Soulless (Maiden of Time Book 2) (3 page)

“Should I wonder what else you have been dreaming?” He kept his tone light, but the question weighed on them both.

“Why?” She looked up. “What are you afraid I have seen?”

He smiled sadly, wishing he could tell her everything; that he didn’t have to withhold some secrets for now. He brushed her cheek and she winced. Redness he’d mistaken for a blush spotted her cheekbone. He flattened his palm across it and ordered the cells to replicate, relinquishing another dose of his own energy.

He nudged her chin up. “I will not leave your side again.”

She grinned, her emerald stare narrowing around dark pupils. “Is that a promise?”

Do not look at me that way, Alexia.
His own need for her was difficult enough to stave, but to combat hers as well?

He inhaled a calming breath. She shifted and light twinkled off the chain around her neck. He touched the golden ring it bore, a coral diamond center with five teardrop petals, his vow to her. Her father, Charles, didn’t approve of them. He believed the
Passionate to be cursed, destined for tragedy, but he had agreed on this one point: Kiren protect her as no other.

Kiren traced the chain and she trembled beneath his touch. He grinned, loving her reaction. Unclasping the necklace, he teased the glittering snake until it surrendered her ring and slipped it onto her finger.

Alexia grasped his hands. “What if Father sees?”

“I intend that he shall.”

She seized his shoulders, seeking his eyes. “You convinced him?”

Kiren bit down, keeping the grin plastered on his face.

“This is wonderful!”

Oh, that it could be as wonderful as she believed. He wished he could share in her rejoicing, but he would not taint her happiness with the truth. Not yet.

He released her, gaze bouncing down her thinly veiled form. He quickly averted his attention. “Please, dearest, you must put something on. We need to leave.”

She reddened and hugged herself. Kiren rose and escaped to the hall.

Three

Breeders

Two quiet shadows raced toward the manor house, cutting through the woods and dodging branches. Elizabeth glanced at her companion, snorting at his wild hair and too-short legs as he stumbled and nearly tripped on a protruding root. They could make this journey so much faster on horseback, but the dwarf was far too jittery around animals, plus he might crush the creature on accident with those massive, too-strong hands.

She grinned wickedly into the night, brushing the leaves away from her famous auburn locks. He was just the kind of ally she needed on this mission: to capture and return the young woman who could alter time before the leader of the Kingdom faction stood between them.

She hoped the leader had returned. She’d never had a reason to attack him, but she’d always wondered if he would fall under her power.

Red Pain
they called her. She loved the title. Let anyone challenge her and she would launch an attack on their minds that could cripple an elephant.

She glanced up at the moonless sky, hoping the Soulless had not arrived before them.

Four

Choosing

Despite Kiren’s mending, every movement set off a twinge of pain as Alexia tucked into a corset, stomacher, and fastened her petticoats. She silently wished she had a domestic to assist her, as the process would go much smoother, but she’d been playing the role of a servant since returning to Father’s home.

No one knew her secret. Father (a prominent country baron) maintained that his daughter had “fallen prey to wolves” last winter when she disappeared.  He had dressed her as a domestic, allowing people to believe her presence a boon of charity, nothing more.

And she never should have had that much.

Alexia retrieved a single black hairpin from her bureau, examining it in the starlight before tucking it over her neckline, right over her heart.

Dana’s gift.

She wasn’t sure if its placement was correct.

Dana had been but a child when she and Father fell in love, but that love resulted in the death of Alexia’s grandparents, the destruction Father’s marriage, and his broken heart. Only Kiren, she, and Father knew he’d sired a child out of wedlock with his Passionate mistress who then died in childbirth. Alexia had been raised by Rosalind, Father’s now-dead wife—a woman who’d selflessly claimed the babe for her own. The sorrow eventually killed her surrogate mother.

Alexia missed the quiet woman with her perfect poise, flaxen tresses, and admonishing looks. She never said a word, merely led and expected to be followed. Rosalind should have sent Alexia to be with her kind instead of sacrificing her own heart day in and day out. At least then Father would have avoided that terrible raid on his home...

She hugged herself against a tremor, unwilling to remember.

It was good that one of her Passionate friends possessed the power to alter people’s memories, to erase the midnight wraiths still flitting through her conscience. Edward took away the servants’ terror. Not hers. Not Father’s. They remembered everything, and Father blamed Kiren.

She sighed and pulled on her baby-blue overdress.

Well, she blamed Father for arranging her marriage to a rapist, the bargain that drove her away in the first place. At least
the miscreant
still believed her dead.

Alexia laced her shoes quickly and exited to the hall, her vision adjusting to the dark, portrait-filled walls. Her favorite painting waited just across from her, two young ladies with dark hair reclining against a forested backdrop, she and Sarah as children.

Sarah who was lost to her.

“Kiren?”

He shifted to her right, propped against a doorframe. His eyes glittered, even in the dark.

“A thousand years could sweep this earth clean and I would never meet a sight as breathtaking,” he whispered.

She blushed. “Is that how long you have been alive?”

His jaw clenched.

She understood their kind could live indefinitely if their blood was not deluded by humanity—which meant she had no idea how long she’d live. Or him. How many times had she asked him about his age, and he avoided giving her a solid answer? She would discover the answer one day, when he finally allowed her in
entirely
. It was just one of the truths she intended to pry loose from his mind once they were married. Before, if possible.

Alexia took his outstretched hand. His fingers laced through hers, skin on skin—terribly inappropriate, at least within society. She had no idea what the Passionate labeled appropriate, but this overwhelming bond—being destined or damned—rendered their kind inseparable. His death would mean hers, as hers would result in his. Since he led the world of the secret Passionate
,
it made both their lives more complicated—especially when considering the vast army of enemies conspiring against him. Her love for him was simple. His came at a great cost.

“Now why this hasty escape?” she demanded, each step shooting a midnight spark at the back of her skull. She wanted to stop him and take an easier pace, but the tension in his fingers seeped into her skin. “And why have you been away?”

He grimaced.

“The Soulless are coming again,” she guessed as they reached the servants’ stairs. She’d been watching the skies. Tonight marked an empty moon, the night the Soulless emerged to feast. From what John had told her, the Soulless were once Passionate, before they’d given their very essence over to a madman and been damned to a state of perpetual starvation. Since that time they’d been rotting, seeking what was lost, only satisfied when they fed on the remaining Passionate. Those taken by the Soulless became like them, hungry, eternal, decaying in their own bodies and taking on a wraith-like state under the new moon. 

A nervous laugh escaped Kiren—so new a sound she paused to take it in.

He pulled her after him down the steps. “Them coming, yes that would be troublesome, but not fatal.”

“Fatal?” A cool breeze curled across her arm. The servants’ door to the yard stood open, a gaping maw to the outside world and shadowed walkway.

Kiren cleared his throat. “Alexia, there are...” His head flew up, fingers tightening over hers, ear tilted. “We must go, now.” He grabbed her arms and slipped them around his neck, lifting her off her feet.

She gasped, unable to restrain her grin at the unexpected brush of his breath across her lips. “What is it? What did you hear?”

His head shook.

“Can you
hear
thoughts now?” The idea made her cringe.

He chuckled. “I can only read what is in a person’s thoughts, and only when staring into their eyes. You know that. However, my ears are slightly more keen than most.”

“From practice or inheritance?”

He grinned. “Yes.”

“Is it common for Passionate to possess more than one ability?”

“Strengths. We call them strengths, and yes.”

They stepped outside. Alexia clung to him, resting a head on his shoulder, eyes closed to block out the flashes of pain. Insects hummed in the late summer evening, the air thick with expected rain.

“Who is coming?” she grated through her teeth.

A groan rumbled in his chest. “There is a general air of panic when a being as powerful as yourself emerges.”

She blinked up at him. “But I am not powerful—”

“You will be.” The confidence behind his words flattened her argument like a press to fresh laundry.

Trimmed grass extended about them, halted at a black line of trees clustered ahead. Alexia did not relish entering them, recalling how she had stumbled across one of the Soulless within those woods—a creature Kiren had destroyed to save her.

He flashed a jerky glance either direction and broke into a jog.

“How could anyone know about me?” She clung to him, focusing on the curve of his chin and the white scar he had yet to explain.

“Word travels quickly.” His lips pressed in a tight line, lengthening the jagged blemish across his cheek. “And not all Passionate are anxious for you to be mine. Some even prefer your death to the shift in power.”

She squeezed his shoulder, searching for his gaze. “You speak as though you do not lead them.”

He heaved a breath, lashes brushing his cheeks. “There are factions among the Passionate seeking power.”

“But you are their leader—!”

“I protect them,” he said between breaths. “I keep the unruly in order. Some do not share my ideals of how that is best accomplished.”

“Like whom?”

His brow wrinkled, starlight catching his pupils. “The strongest group is the Breeders.”

Her blood ran chill.

“They believe this world should belong to us, and us alone.”

She grasped the cottony material along his neck. “But if not for humanity, I would not exist.”

Kiren’s cheek dimpled. “You understand my position then.”

“I am not certain I will ever fully understand your position.” 

His grin faded. He slowed to a trot, then a walk, not meeting her gaze.

She hadn’t meant to hurt him, but it was true. She loved him, but she worried that there were reasons she didn’t and couldn’t deserve him. Why had he chosen her?

Kiren cleared his throat. “Breeders seek to spawn the most powerful Passionate by breeding unique bloodlines—children strong enough to overthrow the world. I have hopes that they will one day be persuaded to reason, along with the other factions, and unite with us.”

She nodded. “These other factions…”

“The Southerners and Ritualists are very weak, as are the Fishers and Old Believers. Only the Breeders pose a threat.”

“And what do they call us?”

His arms around her stiffened, gaze darting away. “Kingdom.”

Bellezza’s earlier hail suddenly made sense. Alexia narrowed her stare, a look he didn’t return. “They accuse you of setting yourself up as a king?”

He placed her back on her feet. Unkempt grass tickled at her ankles as his bottomless eyes swallowed her into their marine depths, promising an eternal Atlantis. “The important thing for you to know is that they are no friends of yours.”

“And why is that?”

He tugged at the necklace that disappeared below the cut of his shirt. “Because they are in a race to either claim or destroy you.”

She braced herself with a hand on his chest. “Me? Because you and I are—”

He shook his head. “Because when someone with rare talents arises, everyone rushes to take them.”

Had that been the reason he came for her at first? The reason he chose her? Alexia shied. “Including you?”

His head tilted, mouth puckering in disappointment.

He hadn’t forced her into an allegiance. He had done the opposite, pushing her away from this perilous existence and keeping her strictly in the human world. Even so, the choice had been hers.

His arm rounded her back, shepherding her toward the jagged tree line. “Edward tracks the family lines and identifies our kind before maturity—usually at birth. All are offered the choice to join us.”

She recalled his hidden estate deep in the woods and wondered how many other hidden sanctuaries occupied England. How different would her life have been if he’d swept her away when she was a child? Might she have become a mere servant like her mother at a country inn?

The corners of his mouth creased, face darkening. “Occasionally the Breeders reach one of us before me...”

“What do they do?” She touched his chin. “What would they do to me?”

His fingers bit into her side. “Any risk to you—!” He shuddered.

Any risk to her directly affected his beating heart—in theory. She felt silly for suggesting it, “But you have not even...”

His fierce eyes returned, a towering wave on perilous seas. “Have not what?” he asked, voice terse.

Her entire face burned. Why was it so hard to say? They were to be wed! A wishful tremor rattled through her and her ears flamed. “You have not touched me.” Not intimately enough. John—the Soulless man who had married and destroyed her aunt—said an eternal bond formed through sexual relations.

Kiren stopped and took her shoulders, meeting her gaze. “I have not, which means someone else could.”

Panic roared in her ears, her pulse quickening.

His voice quieted. “That is what they do, Alexia.” The backs of his fingers grazed down her cheek. “They take the choice away.”

She swallowed. Her lips moved in protest, but no sound argument lit her mind. Could there be a deeper hell than being forced into an eternal bond?

He stepped closer. “They combine the rarest talents and strive to create pure elementals, regardless of people’s will. What do you think would happen if they caught you? Where would your loyalties lie?”

“With you,” she whispered and looked down—though she couldn’t know that. To be touched, to be eternally bound to another being... She gazed again into his stormy eyes.

“I hope so.”

Alexia grabbed his coat lapels, pulling him closer. “Then, then we must end the possibility!”