Nightshade (21 page)

She was wet with need and her stomach filled with fire. Darry closed her eyes in despair. It would only get worse now. Once the fire came she could never stop it.

She could feel Jessa within her arms and the scent of jasmine haunted her. She dragged a sleeve across her face and swiped at the blood, the memory of Jessa’s breasts pressed against her too much to bear.

Blood was in her mouth again. It was the final blow.

“
Yes
,” she said, her voice breaking as she scrambled to her feet.
Clothes.
She was on her knees before the open doors of her bureau closet, staring up into the fabrics and colors. The textures were pronounced and rough within the dark and the colors askew, not quite what they should be. She flinched in pain and turned her face away. Tunics pulled from their hooks and spilled down as she clutched at them for balance.

Darry leaned against the bureau, trying to catch her breath, a cold sweat sliding down her back and soaking her tunic. Her legs trembled, everything trembled.

“Discipline,” she whispered.
Don’t move, just breathe.
“Just breathe.”

The blade twisted in her stomach as Jessa’s warm breath touched her throat.

Darry laughed, the sound barely contained, as she opened her eyes and followed the stairs that led to the high platform that held her bed. The bed where she had sat the night before, thinking herself clever and strong for having pushed back her blood. Thinking she had found her peace in the comfort of words.

“Poems to stop the blood.” She laughed bitterly, wiping the blood from her lips. “And the dance you just had to have, that was so very clever.”

She had to find Bentley. Bentley would help her. Bentley was
always
there when her majik came, and he could always figure out something.

*

“Radha?” Jessa rose from her bed.

“I sense it, child,” she answered. “Someone is working majik, yes?”

Jessa walked past the divan and stepped onto the small corner balcony. A secluded, oddly shaped courtyard below held the smell of summer and allowed her to look at the stars from the privacy of her own little space.

The distant power she could smell was very potent, holding the tang of something hidden. It should have been familiar. It
was
familiar.

“It’s very old,” Radha whispered, and Jessa turned from the railing as Radha stepped under the arch. “Old, child, like the bones of the earth.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know.” Radha held out her hand. “Come inside.”

“It cannot harm me, can it?”

“Come inside
now
,” Radha hissed.

“Radha, please, I’m fine.

“Take a breath, you foolish girl,” Radha said harshly “
Havah seella do
.”

Jessa did as she was told and gasped, touching the arch to steady herself.

“How do you feel?”

“Afraid,” she said. Whatever majik it was, it was deadly, and she knew it as surely as she had ever known anything.

“Aye,” Radha said. “And you should be. The night is no longer safe.”

“Radha?”

Radha turned back into the room. “Something goes hunting.”

“Is it Serabee?”

“The stench of the Fakir is not so pleasant, girl, you know that. It is pleasing to you as well?”

Jessa’s pulse was racing. Everything was too warm and something enticing hummed in her blood. She felt as she had when standing in Darry’s arms, hidden behind the ivy of the Queen’s Garden. A warm shiver moved down the back of her neck and her nipples hardened as she thought of Darry’s hand spinning against her own when she had turned so gracefully during their dance. Her own majik stirred and the Vhaelin shuddered with life as she left Radha at the arch. “Yes.”

“You have a secret,” Radha said.

“Leave me be, old woman.”

“You’ll not tell me?”

Jessa sat on the edge of her bed. “What goes hunting then?”

“I don’t know. That is why we return to bed.”

After sitting for a time Jessa turned over and pulled up the sheet.

“What is your secret, child?” Radha said. “Tell me.”

Jessa closed her eyes. “I have no secret.”

“Your blood stirs.”

“So does yours,” Jessa said.

Radha’s laugh scraped across the silence.

Jessa turned onto her back and stared at the ceiling.
Tell you what? That I’ve seen my visions clearly for the first time in my life? Would you laugh at that as well?
And that the face I see…the eyes.

Jessa had tried very hard just to be herself since the fête. To be with Darry and not pretend, to have no fear at what her visions had shown her. She had wanted to watch Darry and to study her as much as possible, to see if perhaps she was wrong.

But she was not wrong and the waters had not lied.

The way you looked at me, Darry…No one sees me like that, looking so deep, searching out something that is a mystery to me.
Jessa closed her eyes, wanting to groan aloud at the strangeness of it, the unfamiliar sensation of physical yearning.

She reached beneath her pillow and closed her fingers around the delicate fabric of the handkerchief Darry had sewn. She moved it slowly between her fingers and caressed the softness of the thread, remembering Darry’s smile as she had looked back from the door. She saw the shadowed hollow of Darry’s dimple and her chest ached.

Everything ached and she turned onto her side again and brought her knees up. The damp flesh between her legs clenched slowly and sent a warm flood of pleasure through her loins and thighs.
Vhaelin essa
…she eased a hand between her thighs and cupped herself, biting her lower lip as her flesh reacted, begging for more as her left leg shifted smoothly against her right.
Bloody hell.

What should I tell you, Radha? That the face I saw was a woman’s? That the eyes that cause me to feel like I have never felt before are Darry’s eyes?

“I can hear you thinking.” Radha spoke softly.

“Then stop listening,” Jessa said in a rough voice as she turned her face to the pillow.

Emmalyn turned at the sound of her name and draped the gold dress over her arm. She was not used to having Royce home, so close, so wonderfully solid beneath her hands that her world tipped. Her step was quick as she moved from the dressing room into her bedchamber. “Royce, if my mother walks—”

Emmalyn jerked to a halt beneath the desperate eyes of Bentley Greeves, then she stared at Darry. Darry’s head lolled back and her right arm dangled limply as she lay in his arms.

Darry’s tunic was stained with blood and Emmalyn’s thoughts twisted as the memory of Wyatt and Malcolm carrying Evan’s body into the great hall filled her head. His blond hair had been covered with blood and his neck bent oddly. She had known the instant she saw him that he was gone. Only his beautiful body was left, broken and cold beneath her hands.

“Please,” Bentley said in a pained voice. “I can’t hold her anymore.”

Emmalyn’s dress slid to the floor as she took a step backward.

“Emmalyn.” Bentley’s hold weakened and Emmalyn instinctively rushed close and put her arm beneath Darry’s shoulders.

“The bed,” she said, her thoughts gaining a bitter clarity as they moved. Darry rolled onto the top quilt and Emmalyn climbed on the bed beside her. “Darry?” She pulled Darry onto her back.

Bentley stumbled to the side and caught a hand on the carved post at the foot of the bed. “She’s heavy. I carried her from the barracks by way of the far paddocks, hoping no one would see us. When I awoke before dawn she was passed out at the end of my bed, burning with fever and her tunic covered in blood.”

“Bentley, she’s on fire.” Emmalyn pushed the limp curls from Darry’s face, then pulled at the blood-stained tunic.
Baby, don’t do this to me, don’t you dare
. Her fingers refused to function properly and she let out a strange sound of panic as she yanked the shirt open and searched Darry’s stomach for a wound.

“There’s nothing there,” Bentley said. “It’s…it’s not a wound.”

Emmalyn set a hand on Darry’s chest, the rhythm of the shallow breaths much too quick. She felt the pulse at Darry’s throat. It was skittish and faint. “Healer,” she said, and shoved from the bed.

Bentley grabbed her arm. “No!”

Emmalyn stared at him, trying to pull away.

“You must not.”

“Let
go
of me, Bentley.”

“You mustn’t, Emmalyn,
please
.”

Emmalyn struck him. Bentley staggered to the side but didn’t let go.

“Don’t do it,” he pleaded.

“Let me go.”

“No.”

She struck him again and wrenched her arm free. “Are you
mad
?”

“Emmalyn,” he said, “the healer will bring your mother. Darry will have to explain.”

“Explain what?”

“What…what this
is
,” he said. “It’s not what…you can’t, because that cannot happen, Emmalyn.”

Emmalyn stepped close. “Explain
what
?” she said again, though she spoke less harshly. “Where have you been? Why is there blood on her clothes?”

He shook his head and looked down. Emmalyn was taken aback by his surprising refusal. He cringed at her approach but she merely put her hand on his chest, taking hold of his sweat-dampened tunic. “Bentley.”

“She’s not…” he began, then faltered. “There are times when—”

“Was she struck? Was there a fight?”

“No, there was no fight.”

“Bentley, she has a fever.” Emmalyn pulled at his shirt. “Either tell me what this is or I’m calling for help.”

“It’s but a fever,” he said. “She’s had others of this sort, but this one seems much worse, and I wasn’t…I’m not sure that I can take care of her this time.”

“Others?”

“You must ask her yourself, please. Don’t force me to break her confidence, I beg you.”

Emmalyn considered his words for a heartbeat, then stepped back to the bed, climbing onto the covers and pressing her lips to Darry’s forehead.

“Lady Emmalyn, please. I’m sorry I grabbed you. I meant no offense.”

Emmalyn touched Darry’s face. “Get her boots off,” she whispered, and wiped at her own tears, regaining her composure. “And close the bloody door,” she added, her strength beginning to return.

Bentley refused to move.

“I shall clean her up, but we must bring her fever down. Bentley, I’ll get help.”

His face paled.

“Not as you think,” she said quickly. “You must trust me. I think I know someone who’ll not betray us.”

*

Jessa leaned against the balcony railing and gazed beyond the grounds, the late-morning breeze moving through her hair in a pleasing manner. She could smell in the air the many different trees of the land, each one holding a unique scent and power. In Lyoness the trees did not speak so loudly with the wind, nor did their essence travel so easily. The earth was too unforgiving for that and the sun much too harsh.

Amidst the allure of a rich new land, she understood at last what it was about Arravan that had obsessed Bharjah for so many years. Even a butcher could understand beauty.

Jessa recognized all too well what it was like to be deprived of what you needed most. Her royal blood meant nothing except what its presence within her veins might purchase for those who held power over her. She had grown up sequestered from her own lands, rarely leaving the Jade Palace except when she employed the Veil of Shadows. She had learned the twists and turns of its corridors and hidden pathways under the stern tutelage of Radha, and it had been as necessary to her survival as water on her tongue. To have freedom from her rooms, it had been a gift to her that she could never repay. As she had grown older she had been allowed more liberty, and Bharjah had of course seen the wisdom in teaching her what a woman needed to know.

She had learned to ride and dance, though she had done so under the eyes of Joaquin and his most trusted men. She had learned the art of etiquette, both Lyonese and what was acceptable within Arravan. She had learned the languages of her father’s enemies and for several years had spoken only the strange words of the Arravan people and the patois of the Southern Islands until she was fluent with the cadence of each.

All things proper that a daughter of royal birth should know she had studied. And when her voice was discovered as she learned to play the instruments of her land and memorize its songs, her talent had been cultivated. Its sound was so beautiful that even Bharjah would stand within the shadows and listen.

She was taught all things Vhaelin as well, though her father had no idea to what extent Radha was guiding her knowledge. She had had maidservants over the years, though they had been old women, many of whom were without their tongues. Jessa had treated them all with kindness and respect, not only because this was what Radha taught her, but because they were her only daily contact. Those who could speak would tell her of the world beyond the Jade Palace, and some, after a time, would even tell her of the subjugation of their people. They were always careful in what they said, but Jessa had understood the words that were left unspoken. It was thus that she first began to understand that the people of Lyoness were unhappy.