The Eunuch's Heir (16 page)

IN LYSSA’S
chamber alongside the women’s quarter, servants slathered Wolfram’s wounds with a concoction made from honey and herbs that seemed to dull the sting of the claw marks. In some far corner of the palace, they were discussing whether his punishment would be considered complete, or if Lyssa’s intervention violated some part of their archaic law. For the moment, Wolfram didn’t care. He lay at last on a comfortable bed, his wounds tended, his dry throat soothed by some of Esfandiyar’s special rose wine. Lyssa paced not far off, overseeing all that was done for him, snapping at the servants if he so much as flinched. His Lyssa, brought like an avenger from nowhere to save him. How could he have forgotten how beautiful she was. A thousand questions buzzed inside him, waiting for her undivided attention.

Lyssa spoke Hemijrani adequately well, so he surmised that she had been here for some time. Her bare scalp was deeply tanned, accented by the vine tattoo over her eye. She must have been the ally Faedre spoke of, called back from whatever adventure she’d been on. Faedre’s part in it was another, larger question, but one he put aside for the time being. If Lyssa would go through all of this, she must be after more than vengeance. Had she come for his mother’s sake or his own? Drifting in a haze of wine and herbs, Wolfram let himself be lulled to sleep by the patient hands. Lyssa would be there later; she would always be there.

When he awoke, he took a moment just to breathe, quiet and safe. The light had changed from sun streaming from an
open door to lanterns set about on the chests. This room was much like his own, save for the swaths of cloth draped over the bed. One of the two doors opened into the ladies’ quarter, so the cloth was probably an attempt at atmosphere for the lovers who would meet here. Lyssa herself sat on a stool by his side, her sword resting across a polishing cloth on her lap, though she made no move to touch it. Instead, her eyes lingered over his bare chest, flickering up to his throat, and away again, a frown twisting the corners of her mouth.

“Lyssa, what are you doing here?” he asked, the first and easiest question that came to mind.

Lyssa started, the sword clattering to the floor. She retrieved it with a scowl and slapped it down on a table. “Looking for you.”

“Then Bernholt must know where we’ve gone.”

“What’s Bernholt got to do with anything?” She placed an elbow on her knee and leaned her chin on her hand, studying him. “I’ve been here for ages, negotiating for your return.”

He laughed. “But I’ve only just gotten here. Three days ago, I think.”

She made a sound like a growl. “Where’ve they been keeping you, then?”

“Nobody’s been keeping me anywhere. Look, do I have a concussion, or is this conversation not making any sense?”

“Fine then, you first. Tell me all.”

“Well…” He hesitated. “Actually, I haven’t eaten since yesterday. Why don’t you get us some food, then you can talk while I eat. I’ll fill in whatever you don’t know.” He plucked at the light wool blanket.

Lyssa maintained her stare a moment longer. “I’ll hold you to it.” She rose and called to someone in the hall. Moments later, a half dozen servants appeared, toting trays and bowls, which were spread on a chest by his head. Wolfram collected enough pillows to prop himself up and took a greedy swallow of mead before starting in on a roasted leg of something.

Filling her own cup, Lyssa took a sip, then described the scene at the castle when they’d realized he was gone.
“Your mother was frantic, and they were sure you’d been kidnapped by these refugees, maybe to be exchanged for our aid in this war they’re fighting. Gwythym found Erik dead in the streets, and Dylan injured—I understand he’s recovered now,” she added, in response to Wolfram’s flash of concern. “I thought you’d run away,” she continued, describing her fruitless journey to Bernholt.

While she spoke, Wolfram tried to piece together the events of that night. Erik must have gone for Dylan at the observatory when he discovered Wolfram had left. Asenith would have admitted that much, anyhow. Dylan would have known he’d go to the west gate to try for a horse, it was what they’d always talked about if they wanted to leave town in a hurry. The corner of his mouth betrayed a smile as he recalled hiding out when they were twelve, planning secret escapes and adventures. Whatever had happened in the confusion, he was glad Dylan was all right.

“So I left Bernholt and came here on some awful little boat. The Jeshan accepted me as a royal emissary and set about confusing me with kindness. Every sort of gift and honor they could give me. I had to flee my ambassador’s quarters for this place just to leave all the men they kept sending. I tried explaining the Lady’s way, but they’d have none of it.” She snorted, the sound so characteristic that it broadened Wolfram’s smile. “I thought it might be language getting in the way, so I learned what I could of that, but still they admitted nothing. They denied nothing, either, but they did it all in such a way that I was convinced they had you someplace. It was like bargaining in a marketplace. I couldn’t tell if they wanted to draw us into this war or try to get us to stop it. Three days ago, the Jeshan’s men said they’d take me to see ‘something worthwhile.’ You—I thought. We wound up at an ancient temple complex, hundreds of these towers and wombs; have you seen the one here? That’s where the messenger found me last night. I think I rode the legs off my horse to get back here.” She took a long swallow and regarded him sternly. “Now you.”

Licking his fingers and wiping them carefully, Wolfram
considered what to tell her, and what to leave out. Finally, he began, “Someone tried to kill me that night I left. Thief, maybe, or one of the refugees, I don’t know.”

“Great Lady!” She sighed, reaching out a hand to the scar at his throat. Her touch sent shivers through him, as it always had.

“I was running away, Lyssa, you were right about that. After I broke free, I just ran. I wasn’t thinking clearly. You know me.” He threw in a chuckle and ran a hand through his hair. “Anyhow, I wound up in the woods, and fell down a cliff or something. I woke up in a Woodmen’s camp. They took care of me, and I moved on with them.”
Them
, he thought,
not her, not Morra
. He felt a twinge of guilt at leaving her out, but neither could he explain what they had done for each other—not to Lyssa. Suddenly, he touched his throat and cursed. “Where’s my bear claw? Did those guards get it?”

“No, it’s right here.” Lyssa produced it, blood-soaked leather thong and all, and handed it over. “I guess they didn’t think it could do much harm.”

He closed it in his fist, feeling the reassuring jab of the tip. “The Woodmen gave it to me. It’s all I have of that time. Well, not quite all.” Cleaned of blood and grime, his skin revealed the tracery of scars from boar hunting and spear play, and one not far from his heart where a rival had struck a glancing blow for Morra’s sake. He hoped the man had gotten her; she deserved a dependable mate. “I learned a good deal of tracking and hiding in the five months I was with them.”

“Five months! All that time I was trying to deal with these people, you were playing in the woods?”

“I didn’t think you’d care,” he said. “Why should any of you, for all I’d done?”

She leaned in close to him, frowning to make out his soft words. “Why should we? You’re the heir to a kingdom, in case you’ve forgotten. And the only one, aside from the bastard child you left us with.”

“Ouch. Why not just let the baby have it? Finistrel knows I’m not fit.”

“That’s just what Duchess Elyn says,” Lyssa growled. “The last letter Fionvar wrote he told me Elyn went so far as to suggest Brianna should remarry, and get a new heir or a few, rather than have you or your baby.” Lyssa looked away from him, and he suddenly wondered if she might be keeping as much from him as he kept from her.

“And leave the memory of the Blessed Rhys? I think she’d rather die.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Wolfram,” Lyssa snapped. “So maybe you should shut up until you do.”

In the face of her sudden outburst, Wolfram shrank back from her. “Ouch.”

“That’s right, Wolf, and maybe you should remember that you’re not the only one who’s hurting.”

“So I’ve wounded all of you, you think I don’t know that? Goddess’s Tears, Lyssa, why’d you think I ran away? It seems like no matter how far I go, I’m still hurting you. I should’ve died with the leopards and had it over with.” He turned away from her, arms crossed, throat aching.

From behind him came the last sound he expected: Lyssa’s laughter. It was not a sound of humor, but a strangled little cry of pain. “Yes, Wolfram, yes, the farther you go, the more I hurt. Great Lady, Wolfram, if you want to stop hurting me, you’ve got to stay close. Oh, by all the stars and spirits, couldn’t you figure that out?”

In the silence that followed her words, Wolfram shut his eyes tight, holding back the hope for what her words might mean. He covered his face with his hands, trembling, but she reached out and gently drew them back again, into her own.

“It’s wrong,” he whispered, “what I feel for you. It’s all wrong.”

Again, she made that queer laugh. “Oh, you don’t know the half of it, you really don’t.”

The pain, the exhaustion, the longing stormed inside him, and he did not speak, not knowing what part of his divided soul would answer. Then, she stroked her powerful hands down his chest, over his scars, just as he had always dreamed
she would, and Wolfram gave a cry, almost a sob. He wanted this so badly, more than anything he had ever wanted before.

She took his cry for his surrender, and the strength of her embrace took his breath away. Then her lips caressed the scar at his throat, and his fingers traced the blue vine as it trailed behind her ear, and down her neck, half-unwilling. The claw marks on his hip and shoulder ached. The fire within him blasted the demons and the wounds, and he took his hand from her naked scalp to grasp her buttock, to forget what she was, what he was. Wasn’t this what he always wanted—and yet the demon haunted him still, taunting him with Alyn’s long-ago curses. Evil, he was, in the arms of a priestess. Tears burned his eyes, but he would not let himself weep.

Gripping him with arms honed by years of swords and stone, she moaned into his ear. Her hot breath steamed his cheek as she murmured incoherently. He caught her prayers, he caught his name—and not his name.

Wolfram’s eyes snapped open. He broke the embrace, pushing himself away to stare into her face.

Breathing hard, she opened her own eyes, their vivid green sparkling in the lamplight. “What’s wrong? Wolfram?”

“That isn’t what you said a minute ago.”

“What?” She frowned, raised a hand to her brow, and lowered it again. “I said a lot of things; I always have.”

“Orie?” he asked sharply. “Did you say that?”

“I may have.” She matched his tone. “Meeting Faedre again has brought him to mind. What of it?” Red heat rose in her cheeks even as she spoke.

“Nothing,” he said. “It’s nothing.” He rolled off of her to the outside and sat up, sucking in a breath at the twinge of pain from his wounds.

“He was my brother, Wolfram, that’s all. What are you thinking?” Her voice grew almost wild to regain his attention, but he had already risen.

“I’m going to the garden. I trust they’re not going to kill me again for that offense.” Casting his gaze around, he spotted a long robe like the ones Esfandiyar wore and pulled it
on despite the protest of his stiffening shoulders, ashamed of the lust that still enflamed his body.

“Oh, Wolfie, what have we done?” she said from somewhere behind him, in a voice that sounded like a sob.

Wolfram’s throat ached, and for a moment he wanted to turn back and take her in his arms, but that broken sound left him gutted. He swallowed hard and shut the door behind him as he left.

Wolfram struggled to regain his bravado as he stood in the hall of the women’s quarter. Unfulfilled lust knotted his belly and loins, the dream of Lyssa turning sour as it slipped away. He still had too many questions, questions the garden air would only lull into complacence again. One, at least, he could get answered readily enough.

A young woman coming up the hall spotted him and gasped, turning away. He marched straight up as if he would touch her and demanded, “Where’s Faedre?” She whimpered, pressing close to the wall. “Faedre?” he repeated more loudly.

One arm thrust out, pointing toward a grandly carved door not far from Lyssa’s.

Wolfram crossed to it. He rapped sharply, waited, rapped again.

A voice called out in Hemijrani, soft and feminine.

“It’s Wolfram,” he answered.

A moment later, the swish of fabric announced her coming, and the door opened.

Beyond her, the hall was brightly lit with lanterns of pierced silver, backlighting her so that he could see all her curves through the sheer fabric of her robe. Faedre smiled up at him. “I had hoped you would come to me one day, but this is an unexpected pleasure. Won’t you step inside?”

The thought of Lyssa suddenly emerging from her room pulled him over the threshold, barely waiting for Faedre to shut the door before demanding, “I look like Orie, don’t I? I’m the image of him.”

Faedre searched his eyes, then nodded. “You are so alike, you could be his twin, in more ways than one.”

“Bury it,” he muttered, leaning against the arch.

“Are you his son, in truth?” she asked, stepping nearer.

“I don’t know.”

“Mmm,” she murmured, drawing a finger down his cheek and across his collarbone. “It seems unlikely,” she said, letting her finger drift down his arm, back up his chest, “that I wouldn’t have known.”

“If you say so.” He rested his head back against the wall, not moving away, not caring why. The secret love he held for so long crumbled, and he did not know which of them was to blame.

“Do you know,” she breathed against the naked flesh at his throat, “how much I longed for one more night with him.”

Wolfram’s body wanted her, wanted someone—anyone—to take away the pain, but he recalled the moment in the garden and the longing that slipped beneath his defenses. Would a moment of passion fix the broken dream or answer that longing he had never known he felt?