The Passion (36 page)

"Why?" I demanded hoarsely. And again: "
Why
?"

She lifted a face to me that was white and disfigured with pain, streaked with wetness and stiff with effort.

She spoke at last. "Because," she answered in a smal broken voice, "I loved you."

Oh, for an explanation of this thing humans cal love. It persuades them to commit the most vile offenses—to lie, cheat, steal, and murder—but cannot endure the simple trials of fidelity or child-rearing. It seeks, more often than not, to serve itself and imprison its mate; it can excuse any wrongdoing or shortcoming, it overrides justice and common sense. It does not, in fact, bear any resemblance at al to the emotion we know as love and seems to me a very dangerous thing. Yet we must al ow that, for humans, it does exist. And for poor Tessa, who never understood at al what its consequences might be, love was the only explanation she required.

I stared at her for a long time, sickened and uncomprehending, al of the fight gone out of me.

Then I sensed the guards behind me and, with a smal gesture, signal ed them to take her away.

I watched them drag her from the room, for by now she was only half conscious, and my heart swel ed to bursting with sorrow. More than trust died that night, more than love. As Tessa LeGuerre, assassin, human, was pul ed from that room and from the deepest, secret chambers of my affection, I watched the demise of a dream, and a future that was never meant to be.

TESSA

Chapter Twenty

The place where they took her was reminiscent of the legends Tessa had heard as a child of dungeons deep and strong, yet it was infinitely worse. Worse because it was real, and worse because it was happening to her.

She was awash in a sea of throbbing, swel ing pain; pain that robbed her of cognizance and logic and care for anything except that pain. She did not recal most of the journey to her cel , except that it was down several flights of stairs; this she knew only because she fel many times, sometimes tumbling down half a flight or more before the hands would jerk her to her feet again and the pain would explode so fiercely she lost consciousness.

The room was cavernous and smel ed of age and earth and death. There were no gas lights and when the guards lifted their electric torches Tessa had a dim, swirling impression of metal bars half a foot thick, of chains forged from iron so heavy they could have anchored a ship, and her mind recoiled from imagining the kinds of creatures these devices were designed to restrain. But the worst was not the cages or the chains. The worst was the narrow, forged iron box into which they forced her, forced her even though she cried out and struggled, for the first time in her panic breaking her own personal vow and screaming out Alexander's name. They threw her into the box as though she were no more than a bundle of cast-off rags, and the force of the impact caused red lights of agony to burst behind her eyes. The last thing she heard before she passed out was the echoing clang of the heavy door slamming shut.

After that there was timelessness and pain, blackness and cold. So cold. It was no longer than a few moments, and it was a lifetime. When she heard the turning of a key, the creaking of a hinge, she thought she was hal ucinating. She looked up through a haze of agony as the great iron door swung open, and was momentarily blinded by the light.

She turned her face away, squeezing her eyes closed against the stabbing shard of pain, and when she opened them again, Elise Devoncroix was kneeling before her. On one side of her was a huge, shaggy gray-and-brown wolf whose wild-fur scent fil ed the narrow space and whose sharp gold eyes were alert and merciless. On the other side stood a man of massive musculature and size, whose single hand could have snapped Tessa's neck effortlessly.

He, too, watched her with eyes that would like to kil .

Elise had a smal blue vial in her hand, which she uncorked and offered to Tessa. "Drink," she commanded. "It wil ease the pain."

But Tessa just stared at her, breathing hard. She made no move to take the vial.

A flicker of angry impatience crossed Elise's eyes. "I won't poison you," she said. "Although it would be a mercy for you if I did, considering what lies ahead of you. We do not execute humans, Tessa," she said coldly. "We merely make them wish that we did."

In a moment Tessa took the vial with a badly trembling hand and lifted it to her lips. She drank the sweet black liquid down, and even as she swal owed felt the warmth spreading along her nerve pathways, smoothing away pain the way a hot iron smooths away wrinkles. The absence of the agony was dizzying.

Elise watched the relaxation of the muscles of her face, the clearing of her eyes, and when the potion had done its job she nodded in satisfaction. She reached for Tessa's broken arm and spent a few moments deftly probing and manipulating, rearranging mangled bones. Tessa felt nothing except the gentle pressure of Elise's fingers on her flesh, the warmth and the skil of them. When she was finished she splinted the arm between two flat pieces of wood and tied it close to Tessa's chest in a sling. "It wil heal, eventual y," she said disinterestedly, "although it may not be as much use to you as it was before."

She sat back on her heels and regarded Tessa with quiet blue eyes and a face that revealed nothing.

Her hair was tied back at the nape, and she wore a red wool gown with a high neck and long sleeves.

Tessa looked at her and stored the details in memory. She was stil the most beautiful creature Tessa had ever seen.

Elise said, "My trackers picked up the scent of a strange werewolf on you. It's faint, and doubtless would not have been noticed except by one who was looking for it. Wil you tel me who it is?"

For a moment Tessa didn't answer. The effort seemed entirely too great. She leaned her head back against the cold metal box and she said dul y,

"I never meant to harm you, mademoisel e. Please believe that."

Elise studied her gravely for a time. "You have committed a grievous crime against us, Tessa. You betrayed a trust by using the secrets we shared with you against us. You brought a weapon onto our grounds and you fired it at one of us. Whatever your intentions were, whether or not damage was done, these are heinous acts that cannot be forgiven. You wil be punished, and I would not stop it if I could.

But for my own sake, and for that of Alexander, who loved you, I would like to know why."

Tessa slowly turned toward her, and she had no spirit to try to hide the desolation in her eyes. "He wouldn't believe me," she said. "No answer I could give… would bring back what I've lost."

"I have no balm for a broken heart," Elise said gently. "And you must have resigned yourself to your loss when you set upon this course."

Tessa said softly, "Yes."

And then the fog of self-involved sorrow cleared a little from Tessa's eyes, and she met Elise's gaze.

"It was Denis Antonov," she said. "He is the werewolf."

There was a slight relaxation in the queen's tight posture, a faint flicker of question across her eyes, but no other sign of her astonishment. She said thoughtful y, "Ah. That would explain a great deal."

Then, not unkindly but with an authority that would not be disobeyed, she demanded, "Tel me."

Tessa began to speak. She told the whole of it: how Denis had come to her with his outrageous plan, how he had threatened to bring an army and kil both the queen and Alexander if Tessa did not cooperate. How Tessa had run to the Palais to try to warn Alexander, and how she had been refused admittance.

"And when I saw him with you, in the garden…"

Here she dropped her eyes, as much from fatigue as from shame. "When I saw the two of you, and heard what you said to each other… I acted foolishly. I began to think—for a moment I thought that Denis was right in what he said, that you only pretended to be my friend and that neither you nor Alexander had ever cared for me at al . That you had tossed me aside when I got in the way of your plans, and that your plans included only each other.

I ran away. It was al too much and… I ran away.

"Then I realized that it didn't matter what you thought of me, or whether you and Alexander were

—wel , lovers. Because Denis was going to kil you both and it would be my fault. I kept thinking, al that afternoon I kept thinking that Alexander would come, that surely he would read my note and he would come. But when I saw you at the stream, just as Denis had said you would be, I knew Alexander hadn't read my note. And it was too late to do anything else. I knew that when Denis heard the gunshot he would think I had done my part, and you would be safe for a little while. It was the only thing I could think of to warn you. So I fired over your head."

Elise looked at her with eyes that were fil ed with sorrow and gentleness. "My dear, dear child, what have you done?"

Tessa whispered thickly, "I never would have hurt you. Never."

Elise touched her cheek lightly. "I believe that. But I'm not sure even I can help you now. You've broken one of the strictest rules of our society by firing a weapon on Palais grounds. No one wil believe it was for a noble reason, or care. You must go before our tribunal, which is something no human has done in uncounted generations. You wil not be al owed to speak in your own defense. Only a werewolf can speak for you. I am al owed only to present the facts of your actions, not the reasons for them. I don't see any help for you."

"Alexander," Tessa said hoarsely. Desperately she searched Elise's face for some sign of hope there.

"He wil speak for me. He won't let anything bad happen to me. He'll help me."

There was kindess in Elise's gaze, but also pity—

and a reluctant truth. "He feels betrayed, Tessa, and he's very angry. I am not permitted to try to persuade him in the case, for he wil be cal ed as your judge. You must understand—Alexander is a werewolf of high status and influence and you've shamed him before al the pack. I'm not sure he's thinking clearly right now."

Tessa said again, "He won't let anything bad happen to me." It sounded like a plea.

Elise inclined her head and got to her feet. When the iron door clanged shut behind her, Tessa repeated, "He won't." But her whisper was swal owed by the dark.

The dungeons of the Palais were two stories underground, designed to imprison werewolves in a less enlightened time. The wal s were several meters thick, the stone floors buried beneath several hundred tons of compacted earth. There was no fresh air supply and no water; those brought there were not expected to live long enough to miss either. The chambers were completely soundproof even to werewolf ears, so that the cries of the imprisoned would not disturb the residents above.

The place was ancient, but the Devoncroix dungeons had not been so often used as one might suspect. The offenses which warranted such confinement were few; they included treason, neglect of an infant, corporeal crimes against humans which endangered the pack, and the offender was brought here only to await the judgement of death.

No one shared the dungeon tomb with Tessa. No one remembered the tunnel exit by which bodies had been removed for cremation in days of old—or at least no one who was in a position to do anything to prevent the entry of an intruder by those very tunnels. One guard was posted at the top of the stairs leading from the Palais to the dungeon; Denis never saw him. The other guard, in human form, was posted outside the iron box that held the prisoner. Denis snapped his neck with a single twist the moment the guard caught scent of him.

He plucked the bolt from the lock and pul ed open the door. Tessa, lost in the world of blackness and silence, did not know he was there until he swooped down upon her. His hand came up under her chin with crushing force; he snapped her head back against the wal .

She was stil in blackness; she saw nothing, not even the blacker shape of his form descending on her. But she knew his voice. She knew his touch.

She knew his anger.

"Stupid human." His voice was a low growl. "How could you miss such an easy target? I led you to the place, I set you in the tree, I put the gun in your hands. I should have known better than to leave my fate to the hands of a clumsy human." His hand closed, squeezing her neck like the stem of a ripe fruit, choking off her breath. "I should kil you now.

Nothing would give me better pleasure. But unfortunately, you are more valuable to me alive."

Abruptly he released the pressure on her throat. Her breath returned in a single hoarse gasp. "Come along." He pul ed her roughly to her feet. "We only have minutes."

Tessa jerked away from him, clawing and kicking when he tried to grab her again. It was like fighting a demon in the dark. He got her hair and pul ed out a handful. She flung herself against the far wal , hissing into the dark, "You are insane if you think I would go with you! I'll die first!"

"And die you wil ." She could feel him now, using his night vision to locate her, moving close. His breath brushed her cheek, and his body gave off a faint heat that seemed somehow to block the cold air that seeped out from the stones. "You'll die in a pool of your own vomit and urine, writhing in pain, screaming to die, begging to die. And this is what you prefer to me!"

She shrank from him, twisting her face away, but he moved closer. His clothes brushed her skin, his breath seared her face. "Look at me, Tessa. Can you see me? No? I can see you. I can see terror in your eyes and blood on your clothes and I can smel despair on you, Tessa LeGuerre. Do you think they'll stop at a broken arm? Do you have some fantasy that if you stay here, if you repent your crimes and beg for mercy they wil forgive you, your beloved Alexander and the noble queen?"