Adrian (23 page)

“Abdal said no such thing!” Felsteppe protested.

“Then it shall be your word against mine,” Maisie presented calmly. “For Abdal is clearly dead. I am willing to take my chance. Are you?”

“I will not have him so close at hand only to leave him behind!” Felsteppe shrieked hysterically. “He will tell me where the rest of them are hiding!”

“Take your coin and be gone,” Maisie commanded. “My patience is quickly fading, and I do wonder how encouraged the men in yonder boats would be to make war on such a strange place as Wyldonna when their leader and financier is dead.”

“I have yet twelve armed men to defend me!”

“And I have a giant ready to stomp you all like grapes, and a man who has already killed seven of your defenders. I am not afraid of you, Felsteppe.”

“You would not risk it,” Glayer taunted.

Adrian at last stepped to her side and she looked up at him, laying her palm along the side of his shoulder. His face was stony, but he brought up a hand to cover hers.

“I would,” he said to Felsteppe.

On Maisie's other side, Reid gave his answer by raising one foot and slamming it down on the stones so that the very floor shook.

Felsteppe's throat convulsed as he swallowed and glanced nervously at Reid. “As I see it, we are at an impasse. I need that coin to pay the men who have accompanied me. But if I or any of my men come near, Hailsworth will strike us dead, true?”

Adrian nodded once. He squeezed Maisie's hand and then let his arm fall.

“If you will leave at once, I will bring it to you,” Maisie said and stepped toward the chest.

“No, no!” Felsteppe said quickly, holding out a palm. “You might use the proximity to touch me and turn me into some beast, you hoary sorceress. I saw your charms once.”

“What you saw were the simple tricks of a young, foolish girl. I am queen now, and therefore I canna use magic,” she assured him. “But if I could, any beast would be a vast improvement to your present character, I assure you.”

“You can't use magic?” he said, looking at her sideways. “At all?”

Maisie shook her head. “I would suffer the same effects as any whom I used it against.”

“Maisie,” Adrian warned in a low voice. “Don't.”

Felsteppe sheathed his sword. “Very well. If you deliver it, all my men and I shall leave the castle at once.”

“I'll follow you,” Adrian warned. “I'll never let you rest.”

Felsteppe gave him a queer smile as Maisie once more stepped to the chest and lifted it with great effort.

“I expect no less,” the red-haired man assured him.

She reached him then, and Felsteppe's hands came up. But instead of taking hold of the leather handles, he reached for Maisie's curly mane, jerking her head back painfully and yanking her to him while his right hand produced a dagger from his tunic.

The chest crashed to the floor and spilled a tinkling wash of gold over the stones as the cold blade touched the thin skin over her windpipe. Maisie heard the soldiers behind Felsteppe fall on the coins, scraping them from the floor.

“I'm not hurting her! I'm not hurting her!” Felsteppe screamed at Reid as he dragged Maisie back several steps. “And I shan't harm her so long as Hailsworth agrees to accompany me away from this island. I told you: I will not have him so close at hand without capture. And I will not be forced to look over my shoulder the whole of the return to England
to damn this entire bloody place to the king
!”

Tears spring into Maisie's eyes as scores of hairs were pulled from her scalp, and Glayer mercilessly jerked her head back farther. She felt the bones in her neck grinding together and she couldn't swallow. All she could see was the ceiling of the hall. He was walking her backward toward the vestibule.

“Release the queen!” Reid roared.

Adrian must have advanced, for Glayer warned, “Stay away, Hailsworth! Stay away until I am safely aboard else I will slit her throat—I swear it!” Then he commanded, “Hurry up, you clumsy idiots! Hurry!”

“Adrian!” Maisie screamed, the sharp angle of her neck causing her words to scrape like rusty blades against her straining throat. “Doona follow us! He will kill you!”

Felsteppe jerked her head sharply even farther and growled into her ear.
“Shut up, bitch.”

Maisie heard the scrape of wood against stone, the loud crash of coins being jostled about the inside of the chest, and then the tromping of the soldiers' boots as they rallied around their despicable leader.

“Raise your shields; form a barricade,” Felsteppe gasped as they passed out of the darkness of the vestibule.

Then Maisie's eyes saw not the black, shadowed planks of the castle's ceiling but the wide-open sky of night. Instead of the inky darkness of the hour before dawn, a faint, sparkling glow emanated from the wood as Felsteppe dragged her toward the trees.

“Now we shall see, lovely Maighread,” he growled into her ear, “if your people care as little for your life as I.”

T
he treetops seemed aflame as Adrian and Reid ran from the hall and into the castle yard. They both stopped and Adrian looked up at the sparkling lights.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Faeries,” Reid answered gravely. “They're watching. The king must be ready.”

They marched toward the path that curved away from the village directly to the shore—the same trail on which Adrian had followed Maisie Lindsey and gained his first glimpse of Wyldonna Castle. Adrian led the way into the shimmering forest. He was still shaking inside from the massacre that had just taken place in the castle hall. His muscles trembled and his arms were splattered with blood. And Glayer Felsteppe had taken Maisie from beneath Adrian's very hand.

Adrian looked up again at the glowing balls of light in the branches and saw tiny winged creatures, sparkling like gentle stars. Their faces were so small and their glow so hazy that he could not make out their features. He was bolstered by their watchful presence all the same.

“The folk will surely come to her rescue once they see that she is held hostage,” Adrian declared, as if he was trying to convince the giant crashing down the path behind him instead of himself. “The trolls, the elves, the duvenets . . .”

“Nay, Man.”

“She is their queen,” Adrian insisted angrily.

“She left them,” Reid replied.

Adrian stopped and turned on the path, challenging the giant. “She is trying to save the island from war!”

Reid looked down and his expression was sad, resigned. “I know this, Man. But Wyldonna's ways are not your ways. You do not understand.”

“I understand that this woman has risked her life out of duty and loyalty to an ungrateful lot of entitled bastards who feel as if they've the right to control her.”

“I love her, too, Man,” Reid said, his voice rough with emotion. “I've known her since she and the king were babes. And I understand why she left. It is why I remained to serve her. But leaving Wyldonna is seen as a rejection of all that we are—all that Maighread is. The folk will not protect her because she discarded her birthright. Her magic.”

“That is
bollocks
,” Adrian said with a stab of his finger at the giant. He turned around and began walking again. “And well you know it, Reid.”

“Forgive me, but I don't recall stating that it wasn't bollocks.” He crashed brush behind Adrian once more. “What are you going to do, Man, if I may be so bold as to ask of your plan?”

Adrian continued down the path as he considered Reid's question. Maisie had said she wanted to leave the island with him. Why? Was it because she liked making love with him? Because she was desperate to be away from the island any matter and he was convenient? It wasn't as if she was accustomed to a normal life on Wyldonna, so the secrecy, the covertness of movement necessitated by the accusations leveled against Adrian and his friends likely wouldn't faze her at all. Even being cloistered at Melk would probably seem a great freedom to her.

For all Adrian knew, Maisie only wanted someone to help her once more attempt to get her bearings in the Outland, be her crutch until she had settled herself somewhere in an inconspicuous life, and then she would likely set him free. She'd offered to help him apprehend Felsteppe—perhaps as payment for him assisting her in being away from Wyldonna?

But Adrian couldn't fulfill that request. He didn't want payment for taking Maisie away with him. He didn't want to feel as if they were doing each other favors any longer, making good on promises just until each of them achieved the ends to which they set out. He didn't only want her body, her strange magic. He wanted
her.
All of her.

Adrian had been resigned to the idea that he would die in Saladin's prison. And yet, somehow, he had lived. Perhaps he had been given strength by a God as yet unknown, unfounded, unexplored by him. Regardless of the how of it, he had lived to become entangled with the three other men who made up the Brotherhood of the Fallen Angels Abbey. Yes, it was appropriate that they should be called brothers. Roman had freed them, carried Adrian's body; Valentine had shown him great compassion and produced the means of asylum for them all; Constantine had led them, had encouraged Adrian to live, even as he was being thrust into his own black hell.

Had Adrian not sacrificed himself to come here for Constantine, for Roman, even for Valentine and his new bride, even if it had at first been under the guise of saving face? He'd had no idea he would place himself in such danger by accepting this unbelievable mission, but even if he'd known, he would have come if it meant sparing his friends.

Indeed, it had been nothing short of a miraculous chain of events that had allowed Maisie Lindsey to find
him
, Adrian, the only man who had been able to solve her riddle. The Painted Man, whose coming had been foretold centuries before either of them had been born. He had come to Wyldonna full of his own foolish pride, only to be frustrated and stupefied and shocked by how much he simply did not know. Things Adrian had yet to discover and study. Things such as giant men, talking cats, children with pointed ears.

And love.

Maisie Lindsey had taught him that love wasn't always reciprocated. Loving someone—a brother, a people, a ruler, a place—did not guarantee that your feelings would be nurtured or returned. Indeed, sometimes love meant doing what you must, what you were born to do, even knowing that you would be hated for it.

Adrian thought it was perhaps the most important lesson he'd ever learned.

Glayer Felsteppe's great scheme was failing. He was not yet finished, but Adrian could not let his brothers' location be discovered until the men were ready to mount an offense against him with the knowledge Adrian now held.

Which meant he needed to solicit Malcolm Lindsey's help.

“I suppose I am boarding a ship,” he said to Reid at last. “I'll need to speak with the king first.”

“He shall be there, Man. On that you can depend,” Reid said, and then both men were quiet as they came out of the wood and onto the wide rocky slope leading down to the shore.

The scene ahead was alive with flickering light, from the tall torches stuck into rock and the little flares bobbing on the ships waiting menacingly in the harbor, as well as the flitting glow of the faerie light about the fringe of the wood. Besides Maisie's crawler, left abandoned and listing on the sand where they'd landed near the wooden pier, only one ship had been brought to the dock itself, and Adrian squinted to try to make out the figures on the deck far below.

Somewhere there was his enemy.

Somewhere there was his love.

The mist, the gray fog was gone, and above the inky, flashing sea, the sky was velvet, pricked with bright starlight, even as the horizon was highlighted by a startling line of light. Adrian could not recall seeing the deep heavens so displayed, and he wondered how close the equinox was, and if its arrival would be heralded by some further strange phenomena.

On the beach itself, the skeletal arms of the trebuchets stood in stark contrast to the plush blanket of sky. An army of marvelously bizarre beings milled about the engines, and along the rocky cliff of the island a solid line of elves crouched, their bows at the ready. A small figure, like that of a young boy, waved at Adrian.

Edel
, Adrian thought. The boy who also longed to one day escape from his magic home.

Then his attention was directed toward the bearded leader of Wyldonna, who was marching up the slope toward him, his brows drawn together.

“He's taken Maisie aboard the ship,” Malcolm announced before he'd even reached Adrian.

“I know. I'm going after her now,” Adrian assured him.

Malcolm stopped before him, his hands on his hips, his beard bending in the breeze. The fact hung in the air between them, and neither wished to speak of it.

Adrian going aboard Glayer Felsteppe's ship would likely mean his death.

And so Adrian gave the king a half smile. “It's what I'm meant to do—said so clearly in your book. You really should do something about the pathetic state of that cupboard you refer to as a library.”

Malcolm shook his head and huffed a low laugh. And then he reached for Adrian and drew him into an embrace.

“You will be saving the whole of the world, lad,” he choked. Adrian didn't care about the whole of the world; he was only saving Maisie. His throat felt thick and so he pulled away from the king. “I need you to do something for me.”

 

Maisie feared never reaching the beach alive.

Glayer Felsteppe held the blade to her throat as he attempted to maneuver them both down the dark steep path through the wood. The unfamiliar terrain caused him to stumble several times, nicking Maisie's skin, crushing her feet and ankles beneath his heavy boots. She'd fallen a dozen times because he had trod on her, and each time he cursed her, jerked her to her bruised feet, shook her, threatened her.

The faeries were about, always such curious creatures. Some of the more daring ones swooped down from the trees to hover above Maisie's face or around the soldiers, who cried out and swatted at the little glowing wings.

One faerie hung in the darkness just over Maisie's nose, illuminating her face. Tiny green eyes sparkled and looked at her curiously, the heart-shaped face tilting from side to side.

“Help me,” Maisie mouthed. “Please.”

The faerie flipped and then swooped away like a swallow.

“What be they?” one soldier demanded in a panicked voice.

“Naught but insects,” Felsteppe assured him brusquely as he pushed Maisie down the path. “Pay them no heed. They can't harm you.”

She heard a tiny, nearly inaudible
crunch
and then the shriek of a grown man.

“It bit me! It bit me face! I'm bleedin'!”

“Shut up!” Felsteppe commanded, but he must have been troubled by his soldier's injury for he pushed even faster, kicking Maisie's bruised ankles.

“I'll cause you nae trouble should we board your ship and cast off immediately. You have my word,” Maisie said, her words jarred by the descent and strangled through her raw throat. “You doona need Adrian Hailsworth.”

“Your concern for him is touching,” Felsteppe sneered breathlessly near her ear. “I was wise enough to notice the way you cared for each other in the hall. It should please you, then, that I fully intend on leaving the island with you both. It shall be most beneficial to my agenda to torture one against the other until I have the information I seek. So, you see, I most certainly do need him.”

“Adrian will never tell you anything, you cowardly pig,” she gasped. “And neither will I.”

“We shall see,” was all Felsteppe said, and Maisie was dismayed to hear the wicked smile in his voice.

What
wouldn't
she do or tell or reveal to save Adrian from further suffering? Her blood ran cold when she could not answer her own question.

Felsteppe could not be allowed to leave the island with both of them.

Indeed, if Glayer Felsteppe was lucky enough to depart Wyldonna at all, Maisie determined then and there that neither she nor Adrian would be accompanying the bastard.

They came upon the rocky slope above the beach then, and from the corner of her eye, Maisie could see the tall wooden constructs Malcolm had kept secreted away from her in the mountain. The island folk crowded together on either side of the path she traversed in Felsteppe's clutches. As she was pushed through the living corridor, the folk bowed.

“My queen.”

“My . . .”

“. . . queen.”

“My queen.”

Hundreds of voices acknowledged her as she was forced toward the dock, but not one hand was raised to stop Felsteppe.

After all, Wyldonna's folk obeyed the laws of the island.

Maisie squeezed her eyes shut against the tears that swelled there. When she opened them, she saw the pointed bow of her crawler jutting up from the sand before the dock at a sharp angle. She knew it was resting upon a long, half-buried rock that infringed upon the path just enough.

Turning her foot inward beneath her already bruised ankle caused an authentic cry of pain from her and she stumbled to the left, feeling Felsteppe's blade slice just under her chin, where it sent forth a warm rivulet of blood down her throat. But he lost his grip on her hair as he flung out both arms to break his fall, stumbling over Maisie's body and then the rock as her own hands reached out to catch herself on the bow of the crawler.

She hung there for precious seconds while Felsteppe struggled and cursed her just at her back, and as his fist twisted into her locks again, she lifted the fingers of her right hand and tapped the smooth pale wood twice. She felt the vessel tremble as he lifted her away from the crawler and to her feet once more. Maisie screamed and instinctively brought her hands to her scalp.

“Keep your feet beneath you, you clumsy bitch,” he hissed in her ear with a vicious shake, his dagger point once more dimpling her skin beneath her chin. And then their footsteps echoed on the wood of the pier.

He shoved her up the gangway, and as they came to the deck of Felsteppe's ship, Maisie could just see the pale line of dawn drawing a horizon between sea and sky. The sun would rise very soon—in moments, perhaps—and although Maisie had desperate hope that the dawn would bring with it the help Wyldonna needed, she knew she had no choice in what she planned to do.