Chapter 12 #3
“Mystique, don’t listen to this bitchiness,” Lia said, tugging on her hand.
“They’re just jealous. Jocelyn thought she was woman enough to become Prima and she’s just shocked to find out what everyone else already knew.
” Liandra drew Mystique closer. “Reule would rather wed a goat than someone like her.”
“Apparently so,” Jocelyn sneered, looking at Mystique.
The slap seemed to come out of nowhere. The contact was so brutal that Jocelyn crumpled to her knees, cradling the bright red mark on her cheek as she looked up in total shock.
Mystique bit her lip to suppress the burst of laughter the expression triggered.
Liandra stood over her victim, her bosom heaving with her fury, her gloved hands curled into fists.
When Theodora stepped forward, the young blonde snarled out a low, aggressive growl.
“How dare you!” she spat furiously. “How dare you treat your future Prima so disrespectfully! And during my brother’s light and dark mourning! You insult me, my family, and your Prime! You will be lucky if a good slap is all you suffer for your insolence!”
“Lia,” Mystique said softly, laying soothing hands on the petite woman’s shoulders. “I’m certain Jocelyn has just learned the error of her ways. It’s best we leave her to contemplate her actions.”
“She’d better,” Liandra muttered angrily.
Mystique led her out of the hall, ignoring the fact that a great deal of attention had become focused on the altercation.
Once they were well away and exiting the keep onto a balcony, Liandra had calmed down enough to at least uncurl her fists.
The cold, dark air around them stole their breath and they could smell the imminent snow.
Lia paced the long balcony along its stone balustrade, back and forth, her breath clouding wildly around her, her hot cheeks a bright red that set off her sparking eyes.
“Lia, calm down,” Mystique scolded gently. “I didn’t expect everyone would be pleased with a stranger suddenly finding so powerful a niche in their society.”
“You cannot let them treat you like that. She’s right.
Any appearance of weakness and they’ll be on you like Jakals.
You aren’t like us and they know it. They know that whenever you’re without Reule, they’re free to think and feel against you without fear of reprisal.
That means they can plot against you too. ”
“Not with Chayne close by,” Mystique reassured her. She stopped her new friend’s pacing with a hand and pointed through the glass of a nearby window. Chayne was leaning against a wall watching them, amusement dancing in his tan eyes.
Lia flushed even darker when she realized the Prima Shadow had likely been right behind them all along. “Oh. I forgot.”
“But I thank you for championing me,” Mystique said softly, leaning in to press a kiss to her companion’s temple. “It meant a great deal to me.”
“Well … I … you’ve been so kind to me. You’ve made a difficult day something better. It’s almost as though Amando brought us together. Which was how he spent his life. As Prime Envoy, he kept peaceful trade flowing between us and those who can’t stand us. It was a great talent.”
“Well, you struck no treaties today.” Mystique chuckled.
“No. But I was quite satisfied with what I did strike.” She giggled. “I’m not generally the violent type, but damn, that woman makes me seethe.”
“I’m afraid you may have made an enemy today.”
“Two. Theodora is Jocelyn’s mother. No doubt you noticed the familial snobbishness.
Theodora groomed Jocelyn with aspirations of being Prima Mother.
In a way, I feel sorry for Jocelyn. I don’t think she knows how to think of herself as anything but future Prima.
She will waste her life striving for the impossible.
I’m afraid I’m not going to be the target of her contempt.
You are the threat, Mystique. You destroy all she’s been raised to believe for decades. It could make her quite mad.”
“Well, she’s underestimating me if she thinks I have no strengths or power to protect me.
Firstly, Reule will never let harm come to me.
He has sworn it to me, and I believe him with all of my heart.
And now, apparently, I have you as well.
” Mystique squeezed her. “Look. You were right! The snow has begun.”
Both women looked up at the floating white flakes.
Liandra laughed as she shivered hard. “The first time I ever saw snow was when I was ten years old. We had traveled through tropics and deserts, rainforests and then woods. So many years. All of my life, in fact, up until that first fall when we came to the Jeth Valley. We had no experience with snow, had never truly known how cold it could possibly get. We had barely been here long enough to make shelters, never mind appropriate ones for something we weren’t expecting.
So many of our people died of exposure and sickness.
Mostly the elderly who hadn’t already died in the last decade of journeying.
I was just a child, but I remember that cold and that snow.
Most Sánge despise it. But some of us younger ones, we look on the first snow as a tribute to survival and new beginnings. I know Amando did. And so do I.”
“I can see how you would,” Mystique said, feeling deep admiration for what the Sánge had survived. Liandra turned to look at her very directly, a winsome smile on her lips as they trembled with chill.
“Reule saved our lives, gave us hope. Drove us to survive. He was only twenty-two years old. His parents had died when he, was sixteen, making him a boy king. Luckily, he always had Darcio protecting him. Amando … Amando caught his attention three years after we arrived at Jeth.”
“How?”
She laughed. “That’s a story I need to be in a warmer place for.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t feel the cold so much. Let’s go inside.”
They walked inside and Mystique reached out to touch Chayne’s shoulder in acknowledgment as they passed him and he fell into step behind them.
“Amando hated fighting,” his sister reminisced. “Any sort. He would have chastised me fiercely for that slap.”
“True enough,” Chayne agreed from behind them. “He was always making peace.”
“When I was a teenager, we worked the fields as an entity, the entire village, all those of working age and strength. It was a lot of people doing grueling tasks in rough country and unpredictable weather. We were grateful for all we had, but it wasn’t an easy life.
Tempers sometimes came up short. Reule was famous for having a short fuse back then.
He was a little wild. A lot angry. His parents’ murder had taken its toll.
I suppose Darcio just couldn’t defuse his temper that day and he got in a roaring fistfight with Rye. ”
“Rye?”
Chayne laughed at that. “Rye and Reule couldn’t possibly count the fistfights they have had.
Their personalities conflicted more than you might think.
Rye is lighthearted and Reule is too serious sometimes.
Unfortunately, Rye knew this too well and liked to goad Reule.
Still does, though not so much now that Reule doesn’t rise to the bait as easily.
I remember this fight. You’re talking about when Amando sat on Rye’s chest to hold him down and … ”
“I was getting to that!” Liandra scolded him. “Don’t ruin the story.”
“Sorry,” he said with an unrepentant chuckle.
The story was full of humor, good memories from both Lia and Chayne, and the magical ability one man had to soothe souls with logical words of calm.
This had been Amando’s third ’pathic power.
The power to soothe tempers with just the good-natured sound of his voice.
Reule had instantly liked the jovial young man, and they’d become fast friends.
He’d won over the others just as quickly, and when Reule had begun to add friends to his Pack according to their skills and the needs of the tribe, it had been Amando who had filled the role of Envoy, traveling far and wide with Reule to set up trade routes in what would normally be hostile territory.
“I credit Amando with the success of Jeth almost as much as I do Reule,” Chayne said, making Lia’s eyes mist over with pride. “There were times when it was only his skills that kept us working together, or kept us safe from harm.”
“Mystique.”
The group stopped short as Rye stepped out in front of them. Mystique caught her breath, an instinctive hand going to her throat as she looked up into the Prime Blade’s serious blue eyes.
“I wish to speak with you in private, if you would be so kind,” he said politely. But something about the way he held himself seemed too rigid, too threatening to her. She shook her head in refusal.
“I’m busy at the moment,” she said stiffly.
She felt Chayne step up closer to her, but sensed his confusion over their behavior.
She dreaded the idea of causing conflicts within the Pack when its members were already torn up over Amando.
With a sigh she touched Chayne in reassurance.
“Very well. We will speak. Chayne, Lia, excuse us a moment.”
Rye moved aside, holding out a hand to indicate the way to a small room off the corridor. She stopped short inside the door and watched nervously as he closed it. She reminded herself that two ’pathic persons remained right outside and she had nothing to fear.
“Yes, Rye?” she prompted, meeting his cold blue gaze. She could easily sense that the easygoing man she had first known had yet to return.
“I take it you ran crying to Reule about our little encounter?” he speculated. “Is that why he’s so hostile toward me?”
“He’s hostile because he wishes to be. I don’t control his emotions,” she retorted.
“Oh, but I think you do. A man will bend easily to the wishes of a woman who makes him feel the way our Prime felt when he was fucking you this afternoon. My, my, quite the display of affection.”