The Lady of the Storm - 2 (35 page)

“I have been a fool. But you know that, don’t you? I just hope you will forgive me. Wake up, dearest, so I can tell you what a dolt I’ve been. You would enjoy that, wouldn’t you?”

Her eyelashes did not flutter. Her face looked serene and peaceful. Giles kissed her, but apparently he did not have the magic of a prince, for it did not wake her.

She still held on to the scepter as if it had been welded to her skin.

“I will not allow you to suffer because of me. You will wake and you will be whole. But… but if you are not…” His throat closed and he could not continue. But Giles knew he would not abandon her, as she had not abandoned him when he’d been touched by that wild magic. He would not allow her to push him away. He would feed her if she could not do it herself. He would dress her, care for her. Nothing would come between them ever again.

He would love her unconditionally. As Cecily had always loved him.

Giles gently covered her with a rough blanket, and began the task of assessing his own injuries, stripping off his clothing and tossing them in a corner atop Cecily’s. Their cabin was small, containing little more than a bed and a cabinet that latched, and a lantern hanging from the beam in a ceiling so low that Giles had to keep his head ducked. He did not have much room to maneuver, and it became worse when the ship began to sway even more as the captain left the dock in the dead of night.

But he managed to get washed, and it appeared his hand had suffered the worst. He bound it with a clean cloth and glanced at the clothing the captain had provided them. Seamen’s clothes that would be too small for him, and would manage to swallow Cecily whole.

Giles sat on the edge of the bed and brushed the hair away from her cheek.

“I love you,” he said.

Her eyelids flew open. Panic and fright. He could not tell if madness lay in them.

He brushed his fingers against her hair with a gentle but firm touch, as he had soothed Apollo when he’d forced the horse into the ship’s hold. “It’s all right, Cecily.”

“Where am I?”

“You are on the
Argonaut
. You are safe.”

Her eyes grew enormous as she gazed around the tiny cabin. “The elven lord?”

Giles breathed a sigh of relief. She remembered. “He is alive. But Kalah said… Do you know who I am?”

“Don’t be a goose. Of course I know who you are.”

“Can you release the scepter?”

Cecily looked at her hand in surprise. Her fingers twitched. “They’re cramped.”

“Indeed.” Giles stood and gathered her stays, the only piece of clothing that had managed to survive their battle relatively unscathed. “Can you drop it in here?”

Cecily shuddered. “Gladly.” But it took her several minutes to unlock her fingers enough to drop it in the garment. Giles used the laces to tie it into a bundle and stored it in the cabinet, giving the latch a firm tug to close it.

Cecily sat up, holding the blanket over her chest, shaking her hand back to life. “Why did you ask if I knew you?”

Giles resumed his seat. “The dragon said that you and your father had injured each other, in a way that might have… addled your mind. Thank God you seem unaffected. But Breden of Dewhame. It appeared that he got the worst of it.”

Cecily slumped. “I did not want… do you see why I have rejected that power all these years?”

“You did it to save my life,” murmured Giles.

“I remember,” she whispered. For a moment, madness flickered in her eyes and Giles feared for her. Until he realized he but saw the power of the storm. “I called the lightning. I felt it course through my body, my soul. It filled me with a might that compelled me to set it free. To destroy, to burn…” She shuddered. “I felt it when my father attacked me with his own power, but the scepter protected me. It wants to go home…”

“What do you mean?”

She shook her head, tears filling her eyes. “I don’t know. I didn’t want to know. I did not want the thing whispering its secrets to me.”

Giles leaned forward and folded her in his arms, placed his mouth against her hair. “Hush. It is all over now. You have done a great service for the Rebellion. When we pass the barrier, the scepter will no longer have any power over you. Indeed, you shall have no power at all.”

She pulled away from him, looked up into his face. “I have tried to deny it all my life, so it will be no great hardship for me. But you… you have always wanted to serve the Rebellion. I suppose you shall return to England after the ship leaves me in Wales?”

The thought of ever being parted from her again made him crush her to his chest. “I think I shall enjoy a good fight without the interference of the curse on my sword.” His devil-blade hummed an angry protest from beneath the pile of their ragged clothing. “I imagine that I can still serve the Rebellion in Wales. They will need me to protect you and the scepter, at the very least. And our children will need a father to teach them of our enslaved land. I want you to marry me, Cecily. That is… if you can forgive me.”

She tried to say something, but her words were muffled against his chest.

“I vowed to tell you what a fool I’ve been. I owe you that, and more. I should never have doubted your love for me. I was a fool to think a woman’s love could be weaker than a man’s. I took my own insecurities out on you, and I shall happily spend the rest of my life making atonement for it.”

Giles relaxed his hold, placed his finger beneath her chin and tilted her head up to look at him, gazing into those faceted eyes, knowing that she held his soul within their depths. “I love you more than life itself. Can you forgive me?”

“Yes. I forgive you for all the nights we’ve wasted apart from one another. But you shall have to start making up for them. Now.”

Giles lowered his head. “Your wish is my command,” he breathed against her lips. And then covered them with his own. Cecily’s arms flew around his shoulders, pressing them even closer together, if that were possible. He uncovered the rest of her glorious body, tossing the blanket on the floor and lowering her down to the bed. He had only one hand to touch her with, although he managed to use the fingers of his right to good purpose.

Cecily moaned and arched her back. Magnificent lady.

Giles covered her body with his, maneuvering on the small bed with all the elven skill he had. He stroked her breasts with his tongue while his hand stroked the nub between her legs, until he felt she was wet and ready enough to join with him.

And then he did not hesitate.

With one smooth movement he thrust inside of her and gasped while she moaned. Slick, tight heat. She dug her fingers into his back, pushing him against her, giving him the permission he badly desired.

Giles possessed her with a fury of need that had him pounding into her faster than the rocking of the ship. That had her calling out his name, thrashing her head and straining against him.

Giles strove to get inside of her as deeply as he could. Until he could not tell where he began and she ended. Until they became one in body as they were in mind, heart, and soul.

His pleasure washed over him as furiously as their lovemaking, Cecily crying out as her climax peaked with his. They drifted down to earth together, two beings as one.

Giles lowered his head and kissed her open mouth. “We became one long ago, didn’t we? I was just too dunderheaded to know it.”

Cecily smoothed the hair back from his face, coaxing it to lie over his shoulders. Giles did not flinch from her stare. She did not think him ugly. She never would.

“Hush, love,” she whispered. “We have both been wrong about many things. But now… now we have it right.”

Giles slid beside her, tucking her body half over his so they would both fit on the small bunk. He felt the smile upon his face and knew Cecily spoke the truth.

Their love might be the only right thing about their world.

But nothing else truly mattered.

***

A few hours later Giles awoke to early morning sunlight streaming through the open porthole, Cecily standing divinely naked in the middle of the cabin, small globes of water dancing through the window to twirl about her.

Giles crossed his arms behind his head and watched her play, a grin curving his mouth.

“You know,” she said, after giving him a coy glance. “Now that I have discovered the joys of my magic, I think I will miss it.”

The spheres reflected bits of sunlight within their depths, scintillating colors of the rainbow. They rollicked about the cabin, along the beamed ceiling, about Cecily’s head and shoulders. Tiny dots of sparkling diamonds in swirling patterns, expressing her joy and happiness with a cluster here, bursting into a ray of stars, and a pattern there, twirling in a cyclone.

“We can always return to England.”

She made a face. “I shan’t miss it
that
much.

He laughed. “Come here, my little sorceress. I don’t think I’ve finished making up for all the nights we missed together.”

She made a pattern around his head, tickled his nose with a drop of moisture. “There, I have made a crown for you. Such a handsome face deserves to be crowned.”

And she meant it. Giles saw the admiration in her eyes, the draw of his physical beauty. She did not see, did not care about—

Suddenly her small spheres of water fell about them like rain, spattering the wooden planks and thoroughly soaking them both.

“What happened?” sputtered Cecily.

“We have crossed the barrier.” Giles kneeled on the bed and looked out the porthole, as if he could see a difference. But the magical boundary the elven lords used to keep England cut off from the rest of the world was invisible, and it did not look any different on this side of it.

He turned around and studied his love. “Do you feel any different?”

She shrugged. “I can’t… feel the ocean anymore. It has always seemed to pulse in my veins.”

Cecily looked bewildered. A bit lost. And entirely liberated.

Giles slid off the bed and crouched, felt for his sword beneath the pile of clothing. It did not jump into his hand. It did not whine for blood.

“It’s just a hunk of metal,” he murmured, looking down at his blade, his hair falling over his shoulders and hiding his expression from Cecily. His sword had always aided him in his quest for revenge… and yet had always been a burden. “I am free.”

He heard Cecily rise and open the cabinet, the rustle of cloth as she removed the scepter from its bindings. “It still hums,” she said, “but so weakly I can barely feel it. It cannot overpower my will, but simply lure it. Still, I think I would rather not touch it.” She wrapped it back up. “I wonder what Sir Robert will say when we write and tell him we have stolen the scepter and removed it from England?”

Giles set down his lifeless sword. “Even more interesting is that Fletcher managed to touch it without harm. I’m sure Sir Robert will realize that
any
of the scepters can now be stolen, and the thief does not need the power to wield it to do so.” He looked up at Cecily. “I predict the theft of many more scepters over the next few years.”

She closed the cabinet and turned to look at him. Her mouth dropped opened, and she staggered back against the bed, falling atop the rumpled linens.

“Giles,” she gasped.

He frowned. She stared at him now in the same way that strangers gaped at his blemished face.

“What?” he demanded.

“The mark. It’s… it’s gone.”

He held up a hand to his cheek, even knowing he would feel nothing. He did not need a mirror. Cecily’s face told it all.

“It wasn’t a physical deformity,” she continued. “It was created with naught but wild magic—”

“And we are beyond the bounds of magic,” he finished.

Giles did not feel particularly altered by the sudden change. He no longer cared about the mark on his face. Cecily had taught him that love lay within the heart, and he would never forget it again. He tossed the hair back from his face and advanced toward her on hands and knees, a low growl of pleasure deep in his throat. “So I am back to my old handsome self. But the question is: will you still love me?”

She held out her arms to him. “Come and see.”

About the Author

Kathryne Kennedy is an award-winning author acclaimed for her world building and known for blending genres to create groundbreaking stories.
The Lady of the Storm
is the second book in her magical new series, The Elven Lords, following
The Fire Lord’s Lover
. Look for book three,
The Lord of Illusion
, coming to bookstores soon. She’s lived in Guam, Okinawa, and several states in the United States, and currently lives in Arizona with her wonderful family—which includes two very tiny Chihuahuas. She loves to hear from readers, and welcomes you to visit her website where she has ongoing contests at: www.KathryneKennedy.com.

An excerpt from

The Lord of Illusion