Dockalfar (39 page)

That shocked him. He blinked.

She forced a smile, a thoroughly sidhe smile that made her feel feline and dangerous. She laid fingertips lightly on the cloth of his cloak and relieved him of the pressure to answer.

“Never mind. Don’t hurt yourself thinking of a reply.” She trailed the touch down his arm and let it drift away just shy of the skin of his hand. “I think I’ll go back to my room now. A good night’s sleep will do me good, don’t you think?”

It was not a ruse or a flippant statement. She was tired. She was bone-weary and sore and her body ached from the punishment it had received a very few nights ago. Her bruises were turning to purple and yellow. She thought they healed quicker than bruises were wont to do on her pale skin. It might have been the place, or some residue of magic left clinging about her. The healing of herself had been one of the easiest of tricks, when the power had been open for her.

She thought about the assassin. She thought herself the worst kind of fool. One who deluded oneself. One who was desperate for affection and rebounding from betrayal. One who found herself sidetracked by a breathtaking face and let her libido run wild. There had been an excuse when the magic ran wild through her. It had eaten away at carefully constructed restraints. It had made her giddy with abandon. There was no excuse now. She was as sane as she might ever be and still she found the Ciagenii more and more frequently on her mind. The tragic part being, that he had no interest for her and admitted freely that killing her would be a casual task. Or would it? She could not bring herself to believe that it would be. Not after what he had risked for her. Not after saving her life. He had not done that out of pity, or any overdeveloped sense of honor. He was an assassin for God’s sake. Surely the violence of a mere rape meant little to him. And nothing next to the death of a high sidhe. And yet he had come to her rescue and he had killed for her. Covered the trail for her too, she thought. There had to be something. Some fondness, some attachment to do those things.

There was laughter from an interior courtyard. The sound of sidhe voices raised in amusement. Fey lights flickered from the colonnaded doorway. The hall was a main one. It led to the center stairwell that she had to take to reach her floor. She stiffened her resolve and walked past.

A dozen sidhe were inside, lounging around the short tables, drinking from crystal goblets that anxious servants strived to keep filled. Soft music underlay the voices. Some were raised in excitement. They were playing games of chance. The roll of the six ten sided die was a constant. The Unseelie court, she had discovered, were notorious in their gambling. They loved to wager, anything from wardrobe to slaves to prestige.

She wanted to pass by, but her step faltered when she caught sight of an uncommon human head among the sharp eared sidhe ones. She stopped in the doorway and stared. He did not see her.

He sat comfortably in the company of sidhe, playing their games and laughing at their humors. Leanan was not with him.

The absence of his sidhe paramour made the hatred somewhat less poignant. She found that regardless of what she insisted out loud, it was hard to hold onto the hate.

It was hard to wish him dead when it came right down to it. Alex was a part of her that could not be denied despite his present affiliations. And admitting that made her feelings towards Dusk all the more confusing. She wondered if it were a sort of revenge against Alex. He had his sidhe lover, why not find one of her own?

But that just did not sit right, deep down inside. The assassin was not an explainable aspect of her psyche.

“Little human,” a silvery voice called out. Alex looked up from his gaming even as she refocused to find the author of the summons. His gaze found her and his face went still. She caught only the briefest detail of his expression before her attention was centered on the figure of the Mistress of Hunts. Lady Tyra reclined among the gamers, lithe and almost mannish in straight trousers and severe tunic. She made little effort with spectacular garments. She still managed to stand out amongst her peers.

Victoria swallowed and inclined her head. “Lady Tyra?”

The hunts mistress smiled. A lazy turning of the lips that hinted at all the secrets in the world and told nothing of any of them. She shook the die slowly in her hand and cast them onto the table.

Without looking at the outcome of her throw she told Victoria, “The hunt rides tomorrow night. If no one else chooses to outfit you for the ride, see me at the stables.”

Her pulse pounded. She knew she was pale as death. She nodded, fighting for calm in her tone. “I’ll see you. Thank you, Lady.”

Tyra shrugged and went back to her game. Victoria did not know quite what to do after being released from that gaze. Her own drifted back to Alex, who was staring unabashedly at her. There was surprise on his face. Shock at the announcement that she would ride with the hunt. Good. Let him be shocked. Let him wonder at her sanity. She certainly wondered at his.

‘Ride with the hunt’ the message had said. What if it were the chance at escape with help from friends on the outside?

What if riding with the hunt signaled the end of her captivity here? Then she would be rid of Alex and his betrayal. Be rid of the fear of the Unseelies. And the assassin?

Somehow she did not imagine she could shake him so easily.

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Alex lay awake, long after he had retired to his own apartments, staring at the lightening sky outside his window. The stars were all but gone in the last dregs of night. Morning slowly cast a pale blush of color to the air. He was alone. It was not uncommon. Leanan often found diversions other than him to amuse her. His presence had little effect at curbing her pleasures.

He did not think to remark about it. He did not think to feel jealousy. It was a sidhe practice. Infidelity was not a word that existed in their vocabulary. He wondered sometimes why he never worried over what she did, and yet on those rare occasions when his mind possessed full clarity concerning Victoria, he worried incessantly over what
she
was up to. Her eyes had been full of apprehension tonight.

Her face, when she had passed, had been on the verge of panic. Something had her frightened and in Leanan’s absence, he found thinking of Victoria, remembering Victoria, shockingly easy. Leanan clouded his mind. Leanan made him blithely unawares. He wondered why he might be jealous of Victoria for so little as dancing with Azeral and yet not blink an eye when Leanan engaged in an orgy with a handful of sidhe courtesans.

He turned onto his stomach and rested his chin on the backs of his arms. The pillows shifted with silken sighs under him. His mind was full of Victoria this night. For the most part he did not think of her. Just forgot about her existence until she happened to present herself in his path. It was a guilty feeling, like forgetting to do something vitally important until it was too late to do anything about it. He would think about it and dwell on it until Leanan took his thoughts elsewhere. It half reminded him of the new bendithy servants Lady Miralaha had acquired. The way they had been surly and uncooperative until she had altered their way of thinking and forced them to forget their gripes and made them perfectly happy to be serving her. He felt all too often that the same sort of thing was perpetrated on him. He thought what Leanan wanted him to think. He did what she wanted him to do. He gave his loyalty and his affections to her and the resources of his human power to her father. They had all the perks in the relationship. They received the benefits and the majority of the time he was only too happy to go along with it. Until he had a few private moments to think. Then he questioned.

The strange thing was, he had not had the desire to balk against the establishment until Victoria had come. Until he found himself wondering why he did not know all the things he should have about her. If he and she had come to this world together. If they had been lovers. Why could he not recall how she felt, or how her lips tasted? It was too convenient a blank. Too coincidental with Leanan’s fits of possessiveness. It made him think that someone was altering his mind as easily as they altered the minds of the keep’s servants. It made him feel around the edges of his mentality and wonder what lay hidden there that was not of his own construction.

They had not taught him how to shield, but he had picked up the rudimentary basics. Even the fairies knew how to shield to some extent. He knew nothing of the mind games they played, but knew they were masters each and every one. He had seen too many manipulations of the servants to think otherwise. It was just a matter of figuring out what they were doing or had done in one’s own head. The only thing he was certain Leanan, bless her lovely sidhe hide, had tampered with was his memories of Victoria. It was the single starting point that he had. So he searched there. Dredged up every memory he could about Victoria and found that there were damn few that came easily. And there were some that he knew without knowing how he knew.

Lying there, searching diligently inside his own head was a frustrating effort. He was just too close to the problem at hand. Distance was what needed. And if Alex was good at any one magic, it was letting his mind’s eye drift free of his body and soar outside it. He pulled back, and instead of fleeing out the window he hovered in the confines of the room. His body lay dormant and relaxed on the bed of pillows. The breathing was even and slow, almost as if he slept. If anyone came in, it would seem just so.

The physical shell meant nothing, told him nothing. He looked inward, as he might a bird or an animal he wished to mentally hitch a ride with. He was careful to keep his mental eye separate from the magnetic pull of its physical form. His body tended to want to join with his psyche. He was a novice at such mental calibration. He knew not what to look for in a severe introspection. Thoughts focused on Victoria and why she was such a void in his memory when she should have been prominent. He came up with nothing. In frustration he delved deeper, and suddenly rebounded as he skidded off something smooth and impenetrable. He backed off, not knowing if the barrier was some natural occurrence or not. He had the distinct desire to leave it alone, to run and forget the need to find the method of his madness. He forced himself not to. Forced himself to search around the edges where the barrier seamed together with his own psyche. There was power here, he felt it.

Was familiar with the taste of it. It had a signature that was not his own. Azeral had been in his mind enough, had borrowed enough of his human-generated magic for him to recognize the print of his unique signature. And on top of that stronger magic was a lesser one that hinted at Leanan. He hovered in shock for a while, blind and deaf to the world. They ‘had’

been in his mind. They had planted their own whims inside his head and until he had stubbornly searched for traces of Victoria, he had not suspected the extent.

Oh, he had known they were manipulating him. But not that they had constructed barriers in his mind.

Damn them. He trusted them. He loved Leanan. How could they? Or was the trust fabricated?

And the love…?

Even so, he knew he could not stop the feelings. If she walked into the room he would have fallen over himself for her attention. If Azeral had asked, he would give him anything, even though in the back of his mind he knew it was not given with free choice. He pounded uselessly on the barrier. It absorbed the blows. He gathered power and hurled it at it. It dispersed. He exhausted all the brute force he had and still changed nothing.

And then with desperation he pried at the edges where Leanan’s and Azeral’s influence overlapped and managed to flake away at the upper layer. Encouraged he worked at it in diligence. Fine web work cracks appeared, and pieces slid away like melting ice on a windshield.

The fractures seemed to shoot through his body, following the paths of his veins. It was a cold and brittle unpain. Discomfort settled, edged with frost. Lights flared in eyes that could not at the moment see more than the backs of lids. It felt like something was gearing to break and for an instant he was afraid. Afraid that he had done some irreparable damage. He was that unstable. The outer layer of intrusion was nothing more than ragged patches, easy to see through, easy to avoid.

Underneath, the other barrier remained solid, except in one tiny section that in his excitement over the dismantling of the other he overlooked entirely.

He slammed back into his body, suddenly made aware of breathing gone heavy and muscles too long tensed. He was tired. Physically exhausted. Tears streamed down his cheeks, wetting the pillows under his face. His head hurt abominably. Memories flooded in.

Emotions that had been long buried.

Despite the pain he felt gleeful and giddy.

There was a freedom returned that he had barely missed. It was still hard to place what notions were entirely his own and which were whims of Leanan. He could not quit the feeling of desire when he thought of her. He could not find hate for her. But he was also perfectly aware of where he stood with Victoria. And what, because of Leanan’s machinations, he had done to her.

God! Some things were not forgivable. Excuses of any caliber mattered little in some situations. And his malleable little Victoria of the silvery voice had proved to be of an unexpectedly unforgiving nature. An unexpectedly violent one, and most assuredly of an alarmingly powerful one. A hundred apologies for a situation he could not begin to explain to himself swam through his head. It was not his fault. His thoughts had not been entirely his own. The court and its bewitching members had drawn him in like a whirlpool. Leanan was an enchantress. Her charms were as inescapable as the weather. And once snared, he was helpless. He could not quite remember when he had gone from mistrust to infatuation. From wariness to utter pliability. Victoria would have to hear it. Whether she understood or not, she had to be told. He wanted to find her now.

He knew where her apartments were. Just a matter of slipping through the halls in the early morning when the court was deep in the beginnings of their sleep. Find her.