Bound by the Vampire Queen (53 page)

Pressing his jaw down on the top of her head, he clutched her like a father welcoming home a long lost daughter, and perhaps he was.

Jacob shifted his glance to Lyssa, saw her eyes glistening. Crying was something his lady had often told him she never did. Now she tossed her head to cover it, in that haughty way he knew well, that he’d missed. Something vital had come back to her, and by God, he loved seeing it, no matter what they were about to face—or the fact they
really
needed to get more blood in her before she fell over. Nudging his horse up against hers as they rode, he brushed her knee in companionable silence when they moved away from the family reunion and headed for Rhoswen’s castle.

Cayden was on his bench at the gatehouse. Jacob raised a brow at the bruise on his face, a split lip. As the captain rose to take hold of the bridle of Lyssa’s mount, he moved stiffly. Jacob’s gaze narrowed. He knew that way of walking. “She had you flogged?”

“The queen metes out justice as she sees fit. It was fair. I was told to stop you. I didn’t.” Jacob bit down on a retort at Lyssa’s warning glance. Following his lady and Cayden through the courtyard, he noticed the staff gave them some curious glances. With their heightened senses, they probably detected their differences, even if not the clear nature of them.

When they reached the main hall, there were no retainers and no throne. No ice sculptures, either.

Just fountains this time, filling the wide space with the sound of rushing water. Rhoswen sat on the edge of the largest fountain, one with a life-sized statue of a Fae lord on a horse in the center, the water pouring out from the dais beneath the horse’s feet. Floating in the fountain were thick rose blooms, petals jeweled with drops from the fountain. Probably bespelled never to wilt, their life essence captured inside.

His lady stopped, stared at the statue. Rhoswen didn’t look up, though she obviously knew they were there. Lyssa glanced at him, nodded, her pale face quiet, serene.

Wait here at the door, Jacob.

Her servant obeyed reluctantly, but when he took up position at the entranceway, Lyssa noted Cayden stayed with him, as if his queen had commanded the same. Interesting. A pace or two away from Rhoswen, she stopped, studied the statue. The noble features, broad shoulders. The planes of his face that reminded her of her own. Her chest tightened, her heart doing a double beat. “Is this what he looked like?”

“Yes.” Rhoswen passed her fingers through the water, caressing the roses. She didn’t lift her gaze.

Her hair was tied loosely on her shoulders. “At Beltane, in honor of spring and creation, there is a competition of sorts. Each contestant brings forth something they have created to honor the new season, and to please the Unseelie queen and Seelie king. The king and queen choose the best of the new creations, and that creation is displayed appropriately until the following year. The year after Lord Reghan was sentenced, Lord Keldwyn commissioned an artisan to do this. He offered it as his entry. A Seelie or Unseelie of his rank wasn’t expected to participate in a common competition in the first place. It’s typically for the solitary Fae. So it was obviously an act of defiance.”

“I take it he was noticed.”

“He was lucky he was not killed. It was what my mother wanted. Instead, it was the first time he was banished.” Rhoswen stared at nothing, nothing but the past. “For a decade, that time. Of course, by repeatedly banishing him, they ensured that he eventually saw the mountains in your world as more his home than the Fae world.”

“Perhaps he found something there that he’d lost here.”

Rhoswen turned her gaze to Lyssa then. She took in her appearance without any obvious reaction, then rose. Circling the statue, she trailed her fingers in the water to create a wake from her passing. “In the thousand years of your life, you have seen many horrors, both human and vampire. You fought your Territory Wars, established a Vampire Council to achieve a balance between brutality and intellect. It is a long road.”

“Yes. It has been. But some parts have been too short.” Remembering the day a knight had helped her against vampire hunters, Lyssa knew the blissful night following had been the shortest of her life. But until Jacob had reentered her life, it had been the most memorable.

“You see me through the eyes of a short period of time, your mortal hours. But there is so much more that has happened. Reasons for how and what we are, that must be.”

“There is no reason I can fathom for that desert world except an abuse of power and capricious cruelty. Since my father was subjected to it, I assume many others were put there for similarly disproportionate reasons.”

“We have not sentenced anyone there for several centuries. It was barbaric. From a different time.”

“Some still survive there. I kill ed quite a few to reach my objective.” Lyssa studied her, pressed her lips together hard. “You know about the survivors.”

“There are a handful of Fae laws that are unbreakable, woven into the fabric of what and who we are.” Rhoswen frowned. “One is that any judgment handed down from a king, queen or governing Council may not be undone. Ever. It may be approached differently, however.” She gave a humorless smile. “From your exposure to Keldwyn, I’m sure you’ve gained an appreciation for how we twist our way past obstacles. For instance, I can destroy the desert world, but it is a place that has existed long enough to have its own sentience, its own purpose, so I will be snapping strands of Fate if I do that. Therefore, it is not an option, much as I have wished it was. I did rule there would be no more Fae sent there, even those who commit heinous crimes. We execute them instead.”

Sitting back down on the fountain’s edge, she fastened vibrant eyes on Lyssa, obviously ready to move away from the topic. “Where is it?”

“What do you plan to do with it?”

“Whatever I wish.” When the queen shifted her scrutiny to Jacob, Lyssa shook her head.

“You think I’d be foolish enough to bring it here?

Why do you think Keldwyn met us? He has free range between two worlds; he can hide it in either of them.”

Rhoswen’s face froze in pale anger. “I commanded you to bring it to me. To do otherwise breaks our laws.”

“I am his daughter,” Lyssa said shortly. “Do you really think I’d just turn his soul over to you, whatever consequences you issue—”

“You are
not
his daughter.”

The queen snarled, the sound echoing through the hall. She hit the water, freezing the roses on tempestuous ripples of ice that popped, reacting to the water’s abrupt transformation.

As she surged up from the fountain, she advanced on Lyssa with such anger that Lyssa braced herself for attack, well aware that Jacob and Cayden shifted into position to do the same.

“Tabor invites Reghan’s daughter to the Hunt.” Rhoswen spat the words, her tone bitter, mocking.

“All the whispers…
Reghan’s daughter, Reghan’s daughter
. They can see Reghan’s daughter any day, any moment of their choosing. I am the daughter of his Fae blood, of
pure
Fae blood. And you… if it was not obvious before, it is undeniable now. Your Fae blood is not what holds sway in you. It is the vampire. You don’t belong here. You may be from his loins, but you are not of his blood. You are
not
one of us.”

She drew herself up, and Lyssa noted there was a slight tremor to the hands at her sides. “Here I am known as Magwel’s daughter, my mother’s daughter.

The mother who loved me so little and loved herself so much that she tried to deny me a father. But he loved me. He made me love him, more than anyone I’ve ever loved. And then, in the end, he chose you.

He chose a daughter he never met, and a woman who was not a Fae, who was a
vile
, inferior blood drinker. He died and left me alone, alone with a mother capable of loving no one. In a thousand years, it should mean nothing to me.
Nothing
. The fact that it does, that all this continues to raise its poisonous, ugly head, over and over again, is what makes me hate you, him and her all the more.” Lyssa glanced toward Cayden. There was pain in his face for her, and tension. Jacob was alert but quiet, waiting to see where this would go.

A smooth mask fell into place over Rhoswen’s countenance, her tone an abrupt, chilling monotone.

“I wish he’d been the cold and unfeeling person my mother tried to make me believe he was. Instead, she left me with the knowledge of what it is to have someone love you, only not love you enough.” Jacob knew he should have anticipated that still ness, the freezing menace, but desert sand, too much stress and trauma made his reflexes slow.

With an animal sound of rage, Rhoswen leaped forward.

Bolting forward, Jacob saw she gripped a wooden dagger, runes embedded in the blade and hilt. But he couldn’t have matched her speed as a vampire.

As a human servant, he knew he was already too late.

He caught his lady’s body as she was knocked backward. The next moment was nothing more than a blink, but like Fae time, that blink was an eternity in his mind before he realized the dagger wasn’t buried in his lady’s chest. Rhoswen hadn’t reached Lyssa at all, because there was someone in the room just as swift as the angry queen.

Cayden stood toe-to-toe with her, his large gauntleted hand gripping her wrist, face grim as his arm became coated with ice. Rhoswen screamed at him, incoherent Fae words. He caught her to him with the other arm, controlling her movements and refusing to let her yank back as he used a warrior’s training to break her grip on the weapon and send it clattering to the floor.

“No, Your Majesty. Please, cease… Damn it, that’s
enough
.”

The thunderous roar was probably one he used on the practice field. It served its purpose, bringing her up short, shock gripping her features.

The moment he realized he’d distracted her from her purpose, Cayden released her, backed up two steps and dropped to his knees. He kept himself between her and Lyssa, however. Jacob was in a half kneel by his lady’s side, ready to move forward to defend her if needed. She probably had better fighting skill's than Rhoswen, but despite her apparent vitality, she still hadn’t fed or rested enough to stand against a normal vampire, let alone a powerful Fae.

“Forgive me, my lady.” Cayden spoke. “But you are far better than this.”

“You would turn against me, too?” Her eyes were wild, her body trembling.

When he lifted his head, his face showed his anguish. Pulling out his short sword, he offered it to her. “If you believe that, my lady, take my life. I will not exist in a world where you don’t believe that every beat of my heart, every drop of blood in my veins, serves you. But serving you is not following you blindly. It’s helping you be everything you’ve ever wanted to be, for your people… and for yourself. So please, my lady. Kill me now or stop torturing yourself… and those who do not deserve your wrath.”

Rhoswen stared at him, nostrils flared. Letting out a furious cry, she yanked the blade from his grasp and swung it downward. Jacob and Lyssa both leaped toward them, but before they could reach the captain’s side, she drove it into the tile before him, cracking the stone and embedding the blade to nearly half its length. Letting go, she stepped back, breathing hard. “Go back to the doorway. Do your job. Guard.”

Cayden bowed his head, his great fists clenching, then he rose and obeyed. Rhoswen pivoted on her heel. She stood still for several moments. Then, with precise steps, as if she were walking on ice in truth, she returned to the fountain, folding herself down onto its stone ledge.

Jacob glanced at Lyssa.
That was unexpected.

But useful. Join Cayden again, Sir Vagabond. I’ll be all right.

She squeezed his arm, telling him she knew what she was doing. Though he didn’t like it, he obeyed.

Before he moved to the doorway, though, he pul ed the sword from the floor with a grunt and shower of rock. It was a sign of how upset Cayden was that he’d left it there. Of course, even if the man was stripped naked, he wouldn’t be defenseless by a long shot. Still, a warrior didn’t leave a blade behind, unless he just didn’t care if he was skewered with it.

As Jacob reached the door, he extended the sword hilt first, much as he had on that first day.

Cayden took it from him with a stilted expression.

Despite the flogging, Cayden was wearing full mail.

Jacob expected Rhoswen had ordered it to increase the pain and discomfort, and to remind him of his place.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “I didn’t say it was safe advice.”

Cayden gave him a sidelong glance. Though he said nothing, Jacob caught a curl of the taut mouth, almost a grim smile.

Lyssa moved back to the fountain. “You know, before I came here, Keldwyn said everything else can change, but you can’t change someone’s fundamental nature, who they are. It doesn’t matter whether they’re human, vampire or Fae.”

“Sounds like his usual cryptic cynicism.” Lyssa lifted a shoulder. “I’ve been vampire all my life, but I also carry Fae blood. Neither changes who I am, above and beyond both. Like my servant.” She glanced at Jacob. “I’m a vampire queen, a fate and destiny that sometimes has been difficult, but it has always been who I am. The moment I felt the strength of it return to my blood, it felt… right. Even as I know the Fae part of me is fated to play a role. You say I don’t belong here, but you won’t let me go, so I think you know it as well.”

Cautiously, she moved closer. “Lord Reghan did not choose one daughter over another. He chose honor. As either one of us would have done.” She sank down on the edge of the fountain, despite the fact it was like sitting on an ice block. “I watched you cry for that old man, a mere human, the night in the cemetery. Grief and loss is something we all understand. It binds us. My former servant was there that night, and he told me that…” She paused, steadying herself. “Thomas told me that Rex, my husband, weeps over what he did to me. I have forgiven him, but it was very, very hard.” Rhoswen lifted her head, and though it was almost as difficult, Lyssa no more disposed to show weakness than the Fae queen, she let her see the vulnerability, the raw pain that thinking of Rex could still summon. She was glad for the comforting, nonintrusive touch of Jacob’s mind. “He did the things he did to me out of ill ness, but also out of a weakness in character, an innate cruelty.” She took another breath before she continued.