"I do not know." She propped her hands against the walls. "I am hot, and then I am cold. My skin wants to peel itself from my body. I cannot even bathe without… I feel strange things."
"I did warn you that your feelings might change," Alex had to point out.
… burn…
"My feelings?" Jayr echoed incredulously. "My body has developed a mind of its own. I scarcely know what I will do from one moment to the next. I gave him leave to do anything to me. I kissed him, as if it were nothing. I cannot stop sweating. My hands tremble so that I cannot grasp a weapon. What has any of that to do with my feelings?"
… burn the…
"Back up." Alex took hold of her wrist, focusing on the girl instead of the pain hammering on the inside of her skull. "You kissed who as if it were nothing?"
"My lord Byrne." Jayr squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. "It was utterly humiliating."
… no, not here…
"I don't see why," Alex said, gasping a little as the pain switched off and the disjointed thoughts ended. "He's the one you're doing this for, isn't he?" She closed Jayr's open mouth with one finger to the chin. "You've been very cagey, kid, but yesterday was not my birthday."
"I am my lord's servant," Jayr said. "It is wrong of me to feel as I do. To act as I did."
"Oh, bullshit." Alex lowered her voice. "Honey, I'm sure it was no hardship for him to be kissed by you. All you have to do is see you two together. It's pretty obvious."
Fear joined the anger in her eyes. "You know nothing about me or him."
"So I know nothing." Alex had embraced denial often enough to give Jayr time to cling to hers. "Anything else you want to bitch about?"
"Only that I asked you to help me change my body," Jayr said through gritted teeth. "Not destroy my life."
"Let see if I've got this straight," Alex said, ticking off what she said next on her fingers. "You're experiencing unreasonable irritability, body temperature fluctuations, impulsivity, and unusual sensory reactions, and all that is resulting in unfamiliar behavior. Plus you got to kiss your boss. That cover all the bases?"
"Yes," Jayr all but shouted. She pressed her hand to her mouth, dropped it, and murmured, "You see? This drug is poison."
Alex shook her head. "No. The anger and confusion, the weird urges, the boss kissing, all classic signs of late-stage puberty. You're not dying, sweetheart, and you're not poisoned. You're becoming a teenager."
Jayr's fingers curled into fists. "I am seven hundred and ten years old, Doctor."
"Chronologically speaking, yes, you are. But physically?" She lifted her shoulders. "Your body has just found out that it's seventeen, and it's throwing a party."
Jayr looked at her boots. "What more will happen to me?"
"The physical changes are the next stage," she assured the seneschal. "Judging by how fast you're metabolizing and responding to the synthetic gonadotropin, it won't take long for the hormone fairy to drop the main shipment. Expect incoming breasts, hips, and curly hair growing in very inconvenient places."
"I meant my mind." Her eyes flashed up. "Will the drug affect my reasoning, my judgment? Would I wish to harm him? Would I try?"
"Jayr, oh, God, no. It isn't going to be like that." Alex tried to put an arm around her, but the seneschal backed away. "If anything you'll fuss more over him and want to be with him all the time. You'll be miserable when you're not, and you won't be able to stop thinking about him until you're together again. You'll dream about him and being with him." She saw Michael approaching, and reality dwindled for a moment as several things clicked into place. "The dreams will be really hot."
"That is all I can have," she heard Jayr say. "Dreams." The seneschal stalked off.
Michael took her hand in his when he reached her. "Why was Jayr shouting at you?"
"Because I deserved it." Alex reached up to give him a quick kiss. "Listen, handsome, I've got to head over to the infirmary and check something out. I'll meet you in the room later."
She hurried off before he could reply.
Byrne tracked Jayr as she made her way from the ball to her chambers, but kept enough distance between them so that she did not detect his presence. He would not frighten her again, but he would explain himself and make peace with her.
And he would, as soon as he worked out why he had kissed her.
Jayr's path ended at her rooms, and there Byrne hovered, unsure of what to do next. He knew he had shocked her by seizing her as if she were human and making free with her body. His apology had been as pathetic as taking advantage of her oath. No, he should go, forget what had happened and act as if it never had. As bruised as her dignity was, she would surely do the same. It could not happen again. He would keep his hands away from her. He would respect her value to him and his household. He would resist his desires.
He would not kick in her door and seize her so he could kiss her again.
Byrne listened for several minutes, but heard nothing from inside the room that indicated what Jayr was doing. She rarely took time for herself and never took her rest before attending to him. He tried the door and found that it was not latched, and opened it to a small gap to see inside.
Jayr stood in front of the rectangular looking glass on her wall, her back to him, her tunic gone. She turned slightly right, then left, tucking in her chin, studying her breasts.
Byrne's hand slipped from the latch as he looked at the reflection she made. Her breasts were not like most women's, as they had no weight or fullness to them, but they were no longer completely flat, as some assumed. Gentle swells, they rose slightly around her small, flat nipples. Her shirts and tunics completely covered them, and they were what made her seem fashioned like a man.
Above one nipple lay the blurred, raised birthmark he had once heard her call her heart scar. It was the color of blooming heather, the same color her eyes sometimes flashed. He sometimes caught tantalizing glimpses of it when her collar fell open.
He knew how Jayr despised how she was made, and wondered why he did not feel the same. During his human life he had always favored big, buxom women, mostly because they were built to take large, heavy men with relative ease. Thin, delicate women were more fragile, and the thought of accidentally hurting them unmanned him. Becoming Kyn made it only more necessary to avoid them.
Then, too, they reminded him too much of Jayr.
Byrne realized that he didn't care that Jayr's hips didn't flare out or that her breasts were barely noticeable. Compared to the other women he had known, Jayr seemed almost exotic, like a gazelle among bovines. His hands still itched to caress the long lines of her pale neck and back. Among other things.
Byrne's gaze followed the long, gentle curve of her spine down to her bottom. The new trousers she wore were not as loose as most she owned, and lovingly hugged the slim curves of her hips.
The imprint of the velvet whispered its memory against his palms. He had put his hands on her buttocks at some point during the kiss. He was almost sure he had squeezed them.
Her skin was very soft there, he knew from the only other time he had held her so. That day she had worn a full skirt, and he had reached under it to discover only a thin pair of drawers between him and her flesh. He had used the split in the crotch to tear them away from her.
Before he had lifted her up.
Before he had brought her sex to his mouth.
Before he had kissed her there.
A low, wounded sound dragged his attention back to Jayr. Both of her hands pressed over her chest, covering it now, and she was staring higher, at the reflection of the door.
She could see him watching her.
Byrne closed the door soundlessly and slumped back against the wall beside it, breathing in deeply to clear his head. He had taken her once, and had sworn never to force himself on her again. She trusted him to keep his word to her.
But nothing could drive him away from her chamber, not even the shame of knowing he would give up his last coin to go inside and lie with her again.
Byrne slid down, sitting at her threshold as she so often had his, feeling the chains of time tightening around him. If he could not tear himself away from her now, how was he to leave her behind?
He could take her with him, he reasoned. She was sworn to him, not the Realm. She would stay with him and keep him from dying of loneliness. If he was patient—if he took time to court her, prepare her—they could be more than master and seneschal. She had told him that she was his to do with as he willed. He had only to make her want such a thing.
And the day would come when something went wrong, when some impossible turn of luck smashed through the fortress of his control, and Jayr would be the only living thing near him. The only life upon which his affliction could feed.
Byrne closed his eyes. That was how he would let her go. By knowing what he would do to her if he did not.
Chapter 15
Veils of purple and white silk danced around Byrne, drawing him into the palace. From the mosaics and the archways he could see he had returned to the ancient lands, where dark men fought with enormous curved blades and kept their women locked up in seraglios.
Patchouli-scented smoke drifted around him as the intricately knotted carpet beneath his feet lifted him into the air. It flew him through corridors of golden stone and blackened woods until it gently landed in front of an arch in the shape of a woman's form.
Byrne stepped off the carpet and passed through the arch. Inside he saw a room of braziers and pillows, incense and fountains. Stately palms grew from enormous earthen pots to spread their arching green fronds against the sun, for there was no ceiling. He thought the room empty until he saw her in one corner, almost hidden by stacks of pearl-covered books.
Jayr?
She occupied a plain narrow bed, her long legs bare, only a soft old leine covering her body. The material was so thin he could see the dark circles of her nipples beneath it. Pearls glinted from the gores in her sleeves as she turned a page in one of the priceless books. Her hair, shadows spun with moonlight, spilled over her shoulders and trailed down to her hips.