Heart of the Flame (29 page)

Draec's offer was clear: help him, and he would see that Haven returned to Anavrin safely. Cross him, and she knowingly put in jeopardy all she held dear.

For in permitting herself to care for these Outsiders at Clairmont--indeed, by allowing herself to warm to Greycliff's family when she had been covertly sent to the keep to spy on Kenrick's friends--Haven had committed the highest sort of crime against her clan. Her heart was opened to the enemy and she therefore branded a traitor to her kind.

She was Shadow now, a state of existence that was rare among the shifter warriors dispatched from Anavrin to seek the Dragon Chalice. To turn Shadow was to turn traitor.

Her life was forfeit if they found her, her fealty to her clan's mission now compromised by her love for Kenrick. The other shifters would sense her change on sight. They would hunt her with the same ferocity with which they hunted the errant pieces of the Dragon Chalice.

Haven had heard of others in her clan who'd been weakened by mortal emotion. A scant few were rumored to be in hiding somewhere on the Continent; the rest had been mercilessly hunted and executed.

With the shifters getting closer to Clairmont all the time, Haven knew she could not last long before they came for her. They would kill her. And then they would kill those she loved.

Faith, but she could not bear to so much as think it.

She could not permit another horror like the one unleashed on Greycliff Castle.

Siding with le Nantres was no more noble--no less treacherous--than an alliance with Silas de Mortaine himself, but her other alternatives held too many risks, too much pain. Not the least of which being her thoughts toward Kenrick.

As difficult as it would be, her heart urged her to go to him at once and tell him everything. She owed it to him, even if he would hate her for it.

According to the servants, Kenrick had returned to Clairmont with a guest a short while ago, but retired to his solar immediately upon arrival. With the feast yet a few hours away, Haven knew not how she would endure the time alone with her thoughts. For certain, she would not be able to bear the entire meal with so great a weight hanging between them.

If only she could see him--if only she could have one moment to determine what his reaction might be to her terrible truth that burned like acid in her belly. She had to do something, for pacing the confines of her chamber was like to drive her mad.

With a sense of resolve, and a dread that threatened to consume her, Haven quit her tower room and headed for the lord's solar on the main level of the keep.

She was surprised to find the door left ajar, no one within the meeting chamber at all. Kenrick had been there but a moment ago, for a healthy fire burned in the large grate and on a table situated between a pair of cushioned chairs, two empty tankards sat alongside a drained wine decanter.

Something else lay there as well. The glint of flat, hammered steel reflecting the firelight drew her attention as she cautiously entered the chamber.

It was a blade, she realized when she had taken but the first step toward it. The tooled dagger compelled her with its stunning familiarity, with its bewitching dance of light on the dragon hilt and engraved blade of exquisitely rare Anavrin steel.

It was a shifter's blade, this one intact and perfect, where the one that had felled her at Greycliff--her very own weapon, turned on her by a man who had every right to wish her dead--had broken off where it had struck her in her shoulder. She wondered how Kenrick had come by the piece.

More worrisome to her now, she wondered how the dagger had been discussed between Kenrick and whomever had been seated with him in the solar.

Haven picked up the weapon and held it in her palm. The instant the cool blade touched her skin, she experienced a sudden, traveling sense of power. Her fingers were alive with the kiss of a thousand needles. The sensation spread, running up the whole of her arm and into her shoulder, then down her spine.

Like fire itself, the strength of her magic engulfed her, warming her. The air about her became charged with a quavering, thrumming intensity. This accoutrement of her past--of her true home--called to something deep inside of her, showing her what she was and would always be.

Her glamour rippled just below the surface of her consciousness, an alluring whisper that urged her to let it free.

"No. I will not."

Haven dropped the shifter blade back onto the table with a clatter. She spun around--only to find Kenrick standing behind her in the open doorway of the solar.

"Have a care, lady. 'Tis a shifter's dagger, and their witchery knows no bounds."

She put her arms behind her, quelling the pulsations of her rising glamour and praying the queer pricking of her skin would abate. Unsettled by the stirring of her true nature, her discomfiture only worsened as she stared at Kenrick's stoic countenance.

"A dagger just like that one was used on you the night of the attack at Greycliff," he said, striding into the solar and closing the door behind him. "The night you were attacked by raiding shifters on orders of Silas de Mortaine."

Haven swallowed on a suddenly parched throat. "How is it you have this blade?"

He stood near the table now, and reached out to retrieve the weapon from where Haven had dropped it. Shrugging, he turned his mouth down in casual regard. "I cannot be sure precisely where this one came from. Braedon and I slew a fair number of the beasts in France some months ago. It might have belonged to any one of them."

His disdain for the breed--for her breed--was evident in the darkness of his tone. The loathing she saw in him put a knot of fear in her heart.

"Did your travel today go well?" she asked, making anxious conversation while the weight of what she had come there to say to him pressed down on her like iron rods. "Mary tells me you brought a guest back with you."

"I met an old friend." His chin lifted, but his gaze was narrow, measuring. The dagger was still gripped idly in his hand. "We had much to catch up on, it turns out."

She attempted a cheery smile. "Will your friend be joining us at tonight's feast?"

"He will."

"Well, Ariana has put together quite an affair," Haven said with a breeziness she did not feel. "She has prepared an impressive menu and plans to deck the great hall with silks and spring garlands. She does too much for me, I think."

Kenrick's grunt of acknowledgment held a strangely predatory tone. "My sister has a giving heart. She trusts easily, and looks for the good in people--at times, to her own detriment."

"She is a good friend to me," Haven said, wary of the coolness in his steady blue eyes as he looked up from the light dancing on the blade to meet her gaze. "I would never do aught to hurt her."

"I am glad to hear it, Haven. For there is nothing I would not do to protect my sister--indeed all of the folk who live within my keep and trust me as their lord."

He seemed lost in thought for a long moment, and Haven struggled to find words to fill the quiet.

"Kenrick...there is something--"

"Trust is a very fragile thing," he murmured, the low growl of his voice silencing her in midstream. She could only watch in wary silence as he lifted the dragon blade and traced it, untouching, up the length of her long-sleeved arm. "It is hard-won, sometimes never fully given."

He did not look at her, merely watched the tooled dagger as it crested her shoulder and began a slow, skating path toward the neckline of her gown.

Faith, did he already suspect her secret? she wondered, feeling a new layer of fear worm its way into her heart.

"Trust is the most binding gift a man has to give..."

The blade's razor edge slid beneath one of the ribbons that laced her bodice.

"...and it can be lost with the slightest, careless slip of one's hand."

Haven let out a pent-up breath, glancing down at the silken lacing as it severed and fell away.

Kenrick's gaze was flinty hard, but heated when he finally looked at her again. She could not read him, but she could sense the rawness of his emotions. A battle stormed in his expression, somewhere between fury and hunger. Whatever he felt in that moment, it was animal and immediate, and it sent a frisson of nervous anticipation down Haven's spine.

"Do you trust me, lady?"

She nodded, hardly capable of speech as the dagger subtly sliced through the rest of her ribbon lacings.

Some cautious thread of sanity warned that he was dangerous in that moment. She could not dismiss the idea that he was threatening her with this sensual game as much as he teased her. His gaze was too wild to be harmless. He was a man as skilled in combat as he was in study or seduction, and it was with no small degree of wariness that she reminded herself of that fact.

She had her glamour now--in truth, she knew she would be a fair match for any man if she called upon her magic--but she would not use it against Kenrick, no matter what his intent with her might be. His power over her was strangely thrilling, even through her fear.

"Do you trust me?" he asked again, framing her face in his hand, stroking her cheek with the pad of his thumb.

"Y-yes," she whispered. "I trust you."

"Do you want me, lovely witch?"

"Oh, yes," she gasped, her hands coming up around his back when he leaned in to kiss the tender skin below her ear. "Yes. I want you. Kenrick, you must know that I will always want you."

"Nay, lady," he murmured against her jaw line. "I can be sure of no such thing. Show me that I can believe anything that you would tell me."

His command emboldened her and she kissed him with all of the passion she felt for him. Their mouths melded together in a fevered joining that neither seemed able to control. There was fury in Kenrick's kiss, and a need for domination like she had never known in him before. He sought her complete submission, and Haven felt herself bending to his will with eager surrender.

He guided her hand down the hard length of his body, placing her where he wanted her. "Show me how you want me."

With questing fingers, she slipped her hands beneath his tunic. His skin was so warm to the touch, like velvet over solid steel, his heartbeat thudding fiercely in her palm. She caressed the silken sinew of his chest and down along the ridged firmness of his abdomen.

He sucked in his breath when her fingers found the rolled waistband of his breeches. That same breath rasped out of him on an oath as the laces were untied and his sex sprang free and heavy into her hands. Haven stroked him with wordless reverence, marveling as ever at the wondrous feel of his body and the power of what his pleasure did to her.

He moaned, and she was the one to melt. He trembled, and she felt her own legs weaken beneath her.

There was so much that needed to be said between them, so much that would need mending, but Haven was fast losing herself to the sensual spell of Kenrick's body. Touching him was not enough. Recalling how wild he had made her with his own brazen kiss, Haven slowly knelt before him on the floor, and took him into her mouth.

His groan of pleasure was a sweet reward that only made her more adventurous. She suckled the smooth crown of his manhood, teasing it with her tongue. The taste of him made her mad with desire and eager to explore every silken inch of his sex with her mouth. She feasted on him without inhibition, letting his hands guide her, his sharp moans of passion and deep, fevered sighs showing her just how to please him most.

She reveled in his body's reactions, wanting more of him. Needing all that he would give her. But just when it seemed he would lose himself to her, instead he seized her under the arms and hauled her up onto her feet. He was panting hard, his jaw rigid, eyes so deep a blue they seemed nearly black.

"God's blood, you are a ruthless witch."

She reached for him, but he pushed away her hands, denying her with a feral look of hunger. He spun her around in front of him, then bent her over the back of the chair. Her skirts went up around her hips in a whoosh of fabric, exposing her to him in the most intimate way. It made her anxious, but she did not fight him. He was too needy with desire, and she was too willing to submit to him in any way he wanted her.

His probing fingers met with the slick moisture between her legs. He parted the damp petals, teasing her with the thought of penetration, his stiff member sliding along her cleft. Haven cried out, unable to bite back her longing.

"Tell me what you want," he said, wickedly tormenting her with the sensual caress of his heated, heavy flesh at the gate of her womb.

"You," she gasped. "I want you, Kenrick. Please..."

"I shouldn't want you like I do," he muttered, his voice sounding rough with throttled emotion. "God's love, but I should not need you like I do."

With a raw curse, he thrust inside her, as deeply as she could take him. Haven arched up as his sex seated fully within her sheath, filling her in one endless stroke. At once she was panting, breathless with the onslaught of climax. Every flex of Kenrick's hips drove her farther to the edge, the intensity of his need--his fevered quest for release--making her dizzy with sensation. She cried out his name as pleasure buffeted her, radiating over her in waves of pure light and boneless awe.