Entreat Me (39 page)

“He looks almost as he did when Gavin was a child still tied to my lead strings.”  Magda stood beside her, staring fondly at Ballard.  “I’ve physicked him through worse things than this.  Tournament is as deadly as war.”  She sighed.  “He’s always been strong, but I don’t know what the curse has done to him after these many years.  Made him stronger or weaker?”

Louvaen caressed his scruffy cheek, cool beneath her touch.  “I meant to kill him,” she said.

“Well you’re a piss-poor shot, my girl.”  Magda smiled at Louvaen’s stunned expression.  “You did what needed doing,” she declared.  “Besides, Ballard’s spirit would never rest if Isabeau had bested him, and he killed his son.”

“I’d prefer he kept his spirit in his body a little longer so he can share both with me.”

Magda patted her shoulder, and her features grew dour.  “I’ll not sweeten the bitter, Louvaen.  I got the shot out of his leg, along with bits of bone, but the muscle is shredded.  If he lives he’ll limp for the rest of his days.”

Louvaen traced Ballard’s nose, passing over the bony bridge to the flared nostrils and down to his lip.  Warm breath drafted across her finger.  “He isn’t feverish.”

“Not yet, but he will be.  I’ve poured feverfew down his throat until I just about drowned him.  Still, wounds like that almost always poison.”

Her words proved prophetic.  Over the next four days, fever ravaged Ballard.  The deathly pallor of his skin served to highlighted the flush dusting his cheekbones.  Louvaen worked frantically with Magda, Ambrose and Gavin to change bed sheets stained with the blood and pus that soaked through the bandages.  The room sweltered and stank of rot, and she helped Gavin hold him down while Magda scooped a spoonful of maggots into the wound so they’d feast on the ragged edges of dead flesh and infection.

The housekeeper and the sorcerer brewed teas and mixed elixirs.  When they weren’t pouring them into Ballard’s mouth, they were splashing them over his swollen leg, dousing the putrid laceration.  Ballard thrashed in delirium, hard enough once to pitch himself out of bed and halfway onto Magda who’d been standing over him.  Gavin rescued them both.  Fully recovered from the curse, he lifted his father off Magda and deposited him gently back on the bed.  He spoke to Ballard in a steady voice, and the older man quieted even as the fever raged.

On the fifth day, when the red streaks radiating from the wound had retreated and the blood trickled clean, Magda announced Ballard would live.  She grinned at Louvaen, who stared back at her owl-eyed.  “You’ve another chance to take a crack at him, Louvaen, but wait a while.  I’m too knackered to tend to him.”

Gavin, unencumbered by the sleep deprivation that numbed Louvaen, whooped his elation and yanked Magda into a rib-cracking embrace.  She wheezed out a protest and finally cuffed him on the side of the head until he let her go.  He did the same to Louvaen—who hung limply in his arms—before bolting out the door, crowing Cinnia’s name.

Louvaen stared after him before turning to her companions.  “Are you sure?”

Ambrose shrugged.  “How can anyone be sure of such a thing?  But the fever’s gone and the wound is clean.  He looks worse than a skinned rat, but he’s alive.”  He drew a worn Magda into a much gentler embrace and kissed her mouth.  “We are all in your debt, woman.”

Louvaen closed her eyes for a moment.  When she opened them, Magda had sagged into Ambrose’s side, asleep on her feet.  She didn’t hear Louvaen’s fervent “May the gods bless all your days, Magda.”

Ambrose tucked her closer to him and half carried her to the door.  “I’m taking her to her room.  I don’t think she’s slept in a sennight.”  He glanced at Ballard resting peacefully in the bed.  “Can you stay with him?  I’ll send one of the girls or even your father to take up sentry duty so you can sleep as well.”

She shook her head.  “No need.  I’m not sleepy, and I don’t want to be anywhere else.”

“As you wish.”  He paused at the chamber’s threshold.  A tiny smile played about his mouth, and a gleam of admiration brightened his eyes behind his spectacles.  He nodded once.  “Well done, harpy,” he said in tones usually reserved for Ballard.

Recognizing the respectful salute, she curtsied low and returned the sentiment.  “Well done, spitfrog.”

After they left, she dropped down on the stool they’d each occupied at some point during Ballard’s ordeal and stared at the man who refused to die.  Four days of fever and delirium had taken their toll, sculpting the skin tight to his facial bones.  His beard, dark and salted with gray, covered the lower part of his face, hiding most of his gaunt cheeks.  He wasn’t so pale as before though, and his lips were no longer chalky.

She took his hand, noting the pink nail plates with their white crescent moon tips.  Perfectly normal nails.  He needed a trim, but she’d no longer have to use hoof nippers.  Louvaen raised his palm to curve against her cheek.  “It’s just the two of us in here now, my lord.  Magda broke her back to save you, and while I’ve never killed anyone, Ambrose is convinced I’m a murderess.  Please do us all the courtesy of not dying on my watch.”  She kissed each of his fingers before notching them with hers.  Ballard didn’t waken, and Louvaen spent the next few minutes counting his breaths.  For her, they were the most extraordinary music set to the finest rhythms.  She could listen for hours.

They were soothing enough to put her to sleep.  She woke to find herself hunched on the stool, her head propped on her folded arms where she rested them on the mattress.  Something touched her scalp, exploring from crown to nape and back again.  Louvaen straightened and discovered Ballard watching her from heavy-lidded eyes.  His hand slid down her hair to her shoulder and over her forearm.

“Hello, my beauty.”

She blinked.  “Ballard?”  His lips twitched into a ghost of a smile.  Louvaen leapt to her feet and pressed her hand to his forehead.  His skin was cool and his gaze lucid.  Her hands fluttered over him—his head and chest, shoulders and blanket-covered torso.  The questions cascaded off her lips in a waterfall.  “Are you in pain?  Do you want me to get Magda?  Are you thirsty?  There’s willow bark tea.”

For a man who had just kissed death on the cheek before sending it on its way, he was fast.  He caught her hand.  “No tea,” he said firmly.  He gentled his hold, and his pale features took on an arrested expression.  “Gavin?”

That single-word question held a mountain of fear and an ocean of hope.  Louvaen’s grin threatened to crack her face.  “He’s fine, Ballard.  The curse is broken.  Gavin is and will remain himself.”

His eyes closed once more, long lashes like soot marks on his cheeks.  His grip nearly broke her fingers, but she swallowed her gasp and squeezed his hand in return.

When he opened his eyes again, his gaze pinned her in place.  “You shot me.”

Everything inside her stilled—her heartbeat, her breathing, her blood flow.  She stared at Ballard and stayed silent.

“Remind me to teach you how to use an arbalest.  You’ll have better luck next time.”  He winked.

Her knees gave, and she plopped back down on the stool.  “There will be no next time,” she declared.  Her heart resumed beating albeit at a much greater pace.  “You don’t have another four hundred years to forgive me.”

He tugged insistently on her hand until she sat on the bed, her hip pressed to his side.  “There’s nothing to forgive.”  He kissed her wrist, sending hot tingles up her arm.  “Except maybe your bad aim.”

She frowned. “You’re not the first to make that point, though I’d challenge any of you to do better while half frozen and half blind.”

His eyes narrowed as he assessed her.  Louvaen wanted to turn away but remained where she was as his gaze tracked the bruising that mottled her face in fading shades of lavender and yellow.  His mouth flattened to a grim line.  “I didn’t see when he struck you, but I saw the result in Cinnia’s mirror.”  He growled low in his throat.  “I should have been there.  I’d use his guts for bowstring and turn his hide into a scabbard for one of my swords.”

Louvaen believed him.  Cinnia had told her earlier of his rage when he learned what Jimenin had done to her, how he’d almost ridden across the drawbridge on Magnus before Gavin and Ambrose literally netted him off the horse.  They had to use brute force and magic to subdue him.  Hours of cursing, death threats and abuse on his cell door passed before he was calm enough to listen to reason.

“If it’s any comfort, my father exacted revenge when he planted the queen’s knife you gave me between his shoulders.  Papa saved Cinnia’s life and mine.”

He quirked an eyebrow at her revelation and grunted his approval of Mercer’s actions.  “And here I thought your battle spirit came from one of your mothers.”

Louvaen smiled at the memory of Abigail Hallis.  Her stepmother would have stabbed Jimenin and shot Ballard without a second thought if it meant protecting her children.

Ballard patted the mattress on the side opposite his injured leg.  “Come lie next to me.”

She balked.  “You can’t tell me your leg doesn’t hurt.”

“Only as much as having a hot coal sewn to my thigh would hurt.”  He chuckled at her scowl.  “You beside me will make me think of other things.”  She still hesitated and he stared at her, unsmiling.  “Did you fall in love with the forest king and now want nothing to do with the man?”

She pretended to study him.  “I very much liked the bittersweet blooms, and the horns were an interesting touch.”  Her finger outlined the edge of his jaw, pausing to rub the coarse hairs of his beard.  “You’re almost too pretty now.”

He laughed weakly and lifted the blankets, exposing a bare hip and long leg.  Louvaen toed off her borrowed shoes and slid in beside him fully dressed.  Ballard gathered her close, and she rested her head on shoulder, luxuriating in the familiar ecstasy of his body pressed along the length of hers.  She’d have to abandon him soon to fetch Gavin, Magda and Ambrose.  They’d use her guts for bowstring if she waited too long in telling them he was awake.

They lay quietly together until Ballard raised his hand to the candlelight, turning it one way and then another.  “It’s been many years since my hands looked like this.”  He ran his thumb across his fingertips and the blunt distal edges.  “The flux hit so fast this last time, we weren’t prepared.  I held on long enough to help Ambrose lock Gavin in his chamber—not that it did much good in the end.  I didn’t reach my cell before I changed.  Ambrose had to trap me in the buttery.  I don’t remember anything else after that except you holding a pistol and fire in my leg.  What happened?”

Louvaen wasn’t thrilled at the idea of revisiting those nightmarish events in the bailey, but he had a right to know and if she didn’t tell him, someone else would.  He listened without interruption when she recounted her trip with Jimenin to Ketach Tor, Ambrose’s clever illusion of Cinnia that even fooled Mercer and the mayhem that exploded thereafter.  She didn’t dwell on the screams of the man torn asunder by Isabeau’s roses or the savagery with which he and Gavin had dispatched the remainder of Jimenin’s troop.  He must have heard the horror in her voice, because he grew rigid against her.

“I won’t lie, Louvaen,” he said flatly.  “As a man I would have slaughtered those men with the same violence I did as a beast.  The only difference is I’d have used sword and axe instead of teeth and claws.  Such is the way of battle and protecting your own.”

She raised herself on an elbow to peer into his face.  His eyes flashed a challenge and an unspoken message. 
This is part of who I am.
  She smoothed one of his eyebrows.  “I’m not judging you, Ballard.  I nearly blew your leg off, and I love you.”

His features softened and his gaze caught fire.  “Do you?  Even now, after what you’ve seen the curse do to a man?”

Louvaen kissed the tip of his nose, moved down and captured his lips for another lingering kiss.  He moaned against her mouth.  She offered another quick peck before drawing away.  “Oh that’s nothing,” she said.  “I put up with your wizard insulting and trying to poison me all winter just to be near you.  If that isn’t love, I don’t know what is.”  She grinned as he broke into a hearty laugh.

He pulled her back down to him.  The curse had recognized her sincerity the first time she’d uttered the sentiment to a sleeping Ballard.  True Love’s Kiss didn’t break the bane; true love and the courage to admit it did.  Well, that and the odd twist of her being nonborn.  Good thing she, not Cinnia, had fallen in love with Ballard.

“You don’t ask if I love you.”  Ballard’s voice vibrated under her cheek.

“I don’t need too.  You said so, and I believe you.  Besides, I know you love me.”  He’d shown her in countless ways, proclaimed it in many different words.

“You’re right, I do.  I must; I spent all winter preventing my wizard from turning you into a toad.”

Louvaen heard the laughter in his voice and would have cuffed him lightly on the arm if she hadn’t caught a glimpse of his eyes.  They were cloudy with pain and perspiration sheened his forehead.  She ignored his protests and slid out of the bed.  “You’re hurting, Ballard; I can see it.  There’s willow bark tea, but I think you need something stronger.  I’m off to get Ambrose.”  She captured his hand and gave it a squeeze.  “I’ll be back soon.”

She had her hand on the latch when he called out to her.  “Louvaen, send Gavin to me.”

Reluctant to leave him but unable to give him the relief he could find in one of Ambrose’s concoctions, she headed to Magda’s rooms.  She met the sorcerer in the corridor.  Louvaen tossed aside polite greetings, familiar enough with Ambrose now to recognize his appreciation for brevity.  “He’s awake, in pain, and asking for Gavin.”