The Assassin's Destiny (Isle of Dreams) (40 page)

Fabian raised the brass knocker
on the door and let it fall with a heavy thud, ‘Unlike your brothers I assume.’

Mistral glanced at him, wishing she’d
kept her mouth shut, ‘They may have teased me about being eligible to wear
white at our wedding … nothing too offensive,’ she assured him quickly.

Fabian gave a terse nod but his
silence spoke volumes.  Mistral could tell that he was still far from impressed
with her brothers.  It wasn’t just this latest incident, more a whole
string of events that seemed to result in her ending up in some
life-threatening situation every time.  She was about to launch into a
long-winded defence but was stopped by the door being opened by a sour-faced
woman dressed in a severely cut black dress.

‘Mage Grapple is expecting you
Mage De Winter, Lady De Winter.’  she nodded politely and stepped aside to
allow Fabian and Mistral to enter Mage Grapple’s house.

‘I hate being called that!’ 
Mistral hissed under her breath to Fabian.

‘Why do you think I never used
the title?’ he murmured back. 

‘Can’t you tell them not to call
me it?’ she breathed while they followed what was obviously Mage Grapple’s
housekeeper across the entrance hall and down a long corridor.

‘What would you prefer?  Mrs
De Winter?’

Mistral shot him a black look,
‘You know what, I’m not sure I’d have said yes quite so easily if I’d known it
was going to be about being called ridiculous names!’ 

Fabian smiled, ‘Why do you think
I organised the wedding so quickly?’ 

‘I’d never change my mind about
you.’  Mistral whispered back quickly.  ‘Just the damned title that
you conveniently hid from me till it was too late.’

‘What can I say?  You
married a thief and an assassin.’ 

‘I married the man I love.’
 Mistral corrected.  ‘The rest is just a bonus.’

They paused outside a heavy oak
door and waited while the housekeeper knocked and entered.  Fabian
suddenly turned, holding her with a look of such irrefutable love that she felt
the air escape her lungs in a single rush, leaving her staring, breathless and
senseless.

‘I found this outside the
cellar.’  Fabian pressed something cold into her hands.

She frowned down at the object in
her hands and let out a gasp of joy, ‘My dagger!’

‘I was going to give it to you
this morning but I thought it would be best if you enjoyed the pleasure of
Melsina’s company unarmed – ’

‘Mage Grapple will see you alone
first Mage De Winter.  If you could follow me please, Lady De Winter.’

Mistral shot Fabian a pained look
at the repeated use of her new title but he merely smiled and walked quickly
through the door into Mage Grapple’s private study.

The housekeeper led Mistral to a
small room, sparsely furnished with two functional rather than comfortable
looking chairs and a low table.

‘May I offer you some refreshment
La –’

‘No, thank you.’  Mistral
said quickly.

The housekeeper nodded politely
and left, leaving Mistral alone with her thoughts until Fabian returned.

Walking over to one of the
chairs, Mistral poked the uncomfortable looking seat experimentally and found
it was as rock-hard as its appearance suggested.  She sighed and began to
patrol the small room, forcing her mind to focus on the spartan decor, on the
uncomfortable item of clothing Melsina had wedged her into, on Fabian’s
expression when he had looked at her just now … on anything she could to
prevent her mind drifting back to the agonising images Golden had submitted her
to.

Balling her fists in sudden fury,
she swore an undying oath to kill her.  Soon.  Lost in a bloody
daydream of revenge, Mistral barely noticed the time passing until the door
suddenly opened and Fabian walked into the room.  She noted instantly that
his expression was tense.  Perhaps their meeting hadn’t gone well. 

‘Is he ready for me now?’ 
she asked quietly.

He reached out to take hold of
both of her hands, ‘In a minute.  We need to talk first.’

Mistral was instantly anxious,
‘What about?’

‘Eximius has issued a contract on
Putreo.’

‘Alive or dead?’

‘Dead.’

Mistral nodded, her face hard,
‘Good.  Who’s taken it?’

‘I have.’

Mistral’s bloody daydream leapt
to the forefront of her mind once more, ‘Even better!  When do we
leave?’    

Fabian gazed at her with velvet
eyes so soft and deep that Mistral felt like she was falling into pools of dark
water.  Treacherous.  Drowning her.

‘Oh, no!  No!
 NO!  You promised!  You
swore
–’

‘Mistral.’

But Mistral didn’t hear him, she
was shouting, her eyes wide with anger and panic, ‘You swore to me Fabian! 
You swore that you wouldn’t leave me!’ 

‘Mistral.’  Fabian gently
curled his hands around her face, holding her angry glare, forcing her to keep
looking at him.  ‘I cannot let you go with me.  It is too dangerous
for you to leave the Isle right now.  You must understand that.’

‘I won’t let you go without
me!  You
swore
that you wouldn’t leave me!  Do you break all
your promises so easily?’ 

A shadow of pain crossed Fabian’s
face but he continued to gaze into her eyes, ‘No.  I will never break a
promise I make to you.  I will be with you always.  We are as one
Mistral, I can never be without you, nor you without me, we are a part of each
other.’

Mistral stared at him, wretched
with desperation, ‘Then don’t leave me.’

‘I will not leave you
unprotected.’

‘I don’t want you here to protect
me!  I want you here because I love you!  Don’t you dare go
Fabian!’ 

He said nothing but continued to
hold her gaze with his own.

Abruptly changing tactics,
Mistral began to plead with him in a low voice, imploring him with her eyes
while she spoke.

‘Let another warrior take the
Contract!  The Rochfortes are hated by most of the Ri, there’ll be no
shortage of takers!’

Fabian shook his head slowly, his
gaze never leaving hers, ‘I need to see Putreo dead with my own eyes.  I
have to know that he can never hurt you again.’

‘But – but –’ Mistral cast around
desperately for a new argument.  ‘But … you no longer take assassination
Contracts!’  she finally cried. 

‘The Contract is
immaterial.  I will simply be paid for something I was going to do
anyway.’

Mistral breathed in deeply and
closed her eyes, forcing herself to speak calmly, ‘I spent the last two days in
hell, locked in a cellar and forced to watch you die over and over again until
I didn’t think it was possible to still keep feeling more pain.’  Mistral
opened her eyes again to look up at him beseechingly.  ‘And now you’re
telling me that what I saw might come true?  You can’t!  I won’t let
you!  There’s no way I’m letting you out of my sight!’

‘Sight is precisely why I must go
and you must stay.’  Fabian frowned.  ‘You must master your
gift.  It is imperative to the future of the Isle, and more importantly,
to our future –’

‘Damn the Isle!  And damn my
cursed gift to hell!  If you go without me I swear I will stop even trying
to master it!’

Fabian brushed her angry tears
away then kissed her rigid lips until she no longer resisted.

‘Please don’t go.’  she
whispered, hating how weak her voice sounded.

‘Eximius has offered to cast a protective
spell over you while I am away.’  Fabian murmured against her hair. 
‘It will keep you safe from all other spells.’

‘I don’t want a damned spell cast
on me!’  Mistral exclaimed, struggling to pull away from him.  ‘I
want you!’

Fabian sighed and closed his
eyes, his brow furrowed with emotion, ‘Please Mistral, don’t make this harder
for me than it already is.’

‘Then take me with you!’

Fabian drew in a sharp breath,
‘Putreo has probably fled to the Rochforte tribe in France.  They would be
only too delighted if I saved them the effort of kidnapping you again and
simply delivered you.  In fact, I could even put a bow on you to make you
look like even more of a gift!’

Mistral glared at him, anger
flooding through her once more, ‘You can’t go!  No!  I refuse to –’

‘To what?  Face up to the
responsibility you have been avoiding for your entire life?’ a cold voice rang
out from behind them.

She spun furiously to meet the
grey stare of Mage Grapple.  He paused in the doorway, eyeing her
appraisingly before striding into the room.

‘I have to say, Lady De Winter,
that you actually befit your title.’

Mistral ignored the compliment
and narrowed her eyes, ‘Why did you offer Fabian the Contract?  You knew
he wouldn’t refuse!’

Mage Grapple raised a scarred
eyebrow, ‘I shall overlook that fact that you are querying me on my judgement,’
he paused and looked at her steadily.  ‘In answer to your ill-thought
question, I offered the Contract to De Winter because, despite my frustration
at his refusal to honour the Craft in his bloodline, I have respect for his
abilities as a warrior.  He is efficient, discrete and professional. 
I also knew that he would kill Count Darke anyway so to send two assassins
would be pointless.’

Mistral flinched at the use of
the word assassin.  She hated to think of Fabian in that way. 
Fabian.  She looked at him now, the assassin once more. 

‘Lady De Winter.’

Mistral ignored Mage Grapple and
kept her gaze locked on Fabian’s, begging him with her eyes to change his mind.

‘I want you to accept the
protection I offer.  I assure you that you will be completely unaware of
its presence.  You must return to the Valley and continue with your
training.  You are in the second year of an apprenticeship to the Ri and
so far, as I understand it, you have done little more than lurch from one
disaster to another without managing to progress at all with harnessing the
power of your gift.’

‘I hope you are not referring to
my marriage as a disaster!’  Mistral snapped before she could restrain
herself.

Mage Grapple regarded her icily,
‘Do not try my patience!  I refer to your professional life, not
personal!’

‘Well the two seemed to be
inseparable to me!’  Mistral shouted, suddenly enraged.  Ignoring
Fabian’s warning grip on her hands she glared furiously at Mage Grapple. 
‘Why, if my personal life is so damned
personal
does everyone insist on
knowing all about it?  I am sick and tired of being forced to live apart
from Fabian in order to try and master some cursed gift I don’t even
want!  All the time with the pressure of you and Leo just waiting for me
to become a Seer and obediently help you both to achieve your damned
ambitions!  I don’t care about the Sight and I certainly don’t want it!’
 

Mage Grapple met her heated glare
calmly, ‘What do you want Lady De Winter?’

Mistral glowered at him for a
second longer then drew in a deep breath, ‘I want a life with Fabian.’

Mage Grapple nodded, ‘Then we
want the same things.’

‘I can assure you we
don’t!’  Mistral said with feeling.

Mage Grapple laughed, a sound so
completely out place with his austere appearance that at first Mistral didn’t
recognise it and stared at him uncertainly, wondering if she had actually made
him so angry that he was having a seizure.

‘I agree, I probably don’t feel
the same way about De Winter as you do,’ he said mildly.  ‘However, you
want a life with your husband.  You are, forgive me, a half-breed?’

Mistral shrugged and avoided his
gaze.  Her bloodline was an open debate that she didn’t want to enter into
at that precise moment.

‘Then you appreciate that the
Rochfortes would remove every trace of your existence from the Isle and have
the stain your blood left on the ground scrubbed away too.  You would
never be permitted to be with a Mage.  If you so desperately want the life
you have committed yourself to you must fight for it –’

‘Fight I can do!’  Mistral
burst.  ‘But the Sight!  It’s –  it’s – ’ she faltered, at a
loss for words to describe how it felt to spend hours and hours forcing her
mind to seek for something she didn’t even know where to start looking for.

‘Hard to achieve?’  Mage
Grapple suggested coldly.  ‘Why does that surprise you?  The Divinus
is the only living Seer on the Isle and has been for the last two hundred
years.  Sight is an incredibly rare gift, although I agree that the word
gift implies that it is something that is given and easily received, which, as
you are aware, is far from the truth.

‘There are many ways to fight,
Lady De Winter, not just with your fists and your swords or with words, but
with your mind too.  You must have strength, determination, conviction and
above all, the desire to attain control of the gift that lies within you. 
If the Divinus passes before we have another Seer on the Isle we will be open
to countless plots and subterfuge that will threaten the freedom of the
sanctuary I have fought so hard to preserve.’

Mistral stared at the face before
her, ravaged with scars from the countless battles he had fought in his
struggle to unify the warring tribes and bring peace to the Isle.  But
more than physical scars, Mage Grapple’s cold nature was evidence of a deeper,
less visible wound; a result of losing the woman he loved giving birth to his
child.  A child that he still believed to this day was also dead. 
Fabian’s mother had been his lover and unbeknown to him, Leo was his son.

Mistral felt her anger drain away
in the face of such sacrifice and commitment to what Mage Grapple obviously
believed to be a more important cause than his own happiness.  She felt
shamed and belittled by her actions; a petulant child throwing a tantrum
because she couldn’t have what she wanted.  She looked at Mage Grapple
with a chastened expression on her face.