8. Clash of Stone and Steel #3
Samhail squeezed his eyes shut. When he’d decided to confront her, he’d been afraid she might be angry at him for pushing her away that day. Now he was afraid she’d be angry at him for an entirely different reason.
He opened his eyes and looked into her beautiful silvery-gray ones.
“Don’t hate me for what you see,” he said.
Cyra shook her head slightly, and he sat back down in his chair.
Cyra’s mindreading powers were growing stronger by the day, and she could read his mind without touching him, but she still laid a soft hand on the side of his face. Samhail tensed, remembering the feel of her hands on him the other day.
No, not her hands. Someone else’s hands.
Samhail sighed and dropped his mental shield.
A couple minutes later, Cyra pulled her hand from his temple and stepped back, her eyes wide. Samhail tried to read her expression, but he couldn’t tell what she was thinking.
“That wasn’t me,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.
“No,” he agreed, “it wasn’t.”
“Samhail, I…” She trailed off, and he waited for her to say something more, to yell at him, to tell him how disgusted she was. Instead, she just asked, “Who was that woman? How is she able to look like me?”
Samhail stood and began to pace again, his muscled arms crossed tightly. “She’s likely a masque. As for who she is, I have no idea.”
“What’s a masque?” Cyra asked.
“It’s a rare kind of shapeshifter,” Samhail said.
“The majority of shapeshifters turn into animals, either one animal if they have limited powers or, if they’re more powerful like Ursan was, they can turn into just about any animal they want.
Masques are a powerful type of shapeshifter, but instead of turning into animals, they can change their appearance at will.
They can even mirror the appearance of another person. ”
“And you think that’s what this woman was?” Cyra said. “That she made herself look like me? Why?”
“I don’t know,” Samhail said, shaking his head. “If she’d wanted to kill me, she had plenty of opportunity. She could’ve slit my throat while she was behind me.”
Cyra inhaled sharply. “So if she wasn’t there to kill you, then what? It looked like she wanted to…”
Samhail caught her eyes, and they looked at each other.
“That can’t be the only reason she was here,” he said finally. “If all she wanted was sex, she didn’t need to come to me looking like you. There are easier ways to get me into bed.”
“It didn’t work, in any case,” Cyra said quietly. “You stopped her.”
Samhail looked away. He couldn’t meet her eyes right now, but he felt her presence as she came to stand beside him. She reached out to put a hand on his arm, but she again stopped herself.
“Samhail,” she said. “Do you still desire me?”
His eyes met hers. “Yes. And I probably always will, but you’re Bressen’s wife,” he said. “As I told you before, I won’t let my desires jeopardize my friendship with either you or him. I should’ve put a stop to what happened far sooner, and I regret letting it go as far as it did.”
If Cyra was shocked by the admission, she didn’t show it. Instead, she shook her head and let her hand fall on his arm this time.
“She made you think she was me,” Cyra said. “She made you think it was alright, that I wanted it. You stopped it before anything went too far. Under the circumstances, your restraint was admirable.”
He smiled at her wryly. “We’ll see if Bressen feels the same way.”
Cyra opened her mouth to say something but closed it again, and Samhail wondered if she’d been about to suggest they not tell Bressen. It was out of the question, in any case. This wasn’t a secret they could keep from the Lord of Hiraeth for reasons that were both moral and practical.
“Is Bressen at the house?” Samhail asked. “This is something he should know right away.”
Cyra closed her eyes for a moment, and he knew she was communicating mind-to-mind with her husband.
“He’s home and expecting us,” she said as she opened her eyes a few seconds later. “I only told him we had something important to tell him. I’ll have Surgeon and Serise meet me back there later.”
Cyra closed her eyes again, presumably to send a mental message to his siblings.
When she opened them, she raised her hand to draw a circle in the air.
When her hand reached the top of the arc, a portal ringed in glowing blue light opened into Bressen’s study back at Tide’s End.
Bressen stood waiting for them on the other side as Cyra widened the portal and stepped through.
Samhail hesitated as he looked through at them.
He felt the separation between himself and his two friends acutely, not just physically, but mentally as well.
Part of him missed the days he and Bressen had spent together in their bachelorhood, but he also couldn’t imagine his life without Cyra in it now.
He only hoped the momentary madness he’d succumbed to in the great room the other day didn’t permanently damage his relationship with either of them.
He sighed and stepped through the portal to face the Lord of Hiraeth.