Evermore

Harlech gave her a list of errands that would keep her out for hours.

"Have the truck brought out to the front drive," she told him. "Someone will have to attend to our lord while I am in the city. Is Dr. Keller in the infirmary now?"

Harlech confirmed that she was, so Jayr went to see her before leaving for the city. She found Alexandra sitting and peering into a microscope.

"Doctor."

Alexandra lifted a finger without raising her head from the scope. "Give me a sec."

The time drew out to several minutes before it became apparent to Jayr that she was being ignored. "I will return another time."

"Hold your palfreys, kid; I'm almost finished." She groped for a pencil and began jotting down figures on a pad filled with them. "Forty-two, twenty-three, and eighty-seven, and I'm done." She straightened and smiled at Jayr. "I didn't want to count them all over again because I'm lazy. Ready for the next injection?"

Jayr's eyes widened. "After what happened to me last night? You must be jesting."

"What happened?"

"My lord and I… and then I dreamed—" She stopped. She couldn't tell Alexandra these things; they were too private. "It matters not. I have to go into the city. I need you to reverse the treatment. Will you do it now?"

"Sure, not a problem. I whipped up a batch of Jema Shaw special last night." She switched off the microscope's light and went to retrieve a syringe.

Jay felt taken aback by her reaction to her demand. "You do not object?"

"You want to play Peter Pan forever, that's your business." She plunged the needle into a vial of liquid. "No skin off my nose."

"I cannot serve my lord in this state," Jayr told her. "I do not even trust myself to be among humans." Or go to sleep, for that matter.

"Hey, I understand. Things like tits and a sex life and being a normal woman aren't as important as looking like a guy and waiting hand and foot on Byrne." She patted the exam table. "Come on. I don't have all day. Night. Whatever."

Suspicion made her eyes narrow. "You are trying to shame me."

"You think?" Alexandra set down the needle and folded her arms. "Quit worrying about his lordship for two seconds. What do you want, Jayr?"

Last night Byrne had come to her, had seen her looking at herself. Jayr had not been ashamed that he had seen her. Catching him watching her in the mirror had thrilled her.

And dismayed her, for there had been nothing for him to see.

"I want to be like other women," she admitted. "But—"

Alexandra's hand whipped up. "No buts. Be a kid or a woman. Decide. Now."

"Very well." She scowled as she went over to the exam table. "Can you speed up the process?"

Alexandra laughed. "Oh, now it's not fast enough?"

"Give me two injections. You said there was nothing in the formula that could hurt me. Doubling the dose should double the effect, should it not?" She would simply keep busy and have someone else attend to Byrne for the day.

"It might." The doctor hesitated. "But that much hormone in your system could really throw your body into overdrive."

"I must go into town tonight. Two of our people have left the Realm and… It is complicated. In any event, I will be too busy to do anything foolish." She held out her arm.

"I want you to come back here before dawn so I can check you over," Alexandra said as she administered the shot. When Jayr stood, she added, "Wait; I need to talk you about something else. You told me that Byrne was the one who changed you from human to Darkyn, right?"

"He was."

"I don't think so." She discarded the syringe. "Last night I ran a test to compare your blood sample with one I took from Byrne. They don't match. As a matter of fact, your blood doesn't match any other sample that I have in the database."

"Why would my blood match anyone's?" Jayr shifted her weight. "I am an orphan. My parents abandoned me. I had no blood kin among our kind."

"That's not what I mean. If Byrne infected you, the pathogen in your blood should be identical to his. It isn't." Alexandra picked up some small strips of glass and brought them to the microscope, then arranged them beneath the lenses before she stood back. "Come here and look."

Jayr peered into the lenses of the device and saw two squares filled with moving dots. "This is what our blood really looks like?"

"Yep. The red things with the black centers are your blood cells," she told her. "The red things with no centers are the human blood you ingest."

Jayr watched the dots collide with one another. "My blood cells are attacking the human cells." Ferociously, in fact.

"They're absorbing them. It's their food." Alexandra touched something on the scope, and the lenses switched, making the images grow larger. "See those three little dots in the center of the black nuclei?"

"Barely."

"They're the troublemakers," Alex said. "They're present in every cell of your body: blood, bones, tissues, nerves, everything. They've mutated them. They're what make you, me, and all the other people at the party Kyn."

Jayr saw the differences between the two images. "They are not the same."

"No. Which means your mutation is different from Byrne's. Which means he didn't infect you."

"He must have," Jayr said, lifted her head to look at the doctor, "for he was the only one there that day. I gave myself to him. There was no one else."

Alexandra thrust her hands into her jacket pockets. "Are you sure about that?"

"Yes. Perhaps." Jayr felt confused. "My memories of that day stop at the moment my human life did. I lay dreaming until I woke up, changed to Kyn."

Alexandra nodded. "Who was with you when you regained consciousness?"

"My lord Byrne. He had brought me back to his encampment and cared for me until I awoke. I took so long to change he thought I might die of it." Jayr recalled how confusing that time had been, and how gentle Byrne had been with her. "He explained that it had been an accident, that he had not meant to change me."

"Yeah, I bet." Alex tapped her finger against her lips. "When he took your blood, did he share you with anyone else?" When Jayr shook her head, Alex added, "So he drained you dry himself?"

"I think he must have. It was the only way to change a human to Kyn." She saw Alex's expression. "You know what it was like. The seigneur did the same to you."

"My change took a lot longer and was way more complicated," the doctor said wryly. "There's just one big fat problem with how Byrne changed you. He couldn't have done it."

"I am Kyn, Doctor," Jayr said.

"Are you sure that you were unconscious for more than three days?" Alex asked.

"I cannot say." Jayr frowned. "That is what my lord told me at the time. We were both unconscious for some days. Then he awoke and called out until his men found us in the pit."

"Even if Byrne and you were unconscious for a couple of days, he couldn't have woken up first, taken you back to his encampment, or cared for you while you were changing," Alex stated emphatically. "Draining you dry would have put you in rapture and him in thrall. According to what I've been told, thrall would have kept him unconscious for three to seven days. He's have been out cold for at least as long as you were."

"If what you say is true, then another did make me Kyn." Jayr said. "But if it was not Byrne, then who did?"

Alexandra gave her a sympathetic smile. "I think we need to ask your boss that question."

After the humiliation of spending himself in his pants while he slept outside Jayr's door, Byrne had returned to his bed to lie alone and watch a shaft of sunlight crawl across the ceiling. Sometime near sunset he fell asleep, only to be awakened by Beaumaris's attempts to start the fire.

Byrne put a hand to his head. "Where is Jayr?"

"She is attending to the guests, I believe, my lord." He rose and stepped back, beaming as the kindling flared, and then frowning as the small flame extinguished. "Are there birds nesting in your chimney, my lord?"

Byrne sat on the edge of the bed, trying to shake off the sluggishness left from his wretched night. "What?"

"The fire does not breathe, my lord. I should summon the sweep—"

"Forget the fire," Byrne said. "Summon my seneschal." She never let the fire smoke.

"Jayr is greatly busy, but I am happy to attend you, my lord." Beaumaris's eyes darted to the wine rack. "May I prepare some refreshment for you? I think the new merlot from California is exceptionally good. Farlae says—"

"Beau."

"My lord?"

"Get out."

"Yes, my lord." The man bowed quickly and backed out of the room.

Byrne rubbed his pounding temples before starting the fire himself. Thirty minutes later he was still alone, the room hazy with smoke. He tossed a bucket of water on the wood to put out the fire, which only resulted in more smoke. At last he went to the intercom at his bedside and smacked it with his fist. "Jayr?"

Harlech answered. "She is not available, my lord. May I be of service?"

Not available? She was his seneschal, not a parking spot. "Find Jayr and send her to me."

"Yes, my lord."

As he waited, Byrne prepared and drank two goblets of bloodwine, one after the other, to clear his head. When Jayr did not arrive, he washed and dressed. He would show her how little he needed her or anyone to dance attendance on him. What he needed her for—what he wanted her for—would be far more pleasant. For both of them. If nothing else, last night's interlude had proven that.

Still she did not come to him.

By God, would he have to go and track her himself? 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">