The Golden Apple (9 page)

He made a noise, a gurgle, as if trying to speak, and then shook his head, cleared his throat. “What are you doing here?”

“Where am I?”

“My stronghold. In my dungeons.”

She thought he would step closer, but he did not, staying on the second last step. His eyes flicked from the wild magic, back to her.

“I wonder why it brought me here?” Kayla reached out a hand, casually, as if making nothing more than a gesture, and her hand slipped through the curtain of light. She could feel the warmer air of the forest on the back of her hand, the gentle stroke of the wind. Would it let her back through?

“It…brought you?” Eric scowled.

“I certainly didn’t have anything to do with it.” Kayla turned back to him, drawing herself up.

“That is very interesting. I wonder…” Eric extended a hand, as if she should take it. Come closer to him.

She did not move.

Fast as the viper he was, he stepped forward and grabbed her wrist, jerking her back with him to the stairs. He held her close, close enough for her to smell the curious mix of herbs and wood smoke on him. But underlying it all, there was something else. The cold, sour smell of deep, dark places.

Kayla looked down at where his hand manacled her wrist, and then up at his face.

There was a flush of color on his cheeks, and he was breathing hard. “Perhaps you were thinking of me, hmm? Perhaps that’s why you are here?”

Kayla jerked her arm, hard. “No.”

“I have certainly been thinking of you.” Eric tightened his grip, lifted his other hand and stroked her cheek.

Kayla flinched back.

“Not saving yourself for De’Villier, are you?” Eric smiled. “The heroic savior who was only after the apple, not the princess.”

Kayla went still.

“I know about you, Kayla of Gaynor.” Eric’s words were sly. “I know the secret your father tried so hard to hide. My only mistake was underestimating the lengths he would go to keep you from me without showing his hand.”

Her throat closed, and Kayla had to force out her response. “What do you know?”

Eric laughed. “How innocent you look. I must commend you, but witches are duplicitous, aren’t they? You take after your kind so well.”

“Witches.” She repeated the word, flat and expressionless.

“Your dear, departed mother, of course, although like you she was untrained, and your paternal grandmother. With power from both sides, I’ve had my eye on you for quite some time. Your heritage shines out of you. But I cannot believe the restraint you’ve shown.” He twisted her arm painfully, looking at her inner wrist, and shook his head. “I don’t know if it’s a sign of outstanding control, or total ineptitude. But we shall see, won’t we?”

She stamped down on every emotion swirling within, every question, and forced her eyebrows up. Forced her words to be cool and biting. “What did you have in mind?”

Eric fingered a strand of her hair, pushed it off her face, and it took everything in her not to jerk away. “I think you can guess.” He lowered his mouth to her ear. “You’ve been so obliging, turning away suitor after suitor, giving me time to build up my power. Then came De’Villier. He managed to impress you because he let you do the work, am I right? Let you think you were in control. But with me, you can have all the control you have ever wished for. More power than your father, more power than any other in Middleland.”

How little he understood. “Power through you?” She let a little of the scorn she was feeling slip into her question.

“You are hardly going to harness it on your own. I know you are…uninitiated.” He gave the word a sexual innuendo. He dipped his head even lower, nuzzled her throat, leaving her gasping for breath at her vulnerability. She could feel the edge of his teeth, just beneath the softness of his mouth.

“The world will be at your feet.” His whisper teased the shell of her ear, and she shivered.

His hand still held her wrist as viciously as before. The warm, gentle touch of his lips and the steel of his grip deepened her sense of violation.

She lifted her own hand, touched his face to bring his eyes back to hers.

“Kiss me,” she whispered.

He laughed, a throaty sound of triumph, and released her wrist at last, lifting his hands to her shoulders to draw her closer.

In that sliver of a moment she was unrestrained, she dropped straight down in a crouch, spun, and dived headlong through the wild magic doorway.

* * *

Rane approached the wild magic cautiously. He’d seen it glimmering ahead, and with a sense of inevitability, of foreboding, he made his way towards it.

It had formed a thin oval, like a mirror, and as he came closer, it spun, so he was presented with the thin, almost invisible, side view.

The movement was furtive, as if it were hiding something from him. He moved right, and again it spun away.

Anger spiked in his chest, and he feinted right a second time, then leapt left. He found himself staring straight at a strangely lit Eric the Bold. Eric’s head was thrown back, as if in triumph, but already, as Rane watched, he saw the beginnings of a frown.

He realized why a moment later, when Kayla of Gaynor leapt from the pale-green tinted image within the wild magic, into his arms.

The instant Kayla was through, the wild magic crumpled in on itself, forming its usual ball. It spun, lifted off the ground, and flew away.

Kayla struggled against him, and he realized he was holding her tight, as if Eric could lean through some magic window and grab her back. He set her down.

“What was that?”

She was breathing hard, her hands shaking. She lifted fingers to her forehead, and pushed back the hair that had fallen over her eyes.

He could see the dark red marks of a man’s grip on her wrist.

“The wild magic. It formed that mirror thing and came straight at me. Sent me to Eric’s dungeon.”

She leant over, hands on her knees and breathed deeply.

Rane was unable to say anything. Eric’s dungeon?

Kayla lifted her head. “Eric was surprised. And scared.” She straightened. “He wouldn’t come near it.”

“Why did he have that look on his face?” Rane saw her hands tug at her shirt, smooth back her hair.

“What look?” She glanced at him, but he knew she’d understood what he meant.

He didn’t answer, kept his gaze steady on her.

She made a sound, exasperated. “He thought I’d decided to take what he offered.”

“And what had he offered?” Rane realized he was knocking his fist hard against his thigh, and forced his arm still.

Kayla’s eyes were serious, worried. “Everything.” She spun away, began down the path back to the camp, but stopped after two steps. Turned. “And nothing.”

She looked so stricken, so small, he understood there was more to it than that. Eric had done something to her. Told her something, or threatened her, and she was not going to tell him what.

With a curse, he strode forward, gripped her shoulders.

“What did he say to you?” He just resisted shaking her, forcing his fingers to hold her lightly.

He expected her to shout, or put on the cool, untouchable royal look she’d used since she realized he’d betrayed her. But she did neither.

Instead, a tear spilled from her eye, and ran down her cheek, and her lips trembled.

“What did he say to you?” He said it gently this time, let his hands fall from her shoulders.

She shook her head. Drew herself up. “He assumed I knew things…that I did not know. He could be lying, but I don’t think so. If he’s right, my parents lied to me, and kept things from me. But he doesn’t know that, and so he thinks he understands me. That he knows what I want.”

“And does he?” Rane stepped back, putting a little distance between them.

Her gaze flew to his, and held. She looked five years old. Lost. “No.” She took a step towards him, and suddenly she didn’t look five years old any more. She lifted her face and her lips brushed his, light, tentative. “He doesn’t understand me at all.”

Chapter Thirteen

I
t was the kiss Kayla should have given Rane earlier. The kiss she had wanted but her pride and her caution had refused to let her take.

Eric thought she wanted power, but really, all she wanted was the right to determine her own path. And the only one who’d ever helped her with that was Rane.

His response, immediate, completely serious, set her whole body trembling with anticipation. She’d felt the full force of his concentration once before. Her body sang at the thought of receiving it again.

He did not hold her, did not touch her, the only point of contact was their lips.

It made her skin unbearably sensitive. Every brush of forest breeze, every flutter of her clothes, teased her.

When he stepped back, she thought it was to take her in his arms, but when she opened her eyes, he was staring at her, his face a tight mask.

“What is it?” She heard herself speak as if from far off, as if she were waking from a dream.

“What do you want from me?” His voice was stark, the deep timbre of it fraying at the edges.

“Want?” She blinked, feeling stupid.

“Whatever we did together that night in your chamber, whatever your father has given me right to, the fact remains, princess, I am a woodsman. What do you want of me?”

She could not recall ever being at such a loss. She brought her hands together, stared at her intertwined fingers. What did she want of him, specifically? “I don’t know.”

He said nothing, but his jaw bunched and his hands and arms were clenched so tight, she could see the muscles, the tendons, standing out.

The silence went on for a beat. Then another. At last, she turned and started back to the camp. She could feel his eyes on her, like an itch between her shoulder blades.

And running through her head with every step she took away from him was the thought that he was the only one to ask her what she wanted since this nightmare began.

* * *

Rane had always been the thinker, the calm, deliberate one in his family. The one who used his muscle only when necessary, his brains all the time. Soren had the hotter head, the more impulsive nature.

But now, Rane wished his brains to the darkest corners of hell.

Kayla walked ahead of him, just as she had last night, after he’d brought their kiss to an abrupt halt. Every swing of her hair, pulled into a thick tail hanging down her back, every sway of her hips in their blue cotton trousers, was a brutal reminder of what he could have had, if only he’d kept his mouth shut and let his heart take over from his head.

When he’d asked his question last night, she’d looked stricken. As if she’d betrayed herself.

He’d forced her to think far too much.

Now, even the easing of the enchantment, from a death grip to the firm, gentle hold of a lioness on her cub’s neck, could not lighten either of their moods. At least they were nearing their goal. Rane did not believe the enchantment would give them this respite unless they were.

The wind picked up again, bringing a welcome stir in the hot air, mixing up the forest scents so the overriding smell in his nostrils was green.

It cooled the sweat on his arms and neck, but the rattle and hiss of dead leaves blowing, and the sigh and creak of the trees, was dangerous. Anything could approach them, unheard, over the waterfall of sound.

Wild magic was almost impossible to see in the faint gloom of the forest by daylight, and he’d felt eyes on them for the last half hour. He didn’t even try to persuade himself he was mistaken.

Something leapt, sinister and dark, from a tree to their right.

Rane closed the distance between himself and Kayla before she could even cry out, stepping in front of her, his knife in his hand.

He did not look down at the blade, but he knew it glimmered in the gloom. It was one of the only reasons he had to be grateful to wild magic. His knife had saved his life more than once.

“What was it?” Kayla stepped out from behind him, and he saw she’d picked up a stick from the forest floor.

“Do we want to know?”

She shrugged. “It’s been following us for a while.”

Irritation tugged at him. “Why didn’t you say something?”

She spared him a sideways glance. “You knew already. I saw you looking for it.”

There was a flash of a dark body, flitting from one tree to another at ground level, and Rane knew whatever it was, it was fast and sleek.

They had only been standing still a minute or less, and already the enchantment clamped them with a heavier hold. Rane felt a sense of desperation rising in his chest, and he tried to shut it out. He needed all his wits in this.

The wind dropped, and silence settled on them like a down coverlet.

A bush rustled, and Rane tensed, moving forward, ready for anything.

Something jumped, not at him, but over him. He caught a glimpse of black fur, and he had the sense of it twisting in the air, like a cat.