Embers (3 page)

The wildcat hit him again, beat against the arm she had damaged, lunged for the door. She would make it. Her hands scrabbled for the heavy iron latch, the last of her once carefully tended nails breaking.

He caught her. He was so fast. Lightning fast. She twisted desperately, lurched against the table. The table… Her scrabbling fingers found the sword. The snake hilt slid into her right hand. She could not, would not, use it because it was lethal. But neither would she give in.

Because it was not her safety at stake. It was his.

She hefted the blade, but it was overlong, unwieldy and she was jammed into the confined space between the table and the wall bench. She could not make the blade obey her.

"Do not touch me," she yelled with all the strength that she had. But she was a fool and more than a fool to think she could stop a fire spirit like Brand with a mere sword.

"Leave it, woman. Put it down. You will injure yourself—"

But she would rather do that than injure him. She turned for the door, unbalanced, swaying, her feet clumsy in the ill-fitting borrowed shoes. Her arm and her shoulder hit the wall and the blade sliced through the air, falling, falling toward her. The steel-bright edge was in front of her face, filling her vision. She could not stop it because she was falling, too.

This is how warriors die, she thought, just like this. Bright steel and no escape. Just as she hit the ground, something knocked her sideways.

There was silence. Deep. No movement except hers. She tested out each muscle like a terrified animal. She was not hurt, not really—no movement except hers. She gained her feet fast, in one lithe surge, because she was not hurt, only bruised.

There was blood. It oozed out in a small, thin trail from beneath the heap of expensive clothing jammed against the wall.

He was dead.

He had to be dead because she had seen the keenness of the sword blade, right before her eyes.

Just before he had knocked her aside.

She had killed him and the cycle of destruction was complete.

She dropped to her knees beside the motionless form. She was too terrified to touch him. Then she saw it, like a streak of flame in the rushes. The sword he had knocked out of her idiotically dangerous grip was lying on the floor, close to his hand, as though it wished to return to its owner.

It was not tangled up with the crushed remains of his body.

But there was blood.

She touched his face. It was warm. One fingertip moved with delicate, fear-streaked, sense-tingling slowness toward the faintly parted lips; felt the soft, moist-dark warmth of him. Breath.

Her own breath, bundled up in one horrible constricted tightness that scored her throat, came out in a rush that stirred the bright tangled gold of his hair.

A single, light gossamer strand slid across his closed eyes. He did not feel it.

He did not feel her touch.

But he was alive. Her hand rested on warmth. She could feel the smooth texture of skin under her fingertips, the rough line of his jaw under her palm.

Her hand shook. Not just from the aftermath of panic but because she had never touched him so, had never touched any man so.

It had all been of his doing before. And she had let him because she had been spellbound. Because she had been ignorant and desperate and unskilled, and he had been the opposite. He was the only one who had not realized the truth others had known since her birth. That she was not good enough.

She had wanted him to the point of madness.

She still did.

Her fingers traced their way back very, very slowly over the unmoving flesh, caressed the pure, fierce outline of the Northumbrian Brand's face. She brushed the soft threads of his hair aside. The seductive warmth was there, under her fingertips. It pene-, trated through the frail barrier of her skin, up her arm, and then inside her in a small swift rush, tingling, melting. Real.

His warmth had a generosity that overwhelmed. Even now, she could sense it. It was something that called to her, even though she had never been able to give it fair return and had now given away even the chance to. Nothing could stop her yearning for his warmth. It had a power that both exhilarated and frightened. Something clenched deep inside her with a force like pain. She snatched her hand away.

It was Saxon
wiccecrceft
, the man heat that lived in her Northumbrian lover. It possessed absolutely. Witchcraft.

He did not move, was lost in that otherworld of darkness. But he lived. He was strong. He would be well. The blood had stopped. She should leave him, now, before she did a harm that was worse than this.

But she could not.

Not after what he had done. He must hate her and he could have left her to the consequences of her own dangerous folly with the sword. He could have let her fall and that would have been the end. It would have solved everything.

But he had not.

Because of that, she could not leave him.

She could not leave him because he was Brand and though her love was like a thing maimed, she was bound to him by a cord she could not break, whatever she did.

At least she had to help him out of this.

She touched his shoulder. It was massive. Her hand settled round the familiar-unfamiliar shape. She knew him so well and yet she did not know him at all. They had touched as yet so very little and yet when they had, it had threatened to plunder sense and every feeling and every emotion. She had felt alive in his arms, all at once, in one intense, dizzying, life-consuming rush. Just for a moment. A moment that could not last.

He had kissed her. Once. That was all she had had of him in return for breathless, willing abduction and terrified flight and all the bitter consequences of pursuit. It was probably all she could give him.

He had wanted to wed her.

"Brand."

Her hand on the massive shoulder tightened, the damaged and useless second finger tangling in his tunic. He lay in a twisting uncomfortable heap on his left side. She could not see where the wound was, where the blood came from. She could not move him. He was too big, too heavy, and she was terrified of making the damage worse.

"Brand."

Helplessness, fear for him, twisted through her belly. She bowed her head over his. "Brand…" Her breath shivered across the heat of his skin, across the clear rise of his cheekbone.

His face was the comeliest she had ever beheld.

Her hand moved round from his shoulder, sliding upward, burying itself in the wild tangled mass of his hair, seeking the strong curving line of his skull, cradling his head.

"I will not leave you to be alone." The words came out of nowhere, raking through the thick heavy silence of the room. The last words she had any right to say. She bit her Up and tears sprang stinging against the backs of her eyes.

She should not still be with him, but some things, some feelings, admitted no reason.

Her lips trembled, a breath above his flesh, because being with him, holding him was wrong. He was not hers, just as she could never be his and yet— Her mouth touched him, her touch so light that it would scarce have been felt had he been conscious. It was next to nothing. Could be counted so.

But she could not be content with that. She kissed him.

Because this was the only way she could, when he did not know, when he could not feel the uselessness of what she did. Could not respond.

He would not want to respond.

But she could not stop herself. Her mouth fastened on his skin with a desperate greed that held nothing of grace, only the measure of her despair.

Then she felt it, what she should have felt before through her touch if she had not been so frantic to sense his living warmth. His skin scorched her mouth.

It was so hot it burned. He burned.

She drew back in terror.

"Brand…" Her voice was no longer a pleading whisper. It shouted. Her hand slid down, seizing the great bulk of his shoulder.

"Brand, you must wake up. Otherwise I shall not be able to help you. You must hear me. You must wake."

She swapped her damaged left hand for her right and shook him.

He did not respond. Her unsteady fingers moved to touch his brow. It burned under her hand, as though all the fire that lived inside him would scorch through the finely-wrought covering of his skin.

She had to get help. The abbess, the priest. Whoever she could find who knew more than her about healing. Even his own men standing guard outside. Even if they killed her. Someone had to help him.

He moved. Her hand. She had left her hand resting against his heated skin. Touching him. Her fingers moved with the turn of his head, sliding across his face, touching the moistness of his lips like some indecent caress she had no right to. She was staring into gold-flecked eyes, dark with confusion.

"You…" She felt the whisper of his breath.

The eyes were deep, so achingly deep. Their deepness held her, just as it had the first time she had seen him, when nothing in the world, her world, had existed except him.

Just for one instant it was like that again and her heart leaped with a hope and a strength that had no relation to any decision of her mind. But then it was gone, that moment. It had not belonged to anything real, not even to what was real in the mind of the man she loved.

She saw the instant when full consciousness returned and when it did, it wiped out that frail, fathoms-deep connection as though it had no existence.

"Making sure I was really dead?"

She gasped, dragging her hand back. Guilt, the renewed savageness of loss, nearly paralyzed her. Blank impenetrable eyes watched every awkward, clumsy, shaking movement she made.

He tried to straighten up. A small wrenching sound of pain and surprise escaped the lips she had just touched.

She grabbed his shoulder. Regardless of what he wanted.

"Wait! You fell. You took some hurt." She swallowed. "The sword…" It came out on a thin, keening sound of terror.

He looked at her fingers twisted in his tunic.

"Hang the sword, woman. If it had been the sword I would be dead." He raised his head and her gaze was caught in a mesh of burning gold. "Disappointed?"

She blinked, trying to tear herself out of the golden net.

"Yes." She raised her head, but despite the show, her voice choked. She was not naturally good at lies.

She was learning. She untangled her hands out of his sleeve.

He sat up.

She choked back what would have been a shriek. She saw the blood welling down his arm, so much it had soaked out from underneath his body in that thin, life-sapping stream and she had seen it. She remembered how he burned.

"Saint Dwyn preserve—"

"Saint Dwyn? Does that not seem an unlikely choice? A virgin saint?"

Hun's whore.

She flinched. He watched it.

"But then your Saint Dwyn is also the patron saint of ill-fated lovers. Or do you perhaps prefer the fact she had her own importunate suitor frozen into ice?"

Of all Englishmen, only Brand would be able throw a Celtic saint's name back in her face.

And ice could, of course, burn through flesh like fire.

"She unfroze him afterwards."

"Aye. But she did not marry him."

"No." But then Dwyn had been a saint. It would not have burned her heart out that she could not marry in mortal love. Her gaze slid away from molten gold that burned like ice and fire all at once.

She saw the trail of blood. She swallowed.

"What happened?"

"It is an old injury. Naught to do with this and naught that matters."

"But…at least let me see. I can help you."

He became very still.

Healing had not been an accomplishment of the Princess of the Picts.

"I learned healing from the abbess."

The worst thing she had helped with had been the broken arm of a travelling goldsmith. She had been squeamish all the way through. The man's gratitude had been an embarrassment. She smiled with a confidence she did not feel.

"And you use your…skills on those who pass through this place?"

Her smile became bland.

"Why not?"

The subtle eyes flickered.

Do not do this, Alina. Do not tread on dangerous ground.

Her perfect smile remained intact. She had never taken advice in her life, least of all her own.

"Well, then? Do I practice my skills on you?"

"It is not necessary." The eyes blanked off. He got to his feet. She stepped back, watching his pain, both physical and of the mind, obliterated, consumed by the flames inside him as though someone had poured oil on hot coals. "If you really want to be useful, just find me a cloth to bind it."

She crossed to the carved chest in the corner, found clean linen. She thought his gaze followed every move. Doubtless ready to fall on her if she attempted escape.

She could not. Not yet. Not while he was so hurt.

She ripped cloth into strips. "Let me see."

He was sitting, propped up on the wall bench. The sword, laid out next to him, was unsheathed. She averted her eyes from the gleaming, lethal length of metal that had so nearly killed her. Killed him.

She took his arm. She half expected some further outburst of the scarce-contained wrath scorching inside him. But her touch was permitted. The gold eyes held her, like a giant beast of prey toying with its victim before it drove for the kill.

"You really are going to minister to my hurts?"

His voice was cool and quite calm, but inexpressibly dangerous. Her insides clenched.

"I know how to do what is necessary."

"So you say."

"Then—"

"Just bind it. There is no time for anything else."

"But you need—"

"Do it."

He was already reaching for the fallen sword. The danger in his voice was in that movement, locked down in every muscle, ready to take the fire that burned inside him.

She looked at how much blood there was.

"Give the cloth to me. I can do it."

He must have seen how much she was shaking.

Her fingers lightened on the linen strip.