Heart of the Flame (5 page)

"I am injured."

"Yes," agreed the young woman at her side, "but your color is much improved today. Your fever has broken, Haven, and now you are well on the mend."

"Haven?"

"That is your name, is it not?" It might have been an innocent question, but the man at the foot of the bed made it seem an accusation. "Are you the woman called Haven?"

"Haven," she repeated, slowly testing the name on her tongue and finding it more familiar than anything else she knew in that moment. She stared, trying to absorb all that she was hearing. She was uncertain what to make of him or her present circumstances. She nodded once, wary with this queer disorientation. It felt as though she were adrift in a thready fog, random patches of her world obscured by mist; others providing slim and fleeting clarity. "Yes," she said, certain of this one thing at least. "Yes, that is my name. I am Haven."

He gave a curt nod, evidently satisfied with her answer. "I inquired after you in the village the day we left Cornwall. The folk there told me who you were, that you had some skill with herbs. They said you often visited Lady Greycliff with your potions."

In her mind's eye, Haven caught the sudden flash of a brief image: a woman's face, pretty but pained, and pale against the chestnut brown of her hair. She was seated on the edge of a large bed, clutching her temples in her hands, scarcely able to speak for the pounding of her head. Haven remembered giving her a pouch of herbs, telling her how to brew them to treat her frequent bouts with the ailment. At once, the anguished lady's name came to her. "Elspeth," she whispered.

"That's right." Her interrogator's gaze searched hers, probing for more facts. "You were acquainted with her, then."

Haven nodded, a burdensome effort for her head felt heavy on the bolster. "I knew her, yes. She was...kind to me."

"Do you know what happened to Elspeth and her family? Did you know her husband, Rand? Were you there that night--"

"Kenrick," said his sister, cutting him off when he seemed intent to press further. "Hold your questions a while, I beg you. Can't you see Haven is exhausted? This is the first she's been lucid in the four days since she arrived here."

"Four days I have been waiting for answers."

"I shouldn't think another will make so much difference."

"You know what is at stake here, Ariana."

"Yes. Of course, I do. You know I do. But badgering this poor girl will not bring your friends back. Nor will it get you any closer to--" She broke off suddenly, as if catching herself before she said too much. She glanced at Haven. "Please do not let my brother upset you. I trust the pain in your shoulder has lessened?"

"Yes," she murmured, her thoughts yet churning on the notion that she had been senseless--and completely at these strangers' mercy--for so long a duration.
Four days.
The lengthy span of time was so unexpected. It had passed by her in such a blur, and she could account for none of it. She frowned, confused by all she was hearing and seeing, yet unable to fully comprehend. "And you...have you been tending me all the while?"

"I've done what I could, but I fear I have much to learn about the healing arts."

"You saved me."

The lady Ariana gave her a warm smile as she squeezed her hand. "Not I. That credit must go to Kenrick. If anyone spared your life, 'twas him."

Impossible, Haven thought, looking in wary disbelief to his impassive face. His frost blue eyes watched her intensely, measuring her in some way, she was certain. From his strong brow, creased slightly from what must be years of practiced scrutiny, to the perfectly aligned nose and the firm mouth that seemed so wont to pass judgment on all he saw, Kenrick of Clairmont was a vision of rigid control.

Stoic, silent as he gazed at her, it seemed difficult to imagine he might have saved her from death. Haven saw no mercy in that handsome, untrusting face; only cool logic.

"You'd been stabbed," he told her grimly. "By the look of it, more than a sennight past when I found you wandering Greycliff in a state of delirium. The tip of your attacker's dagger had broken off inside your wound. It was poisoning your blood. If the blow itself didn't kill you, the infection from that bit of severed steel surely would have."

She heard his words, and knew that what he said must have been true. The aches of her body told her as much. The memory of searing pain flickered in the darkness of her mind, as did the vague notion of losing her footing on a night-black cliff, of waves roaring very close to where she lay before unconsciousness swallowed her up. She could almost feel strong arms catching her, lifting her up, holding her when she had not the strength to hold herself. "I remember so little...most of it is dim...out of my reach."

"You were in a very bad way," Lady Ariana said. "Perhaps it is God's mercy at work that you do not recall much of what you endured."

"Perhaps," Kenrick muttered. He held something in his hand, Haven realized, watching as he uncurled his fist to reveal a small triangle of tooled metal. "Tell me, do you recognize this?"

"What is it?" Ariana asked, clearly surprised by this revelation. A note of wariness crept into her voice. "Kenrick, what do you have?"

"Anon, Ana. I would have Haven's answer first," he replied, his voice as cool as his gaze.

He came around the other side of the bed and held out his open hand. The broken bit of weaponry sat in the cradle of his large palm, a wedge of dark steel no bigger than his thumbnail. But scant as it was, the piece shone with peculiar allure. Light played off the intricate scrollwork that adorned it, dancing like a flame with every subtle movement of his hand.

Haven peered at it for a long moment, uncertain and yet...

Other images assailed her in that moment, unbidden images of darkness and violence. Of fire and smoke and brutal, slashing steel. Shattering screams and the metallic scent of spilling blood. She drew in her breath, quickly glancing away from the bewitching sparkle of the dagger's tip in Kenrick's hand.

"You were there when Greycliff was attacked," he said, not a question at all but a statement of fact. "Tell me what you saw, Haven. You are the only living witness to the attack on Elspeth and her family. I must know what happened that night--everything. Who was there, what they did--anything you can recall, you must tell me."

In silence, she stared out the window across from the bed. She heard the impatient hiss of breath Kenrick exhaled, but she could not heed it.

"Who stabbed you with this blade, Haven?"

The images continued to fly at her--disjointed, unclear. "I don't..." She shook her head, closing her eyes against the onslaught of memory. "I am not sure what I saw. Nothing is clear."

"By the blood of Christ--you must think!"

"Kenrick," said his sister, rising to cut him off when he seemed intent on pressing further. "Enough, please. Let her rest a while."

"My friends are dead, Ariana. I do not take that lightly. As it stands, this woman is the only person who can tell me what might have transpired the night of the raid on their home. I need those answers." He fixed Haven with a piercing stare. "I
will
have them."

"But I have told you all I know," she protested, frustration rising in her breast. "I cannot remember what occurred. You know all that I do, I swear it."

"Indeed." He cursed under his breath then strode around the bed and toward the chamber door. "I trust your memory will improve along with your shoulder," he said, pausing with his hand on the latch. "Until then, you'll be staying under my watch while you recuperate."

Lady Ariana turned a sympathetic look on her. Instead of comfort, it brought a pang of alarm. Haven's memory might be sketchy, but she knew a threat when she heard one.

"Under your watch?" she challenged, anger flaring now.

"Aye," he replied easily. "Here at Clairmont."

He said it as though the matter required no further explanation. As though he would invite no questioning, nor permit her any other choice but to abide his own will.

Such domineering nerve--such arrogance!

Haven moved to push herself up on the mattress, but was felled by a jolt of debilitating pain. It robbed her of breath, stilling her instantly, even if it did not cool the outrage that was blooming hot in her belly. Lady Ariana eased her back down, concern soft in her gentle eyes.

Where he stood across the room, Kenrick said nothing. He merely watched her with that judicious, unsettling gaze that seemed wont to turn her inside out. Pride rankled inside her, inflamed by the understanding that she was well and truly at his mercy--at least for now. Had she an ounce of strength, she swore she would have flown at him like a tempest. That maddening look of his said he sensed as much, and it worried him not in the least.

To her dismay, her voice, when she finally found it again, was weak with the slow ebbing of her pain. "Well, then. Do you mean to hold me here as your guest, sirrah, or your prisoner?"

"That, my lady, shall be up to you."

He turned away without another word, quitting the chamber and leaving Haven to simmer, made helpless by her lingering fatigue.

Pray, not for long
, she thought, more certain than ever that her survival hinged on her escape from this place.

Chapter 5

"Did the woman confirm your suspicions about the attack at Greycliff?"

Kenrick glanced up from a journal that lay open on his desk. His brother-by-marriage, Braedon le Chasseur, reclined in a chair situated near the solar's cavernous fireplace, his sea-gray eyes shadowed by dark brows and a fall of overlong raven hair.

Scowling, half-absorbed in his thoughts and the work spread out before him, Kenrick gave a shake of his head. "No. She claims to remember little of that night."

"Fever can rob a person of memory. I have seen it happen more than once."

Kenrick grunted, knowing there was sense in the statement yet unwilling to accept it. "She holds something back. I can see it in her eyes. She vows she is being truthful with me...but I don't know."

"Mayhap it is fear that keeps her from talking." Braedon turned a sage look on him. "Fear of you, my brother."

"Me?" Kenrick scoffed. "I have given the chit no reason to fear me. She is alive, is she not? She is safe and comfortable. Any fear she might harbor toward me is misplaced--nay, unfounded and foolish."

"Hmm."

The thoughtful response bespoke disagreement but Ariana's husband made no more of it. Kenrick watched him turn his attention to a small object in the cradle of his palm. He inspected the metallic shard, tilting it this way and that to allow the firelight to skitter across its polished surface.

"That she was present during the raid on Greycliff is obvious," Kenrick continued. "I reckon the chip of tooled steel you hold in your hand is evidence enough of that."

"Yes," the dark-haired warrior concurred, grim as he continued to peruse the item. "This dagger tip could have come from one place only."

"Aye," Kenrick said. "Anavrin."

Although thoughts of the place had consumed him for years, he had not spoken the word aloud in months.

Anavrin.

It was the realm of the Dragon Chalice itself, a mythical world that was said to exist alongside their own, ruled by benevolent immortals and guarded by soulless magi warriors who could shift their physical forms at will. Legend had it that some of those shapeshifters had been dispatched to the mortal world to aid in retrieving the Chalice treasure, after it had been stolen from Anavrin some hundreds of years ago by an unscrupulous knight who had connived his way past Anavrin's protective gates.

Most would call it fanciful fiction, mere fairy tale. But not Kenrick. Not Braedon and Ariana. They had seen too much of it--felt too much of the power and the pain--to maintain a blissful ignorance of the treasure and those who sought it.

Rand and his family had seen too much as well. And Haven, whose tender body had endured the nearly lethal blow of a shifter's blade.

"She was there," Kenrick asserted. "She was nearly killed by one of them--strangled, stabbed, left to die--and yet she can recall none of it."

Braedon set the chip of tooled steel on a table beside him. "Naturally, you do not believe her."

The statement carried an irony that made Kenrick pause. "Would you? Knowing all that you know--Criste, having lived through it, closer than most--could you trust anyone who might have knowledge of Silas de Mortaine and that accursed cup he seeks?"

A measured silence was all the answer he would get from Braedon le Chasseur, the man once known by his dangerous reputation as The Hunter. Eyes gone stormy with contemplation, he looked away from Kenrick, toward the orange glow of the fire on the grate. As he turned, light played over the long, silvery scar that rode a jagged trail down the left side of his face. It was an old wound, given to him in the time before Kenrick or Ariana knew the man they would one day call kin.

Braedon bore other scars as well, the most savage of them earned but a few short months ago, in the bowels of an ancient abbey in France. The night that he, Kenrick, and Ariana experienced the true and terrible power of the mythical Dragon Chalice. None of them had emerged unscathed from that journey. Nor would they be eager to face such a test again.