PRINCE OF THE WIND (20 page)

"Aye," she called. "Joined at last."

* * *

As the sounds of the three sets of footsteps ceased and the filthy dungeon cell was silent, the woman surveyed the dark corners. Her keen eyes delved into the deepest shadows and her preternatural hearing sought the rapid beat of the frightened rodent hiding amongst the rushes. An evil smile pulled at the corners of her mouth. She walked to where the rat hunched, its emaciated gray body trembling. As quick as a bird of prey swooping down to filch a mouse from a harvested field, the woman snatched out a sure hand and plucked the rodent from its hiding place.

A terrified squeal was the next to the last sound in the dungeon.

The last was the crunching of bones as the woman thrust the rodent into her mouth.

* * *

Gently, she stroked his cheek as he lay with his head against her pale bosom. His soft, sleeping exhales stirred the hairs between her breasts and sent shivers of delight through her. The press of his lean body against her hip, the weight of his leg over hers—his knee pressed intimately to the spot he had claimed only an hour before—was pure heaven as she held him possessively.

"Never allow him to see you as you really are," the room’s other inhabitant warned.

Suzanna de Viennes smiled at Dearg Dul. "I would not be so foolish."

Dearg nodded sagely. Her cold gray eyes shifted longingly over the sleeping man before she turned her attention to the cup of tenerse that had been laced with the milk of one of the servant girls.

"He’ll not remember your touch," Suzanna said, a proprietary note in her voice.

"He will not, but I will."

"He’s mine!" Suzanna’s arms tightened around the heavily-drugged man.

"That he is, but I will hold you to our bargain, de Viennes."

Wild jealousy pricked Suzanna. Were it possible, she would slay the dead one and never have to share the strong, young body of the man in her arms again. She was now legally his wife, even though the name on the Joining Roll was not her own.

"Remember that one’s purpose in all this, de Viennes," Dearg warned, reading Suzanna’s mind. Her hooded gaze fell heavily on the other woman. "Cree’s punishment comes before all else."

Suzanna lifted her chin. "This one loved me well this night!" She shifted Raven’s inert body against her own and bent her head so she could place a kiss on his smooth brow.

" ’Twas not you he loved so well, de Viennes." Dearg chuckled; her laugh was like dry bones clanking together.

"In time, he will forget that Chrystallusian slut!"

"He will not nor would you want him to. As long as he believes
you
are his love and he is protecting you from Cree, you can control him. But the moment McGregor finds out you have deceived him, that you are responsible for the death of his woman, you will have him at your throat like a weretiger on a hare." She shrugged, and her tight gray skin rustled. "Such are the men of his clan. In that way, they are not that much different from the Crees."

"He’ll not find out!"

"You have best hope not, de Viennes." Dearg’s cadaverous smile was terrible to behold.

* * *

He was too warm when he awoke and used his feet to push away the covers. Sweat slicked his upper body, and he tried to raise his head only to find his lady’s hands buried tightly in his hair.

His cheek was pressed to her chest and all he could see was the light rise and fall of her stomach. "Miyoshi?" he whispered, hating to wake her.

She stirred and drew in a long breath, groaning as she exhaled. Her nails grazed his scalp as her grip loosened.

"Miyoshi?" he asked louder and smiled when she sucked in a horrendous snore. Gently, he untangled her fingers from his hair.

"Let her sleep, Milord."

Startled by the voice, Raven looked around to find a middle-age woman staring at him from across the room. He blinked, wondering how long she had been sitting by the window, and how she even came to be in the room.

He snatched his breeches from the bedpost and struggled to put them on, his face burning as he covered his nakedness. "Do you make a habit of entering a person’s room uninvited?" he grated, fumbling to button his clothing.

"I am Suzanna de Viennes, Milord Raven," she said as she pushed her considerable bulk from the rocking chair. "And this is my keep. I have the right to be here."

For a moment, Raven looked at her, the name she gave stirring to life embers of concern in his brain. When the flame of memory took hold, his mouth dropped open.

The woman walked to the bed. "I see you have heard of me."

With his heart beating furiously, Raven rolled away from Miyoshi, coming to his feet in a lithe bound, and looked for some sort of weapon with which to defend himself and his lady.

"Calm yourself, Milord." The woman stopped at the foot of the bed and folded her hands demurely at her waist. "I am not the ogress the Cree clan has made me out to be."

"You were in the asylum!" Raven’s gaze fell on the candlestick atop the night table. The candlestick looked heavy enough to cause damage should it be wielded against the portly woman. "Your own father locked you away."

"That he did, but not because I was insane." She pointed to the bed. "There lies the reason I was put in Baybridge."

Raven cast a quick glance at his lady. "What reason is that?" he questioned, edging toward the candlestick.

"To keep me from upending the apple cart."

"Apple cart?"

"Riain Cree and I were lovers. I was with his child when I was exiled."

Raven frowned, the words garnering his attention. He looked away from the candlestick. "I heard nothing of a child."

"Why would you have?" she countered, threading her fingers together. "The poor bairn did not survive my incarceration in that hellish place."

He flinched. "My sympathies, but what has that to do with—"

"Your lady? It has everything to do with her. Think you King Aidan would rather have me as his daughter-in-law or the lovely Miyoshi Shimota?" She smiled sadly. "Take you a good look upon me, Milord Raven. If you were the Chalean king, which of us would you want as a daughter-in-law?"

"They say you drugged Riain, seduced him with tenerse mixed with mother’s milk."

"That is what they say, but that is not the way of it." She looked at the carpet, her gaze demure. "He was drugged, but it was not I who administered the potion."

Raven wondered how Riain Cree, drug or no drug, could have bedded this hag, with her lank hair, slack flesh, and unsettling features. He shuddered as he looked at her mottled complexion and hooked nose. "I’ll not call you a liar, Milady, but I heard differently."

She raised her head. A single tear rolled down her wrinkled cheek. "I was nursing him through the Labyrinthian fever and he was not in his right mind, I fear. I was giving him small doses of the drug to relieve the symptoms. It is true the tenerse was mixed with milk. How or why this was done, I can not explain, unless it was meant as a cruel jest." She wiped tears from her eyes with the back of her hand.

"A jest? For what purpose?"

"There were among my father’s retainers, those who often made jokes at my expense. Can you not see why?" Her lips trembled. "I was not a pretty child, and I am not a pretty woman. Women such as I do not fare well among the lush servant girls. Perhaps I was sterner with them than I should have been because I envied their prettiness. Perhaps they took my shyness for arrogance. Who knows? I suspect when they saw the way I looked upon Prince Riain, they must have howled with vengeful glee, for they knew he’d never look at me with anything other than loathing."

"And how was it you looked upon him?"

She shrugged in a fatalistic way. When she answered, her voice broke. "With unrequited love that turned my nights to sleepless tossing and my days to aching endurance."

"You fell in love with him."

"As I will love no other this side of the grave." She smiled tremulously. "Just as you will love no other than that lovely lady lying there."

He looked at his lady’s slumbering profile, and for a split second, he thought he saw Suzanna de Viennes lying there. He gasped, stepping back from the bed, but his vision altered and again he was staring at the creamy perfection of Miyoshi Shimota’s smooth shoulders and silky black hair. His exhalation of relief sounded loud in the still room.

"When it was learned I had lost my virginity to Riain," the woman said, drawing Raven’s eyes back to her, "my father made plans for a Joining between our clans. My father fully intended to see that Riain made a good woman of me."

"Even though Cree could not be held accountable for having taken you?"

"My father saw a way to be rid of me. He had no more use for me than did his retainers."

Raven shifted uncomfortably. She was staring at his bare chest and he scrunched his arms together. "And King Aidan’s untimely arrival halted the Joining plans," he snapped, reaching for his shirt.

"He had already betrothed his son to the Chrystallusian princess," she said with a hitching sob. "He meant to ally the two houses, and would have started a war with the Northzone had my father insisted Riain made an honest woman of me."

"I can not believe King Aidan would allow a pregnant woman to be sent to that hellhole. From all I have seen of the man, he is honorable and—"

"As ruthless as he is powerful. He did not know I was with child. No one knew. Not even I." She hung her head. "Until it was too late to do anything about it. By then, I had been in that foul place for several months. Hidden away like the dirty secret King Aidan believes me to be. His attacks on my character have been a calculated attempt to make the Crees look good and the de Vienneses grasping, connivers."

"Riain Cree fears you."

"What is to fear?" she asked, her face pitiful to behold. "A broken woman no man can look upon for long without turning away in disgust?"

"It is said you cursed him. That you—"

She flung a limp hand against his words. "My pride at work, I fear. Aye, I cursed him, for he hurt me when he spurned my love. But hurt him? Do harm to him?" She looked at him, pleading in her tearful eyes. "I love him. With all my heart and soul. How could I do harm to the man I love more than life itself?"

She sagged to the floor, her hands covering her face. Her shoulders shook with mighty sobs. Her pitiful keening unnerved Raven, and he would have gone to her if his lady had not grabbed his wrist.

"No," Miyoshi said in a voice that brooked no argument.

Raven was stunned at the fierce way she held his wrist and pulled him to the bed. He blinked with surprise at the strength in her slender hand.

The woman on the floor looked up, fury in her wet eyes. For a moment, Raven thought she was going to speak, for her ugly gash of a mouth opened in an obscene way. But then she snapped her teeth together with an audible click and pushed up from the floor, turned, and fled the room.

"Raven, stay away from that one!" Miyoshi commanded. She jerked on his arm so that he fell into bed beside her.

"Why didn’t you tell me whose keep this was?" he questioned. "When we were Joined last eve, where was the de Viennes woman? I don’t remember anyone but the priest and the two guards. Where was—"

"You heard her tale. If you were her, would you wish to be at the Joining of two lovers whose happiness shown brighter than the candles on the altar?"

He shook his head. "But—"

"Sleep," she said, her voice a stern demand.

Raven collapsed like a broken toy and fell into a deep slumber.

* * *

Suzanna de Viennes thrust her arm under Raven’s shoulders and rolled him toward her, pressing his body close. She rested her chin on his bright golden hair and glared at the chamber door through which Dearg Dul had fled.

"Am I really that hideous?" she asked.

Raven moaned in his sleep. She cooed to him much as a mother would a child until he was silent.

"Given the opportunity she would take you from me now that she has had a taste of you. But I’ll
not
give her the chance. I will have you both—you and Riain—and there is
nothing
to stop me!"

* * *

Dearg Dul threw the cat’s carcass into the corner and licked her dripping lips. Her long nails curled into her palms, drawing black blood to the impressions. Animal blood never sated her ever-thirsting need, and hunger still throbbed in her veins. The young man’s life essence would be sweet and pure and satisfying, but his throat was inaccessible—for the moment.

"Damn you to the Abyss, Suzanna de Viennes."

She drew her ebon robe about her thin body. Looking down at her claw hand, she shrieked with impotent fury, for the distended veins and liver-spotted flesh of an Ancient One had replaced the smooth, elasticity of the flesh she had taken on while impersonating Suzanna. Without sufficient Sustenance, the flesh would begin to crackle and parch like the Rysalian desert and shrink from the bone.

Scratching within the wall brought Dearg Dul’s attention to a rodent. But there were scarce ounces in the scurrying body and a goodly amount of Sustenance was needed now so the creature would remain hidden and safe.

With her hair beginning to bleach whiter than snow and turning wispy about her shriveling head, Dearg stalked from the room, her thin lips skinned back over fangs as sharp as a weretiger’s unsheathed claws. A humming sound came from her and the stench of the grave followed her as she prowled the corridors of Vent du Nord. In search of that which would ease her building hunger, she sniffed the air with distended nostrils.

There! she thought as the scent of warm, pulsing blood wafted to her from nearby. She stilled, cocked her head, then smiled. Rubbing together her bony hands in anticipation, she arched her neck forward like a buzzard and sidled closer to her prey.

The young girl never heard the stealthy approach of her death. She never saw the shadow that slithered up and over her, arms and fingers spread wide to envelope her. The last thing the servant probably felt was the sharp punctures driving deeply into her neck.

* * *

From the corner of the room, the boy child watched as his mother’s body lurched and twisted in the grip of a nightmare. He slapped his hands over his ears to drown out the slurping sounds. Even at four years old, he somehow knew the memory of the drained husk soon discarded at his feet when the monster finished would haunt him for the rest of his life.