Night's Templar: A Vampire Queen Novel (Vampire Queen Series Book 13) (48 page)

“How long will you let the love you feel for him burn inside your ice heart before you let it melt and heal your soul?” Keldwyn said quietly.

Cayden was almost as good as his Queen at concealing his thoughts, but Kel saw the brief slip. He would always stand at her side, protect her, love her, care for her. Yet if Rhoswen allowed that love to become an open thing, growing without restrictions, it could change everything inside her soul. Cayden knew it, hoped it, wished for it.

Keldwyn knew it would, because it had for him.

Rhoswen was now looking into the space beyond Keldwyn’s shoulder, away from everyone. She was barely breathing, it seemed, her energy glowing blue around her. Keldwyn passed his fingers through that aura, making it curl around his fingers and dissipate. He’d done that when she was younger, making her laugh, snapping her out of a tantrum.

"Most of my life, I've watched over amazing, powerful and supremely frustrating children. Uthe is no child. He is my equal.” He met her gaze when it shifted to his. “Just as you know that Lyssa is yours, with or without Fae blood. He is balance and intelligence, steady as the earth itself, and I have ever been a creature of earth. For me, he is the fire in the center of it."

She turned away from him. The unbroken tiles beneath her feet changed to cracked ice as she stepped upon them. A blast of cold air whistled through the chamber, rustling the tapestries on the wall and frosting the skin of those left in the chamber. Stopping in front of her throne, she tipped her head back. A ripple went through her body, a hard shudder. Cayden moved to her side, closer this time. Once there, he stopped, paused. After a long moment, he dropped to a knee and bowed his head, but he put his hand at her waist, long fingers wrapping around her hip. It was an intriguing mix of messages. She tilted her head away from him, but her fingers touched his, curved into them and held. She said something too low to be heard, and Cayden rose to his feet. As she turned and faced him, the two of them exchanged a long look. Then she brought her attention back to Keldwyn.

“Lord Keldwyn, you have ever been a thorn in my side. I have imagined many ways to destroy you, yet I am not so caught up in the pleasure of such visions that I overlook a crucial truth. I rely on your counsel, your arguments and your clever insults that veil wise advice.”

“Though you are a pain in my ass, Your Majesty, I would not offer counsel unless I thought you were a monarch worthy of my time.”

“Proof that your arrogance is one of the least charming things about you, my lord. But…” She took a step toward him. She seemed to be struggling with something. Cayden moved a step closer again, and his proximity steadied her. She straightened, met Keldwyn’s gaze. He caught a breath, for in the pain, resolve and raw honesty he saw there now, he remembered Reghan’s face in their last days together, when so much had been about baring the soul, and saying their good-byes. He also thought about Uthe, calling him Master as they stood outside the Shattered World, admitting his desire to be Keldwyn’s.

By the gods, he needed to go, now. He was quivering inside like a wolf in desperate need to go on the hunt. But she was his only gateway back to him.

“You have been the constant in my life since my father’s passing. You loved him.” Rhoswen’s lips tightened. “I knew that. Countless times, when I felt the pain of his loss touch me from some passing memory, I saw it had touched you also. Since you hold so much away from the rest of us, I could only imagine how deeply that emotion ran. It changed, hurt and remade us all, didn’t it, my lord?”

Her voice had become soft, her eyes weary. He nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He thought of Uthe, asking,
“Was he the love of your life?”

“You have stayed by my side to help me learn to be a better queen,” she said. “You have counseled me in ways large and small to keep my baser emotions from dictating my rule. Mostly. I think there were times you deliberately made yourself a target so I could channel my anger toward you rather than toward the responsibilities of my throne.”

He didn’t deny it, and her lips twitched, though there was no humor in her face. Pain was still a living thing in her eyes. “You watched over his other daughter as much as you were able, cared for her interests and brought us together. You suffered guilt over her mother choosing to meet the sun, because you felt you owed that to him as well, to protect the happiness of the woman you despised for taking him from you. But you figured that out, too, didn’t you? He loved us. Just never as much as he loved her.”

“Yes.” Keldwyn spoke through stiff lips. “We cannot help whom we love, my lady.”

“Nor whom we don’t.” She sighed. “That’s the dark side the poems do not address. You have now given your heart to a vampire, and you are willing to let that love take you from my side. Forgive my reaction to that, but it opens old wounds.”

“You are true Unseelie Fae, my lady,” Keldwyn said slowly. “You have trouble understanding that the confession of love for one is not a denial of any love for another. You do not have to be the center of my existence to have my love, my regard, and my care for your wellbeing.” Her gaze lifted to him, and he nodded, meaning every word. “If it must be done from the human realm, it will be no less strong or steadfast.”

“I do not want to lose your counsel,” she said after a moment. “But our rules on this are very clear. I am not of a mind to try and change them yet. Too much has changed, too quickly, between our world and the human one, the vampire one. There must be boundaries.”

“There must.” He dropped to one knee and bowed his head. If this was the last counsel he would ever give her, he knew what needed to be said. What Reghan would want him to say. "You are a fair Queen, my lady. The past is relinquishing its hold on you, the present moment notwithstanding. With every step you take away from it, you become an even better ruler. I wish you success and joy.”

He lifted his head, met her ice-blue eyes. “Now send me back to Varick, damn it, before I lose my mind."

High spots of color appeared in her pale cheeks, but her countenance held something other than anger.

"One day you will learn you do not order a queen to do anything. Goodbye, Lord Keldwyn."

H
e only had
time to bow his head in acknowledgment. He experienced the familiar disorientation of a portal transition, and then he was in the castle ruins once more, surrounded by bodies, blood and a scattering of weapons. He scrambled to his feet.

The Templars and Saracens were dead. As he moved among them, Kel saw they’d either been taken by the fight or, once the fight was over, their purpose done, the Shattered World had no more claim on them. Curled up on his side, Jacques looked as if he were in his bed. He held his sword, his lips pressed to the blade.

Keldwyn squatted next to Nexus. The stallion lay where he’d fallen when the shielding around the demon had hit him. Had Uthe not had the sorceress’s weapon protecting him, Kel expected it would have done far more damage to the vampire. It had broken the horse’s neck. It would help Uthe to know the noble creature hadn’t suffered more than a moment, illusion or not.

The only one missing from the courtyard was Uthe.

Varick?
He spoke in his mind, hoping, but he heard nothing. It didn’t mean anything, he told himself. He could be sleeping, unconscious. Kel didn’t know if body decomposition was the same here or not, but those in the courtyard did not look long dead. So perhaps he’d only been gone a few hours.

Scanning the altar, he saw the pieces of the head had dissolved to ash. The Grail was still there, knocked on its side as before, the Cross standing silent above it. The traces of the demon’s power, that insidious red, were gone, as was the silver-blue of the binding. With those two influences gone, Kel could feel the drumbeat pulse of the power innate to the Cross and Grail, a golden heat like the sun, constant, steady. Beneath that was the power of the earth, fueled by that light, as well as by blood. The vines were gone from the Cross, and the goblet no longer looked like an artifact recently dug from the ground. The wood of the Cross gleamed and the Grail’s clay bowl had a luster.

He didn’t see the Spear. Perhaps it had dissolved to ash with the head.

Kel moved away from the altar and began to search the crevices around the main courtyard. A handful of shallow, shaded alcoves seemed to be former entry points into the keep. Even though the sun wouldn’t cook Uthe here as it would in the earthly realm, instinct might send him to a cool, dark place to recoup his strength.

Keldwyn discovered a hallway that had deteriorated into a cave, which became a tunnel leading downward, perhaps once a hidden passageway out of the keep. He saw a blood trail and, as he traversed the tunnel, skidding a little from the steep incline, he saw signs of a scuffle against the rock walls. When he had to step over two more bodies, he knew Uthe had been required to finish off his attackers. The demon’s last defiance. Yet it meant he hadn’t succeeded in taking Uthe’s soul with him. Kel curled a lip in savage satisfaction. His heart was too pure, his faith too devout. Hell would have no space for Varick Uthe.

That part was good news, but Keldwyn couldn’t dispel the image of Uthe fighting on his own while he and Rhoswen wrangled in her throne room over the mistakes of a time so far past it shouldn’t matter anymore.

Cursing, Keldwyn quickened his pace. He hadn’t yet found Uthe’s collapsed body, something he wanted to feel hopeful about. The blood trail continued and, since he didn’t find any other Saracens, the blood had to be all Uthe’s. Blood loss might not kill a vampire, but it would have severely weakened him.

The tunnel opened back up into a cave, which led out into the grassy area Uthe had thought might be a former tourney field. It was at the mouth of that cave that Keldwyn found him. His heart froze. The Spear was thrust through Uthe’s chest, and the vampire lay motionless on his side.

Keldwyn skidded down to him, kneeling by his side. He was dead. He must be dead. Uthe’s eyes were open and unblinking, his face in the rigor of death.
No.

He didn’t care how selfish it was, he wanted to rage at Uthe’s God, at any god that was listening. He’d let Reghan go, because Reghan belonged to another, and Fate had been too strong for him to fight its course, but Uthe was his.
His.
He’d given his heart to Keldwyn—at least he’d started to do so. They were going to belong to one another. He’d known it down to his soul.

He couldn’t bear to see the Spear there, so Kel maneuvered Uthe gently forward, clasped the shaft behind the tip and pulled it free, setting it aside. If the trail of bodies hadn’t told him vengeance was already served, he would have hunted down those who’d done this to Uthe, charting every corner of the Shattered World necessary to make it happen. He didn’t care if Rhoswen brought him back. He’d rather stay lost here, never having to go through the painful farce of facing others in his life, forced to cope with yet another loss he couldn’t bear. It would end here.

He was cunning as needed without ever telling a direct lie, the epitome of legendary Fae cleverness. He always presented the face he intended to present. It had been many years since someone had looked beyond that to see the soul beneath. That spoke to how good he was at the tasks he’d set himself over the years. Yet the perverse hypocrisy of being so good at such dissembling lay in the soul deep longing to find someone with the intelligence and strength to see that and far more. To accept Keldwyn as…Keldwyn. Someone who would look at him like Uthe had, with no mask or artifice between them. No separation between their souls.

Catriona loved him, and he treasured that, but a child’s love was different. Uthe had looked into his soul and understood in a single quiet moment how much Keldwyn grieved for his children and for Reghan. He’d seen how important peace between their worlds was to Keldwyn, how Keldwyn did so much of what he did as a memorial to those he’d lost.

The gods thought a soul was supposed to have a limitless endurance against grief and loss. It didn’t. He was done.

Keldwyn placed his hand on Uthe’s chest, sliding his other arm around him to pull his body halfway into his lap. Wrapping both arms around him, he rested his forehead on the top of his head. A thought crossed his mind and he reached up, unraveled the braids Catriona had made. His time in the Shattered World had knotted them, but he yanked the strands free with impatient fingers. His hair tumbled down to brush Uthe’s face and neck.

Beauty didn’t mean much, except as a strategic advantage or as something that just
was
. But it became something different when offered as a gift to one specific person, one of many gifts he’d wanted to offer. The vampire liked his hair, liked feeling it on his face, and on his body. It had pleased Keldwyn so deeply, so absurdly. He’d liked how the vampire touched his ears, wondering at their shape and feel.

When he gripped Uthe’s limp hand, he found there was still warmth in it. The discovery twisted the knife deeper in his gut. He could not have been gone long. Not long at all…What if the thrust of the Spear had happened a blink before Kel arrived, the last body thumping to the ground and Uthe stumbling or rolling to the bottom of the tunnel, coming to a stop here only moments ago? The quest was done, the relics now all that was left of his task.

The thought drew his mind back to the altar. Kel lifted his head, staring into Uthe’s face. What if there was a way to restore life to him?

Keldwyn knew how magic did and didn’t work. The idea that the Grail could bestow immortality was a legend born of men’s perpetual fear of death. Yet there might be some truth in the embellishment. The Grail had power; he’d felt it. What if it had regenerative powers?

He left Uthe for only as long as it took him to run back through the tunnel, faster than he’d ever moved before. If he’d been matching himself against Uthe in one of his sun rituals, Kel would have left him far behind. But he had no intention of leaving the vampire behind, or being left behind himself.

The Grail was still on the table, an unadorned goblet lying on its side. Some of the inert black ooze that had come from the head was still pooled on the table, but it had cut a deliberate swath around the sacred cup, such that the Grail lay in a cleanly marked circle. Proof of its properties of Light gave Keldwyn hope.