Betrayal's Shadow (13 page)

She stretched her back and grimaced, then unzipped the backpack. “Leftover souvenir of my swordplay demo.”

He raised a brow. “A new pursuit.”

“You’re the one who told me to train.” She glared at him, holding up a covered bowl and water bottle for him, though she made no effort to move.

Ah, so it was his fault. He hid a smile and accepted the bowl as he sat beside her.

“What made you consider the sword?” He popped open the top of the bowl and peeked inside at a mix of vegetables, chicken and lettuce.

“Greek salad with grilled chicken. I figured you weren’t getting a balanced diet in here.”

“How considerate.” Ironic, he would die healthy. He picked up the fork and took a bite with a fervent wish that the food’s aroma wouldn’t drift outside the cell. “The sword?”

She let out breath. “I always wanted to try it. I’ve decided it is time to embrace the things I want to do. Besides, I figured it would make for an interesting article.”

“Admirable. This is delicious, by the way. So why now?”

Mia was silent for a minute. Turen used the excuse of eating to give her time and exercised his patience to be worthy of her trust. He wanted her to open up to him, to tell him her secrets. Not for details to hold against her—more because he could feel her thoughts gnawing away at her in a whirling dervish of uncertainty wound too tight about her. Release from her burdens was the little he could offer in this prison.

“After my husband died, I decided I had let my life pass me by.”

He paused, fork halfway to his mouth. “I’m so sorry, Mia.”

The acknowledgement was almost impossible to choke out. Mia married, living, and sleeping with another man, lent a bitter taste to the meal in his mouth. Perhaps he should put more distance between them, given his thoughts were improper and his response to her pain too strong.

“No, don’t be.” She bit her lip. “I mean…thanks.”

He put the fork in the bowl, any intent of backing off gone as quickly as it had come. She scrutinized the spigot in the corner as if it were some new creation. “Now who’s being distant?”

Her gaze dropped to her lap. Her stillness sent a prickle of unease across his skin. Her voice had taken on a strange tone at the mention of her husband, a tone thick with pain, not loss. How had this man hurt her? A man who had taken vows to honor and protect her.

“He was going to leave me.” She laughed.

One of the saddest sounds he had ever heard. She shook her head in an effort to shrug off her words, and once again he experienced the burn to harm another for Mia’s pain.

“The divorce papers came the day after the funeral. I believe that’s called irony, although it feels more like pathos.”

Turen was silent. He waited, the hot need to protect her and make the past disappear barely held in check as his anger raged against a stranger so stupid as to harm such a precious gift.

She turned to him. “It turned out rather well from my standpoint. I don’t have to go through a divorce or sell my house or split assets.” She let out a deep breath. “Once I had time to think it through, I realized we hadn’t really been there for each other for years. He’d already moved on and was fixing his life. I’d—become stuck.”

Turen ran his thumb up and down the metal of his fork, warming it enough to bend it back to shape from his uncontrolled grip. He remained quiet, supporting her as she had him when he’d poured out his burdens—all he could truly offer.

“I realized I had things I wanted to do, things to make me feel alive.” She winced and shifted a little. “And while I feel this one a bit too much right now, I’m enjoying it.”

He smiled at her and received a weak smile in response. Putting aside the bowl, he rubbed across the back of her shoulder with his palm. “Where does it hurt the most?”

“My upper back.” She grimaced with the effort to find a position that didn’t cause pain.

He stood and extended his hand. “Show me your stance.”

“Here? Now?” Her eyes widened.

He nodded. “I’ve used a sword once or twice. Show me.”

She laughed and allowed him to pull her up through a muffled groan. He positioned the water bottle in her hands and curled her fingers around the bottle in makeshift fashion. “Here’s your weapon. Show me your follow-through.”

She widened her stance, held out the bottle a bit, and swung her arms to the side.

“Ah, that explains your back pain. You’re ready to bat.”

With a frown, she tilted her head and glanced at the bottle and back to him. “This is the way the instructor showed me to stand.”

“What type of sword?”

“Well, it’s a piece of wood right now. I was going for a katana, though I’d love to learn to use the staff.”

“The katana is not a bad length for you, the staff perhaps a bit too long. They’re six feet, and you’re what? Five feet—” He held a hand to the top of her head and measured it to his chest. “Three inches?”

Her faint swat moved away his hand. “Five-four, but you’ve made your point.”

He moved around behind her anyway, placed his hands on her hips, and pushed her hips lower into a crouch. Then he shifted her shoulders back and kicked at her feet to adjust her legs.

“Women have a lower center of gravity than men, so this stance better accommodates. Move back and forward from this center position.” One hand pulled and the other pushed, rotating her hips and motion. Even in instruction, the move was intimate. “Let the stance move with you and dictate your swing. Don’t let the swing dictate your stance. Your arms and action flow from the move and your core. Consider your progress like chess. Think a few moves ahead, and let your momentum aid you.”

She squatted and bounced a bit.

Still behind her, he put his hands on her shoulders and then arms, moving them in conjunction with her body.

“The strength and balance will come from your legs, not your back, and from above, not sideways twisting in your previous fashion.” He gestured with his hands and arms along her body to mimic the motion with her, then released her to move again before her.

“Women have stronger muscles along the tops of their legs,” he continued. “Men are a little more even in the distribution of strength in those muscles. You can use your strengths to your benefit. Generate your movement from your legs.”

She moved the bottle in the arc he had shown and smiled. “It hurts less this way.”

“I would think.” He smiled back. “The other posture isn’t wrong. It just may not fit you. This will leverage your strengths.”

He picked a second bottle from her backpack and stood to face her. “You need a sword or staff designed for your body. Perhaps someday…”

She backed up and stood straight. “I’m seriously outclassed.”

He fought back a smile. “We’ll pretend I haven’t used a sword before. Are you interested in competitive battle or showmanship?”

“I want to kick butt.”

“Of course.” He laughed, enjoying watching her spirit break free. Once invested, there was no retreat with Mia. If she made up her mind, it was full steam ahead. “When I was younger and learning to fight, several of us worked at methods to get a rise out of our teacher. We would pretend to slay each other.”

“With real swords?”

“It wouldn’t have been fun if they were fake.” He shrugged. “Remember, this was an act and we were adolescent males. We didn’t mind taking a few punches from each other, but we never desired permanent injury.”

He flipped his water back on the bed and reached to hold her wrists. “The motion worked like this.” He pulled her arms up and then down, turning her around and finally swinging her hands in toward the edge of his stomach. At the last moment, he pivoted her wrists to lodge the bottle along his side beneath his elbow.

Her eyes were still wide when she met his gaze. “That would take a good bit of coordination not to slice the skin or lose an arm.”

“We practiced a great deal to keep our bodies and minds engaged. It took more than a few slices to our bodies before we perfected the technique. Granted, some of us were much quicker at healing than others. You’ll be pleased to know no arms were lost.” He laughed again, though she appeared a little unsettled and pushed him away to toss her bottle into her bag.

“I’ll have to work on the routine in my off hours, between my day job and my moonlighting in the cell with you.”

He let her comment slid by. Even though the reality was a bit bleak, her mood had steadied. Whatever her true feelings were about her former husband, she’d migrated back to the attitude of readiness and adventure he associated with her visits.

Settled back on the slab of his bed, the bowl of salad in his lap, he gestured for her to join him. “Tell me what question you have today.” Lightness had returned to Mia’s posture. He was determined to keep away her other demons while she was here. Visits to him in hell should be enough torment for any one person.

She sat beside him, stiff and uncomfortable at his side. “You make it seem like you’re telling a bedtime story.”

He pulled at her sleeve until her back turned to him. “One is never too old for bedtime stories. They stimulate the imagination.” He put aside his empty bowl and slid his hands across her shoulders. His fingers massaged across her sore muscles.

She laughed, wiggled, and then groaned. “That feels so good.”

“If you don’t behave, I won’t tell you anything.” He pushed and circled his hands over her muscles until she acquiesced and her head dropped forward on her knees in resignation, allowing the attention her sore body needed.

Mia turned her cheek to her knee and bit back the immediate response to use Rheanna’s name. They needed to sort through the details of his past, why he was here, why she was here, but she wanted minutes more of his fingers to ease her muscles. “Tell me of your family.”

Turen hesitated a second, then continued his methodical kneading.

“My parents had a farm at the foot of the French western section of the Pyrenees.”

“France?”

He grunted a confirmation. “Several of our families lived near the region. I haven’t been back there in many years.”

“I can’t picture you on a farm.”

His chuckle vibrated through his fingertips to her skin. “You’ve only seen me in a cell. I can take a chicken’s eggs without a peck. I can milk a goat, and because my friend lived not far away, on the coast, I can trim a sail and navigate at night by the stars.”

“Whoa, talents. Your friend was a sailor?”

“Ansgar is a water rat, though his parents were merchants. They owned a series of shops throughout the coastal cities along the Bay of Biscay. I went there sometimes with my sister.” He paused, and his fingers stilled again. “Rheanna was a friend of Xavier’s. They were about the same age. I’d rather forgotten that.”

Mia turned her face back to her knees to hide her reaction. “I guess most of your people knew each other?” Her voice came out more gruffly than she had intended. He didn’t seem to notice as he stood to bring her backpack to the slab.

“Once we were old enough to
fold
through space, we were taught the need for discretion, and more importantly, how to recognize our own.”

He sat behind her and reached across her shoulders to pull her against his chest, his chin resting on the top of her head. She dreaded her next question, but the link she’d found to Xavier wasn’t one she could disregard. “How old were you when you left your family?”

“I was fourteen. My sister was nineteen. We were the last of the people in our area to survive. She summoned Xavier to take me away.” His voice was low and heavy with emotion. “I didn’t get to be there for her at the end.”

“She might not have wanted you to watch.”

“I’m sure that’s the case. It felt as if I failed her. Xavier forced me to leave with him, and only because Rheanna made me promise did I go. He didn’t want to leave her either. I don’t know what she did to convince him. One minute he was determined she join us, the next he accepted her wishes and never spoke of it again.”

She waited in the silence and gave Turen time to wander through his thoughts. The only sign she had he was still with her was his thumb absently stroking her arm.

“You said you went back?”

“Almost eighty years ago. It had been a very long time. Most things were so much different than I remembered. Progress. It’s difficult to witness. I expected people to appear who no longer exist.”

“How old are you anyway?”

His arm tightened around her shoulders and gave a quick squeeze. “Old enough you should give me respect as your elder.”

Mia snorted. “Of course, now that I know you’re a doddering old man.”

“Don’t tempt me. This old man can tan your ass and make you enjoy it.”

Of that she had no doubt. Just the warmth of his arm and the press of his body against her back made her skin ultra sensitive. She yawned with fatigue and settled farther back against him in comfort.

“So you didn’t take up farming at the Sanctum?”

“No, my talent doesn’t run along those lines. We had too much to do, train for defense and raise the younger ones.”

“I’m sorry, Turen.” Her words issued as a mumble from the haze of her doze.