Heart of Darkness (11 page)

Clenching her eyes, she tried to hide from
the truth. But how could she? For so long, she had been running.
Constantly, perpetually, fleeing a fate that she wanted to avoid at
all costs. Behind that though was the fact that as she had run,
she'd been confused and lost as to the reasons why. Now, she
knew.

What had he said?

Something about the ring being able to
balance the light and the dark.

What did that mean?

Did he consider Isabeau the light and himself
the dark?

She had to be involved in this situation.
Wolfe had taken her as well as the ring. He could have been the one
to slice off her finger. In the woods, when he had first captured
her and had pinned her to the ground, he could have easily subdued
her and had one of his men cut off her finger. Wolfe could have
left her bleeding on the ground. Let her die and simply taken the
ring, had he wanted to.

The fact that he hadn't, actually gave her
some confidence in him.

He could easily have disposed of her, yet he
hadn't.

At the same time, why hadn't he?

What purpose did she have in this game?

God, there were so many questions and so few
answers. It was so unbearably infuriating, she felt as though she
could explode from the sheer number that were rattling around her
brain.

All of her pre-conceptions had been blasted
away and she found that she felt rather stupid. Dumb. And she
certainly did not appreciate that!

To the contrary! It angered her all the
more.

She felt anger towards her mother and that
was something she had never felt before. Having always believed her
parents to be innocent parties, these last two days had totally
decimated that belief.

Her memories had enabled her to recall the
distress in her mother's voice, when she had handed Isabeau the
ring. Something that told Isabeau, her mama had known she would not
be alive for very long.

In the same breath, her mama had handed her
the reason for the unnatural end to her life!

Why had she done that?

Was the legacy to be protected and at all
costs?

Even her daughter's life meant naught in the
face of the ring's power?

A part of her resented the fact that only
now, years later, she had come to realize all of this. Had she
known before, then she would have thrown the damned ring in a lake
or in a river! Anything to free herself from it.

While she had earlier told Wolfe that the
onyx allowed her to 'access' her gift, she was slowly coming to see
it as a curse. A curse that had prematurely taken her parents from
her and the life that she should have had.

She shouldn't have had to flee her parents'
murderers. She shouldn't have had to run around the bedamned
country simply to keep herself from harm! Inadvertently, Isabeau
had been robbed of her life, her true life and she felt nothing but
bitter for that.

She should have been married now and to a man
she loved. At twenty one, she should have been wed for three years,
at least. Isabeau could have been a mother! Twice over!

While the powers the ring gave her were
immense, they weren't enough to feel
pleased
that her life had been destroyed! Nothing
was worth that! Damn her gift or magic, or whatever the hell it
was! Damn it to hell!

Sucking in a breath, Isabeau felt it shudder
through her as she realized that she was simply guessing at the
truth and it was doing nothing to help her situation. She wasn't
helping herself by blindly seeking answers. In fact, she was only
succeeding in making herself feel even sadder and more
resentful.

The truth was, all of her thoughts could be
mere suppositions. Of course, they could be the truth, but as in
the dark as she truly was, she did not know.

She needed answers and it seemed that only
Wolfe had them. Or at least, it was a possibility that he had
access to them.

How she hated that!

Damn him!

Chapter Five

The whip of black material against running
bodies, sounded literally like a lash through the air. When the din
was multiplied ten times, the men chasing the boy did so with a
lack of stealth and when combined with their heavy breathing and
the jolting footsteps, the boy could easily hear their
location.

He ran like a whippet down corridors he knew
as well as he knew his own face. His lighter body and fleet agility
had him careening along as the struggling men battled to keep up
and gain control over their charge.

The boy didn't know why he was being chased,
why they wanted him, but he knew that he couldn't let it happen.
That he had to escape. He ran down the staircase, moving swiftly
down the three floors that would take him from the family's
sleeping chambers to the great hall. Once in the Great Hall, he
could rush to his father's study and escape through the one of the
windows. Within five minutes, he could be willingly lost within the
great expanse of the woods that surrounded the castle.

The plan widened and became more complex as
his mind ascertained where he would stop in the woods and where he
would hide. The boy charged down the stairs and when one foot
touched the stone flags on the Great Hall's floor, his speed
increased.

The Hall was pitch black. And had he not
known that he was in great danger, that in itself would have told
him so. In the depth of the night, this one chamber in particular
was always heavily lit with hundreds of candles. He wished that he
could remember the spell his father had taught him, the one that
enabled him to throw bolts of light at enchanted candles and for
the balls to hover above the magical wax. But his brain was
otherwise engaged.

The darkness, however, was his enemy. When it
had always been his companion, now it worked against him.
Unknowingly, a body rested before him and as he turned in the
direction of his father's study, his foot caught on the dead weight
and he fell flat on his face, as he tripped over and tumbled to the
ground.

With a slight groan, he tried to jump to his
feet, but his ankle had twisted and he felt wetness on his shins
and hands. At first, he thought it to be a sign of his own
injuries. That he'd grazed himself rather badly, but when he took
stock of his body, he knew that he hadn't damaged himself to the
extent that blood would cover his shins and hands. He could feel
the sting on his right knee, which had been the one to take his
weight as he fell, and he could feel the pain in his left ankle,
where it had twisted as it had caught on whatever he had tripped
over.

His guesses were jolted to hell, when a blast
of power silently shot through the room and small balls of flame
rushed through Hall and collected around the enchanted candles.
Blinking away the dark spots in his vision as his eyes tried to
acclimatize to the sudden light, he curiously looked down to see
what had caused him to fall.

Instantly, nausea bubbled in his stomach. It
griped and festered until he could taste vomit and could do nothing
but let it flow out of his mouth as his eyes continued to take in
the horror before him.

Spying that the wetness on his shins and
hands was indeed blood, that of his mother, he felt the nausea
churn through him once again and with a similar result.

The body, his mama, lay sprawled on the
ground. At first, it was hard to believe that his so elegant mother
would even be there.

At night, when the castle came alive, she
remained in her sleeping chamber unless it was vital for her to
leave it.

The boy was entirely aware that his mother
hated her husband, his father and because of that, she had no love
for him, the spawn of his papa as he was. But regardless of that,
he loved, had loved, his mama greatly. To see her lifeless on the
ground made a well of pain gather in his heart as he studied her
beautiful face and thought that never again, would he be able to
see her vibrant delicacy.

What they had done with his father, the boy
didn't know. While his mother had hated her spouse, his papa had
loved her. If his mama was dead, then it computed that he was
also...The boy closed his eyes and shied away from the realization
he'd been orphaned. Licking his dry lips, he tasted the pungent
bitterness of his sour retches and turned his head away from
the...the corpse before him. He refused to think of her in that
way. In his heart and mind, she would never be dead. She would be
adorned in her jewels and sat in state in her bedroom, as she
always did, when she called for him.

The heavy thudding of footsteps against the
stairs jolted him from his memories and rather than fight, rather
than battle against what could mean a similar fate for him as had
befell his mother, he sat there and waited...

* * * *

Her shriek awoke her and she bolted upwards
into a sitting position. Her mind asked, what happened to him? Did
he die? Was he murdered like his parents had been?

With a balled fist, she rammed it against her
eyes and shucked sleep away. Her skin was beaded with sweaty
moistness and her hair was drenched. Isabeau trembled as her
awakened mind analyzed the dream and she realized that it had taken
place here in this very property. Had Wolfe been a part of the
group of men who had killed the boy's parents?

He had chased her in similar attire...

She shook the thought away. Robes were robes.
There was very little to separate or differentiate between one or
another.

Was he the boy?

Or was it simply a dream? Had none of that
even happened?

Swallowing convulsively, Isabeau shook her
head. Instinctively, she knew that somehow she had tapped into a
memory. How or why, she did not know. But as horrible as it had
been, it had actually happened. A small child had fallen over his
mother's dead body and had either suffered a similar fate or he had
grown up into the man who had captured her.

There had to be some twisted psychological
reason behind the captive becoming the captor...

She didn't like to think about what that
could be. Not after last night's revelations, be they right or
wrong.

Slowly, she lowered herself back down to the
mattress and as she did, she realized two things. It was still
night and there was a rose resting on a pillow beside her head.

Someone had been in her room and either she
had been asleep for a very little time or she had slept through a
whole day!

Reaching out for the rose, she noticed there
was a bead of dried blood on one of the thorns. Ignoring it for the
moment, she lifted the fully bloomed flower to her nose and inhaled
the scent. Her eyes fluttered for a moment as she recalled the fact
that her mama's favorite flower had been a rose and her perfume had
been heavily scented with rose water. How Isabeau missed her. There
were days, when she managed to forget, then others where she felt
the loss keenly.

After last night's confusion and anger,
Isabeau truly felt a wave of grief. And when it was combined with
the small boy's loss, the sensation trebled until she felt almost
as though she could weep.

Curling on to her side, she froze as
something Wolfe had said suddenly occurred to her. He'd said that
this room had once been his mother's.

This had been the room to which he'd been
summoned as his mama sat in state, as he'd classed it.

Blinking, Isabeau crawled out of the bed and
looked around the room with blind eyes. Perched upon the dressing
table was a tray of food and a cloche. Isabeau walked over to it,
tugged the cloche away and spied a hearty slice of meat pie. With a
grimace, she picked at the pastry and a little of the meat, but
otherwise returned the cloche to its original setting.

She turned around and noticed that draped
over the chaise longue, was a dress. Isabeau found she was relieved
as the one that she was currently wearing was indecent after Wolfe
had ripped open the bodice.

With a slight blush, she stripped out of the
tattered dress and something she hadn't noticed on the previous
night, had somehow just thought it was a part of a carved design on
the wall popped into her line of sight. It was in fact a Chinese
Coromandel screen, which depicted four large birds in varying tone
of rose and yellow gold. Gathering the heavy, crushed red velvet
dress to her bust, she swept behind the screen and was pleased to
discover there was a discreet wash stand with fresh water and a
tablet of soap for her pleasure.

Pouring the cold water into the bowl, she
dropped the soap into it and then laid the dress over the top of
the screen. Quickly, freeing herself from her ripped dress, Isabeau
cleansed her body and washed her face. All the while, she remained
in her chemise, just in case anyone walked in. She would have liked
to remove it and either have it washed or replaced with another,
fresher undergarment, but while whoever had seen that she required
a new dress, they had not realized she also needed a change of
undergarment.