The Betrayal (25 page)

“Dareth.”

His head came up at the sound of her voice, though he did not turn at once. Shalár wavered between anger and concern that she had worn out his patience at last. She felt suddenly small and weary, wanted his arms around her.

No weakness. She drew herself up and strode toward him.

He turned at last and reached a hand up to brush against her cheek. “How strong you look.”

“I have brought you a feeder.”

His smile faded to a look of trouble. “Here?”

“Yes, here! Why not here? Do you think it shameful? It is time you embraced the truth of our survival, Dareth.”

He winced as if her words had cut him. Shalár felt regret, but would not take them back.

She took his hand, felt the thinness of his khi against her flesh. He had not fed, perhaps not since she had left to hunt. She felt a flash of fear.

“Come.”

She pulled him away from the gallery, across the chamber, toward her private rooms. He came, as reluctantly as the kobalen at first. She urged them both on, impatient now that his hunger had enhanced her own.

As they reached her bedchamber, she took his shoulders in her hands, leaning forward to kiss him. The kobalen tried feebly to escape her grasp. She bore it down instead, made it kneel, then lie on the cold stone floor. She pulled Dareth down with her onto the thick furs nearby and reached a hand to her knife.

Dareth's hunger flared. “Shall I find a cup?”

“No.”

Shalár drew him close to the kobalen. Dareth's brow gathered into an anxious frown; his breaths came quick and short. She opened a vein behind the kobalen's ear with a flick of her blade, then bent to it and filled her mouth with the rich, khi-heavy blood.

Tossing the knife aside, she reached for Dareth, twining her arms around his neck and sharing with him as she had with others on the hunt. He shuddered, then seemed to come afire, embracing her tightly, deepening the kiss. Laughing, she pulled away from him and urged him to feed on the blood that was seeping, hot and vital, from the feeder's neck.

He was aflame with hunger now and needed no second invitation. While he bent to the feeder, she searched for her knife among the furs. She made a second cut for herself, wiped her knife and sheathed it, then curled around Dareth and abandoned herself to feeding.

Later, much later, after they had drained the feeder and coupled frantically and unsuccessfully on the floor beside it, Shalár rose and shed the few pieces of clothing she yet wore. Dareth's robe had been much easier to dispose of than her hunting leathers. He lay naked
on the furs, sated, dreamily watching her, his smile tinged with sadness.

“I missed you.”

Shalár knelt beside him. “And I you.”

“So the hunt was successful.”

“Very successful.”

“I am glad.”

She looked at him, admiring the line of his throat beneath the pale hair, watching the shadows at the back of his eyes. Glad of what? Glad she was back? Glad it was over?

“I have sent Ciris and Welir to gather an army of kobalen.”

Dareth's brow creased, and he closed his eyes. “Another war? It will fail, just as before.”

“No. This time I have a way to make the kobalen stand.”

She told him how she had gathered the most sharp-witted kobalen from the hunt's catch, told him of the bargain she had made with them and how she planned to enforce it. Dareth listened in silence. She watched him, eager for a sign of his approval. He seemed only to sink deeper in concern.

“They need not defeat the ælven. They need only hold their attention long enough for us to recapture Fireshore.”

At that Dareth raised his head and met her gaze. He said nothing, though his eyes told of hopelessness.

“We
can
win it back. Now is the time. We will never be stronger.”

“And what of those who have dwelt there these many centuries?”

Shalár stood and went to a shelf for a pitcher of wine. She poured herself a glass, then glanced at Dareth, who shook his head.

“If they are wise, they will flee whence they came.”

“And those who were born there in the meantime?”

Dareth's voice was quiet but unrelenting. Shalár took a mouthful of wine, savoring it before she swallowed.

“They may remain if they will give allegiance to Darkshore.”

Dareth closed his eyes, shaking his head. Annoyed, Shalár tossed off the wine in her cup and poured more.

“Do you not wish to return to your home?”

He looked at her, a slight, sad smile touching his lips. “This is my home.” He reached out to brush his fingers along her leg. “You are my home.”

She sank down beside him again. “Fireshore is
my
home.”

It was Darkshore's home, home to all of them, though they were beginning to forget it. Shalár clung fiercely to the memory of their true home, but others had begun to accept less. Nightsand had its pleasures. She felt a wave of despair at the thought that her folk might give up the fight for their rightful lands.

“I will take a force of hunters north within the season.”

Dareth's throat moved in a swallow. He said nothing, made no sign of acknowledgment.

“Promise me you will feed while I am gone.”

He gave a startled blink. His lips parted, then he looked away. Shalár moved closer.

“Dareth.” She touched his face, frightened by the weariness in his eyes. “How can you have lost the desire to live?”

“I dislike the cost of living as we do.”

“You liked it well enough just now.”

He cast a resentful glance at her and sat up, moving away. The dead kobalen lay within arm's reach.

“Dare to tell me you did not enjoy it!”

“Yes, I enjoyed it. That does not change my belief that it is wrong.”

“Wrong to survive in the only way we can? We have no choice, Dareth!”

He was silent. Cursing herself for falling into their ancient dispute, Shalár stood and went to her wardrobe, pulling out a robe. When she returned, Dareth had not moved. He sat watching her, his fair brow drawn into a frown.

Shalár moved toward him, fear, love, and anger warring in her heart. She knelt beside him, reached for him, wrapped herself around him. His body responded, sliding into her easily as his arms enfolded her. She clung to him, not moving, savoring the near completeness of their embrace. Only a little distance and they would be irrevocably joined, bonded in the making of a new life.

Shalár's heart leapt with hope. Would a child inspire Dareth to live on despite his misgivings? She needed no further reason to seek conception, yet here it was.

Moaning, she pushed herself against him. He pushed back gently. Slowly, gently, her silken robe caressing them both as they moved. No anxious rush. Perhaps this was the way. She reached for his khi, gathering it to her like petals of a fragile blossom scattered by the wind.

She whispered his name, feeling the heat of their coupling intensify. She arched her back, leaning into him with her hips.

“Come inside me, Dareth.”

“Let me in.” He pressed back.

She grasped at a shred of Yaras's memory, a moment's confusion of passion and swirling khi. Felt herself start to yield, then even as her heart leapt she was swept with a shuddering climax. She cried out in frustration and joy.

Dareth spilled himself into her. Shalár held him more tightly, savoring each hot pulse, hoping still to make her
body do her will, though it was too late. They convulsed together, then slowly fell still.

“Close. So close.”

His arms tightened around her. She felt him throb again inside her.

“Do not leave me before we have a child.”

The air was heavy with his silence. At last he answered. “I will not leave while you are here.”

He wished to keep her away from Fireshore. He would not succeed, but she acknowledged the reasoning behind his cruelty. She understood.

She wanted more, wanted his promise to feed, to live, to join her as the rightful governors of Fireshore. She knew it would be folly to make such demands. He had given her a promise, and it was not in Dareth's nature to promise less than he intended, so she knew she must be content with it.

She laid her head on his shoulder, closing her eyes for now to the toil that lay ahead. She must capture Fireshore swiftly if she was not to rule it alone.

The night was old by the time Shalár set out along the trail to the pens. She shivered in the cold and rubbed her arms through the sleeves of her tunic, wishing for her cloak. It was warmer here than on the plains but not so warm that she could forget the coming winter.

She must strike soon, while the nights were longest and the climate on the northern coast at its mildest. She needed every possible advantage.

She paused outside the chamber of the Greenglen female, who lay listless, curled against the wall. Shalár tasted her khi, found it dark with despair, heavy with anguish both mental and physical.

She frowned. Evidently her male guards had been too eager to obey her command that the Greenglens
be bred. She should have foreseen the problem, with only one female among the new captives. She would have to remind the guards that the ælven captives were not to be damaged, and give Nihlan instructions that this female be left alone for a while.

Moving on, she found the cave in which the lone Steppegard was housed. He, too, lay with his back to the door. A plate of food sat uneaten beside his pallet. He did not move, even at the sound of her key in the lock. That desperate spirit was beginning to weaken.

Shalár stepped inside and pushed the door closed, hearing the bolt click into the lock behind her. She put the keys into an inner pocket of her tunic, then walked toward the Steppegard and nudged him in the back with her toe.

He heaved a sigh. “I am spent. Try another.”

“Spent, my sweet? Then let us talk a while.”

He turned his head at the sound of her voice, looking up at her in mingled fear and hope. His eyes were sunken with weariness, his curling hair tangled and dull. He looked less well than she had expected.

“Bright Lady.” His voice was a hoarse whisper. “I thought you had forsaken me.”

“I have been away.”

“Have pity on me, lady. Let me go.”

“Come now, you know better than that.”

He struggled to raise himself, managed to sit up and lean against the wall. He seemed too weak for the short span of his imprisonment. Shalár glanced at the food, fearing he was deliberately starving himself. She picked up a dried apricot and held it to his mouth.

“Why have you not eaten?”

He made a face of disgust and turned his head away. “I cannot. I have tried. I am ill.”

Shalár put the fruit aside and frowned, kneeling to look at him more closely. She caught his jaw in her
hand and pulled his head up while exploring his khi. What she found surprised her.

“Oh.” She released him. “Accept my commiserations.”

He blinked at her. “What do you mean?”

She smiled wryly and sat beside him on the blanketed pallet. “You have started down a dark path. Sadly, there is no turning back.”

He gazed at her in dull confusion. “What path?”

“The path of hunger. The path of my people, Steppegard. Your own clan will shun you if they see you again, not that they ever will.”

Understanding crossed his face like a cold wind, wiping away what color was left in it. “I will never follow your path!”

“I gather the ælven still believe there is a choice? It grieves me to tell you there is none.”

“No. No! It is unfair.”

Shalár chuckled. “Quite.”

She watched him, rethinking her plans for making him yield up what he knew. He would have to be tempted with blood, and before it would tempt him, he would have to learn that it was now his proper food. That could take time, and she had little to spare.

“Tell me what you know of Fireshore, and I will ease your pain.”

He leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. “I have told you all I know.”

“No, my sweet, you have not.”

Slowly, patiently, she questioned him, demanding details of every place he had seen in Fireshore in the last year. How many dwelt in Bitterfield? In Woodrun? In Blackland? How much darkwood was traded? How many hunters had the usurpers of Clan Sunriding, and how armed? How often did foreigners like himself visit
each town? When was he last in Ghlanhras, and what was its condition then?

She kept at him until he slumped against the wall and his voice became a raw whisper. His answers seemed truthful, and some might be useful. When she judged he was near exhaustion, she asked the question she had kept in reserve.

“What is Alpinon to you?”

His brow tightened in a feeble frown. “Nothing.”

“Untrue. You do not uphold the ælven creed, Steppegard.”

His eyes opened as he turned his head toward her, a flash of spirit kindling in his glance. “Nor do you!”

“Not for many centuries.”

He gazed at her hopelessly for a moment, then his head drooped in despair. She judged it time to offer an incentive.

She stood, leaving him there without a word. Going to the door, she let herself out and returned to Nihlan's antechamber.