Bound by the Vampire Queen (54 page)

“Our father… it appears he was an honorable, brave male who did his best to love his family, all of us, and do what he thought was right. If I can forgive a male like Rex, who was so much less in character, then Lord Reghan is worthy of your forgiveness. I expect he would want your forgiveness, not just for his own sake, but as your loyal captain just showed, for yours. He wouldn’t want to be an open wound in his daughter’s heart.”

As a queen herself, she saw Rhoswen as a peer, so Lyssa had no qualms about reaching out and laying her hand on hers. When the Fae’s gaze went to that contact, Lyssa wondered how long it had been since someone had touched her without calculated design or permission. She suspected it had been quite a while.

“I know what it is to rule from isolation. To not trust anyone because of betrayal. But if you are brave enough to love, you
will
be a great queen. And there are already those in your life who bear you great love, no matter how sorely you test it.” Lyssa tilted her head toward the doorway. “My Irish wolfhound, Bran, is the only creature I’ve met as singlemindedly devoted as your captain. Though Bran smells less gamey.”

That won a brief flash in the queen’s expression that might have been humor. “Tabor would be an extremely strong ally to you in whatever way you need,” Lyssa persisted. “And I do not know your history when Keldwyn was your Regent, but I still sense loyalty to you in him, though it is on his own difficult terms.”

Rhoswen’s lip curled. “I do not trust him.”

“It doesn’t mean he’s not loyal. He was close to our father, right?”

Rhoswen’s jaw tightened over the “our,” but she let it stand. Looked up at the statue. “Though he had it commissioned, you can see the love there, how every chip of the sculptor’s blade was supervised.

They were best friends, close as brothers. Perhaps more. There are those who said Keldwyn and he were lovers, off and on. While Keldwyn has never said, I do not doubt he loved Reghan. I was there the day he presented this statue. He was much younger then, of course. But the way his eyes flashed, his expression of utter defiance and grieving rage… I’d never seen him exhibit such emotion.”

“Then it stands to reason, he would feel a strong compunction to protect and serve Reghan’s offspring. Either one of us.” Lyssa moved her fingers over the cool hand, drawing her gaze again. “I am your sister, Rhoswen, royalty in my own world, whether or not that world or my position in it has any of your respect. Tabor is offering us a chance to make this a better world on both sides. Let me give you that, and maybe, in time, we can build together what neither of us has. A trusted blood relative.” Rhoswen had lifted her face to stare at the statue again. As Lyssa watched her, her blue eyes glistened, then a tear rolled down out of her eye, freezing on her cheek like single diamond. Lyssa brushed it off with one light finger. Rhoswen didn’t move, but when Lyssa touched her hand again, there was a linking of fingers, a tentative gesture that was somehow permissible because Rhoswen kept her gaze averted from it, not acknowledging what her body was doing.

“You don’t want to harm his soul,” Lyssa realized.

“You wanted a part of him back.”

“I thought I could put the soul essence into the statue. It would make it a place of power, of strong energy.”

“A place for a queen to go and meditate for guidance. This queen, or any of those who succeed her.”

“You know I’m barren. Keldwyn told you, of course.” Rhoswen’s lips curved, bittersweet. “A Fae queen of ice and water, unable to have a child. But there are others who would be suitable heirs to my throne. I shall name one in the coming years, when she is worthy.”

At Lyssa’s mental prompting, Jacob moved forward again. Cayden came with him of course.

When Jacob stopped at Lyssa’s elbow, she reached into the pack he brought, withdrew the pouch and the red gemstone.

Rhoswen blinked. “You were bluffing. How did you… ?”

“A bit of sorcery I learned a long time ago to protect the location of my underground bedroom at home. Fae magic, of course. I used it then without directly acknowledging it as such, out of stubbornness. We are similar in that regard.” Rhoswen’s fingers had closed into a ball. When Lyssa extended the gemstone, she turned her half sister’s hand over, loosened the fingers and placed the stone in it. The red stone was held between their palms, their fingers interlaced. The Fae queen closed her eyes. “It’s warm. And I feel him. So faint, but I remember him… do you feel it?”

“I do. I never had the chance to know him, but to feel his soul essence… it’s like the cemetery.

Painful joy.”

Rhoswen kept her eyes closed, but nodded. When Lyssa at last drew her hand back, the queen opened her eyes to see her lifting the pouch for her inspection. “I ask, respectfully, that you let me take the ashes of the bush home with me. The roses I planted in Atlanta were started from the rose Reghan gave my mother. I think he would like it if he were scattered over those roses, so in some way they can be together again.”

“I will think on it.” After a moment, Rhoswen spoke, with studied indifference. “So Tabor feels you would be a good liaison between our courts.”

“He spoke of that, yes. Is he well ?”

Rhoswen gave her that faintly scornful smile, though it had less heat. “He makes a good impression, doesn’t he? He elicits care from total strangers. It is the type of male he is. Yes, he is well.” Shifting on the fountain, she looked down at the glistening red stone. “I expect, since your vampire and Fae abilities appear to be more balanced, and your relationship with your servant is restored to something the council understands a bit better, a liaison is not a bad idea.”

She paused.

“To agree with

Tabor’s recommendation is an acknowledgment that a relationship between our worlds can be beneficial to us, and I’m still not so sure of that. But I am willing to defer to his judgment, wait and see. I appoint you as liaison to the Vampire Council, Lady Lyssa, in addition to whatever other role you will eventually serve for them. My scribes will prepare a formal correspondence from me for you to carry to them. I think that serves both of us, just as it has served Tabor and me to have Keldwyn fulfill more than one role in our respective courts. However, you will come back here three months out of the year. The months that contain Beltane, Samhain and Yule. All Fae court members are required to participate in the rites to honor the Lord and Lady, our blessed Danu and her Consort, and all they represent in our world.” Lyssa pursed her lips. “You issue this as an edict, but by your own laws, by completing this third quest, I have some direction over my own will , my own decisions. I will come for part of Yule, but there are others I honor at Christmas as well. I will want time with them. However, I will give you two weeks of that month. I support the establishment of the liaison role and will champion it with Council. I will hope it benefits both our worlds, and heals some old wounds.”

Rhoswen didn’t respond, but she did not disagree, either. She took her hand away from the pouch, a tacit acceptance of Lyssa’s wishes with respect to it.

But as she did, she gazed back down at the roses floating past her in the water. “The old man… you are right, that I felt his grief and understood it. But you are wrong if you think I don’t understand our similarities. Humans are not so different from Fae, for all that they need their structure. Their structure only hides how truly capricious they are. They vacillate between hate and love, joy and despair, not like a pendulum clock, which is predictable, but like the chaos of shrapnel exploding from a bomb. Much as we do.”

She looked at Lyssa now with bright, harsh eyes. “I hate you… yet I do not, as well. What I feel toward you… it has no order. But I do know… I have a desire to see you again, sister. If you would consider coming for a few days in February… winters are long here. Your company, the company of your son, my nephew, might be welcome.” Now she straightened, speaking as one royal to another. “I swear to you, my oath, that as a child he will never come to any harm here, no matter the tenor of our own relationship.”

“I will think on it.”

Rhoswen gave her a tight-lipped smile as Lyssa repeated her own haughty words. The Fae queen rose, a dismissal, but she gave Jacob an openly appraising look. “I like you better as human, former vampire. On future visits, I might very well exercise a queen’s prerogative to have you share my bed again.”

Jacob cleared his throat, sketched a respectful bow. “I’m ever at the disposal of my lady’s will , your Majesty.”

“Then I shall just have to see what I can do to compel that will .”

“You better be capable of making Hell freeze over,” Lyssa said politely.

Rhoswen gave her that humorless smile, but it held no more than a shadow of her earlier malice.

“My scribes will prepare the correspondence and we will review it tomorrow, so I anticipate you will be able to return home shortly after that. Our dawn will align with your dusk for the next several days. Wait until then to protect your fair vampire skin, sister.

Particularly since it needs some time to heal as it is.” As she turned away, bringing the audience to an end, Lyssa rose. “I’d like to ask you a question, sister. About the doll and the child’s tea set.” Rhoswen stopped, but she didn’t turn back, speaking instead to the sheets of water silently sliding down the wall before her. “He gave it to me, shortly after you were conceived. I have no idea how he knew his child would have dark hair and green eyes, but he was a powerful magic user, gifted with visions of different things. Sadly, his own fate was not one of them. However, perhaps he knew enough, because when he gave me the doll, he told me if I became sad, afraid or lonely, I could talk to her. She would listen, and that would help.”

“Did it?”

“Not always. Sometimes I needed her to talk back.” Rhoswen looked over her shoulder, gave her a tight smile. “Return to your room with your servant and have the staff care for you as needed. I have some further business to handle here. Captain, please remain.”

Understanding that the doll admission was a difficult one, that the whole discussion had been draining for them both, Lyssa was willing to overlook being summarily dismissed.

Acknowledging

Rhoswen with a nod, she moved toward the doorway with Jacob. Cayden could have been made of stone, his face expressionless.

As they slid out, the double doors closed behind them. Jacob hesitated.
My lady, he defied her on my advice. He’s already been whipped. I don’t want to leave him in peril.

“I don’t think that’s her intent,” Lyssa said. “And though your advice may have prompted him, Captain Cayden is very much his own man.” At Jacob’s look, she sighed, jerked her head to the left. “Come this way. I'll show you something I learned, wandering about while you were sleeping your days away.

Unnecessarily I might add.”

“You didn’t know about the sun any more than I did.”

Do I have to do all of my servant’s thinking for him?
She caught his hand, breaking into a near-silent trot to take him where she intended to go.

A winding stairwel led to a narrow fissure, through which they squeezed into the upper gallery of the main hall. Using her cloaking abilities, Lyssa made sure they blended into the shadows at the rear of it.

She warned Jacob to absolute silence, knowing if Rhoswen’s attention strayed, they would be found out. After their conversation, Lyssa didn’t think the queen would censure them for curiosity, but that curiosity would remain unfulfilled if they were noted there.

Rhoswen had sat back down on the edge of the fountain and now she beckoned. “Come stand before me, Captain.”

Cayden complied, maintaining that stolid expression. Leaning forward, Rhoswen took hold of one gauntleted hand. She pul ed the heavy glove off, then did the same to the other. His eyes darkened, his mouth tightening as she unbelted his tunic, setting aside his dagger and it scabbard. When she pul ed the garment over his head, since he was taller, he had to help. The mail was heavy, so she stepped behind him, lifting it away from his sore back, tugging to tell him she wanted him to help her remove that as well. She dropped it to the floor with a heavy clink.

“My lady?”

“Be still .” Now he was clothed in a thin undertunic and hose. Lyssa couldn’t deny Jacob the anger that flashed through him at the sight of the dried blood pasting the thin shirt to his back in several raw patches.

Unsheathing Cayden’s knife, Rhoswen cut the undershirt he wore, taking a strip from it. She wet it in the fountain then moved behind him again. He shuddered as she squeezed the moisture out of the cloth, dampening those stiff patches and loosening the fabric. His jaw flexed.

“My lady does not need to do that. I can—”

“Your queen will do as she wishes, and you will remain silent, unless I command you to speak. Kneel for me here, where I can sit on the fountain and attend to you.”

When he did, she sat back down behind him, her feet placed on either side of his calf. Gently disengaging the cloth from his skin, she removed it, so now he was bare except for his hose, for she cut the rest of the shirt off him, using additional pieces to clean out the wounds. An attendant came in, bearing a tray of salve, evidence that Rhoswen had some telepathic ability to communicate with her staff as Lyssa did. The queen bid the attendant leave the items and go, then began to apply them with her own hands on his broad back. In addition to the wicked scar on his face, Cayden had plenty other battle scars visible under the lashes. Several near fatal blows, making Lyssa remember Rhoswen’s reference to the conflicts in the Fae world.

Rhoswen didn’t speak as she cosseted her guard captain, but he became progressively more discomfited by this unprecedented behavior. His hands closed into loose fists. She’d set aside the balm, but was still rubbing it in slow circles over the hard muscles in his back. Now she leaned forward and placed her lips on the nape of his neck. She stayed there, her mouth not moving, just touching his flesh. She curled her hands over his substantial biceps, holding him in place. Though he couldn’t see her face, her tears had weight. Tiny diamonds of ice pattered against his skin, and hit the tile with a pling of noise.