Chapter 3 #2
In a sudden fit of anger, Reule overpowered her physically to pry her off him and she landed on the bench with a thump and a small sound of pain. Regret twanged through him, but he couldn’t pause to apologize or he’d never leave the room. He had to leave. Now.
Reule reached down to Para and lightly smacked his fingers against her cheek until she opened her eyes with a flutter. “Wake, lioness,” he called to her gently. “Your cub needs you. Are you well?” She blushed and nodded vigorously and he felt her embarrassment over her display.
Reule surged up to his full imposing height, unable to find it within himself to reassure her just then.
His tone was clipped as he instructed the servant.
“Bathe her, dress her, and feed her. Install her in the north wing.” In his current temper, he wanted to forbid her from staying on the same floor as he.
But her innocence didn’t deserve punishment.
He was the only one she trusted, whether she should or not, and it would be wrong to exile her to a lonely place in a strange world.
“Across the hall from my suite will do. No one is to approach her save yourself and another girl to help you. She’s frightened enough. ”
It was all the instruction he could give. He turned on his heel and marched out of the bath. He didn’t have to look back to see the beseeching hand that tried to grab for him or to hear the panicked gasp of fear as he completed the act that terrified her from sense to soul.
He abandoned her.
But he felt it all quite plainly as that tidal wave of sorrow burst forth in full majesty once more.
As promised, Reule didn’t go far. Apparently he was something of a masochist, he thought grimly as he sat in a private bath across the hall and washed away the grime from his body, if not the spreading stain on his soul.
He could feel her like a sharply rising and falling aria, painfully honest as her emotional expression expanded from mere sorrow to fear and a raw sense of betrayal and rejection.
Lord. Reule rubbed his fingers against his temple as his head began to throb painfully.
He despised knowing that he’d provided those newer emotions to her mostly blank canvas of feelings and thoughts.
But what was he to do? It was the only choice.
If she knew the depth and truth of what was seen as S?nge savagery …
Sánge, bautor mo.
The phrase she had spoken rushed into his mind like a fiatland wind scour, an infamous windstorm that scrubbed away everything along its path. People, animals, every blade of grass, all would be swept away.
Sánge, bautor mo.
S?nge, drink of me.
Reule shuddered at the erotic rush that remembering the words sent through him.
If she didn’t know, why would she say that?
It kept coming back to that single, crucial command.
It wasn’t an accident she’d said it that way.
It couldn’t be. It was ritualistic, that phrase.
It was what a S?nge bride said to her husband on the night of her marriage, the first time she stepped into his arms and prepared to make love.
Reule reached below the water and wrapped a fist around his savagely aroused penis, closing his eyes as another shudder rocked through him.
He shouldn’t be feeling this. He shouldn’t be reacting like an untried boy getting hard at every thought of a woman.
It wasn’t who he was. It never really had been, even as a youth.
He’d been born in war and the desolation of starvation and persecution.
He’d learned to flee before he’d learned to walk.
He’d been heir to devastating responsibility, taking on the mantle of it when he was only sixteen years old.
Too young to become responsible for the lives of a tribe numbering in the thousands; old enough to understand his parents had been murdered simply for being what they were.
Sánge.
With a curse, Reule released himself and ran wet hands through his hair in furious frustration. He hadn’t thought about these things in so very long. Why now? Why were these memories invading his peace and the safety he had found in the stone walls of his valley fortress?
Reule couldn’t say he was surprised when a sharp knock sounded on the door a short time later. With a long sigh, he relaxed back in the wide, sunken tub and spread his arms along the ceramic-tiled edges before bidding his visitor come in.
Darcio entered, shutting the door quickly to keep the warmth in.
Reule watched warily as his companion turned to face him.
His hair was wet from his own bath and his clothing neat and fresh.
Reule’s Shadow was even freshly shaved, which was more than he could say for himself.
Then again, Darcio hadn’t been tending to …
Reule shoved the thought aside. He’d probably been emanating far too much emotion as it was already. Darcio’s presence was proof of that. He didn’t need to rehash his conflicts while his friend was staring at him so intently.
“What is it?” Reule asked, unable to keep the irritable bite from his voice.
“Now, that’s strange,” Darcio mused. “I was going to ask you the same thing.”
Darcio ignored the steam and the wetness coating everything in the room and moved to sit back casually on a bench as he regarded his Prime.
The smaller private baths like this one were plumbed and tiled, rather than naturally replenishing like the Prime’s Bath.
In comparison, the oval, tub was rather small …
if a tub big enough to hold four people could be called small.
Still, it gave Reule little room to escape Darcio’s scrutiny.
“Now, I know I’m not as easygoing as Rye, nor as powerful, for that matter, but I imagine I’m as good to talk to as anyone else,” Darcio speculated.
“Of course you are,” Reule snapped, hating it when Darcio denigrated himself like that.
It was as if Darcio, whom Reule couldn’t imagine living without, didn’t feel himself worthy of his role as advisor and protector.
Reule believed it was his inhibition about his low-level telepathy that made him so, but Darcio had skill and ability that made him powerful in other ways.
Reule just wished he’d acknowledge that to himself from time to time.
“I just don’t want to talk,” Reule mumbled irritably.
“Well, I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”
“Why?” Reule barked, his darkened hazel eyes flashing furiously.
Darcio shrugged, a slight lifting of a single shoulder that belied the intense focus of his carefully assessing gray eyes.
“Because I know how fastidious you are, and how determined to shield others from your emotional emanations. You rarely lose control. However, every upper-level ’path in the castle has been getting a slideshow of their Prime’s moods ever since you crossed beneath the portcullis.
My suggestion to you is to vent this emotional pollution you’re swimming in and gain your privacy back. ”
Reule had little to say in argument, so he didn’t bother. He turned his head aside for several minutes as he struggled to draw his tattered thoughts together.
“I have to ask you something first,” he said carefully, knowing Darcio’s reaction could be potentially volatile. “It’s a favor to me, but one you won’t like.”
“I rarely like doing favors for anyone but you, Reule,” he said, dropping all formality in light of the request. “Ask your favor.”
“I need to know if she was raped,” Reule said quickly, meeting his friend’s eyes in time to see them widen.
“Shit,” Darcio hissed, leaning forward to place elbows against knees and running thick fingers through dark blond hair. Reule wasn’t fooled. He saw the shudder that his Shadow tried to hide with the gesture. “Can’t the apothecary tell you that?”
“She won’t let him near her, I promise you that. She regards even Para with nothing but suspicion and fear. Pariedes, who everyone makes fast friends with.”
“You should wait for her to tell you in her own time.”
“I would, but she can’t even remember her name, never mind how she got mapped with bruises and half the skin on her back scoured off. Friction burned off,” Reule added, menace creeping thickly into his tone.
“Shit.” Darcio’s voice shook as he uttered the curse.
“I wouldn’t ask you—”
“I know,” Darcio cut him off hastily. “Why do you need to know so badly, Reule? If she can’t remember, shouldn’t you leave it at that? What will you say if you know the truth and she doesn’t? Don’t put yourself in that position.”
“You don’t need to know my reasons,” Reule said carefully.
“The task won’t be any less difficult for you if you do.
Let me worry about my motivations and the results.
But if it helps you, I’ll at least be able to tell the apothecary, and he’ll be able to act accordingly without putting her through the trauma of an examination. ”
Reule could tell by the weight of his sigh that Darcio would agree.
He didn’t need to be a telepath, only a longtime friend, to know it.
The method was simple, even if it was unique and potentially traumatic for Darcio.
The Prime Shadow had been born with a gift as exclusive and powerful as Reule’s ability to emanate.
But like that gift, it was hard to control and not always a pleasant thing to have at one’s disposal.
Reule’s mother and his granddame had both had the gift of emanation, so it had come with a name and a measure of training.
Darcio was the first of his kind to exhibit his particular power and so he’d named it himself, calling it “the Curse.”