“The Lady of Mercy.”
“He’s from outland, Ev,” Cullen whispered.
Lady of Mercy?
Darin thought.
Crest?
“When was this?”
“Yesterday. The three of you went off together, and you came back alone.”
Yesterday? But he was wearing
—Darin’s eyes grew wide, and Cullen looked almost smug as he rolled his eyes at Evayn. Evayn frowned.
“You honestly don’t know much of our customs, even after five years.” She shook her head, and to Darin’s relief, Cullen relaxed his grip.
“Darin,” he said, his voice a whisper, “who is the lady?”
“Who,” Darin answered, “was the Lady of Mercy?” His voice became quieter, if that was possible. “Who did she love?”
Silence.
“That isn’t possible.” Evayn’s tone was guarded—guarded and worried.
“Her name is Sara,” Darin said. He leaned gently against the wall. “She has no memories . . .”
Darin’s jaw hadn’t moved for fifteen minutes, and Sara was quick to note this.
She tilted her head to one side as she watched his expression of astonishment, but didn’t stop talking.
At length, she said, “What do you think?”
“You remember.” It was all he could think of to say.
She nodded. “Not everything, no. But I remember more of
who I am—and who I was.” She folded her arms around her knees. She knew who Darin reminded her so well of; she should have known it in an instant, they were so alike.
Belfas.
She missed him, and wondered how by the Hearts he was surviving without her.
“But you—you know who you are.”
“Yes.” Her reply, simple and elegant, told Darin that she wouldn’t stop there. “I do.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.” She stood then, and turned to face the window. The day was already paling, and clouds had turned blue sky to ash. “I don’t know where in the Empire I am—but I know that I am in the Empire.”
“Yes.” He hesitated, and then began to fidget with the staff of Culverne. Bethany was silent; she always was at difficult moments. “But what do you want to do?”
“I want to know what I’m doing here. I want to know why I came.” She sighed, and then turned again, her eyes narrowed. “Darin, are you of the lines?”
He looked down at his feet and caught the staff out of the comer of his eyes. He nodded, swallowing. “I’m of Line Culverne.”
“Culverne.” She frowned. “It’s north, is it not?”
“North.” His lips were numb. Casting about for something, he said, “Are you going to try to escape?”
“Escape?” She turned the word over in her mouth. “Escape. I don’t know. I don’t think I’m a captive here.” She took a sudden step forward and grabbed his arm—his right arm. Before he could pull away, she rolled up the sleeve, exposing for an instant the pale lattice of dead flesh that House Damion had left him.
The sleeve fell loose again as she released his arm. Her face was as white as the scar had become.
“Darin, why are you here?” She was trembling. “Why am I? What’s happened?”
“I don’t know.” He could say this truthfully. It was a relief.
She heard that, and sighed. “How long, Darin? How long since Culverne fell?”
He was surprised at how the question cut him. He drew a breath; it caught in his throat and dragged across it with invisible claws.
Bethany warmed briefly in his hand, but he ignored her, looking
instead at the long-healed scar on his right arm. Remembering Kerren.
She stopped asking questions then, the way the Grandmother had often stopped, and rose. He felt her arm around his shoulder as if it were steel; as if he could let everything go and still be safe.
But the words wouldn’t come. Tears did, tears and then silence.
They were late for lunch.
Darin held the staff as if it were a crutch, and Sara kept a hand on his shoulder. It felt right, somehow, that they should walk this way, the last two of the lines of the Bright Heart.
“We’re late again,” Sara said, because it was something to say.
He nodded, looking around the empty hall.
“Come on.” Her fingers squeezed his shoulder and then relaxed. “We’d best run—Stefan doesn’t like to be kept.”
He didn’t ask how she knew it; if she remembered this much, it wouldn’t be long until she had the answer for herself. But the running brought his mind into the present, into the long, stone halls of House Darclan; into the Empire that they had to live within.
He fell behind, surprised at just how swift Sara could be. She reached the foot of the steps, gripped the banister, and swung around to the bottom of the stairs.
“Sara, look out!”
She heard him in just enough time to throw herself out of the way; she hit the ground with a hard thump and rolled. A small little gasp, mingled with high gurgling laughter, filled the hall. Sara looked up to meet the astonished—and pleased—eyes of a very young girl.
The girl’s mother was a few feet away, her face suddenly white as she rushed over to her child. The child, surprised by her mother’s harsh grip, exchanged the quickness of wonder for a loud wail; tears began to trickle down cheeks that had already turned red.
“I’m sorry,” Sara said as she gained her feet.
“Please, lady, the child didn’t mean to get in your way.” The woman clutched the shrieking girl tightly to her breast. “It won’t happen again, I swear it. She doesn’t know what she’s doing yet, lady. I’ll make sure she doesn’t do this again.”
Sara took a step forward, and the woman took two steps back,
fear and protectiveness wrapped around her child more thickly than her arms.
“Hello.” Sara slowly extended her hand, as if approaching a wild creature. The woman’s eyes darkened, but she remembered, this time, to hold her ground. “I’m sorry I almost ran into your daughter.”
The woman met her eyes rigidly.
Very slowly, with infinite care, Sara reached out to touch the small girl’s hand. The child was too old to reflexively grip the finger that she found in her palm, but her curiosity was piqued enough to stop her tears.
“She’s beautiful.” Sara avoided the mother’s gaze and wrinkled her nose at the girl, who stared at her with the hint of a shy smile. She pulled back and shoved her face into her mother’s shoulder, and then peered sideways at this new person.
“Thank you, lady.” The woman’s voice was as rigid as her posture.
They stood that way for a moment before the child picked up Sara’s finger and bit down on it.
Her mother gasped.
“Ouch!” Sara made an exaggerated face—she was good at that—and then chuckled slightly. “Well, little one, I don’t think your bite is all that it could be.” She gave a little tug. “Can I have my finger back, or are you going to gum me to death?”
The child gurgled, and a few indistinct words came tumbling out.
“Baby talk,” Sara said, stroking the soft skin of the child’s cheek. Without looking up, she spoke to the mother. “I don’t suppose you understand what she tried to say? It always seems to me that each child has its own language before it learns ours.”
“Yes, lady.”
Sara flinched, and then she did look up. Her green eyes flared, brightening and deepening at the same moment. She reached out to catch the woman’s arm, and a trickle of light flared, a binding around and between the two of them.
The woman closed her eyes for a moment, and her breathing became more relaxed.
“I’m sorry,” Sara said. “Truly, you have no need to fear me. I don’t have children, but I’ve always liked to see them.”
“Yes, lady.”
Light continued to pulse; power continued to flow between them. “Please, don’t break your child for my sake.”
Brown eyes seemed to flash. And then the mother smiled, the first genuine smile that Sara had seen on any face but Darin’s or Stefan’s.
“I understand,” the woman said softly. She looked at her daughter. The child was already trying to reach for the long swathe of Sara’s hair.
Sara chuckled, but the sound was weaker. She withdrew her hand, and after a moment the slave bowed and left, young daughter still trying futilely to catch the wisps of Sara’s hair before they floated past.
It was Darin’s turn to be a support.
He caught Sara’s elbow as she steadied herself against the wall. Her face was white once more.
She shook her head at the expression on Darin’s face. “I’m all right.” She took a deep breath, but the shadow wouldn’t leave her eyes. “It’s just hard—she was so frightened of me—of what I might do to her child.”
Darin knew. But he also knew that explanations wouldn’t help; Sara probably understood the reasons for the fear.
“Lunch,” she said, and held out her arm. He took it and began to lead her toward the dining hall. But he watched her face, unable to understand all the things that passed across it.
They reached the door in silence, and then Sara stopped. Her hands were shaking as she grabbed Darin’s shoulders.
“It’s no good,” she said softly. “I can’t continue like this. Darin, please, you have to tell me what you know. I know it’s hard for you—but I can’t keep meeting people who fear me as much as that woman did.”
Darin didn’t know what to say.
“Why am I here, Darin? Why am I not on the front?” Her fingers tightened. “Is there no front anymore?” Her face paled further, her fingers now a vise. “Did I betray the lines somehow? Did I fail them?”
Darin shook his head. “No—”
“Do you even know?”
“No, Sara. He does not. But I do.”
Lord Darclan stood between the open doors of the hall. He stepped forward and gently brushed the comers of Sara’s eyes. She looked up at him and then tried to pull away; she was too tired to ease the pain that flared between them, but not too weak to feel it. She was never too weak for that.
And he, he was strong enough. Her pain answered his, an echo of the same. He looked at her white, white face, at the
shadows in her eyes that spoke of a pain he had grown to hate.
“Lady,” he said softly. He drew her into his arms, and after a moment she relaxed enough to allow it.
“I’m sorry.” Her voice was muffled against his robes.
“Do not be. It was my desire that we wait, my desire that we not speak of the things you need to know.”
He caught her chin and held it, seeing the years that had passed between them.
Time.
His fingers tightened as if he desired nothing more than to hold this.
“Lady Sara, you never betrayed the lines.”
She sagged against him with relief.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice very small.
She could not know that he was lying.
But he knew it, knew it well. She was tired; even he could see this. He had forgotten how strongly fear affected her; without all of her memories she probably had no defense against it. And he was weary. All of his plans had collapsed and lay around them in ruins. He had wanted to give her life eternal; five days were all that remained.
“Lady,” he said, his lips against her hair. “Come. The day is cloudy, but it is still warm without. Let us go to the grounds.”
It is time.
He closed his eyes, drew her closer. Five days, and for those five, he suddenly desired what he had put behind him—the past.
He met Darin’s eyes over Sara’s head.
Go.
His lips moved soundlessly over the order.
Darin left.
She was tense; the promise he had extracted still hung between them, a wall now, not a solace. But she rode well, or at least as well as four years of experience had gained her. He remembered the teaching of this with a bitter smile. It was lost, but it remained. His own mare was a calm, tired beast, one of the few in the stables that would carry him.
“Where do we ride to?” she asked, her hands almost slack on the reins.
“There is a simple trail just beyond the castle grounds. I believe that should do well enough for today. I shall lead.”
She nodded, and he set his horse in motion.
They rode for some time with only the crunch of hooves and the slap of low branches providing any noise at all. If there were leaves there, forest flowers, soft mosses—if there were birds or
squirrels, rabbits or other small woodland creatures—Sara didn’t notice them. She saw the path, thin and scraggly as it lay across the undergrowth; she saw the shadows branches cast in front of rounded hooves; she saw her lord.
At last they rode out of the forested trail and into a small clearing. It was bisected by a clear, small stream with a visible rocky bottom; on either side of it were large, moss-covered rocks and a few fallen tree trunks.
Stefanos dismounted at the edge of the trees and quickly secured his horse. Sara mimed his actions slowly; it had been long since she’d ridden, and the trail had been difficult.
But he had chosen it because the blood-wall would not be visible. She steadied her horse as he brushed by, and he caught the meaningless murmur of comfort that she provided.
It was a comfort that could not touch him.
Angry, he nimbly made his way past, over the large rocks that the water swirled around.
She watched him go, the tension growing as the silence did. It seemed to her that he only touched the rocks with his shadow; his step was that quick and that sure. He crossed the stream without pausing to look at it, and after a few concise half steps and jumps he stopped, his back toward her. She moved forward more slowly, aware of the size of the rocks, and the large gaps between them. A fall here would certainly not be fatal, but it would be painful and hard to land on the rocks. She chose her steps with care and caution, planting one foot firmly against the moss before venturing another step forward.
She stopped for a minute when she reached the stream, her gaze caught by a continual distortion of rock as water rushed glibly over it. She could see the bobbing green of leaves and branches that had been trapped by the narrow current and imagined, briefly, that they pursued some futile struggle against its pull. On impulse, she bent down and, leaning precariously forward, swept one bedraggled leaf up into a cupped palm. It lay, wet and glistening, against the droplets of water on her skin, its veins branching delicately outward within the green of its flesh. With careful, slow movements, she set it down on the rock beside her.