Heart of the Flame Page 4

  "Who stabbed you with this blade, Haven?"

  The images continued to fly at her--disjointed, unclear. "I don't..." She shook her head, closing her eyes against the onslaught of memory. "I am not sure what I saw. Nothing is clear."

  "By the blood of Christ--you must think!"

  "Kenrick," said his sister, rising to cut him off when he seemed intent on pressing further. "Enough, please. Let her rest a while."

  "My friends are dead, Ariana. I do not take that lightly. As it stands, this woman is the only person who can tell me what might have transpired the night of the raid on their home. I need those answers." He fixed Haven with a piercing stare. "I will have them."

  "But I have told you all I know," she protested, frustration rising in her breast. "I cannot remember what occurred. You know all that I do, I swear it."

  "Indeed." He cursed under his breath then strode around the bed and toward the chamber door. "I trust your memory will improve along with your shoulder," he said, pausing with his hand on the latch. "Until then, you'll be staying under my watch while you recuperate."

  Lady Ariana turned a sympathetic look on her. Instead of comfort, it brought a pang of alarm. Haven's memory might be sketchy, but she knew a threat when she heard one.

  "Under your watch?" she challenged, anger flaring now.

  "Aye," he replied easily. "Here at Clairmont."

  He said it as though the matter required no further explanation. As though he would invite no questioning, nor permit her any other choice but to abide his own will.

  Such domineering nerve--such arrogance!

  Haven moved to push herself up on the mattress, but was felled by a jolt of debilitating pain. It robbed her of breath, stilling her instantly, even if it did not cool the outrage that was blooming hot in her belly. Lady Ariana eased her back down, concern soft in her gentle eyes.

  Where he stood across the room, Kenrick said nothing. He merely watched her with that judicious, unsettling gaze that seemed wont to turn her inside out. Pride rankled inside her, inflamed by the understanding that she was well and truly at his mercy--at least for now. Had she an ounce of strength, she swore she would have flown at him like a tempest. That maddening look of his said he sensed as much, and it worried him not in the least.

  To her dismay, her voice, when she finally found it again, was weak with the slow ebbing of her pain. "Well, then. Do you mean to hold me here as your guest, sirrah, or your prisoner?"

  "That, my lady, shall be up to you."

  He turned away without another word, quitting the chamber and leaving Haven to simmer, made helpless by her lingering fatigue.

  Pray, not for long, she thought, more certain than ever that her survival hinged on her escape from this place.

  Chapter 5

  "Did the woman confirm your suspicions about the attack at Greycliff?"

  Kenrick glanced up from a journal that lay open on his desk. His brother-by-marriage, Braedon le Chasseur, reclined in a chair situated near the solar's cavernous fireplace, his sea-gray eyes shadowed by dark brows and a fall of overlong raven hair.

  Scowling, half-absorbed in his thoughts and the work spread out before him, Kenrick gave a shake of his head. "No. She claims to remember little of that night."

  "Fever can rob a person of memory. I have seen it happen more than once."

  Kenrick grunted, knowing there was sense in the statement yet unwilling to accept it. "She holds something back. I can see it in her eyes. She vows she is being truthful with me...but I don't know."

  "Mayhap it is fear that keeps her from talking." Braedon turned a sage look on him. "Fear of you, my brother."

  "Me?" Kenrick scoffed. "I have given the chit no reason to fear me. She is alive, is she not? She is safe and comfortable. Any fear she might harbor toward me is misplaced--nay, unfounded and foolish."

  "Hmm."

  The thoughtful response bespoke disagreement but Ariana's husband made no more of it. Kenrick watched him turn his attention to a small object in the cradle of his palm. He inspected the metallic shard, tilting it this way and that to allow the firelight to skitter across its polished surface.

  "That she was present during the raid on Greycliff is obvious," Kenrick continued. "I reckon the chip of tooled steel you hold in your hand is evidence enough of that."

  "Yes," the dark-haired warrior concurred, grim as he continued to peruse the item. "This dagger tip could have come from one place only."

  "Aye," Kenrick said. "Anavrin."

  Although thoughts of the place had consumed him for years, he had not spoken the word aloud in months.

  Anavrin.

  It was the realm of the Dragon Chalice itself, a mythical world that was said to exist alongside their own, ruled by benevolent immortals and guarded by soulless magi warriors who could shift their physical forms at will. Legend had it that some of those shapeshifters had been dispatched to the mortal world to aid in retrieving the Chalice treasure, after it had been stolen from Anavrin some hundreds of years ago by an unscrupulous knight who had connived his way past Anavrin's protective gates.

  Most would call it fanciful fiction, mere fairy tale. But not Kenrick. Not Braedon and Ariana. They had seen too much of it--felt too much of the power and the pain--to maintain a blissful ignorance of the treasure and those who sought it.

  Rand and his family had seen too much as well. And Haven, whose tender body had endured the nearly lethal blow of a shifter's blade.

  "She was there," Kenrick asserted. "She was nearly killed by one of them--strangled, stabbed, left to die--and yet she can recall none of it."

  Braedon set the chip of tooled steel on a table beside him. "Naturally, you do not believe her."

  The statement carried an irony that made Kenrick pause. "Would you? Knowing all that you know--Criste, having lived through it, closer than most--could you trust anyone who might have knowledge of Silas de Mortaine and that accursed cup he seeks?"

  A measured silence was all the answer he would get from Braedon le Chasseur, the man once known by his dangerous reputation as The Hunter. Eyes gone stormy with contemplation, he looked away from Kenrick, toward the orange glow of the fire on the grate. As he turned, light played over the long, silvery scar that rode a jagged trail down the left side of his face. It was an old wound, given to him in the time before Kenrick or Ariana knew the man they would one day call kin.

  Braedon bore other scars as well, the most savage of them earned but a few short months ago, in the bowels of an ancient abbey in France. The night that he, Kenrick, and Ariana experienced the true and terrible power of the mythical Dragon Chalice. None of them had emerged unscathed from that journey. Nor would they be eager to face such a test again.

  Kenrick knew he need not remind his sister's husband of the danger they courted should Silas de Mortaine and his league of sorcerer's underlings learn of their escape and then turn their sights on Clairmont.

  De Mortaine was a wealthy man with vast personal connections, particularly among the Templars, where Kenrick had first encountered the evil nobleman. Powerful in his own right, de Mortaine was next to unstoppable now that he held one of the four sacred Chalice pieces. Only two remained. Kenrick's work had given him clues to their locations, but never had the treasure felt farther from his grasp.

  "What of the seal?" Braedon asked, referring to the item Kenrick had sought, but not found in Greycliff's cemetery hiding place. "Will you be able to proceed without it?"

  "I don't know. I had not yet puzzled out how to use the seal--did not know where it belonged, or what it would do. But I know it is a key to finding one of the Chalice pieces, and now I've lost it." He fisted his hand and let it fall hard against the surface of the table. "It has taken me years to put my findings together. Already de Mortaine holds a large portion of my work, but if they possess the seal as well..."

  Kenrick broke off with a low muttered curse.

  "Mayhap Randwulf of Greycliff destroyed it before it could be taken."

 
; "Optimism from you, le Chasseur?" Kenrick chuckled at that, a humorless sound in the weighty pall of the solar. "Neither of us can claim to subscribe to that brand of faith. No, Rand would not have destroyed the seal any more than he would have surrendered it to the villains who raided his keep. Nothing would have torn its location from his lips."

  "Not even the torture of his wife and child?" There was a soberness to Braedon's words that set a coil of ice in Kenrick's gut. "Don't think they wouldn't stoop to it. Nothing is sacred to these bastards. You know it."

  A niggle of sick possibility rose like bile in Kenrick's throat. Randwulf of Greycliff was a strong man, a stalwart knight with an unbreakable sense of honor. He understood the gravity of what Kenrick had entrusted him with, and that trust would not have been breached. But at what personal cost?

  "Damnation. What did I bring down on them?"

  Kenrick's remorse was broken by the snick of the latch on the solar door. There was no rap, no delay for permission before the panel swung open on its hinges. Ariana entered the room with hands on hips, a look of censure snapping in her eyes.

  "Do I interrupt?" She phrased it as a question, but it was clear from the stubborn tilt of her chin that she dared either of them to tell her she was unwelcome. "Pray, continue with your conversation, my lords."

  Braedon cleared his throat.

  "We had just concluded," Kenrick told her as she walked farther into the solar, narrowly regarding the both of them. He closed his journal before her gaze could fully light on the scrawled notes he had been writing. The subtle concealment of his work did not escape her shrewd notice, but she seemed to have other pressing matters to address.

  "Do you mind telling me what just happened back there?"

  "I merely asked the lady some questions."

  "Interrogated her, I should say. You left her in quite a state, Kenrick. 'Tis not like you to be so rough and uncaring."

  "Quite a lot has transpired these past weeks, as you well know. There are answers that must be found and little time to find them. I did not question the woman to be cruel." He reached for a tankard of wine on the desk and took a slow drink. "In any event, I think it prudent that we keep a close watch on this 'Haven' woman. She knows more than she is telling me, I'm certain. There is something amiss with her, something I don't quite trust."

  "Did you consider for a moment that Haven might not trust you? That she might well be afraid of you?"

  Kenrick frowned, glancing sardonically in Braedon's direction. "Clearly the two of you are well suited." At Braedon's answering smirk, he looked back to his sister, holding the snapping blue gaze she fixed on him. "Have I done anything to send the woman into a cower?"

  Ariana gave an exasperated sigh. "Who knows the extent of what she might have suffered. Then to wake up in a strange place, injured and weak, finding herself among people she does not know--one of them scowling and grumbling at her as though she were a base criminal deserving of the stocks. For pity's sake, Kenrick, she is being kept here as your prisoner, or so you said as much when you confronted her a short while ago."

  He felt the crease in his brow deepen at his sister's charge. An accurate one, he admitted with some reluctance. "I cannot afford any risks, Ariana. We cannot afford it."

  "Kenrick is right, my love." Braedon rose from the chair he all but dwarfed, and strode to his wife's side. He put his arms around her, gently gathering her into a protective embrace. "Until we have more facts, we must be cautious with our trust."

  "What are you saying?" She glanced from Braedon's face to Kenrick, worry etching the corners of her mouth. "What is going on here? For days--ever since you brought Haven here--the both of you have been discussing things in hushed voices and behind closed doors. Nearly every time I enter a room where you are, conversation ceases or makes an abrupt switch to mundane topics I know to be of no interest to either of you."

  "We have not wanted to worry you, Ana--"

  "Well, I'd say it is too late for that."

  "You have already been through much, my love," Braedon began, but he was cut short by Ariana's dismissive little scoff.

  She shook her head, creating a small tempest of movement in her long blond hair. "Husband, do you credit me to be some delicate thing that will break with the slightest whiff of distress?"

  Braedon arched a dark brow. "Not at all."

  "Then tell me what's happening. If there is trouble here, I want to know. All of it." She pinned a stern look on each of them, a softly censuring gaze that set both men to staring at their boots. "Dear Lord. It has to do with Silas de Mortaine, doesn't it? Your friends' deaths...the raid on their keep--de Mortaine is responsible, isn't he?"

  "Yes." Kenrick nodded, remorse lying cold as frost in his gut. "Although if I blame him, I must blame myself as well. I should never have involved Rand in my findings of the Chalice treasure."

  "Oh, Kenrick. What did you tell him about it?"

  "It was not so much that I told him about the treasure, but what I gave him. Before I left for France last year, I entrusted Rand with the safekeeping of a key of sorts. On surface, it did not appear to be much--a bit of tooled metal wrapped in parchment--but it might be all that prevents de Mortaine from recovering another of the Chalice stones."

  "Or the very thing that leads him to it," Braedon added gravely.

  "And you believe that's why Greycliff was attacked?"

  "We are certain of it, love."

  "Mother Mary," she whispered. "Poor Rand and his family. Poor Haven, to have been made to bear witness to the horror of such a thing. My heart breaks for all of them."

  Braedon smoothed his hand over her silken pate in a comforting manner, but the gaze he shared with Kenrick betrayed his unrest. His concern that the dark magic he had battled once before--that which had scarred him and nearly robbed him of the woman he loved--was clear in his stormy eyes. The danger might well come to roost once more, visited this time at very gates of Clairmont.

  Kenrick knew the same dread. He had worn it like a robe since the day Braedon and Ariana had rescued him from imprisonment and torture at Silas de Mortaine's hands.

  "The seal was missing from its hiding place at Rand's keep. That woman recuperating abovestairs is likely the only person who might know what happened to it. She is our sole witness to the attack that night. Any answers we might have will come only from her."

  "And so you will keep her here on suspicion until she submits," Ariana replied. "Even against her will?"

  "We must."

  "Ah, yes. I understand." Her expression was schooled, but the challenge in her eyes had dimmed little. "I wonder though...how does this differ from the shackles that de Mortaine placed on you, my beloved brother? Is one prison any more justified than another?"

  The question hung in the air of the solar, unanswered, for it was no simple matter to be viewed as either black or white. Was it?

  Kenrick felt a muscle draw tight in his jaw. He need not justify his actions in this. Ariana was softhearted, ever compassionate. This was war. Undeclared, but bloody and serious all the same. And now his sister saw him as no better than the most heinous of villains, Silas de Mortaine.

  When the silence stretched out, taut and unyielding, Braedon was the first to break it. "Come, wife. To our own chamber, if you will. I am late to training with the men and I would enjoy your company while I don my mail."

  "Aye," she replied quietly. "Of course."

  With one last glance in her brother's direction--a glance that went broodingly unacknowledged--Ariana accepted her husband's arm and accompanied him to the corridor outside. It was not until they had left and the door had closed firmly behind them that Kenrick let loose the black oath that rode at the tip of his tongue.

  Chapter 6

  A tub of lukewarm bathwater sat vacant near the fireplace of Haven's chamber. Recently withdrawn from the fragrant, lavender-scented water, now dressed and seated on a cushion in the embrasure of the chamber window, she sighed as she ran a comb through her damp hai
r. She luxuriated in the feeling of cleanliness, in the soft slide of the fine bone teeth as she brushed out her long tresses, gathering the thick skein over her good shoulder to let it dry in the fresh morning air of the open window. The comb was a gift from Lady Ariana, as was the simple berry-colored gown that caressed her skin in silken luxury.

  It had been two days since she had awakened in this place, confused and infirm, but already her strength was coming back. She was alert and out of the worst of the pain. She had her appetite again, and could move about without assistance--carefully, for her limbs were still unsteady, the strength in her left arm yet impaired by the healing wound. Each day, indeed each hour, brought more recovery, more physical strength and focus.

  The same could not be said for her memory of the night she was attacked, however, a fact that troubled her much. As long as full recollection stayed out of her reach, it was clear that so, too, would freedom.

  Her cage was the four tapestried walls of this chamber, her benevolent warden the kind Lady Ariana. This very moment, Ariana was searching out a pair of hose and slippers for her, for she worried that walking barefoot on the drafty floor might cause Haven a chill. In truth, her kindness thawed something cold in Haven's breast. Still apprehensive and wary, she had not wanted to like any of them, and a cautious voice inside warned that whether they were kind to her or nay, she would be wise to keep her distance.

  Thankfully, Haven had seen little of the lady's disagreeable brother since that first day. Even now the thought of him and his arrogant ways rankled. It was primarily anger that fueled her determination to heal as quickly as possible. No man--no matter his reasons--would hold her against her will. She would regain her strength and then she would put Clairmont Castle far behind her.

  She looked out longingly over the landscape that unfurled at the base of Clairmont's ancient motte. At the base of the hill, an open field, flowering in shades of pale yellow and violet, spread like a blanket toward a small orchard of blossoming apple trees. Farther still, a dense thicket of woods thrust up, dark and bristling with new spring leaves. Haven peered closer and spied a deer grazing on the dew-drenched grass of the meadow.