Shana Abe (24 page)

The stablemaster would tell the steward. The steward would tell Roland. And Roland would, no doubt, send someone after her, if he did not come himself.

Kyla lowered herself closer to her mount, urging him on faster, faster. She was no longer the prisoner of the Earl of Lorlreau. He might think the chains of marriage would tame her; he might think, now that she had given herself to him, that he could control her. She would show him how false that was. He would never control her.

But someone would come after her, probably very soon, and she accepted this as fact; indeed, it seemed to lend this moment even more sweetness. She was sore in an unaccustomed place, sore even though she rode sidesaddle now—the stablemaster had been utterly aghast at the thought of the new countess astride, and she had to concede on that point. The unfamiliarity of the sensation brought back in vivid detail all the reasons she should be sore there, in that private, feminine place, and so mostly Kyla didn’t see the landscape she passed. Not the people in the fields. Not the trees, the meadows.

Guilt. Horrible, crushing guilt, that she had acquiesced to the hunger for him, that she had made the decision to satisfy her own pleasure over the sanctity of her values, over what she thought she knew of right and wrong. She had melted into the gold and turquoise of him, she had felt alive and free
and wild with happiness when he was inside of her, she had adored watching him, feeling him, moving with him. She truly was his wife now, in every sense. Yes, crushing guilt.

And it was the guilt that spurred her on, driving her farther and farther away from the castle.

She was at the cliffs now. Auster gave way to an easy canter along the top of a rocky wall of stone that plunged down to crashing waves.

It was a clear day, no trace of the clouds that had crept up yesterday. Coming back to herself Kyla slowed her mount, the canter to a walk to a stop. An upward gust of wind pillowed her hair in front her—she had left it unbound again—a mask of deep red blocking the sky, the ocean, until the capricious wind shifted again, showing her where she stood.

Across the flat waters lay two more isles, their outlines clear and sharp under the midday sun. Taldon and Forswall, no doubt. Not very far away, not nearly so far as the mainland, she was certain. In fact even now, what was that there on the crisp waves? At least two boats full of men, going from here to there or there to here, she couldn’t say. Both rigs had sails out in full, white banners, cheerful and bright against the deep blue water.

Auster shook his head at her idleness, growing impatient. Kyla patted his neck, urged him to a walk again, loosely following the line of the end of the land, taking care not to come too close to the drop to the sea below.

Although the view was unfamiliar, although the land was strange, her thoughts were not on her new home, but rather on the man who had brought her here.

It was hard to make sense of the confused swirl of emotions that had become her life of late, but beyond the searing guilt was something deeper, something calmer. Kyla tried to understand that. Last night had happened and she didn’t want to regret it. She didn’t want to rue her fate any longer, there seemed to be no point in that. That was one lesson that had been curling bitterly on her tongue ever since the murder of her mother.

She truly wanted to believe that it didn’t matter that her
desire had overridden her common sense. That it didn’t matter that Roland had made her his own with all of her apparent consent. That it didn’t even matter that what she had felt with him had been the blossoming of that deeper thing living in her that she never had the name for: passion or infatuation or … love.

Of course that didn’t matter. Love! The winds must have blown away her senses to even consider such a thing. She couldn’t love him. How incredibly stupid.

The guilt rushed back, enveloping her. She fought it, pushing it away. Something more important was at stake.

It had mattered what he said afterward, about Glencarson. That mattered.

Because that would mean that the hatred she had been so carefully tending might just crumble to dust, might not have the will to survive after all.

Roland said he had not ordered the attack. If it was true, then Roland had not killed Alister. Not directly. Not really even indirectly. And the guilt would be meaningless.

Kyla brought a hand up to cover her eyes for a moment, trying to block out everything. But still came the raucous cries of a band of seagulls over the water, diving and floating on the currents. The incessant beat of the water against the rocks. The wind scraping past her ears.

The screams of the women pierced her. The mud was thick and dark, smelted of blood and earth. She tried to keep her eyes ahead of her, she tried not to look down, she didn’t want to see what she was stepping over, stepping on, stepping in. She didn’t want to know
.

Alister was up ahead, Alister was lying in a twisted pile of men, just like a broken toy, one of his arms at an impossible angle. His blue eyes were sightless, his freckles stood out so clearly against the waxy hue of death. Odd how she never would have thought of that, that freckles would not fade even when the life force was gone, even when the blood had drained from the body in a puddle beneath him. She had to close his eyes, it wasn’t right that they should stay open like that, she had to close them but she didn’t want to touch them, she had to make herself touch him—

Her own scream bubbled up and she let go of it, facing the
wind, letting it snatch the sound away and carry it out to the infinity of the ocean.

She was crying again but it was all right now, because she was alone, there was no one here to witness her weakness.

When it was over she leaned her head wearily against the mane of her horse, exhausted. Auster took this as a sign to move on.

So Roland hadn’t ordered the battle. It was just another trick, then, one of the many tricks she had endured. The confusion in her made her almost dizzy. Was Roland still responsible? He had been the one chasing her, he could never dispute that. He had lived up to his name, he had been relentless, and could she allow a small factor like timing to whisk away all his culpability?

Perhaps he would have ordered that attack anyway, once he had arrived at Glencarson. Perhaps he was just saying something he thought she wanted to hear.

Or perhaps not. She had to admit she wanted him to be a better man than she had believed. For whatever reason, she did want that. But she also wanted someone to blame, Kyla realized. She wanted to be able to focus her rage on
someone
. Otherwise, the random viciousness of this life was just too awful to contemplate.

She closed her eyes, keeping her head down, and when she opened them again she found Auster had wandered off without her direction and taken her around a hedge to an unexpected thrust of granite that jutted out over the sea. On the thrust stood a tower.

It was made of stone, but not the same stone as Lorlmar; this was gray with corners and curves of green lichen to outline every block. The tower was round and tall. She had to lean back in her saddle to view the top of it and even then she wasn’t sure that what she saw was the end of it, or rather just her imagining of the end of it.

No, it was real enough. She dismounted to touch it, leaving Auster with a small pat to roam where he would. She knew he would not go far.

The rock was cold, hard, just as it looked. On one of the
blocks, the one facing directly out to the sea, was a cross carved deep into the stone, but that was the sole decoration. She found a door, plain wood, locked tight. Scraggly patches of grass and brambles hugged the base of the tower, as if to hide from the constant wind.

How strange. She supposed it might have had something to do with the other islands, both still visible from here. But there were better vantage points for Taldon and Forswall, both of which were a little too easterly now for the best sighting.

A snatch of breeze brought a murmur of conversation, low and unintelligible, feminine voices. They faded in a heartbeat, leaving Kyla turning in circles for the source of the sounds. She listened again carefully but heard nothing further, only the wind, the birds. There were goose bumps on her arms.

Around the far side of the tower she found the path to the beach below. And although the beach was empty of people, at least then she understood the odd placement for the monolith.

It wasn’t much of a beach here, more of an inlet, the golden sand creating a meandering finger that zigzagged between huge, rough boulders pushing up from the waves, until it disappeared altogether in the dangerous froth of the waters.

And the waters were dangerous, they had to be, judging from the wrecks of the ships littering the shore below.

Kyla crept down the path carefully, mesmerized by the sight of the smashed wood, ribs and beams of ships caught on the rocks, impaled until they rotted or the surf tore them apart. There had to be the remains of at least four large ships there, and who knew how many smaller.

The timbers were shiny from the water, some bleached, some newer-looking, a few with even the planking from the hulls intact.

It was a death trap, this little inlet, as the men from these ships must have discovered. The current must suck them inward to the sharp black-and-gold rocks and crush them in the whirl like paper.

She didn’t venture far onto the beach. It was too eerie, even in full daylight, examining the shattered wrecks, which had sent out stray beams here and there with almost wild abandon.

The sand was cool and wet, soaking her slippers immediately. She took them off and carried them instead, using her other hand to gather her skirts up to her knees.

A gull was perched on a thick, old plank of wood that had become wedged perpendicularly between twin columns of rock. It watched her movements curiously, following her with small black eyes.

Kyla paused with the water now pulsing over her ankles. There was no reason to go any farther. She had seen enough of the damage to understand what had happened here. Yet still her feet moved through the water, carrying her forward to the inverted shell of a medium-sized rig, its keel facing up to the sky like a knife blade.

Inside the shell it smelled strongly of salt and rot and birds. There was a tidal pool caught in there, she could see scattered orange bursts of starfish decorating the darkness. The gull that had been watching her suddenly gave a screeching cry and flapped up in front of her before heading up into the sky, causing Kyla to take several startled steps backward, dropping her skirts.

She ran into something soft—that wasn’t right, there shouldn’t be anything behind her—and opened her mouth to scream, but before she could came the slam of darkness, engulfing her.

There was only the ocean pounding at her, and the images of the starfish burned behind her lids. And then nothing.

Chapter Eleven

S
omeone was shouting inside her head.

It made Kyla unhappy, the loud, angry voice, immediately covered by lower, calmer tones. The words were blended together, meaningless, shades of things she didn’t understand. It didn’t matter, anyway. She didn’t want to understand.

The voice quieted and then her existence was black and endless, calm. Peaceful. Other voices began to speak to her, familiar ones, loving. Her mother’s sweet tones, her father’s, urging her to do something she didn’t want to do. And Alister, even Alister, siding with their parents, telling her to go back, go back.…

When the darkness began to lighten she fought it, because it had been so long since she had seen her mother, Kyla missed her. She missed them all so dreadfully. How much easier it would be to go forward and not back. Easier.

But they wouldn’t let her, knowing, perhaps, that what she really wanted was not with them any longer, but rather back with the body she had that was now aching with pain, lying flat on something soft. A hand was stroking her face, her cheeks.

And it was now Roland’s voice saying her name, repeating it, hoarse and low.

She took a deep breath and the pain racked her further, clamping around her lungs, making her cough weakly.

Roland moved quickly to support her head with his hand, holding her, then letting her down gently when she stopped.

Her lips had been blue when they brought her back to the
castle. Blue, really blue, like no shade that should have ever touched the tender flesh of his living wife.

Someone had been carrying her. The watch, Roland supposed. Yes, it had been the watch. He had carried her into the bailey crying for help, and thank God Roland had been there supervising some of the squires on the quintain. He had heard the cry along with everyone else and had rushed to join the crowd that gathered to aid her.

He had grabbed her from them. There was no reason for that, Roland knew. It had been instinct taking over:
Kyla was hurt, his Kyla, he had to help her
.

Her gown was damp, her hair was stiffening to salty tendrils, he had seen this before. The heavy weight of her in his arms told him she was truly unconscious, perhaps dead—
No, no
, his mind had babbled—but he registered this as he was running with her to the keep, to their chambers.