“You’ve turned pensive,” he murmured. “Are you remembering?”
With a sigh, she nodded. “More than you can imagine.”
“Can you share with me . . . anything? Were you in love with Castin?”
“No. But I thought we were friends. We’d been lovers for nearly a year. He was one of the cheetah clan chieftain’s lieutenants. I met him when I attended one of the war-council meetings with my queen, Rayas.”
He stilled beneath her, his breath catching, his palm freezing on her head. “Mel . . . how long ago was this?”
She lifted up, peering down into his shocked face. “Five thousand years. In the weeks after the Sacrifice.”
He stared at her as if she’d grown a second head.
Melisande scowled. “Are you horrified that you just made love to an ancient?”
Slowly, he shook his head. “Awed. You were there at the time of the Sacrifice, in the time of the Daemons.”
“I was. And for almost a thousand years before. I’m quite old, Feral.” She started to push off him, and he lifted her, setting her beside him. Together, they rose and donned their clothing, boots, and weapons.
As she began to plait her hair, Fox strolled to the cave’s mouth and peered through. “The snow is piling up. We’re going to have trouble getting out.”
“They have no intention of letting us out. And where will we go if they do?”
Fox turned back and placed another couple of logs on the fire. The smoke rose instead of filling the cave, telling her there must be an opening high in the ceiling they couldn’t see.
As Fox knelt to stoke the fire, he glanced at her, his eyes deep wells of compassion and curiosity. “Will you tell me more? About the past? About you?”
The barriers she’d erected were all gone now, burned away in the warmth of her newfound love. No longer did she feel the need to hide the past. Instead, with this male, she longed to share everything.
Fox knew he wasn’t going to like what Melisande had to say. The thought of anyone hurting her had his hands shaking with the need to rip off heads. But there was so much turmoil inside her, so much torment. He needed to understand what was going on if he ever wished to help her. And he wanted to help her, desperately.
As he stoked the fire, Melisande took a long, shuddering breath, her fingers plaiting her hair with quick, tense efficiency. “The Daemons were newly defeated, the Sacrifice but weeks old.”
Everyone knew the story, that both the Therians—all of whom were shape-shifters back in that time—and the Mage had pooled their great power to defeat the Daemons and lock them in the enchanted Daemon Blade. They didn’t call it the Sacrifice until years later, once they’d realized the horrible truth—that little of that power would ever return.
“I knew that the shifters were having trouble accessing their animals, but I didn’t know the extent of it,” she told him. “None of us did. When Castin extended an invitation to the cheetah clan’s celebration at the end of the war, I gladly accepted. He asked me to bring seven friends, and while requesting eight Ilinas to attend their event, and only eight, was odd, I didn’t question it. Most Ilinas can sing quite well and are born dancers and courtesans. We were highly sought out at such gatherings, as you can probably imagine. Highly prized. Requesting all that wished to attend, I would have understood. But he asked for eight.”
She looked away, a ripping sadness in her eyes that made him want to smash something. “I brought my seven best friends with me that night.”
Castin was going to die ten thousand deaths. Fox joined her, sitting beside her on the hard-packed dirt, where he could at once see her face and the cave’s entrance beyond the fire. He gave her knee a gentle squeeze.
Melisande continued. “At the end of one of our dances, the chieftain ordered his guards to bestow a gift upon each of us, a silver bracelet set with what appeared to be lumps of tar. He claimed it was a cheetah tradition to honor beloved guests with such, and he stood beside me as his warriors placed a bracelet around each of our wrists, Castin giving me mine. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the tar hid the red moonstones that stole an Ilina’s ability to mist. As soon as they got the moonstones around our wrists, they turned on us, knocking us out. They moved us miles from their caves and warded the new caves so that our sisters and queen would never find us. And they never did.”
“Why?” He’d tried to remain quiet while she spoke, but he couldn’t. “Why would they do such a thing?”
Melisande turned her delicate face to him, the anguish in those eyes slaying him. “Because the chieftain believed that Ilina power might be able to restore their animals if only he found the right way to access it.” Her braid complete, she tossed it over her shoulder and looked down, drawing a thin line in the dirt with her fingernail. “And because I was a Ceraph.”
Fox frowned. “A Ceraph?”
She looked up. “It’s hard to explain. Most Ilinas are born through magic and ritual, as I was. But every dozen millennia or so, an Ilina is born who is something more. It’s said I was touched by divinity, by the goddess herself. And they call Ilinas like me Ceraphs.” She shrugged. “Angels.”
He stared at her.
A smile pulled at her mouth, but her eyes were sad. “Most of the Feral Warriors would have a laugh at that, wouldn’t they?” She shrugged. “My gift . . . to ease the torment of others . . . was considered the gift of grace from the goddess herself. It was that power the cheetah chieftain believed might heal his clan and restore their animals.”
“He couldn’t simply have asked?” Fox growled. “Why hurt you?”
She sighed. “You have to understand, we’d all endured over a century of war with the Daemons—a war in which our enemy, over and over, had demonstrated the ability of torture to access deep power. I believe it’s part of the Daemon nature, or the way they access their own power. Castin and I had been lovers for months, and in those weeks after the Sacrifice, I’d been trying and trying to heal his animal. To no avail. They decided to find out if torture would access the power they needed. And death.”
Fox’s heart clenched.
Melisande resumed drawing in the dirt. “Castin handed me over to them, a lamb for the slaughter. And with me, the women closest to my heart.” Her voice turned bitter. “I was so naive. I could not conceive of anyone’s intentionally trying to harm me, especially one with whom I’d shared so much laughter, so much pleasure.”
Fox felt a stab of jealousy among the fury, even as he ached to pull her into his arms. But she needed to get this out, and he needed to hear it. Instead, he clasped her knee and held on, hoping his touch might ease the awful truth of her words.
“When I awoke . . .” She pressed her lips together, digging deeper with her finger as if she would dig herself a hole in which to escape the past. “I found myself staked to the ground.” Her words caught. His chest ached. “The chieftain was the first to rape me, torturing me as he did so, but he was far from the last. I lost count and lost track, but the brutality went on hour after hour, day after day, for weeks. Perhaps months.”
It wasn’t until her hand slid over the one he’d curled around her knee that he realized how tightly he was gripping her.
“Sorry,” he murmured.
“You don’t want to hear this.”
“I . . . do. But no, I don’t, because I hate what they did. I’m going to flay the skin from Castin’s bones before you kill him.” He lifted her hand, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. “Don’t stop, Mel. I need to know the rest, angel.” He snorted softly. “You really are one, aren’t you?”
“Was. Not anymore.” When he released her hand, she returned to her digging in the dirt. “Castin never found the guts to face me again after his betrayal. I’m certain he was first in line with my sisters, instead. I’d been isolated from the rest of the Ilinas and could neither see them, nor communicate with them. But for days I heard them scream. And, one by one, I felt them die.”
Without warning, she leaped to her feet as if unable to stand the misery of her tale. But as she paced the small cave, she continued. “The first two were killed within hours of our captivity.” She whirled on him, horror in her eyes. “They cut out their hearts and ate them, Fox. They ate them. Then they told me all about it, and I prayed they’d do the same to me because at least it would put an end to the pain.”
Crossing her arms, she stared at the fire, rigid. “I don’t know how long it took the others to die. Days, weeks perhaps. All I know is that my screams echoed long after theirs went silent. And then mine went silent, too, because they left me. I think they believed I’d died. Even an immortal body can only take so much, and I knew I was close to the end. I believe I tipped over, turning gray. I may even have remained like that for some time. Most Ilinas will never return from that ashen state, but I was not most Ilinas. I was a Ceraph.
“With the last of the Ilinas believed dead, they left. But I wasn’t dead, and they’d left me staked in the dark, bound by moonstones and a warding that made it impossible for my queen or sisters to find me.”
Fox stared at her with horror. “How long?”
She looked up slowly, blinking as if she’d been back in that cave. “Three years.”
His jaw dropped. His gut cramped.
“My need for sustenance became a torture in itself, but eventually even that left me. Slowly, everything inside me died but a hatred so cold that it turned my heart to ice. The Ceraph was gone. Everything I’d been was gone—all the goodness, all the gentleness, all the love. All gone.”
Fox held out his hand for her, unable to watch her standing so alone. “Come here.”
She blinked, her rigid stance softening as she went to him. He pulled her down onto his lap, wrapping his arms around her, pulling her close to his heart. The scent of wild heather wafted over him, a sweet scent, her natural scent. And he tried to imagine the sweet, graceful angel that she’d been. Abused. Tortured. Left staked to the ground for three years.
Skinning wasn’t good enough for Castin. He’d shift into his animal and chew off the male’s limbs first.
He rubbed his chin against her silken hair. “How did you get free, pet?”
She pressed her cheek against his shoulder blade, tucking her head against his neck, accepting the comfort he needed to offer. “A couple of human kids found me. Their father freed me, draped me with his cloak, and carried me out of the cave. The sunshine on my face after so much dark woke me from my comatose slumber. I tore at the cuffs, tossing the moonstones aside, and misted away.” She grunted. “I’ve never stopped to wonder what he must have thought when the woman in his arms disappeared.”
“It’s a wonder you survived with your mind intact.”
She snorted. “Some might argue that I didn’t. I’d think you’d agree.”
Pressing his mouth to her head, he kissed her hair. “What I think is that your strength of mind and will is remarkable, Melisande.” He held her tighter. “After you escaped, you got your revenge?”
“I returned to my queen and demanded vengeance, and she granted it. Truthfully, I think she was afraid of me, afraid of what I’d become. It took me five years to find the cheetahs—they’d moved in the interim, probably afraid they’d eventually face Ilina retribution. And I cut them down, one after another, digging their hearts out of their chests with my blades.”
“Except for Castin’s.”
“He wasn’t with them, and no one knew where he’d gone. I never found him.”
“He dies.”
She pulled back far enough to meet his gaze, her own flint. “But not at your hand. He’s mine, Feral. Mine alone.”
Fox cupped her face in his hands and kissed her lightly on the mouth before pulling back. “I’ll give you the killing blow. If you want me to, I’ll even let him heal first before you take him on. But he’s going to feel my wrath, angel. Allow me that. I need to make him suffer for what he did to you.”
She watched him with fathomless eyes. “Why?”
Tracing her lovely eyebrow with his thumb, he told her as much as he understood. “Because . . . you’ve become important to me. Precious to me.” And, goddess, it was true. He’d never wanted to care too deeply for another, having always known that caring . . . loving . . . only led to heartache. But he was absolutely falling in love with Melisande.
She turned and pressed her cheek to his shoulder again, a sadness in the move that made him hurt. “I’ve done some terrible things, Fox.”
He stroked her head. “Nothing you didn’t feel you had to do. Or that you hadn’t been driven to do.”
“Perhaps, but you don’t understand. When I was . . . dead inside . . . when I was the woman you first met, I couldn’t feel remorse. I couldn’t feel guilt, grief, love, joy, any of it. Just anger. And hatred. And duty. After a thousand years, I knew right from wrong, but the end justified the means. I wreaked my vengeance on the cheetahs. And when the world believed us extinct, I eliminated the threats to my race so thoroughly, so thoughtlessly, that I left a nine-year-old orphaned.”
Fox stroked her back, aching for her. “We all do things we regret.”
She pulled away from him, standing. “The thing is, I want to go back to being that person.”
He stared at her. “Why?”
“Because I can’t live like this, Fox. I feel . . . And I’m tired of feeling. I won’t live like this.”