Kingdom Blades (A Pattern of Shadow & Light 4) Page 12

  Alshiba gave him a tired smile. “No, William. Thank you.”

  He nodded and made to close the doors.

  “Franco.” Alshiba’s voice halted William and Franco both. “Stay a moment, would you?”

  Beset by a sudden odd anxiety, Franco dutifully turned back. William leveled him a look that spoke volumes—several volumes: warning overlapping caution, layered with threat. Then he closed them inside the mansion together.

  Alshiba led Franco through a series of palatial rooms and into her study, where a wall of glass doors overlooked a high balcony patio and the sea. She walked to a sideboard while Franco looked over her impressive collection of artifacts, which were artfully arranged on shelves and pedestals around the room—and indeed, more of which he’d noticed on display throughout the mansion.

  Alshiba came over and handed him a goblet. As he took the wine from her, their eyes met. Something in the look she gave him…he read it well, yet its message was so unexpected that he became sure he hadn’t read it well at all.

  They quickly separated again. It was almost painful the way they haunted each other’s periphery—tentative, belabored by apprehension, neither one quite brave enough to step into candor’s central light.

  Alshiba wandered over to the priceless collection of artifacts. “Lovely, aren’t they? They’re Björn’s, mostly.” She sipped her wine. “Tributes from the Thousand Realms. Niko has added more in recent weeks.”

  Franco didn’t care about the art just then, for his eyes were pinned on her hand and the way it was shaking as she held her wine. She seemed uncommonly pale in the dying light. “Alshiba—”

  She turned a look over her shoulder. “You still don’t entirely trust me, do you?”

  Franco dropped his gaze to the dark liquid swirling in his goblet. She was adept at reading him—uncomfortably so, considering the relatively short time they’d spent together. “I’m not sure I even know what trust feels like anymore.”

  Alshiba grunted. “It feels like safety. Both are rare commodities in Illume Belliel.” She walked towards the windows and the encroaching night.

  Franco perceived a grave weariness in her movements as well as in her speech; even in her quiet exhalations. It seemed to him as if she stood by force of will alone, not even resting in her own home for want of projecting the strength that had become a shield for her. It had never been more apparent to him that he wanted to be that shield.

  Franco lowered his gaze back to his wine. What had happened to him? From death’s door, he’d awoken as if to a completely different life, with a new mistress and sudden purpose found in service of her. How had she claimed him so completely?

  “For three centuries it was just Raine, Seth and me.” Alshiba turned a look back towards him as she strolled the long windows. “Raine and myself, more truly, for Seth as you know, offers intemperate counsel.” She touched a hand to the glass and then continued on, trailing regret behind her. Franco wondered what was really on her mind…why she’d asked him to stay.

  After a time she exhaled a slow breath. “Do you know why I voted for the measure to allow interrealm trade, Franco?”

  Franco lowered the wine from his lips. “No, my lady.”

  She turned to face him. “I voted for it because Björn would’ve voted for it.” A tragic sort of smile touched her lips and lingered, hinting of regret. “All these years—verily, for three hundred years—I’ve simply been doing as Björn would’ve done, trying to make the decisions he would’ve made.” Her expression twisted into disharmony. “Ironically, a traitor’s remembered counsel still proves the truest.”

  Franco drank his wine. It would do no good to try to advocate for the First Lord; the betrayals she was speaking of were ones Björn admitted to without justification—personal betrayals, deep treasons of the heart.

  Franco sensed the fragile filaments of her trust reaching towards him, seeking him, so delicate he hardly dared breathe for fear of scattering them. Yet deeper still rooted his own fear of being trusted.

  “For so many years, I’ve lived this way,” she confessed, an odd hesitation in her manner, “hardly daring to have a thought without comparing it first to Björn’s ideal. Living, sleeping and breathing the mystery of his abandonment. But then you came—”

  She wavered unsteadily on her feet.

  Franco rushed over and caught her. He hastily set down his wine to better support her and helped her sit down in a chair. Then he knelt before her. “My lady?” He took the goblet from her hands and set it down.

  She looked frighteningly pale and dabbed at her cheeks with the backs of her fingers. “The wine. Perhaps—”

  “It’s not the wine, Alshiba.” Her condition alarmed him. He held her gaze, determined now to get the truth out of her. “Are you ill?”

  She stared into his eyes with a furrowed brow. Then she exhaled a tremulous breath and fell back in the chair. “I don’t know.” Her head lolled to one side. “I’m not sleeping. I can’t seem to keep anything down.”

  This news disturbed him greatly. “How long has this been going on?”

  She gave him a rueful look. “I noticed it soon after you and Niko arrived in Illume Belliel.”

  A host of ill possibilities bombarded Franco upon this news. He searched her gaze with his own. “You’ve seen a Healer?”

  “Of course.”

  “And?”

  “She said my pattern seemed frayed but couldn’t find a reason for it.”

  “But she Healed you?”

  “She tried. The Healing hasn’t…taken.”

  Franco’s thoughts were rapidly carrying him to dark places. He knew too many ways elae might be used to make a person ill. Doubtless Alshiba knew them also—doubtless she’d had Illume Belliel’s Healers search for them in her pattern, but if it wasn’t elae making her sick…

  The First Lord must hear about this. He would want to know what’s happening to the woman he loves.

  Franco gazed disconcertedly at her while considering the ramifications of illness versus ill working, wishing he understood better how to help her. In the last, he handed her back her wine—at least she was keeping that down.

  Their eyes met as their fingers met, and Franco glimpsed a naked truth in her gaze. Words crept shyly towards her lips but then fled back into hiding, where his own words remained, thinly shielded by protestations of duty.

  She withdrew the goblet from his hand and drank of it, keeping her own counsel behind her silence, making him wonder if his own unexpected desire had merely tricked him into imagining hers.

  Feeling an unwelcome anxiety, Franco stood and went to pour himself more wine.

  Alshiba followed him with her gaze. Her eyes felt like heat, searing him all the way across the room. “Franco, I hate to impose upon you…but until I understand better of what’s happening to me, will you…stay here…with me?”

  Franco paused with his hand on the decanter. He’d thought at first…the intimation in her tone…but no, she only meant to have the support of his company, and the mansion had countless bedchambers.

  Instinct told him he should leave at once, that he did not want to encourage his own ill-conceived thoughts. But she’d bound him to her that very first day—he still had no idea how—and leaving her side had become an unpalatable choice.

  The First Lord’s admonishment echoed in mind, relayed to him via a Dreamscape conversation with Dagmar: ‘…Tell Franco to do nothing to betray Alshiba’s confidence, even should it appear to mean betraying mine…’

  Franco blew out a forceful breath and turned her a look over his shoulder. “Of course, my lady.”

  Seven

  “I would rather traverse the valleys of a thousand hells than live a day without desire.”

  –The zanthyr Vaile

  Alyneri parried Trell’s descending sword, twice, and again. He forced her back—three quick steps beneath his flying blade. She spun under his next swing and thrust her weapon upwards, aiming for this throat. He reared back,
and her blade sang past his ear.

  The cortata filled her with its tingling, heady power, while Vaile’s Merdanti blade hummed in her mind, a constant companion that enticed and encouraged. And Trell…matching blades with him felt the sweetest torment.

  Trell lunged. Alyneri sidestepped.

  She jabbed and he slung her blade away.

  Into her opening, he advanced with four rapid blows. She met each of them and then spun out of his line, swiping for his side.

  He sidestepped and made an angled thrust back at her. She spun out of his reach, aiming a backhanded stroke as she turned. He swept her blade aside with a scraping ring and lunged for her. She danced back with a laughing gasp.

  Who could’ve imagined that sparring would be so invigorating, so purely enjoyable, so freeing? One side of her blade knew exhilaration, the other exhaustion, while desire radiated in each clashing, making her blade hungry for the taste of his.

  The more she fought Trell, the more she admired him. The quality of his movement, the power of his focused advances…he wooed and enticed her even while battering her. She felt the threat in his every swing; yet his gaze, pinned unerringly upon hers, invited her ever closer. They courted each other with deadly blades, and never had a romance known a more intoxicating mix of danger and desire.

  Now Trell stalked her with his blade held low. A sheen of sweat clung to his chest beneath his open shirt, but its hem remained tucked into his pants. She could tell how hard she was making him fight her by the state of his shirttails.

  She brought up her blade with both hands and darted in for an overhead blow. He grinned and parried her with an upward stroke. Steel clanged. Sentient blades sang. Their eyes met but inches apart.

  Then Trell hooked his foot behind her ankle and swept her off her feet. As she fell, he caught her hand above her head while his other hand grabbed her around the waist, and he cushioned her fall as they landed together in the grass.

  Alyneri felt the length of him pressing atop her and smiled demurely up at him. “I don’t recall this sword form, Your Highness.”

  “Indeed not, Your Grace?” Trell slipped her blade out of her hand and brought her arm down within the confines of his. “I thought everyone was familiar with this form.”

  To keep herself grounded against the invitation in his gaze, Alyneri swept her mind back through that day’s sparring. “Were you using the cortata at all?”

  Trell smiled. “A little.”

  “How much?”

  He pressed his lips to the back of the hand he still held. “Enough to make it fair.”

  “If you never use the pattern in our matches, how can I know for certain that you have it?”

  “I have it, Alyneri.” Trell released her hand and traced his fingers along her collarbone instead, sending delightful shivers through her. He was hardly paying attention—at least, not to the conversation.

  To be fair, she was having difficulty concentrating on more than the feeling of his body pressing against hers. She could remain focused when sparring with him, with some distance between them, but lying in his arms…

  “Soon,” Trell ran fingertips down her throat, imparting a lingering tingle in a trail of promise, his smoldering gaze intense upon her, “very soon…” His mouth hovered close to hers.

  Alyneri closed her eyes, warm with the connection she felt to him. “It cannot be too so—”

  “Why do I always find you two this way?” Vaile’s voice chided them.

  Alyneri opened her eyes to find the zanthyr striding out of the trees. Vaile wore a dress of clinging green silk, split up the sides to reveal tall boots of the same velvet hue. Somehow, the dress only made her seem more dangerous, as a panther’s sleek fur accentuates its lithe power.

  Vaile came to a halt above them and arched a raven brow. “It would lead one to wonder if any swordplay ever occurred at all.”

  Trell lifted his gaze to her. “Alyneri distracted me again.”

  Vaile’s emerald green eyes regarded them amusedly over crossed arms. “Perhaps I should encase Her Grace in armor.”

  Trell grinned. “That would only invite a different challenge.” He sat up and helped a blushing Alyneri to sit up as well. “It’s not Alyneri’s fault.” He brushed a strand of hair back from her shoulder and smiled at her. “She does the best she can, considering my propensity to distraction.”

  “Yes, I’m well advised of how difficult you’ve made her task.” Vaile retrieved her blade from the grass—the one Alyneri had been sparring with—and looked it over as if gazing upon an old friend. “Sidthe has told me everything.”

  Alyneri’s eyes widened upon the sentient blade. “Everything?”

  Vaile cast her a potent look. “Everything.”

  Alyneri covered her mouth with one hand and turned, blushing, to Trell.

  Trell chuckled. “There are no secrets in the First Lord’s sa’reyth.” He pushed to his feet and held his hands to help Alyneri to stand, shooting Vaile a grin the while. “Only subtext.”

  “Which you are learning to speak with alacrity, similar to your mastery of the cortata, I do believe, Trell of the Tides.”

  Trell gave Vaile a bow. “Thank you, my lady. I bask in your esteem.”

  “But not so much, I think, as in Alyneri’s adoration.” Vaile’s smile held a feline serenity, quietly approving. She set the toe of her boot beneath Trell’s sword and flipped it up to him. He caught it out of the air, whereupon she gave both of them a nod of earnest meaning. “Ramu has returned.”

  Alyneri exchanged a swift look with Trell. Her heart was suddenly fluttering. “Then…”

  Trell wrapped his arm around her and drew her close, his gaze locked upon hers. “Tonight?”

  Alyneri smiled…nodded quietly.

  Vaile regarded them as a dam observing her kittens. “Come, adored ones. Ready yourselves.”

  They met again beneath sunset skies upon a hill overlooking the First Lord’s sa’reyth. As Alyneri rounded the rise, Trell was already there, looking dashing in a cerulean coat trimmed in gold embroidery and with his hair swept smoothly back. She felt her own blue dress too simple by comparison, despite the heavy beadwork decorating it.

  Trell held out his hand when he saw her, his gaze admiring. “You look beautiful.”

  Alyneri looked him over wondrously. “I feel common, next to you.”

  “A princess of Kandori?” The quirk of a smile hinted on his lips. “Common, you are not.”

  Alyneri looked down at her hands, held in his, and then nervously back to him. “Are you sure about this?”

  His eyes crinkled. “Need you really ask?”

  “It will feel…strange. It may hurt. The experience is different for everyone.”

  “Pain doesn’t frighten me, Alyneri.”

  “That’s because nothing frightens you.”

  “No, that’s untrue.” He ran his thumb across her lips and held her gaze captive to his. “Living without you…that frightens me.” He drew her close and wrapped his arms around her. “This bonding—”

  “Binding,” she correctly softly, though her mind was fair shouting it and her heart a pounding drum to be heard throughout the countryside.

  “—binding,” he ran his lips across her hair, “whatever discomfort it involves, I welcome it.”

  Alyneri still couldn’t believe it was happening. They’d spoken of marriage, but with so much in play, so much unknown, with their titles and the responsibilities associated with them momentarily pushed aside but always looming…the prospect of any formal ceremony carried too much complexity.

  They both felt their promises to each other more binding than any law, more meaningful than token rings, yet this binding that Trell had so readily agreed to…

  Ramu wouldn’t be using the fifth, but the intention remained the same. They would be joined more surely than any king or court could adjudicate, their fates entwined, their very paths through the tapestry interwoven. Bindings were the Adept form of marriage and far more bin
ding than signatures and seals on parchment. But Trell wasn’t an Adept, so before the binding itself could take place…

  “Why do you look so concerned?” He took her chin again. “You’re fair scowling, Duchess—and on this, our…what do you call it? Not a wedding day, a binding day?” He arched a brow amusedly.

  Alyneri forced her expression to relax. “Sometimes I still can’t believe Prince Trell val Lorian wants to spend his life with me.”

  Trell’s eyes glinted as he looked her over. “Believe me, Alyneri. I feel the same.” He brushed his fingers along her cheek and smiled at the jeweled pins Jaya had put in her hair. “Every day I ask myself what I could’ve possibly done to deserve a woman so brave, selfless and true.”

  Alyneri was starting to feel fluttery from the implication in his gaze—never mind her own contemplation of the night ahead. She admitted softly, “Your mother chose better for me than ever I chose for myself.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” his eyes shone with a mischievous light, “we’re betrothed, aren’t we?” He drew her into his arms again, but then his mood sobered. “In some life, anyway.”

  Alyneri laid her head against his chest. “It feels so far off, doesn’t it? Calgaryn, court…a world away.”

  Trell’s chest rose and fell with a sigh. “A hundred worlds.”

  They were still standing in this embrace when the others arrived. Balaji with Vaile, Jaya and Mithaiya, Carian beside Fynnlar, and Náiir and Rhakar behind them. In the last came the illustrious and rather elusive Ramu.

  Alyneri hadn’t yet met the ‘sometimes’ leader of the drachwyr, but something in his bearing—not to mention his height—reminded her instantly of Phaedor. The others parted naturally to let him pass.

  “Ah, Trell of the Tides,” Ramu’s eyes were warm as he approached. He took Trell by the shoulder while gracing him with the full measure of his attention. “I’ve been kept apprised of your adventures. It pleases me beyond words to greet you here again today.”

  Trell took Ramu’s shoulder with gratitude in his gaze. “Your advice has guided me since the moment of our parting.”