WesternWind 4 - Tears of the Reaper (31 page)

Aingeal’s eyes flared wide and she scrambled for the door, fleeing as though the hounds of hell were after her. The moment she stepped outside the room, the memory of the kiss vanished and she stood there staring at Argent, unsure of what was happening.

“You were on your way to your quarters,” Argent told her softly.

“Oh aye,” Aingeal agreed, her brow furrowed.

Lord Kheelan slumped back down on the bench and buried his face in his hands. He might have ensured Aingeal not remember their encounter but he would remember it for as long as he lived. He barely heard Argent shutting the door behind Aingeal’s departure.

Chapter Seventeen

The door to the con cell clanked shut behind Owen and he heard the lock cycle into place. He stood there naked for he had been ordered to strip before entering the cell and listened to the silence that would be his life for the next year.

He looked around him. It was not his first time in a con cell—his kind knew them all too well—but it was the first time being punished in one. He shuddered for Reapers did not like to be confined for long stretches of time.

The cell was seven feet by seven feet, twenty feet high with no windows. Two horizontal iron beams were embedded in the titanium steel wall and jutting out from it at a ninety-degree angle was a shelf of solid sheet of metal six feet long by four feet wide. It would be his bed although there was no padding or covers. In one corner of the cell was a four-inch waste removal hole and in the one opposite a showerhead set flush against the titanium ceiling. On the wall over the waste removal hole was a small spigot from which he could drink water. A wire-encased light was recessed into the center of the ceiling and the light would never be extinguished. The cell maintained a constant temperature. A two inch by twelve inch slot in the door would be kept locked at all times except when he received the once-daily meal.

He walked to the uncomfortable shelf that was his bed and sat down. He stared at the titanium floor for a long time then pulled his legs up and stretched out on his back with his knees crooked. The light would be a horrid punishment. It was bright and intruding and it glared into eyes that would become more and more sensitive to the illumination as time passed. Flinging an arm over his face, he clenched his fists, knowing full well that embedded high in the ceiling were spy holes through which his jailers could observe every second of his incarceration.

He forced the discomfort of the hard shelf, the coldness of it against his back from his mind and went looking for Rachel. Once he had her pretty face before him, he concentrated on her. Knowing that image would fade as the animal side of him took over with the coming Transition, he wanted to hold it as long as he could.

It would be recorded in his file that at 1045 hours on December 2, 3478, a single tear slid down the temple of Reaper Third Class Owen Kieran Tohre.

* * * * *

Rachel Lawrence Tohre stood at the window of the imposing quarters to which she’d been led and stared out at the heaving gray blue ocean beyond the Citadel’s battlements. Rain was still falling but it was now a light silvery sheet that made soft sounds on the windowpanes. The rain held her transfixed for in that last moment before she had climbed the stairs with Lord Arawn, she had looked back to see her husband standing in the deluge, his face to the heavens.

“I love you, my Owen,” she said.

Lord Arawn had told her the walls of the punishment con cell were lined with lead and it would be impossible for Owen to communicate mentally with her. He also told her that she would not be allowed to visit him or see him until his full sentence was served. It was Danielle who told her why.

“When Cynyr was undergoing punishment, Lord Kheelan allowed Aingeal to go see him. It created problems for the High Lord,” Danni said. “Problems he doesn’t want repeated.”

Rachel didn’t ask what kind of problems. It didn’t matter. That was then and this was now and she doubted Lord Cynyr’s punishment had been as terrible as Owen’s.

“Will he have books to read or…” Rachel had asked, but Danni had shaken her head.

“Once he Transitions, such things would be useless to him.”

Rachel moved away from the window and sat down on the settee, drawing her knees up beneath her. She was cold but she knew the cold was inside her and did not come from the lovely, well-appointed room that would be her home while she was forced to remain in this terrible fortress.

“I’ll build you a home of your own with my own hands just as you want it when we return to Saint Marie,” Owen had sworn to her.

She imagined him stripped to the waist brandishing a hammer as he nailed joists into place on the roof of their fledgling home. Closing her eyes, she saw him lift an arm to blot away the sweat from his brow as he worked. She could hear the sound of the hammer striking the nails, the slight squeal of the wood giving way beneath the insertion of the nail. She could smell the new wood, the hint of honeysuckle wafting through the air.

That was the image she held to her heart.

That and the wicked smile of Owen Tohre as he looked down at her from the bones of the roof, one dark swath of hair tumbling into his amber eyes.

“He will always belong to Me,” a sly voice whispered in her ear.

Something inside Rachel hardened like molten steel. “Aye, you may have his body but his heart belongs to me and that is something you will never have!”

“I’ll think of you when he’s straining into My flesh,” Morrigunia taunted.

“And while that’s happening, remember it will be my body he is thinking about and not yours!” Rachel threw at the goddess. “He comes to you only because of me. Think on that, Morrigunia!”

She felt the Triune Goddess withdrawing and smiled nastily.

Though it broke her heart to dwell on Owen in the arms of the goddess, she knew the only way she would be able to endure it was to remember it was his love for her that had put him where he was. She made a vow to see he never regretted for one moment either the pain or the shame he was made to endure for that love.

* * * * *

Prime Reaper Arawn Gehdrin could not sleep as he lay with his wife’s head upon his shoulder. He was staring up at the ceiling. One of his men—nay, one of his friends—was being punished because a Shadowlord could not or would not love. It was a vile retribution and every Reaper knew it.

It wasn’t because Owen—or Bevyn and Cynyr before him—had disobeyed orders or flaunted rules. It was because Kheelan Ben-Alkazar could never have what those men had found. Because he couldn’t, the High Lord would make those who did suffer.

“There is nothing you can do, Ari,” Danni whispered.

“I know,” Arawn replied.

But that didn’t make the Reaper’s heart any less heavy.

* * * * *

Cynyr Cree knew all too well what Owen would be going through soon for he had endured the con cell punishment himself. Had Bevyn Coure been there, he too would be spending a sleepless night worried about their friend. But Bevyn, Kasid Jaborn and Phelan Kiel were on assignment in the Kiel’s Vircars Territory, no doubt sent there to reduce the number of Reapers who would protest Owen’s punishment and thus the support for Tohre.

“It will only be eight months, Cyn,” Aingeal told her husband as she ran her fingers up and down his muscled biceps.

“Aye, well, that’s still a long time, mo shearc,” he replied.

Cynyr had no idea what his wife had said to the High Lord and she had been unable to tell him. She didn’t even remember going to see the man but Cynyr knew she had else the sentence would not have been reduced by even a day. Only one person could have accomplished that feat and she lay beside him, her forehead pressed against his shoulder. That she did not remember her encounter with Lord Kheelan concerned him.

Jealousy the likes of which Cynyr had never known ate at his gut like acid but there was nothing he could do. In his heart he knew his wife’s body was still his and that not even the powerful Shadowlord would dare poach in that territory. But just knowing Ben-Alkazar had such affection for Aingeal that he would back down from one of his infamous proclamations, made the green-eyed monster in Cynyr Cree raise its head.

Not for the first time did the Reaper slip into a restless sleep hating—and fearing—the High Lord and that man’s power over Aingeal.

* * * * *

Glyn Kullen and Iden Belial sat together in the social room with a chessboard between them. Both men knew they would spend their restless evening until complete weariness claimed them playing the strategy game and honing their skills.

“She’s a pretty little thing,” Iden remarked of Daphne.

“Aye.” Glyn was sitting hunched forward, his arms crossed, elbows on his knees. He lifted a hand and moved his knight in front of king’s bishop pawn. He stared at it for a moment then swept his arm across the board, scattering the pieces. He raked his hands through his hair. “By the gods, I hate this!”

Iden’s lips twitched. “That’s because you were losing,” he suggested.

“The hell I was!” Glyn snapped. “I was three moves from checkmate, you prick!”

“If it pleases you to think so,” Iden chuckled.

Glyn would have to report the first thing the next morning for the beginning of his own punishment in the con cell and he was as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. That was the deliberate intention of the High Lord’s part—this overnight waiting—and it rankled something fierce.

“At least Tohre’s sentence was reduced,” Iden said.

“Thanks to an angel named Aingeal,” Glyn replied on a long sigh. “That had to put a crick in Cree’s bushy tail.”

“I saw Lord Kheelan just before supper,” Iden stated. “He looked like somebody had run over his little puppy.”

Glyn frowned. “He’s got a puppy?”

Iden rolled his eyes. “It was an expression, Kullen. Who the hell knows if he has a dog or a cat or maybe even a ferret?” His forehead wrinkled. “A pet ferret seems about right for a man like him.”

“Skunk is more like it,” Glyn observed. He pushed back his chair and stood, began pacing the room. “If he looked that bad, I’d say it might be because he’s regretting Owen’s harsh sentence, but I suspect it’s him regretting he can’t have Cree’s mate.”

“Aye, now that you and I can agree on,” Iden said.

“Seeing what’s happening to Tohre is all the more reason I don’t want no woman,” Glyn declared. “Let ’em suck my stick then send ’em on their way.” He thumped his chest with his thumb. “That’s my new motto.”

Iden leaned back in his chair, the front legs of the seat off the floor. “Daphne don’t look to me to be the type to be licking your stick, Kullen. She’s afraid of her own shadow.”

“Who says I’d ask her?” Glyn challenged.

“You were flirting with her,” Iden accused.

“Was not!”

“Were too!” Iden said with a grin.

“Was not,” Glyn snapped, and spun around on his heel and stalked off, slamming the door to the social room behind him.

“Were too,” Iden repeated.

* * * * *

Whether or not Lord Glyn Kullen had been flirting with Daphne was a moot point. For years she’d had her eye on Healer Benjamin but knew nothing could ever come of the attraction he held for her. As an indentured maid to the high elder, she had been at his wicked beck and call with the Colony none the wiser—though Rachel had been aware of the arrangement. How could she not have been, living in the house with them? Once Rachel’s mother had died of consumption, Daphne had been installed in Chamberlain Lawrence’s bed.

Now the young woman was free to have a life—and love—of her own and she knew she wanted Benjamin Tate.

Walking silently beside the healer, she said nothing as he reached down and took her hand in his as they climbed the stairs toward the apartments that had been allotted to them. For the last two hours, they’d been speaking quietly in the solarium while each had oohed and aahed over the tropical plants growing there.

“Healer Dresden has asked me to be his assistant,” Benjamin had told her. “I get a very nice allowance and an apartment of my own. It will be a good life.”

Daphne had remained quiet until Benjamin asked if she would be opposed to him courting her. She’d shyly shaken her head, too excited to open her mouth lest she scream with happiness.

“Edward and his family will be staying here too,” Benjamin said. “He will be helping in the stables and Betsey will be working in the kitchens. Their children will be schooled right here. Is that not grand?”

Daphne agreed that it was.

“Our children will be schooled here too, Daph,” Benjamin had then put forth. “Think of the learning they will get in this remarkable place.”

She agreed that too would be grand.

“Then it is settled,” the healer had said.

As he escorted her to her door, he looked like a condemned man about to meet his fate as he leaned down—giving her time to stop him—before placing a gentle kiss on her brow. He smiled then hurried away, his cheeks burning brightly.

Daphne sighed as she opened the door to her room.

The last thing she did before turning in to bed was to kneel down and say a prayer—as she would every night of her life from that day forward—for Owen Tohre, the man who had made it possible for her to start living.