Authors: Julia Keaton
He
lifted his gaze after a moment, scanning her bruised and battered face, his
expression growing harder.
Embarrassed,
realizing the same sources of light--the fire in the hearth and the lit
candles--that threw him in shadow, illuminated her damaged face, she snatched
her hands away and covered the ugly bruises. “I will not tell them,” she whispered.
“I would not repay your kindness to me with treachery.”
His
expression was stony as he straightened away from her, lifting his head to scan
the room around them. Curious, she glanced around, as well.
It
was a well-appointed room, but she had grown accustomed to the vulgar display
of wealth, the rich wall hangings, the dark, heavily carved wood from which the
huge columned bed had been wrought, the chest that rested at the foot of the
bed, the enormous armoire that took up much of one wall, the benches, table,
and high backed chairs. Luscious, thick woven cloths covered the cold stones
of the floor. A fireplace, surrounded by slabs of carved stone took up almost
the whole of another wall.
She
had thought it a place of beauty before she had realized it was her prison.
“Retribution,”
he murmured, rolling the word around in his mouth as if trying to discern the
flavor of it. His gaze focused on her again. “Nothing can be taken from me
that was not already taken,” he growled, his voice cold now.
Bronwyn
shivered at the cold anger behind his words. “But … you said you were damned.”
“Long
ago … and I have tossed my only hope of redemption from these castle walls to
save a pitiful scrap of humanity that means nothing to me,” he ground out.
She
could see that he regretted it now, could see confusion in his eyes and his
expression as he wrestled with the impulse that had cost him so dearly.
Moistening
her fever dried lips, Bronwyn searched for something to say as he turned
abruptly and strode toward the door. “Who are you?”
He
stopped abruptly at the door and turned to stare at her. “Once....” He broke
off. “Nightshade.”
Chapter Two
Anger
roiled inside Nightshade as he vaulted over the crenellation wall and settled
on the ledge where he had stood guard over the household of his enemy for so
long that he could scarcely remember ‘before’. It mounted, joined by the ever
present bitterness as he stared down at the broken body of William of
Raventhorne.
“Fool!”
he muttered, though he was not entirely certain whether he referred to the
carcass below him or himself.
Both,
he decided, wondering where the insane impulse had come from that had driven
him to heap stupidity upon idiocy. He had been in such a rage, though, that
that craven coward had tried to throw the woman from the tower that he had not
thought, had not reasoned. He had yielded to the desire to shatter the
bastard’s body on the stones below as William had intended to do to her.
Unbidden,
an image of the female rose in his mind.
Bronwyn,
brown one. She should have been named rose. Her skin was as soft and delicate
as that flower’s petals and smelled as sweet.
Desire
rose in him, nearly uncontrollable because it had been so long since he had
felt that particular infirmity of mortals. Confusion followed, partly because
his brain ceased to function with any efficiency when the blood raced from his
head to engorge his cock, and partly because he could not understand what had
provoked it.
He
had lost his humanity when he had been cursed, lost all ability to feel
anything except fury over his helplessness, bitterness over his losses, and
cold hatred for the man who had deprived him of everything he had ever held
dear.
He
thought he had.
And
yet, he had watched the woman with an unnamable hunger since she had come to
Raventhorne, both fascinated and disturbed by the dainty, fragile looking
creature with the huge, sad brown eyes.
A
wave of nausea went through him, killing the desire.
Please
, she had
begged, clinging desperately to his wrist, struggling with surprising strength
in one so frail to save herself.
Please
.
He
swallowed against the uncomfortable knot in his throat. He had tried to close
his mind to her touch, her pleas. It was not his affair, not his problem. He
had felt as if a great hand had ripped into his chest, though, when he felt her
lose her grip. He had acted then, not thought, not beyond his unwillingness to
watch her fall to her death, not beyond his revulsion of the vision that rose
in his mind of her broken and bloody upon the hard earth below.
Bronwyn.
He
lifted his hands to either side of his head and pressed hard, as if he could
squeeze her from his mind, her name, the feel and smell of her.
Short
of crushing his own skull and pulverizing his brain, however, there seemed no
way of delivering his mind or body from torment.
She
had bewitched him, ensorcelled him as surely as the sorcerer who had taken his
life from him and made him a monster. She had used her woman’s body, her
pretty face, the pleasing tones of her voice … and her delicate scent and
fragileness to reach inside him and find the ashes of his humanity to use
against him.
Not
willfully, of course. He was a monster … stone … cold … unfeeling.
She
had looked at him, though, that first day. She had lifted her head and stared
straight at him, the first time any woman had looked directly at him since the
sorcerer, Gaelzeroth, had given him ‘immortality’.
And
she had shuddered to find his eyes upon her, his monstrous face frozen in the
grimace of torment and pain that overtook him each dawn as the sorcerer’s curse
turned him once more from a living, breathing monster of flesh and blood and
bone to stone.
Bitterness
rose like bile in his throat as his memories surfaced to torment him, memories
he had thought that he had crushed to dust long ago.
Gaelzeroth
had chosen his place and method of imprisonment with diabolical care,
positioned him so that he had to watch the slaughter of his wife, his sons, and
daughter.
Uttering
a howl of anguish and fury, he launched himself from his perch, spread his
wings and fled his birthplace, his prison, his memories … and most of all, her.
* * * *
“She’s
worsened. I cannot fathom it. I was certain the fever had broken.”
“Has
she been told about Lord Smythson?”
“Nay!
And what would be the point? She’s likely to join him in the family crypt at
this rate.”
Voices
faded in and out of Bronwyn’s consciousness, as if those who spoke in the room
around her were moving toward her and then away again. She hurt everywhere it
seemed. Sometimes she found herself freezing, sometimes burning.
And
each time she managed to lift her eyelids, the room had changed.
One
moment the room was filled with sunlight, the next shadowy with candlelight.
She
dreamed that she lay crumpled and freezing on the ramparts of the castle,
begging for her life, screamed weakly as William pitched her over the walls,
jerking and twitching when she slammed into the ground.
She
didn’t hit the ground though. She hit something else.
The
horrible grimace of the hulking gargoyle perched above the entrance of the
castle materialized in her mind and she sucked in a breath to scream. His face
changed, though, still harsh, but strangely comforting.
The
room was lit with the golden glow of candles when she opened her eyes. She
stared at the drapery above her for several moments, wondering what had wakened
her and finally turned her head to look toward the hearth.
He
crouched there, watching her through hooded, brooding eyes.
A
jolt went through her, but it was surprise, not fear. It took a focused effort
to hold her hand out to him, to form her lips into a smile. “You didn’t leave
me,” she whispered, her throat grating with the pain of speaking.
He
stared at her hand for several moments as if surprised. Abruptly, his face
twisted and he surged to his feet.
He
meant to leave. The thought sparked fear where his presence hadn’t. “Don’t
go!” she whispered, lifting her hand as if she could reach across the distance
between them and draw him to her.
The
gesture made him pause. He glanced at something across the room, studied it
hard for several moments, and then moved toward her. “You are safe now,” he
said, his voice emerging as a low rumble of sound.
A
rustle of movement drew her gaze and she turned her head to discover what it
was he had stared at so hard before. One of her maids lay huddled on a pallet
near her door. She rolled over and went still again and Bronwyn glanced back
at the man who towered over her.
He
hadn’t taken her hand. He was staring down at it, she saw, as if it was a
snake. Curling her fingers around two of his, she drew his hand to her,
struggling with the weight of his arm and finally pressed his palm to her
cheek. “Brave knight, I owe you a debt of gratitude. Tell me how I can repay
your kindness.”
She
heard him swallow. For many moments, he simply allowed his hand to lie limply
against her cheek and then his fingers curled, the pads of his fingertips
brushing lightly, almost caressingly along her cheek as he reclaimed his hand.
“The fever,” he muttered, his voice grating.
Bronwyn
frowned, puzzled by his allusion to her illness. “This is a dream then?”
His
finely etched lips twisted, but she had the sense that the contempt was turned
inward. “Nightmare, more like if you see before you a knight and not a
monster.”
Her
gaze flickered over his face searchingly. “I see a brave and noble man who
slew a monster.”
Anger
surged into his eyes. “Then the fever
has
addled your wits, woman!” he
growled. His fists came down on the bed on either side of her and he leaned
closer until his face hovered mere inches above hers. “Or is it your sight
you’ve lost?”
His
ferocity unnerved her, and still she felt no real fear. She lifted a hand to
his cheek, tracing the harsh plain. “Nay. There is nothing wrong with my eyes
or my wits.”
He
looked startled when she touched him. Deprived of his anger, his gaze
flickered over her face speculatively before a feverish gleam entered his
eyes. “Give me yourself,” he snarled. “Spread your soft white thighs for me,
little rose. Let me bury my flesh deeply inside you. Give me surcease from my
torment, and I will consider myself well paid.”
Shock
went through her and revulsion, as well, not for him but the image he summoned
of William plowing ruthlessly into her body.
He
saw the revulsion and misunderstood it. “I thought not,” he snarled.
She
caught his wrist as he began to withdraw. “Yes,” she said in a suffocated
whisper.
“You
are
unwell,” he said coldly.
She
licked her lips, unnerved by the offer she’d made but determined. “I will heal
… because you gave me back my life. I will gladly give you what you have
asked.”
Several
emotions flickered across his features, but too quickly for her to read them.
Turning away, he strode toward the window and disappeared through it.
Near
dawn, the fever came upon her again, but this time it did not fill her mind
with strange, frightening images.