The Twelve Kingdoms: The Mark of the Tala (24 page)

“I’m barefooted,” Rayfe pointed out.

“Yes, well, you’re used to it.”

“Fewer clothes are better when you’re learning to shift.”

“I saw the soldiers shift with their clothes on. They were dressed when they came back, too.”

“It’s an acquired skill and not easily won. The horses lost everything not part of their bodies, did you notice?”

I hadn’t. Had I? I tried to picture it.

“We’re hard on tack around here, so we don’t use much to begin with. The staymachs are innately magical, but their intelligence is more animal. We can suggest the forms they take, but not much more than that.”

“I can just imagine.”

“Best to take off your jewelry, too.”

“Even my—your—ring?”

His lips twitched with amusement. “Worried you’ll forget who your husband is?”

I wrinkled my nose at him, snatched up the peachy silk, and flounced into the little dressing room with my best Amelia-style hair toss.

I wiped myself down and put on the dress. It skimmed my bare skin like a cloud, perfect for the warm, moist air, really. I felt nearly naked, though. And nervous. I brushed my hair out, to soothe myself. Then set the pendant Dafne had given me and Rayfe’s ring in a little dish. When I emerged, Rayfe took my hand, lacing his fingers with mine with a half smile.

“Now you truly look like a woman of the Tala.”

“Yes, well, you can dress up a pig as a horse, too—that doesn’t mean you can ride her.”

He raised an eyebrow at me but didn’t comment. Improbably, we climbed up the stairs to leave the house, instead of going down. I’d have to break my habit of thinking I needed to come and go by the front courtyard. My rooms weren’t on the highest level of the house after all, and several hallways led out into pathways that became roads. It was as if, at the edges, the place became community property again.

“Not much security,” I commented. It felt odd to walk hand in hand with him like young lovers.

“No,” Rayfe mused. “Nothing like what you’re used to. Really there’s not much call for it. We respect each other’s territories.”

“And you rely on the barrier to ward off outside enemies.”

He glanced sideways at me, some kind of foreboding darkening his visage. “That has long been the way, yes.”

“Ursula would say that doesn’t give you much defensive depth.”

“And what would you say?”

I shrugged. “I’m not the soldier or the strategist—what do I know?”

“More than you think, I suspect.”

We walked along a narrow winding path now, that switchbacked up the cliff. The stones felt smooth and polished by many footsteps. No dwellings here. Brushy plants, touched here and there with salt from the sea breezes, clung to the dirt with enviable tenacity. Somehow I didn’t think I’d have this ability they all looked for in me. That my mother had sacrificed herself to get. Everything had been much simpler when I could just get on Fiona’s back and ride, ride, ride.

“There’s no reason to be nervous,” Rayfe told me in a quiet voice. He met my gaze when I looked up at him. “Trust me.”

Oh, yeah. Trust the guy who blackmailed you into marriage, changes into various large animals, and glibly promises you can do the same.
Funny thing was, I found that I did. When he studied me with that deep-blue gaze, it seemed he saw me more clearly than anyone ever had. With him I was Andromeda, not the middle sister. Not invisible.

Unfortunately, it seemed visibility came with a price.

The training grounds turned out to be a stone-lined ring dug into the flat top of the cliff, circled with wind-twisted scrubby trees that laced together, forming an impenetrable fence.

“I kind of thought there’d be a view up here.”

“What we can’t see, can’t see us. This place is for privacy.”

We entered the ring and Rayfe moved a hinged gate into place, closing the wall. A sharp sea breeze tugged at the silky dress I wore and I shivered a little. The sun had nearly set, casting long shadows.

“Look there.”

I followed the line of Rayfe’s finger. The moon, round and pink-gold, rose over the arena wall, glowing impossibly large in the shimmering blue evening sky, impossibly lovely.

“Not quite full, but close enough.”

“Enough for what?” I murmured, feeling spellbound. Rayfe pressed against my back and wrapped his arms around me. The heat of his body burned through the light silks we wore.

“We draw our magic from the moon.” He kissed my temple. “From Moranu. You’ve always known this, just . . .”

“Without really knowing.”

“Yes.”

“I feel it,” I whispered. “I feel something.” Something like the desire Rayfe woke in me poured sweet and hot through my blood. It seemed the moon sang. Promises and passion.

“Yes,” Rayfe repeated, his voice rough.

I turned in his arms and his mouth caught mine, feral and devouring. His manhood thrust against my belly, hard and insistent, and I dampened immediately, suddenly famished for his touch. I wondered if he’d make love to me right there on the stones. I hoped he would. Pressing the palms of my hands against his muscled chest, I returned his kisses with my own hunger laced into them.

“Hold that thought,” he murmured into my mouth. “Keep that feeling.”

His blazing blue eyes drilled into mine. Deliberately, he bit down on his lower lip, dark blood welling up. I gasped a little and he shushed me.

“Trust me. This will help.”

I flinched a little, but he held me steady for the next kiss, the hot taste of his blood filling my mouth along with the desire that flared hotter and higher, consuming me. The beast in my heart roared in delight. Wanting to burst free.

“Let her go,” Rayfe told me, slipping the dress off my shoulders so I stood naked, following it with his hot hands, caressing my skin. I purred under his touch, feeding off it. “Let her go,” he insisted.

His words kept pricking me. I didn’t want to talk. I just wanted him to touch me, to fill me. I needed to devour him.

“Andromeda—focus.” Rayfe cupped my face in his hands while I tore at his clothes. “That hunger, that need—let her go.”

“I want you,” I cried against his mouth, and he laughed, kissing me.

“You’ll have me, I promise. As much as you like. Later. Concentrate. Relax. Let her go.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“You don’t have to do anything. All your life you’ve restrained her. Tucked her inside. Let her go.”

He caressed the tips of my breasts, and I moaned, his blood still in my mouth, in my veins. I writhed against him, losing my fear in the moment, in the building tension. He slipped a hand between my legs and I exploded.

“Now, my love. Now, Andromeda!”

I came apart as she broke free, leaping up and out of my heart.

The world changed, shifting to shades of gray, layered and sharp. The stone arena looked both larger, with taller walls, and at the same time, more scalable. Hunger rode me. I needed to hunt. I could leap up on that wall, quite easily. My muscles bunched, full of power.

“No, Andromeda. Stay here, please.”

The man stood there, smelling delicious. Like blood. I wanted to devour him.

I stalked toward him.

Rayfe.

I knew him. Something popped and I found myself naked and crouched on the stones, Rayfe grinning like a madman. He seized me by the arms and lifted me to my feet, running his hands over my skin and raining kisses on my upturned face.

“Perfect. Just perfect. I knew you could do it. That you weren’t too old.” He clasped my head in his large hands and kissed me with fierce joy. “I knew it!”

“Too old?” I repeated faintly. The bones of my skull seemed to vibrate. Panic shimmered in my stomach. They’d said that before.

“Oh,” he brushed off, “a long-standing debate. A lot of nonsense, obviously.”

“So . . . I did it? I shifted?” I felt . . . odd. Like I didn’t quite fit in my skin.

“Yes, you surely did.” He beamed with pride, stroking my hair back from my face. “You turned into a large cat—as I suspected you might—and held the shape for a good several minutes. Well done, indeed!”

“I didn’t mean to shift back, though.” Not much control at all, it seemed.

“You were surprised when you recognized me through your cat eyes. That’s the most difficult part to control. When you start thinking like a person too much, it pops you back out into human form. We’ll work on that.”

“That’s why you kissed me—to get me thinking more like an animal.”

“Yes. And it worked. I told them it would work.” He clasped me to him, his mouth feeding down my throat. Instead of pleasure, I felt . . . irritated. “Now let’s do it again.”

“Maybe not tonight.” I still felt unsteady in my skin. The beast’s bloodlust ran hot in me. Somehow I didn’t think that was right. I hesitated to ask Rayfe. Maybe I didn’t want to know how wrong it was. My blood—my part-blood—wasn’t good enough, I feared. The headache that had assaulted me at Windroven clung to the back of my skull.

“You need a lot of practice. Try it again, while the feeling is still fresh in your mind.”

I tried.

It didn’t work.

What had felt like a releasing, the first time, eluded me like a word I couldn’t quite recall. Now that I knew Rayfe’s technique, my mind kept drifting away from the pleasure of his touch to other thoughts. How did my body know to become something else? More important: how did it know how to get back?

And Rayfe, arousing me in such a skillful way. I didn’t want it. Not like this. Not like the intimacy was a tool to get me to become this thing he wanted me to be.

That maybe I couldn’t be.

I tried to let go, but the surging of the beast frightened me and I found myself grabbing at my own familiar form again. How could my skin grow fur and lose it in an instant? What if I couldn’t get my human shape back again? I blew out a breath and let it go, trying to sink into Rayfe’s kiss. But the sick drop in my stomach lurched me back into reality.

“You’re thinking too much,” Rayfe muttered.

I wrenched myself from his embrace, biting my tongue on the twenty-seven things I wanted to say to him, and snatched up my dress. Sliding it back on over my head, I took in and released a deep breath. The moon shone smaller and higher now, lighting the sharp planes of Rayfe’s face with bright silver. How could I explain my queasy fear? I searched his face. What in Moranu was wrong with me? I’d walked into this knowing that I was only a means to an end for him, that I followed in my mother’s footsteps in wedding myself to the enemy.

My mother’s plan.

“I have questions.”

He folded his arms and shook his head. “No. No questions. This is about instinct, not thoughts.”

I clenched my jaw. “Tell me about being too old.”

“You’re not too old. You shape-shifted just now—that proves it.”

“But normally, the Tala learn younger. As children, right?” I saw the truth of it in his face. “That’s why my mother wanted the one of us with the mark of that ability sent back here as a child, so she could learn. That’s what she was afraid of.”

He scrubbed a hand over his face. Sighed. Then tipped back his head and stared at the round moon. “She should have taught you herself. That’s what should have happened. Even outside Annfwn she was strong enough to shift—she should have given you her blood and showed you how to manage your beast. Think back—are you sure you never did?”

“Never. None of us even knew she could.”

“That’s not possible.”

“I don’t think you’re the person to spout off about what’s possible.”

The anger he’d tried to tuck inside roiled through him, the wolf gleaming in his eyes. He gripped me by the shoulders, fierce, fingers digging into my flesh.

“You don’t understand. She would have known you needed to shift—why wouldn’t she have taught you?” He finished on a shout.

“She died!” I shouted back. “She died giving birth to Amelia and she didn’t have time!
You
have to understand, these . . . abilities are anathema in the Twelve Kingdoms. They call you demons and worse. He never would have let her teach us black magic like this.”

He let go of me in a burst of frustration, clenching his fists by his sides. “I could rend Uorsin limb from limb for fouling your mind like this. For betraying the treaty. For putting you at risk like this.”

“What risk?” I scoffed. “Politics and religion.”

“Oh, he knew,” Rayfe sneered. “He knew from being with Salena. She had to shift or she would have lost her mind. She knew you would be weak and prone to illness if you didn’t learn. She had to tell him that.”

I stared at him in horror.

“She did,” I finally whispered.

“What?”

“She did lose her mind. I understand now.” And I had always been weak, hadn’t I? Growing sicklier every year, though I hadn’t liked to think of it.

“Wait, how do you know—what do you mean?” He tried to take my arm, but I shook him off. Turned my back and walked away.

“You need to practice,” he called after me.

“No more tonight. I have something to do.”

“You can’t give up. Andromeda. You have to learn—”

I fixed him with a steely glare, feeling the cat rise in me, a match to his wolf. Nothing invisible about her. I stalked back to him. Did he flinch a little at the look in my eye? Good.

“You don’t tell me, Rayfe.” My voice stayed smooth and even. “King. Husband. I don’t know who you thought you married, but I am not your tool, to wield as you please. I am Uorsin’s daughter as much as my mother’s. I decide for me. Not you.”

“So you’re just giving up?” He challenged me, matching my anger.

“I’m not giving up. And it’s not about you. You’re right—my mother should have taught me. This is between me and her. I have to go.”

I spun on my heel and walked away without a backward glance.

M
y grand exit failed in the execution. I couldn’t work the latch on the gate and had to wait while Rayfe maneuvered it for me. I stared stonily off into the darkness, while he did so without a word, then followed behind as I picked out the trail. Everything looked brighter and more defined than before, shading with the gray scale of the cat’s vision.

I would never again be who I was before.

At a loss to explain my rage, I let my thoughts run free. The memories bubbled up now, blurred by time and childish incomprehension. But the way my mother had stared endlessly out the window, her eyes empty. I’d brushed her hair because it had always been snarled and only Ursula and I could touch her.

Ursula—had she seen the madness, known all along?

That look in her eyes when she made me burn Rayfe’s feather. She had known enough to suspect me of madness, too. Salena’s stamp. No wonder I made people’s skin crawl. A sudden sob escaped me and I stumbled over a rock.

“Andromeda.”

“No,” I choked out.

Rayfe caught my arm. “Stop. Talk to me.”

“I don’t know who I am!” I shouted at him. I clenched my fist and thumped my breastbone. “This beast crawls around inside of me, wanting to rend and tear. I am apparently defective, either from birth or the accident of my mother’s death. I’m supposed to take over this barrier that’s so thrice-damned important for people who don’t even want me here. And now I’m afraid I’m evil or mad or both, and I don’t know how to save myself from this!”

His hard, angry gaze softened. He drew me into his embrace and held me gently, like a child. The sympathy broke me and I wept, hot tears soaking the silk over his chest, the sobs wrenching out of me like so many pounds of flesh. All this time, I’d mostly managed to hold the tears in, but now they poured out of me, beyond my control. Rayfe sank to the ground and pulled me onto his lap, cradling me there and making soft, soothing sounds until I cried out all the anger and grief.

When the storm passed, embarrassment found me. So much for being the dignified princess, emissary of my people and proudly following in my mother’s footsteps.

“Done?” Rayfe asked quietly.

I nodded against his chest and tried to move. His arms tightened around me.

“I didn’t think,” he said, leaning his cheek against my hair. “I’ve been around this all my life, so I didn’t think through what it would be like for you. Salena was—she was so bright, so beautiful, and you seem so like her.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you.” I wanted it to sound dry, but it came out pitiful.

“Is that what you think?” He sighed, the muscles of his chest moving under my cheek. He smelled of man and something dark, spicy. Even now the warmth curled through me for him. “I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“I know you wanted me because you thought I could be this . . . thing that you want me to be. Salena’s legacy or what have you. But you have to know, Rayfe. I’m just the middle daughter of a broken and lonely woman. The rejected child of a brutal man. A traitor to my sisters, who loved me.”

He made a wordless sound of protest, lifting my chin so he could gaze into my face. The bright moon shimmered in the depthless silver of his eyes.

“Never say that again, my Andromeda. Never think I’m disappointed. You are far more than I hoped to imagine.” His lips brushed mine, then again. He deepened the kiss, and I returned it as I couldn’t before, the bloodlust singing through me. In this way I could devour him. “As for the beast. Trust me. I know how to handle her. I know how it feels. Take it out on me. I want you to.”

I couldn’t have stopped it if I’d wanted to. I turned to straddle his lap, digging my nails into his muscled chest through the silk, now tearing it away in my haste to touch his skin. He growled in response, shredding my dress in an easy movement, hands roving over me in a desperate hunger that echoed mine. His manhood thrust against my belly, hot and eager.

I pushed Rayfe back and he lay before me, spread out like a banquet. All mine. I bit and licked my way down his hard warrior’s body, relishing each shudder and moan I wrung from him.

Remembering how he’d put his mouth on me, I took him in my hands, stroking the surging length of him. Such soft skin over hot, blood-filled flesh. I kissed the tip and he flexed like a wild thing in my hands, making me laugh softly with the power.

“Andromeda . . . ,” Rayfe whispered on a growl, “you torture me.”

“Good,” I answered, swirling my tongue over the tip of him. “You could stand a bit of torture.”

With that I drew him into my mouth and he wound his hands in my hair. I played with him, now sucking lightly, now licking with little nips. Whenever it seemed he might lose his seed, I backed off, enjoying the shadowed flex of his abdomen as the pleasure wrung through him.

“Enough!” he finally shouted to the sky. “I concede—you’ve conquered me, my queen.” He tugged my hair, urging me up his body to capture my mouth with his. Our skin slid together, nearly sparking in the moonlight.

He rolled me under him and slid inside me in one movement.

I cried out as he speared me, the sensation nearly unbearable. He plunged in again, stroking the pleasure through me, melting away the tense and dark feelings. I dissolved into it, barely hearing his hoarse cry of completion as I stared at the full moon over his shoulder.

It seemed she smiled at me.

We lay there, connected, skin damp with the moist air. Something surged through me, a vast and intense affection for this man who’d become my husband and my lover. Who saw me. Whose skin did not crawl at my strangeness. Because it was in him, too. I kissed his shoulder, overwhelmed. He raised his head, staring into my eyes. Wordless, he kissed me, deep and tender. Pulling out of my body, he tucked me against him, so we lay in the grass, gazing up at the moon.

“I became King of the Tala when I was but fourteen—did you know that?”

I nodded against his shoulder and he picked up a long lock of my hair, idly winding it around his finger. “Your mother told me.”

“After Tosin died and Salena . . . left us, things fell apart. The magic wasn’t working right without her to guide it. My mother, she grieved for months. Everyone did. The weather became unpredictable. The staymachs sometimes turned into distorted forms and had to be put down. Someone had to fix things. No one thought I could win, but I
did
.”

Grim satisfaction echoed in his voice, but I saw the boy he’d been. Tall and skinny with it. Not yet grown into this hardened man.

“They all thought Salena would return. That she’d only gone to distract Uorsin. Or she’d get with child and bring it back. Surely it would be impossible for her to stay away. Then the wars unfolded, she summoned more and more of our warriors to battle, and it became clear that she was using her magic—the magic of Annfwn—to help him.”

“How? How can the magic of a place go with a person?”

I felt the tension in his muscles, the hesitation that tightened his body while he considered his words.

“There’s a ceremony, when you’re made ruler in truth, that connects . . . one to the heart of Annfwn.”

“And the barrier.”

“An extension of the heart, yes.”

“That’s why no one calls me queen, except you—I’d wondered.”

His arm clenched, holding me almost painfully close. “You will. You have to. It’s meant.”

“You don’t need me—you’ve done it. You said so.”

“No.” He sighed, long years of grief and fear seeming to stream from him. I tilted my head up to look at him, but he stared fixedly at the sky. “I could stop the worst of the troubles, but I’m not enough. You don’t know what it was like.”

“Tell me.”

He laughed, a soft sound with a bitter edge. “Piece by piece, we cobbled things together. And we waited.”

“For Salena to return.”

“For something. Because I wasn’t enough. I could feel the magic leaking away in some places, turning in on itself in others. So many of our people found themselves trapped outside, unable to return. It all looks more or less like it should, but Annfwn is unstable. I couldn’t do it alone. We needed Salena’s daughter.” He rose on his elbow, stroking the hair away from my face. “The treaty promised us Salena’s daughter, so I figured that was Salena’s answer for us. They all thought she left without a backward glance, but I believed. Twenty years I waited for that, my salvation.” His face creased with contempt for his idealistic youth. “Hoping they’d never find out what a fraud I am.”

I made an inarticulate sound of protest and he pressed fingers against my lips to stop me.

“You say you’re a tool to me? I can’t deny it. All these years I’ve thought of this woman and all the things she’d bring to me, to Annfwn. A means to an end, yes. You’re right to doubt my motives. They are the worst kind.”

I nodded and moved his hand, disappointment darkening my heart. Foolish, silly girl. “I understand. I always understood that.”

A wild impatience broke the lines the old griefs had carved into his face. He laced his fingers with mine and pressed our joined hands against my heart and spoke all in a rush.

“No—you haven’t thought this through. You didn’t have to marry me. It wouldn’t have been easy, but you could have come here and claimed your rightful place as queen without me. I planned to offer that. I would have helped—it didn’t have to mean civil war.

“And then I met you and all that fell away. You are . . . yourself. This thing I waited for—I had no idea who you would be to me. That you would be like my mirror self, this canny, stubborn woman who makes me laugh, who stands up to me. I don’t know how to tell you who I see when I look at you.”

I reached up with my free hand and traced the high line of his cheekbone.

“It’s enough that you do.”

His lids lowered, shadowing his eyes. “I’d like to think that it was more than duty to you. That maybe you weren’t entirely unwilling. In another world, perhaps I could have courted you, won your heart. I know it’s too late for that, but if there’s a way to make that up, I will.”

I bit my lip against the words, then let them go. “If I were Amelia, I’d make you work for it, write me poetry and bring me flowers, but in truth, Rayfe, this is all so new to me. I don’t know what I feel, except that I’m all jumbled up with it. I don’t know what’s in my heart. But I wouldn’t change this. And I’m trying.”

He took my hands in each of his and drew me up. “It’s enough that you do.”

I smoothed my palms over his muscled chest, fast becoming familiar to me. I kissed his skin, just over his heart, inhaling the masculine fragrance of him. Mine, my dark and fierce husband.

“Tell me what I have to do. It takes shape-shifting, doesn’t it?”

He searched my face. Even I heard the dread in my voice. “No, we can go home. We’ll wait until you’re ready.”

“Why do you think I can somehow do this thing that you’ve been working on for so long? What are you doing wrong that I can do right?”

He scrubbed his fingers over his scalp. “I don’t know.” He ground out the words. “That’s just it. I hope you can.”

“So all of this”—I swept my hands as if to encompass the last several months of suffering, death, and betrayal—“is all a wild gamble on your part?”

Rayfe regarded me steadily, like the wolf had, like the falcon had. “Yes. Call me a fool, but yes.”

“But no pressure, right?” My laugh still had a hysterical edge, and he smoothed a hand over my cheek.

“No pressure. We’ll find a way. For tonight, we’ll go back. Rest.”

The relief of reprieve washed over me like gentle rain. He picked up the shreds of my erstwhile dress, trying to position them over me strategically. A scarf-like piece he draped over my shoulder to cover one breast slid off while the knot he attempted to tie around my waist came undone. I started to giggle.

“Hold still,” he ordered and switched to putting his clothes on me, which I’d apparently torn even worse than he had mine.

I tried to be still, but the slippery silk refused to cooperate. He cursed, and a laugh burst out of me. He looked up with a wry twist to his lips.

“This won’t work, will it?’

I shook my head, pressing fingers to my lips to keep the giggles in.

“Do you laugh at me, my queen?” He mock growled, standing and pulling me into his arms.

I kept my face very serious, but my lips trembled with the effort. “Never, my king.”

He frowned at me. “Yes, I can see how long ‘never’ will last. Wait here and I’ll go fetch you another dress.”

“Wait.” I touched his arm, making the decision as I said it. The stakes were bigger than me and my fears. “Bring the doll, too, would you?”

He stilled. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. This isn’t only about me and Mother. You’re part of it, too. And I have this feeling that time is running out.”

“Thank you.” He said it as solemnly as a pledge, then kissed the back of my hand in as courtly a gesture as Hugh might have managed.

I waited for him in the bright, moonlit night. From where I stood, on this high point before the path started to wind down, the silvered sea spread out below. The night caressed my naked skin, moist and warm and gentle. Oddly, it felt natural and right. I stretched, replete and a little sore from our nearly violent lovemaking, my palms up to the moon. I thought of the moon pendant Dafne had given me. I missed her with a sudden pang, wishing I could ask her advice.

Though I knew she would tell me to follow my own instincts.

Which meant the cat inside. And whatever other shapes lurked within. They would all be me, right? Not demons, like Glorianna’s priests shrieked. Only the priests, I realized. Glorianna herself had never rejected me or shown me ill favor. And Moranu was her sister, as was Danu. Other faces of the same light, as Ursula, Amelia, and I had common blood but different faces.

None of us was the good and right daughter. We were all just ourselves.

My hearing sharper than before, I knew Rayfe approached long before I saw him, even imagined I smelled him on the warm breeze, along with a hint of jasmine from the low bushes he pushed through.

“Ah, look—a beautiful, naked woman waiting for me.”