Chapter 6 #2
Warmth flooded him. She smiled a smile that made his legs weak and his groin tight. She brushed her gentle fingers against his jaw and dropped her hand to his, then slid the ring back onto her finger.
Perhaps there was a chance for them after all...
Nay, Sin. Don’t even think that. Don’t think it at all. ‘Tis an illusion. A fleeting moment. Sooner or later, the truth will out and she will hate you.
His heart heavy, he listened as the priest joined them together.
Once it was over, Henry led them from the room to the great hall where a feast had been laid out. The hall was crowded with somber nobles who eyed Callie with pity and Sin with open hatred.
Sin paused as he regarded the cold room. Granted no one had ever cared much for his presence, but this went beyond the normal reserve and disdain the courtiers showed him.
One of Henry’s marshals came forward. An older man in his late years, he wore an impeccable gray surcoat and had the look of a harbinger of doom.
He bowed low before Henry and his guard. “Forgive me, Majesty, it seems Roger, the Earl of Rutherington, was found murdered in his cell this morning.” The man’s suspicious gaze went to Sin. “His throat was cut.”
A mortified condemnation rippled through the crowd.
Sin went numb at the news. He heard Simon’s sharp intake of breath behind him and he felt Caledonia’s hand drop three more degrees in temperature.
Convicted without a trial. How very typical.
He stared blankly at the crowd, tempted to hunch over and run about like a crazed animal. It was, after all, what they expected of him.
“Were there any witnesses?” Henry asked.
Again the marshal’s gaze went to Sin. “None, Majesty. ‘Tis as if a phantom had come and gone.”
Against his common sense, Sin glanced to Callie. A stern frown marred her face while she listened to Henry and the marshal speak.
When she locked gazes with Sin, he waited for her to condemn him as the others had. “He is the man who tried to kill you last night?”
“Indeed, madame.”
Once more, he felt her hand grow colder. Worse, he felt it tremble.
His stomach drew tight. He would expect the others to think the worst of him, but for some reason it bothered him greatly that she would.
“We shall have to investigate this matter,” Henry said. “For now, we have a wedding—”
“Murderer!”
The word rang out across the hall.
Callie scanned the room’s occupants until she saw a woman around two-score-and-five years behind the massive crowd. The crowd parted, giving the unknown woman a pathway from the door to Sin.
Her face flushed and dark brown eyes bright with tears, the noblewoman approached Sin with the quiet dignity of a queen. Her long, red dress was a stark contrast to the lady’s black hair and dark eyes. There was something oddly familiar about this stranger.
She stopped in front of Sin and gave him a glare of such loathing that Callie was amazed it didn’t cause him to disintegrate right before her eyes.
He didn’t move at all as he regarded the woman with the same contemptuous sneer.
“Damn you for killing my son. I wish you had died in my womb,” the noblewoman said cruelly. “Better I should have killed myself than ever given birth to a monster such as you.”
Callie gasped as she realized this was Sin’s mother and it was his similarity to her that she had noted as the lady crossed the hall...
Which meant the man last night who had tried to kill him was his own brother. Callie’s legs went weak with the knowledge.
Her black eyes lethal, his mother slapped Sin hard across the face, laying his cheek open.
Still Sin didn’t move. He didn’t flinch. Not even when his mother rotated the ring around on her finger in a hateful gesture to let all know she had cut his cheek on purpose.
“I demand justice,” the woman cried, turning to Henry. “I want this bastard to pay for what he’s done.”
“You would condemn your son, Countess, without a trial?”
Tears ran down the lady’s cheeks as she fought against her sobs. “I have no son. My only son died by the hands of a filthy killer.” Raising her hands like claws, she rushed at Sin who caught her by the forearms and held her back.
“I want you dead for it!” she shrieked in his face. “You’re despicable and vile. I wish to God I had killed you the very hour of your birth.”
His eyes blank, Sin still said nothing as he kept her from clawing him.
Henry ordered his guard to take the distraught woman from the room and to escort her to her chambers.
Callie moved toward her husband and reached up to touch the bleeding cut on his cheek.
Sin flinched from her as if she were a viper. “It will heal.”
“Some wounds never heal, milord,” Callie said as her heart ached for him. She couldn’t imagine a mother being more cruel to her child than what she had just witnessed. She could only guess at what other atrocities the woman had visited upon him over the years.
No wonder he had refused to speak of his mother last night when she’d asked him about her.
Sin glanced to Henry, then he turned and stalked back down the hallway toward the chapel.
Callie followed after him with Henry one step behind her.
Once Sin reached the chapel, the priest took one look at Sin’s angry visage, shrieked and ran from the room.
Ignoring him, Sin grabbed their wedding papers from where they’d been left drying on the altar and started for the fire in the hearth.
Henry quickly stepped into his path. “What are you doing?”
The rage on Sin’s face was terrifying. “I want this marriage dissolved. Now.”
“Sin...” the king’s voice was thick with warning.
“Step aside, Henry.”
Callie held her breath. She’d never seen Sin like this. This was the man who really could kill someone in their sleep. He was cold. Icy. His eyes filled with turbulent agony.
“You burn those papers and I will see you in chains.”
Sin gave him a hard, droll stare. “Think you that matters to me? If you’re trying to scare me, you will have to do better than that.”
“Leave us,” Henry said to everyone.
His guards hesitated.
“Now!” Henry roared.
They left, but Callie went no farther than the closed door. She glanced at the guard who looked away sheepishly, then she pressed her ear to the door to hear them.
A heartbeat later, the guard did the same.
“Give me those papers, Sin.”
Sin didn’t move. He couldn’t. Everyone in the great hall believed he had killed his own brother. Everyone, including Callie. He shouldn’t care what Callie thought and yet he did. He cared in a way that scared him. “Why did you do it?”
Henry shrugged. “It had to be done.”
How many times had he heard those words? How many times had he murdered for Henry? In truth, it was a miracle he hadn’t been the one ordered to cut Roger’s throat.
“I won’t marry a woman who believes I could cut the throat of my own brother.”
“Whyever not? It’s not as if you haven’t done worse things in your life. Remember what your masterscalled you? Melek in ?lüm. The Angel of Death. It’s what you’ve always been best at.”
Sin’s jaw ticced at Henry’s words. How stupid he had been to even hope he could start anew with Caledonia and live a quiet, normal life. He could never run from his past. From all the things he’d done to survive.
He stared at the papers in his hands and saw his signature below Callie’s. Her dainty, graceful handwriting was a stark contrast to his clumsy attempt.
She was made of such goodness, such kindness. Everything about her was beautiful and he was nothing but evil. Ugly. A scarred soulless monster, incapable of anything save destruction.
Melek in ?lüm. The title rang in his ears.
Even now he could hear his masters laughing as they trained him.
He had gone by many names back then. Had committed crimes he wished he could bury to the farthest reaches of his mind.
He didn’t deserve a second chance at life.
And he damned sure didn’t deserve a woman as decent and kind as Callie.
Only a devil like Henry would seek to bind them together.
Through the pain of his memories, he saw an image of Callie’s warm smile. Heard the beauty of her laughter.
She touched him on a level that made no sense whatsoever.
“Now…” Henry held his arm out. “Hand me those papers.”
Sin hesitated. But in the end, he found himself handing them over against his will.
Henry breathed a sigh of relief as he tucked the papers inside the leather pouch on the altar. “I am your friend, Sin. You know that. If not for me, you would have died alone in Outremer without ever being among your own kind again.”
His own kind. Strange, Sin felt as alien here in England as he had ever felt in the Saracen tribes who had bought and sold him.
Henry tucked the pouch under his arm. “Why do you care what the wench thinks of you anyway?”
Sin cut a glare to Henry to let him know he had overstepped his bounds. “That lady happens to be my wife. I would caution you to show her due respect.”
Henry rolled his eyes. “Not another one. I do you a favor and get a snapping lion at my heels. Please don’t tell me you’re going to be like Thomas Becket and turn on me, too.”
“You know me better than that.”
“I thought I knew him better than that, too, and yet look how wrong I was.” Henry stared at him speculatively for the span of several heartbeats. “By the way, if you’re still thinking of thwarting this marriage by trickery, think again. Come morning, I want proof of consummation.”
Sin arched a brow at that. “Don’t tell me you wish to witness the event.”
“Hardly. I’ve already verified her virginal state. Come morning if there is no blood, then I shall have my physicians examine her again. There had best be no maidenhead.”
Sin gave him a dull stare. “You keep speaking as if I care whether or not I live or die. You have no real power over me, Henry, you know that. All that binds us together is my oath of loyalty to you.”