Evermore

What angers him?

Jayr felt no fear. She could not look at Byrne without feeling his skin against her lips, or tasting him in her mouth. His very presence made itself known on her skin as if she were actually pressed against him. Such unseemly thoughts had never plagued her before, but she now suspected that he bond between them had been affected by their recent blood exchange, reshaped into a new and altogether unwelcome sensitivity.

Perhaps it affected him in the same fashion.

Why had he made her take oath blood from his throat? Before last night he had always made the exchange according to custom, in the proper manner of hand to mouth. What he had done had been too intimate for contact between a lord and his seneschal. He had treated her the way he might a human lover.

What had possessed him to think it necessary? She had never broken her oath to him; he had no reason to demand such a thing. But it was done, and it seemed that both of them would have to suffer the consequences. She had to stop brooding on it. In time it would fade, and everything would be as it had been. She would simply have to remain on her guard until it did.

Jayr shuffled her feet, but Byrne ignored her, evidently as lost in his musings as she had been. "Excuse me, my lord. Should I summon your captains?"

"They have been and gone." His arm tensed, and the knuckles of the hand holding the edge of the mantel bulged. Just as quickly the moment passed, and the frightening cast to his eyes disappeared. "You are late again."

"Someone made mischief with Rainer." She described how she had found the warrior, and the condition of his rooms. "I will question Beau, but I doubt this was his doing. This seems too deliberate."

He nodded. "Cyprien has moved Alexandra from the infirmary to his chambers. Post guards at the access points."

"At once." That part of the keep was already well patrolled, so the request perplexed her. She tried to see his expression. "Is this because of Rainer, or do you or the seigneur expect some new trouble?"

"Rainer likely brought the beating upon himself. Michael's woman is genuinely ill. More than that I cannae say. She is nothing like us." He thrust himself away from the hearth and paced the length of the room. "Cyprien told me that her talent is to read the thoughts of murderers."

Jayr had never heard of such a thing. Kyn talents were unique to the individual, but served chiefly to lure humans or incapacitate them so that they could easily feed. A few exceptionally powerful lords like Lucan and Richard could use their talents on anything living, including other Kyn. Talent was for the hunt, so why would Alexandra need to know the thoughts of murderous humans in order to take their blood?

"Our household staff has left, and none of them would kill," Jayr told him. "Surely there is no one here who could cause her illness."

"She reads the thoughts of humans and Kyn." He stopped under a display of copper-bladed claymores. "Did you hear what she said before she fainted?"

"I did," she said, adding cautiously, "It sounded like the Gaelic you speak sometimes."

"'Twas my native tongue. She spoke like a woman of my clan. No human has done so in centuries." He ran his hand along the length of a blade in the same way he might stroke a woman's arm. He drew back and looked at a long gash on his hand in wonder. "Damn me."

Jayr was beside him before he could bleed, and seized his hand. The sharp edge of the sword had cut through his skin and muscles down to the bone, but instead of healing instantly, the wound remained open. Such a thing could not happen, unless—

"You have not been feeding properly." She felt a sudden appalling urge to strike him. "But you had those women the other night. Why did you not make use of them?"

"I cannae remember." Byrne seemed bemused rather than concerned by the wound. "'Tis no matter."

"Your bones sticking out of your wounds might make it difficult to clasp hands with the lords at the tournament," she snapped, examining the gash. Muttering to herself, she added, "This will take hours to heal."

He looked bored. "You make too much of it. Give me a cloth and I will bind it."

Jayr drew the dagger Harlech had given her and slashed her left wrist, pressing the wound to her master's palm. All of this she did too quickly for him to see, much less stop her. By the time he felt her blood pulse over his flesh, they were both healing.

"Dinnae waste yourself on me," he muttered as he pulled his hand away.

"I waste nothing. Be still." She encircled his wrist and brought his palm back to her own shrinking gash, forcing the last of the bleeding into his closing wound. Kyn blood could be used to heal the damaged flesh of another Kyn, but it was done only when the wound proved serious.

He eyed her. "Happy now, lass?"

"No. I don't understand why you've denied yourself like this. Have you tired of human females? Do you wish a new selection?" Part of her wanted to hear him say yes—and no, but not because it would explain his fast.

"I've lost my taste for them." He closed his fingers around her forearm, holding her as tightly as she gripped him. "Do you never weary of humans?"

I weary of playing nursemaid, she thought, but said nothing.

Flames crackled, but not in the fireplace. Jayr looked into her lord's eyes and saw them reflected there. Not the heat of anger or the ashes of melancholy. No, this heat was something entirely new, but part of her recognized it.

So it was true—she was not the only one suffering from useless desires.

"I would offer you different fare if I could, my lord," she said, quickly hiding her own startled pleasure, "but I fear you would not care for the taste of black bear, alligator, or flamingo."

"Aedan."

Her hold on him loosened. "My lord?"

"Aedan. It is my given name," Byrne said, bending until his nose almost bumped hers. "Or have you forgotten it?"

They had shared blood—far more than they ever had at renewal. The bond that tied her to him now tugged at her, as if determined to drag her backward through time, to the day she had first looked into the abyss, and the abyss looked back at her—

Stop this. He is your master, not your lover.

"I have announced your name often enough." She hated the stiffness in her voice, but it could not be helped. For a moment she had thought of him as hers, and that would not do. "You need to hunt, and soon. Master, you cannot afford to have open wounds—"

"Master." He lifted his uninjured hand to her face and ran a fingertip along the curve of her brow. "You've not called me that since we left Scotland."

She had to swallow to find her voice. "When we came here you bade me call you lord."

"I did not want the Americans to think you my slave." As he spoke, his breath caressed her lips. "No." He cupped her jaw and held her when she tried to turn her face. "You still think of me that way? As your master?"

"I am your seneschal." She could not think, could not move. Whatever had seized him and burned in his eyes held her as tightly in its grip. "You have but to say how I am to think. I am sworn to obey."

"Yes." The strange incandescence faded from his eyes. "Of course." He released her and stepped away.

The distance between them helped Jayr reclaim some of her composure. "How is it that Lady Alexandra speaks your language? Could she have somehow drawn it from your thoughts when they arrived?"

"No. My thoughts were not of murdering anyone, and I've made myself think in English since we came to this land." Byrne looked down at his hand, flexing his fingers and then spreading them to flatten his palm.

Jayr saw that his wound had healed over, and made a mental note to double the amount of blood she mixed into his wine for the next few days. "What did Lady Alexandra's words mean?"

"'Twas mostly gibberish." He pulled his sleeve down and straightened the cuff. "One thing I had prayed that I would never hear again." Contempt chilled his features. "The last time I heard it used was when Henry and his armies invaded the land. 'Burn the field.'"

Jayr remembered the old, vile king who had slaughtered anyone who stood in his path during his quest for power. He had certainly deserved to burn for his sins a thousand times over. "What field was burned?"

"All of them." Byrne's eyes dulled. "The English came before harvest that year, as they often did. One of the young farmers incited our villeins to go out and burn their crops where they stood. He had them pledged to see their own children starve before a handful of their grain fattened an English belly." His voice went soft. "Many children died that winter, along with their parents and kin."

Jayr thought of all the scorched fields she had seen on her first and only journey into Scotland. Everyone had blamed the English for them, even the Scots themselves. "I never knew this."

"I tried to find the instigator, but he vanished. Perhaps he starved along with the rest of them. The Brus played the politician; he made sure to blame the bloody English for the burnings, and they were eager to take the credit for it. It enhanced Henry's reputation for cruelty, and martyred those who died of starvation." Byrne's tone turned ironic. "They won, we became merchants, and they wrote the history books. No one could know those words unless they had heard them."

"One of the newcomers must have been," Jayr suggested. "Given the lady's talent, this could be some sort of warning, a premonition of trouble to come." She took out her radio. "I will alert the men and have them—"

"No." Byrne snatched the device from her and tossed it into the fire.

She had others; it made no difference to her. It was the manner with which he treated her equipment that stirred her ire. Still, this was not the time to protest the waste of resources, even if Byrne would never appreciate them. "My lord, this could be a threat against you, against the Realm. I cannot protect you if you do not allow me—" ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">