Poison (4 page)

"I do," Gael said softly and finally let him go, carefully putting Noire's clothes back to rights. He was taking a foolish risk, but gods did he want to do it all over again. His cock throbbed, and it took every bit of self-control he possessed not to tear Noire's clothes off and bury himself in that tight, hot body. Gael buried his face in Noire's throat, breathing in the smell of him, soaking up his warmth, tasting the saltiness of his skin.

Fingers gripped his hair, Noire's breath catching, tripping. "Gael ... "

Gael withdrew and kissed his abused lips softly. "You are perfection, kitten."

Noire smiled at him, shy and sweet and Gael's utter undoing. It had been on that very first night they'd met. He'd been bored out of his mind at yet another party, tired of the dancing and the noise, irritated he could not even get drunk. Poison, drugs of any sort, did not work on him.

Cranky and desperate for escape, he had slipped out onto an empty balcony. He hadn't seen Noire tucked back into the shadows at first. It was the soft gasp that alerted him, and a shy, but happy smile that had captured him. Gael was used to awe, to simpering, to people either being afraid of him or eager to ingratiate themselves with a near-god.

No one had ever smiled at him like he had just made the entire difference in their whole world. Several minutes of conversation and flirting later, he had wanted nothing more than to bind Noire to his bed. He'd settled for stealing a kiss. He was still proud he had lasted an entire week before finally surrendering to the desire to have the sweet little panther.

Then the nightmares had started. The bone-deep, chilling certainty that if anyone knew about Noire—knew Gael loved him—he would die. There was also the fact he could not break away from his sisters. Tradition said the Triad had always been lovers as much as siblings, a family in every sense of the word. At first, he had been more than happy with that; it had felt like 'meant to be' rather than 'must be'.

Gael did not know what it meant, what it said about him, that it no longer felt that way. They were the Triad, but he was not happy with all that entailed. His sisters had always been happy with it, why couldn't he?

Regardless of his feelings, he dare not break tradition so close to the ceremony.

So Gael had insisted Noire keep their affair a secret. He never should have succumbed to Noire in the first place, but looking back, he still did not know how he would have resisted. If only the nightmares had started sooner.

But even then, he was not certain he would have been able to walk away. Noire completed him.

"Three months, kitten," he said softly. "I love you more than life itself, and in three months I can finally say so."

Noire smiled at him, but the strain in it was unmistakable. Gael could not blame him and was humbled Noire put up with him, anyway. "I love you, too," he said softly.

Gael pulled him close and held him tightly, silently willing Noire to have faith in him just a little longer. He would ensure the ceremony succeeded just to be able to kiss Noire in the garden and tell everyone else to keep their hands to themselves. To finally dance with him and drag him out onto the balcony, and wake up beside him every morning.

Three months. He just had to last three more months.

Drawing back, he cupped Noire's face and gave him a last lingering kiss. "Best get going, kitten."

"I'll be back soon," Noire said softly and lightly touched Gael's cheek, before unlocking the door and slipping away.

Gael sighed and prowled the room, poking disinterestedly at the books filling the shelves built into one wall. History, poetry, and others he did not bother to look at closely.

When enough time had passed, Gael finally slipped out of the room and headed slowly back toward his solar. As he reached the great hall, however, a familiar face captured his attention. He smiled in greeting. "Lord Ailill, it's a pleasure to see you looking so healthy again." Gael touched Ailill's forehead, pleased that all residue of the magic that had damaged him was gone, that he felt nothing but clean health. "How are you adjusting? I am sure city life is nothing like what you are used to."

"If I ever got used to my life, it would become quite boring, your highness," Ailill said with a smile. "Thank you again for purifying me. I still do not know the true nature of the spell that struck me, but shadow magic is certainly nothing to take lightly, I have learned that much."

"Yes," Gael said, whispers and images surfacing at the back of his mind. He never saw or heard anything clearly, save his terrible nightmares, but he got flickers. "The sorcerers of Schatten were always powerful magic users. Only the Seers were more powerful, and all their power went into reading fate."

Ailill nodded. "I hope I never encounter another shadow child."

"I am no Seer, but I do not think that is your fate," Gael replied, a faint resonance to the words. The power faded, and he continued, "Are you here to present the jewels?"

"No, my audience with her majesty is not for a few more days. I had wanted to return them sooner, but her majesty's secretaries informed me her audiences were full for the next few days."

Gael was fairly certain Etain was only busy with sleeping at present; she seldom rose before the middle of the afternoon. He said nothing about it, however, only nodded. "So what brings you to the palace today?"

"I thought I would relearn it before I had to be on time," Ailill said with a rueful smile. "I was also hoping I might see Noire."

"Oh?" Gael said, and he clamped down on wholly inappropriate jealousy. "You have met our Voice, then? I did not think you ever had the opportunity, when you were here recovering."

Ailill laughed. "I only encountered him last night. He helped me catch some meat-eaters beating up a woman in the harbors. I punished them this morning. But Noire and I grew up in the same village; we were friends as boys. It was a pleasant surprise to see that he has come so far."

"I see," Gael replied and smiled. "Yes, I remember how quiet he was when he first arrived. But he has settled well into palace life, and he takes his responsibilities very seriously—more seriously than the rest of us, I daresay. If you have no plans, you should join me for lunch. Many of the other Beasts will be there, if you've not yet had a chance to catch up—"

"Gael!"

Turning, amused and exasperated as always, Gael raised a hand in greeting to Freddy—Princess Frederique Levesque, the Pegasus. "Good afternoon," Gael greeted as she strode up, her clothes a perfect match for Gael's save they were accented and trimmed in gold rather than silver.

"Did you speak with Noire this morning?" Freddie asked. "I'm sorry I wasn't there, I was waylaid by Etain to handle the morning trials. Did—"

"Of course I spoke with him," Gael replied. "He is on his way as we speak."

Freddie nodded and shifted her attention to Ailill. "Welcome back, Panther. It's good to have all six of my Beasts with me again."

Gael said nothing as Freddy rambled on at her usual rapid pace; Ailill seemed more amused than anything and actually managed to keep up with her. Gael excused himself, but neither one seemed to really notice, making him laugh as he slipped away and finally returned to his solar.

The pot of tea he'd left behind had grown cold, but Gael did not bother to call for a second one. Instead, he waited—and a few minutes later, Freddie strode into his solar without bothering to knock.

"So Noire has gone to see what is wrong with Elianne?"

"Yes," Gael said and sighed. "This ... this doesn't fit with what we know about the ceremony."

Freddie snorted. "What do we know? Precious little. We know if it goes wrong a lot of people will die."

"All twelve Beasts," Gael said quietly. And Noire, though he dared not breathe a word of that.

"The shock of losing us and the Beasts, all at once, will kill far more than that. We may lack proper histories of the ceremonies, which still confounds me, but we all know what happened the last time a Beast was killed."

Gael grimaced. He had only been a child then, not yet revealed as the Unicorn, but he remembered the day as well as anyone, when the previous White Panther had been brutally murdered by a spurned lover. The shock of that death had killed dozens—those too young, too old, too weak to survive the shock that such a death caused, because the White Beasts were always loosely connected to their people. A few years afterward, Ailill had come into his power and the void had been filled again, but it was impossible to forget. "It's the only reason I am hopeful that Elianne is still alive, but it's not like her to go this long without word. If she is not dead, I dread learning what is truly wrong."

"Noire will find out quickly," Freddie said, and she closed the space between them to hug him and kiss his cheek. "There is nothing to be done until Noire returns, so put it out of your mind. I need your help with something."

"No," Gael said.

Freddie rolled her eyes as she stepped back and planted her hands on her hips. "You don't even know what I want."

"I am not going to be dragged into court. That's Etain's job; I'm not doing it for her. I have work enough of my own."

"Well, too bad. Etain is going to be tangled up in a particularly ugly murder trial all day. It happened two days ago, apparently, up north. They are trying to claim mermaids killed three girls, but there is a great deal of doubt. So you and I must handle the minor courts this afternoon. Come on, I will make it worth your while," Freddie cajoled.

Gael gave her an unimpressed look, even as he bent to gather his papers to take with him to work on surreptitiously when some of the cases they heard dragged on unnecessarily. "I do not believe you."

"I'll take over finalizing the details for the royal ball," Freddie replied. "That will allow you to make up the time you'll lose today."

"Done," Gael said before she could change her mind and walked arm in arm with her to the courtrooms.

Noire loved to travel, even when he must exhausted himself traveling as quickly as possible. Travel meant assuming his panther form for long periods, something he'd seldom gotten to do since moving to the city. Being the Royal Voice, he spent most of his time in the palace, where it was rare to see anyone in their shifted forms. It was simply not the done thing.

A lot of things he enjoyed seemed to be not the done thing—though, to be fair, it was more than evened out by being the Royal Voice despite his youth. And even if he had hated absolutely everything else about the royal palace and the city, which he didn't, there was Gael.

He endured the aches that rose up with thoughts of Gael:  an ache of longing, an ache of weariness, an ache of resignation. They had been lovers for three years, and all he wanted was to be able to tell everyone. For Gael to tell everyone.

The only thing that kept him from surrendering to the doubts and panic that clawed at him were the dreams. All his life he'd had the dreams. They'd been innocuous when he was a child. Dreams of running through the forest with someone he could not quite see, someone who held his hand, made him smile. As he matured, so too had the dreams.

His childhood friend became a lover, those friendly romps in the forest became passionate encounters on the forest floor. He could taste his lover, sweeter than honey, warmer than sunlight on bare skin. Feel the muscle rippling beneath that warm skin as he raked his nails down it, met every fevered thrust, lapped at the hungry lips devouring his mouth.

All he had ever wanted, his entire life, was to be able to put a face and a name to his dream lover. Was it someone he was destined to meet, or a memory from another life?

When the opportunity arose for him to leave his home to go to the city, it had felt like the right thing to do. The dreams had grown more fevered, more passionate after that. Noire lost count of the number of nights he woke with sticky sheets, flushed and more exhausted than when he had gone to bed.

He had felt on the verge of losing his mind when some fellow heralds in the palace had dragged him to a small fete. Overwhelmed, he'd slipped out to the balcony for a reprieve. When Gael had first stepped out onto the balcony, all Noire had seen was his back, that long, beautiful hair that everyone wanted to touch and comb their fingers through. It never failed to amuse Noire how oblivious Gael was to the admiring glances constantly thrown his way.

Back then, he had not been in the palace long; he'd been a journeyman for only a handful of months. He was not nearly important enough to interact with, or even see, any of the Triad. He'd known Gael immediately only by reputation, and that waterfall of beautiful silver-white hair.

His first thought had been to slip away and leave Gael alone; a lowly panther had no business intruding upon the Unicorn, no matter he'd been on the balcony first. But he hadn't been able to move, only gawk like a nitwit that he was so close to one of the Triad.

Then Gael had turned around, and every last single shadow image of his lover had come fully into blazing color. After a life time of dreaming, Noire finally had a face and a name, and the reality was terrifying.

Only a week later, they'd become lovers. Mere months later, he'd found himself appointed the Royal Voice—the youngest person ever appointed that position. Most said twenty-one was far too young, but three years later, Noire still held the post.

He slowed his pace as he reached the Great River, which was overcrowded as ever at the crossing point. Shifting back, Noire began to weave and shove his way through the crowds.

"Hey! You can't just—" the man who grabbed him stopped as he turned Noire around and saw the badge embroidered to the front of his military style jacket:  a silver triangle which encased a gold oak tree. "F-forgive me, Voice."

Noire nodded at the man, then turned away, walking easily to the front as people parted, his identity spreading through the crowd. When he reached the edge of the dock, a private boat had already been prepared.

"Voice," the head oarsman greeted and bowed.

"Thank you for being so quick," Noire said and then motioned to the crowd behind him. "Please, take as many passengers as we are able to carry."