Reothe fell silent, his thoughts turned inward. Tulkhan watched him, fascinated despite himself.
‘Why do you tell me all this?’ Tulkhan asked.
Reothe smiled sweetly. ‘Because you are as good as dead, Mere-man, and I thought you would appreciate the irony of knowing you always had it within your power to destroy me, if only Imoshen had understood her own potential. It is her mistaken belief that I am more powerful that allows me to control her.’
Victory had been within his grasp all along? Tulkhan wanted to rage at the unfairness of it all, but he shut his eyes, vowing he would not give the rebel leader the pleasure of knowing how he felt.
When he opened his eyes, he saw Reothe’s sympathetic expression and he knew his enemy understood only too well.
‘Do you like to watch me suffer?’ Tulkhan snarled.
‘Yes. Part of my gift is the vicarious enjoyment of emotions, the more intense the better.’
‘You’re insane!’
‘No. Just different.’ Reothe leaned closer.
Tulkhan wished his hands were free. Chained like this, he could do nothing but glare at the Dhamfeer male.
‘I think I have enough now. I just need one more thing: taste.’ With that, Reothe licked Tulkhan’s throat, lingering the hollow beneath his ear.
Anger vibrated through the General’ s body.
Reothe stepped back and gave an odd little formal salute. ‘I thank you.’
Tulkhan wanted to ask Reothe him what he meant, but he dreaded the answer.
‘Wait,’ he whispered. ‘I have a question.’
‘Ask.’
‘The night you came to the palace and saved Imoshen... if you aren’t as gifted as her, how did –’
‘You ask; don’t blame me if you don’t understand. I have some knowledge of death’s shadow.’ Reothe repressed a shudder as he undid the laces of his shirt. Parallel ridges scarred his chest. ‘I used my gift to anchor myself in you. If only you knew it, we are closer than blood kin. And I borrowed power from an outside source.’
‘A snow leopard.’ Tulkhan had seen those same marks on Imoshen. ‘But how?’
‘Imoshen and I are bound in a way that you and she can never be. I have trafficked with the Ancients and compromised principles because of you. You threw my plans into confusion.’ Reothe pulled his shirt laces tight. ‘Power exacts a price and there will be a price to pay for regaining Fair Isle, but I am willing to pay. My people have been persecuted too long. Imoshen and I will introduce the Golden Age of the T’En and you will be but a memory. You damned yourself the day you stepped onto this island. It was already mine but I wasn’t ready to move. You forced my hand.’
Tulkhan said nothing.
Reothe shrugged. ‘Think on it, Mere-man. You were in the wrong to invade a peaceful island. I am redressing that wrong.’
‘I’ll escape if I can,’ Tulkhan warned. ‘I’ll tell Imoshen about her gifts and I’ll see you dead!’
Reothe gave a mock bow. ‘I would expect no less.’
The General watched him climb the ladder out of the windowless cell, taking the only light with him.
Alone in the cold darkness, Tulkhan faced his own mortality. And he cursed the day he made Imoshen swear not to use her gifts on him.
I
MOSHEN AWOKE TO
find a hand on her mouth and a body pressed to hers in the darkness.
She recalled huddling in the bed crippled by the mental blow Reothe’s lock had dealt her. Sleep must have overcome her. She glanced over to the fireplace but the baby had not stirred.
‘Imoshen?’
‘Tulkhan?’ Her heart rejoiced in his familiar scent and the rasp of his whispered voice. ‘How did you get in here?’
‘I slipped in by sea. They’re all busy watching the entrances to the town.’
She nodded. That made sense, and Reothe’s lock was to keep her in, not someone out. Hugging him, she ran her fingers through his silky dark hair. ‘I missed you so much. I never thought to see you again.’
His lips were achingly familiar, his kisses so sweet. She wanted to drink him in. Tears of joy stung her eyes and slipped across her cheeks. He kissed them away, as loving and gentle as she knew he could be.
His ragged breath spoke of such longing she had to respond to his touch. An impossibly savage surge of desire ignited her. They had been parted, faced death and now were united. It was only natural to want him like this, but...
‘We must escape –’
‘Everyone’s gone, watching the roads.’ He caught her hand, guiding it inside his shirt. She could feel his pounding heart under her fingers. Her own heart thudded erratically.
His free hand undid the drawstring on her gown and pulled the neckline down. His palm pressed over her heart. She covered his hand with hers, just as she had done that morning when they swore their bond. She felt her heartbeat steady to thud in time with his. Words weren’t necessary.
Silently she tugged at the laces of his breeches. When he moved to take over she pulled her nightgown above her head and tossed it aside, looking up to see him magnificently naked before her in the light of the larger moon.
Extending one hand, she drew him down onto the bed and pulled him to her. Tomorrow they might die but tonight they had each other. She wanted him fiercely and wanted him to know it.
He hesitated. She welcomed him with a subtle tilt of her hips. When she felt him fill her, a shudder of repletion shook her. His body trembled in sympathy.
It was beyond her control. Her body’s needs overcame all thought. Her lips sought his, their breath mingled. The urgency in him spurred her on. If only he would let her touch his soul. She longed to make that final contact.
Threading her fingers through his hair she drew his face to hers.
‘General,’ she whispered, ‘if we die tomorrow, know that I love you.’
He froze. She felt his fingers dig into her shoulders. His hands moved up through her hair as his mouth took hers. It was a brutal kiss, but she welcomed it because she wanted to shut out everything else, to imprint this moment forever.
Again, tears burned her eyes and her throat grew tight.
Then she felt it, the faintest whisper of cool contact, brushing the fevered plains of her mind.
Impossible. But it was there and she recognised that sentient sensation. Dawning panic took her.
Like a great blue-white sun, she felt Reothe’s essence rise above the horizon of her perception. The mountains she built could not keep him out and he blazed forth across her mind, searing her with his presence.
Turning her back on that intense coolness, she tried to escape.
Wordlessly he sought her.
Imoshen, let me love you.
It was a plea from the heart. It demanded nothing. She was already caught.
A spasm of desire rolled through her. She lost the perception of where her body ended and his began. Rippling waves of passion built around them, sweeping her ever closer to the edge, driving her to clutch him as they were swept over.
When she found herself again, she clasped him close. He was her only solid point in the chaos of her heightened perception.
Stunned, she turned her face away and the tendrils of intermeshed awareness parted, prickling all over her body. At last he was just a cool, soothing presence in the dark stretches of her mind. There was no room for thought, no words for what she had experienced.
Time seemed to stretch. He demanded nothing of her, seemingly content to linger in contact. And she, who had never known the intimacy of such contact, marvelled.
Was this what it was meant to be like with one of her own kind, a sharing of complete trust?
But he had tricked her.
She tried to ease away from the mental contact. He held on, passive but determined. Fear made her heart lurch and he reacted with a soft breeze allaying her fear.
‘Reothe?’
He covered her lips with his fingers, cool, calming, calculating.
Calculating?
Then she felt it, the familiar pinprick as new life flared within her. It was a tiny star-burst of sensation so intense she gasped.
She felt his flash of triumph. Fury engulfed her. She chased him down a long tunnel. His blazing essence escaped her and his own walls sprang up. This time she pulled back before she hurt herself.
The transition was so abrupt her head reeled with impressions and nausea threatened.
‘Imoshen?’
She scrambled across the bed away from him.
‘Imoshen, don’t do this.’
‘You tricked me!’
‘Yes. The drug was in the food, disguised by the spices. It was three days until the night you were fertile, not three days before your General arrived. His arrogant Ghebite pride won’t let him accept you once he knows you carry my child.’
‘It was him I took in my arms, not you!’
‘Not in the end.’
That was true. A flood of sensations rolled over her, memories so intense she gasped. She felt raw. ‘So this is what you promised?’
He was a pale form glowing on the bed. In her heightened T’En state, all surfaces gleamed with an inner radiance.
His hands lifted in a pleading gesture.
‘You did wrong to trick me, Reothe.’
‘Sometimes you must do a little wrong to achieve a greater right.’
Imoshen snorted, rejecting this utterly. Chaotic impressions rushed through her. She pressed her hands to her closed lips, fighting nausea as her head filled with sensations. ‘What’s happening to me? I feel strange.’
His touch was reassuring. She sank into his arms and he cradled her against his chest. The unnerving sensations passed. His cool essence was so calming she had to fight to remind herself he had betrayed her.
‘Oh, Reothe,’ she whispered, ‘why did it have to be this way between us?’
T
ULKHAN LIFTED HIS
head and blinked. The single candle flame seemed brilliant after the dark.
It was Reothe again, descending the ladder.
‘Come to gloat?’ Tulkhan tried to goad him. Anything was better than hanging here like piece of butchered meat waiting to be served up to his half-brother.
Reothe crossed the stone floor and stepped close, wordlessly offering the inside of his wrist to Tulkhan, holding it just below his nostrils.
‘Do you smell her on my skin, Mere-man?’
As he said it Tulkhan experienced a flash of jumbled sensations. He felt Imoshen’s body under his, felt her quicksilver passion ignite.
He wanted to deny them, but the impressions were too vivid to be a lie. Devastated, he turned his face away.
‘The next time you see her, know this: she carries my child. As her true mate I have awakened her T’En potential. Whatever she may have felt for you will be coloured by this. Once she might have loved you, but can you bear to be pitied?’
It was the final blow. A groan escaped Tulkhan.
‘Accept your fate, General,’ Reothe whispered, satisfaction strong in his voice. ‘You were outclassed.’ Stepping back, Reothe called up the ladder. ‘He’s ready.’
Tulkhan turned to see several armed rebels descend.
‘It is nearly dawn,’ Reothe told him. ‘At the Vaygharian’s signal from the cliff-tower, Gharavan’s ships made a night crossing with the wind behind them. There is only the exchange to get through, General, then you go home to your people and die.’
In that moment Tulkhan was overwhelmed with a longing to see the brilliant sun of his homeland, the brightly dressed people in the markets, the proud Ghebite men riding at one with their horses.
When they released him, Tulkhan rubbed his wrists and stretched to loosen his stiff muscles. One of the rebels moved forward with a chain, but Reothe waved him off.
‘There is no need. Come, General.’
They walked side by side towards the ladder. Three of the rebels climbed up first. Tulkhan thought briefly of forcing Reothe to kill him, but the rebels might simply maim him, and besides, he discovered a nub of resistance deep within him. He would not go down without a fight.
Yet why did he feel so useless?
It was Reothe’s doing. It had to be.
‘Climb.’ Reothe gestured to the ladder.
Tulkhan obeyed. When they were on the next floor the ladder was pulled up and a stone slid over the opening of the cell to create a living tomb.
He shuddered.
‘Come take your place in history, General,’ Reothe said.
They were escorted out of the gates of Northpoint citadel and into the township. It was the darkest part of the night, just before the dawn. The small moon had already set and its larger mate was waxing. Tulkhan looked down to the bay where a low fog clung to the water.
Reothe and their escort marched silently down through the curving streets to the wharfs. Incongruously, the smell of freshly baked bread made Tulkhan’s stomach rumble with hunger.
A large bonfire burned on the stones of the wharf. Reothe lifted a brand and waved. Tulkhan saw a man return the signal from the ship. He could not see the Ghebite flag, but then the Ghebites would hardly advertise that they were supplying rebels to a Dhamfeer prince in exchange for the black sheep of their royal family.
The cruel irony of it tortured Tulkhan.
I
MOSHEN WOKE FROM
a troubled doze with a start. Ashmyr slept in her arms. The baby had woken after Reothe had slipped silently away. She had refused to speak to him, turning her face to the wall. All her perceptions of herself had been overturned, and she’d been too confused to confront him, her dearest and most dangerous enemy.
Now a sense of foreboding made her anxious. She slipped out of bed. The room looked normal. Instinct took her to the window. The bay was still dark, but a bonfire burned on the wharf.
Its leaping flames drew her gaze, reminding her of something. Before she could pinpoint the memory several figures stepped in front of the bonfire. Amid them was a broad-shouldered man, taller than all but one other. Even from this distance she recognised Tulkhan.
And Reothe was with him. The General must be Reothe’s captive, yet he seemed unharmed; unarmed, yes, but not restrained. She couldn’t imagine Tulkhan giving up without a fight.
It was so strange.
No time to wonder, this was her chance.