copper eye squinted in suspicion. “So we do.”

I reached across the space between us, palm up. “Give me your hand.”

He shied. “What are you up to?”

I chuckled at the sight of fearsome Brenn, who made even seasoned warriors doubt their skill, cowering at the thought of taking my hand. “Not afraid of me, are you?”

“I'm scared enough of Maerlin and Una to know better than to think my own daughter might not have danger up her sleeve.”

I wiggled my fingers and raised my brow.

He puckered his mouth and laid his rough paw over mine, my hand disappearing inside his broad grip. It was like being held by a chunk of sun-warmed bark.

“I'm not very good at this yet,” I said by way of warning, and felt his arm jerk as if to draw away.

“There's not going to be blood spewing out my one good eye, is there? I won't fall off my horse? Soil myself?”

“Stop it,” I scolded. “I'm trying to concentrate.”

“Like it will make me feel better, knowing that? Now you can't concentrate. I'm going to come out all over in boils, aren't I?”

“
Brenn,
” I growled.

He made muttering noises, then squeezed my fingers and went quiet, our held hands pulling and relaxing as our mounts moved down the road in their rocking gait.

When I hadn't been too busy hating myself to be able to think over the past couple of months, I'd been trying to learn how to contact those with whom I shared blood, or the men I had been with. Terix had offered to let me practice with him, but I could sense how it unnerved him, to know I might be peering into his mind without his knowledge. It was far more comfortable to work on my skill with Maerlin, who knew when I was mentally reaching for him and knew how to protect any part of himself he did not wish me to see.

I'd tried as well to reach Clovis. Arthur. My son, Theo. Even Alaric, in far-off Tolosa, and Jax the pirate, who might be anywhere upon the seas. I hadn't the skill yet to see any of them, though. There were glimpses, fleeting images and emotions, but I couldn't be sure I had truly seen that moment of a delighted Theo grasping at and pulling Basina's silver-streaked hair; of Jax feeling a rush of bloody pleasure as he stepped onto the deck of a galley just conquered; of Clovis sitting alone with a flagon of wine, loathing the thought of his Christian betrothed, Clothilde, and remembering with longing and regret the feel of my body against his, and silently fueling a hurt anger that I had left him.