HerMatesEmbrace (14 page)

Chapter Fourteen

Cami headed up the stairs. She knew there was a third level
to this place and she wanted to see it. At the end of the hall on the second
floor, she found the steps leading to the third floor and grabbed a lamp as she
climbed the stone staircase. There was no light up here other than the
flickering glow of her lantern. She explored. More because she needed something
to occupy her thoughts right now than from sheer curiosity. If she didn’t do
something, her mind would be running in more directions than it already was.

Dust coated the floor and covered the top of the sconces
along the wall. She looked back over her shoulder and could see her footprints
along the hallway. This area hadn’t been used or given a good sweep in a long
time. In a way, that was kind of comforting. This level would only be used if
there was a siege and those who lived outside of the walls needed to take
shelter inside of the fortress. On the other hand, she hadn’t expected to see
so much dust here.

A noise caught her attention and she turned to find a woman
at the top of the stairs. She had straight black hair, very dark-golden-brown
skin and seemed to be the type of woman she knew Linc and Colm favored. Her
body was slim and sleek and she was almost a full head shorter than Cami. Even compared
to her, the woman appeared to be small.

Cami glanced at the doors along the hallway, wanting to take
a peek inside of them, but good manners insisted she acknowledge the woman with
more than a glance. Just from the determined look on the woman’s face, Cami
knew it wasn’t curiosity or concern that had brought her up here. No, the woman
wanted to confront the person she saw as encroaching on her territory. Damn
Colm and Linc anyway. Didn’t they know that it wasn’t a good idea to mess with
people in their own
Thent
? It was bound to lead to some messy
situations.

“Hello.” Cami smiled. Although it was an awkward situation,
Cami didn’t blame the woman. She laid it all on Linc and Colm. It was stupid
and cruel to play around with the hearts of women in their
Thent
.

“Hello,” the woman said, but she eyed Cami warily.

“What are you doing up here? Did you see the light and think
something was wrong?” Cami gave the woman an easy way to back away from a
direct confrontation. The woman seemed to be losing her nerve now that they
stood face to face.

The woman took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “No,
I followed you up from the first level.”

“I’m Cami. What’s your name?” Cami leaned a shoulder against
the hallway wall and relaxed a little. She knew she sounded a little ditzy
asking the woman’s name when she’d just admitted to following her up to this
level, but she didn’t want to keep thinking of her as that woman.

“I’m Zinnia.” Her head tilted and she looked at Cami as if
she couldn’t understand what she was doing.

“Why did you follow me up the stairs? Was there something
you wanted?” Cami tried to keep the amusement out of her voice. Letting the
other woman know she found this funny wouldn’t help the situation. Zinnia would
probably take it the wrong way.

“Yes, there was something I wanted.” Zinnia frowned. “What
do you think you’re doing?”

“Here? Exploring.” Cami wasn’t going to make it easier and
steer the conversation to Linc or Colm, even though she knew that was what the
woman intended.

“Not at this moment.” Zinnia voice roughened and she leaned
forward. “I meant with the
Ardin
.”

“Let’s see. They’re helping me stop the old, false
Ardin
who ruled my
Thent
and I’m waiting for that to happen.” Cami shrugged
and watched the woman’s face turn red.

“You know I don’t mean anything to do with their mission to
get those men. I mean what are you doing with them? Do you think you can simply
come in here and grab their attention? Do you think it’s going to be that
easy?” Zinnia scowled and swung away only to turn back almost immediately.

“You’re under a few mistaken impressions. Now if I hadn’t
made a promise not to send another woman at them as a distraction, I’d tell you
to go ahead and do your best to take them. You’re also missing one important
factor. They make their own decisions. What you or I think about it is pretty
much irrelevant.” Cami resisted the urge to roll her eyes and laugh. The woman
acted as if all Cami had had to do was beckon to those men and they’d come to
her. She hadn’t done anything to attract them. She’d pushed them away and
generally tried her best to keep them at a distance. None of it worked.

Zinnia’s mouth dropped open. “You don’t want their
attention?”

“They’re Ardin. For you, that may be a draw. For me, it’s
one of their greatest faults. On top of that, I don’t really know much about
them so I’d just as soon keep my distance while I’m here.” Cami took a deep
breath. In spite of how strongly attracted she was to both of them, that was
the best choice. The only problem was it might not be possible. Not only
because they wanted her, but because that pull to them seemed to increase every
moment she was with them.

“Yet they are interested in you.” She swept her eyes down
and then back up and her eyes lingered on the right side of Cami’s face.

“Yeah, I know, not their usual fare. Definitely not small
and slender.” Cami turned and began walking down the hallway. No reason not to
explore since this conversation didn’t seem to be going anywhere. Zinnia wasn’t
a physical threat.

“Where are you going?” The woman’s voice rose in
indignation.

“Just walking. We’re not going to agree on anything with
this, because there’s nothing either of us can do. There’s no use talking about
it. Although you might not like it and I might try to dissuade them, they’re
going to do what they want to do.”

“They won’t force you to do anything you don’t want to do.”
The woman hurried to catch up with her.

“No, they won’t, but I never said that I wasn’t attracted to
them. I said that I wanted to keep my distance and that there were reasons why
I’d rather do that.” Cami pushed open a door and looked into the room. It was a
bedroom, but the bed wasn’t covered with a drape and all of the flat surfaces
had a fine layer of dust. “Even knowing that it would be better to stay away
from them, I still want them.”

“You’re right. You’re not what they usually look for in a
woman. Which means they either see something other than the physical or that
they want you in spite of the fact that…” Zinnia’s voice trailed off and she
shot a glance over at Cami.

“In spite of the fact that my looks leave a lot to be
desired.” Cami slid a glance over at the woman. As if she wasn’t fully aware of
the fact that compared to Zinnia, she faded into the background at the very
least and looked hideous at the worst.

“I didn’t mean that. It’s just that you’re different from me
and the others they’ve favored.” Zinnia shook her head. She looked a little
horrified.

“I can’t understand it either. I’m not petite, and if they
ever call me perfect, I’ll know they’re lying. My body and face is so far from
that, even I wonder about it. Maybe now that they’re back among the type of
women they favor, they’ll see that they want something different.” Cami gave a
small shrug, but she really didn’t see that happening. Agitation rose in her.
She didn’t want that to happen.

“They won’t.” Zinnia shook her head and grimaced. “What
happened to you?”

Cami slid a glance over at Zinnia. She couldn’t understand
what the woman was doing now. First, she’d been confrontational and now she
seemed curious. She wondered for a moment if she should tell the woman and then
sighed. It’s not as if it was a secret that Linc and Colm were after the Ardin
and others had heard parts of her story, so they would probably find out some
of it anyway.

“The Ardin, well, men claiming to be Ardin, of my
Thent
beat me and then cut me,” Cami said flatly. It was getting a little easier to
talk about it, but she wasn’t entirely sure that was a good thing. Talking
about that time kept it present and at the front of her thoughts. She wanted to
put it behind her.

“What did you do?” Zinnia’s head cocked to the side.

“If you mean to earn some kind of punishment, nothing. I
brought their meal. They wanted someone else and decided to take it out on me.
They became angry at the smallest things and when they were angry, someone
paid. That day, it was me.” Cami exhaled and moved down the hallway and pushed
open another door.

The room seemed to be in the same state as the others, but
she decided to go inside and look at it a little more closely. The carvings on
the mantle of the fireplace caught her eyes.

“What kind of things made them angry?” Zinnia’s eyes rounded
and her face paled.

“Almost anything could set them off.” Cami ran her fingers
over the carved head of a
tiron
on one side of the fireplace. It was
gorgeous. The white stone was smooth and cold. These rooms would be fabulous
cleaned and decorated.

“What things would do it, though?” Zinnia pressed.

Cami didn’t know if it was curiosity or if the woman thought
Colm and Linc might harbor some of that behavior. “Your Ardin are different
than them. I’ve tested them. Everything had to be done Laed and Kynar’s way.
They liked to control all aspects of life in the
Thent,
including the
cleaning schedule. There were a group of women who were beaten for not getting
to the upper level rooms on time. One of them backhanded the cook when she told
him that there wasn’t enough of a specific herb to make a dish he wanted.”

“I know they’re not the same as them. I just wondered if
there were other Ardin as bad as those two, since I’ll probably find a mate
outside the
Thent
now.” Zinnia licked her lips.

“According to the men, no. If the
chatars
in most
Thents
are comparable to the one here, then there will be true Ardin rulers, not the
false ones we had to endure.” Cami grimaced. As much as Vin, the
chatar
here, got on her nerves, she had to admit she wished that there had been
someone with his abilities at her
Thent
. It wouldn’t have gotten as bad
as it did. This conversation had gotten a little bizarre. “There are good and
bad people everywhere.”

“You’re not what I expected when I heard that the Ardin had
brought a woman back with them. It’s not anything to do with your appearance. I
didn’t expect the conversation to go this way.” Zinnia shook her head and
looked bewildered.

“Well, I expected it to be a little more confrontational and
a little louder. I also didn’t expect you to be so calm about it after only a
few sentences.” Cami glanced over at the woman, even as she moved over to the
bed and knelt to look at the scenes carved into the wood of the footboard. The
panel at the end of her bed was nothing compared to this one. It was simply a
polished wooden board with carved posts at the end.

“I wasn’t really angry. I was surprised when they told me that
there was a woman who the Ardin had brought with them and that the Ardin
couldn’t take their eyes off her. That they followed you and searched for you.
They never did that with any of us. Not even at the first. Not really. They
talked to us when we came to them to bring them food or some other chore that
brought us close to them,” Zinnia said. “To tell you the truth, I was a little
jealous of that.”

“I can understand why you’d be surprised. After all, they
had seemed focused on finding someone among you.” Cami stood and dusted her
hands off on her pants. “That doesn’t explain why you weren’t looking for your
real mate. Before…” She lifted her hand to her face and traced her fingers over
her cheek. “Before this happened, I wasn’t about to accept anything less. I
didn’t want to wake up one day and find I was second best because my man had
found his mate even if he was honorable enough to keep his commitment to me.”

“I never thought of it in that way. I think I wanted to stay
with the familiar. I know everyone here.” She shrugged.

Cami nodded. She could understand wanting to stay with the
known rather than the unknown. “Do you think there will be others such as you
who want to confront me for taking the Ardin away?”

She felt silly even saying it that way, but she knew that
was how some of the women saw it. Those men didn’t do anything they didn’t want
to do and she had no hope of leading them around with a crook of her finger as
the women seemed to think.

“I don’t know. Maybe.” Zinnia shrugged. “What were you
really doing up here? You don’t seem as if you’re all that interested and yet
you’re still here.”

“I needed some time away from my thoughts. Walking and
looking, while not entirely effective, works enough to keep my mind from
circling and making me feel trapped.” Cami shrugged. “That’s something I try to
stay away from.”

“Feeling trapped?” Zinnia frowned.

“Yeah, I never did like being crowded, but now, it’s worse.
I panic and overreact to any situation where I feel trapped. I feel silly and
embarrassed afterward, but I can’t seem to stop it.” She wasn’t even going to
go into how the feeling made the magic in her rise and the trouble that caused.

“How do you deal with Colm and Linc then? There are two of
them and you can’t choose one or the other.” Zinnia’s head tilted and she
straightened.

“They’ve been good about giving me time and space. Most of
the time, they’re on one side of me or they keep a step or two away so that I
don’t get panicked.” Cami really appreciated that and until this moment, she
hadn’t thought about how much they made allowances for her fears and her needs.

Zinnia’s eyes widened. “They’re serious about you. More
serious than I’d thought even from hearing they chased after you. I guess
you’ve learned enough about Colm to realize that that’s a very significant
thing.”