Charlotte Boyett-Compo- WIND VERSE- Prisoners of the Wind (26 page)

“Be thankful my lady has the heart I don’t, witch,” Taegin
told her. “If you come after me or mine again, there will be no leniency. I’ll
snap you over my knee like a twig.”

He turned away—dismissing her—and started back toward the
McGregors’. So angry was he the thought of her dagger lying on the ground near
her didn’t even register. He forgot all about it until he heard the snarl
coming from her and half turned to meet the threat. The dagger slid wickedly
beneath his ribs, grating against bone and puncturing his right kidney. He went
to one knee as the blade was yanked free and driven into his left shoulder as
Kali aimed for his heart.

Shrieking like a banshee, Kali jerked the dagger out of his
shoulder and tried again, but he threw up an arm to block her, the blade
slicing through his forearm. He was losing blood rapidly and weakening too
quickly to strike for a Conversion. It was his only chance to escape the insane
woman repeatedly striking at him and it was all he could do to bat her plunges
away, sweeping out a leg to trip her up.

Kali fell—the wind temporarily knocked out of her—as Taegin
levered himself up. He crashed back to the sand twice before gaining his feet.
Scrambling for his life, he pushed up, staggering, his right side on fire with
an agony that sent hot blood flowing down his leg. Panting, he stumbled away,
hoping to gain a wooden board—anything—he could to protect himself from the
virago he watched turning to her side in the sand.

There was nothing close by for him to use to fend her off.
She was already on her feet and coming at him, the knife raised in her hand.
Shuffling backward with his eyes on the bloody blade, he didn’t see the log on
which Burl usually sat and tripped over it. He went heavily to his back, his
injured kidney an excruciating fire burning through his lower body. He hurt so
badly he couldn’t move his leg, couldn’t kick out at her as she came at him,
diving in for the kill, her enraged eyes wide, lips peeled back from clenched
teeth. His leg arm was useless but he held up his right arm to try to hold her
off but there was no strength left and he knew it. Closing his eyes to the
inevitable, he braced himself as best he could for the burying of the blade in
his chest.

It was a strange sound—an odd plinking sound but one with
depth and power in its song. It was accompanied by a squishing thud, a grunt
and a loud crash that brought the tent collapsing down. Taegin opened his eyes,
turned his head to search for the source of the sound. What he saw made him
shudder.

Marin was standing over Kali’s body, the shovel she had used
to kill the viper the night before clutched in her hand and arched over her
left shoulder. Blood dripped from the shovel’s blade. She stood there like a
warrioress of old with blood fever turning her face red with rage and her
lovely green eyes vicious, her legs braced apart and stiff. Her breath was
heaving into and out of her lungs as she glared down at the lifeless body of
the woman whose head she had pulverized.

“Are you alive, milord?” he heard her ask in a tight voice.
When he didn’t answer her right away, she swung her head toward him. Her face
made his blood run cold.

“Aye, milady,” he replied as blackness swept up with greedy
arms and dragged him down into oblivion.

Epilogue

It took him two weeks to recover from his wounds. In all
that time neither Marin nor Maveen would allow him out of bed except to relieve
himself in a chamber pot kept close to his side of the big four-poster. He was
pampered and cosseted, spoiled rotten, his every wish instantly gratified. All
he had to do was ask and it was received—no matter how trivial. To make sure he
did not disobey them, there was a woman in his room every hour of every day and
a guard outside in the hall to make doubly sure he did as he was told.

Phaedra looked up from her mending as the Tiogar woke from
his afternoon nap. “Do you need something, Tae?” she asked.

He stretched, wincing as the stitches in his back pulled.
“How much longer, Phae?” he asked—as he had every day for damned near the
entire two weeks.

“Maveen says perhaps tomorrow,” Kale’s wife answered—as she
had every day for damned near a week.

“Perhaps tomorrow,” he mimicked, his mouth twisted. “I’m so
sick of this bed I could shit in it!”

Phaedra made no comment to his vulgarity. She plied her
needle with remarkable calm although personally she was getting tired of Taegin
Drae’s convalescence almost as much as he was.

“Where’s milady?” he grumbled, fanning the covers. He lifted
his left arm and tested the strength in it. It was mending a lot faster than
his temper.

“I imagine she’s at the cove.”

“Where I should gods-be-damned be,” he mumbled.

“You are right where you belong,” Maveen said as she came in
to relieve Phaedra. In her hand was a plate with a large slice of lime chiffon
pie.

“Glory be to Aneas,” Phaedra said. “I was beginning to think
I’d have to sit there and make more conversation with him.” She got up, wadded
her mending into a ball and tramped out of the room.

“Don’t leave on my account, Phae!” Taegin shouted after her.
He grinned up at Maveen. “Is that for me?”

Maveen lifted her chin. “Do you think you deserve it?”

“Probably not,” he responded, a twinkle in his eye.

“Most likely not,” Maveen grumbled, but she handed him the
pie, smiling as he dove into it, smacking his lips like a little boy. “Marin’s
sick today.”

He stopped with a forkful of pie halfway to his mouth. A
crease formed between his eyebrows. “How sick?” he asked, the pie forgotten as
he set the plate on the bedside table. “Sick from what?”

“Very sick,” Maveen allowed. “Daniel brought her home early
from the cove and I’ve got her lying on the settee in the parlor.”

“What’s wrong with her?” he asked, throwing the covers aside
and swinging his legs to the floor.

Maveen made no effort to stop him as he snatched up his
jeans and pulled them on. She sat in the chair Phaedra had vacated. “Nothing
nine months won’t cure,” she said softly.

“Nine months?” he gasped, his hands still on the top button
of his jeans. “By the gods, Mave, what’s wrong with her?”

“Well, now, lad, you should know,” Maveen said. “You were
the one what caused it.”

“Is the healer here? Has he seen her?”

“We don’t have no need of the healer yet,” Maveen reported.

“The hell you say. I want my lady taken care of,” he
snarled, padding barefoot toward the door.

“She’ll be right as rain in about
nine months
, I’m
thinking,” she said, stressing the nine months.

Her words weren’t registering with him. All he’d heard was
that Marin was sick and he knew he had to get to her. Although he was
lightheaded, he was moving as quickly as he could to the door when the
implication of what his adopted mother had said hit him like a sledgehammer. He
came up short, turned around, stumbling to catch himself with the bedpost and
stared at Maveen with wide eyes.

“She’s pregnant?” he whispered.

“Aye, lad,” Maveen agreed. “That she is.”

“She’s pregnant.” The two words fell from his numb lips like
falling timbers.

“As much as she can be, I’m reckoning,” Maveen said.

“Pregnant,” he said, gripping the bedpost as though it was
an anchor. He sank down on the mattress.

“When you feel up to seeing to her, be quiet about it. She’s
resting,” Maveen said. She got up from the chair. “I’m thinking your
recuperating is at an end, lad.”

He lifted his head and looked up at the older woman. There
were bright tears awash in his amber eyes. “She’s going to have my baby, Mave,”
he said, his voice filled with wonder.

“Well, it had gods-be-damned better be yours,” Maveen said
with a laugh. She went to him and reached out to cup his cheeks in the palms of
her hands. “Congratulations, Taegin Drae. You’re going to be a father.” Her
lips twitched. “In about nine months.”

Without thinking of what he was doing, he put his arms
around Maveen and pulled her to him, burying his cheek against her ample
breast. Tears were flowing down his cheeks as his adopted mother smoothed his
bed-tousled hair.

“Let’s go down and see your lady,” she encouraged, bending
over to place a kiss on the top of his head. She eased out of his embrace.

“Aye,” he said, sniffing. He ran his hand under his nose.
“Aye, let’s do that.”

Together they walked slowly down the stairs. He was weaker
than Maveen would have liked and had to stop halfway down to rest, but it was
time for him to be up and out, to flex his wings again. He’d nearly died from
the loss of his kidney but the healer and surgeon sent to Comhcheol by General
Ben-Alkazar had performed a near miracle in saving the Tiogar.

Marin was sitting up with Phaedra and Timothy fussing over
her, plumping her pillows. Silus stood by with a glass of iced water at the
ready should she require it.

“Let’s leave them alone now, dearlings,” Maveen said,
shooing her kinfolk ahead of her and toward the back of the house.

The door to the kitchen closed as Taegin came to sit down beside
his wife on the settee. He took her hand in his and brought it to his lips. His
eyes fused with hers.

“Are you feeling better, wench?” he questioned, his heart in
his gaze.

“I passed out again, milord Tiogar,” she said with a sigh.
“And after you warned me not to.”

He smiled. “I’ll have to take you to task for that a bit
later on when the both of us are feeling up to a little slap and tickle.”

“Promise?” she asked.

“Count on it.”

“Oh, goody,” she said, taking his hand and placing it on her
flat belly.

He caressed her. “Are you really okay?” he asked, searching
her eyes.

She nodded. “I found out something about myself that night,
milord,” she said.

Taegin gave her all the time she needed to talk about it. He
didn’t press, didn’t try to guess what she’d felt about killing another human
being.

“She dared put hands to what was mine,” Marin said, pressing
his hand close to her abdomen. “I didn’t like that, milord Tiogar.”

There was a glint in her pretty green eyes that shone like
steel. She was made of sterner stuff than he could ever have imagined.

“If you ever want to talk…” He left it open.

“Perhaps I have more of Neala Acet in me than I ever
realized,” she stated in a voice that said this would be the one and only time
she’d discuss the matter with him or anyone else. “No one lays hands to what is
mine and hurts it.” The gleam became a hard glint. “No one.”

He put his free arm around her and pulled her head to his
shoulder. “Aye, wench. I know the feeling.”

Outside the McGregor hut, the wind was blowing gently,
swaying the palm trees. On the breeze was the scent of newly hewn lumber. The
waves were breaking calmly to shore as the pylons of the Draes’ new home cured
in their diggings.

It was just another day in paradise.

Also by Charlotte Boyett-Compo

Ellora’s Cavemen: Legendary Tails I
anthology

Fated Mates
anthology

Passion’s Mistral

WindVerse: Ardor’s Leveche

WindVerse: Pleasure’s Foehn

WindWorld: Desire’s Sirocco

WindWorld: Longing’s Levant

WindWorld: Lucien’s Khamsin

WindWorld: Rapture’s Etesian

And see Charlotte Boyett-Compo’s stories at Cerridwen
Press (www.cerridwenpress.com):

BlackWind: Sean and Bronwyn

BlackWind: Viraiden and Bronwyn

Discover for yourself why readers can’t get enough of the
multiple award-winning publisher Ellora’s Cave. Whether you prefer e-books or
paperbacks, be sure to visit EC on the web at www.ellorascave.com for an erotic
reading experience that will leave you breathless.

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