"How long have you been doing that ritual for him?"
"Since I got there."
"Since you were eight?"
"Yes."
"That's why."
She stared at him, then looked away, as if suddenly fascinated by the paintings on his wall. There was something about her, a sudden brittleness that made him feel like the wrong word would make her shatter.
And he knew.
"He hurt you anyway, didn't he? When you were young." She didn't react, and he didn't push. "You don't have to tell me, Skye. I just want to understand you better."
Slowly, she turned back to him, in her eyes a strange mixture of pain and strength. She met his gaze, held it, as if trying to comprehend him instead.
"Why do you want to understand me?" Why are you being nice to me now when you nearly raped me last night? She didn't have to say the words for him to hear them.
Paenther pushed away from the window and leaned his shoulder against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest.
"You've been a contradiction to me from the start. The forthright siren with the sad eyes who led me into the woods, took me into her body, then enthralled me. The gentle witch who was beaten bloody for not forcing herself on me. My instincts have told me all along that you weren't like the other witches I've known. That you were innocent. That's why I couldn't hurt you, even though the part of me that has always hated the Mage wanted to."
He looked up at the ceiling, remembering last night with a crushing ache. "When I saw the cuts, Skye..." When he looked down, he found her watching him with an odd combination of wariness and tears in her eyes. "When I saw the cuts, I knew my instincts were right. Whatever else you might be, you were every bit as much a captive of that place as I was. I judged you without knowing you. I saw the copper rings around your irises and expected the worst from you. And even when I didn't get it, I chalked it up to enthrallment or subterfuge."
He shrugged. "For the first time, I'm listening, Skye. I want to know who you are. And I'll try my damndest to judge you on that and not your race."
The edges of wariness in her expression softened. She brushed away the single tear that had escaped her eye while he spoke and met his gaze. "The first time he raped me was two weeks after he took me from my mother."
Goddess. "I'm sorry." He suddenly wasn't sure he wanted to hear this after all, but he wouldn't turn away from her now. Not after he'd begged her to talk to him. "Why did she let him take you?"
"She tried to hide me, but I wouldn't let her."
"You wanted to go with him?"
"No." She released her legs, digging her fingers into her hair and raking it back. "Going with him was the last thing I wanted." Her words were hot and vehement. "I don't know how he found out I was an enchantress, but he just showed up one day. I detested him on sight. Even then, I think I sensed he was without a soul. He told me to come to him, and I refused, so he grabbed me. One of my dogs attacked him. A small one, unfortunately. The big dogs were all outside."
She wrapped her arms tight around her legs again, pulling into herself. "He killed her with his magic."
"Again, I'm sorry."
She shrugged one slender shoulder. "It was probably a good thing. It told me all I needed to know about him. That night, the leader of our clan, the archsorcerer, told my mother I had to go with him. Birik was too powerful, too dangerous to attempt to cross. But after I went to bed, my mother came to me and told me to run. I'd befriended a human girl a couple of years before in the neighborhood on the other side of the woods and had played with her a couple of times. She wanted me to go there, thinking the humans might hide me."
Skye shook her head, meeting his gaze with remembered fear in her eyes. "But I was afraid Birik would destroy my friend and her family as he'd destroyed my dog. And he would have, I know that now. So I hid in the woods by the house that night so my mother wouldn't try to take me away and endanger herself. When morning came, I went to Birik and told him I was ready to go."
She turned her head, pressing her cheek to her knees. "I don't know if my mother ever forgave me for that." Her voice was soft and low, as if she were speaking to herself. "She was so upset."
"She forgave you. Whether or not she understood why you did it, she never blamed you, Skye. She only wanted to protect you."
Skye lifted her head to look at him, her mouth turning wry, a glimmer of thanks in her eyes. "I hope you're right. I don't know if I saved anyone in the end. My entire clan may be soulless by now."
"You never saw your mother again?"
"No. I never heard from any of them. They disappeared from my life. I've often dreamed of escaping Birik and going back, but I don't know where they are."
She pulled her knees closer to her chest, her eyes taking on a faraway look. "After we left my clan, Birik took me to the caverns and taught me the chant and the dance of the enchantress that raised my power. They were kind of fun, though I didn't like dancing without clothes on. It was too cold, but he insisted I be sky-clad. Then he took me outside and told me to call the animals. Dozens came. In hindsight, I think it made him angry that I could call them so easily when all he could call were snakes. But he selected a beautiful doe and her fawn, and we led them back into the cavern. I was happy. I'd been scared and lonely, and the creatures comforted me. He promised me I could bring them to watch me dance that night."
His stomach rolled. "He slaughtered them in front of you."
Her mouth compressed, and she nodded. "I went crazy. I refused to dance. I tried to run away, but he beat me. Every night he dragged me back to the ritual cavern, but I refused. He tried one thing after another to punish me. He ripped me out of the plush little room his people had prepared for me and locked me in the cell where you were chained. Then he took away my clothes and stopped feeding me, but still I refused to dance.
"Finally, one night, he'd had it with me. He grabbed me by my hair and dragged me all the way up the stairs to the room where he held the rituals, the stone stairs tearing up my bare back. But I still wouldn't do what he wanted, so he threw me to the floor, followed me down, and raped me. Then he ordered the sorcerers to do the same, one after another, and they did. For hours."
Paenther's scalp crawled with horror at what she'd endured. Fury pounded in his ears, his teeth bared as he imagined ripping every one of those bastards apart with his panther's fangs.
"After each rape, he told me to dance, and I refused. My creatures were standing there, watching me. For them, I never gave in."
He stared at her, in awe of her courage, her sheer determination. At eight. "You were a stubborn little thing."
To his amazement, she smiled. It was a small smile. A lopsided one that didn't reach those sad eyes, but it was a smile all the same.
"That night I chopped off my hair so he could never again drag me up the stairs. I've never let it grow long since. For all his power, he couldn't make me dance, and it infuriated him. He chained me in that cell, like he chained you, and used me for weeks, promising it would stop when I danced. Finally, one of his sorcerers came up with the idea of the cantric."
"Putting it in your heart like that could have killed you."
"I was of no use to him the way things were. With the cantric in my heart, the battle was no longer between him and me. It was mine alone. Every night..." She closed her eyes on a shudder.
He tried to image that child, that stubborn, determined little girl, suffering that cutting, and it almost brought him to his knees. "Is that the only punishment?"
"No, though I don't know what all he loaded into it. I shouldn't have been able to leave the mountain. Every time I've tried in the past, I've hit a wall at the outer warding, then been consumed by so much pain I couldn't move. I don't know how you got me out of there."
"You were unconscious. If you suffered, I didn't know it." His brows drew down as another thought occurred to him. "How did you get down to the Market? Did the warding extend that far?"
"Only recently. After Vhyper arrived, Birik became intrigued with the idea of seeing what kind of power I could draw from Ferals. Vhyper and I created sparks between us, but they weren't the right kind."
Something coiled in his chest. "Did Vhyper hurt you?"
"No, not really. He kissed me, and I hated it. I've never had an affinity for snakes, nor for the soulless."
"He's not soulless." The words came out hot and fast. But as he watched Skye visibly tense, he forced himself to calm his voice. "His soul is still there. And I'm going to find a way to free him."
She met his gaze. "I hope you do."
Paenther nodded once. He would. "Anyway..." he prompted.
"Anyway, Vhyper assured Birik other Ferals would come. He knew you'd come looking for him. So Birik extended the warding to include the Market." A fleeting smile flickered across her face. "It was the first time since I was a child that I'd been able to touch the outside world. I spent two days in that place, watching the television, looking at the magazines, and drooling over the junk food before the day you finally arrived."
"Drooling? You didn't buy any?"
"I didn't have any money."
That simple statement told so much, confirming that she didn't have the power of a witch, to control the mind of a human and take what she wanted. Then again, he suspected she wouldn't have taken even if she'd been able to. Stealing wasn't in her nature any more than the slaughtering of innocent creatures. He wasn't sure how he knew that, but he'd bet money on it.
"How did Vhyper know I'd wind up at the Market?"
"It's the only public building on the mountain."
Paenther considered that. "I won't send you back there."
"I don't want you to." The strength in her eyes hardened. "I meant what I said to Lyon. I won't be used to free more Daemons." Fire leaped in her blue-and-copper eyes as she released her legs and rose to her knees. "I'm not your enemy, Paenther. I'm not the enemy of any of your people. I hate Birik. I hate what he's doing, and I'll do anything to help you stop him. Anything. I know you can never completely trust me, but trust me in this. Please?"
He pushed away from the wall and went to her, as drawn to the fire of her conviction as to the woman herself. She didn't back away when he sat on the edge of the bed in front of her, mere inches from her knees.
"I do trust you." He reached for her hand and took it in his. "But I want you to trust me, too. Trust me when I tell you I don't hurt women, not without certain cause." His thumb brushed the back of her hand, his fingers, caressing the soft flesh of her palm, sending tendrils of excitement snaking along the edge of his flesh. "It may take me a while to get past the copper in your eyes. It's been a symbol of all I've distrusted for too long to forget easily."
With his free hand, he reached for her face, glad she didn't turn away. As he slid his fingers along the silken line of her jaw, awareness rippled through the air between them. "But I won't hurt you, Skye."
To his surprise, she lifted her hand, her soft palm mirroring his, sliding along the edge of his jaw. Her eyes softened and glistened, tightening the band of tenderness around his heart.
"No matter what happens," she said softly, her fingers lifting to stroke his cheek, making him ache with the need to take her into his arms. "No matter what you ultimately have to do with me, I want you to know you're the finest man I've ever met."
He wanted to object. The only thing he intended to ultimately do with her was protect her. But he couldn't make that promise. Not when there were still so many unknowns about her role in all this.
Besides, her words made his conscience rebel. "How can you think that when I've hurt you?" Not only had he torn a chunk from her arm, but he'd scared them both by what he'd almost done to her in the prison.
"You never hurt me without reason. Never for the fun of it." Her fingers slid into his hair, sliding through the locks, making him want to purr. "Even when you scared me, even when I thought you were going to hurt me downstairs, I understood why. What I did to you, capturing you, was reprehensible."
"You didn't have a choice."
She looked away, even as her fingers dug more deeply into his hair as if she needed to anchor herself. Her eyes, when they looked up again, were deep wells of regret. "I did have a choice, though. I almost told you to run that day, the day I led you into the woods. I was terrified of what would happen to you if I captured you. Birik had assured me I'd be able to keep my Feral, that he didn't mean to kill you, but I knew he'd do whatever he wanted. His word means nothing. But I also knew that if I let you go, Birik would only capture another Feral for me."
Her gentle thumb stroked his cheek. Her fingers moved, their tips trailing across his mouth, sending tendrils of lush excitement heating his blood. Her gaze flicked back to his, her eyes luminous, reflecting the heat he felt in his own.
"I didn't want another Feral, Paenther. I wanted you. It was selfishness that made me lead you into the woods that day. I wanted you inside me. And I wanted to keep you."
Her admission probably should have angered him, but all it did was inflame him more. Because the truth was, from the moment he first laid eyes on her, he'd wanted her, too. His hands slid into her soft hair and he pulled her to him and kissed her, a tender kiss meant to cherish instead of dominate. A kiss he wanted to share instead of take.