Alive.
His gloved hand reached out, clamping onto the stone windowsill as his unblinking gaze followed them. He had watched his enemy fall, and had left England on the assurance that his honor had been restored. But here was proof that the trap had failed. Here was the one thing that made mockery of all he was.
"The blood on my blade," he murmured, deaf to the stone cracking beneath his grip.
Turning away, he saw the walls of the corridor shrink back, shadows swelling like his hatred, taunting him with what would never be his. No castle. No lasy on his arm. No title. Nothing to signify his rank. Only the hollow march of time and a meaningless pantomime of existence.
He'd been a fool to believe it over. Now he would have to take again what had been rightfully his from the beginning.
This castle. A lady on his arm. The title to which he had been born.
All of this will be mine.
He went to the window and renewed the vow he had made so long ago. "You will be nothing, as I was. You will be the blood on my blade… the blood in my blade… the blood of my blade."
It was his bloodright.
Because Byrne and Michael were talking, Alex walked with Jayr and Phillipe. The two seneschals had greeted each other with formal bows but didn't seem especially friendly. Maybe they didn't know each other too well, or were supposed to act that way.
The blood on my blade.
Those five words slammed into Alex's head so hard she could almost feel her eardrums bulge out. A moment later a deep, dark hole opened up in the stone in front of her.
All of this will be mine… mine… mine.
The toneless voice shrieked from the hole, and she jumped back, colliding with Phillipe.
"My lady?" His big hands cradled her elbows. "Alexandra?"
"That." She turned to him and pointed to the hole in the walkway, but it wasn't there anymore. "What was that?"
Phillipe stared past her. "I see nothing."
"But I…" A scream of rage filled her head, and she slapped her hands to her ears while she yelled over the noise, "Michael."
He was already there, holding her up between him and his seneschal. "I am here, chérie" he said, his voice barely audible over the howling inside her skull. He looked at Phillipe. "She is ill again."
"No. I hear it. I see it." She turned her head and saw a wide black crack run across the stone. "There. It's over there. Look, damn it."
"You will be as nothing, as I was, blood on my blade the blood in my blade the blood of my blade blood right blood right bloodright."
This time the voice deafened her, while the crack in the stone gaped wider and uglier than before and belched out the stink of horses and smoke and death. As if the devil himself were trying to claw his way up from the underworld.
"Alexandra." Michael's lips formed her name, but she couldn't hear him. He shook her. "Speak to me."
"Vengeance. Michael. Here." He didn't understand her because she wasn't speaking English anymore. Why did it sound like English to her when it wasn't? She stared at the widening abyss and felt the stone rambling under her feet. "Bloodright." As the voice in her head bellowed its rage, she whispered its promise. "It's here, and no one… nothing can stop it."
The hole seemed to collapse inward, but a moment later it convulsed and exploded outward, sending a geyser of dismembered body parts, fire, and bloody smoke into the air.
Alex shrieked and covered her head with her arms. But something made her look again, something that glittered like polished bone, something that had not yet come out of the pit—
Whimpering, Dol an dearg bh‡inidh—
Crying, The field—
Shouting, Burn it down.
Raging, Burn it all down.
"Burn the field." Alex pushed away from the hands holding her, unable to breathe or think as she shouted the words roaring behind her eyes. "Burn the field—"
Alexandra. Come to me.
The new voice seized her, wrapping her in warm velvet ropes. They dragged her to the pit, pushing her over the edge into its suffocating void and what waited at the bottom.
Jayr lunged, catching the smaller woman before she fell over onto the walkway.
"My lady." A moment after Jayr lifted Alexandra into her arms the seigneur was there, taking her from her. His sygkenis's head lolled against his chest. Jayr saw teeth marks and fresh blood on Alexandra's bottom lip, evidence that she had bitten through it. But why? And why did she not heal at once, as other Kyn did? "My lord, what ails her?"
Cyprien shifted his lady's limp form into a more secure hold. "I don't know. Her talent…" He didn't finish the statement, but turned to Byrne. "Is there a place I can take her?"
"Of course." Byrne gestured, and his men dispersed. "Jayr, escort the seigneur to his chambers."
Jayr had seen Kyn display strange talents, but never one that caused them to bite themselves and black out. "My lord, perhaps I should take the seigneur and Dr. Keller to the infirmary."
"Yes," Cyprien said, almost too quickly. "That is preferable."
Byrne frowned but nodded his consent.
Alexandra Keller remained unconscious as Jayr led the seigneur through the back passages to the infirmary. Harlech intercepted them at the threshold but stood back in silence and gave Jayr only a single, narrow look before continuing on his way.
"Does this happen often to her, seigneur?" Jayr asked as she pulled back the linens of one of the gurneys they used to transport men who were injured in the lists.
"Not very often." Cyprien gently lowered the unconscious female to the crisp sheets and brushed her hair back from her pale face. "She will need blood."
Jayr retrieved a bag from the chill room, but was astonished to see that the seigneur had taken an intravenous kit from the supply cabinet and was preparing to insert the copper-tipped needle into a raised vein on the back of Alexandra's hand. No Kyn fed by tube unless they were grievously wounded or unable to swallow.
How to put it diplomatically? Jayr thought. "Should she not drink, my lord?"
"She does not feed as we do." He took the unit of blood from her and swiftly attached the thin plastic tubing that fed its contents directly into Alexandra's vein. He took her other hand in his and watched as the transfusion restored a more natural color to her face.
"There." Jayr relaxed a little. "She looks better. My lord, why does your lady take blood only by tube? Has she no dents acérées?"
"My sygkenis has an aversion to drinking blood," Cyprien said. "She is a physician, and devoted herself to healing other humans before she changed. She equates feeding to harming them. She has also been influenced by the vampire mythology of this time, which you know is completely ridiculous." He met her gaze, and in his was pure, turquoise-edged steel. "I will not hear her ridiculed for her wishes while we are here."
"No one would be so ill-mannered, my lord." Jayr stepped back from the bed, but felt compelled to add, "You need not be concerned that she will be shunned or rejected by the others. It is common knowledge that your lady has helped many Kyn, and everyone knows that she did not invite the change."
"No, she did not." His lovely mouth thinned. "Byrne must have told you that I forced it on her."
"When you were enthralled," Jayr amended for him, "and she enraptured."
"My tresora—Richard's spy in my household—arranged for it to happen to protect the Kyn. She assumed it would kill Alexandra like all the other humans we have tried to change over time." He rubbed his thumb across his sygkenis's narrow knuckles. "Somehow she survived."
"I begin to understand." Without thinking, Jayr placed her hand on Alexandra's forehead. "Poor lady." She abruptly remembered before whom she spoke. "Seigneur, I do not mean to imply that you—"
"She saved me, Jayr. She gave me back my face and my heart and my hope. For that I took away her human life and everything of importance in it. I put her in terrible danger. Then Richard took her from me and…" He paused and visibly composed himself. "I want her to rest and enjoy this time here. I want her to see that the Kyn can be as noble as she is."
Jayr nodded. "How may I help, my lord?"
He placed Alexandra's hand by her hip. "I will keep her at my side as often as I can in the days ahead. I would appreciate it if you could look out for her when I cannot."
Yet another duty, when there were not enough hours in the day to see to the ones already made hers, as well as care for her lord. And this to play nursemaid to a female with whom she likely had as much in common as she did the Queen of England.
But now Jayr knew more about Alexandra Keller, far more than Cyprien or anyone who had not been made Kyn by Kyn would ever know. And perhaps here was someone who could in return understand her as no one ever had.
Jayr bowed. "I am at your service, my lord."
Alexandra stirred, her lips moving as she murmured something. Cyprien bent over, caught the words, and frowned as he straightened.
"What did she say?" Jayr asked.
Cyprien looked at her, his own eyes puzzled. "Something about dragonflies."
Chapter 6
Alex opened her eyes to find herself on her back, staring up at a starry night sky. She lifted her head an inch but didn't see the people she expected to, or familiar surroundings. She was alone in a place she didn't recognize, some sort of wilderness.
But there had been smoke, fire, blood… a stone floor cracking, opening up into an endless abyss…
Hadn't there been?
Carefully she pushed herself up to her knees. Nothing hurt, but there wasn't enough light to do a thorough self-exam. Wherever she was, the air felt dry, cold, and dusty. No smoke, fire, or bottomless pits anywhere to be seen, either.
"Hello?" She stood, turning around to get the full view. "Anyone here?"
She'd been dumped in a desert.