Nine
A strangled scream pulled Dominic from his dark thoughts. It came from over the garden wall, and it sounded like… "Cassandra!"
Dominic vaulted off the pavilion that he'd been standing in and ran through the orderly garden, skirting small ponds and beds of flowers and sculpted bushes. Had he truly recognized her voice in that cry?
He mentally scoffed. Who else would dare to breach the elven garden's walls?
Without hesitating a whit, Dominic leaped up the stone wall surrounding the garden, grateful for the elven blood that allowed the feat, and crouched like a cat on the narrow capstone. He scanned the guardian vine covering the outside wall, looking for a hint of movement, but the gale from the coming storm shook all the leaves in his vision and the screams had been too far away for him to judge the location.
"Damn."
The wind tore the hair away from his face and billowed his linen shirt out behind him as Dominic leaped again, over the green vines to the ground outside the garden. Dirt puffed up from his boots as he landed and he rolled, then sprang to his feet with a grace and speed that would have had the peasants crossing themselves in fear.
Dominic kept his eyes on the greenery as he ran beside it. His cursed father and his clever traps. Why should Mor'ded waste his magic when the plants that the Imperial Lord of Verdanthame created with his power could prove just as deadly? Although Dominic had been grateful the vines guaranteed his solitude within the elven garden, that had been before he'd married Lady Cassandra.
He wanted to curse her, but he could not. For he suspected that she'd sought him out, and the thought that she could not stay away from him almost made him smile. He quickly suppressed the desire, another thing he had to blame her for, but ran faster, scanning the leafy greenery. He had no doubt the nimble girl had tried to scale the wall to get to him. She possessed a reckless bravery and a willful heart that betimes he admired, and at others, terrified him.
Dominic had given some thought to the condition of the men who had kidnapped Cassandra and he'd come to the conclusion that her repertoire consisted of more than just love dances. Someone had taught her a death dance, and she had killed both of those men with seemingly little effort. She could have learned such a thing only from a few sources, the most likely being the Rebellion.
His wife had been trained as an assassin.
She hadn't been the first assassin the Rebellion had sent against an Imperial Lord, nor did he doubt that she would be the last. But they'd been clever this time, keeping the girl innocent while training her. Using Dominic to position her so closely to his father.
Dominic had little reason to expose her. He knew she'd fail in an attempt to kill Mor'ded, just as he had failed so long ago…
He tried not to think of Jack. Indeed, he ran faster, hoping the exertion would wipe the sudden thought from his mind. But he feared that his wife had managed to thaw his frozen heart for he could not stop the visions from replaying through his memory this time.
He saw himself young and brash, having just won his first skirmish against the finest of Imperial Lord Breden's troops. He'd entered the hall amid cheers and adoration, and he'd been so green he'd allowed it to go to his head. He had gotten drunk and cocky… and his father had told him he was due for another trial. Dominic had told him to go to hell and had tried to gut him with his sword.
Mor'ded had his guards haul Dominic to his room and had held him there with a ring of gray fire. The Imperial Lord had then summoned Jack. Jack, another slave who had not been raised from his lowly status because of his skill for battle. Jack, who had done nothing more harmful than befriending Dominic.
At first Dominic had thought that his father would only threaten to harm Jack.
But Mor'ded had made his son watch his best and only friend burn to death, while taunting him the entire time to call forth his black magic to defend him. And Dominic had failed. Just as he'd failed later to save Mongrel. After that Dominic had sought out Ador, relieved that the dragon, at least, could survive his company unscathed.
With a will borne of desperation, Dominic erased the vision of Jack's bones appearing through a haze of red fire.
He'd thought he'd buried that vision so deeply that it would never resurface. Damn his wife for making him acknowledge his human heart. It opened up too many old wounds.
A flutter of lace in the wall of green caught his eye, bringing his feet and, thankfully, his thoughts to a skidding halt. He reached out and tore the lace cap from the grasp of spiky tendrils and caught a flash of burgundy wool beneath the green. He knew these vines, had watched as they'd caught rabbits and unwary robins within their coils. They twined around their catch until nothing could be seen but leafy greenery and then belched out fur and bones like some great toothy beast.
Off to the far left, partially hidden in a thatch of tall grass, lay a set of hoops and a pair of low-heeled shoes. But thank the king for his fondness for lacy caps to adorn women's heads, for otherwise Dominic might never have found the exact place the foliage had swallowed his wife.
Dominic spread his fingers, calling forth orange fire instead of red, hoping to avoid harming Cassandra while he burned away the vines. He made his fire a narrow stream, cutting through the smaller vines first, hoping to reveal the rest of his wife's body. He had faced battle time and again but had yet to feel the sort of panic he felt now as he spied a stomacher laden with garnets, a tiny waist encircled with a leather belt.
For the garments did not move. She wasn't breathing.
The plant sent out a questing vine in his direction, moving so stealthily he did not see it until it wrapped around his leg, injecting those barbed thorns into his flesh. He cursed, cut the vine away from the mother plant, and shook the thing off his leg. He felt the thorns rip out of his flesh with the movement.
With calm fury Dominic slashed around the outline of Cassandra's body, the vines oozing purplish sap, quivering wildly from his assault. If it wouldn't have harmed his wife, he would have burned the entire garden wall of greenery. For when he'd cleared enough of the bush away he could see where green spikes had plunged into Cassandra's own flesh, seeking to suck her dry.
He cursed and took a step toward his wife.
A foolish mistake. For now the plant fought back with renewed desperation, no longer trying to be stealthy. Two vines wrapped around his ankles but he had to ignore them for the six that whipped toward his arms. He fried four of them, but the lower two each encircled an arm, preventing him from directing his magic at the trunk of the plant.
One breath and barbed thorns sprouted from the vine, piercing his flesh again. Another breath and he could feel the pressure as the plants sucked the blood from his veins.
Dominic smiled. Red fire bloomed on his body, his magic insulating him from the heat. But the plant had no such protection, and it could not unwrap itself from his limbs fast enough. Green twisted to black and thorns withdrew and shriveled, an odd sort of thumping noise emitting from the plant, like a stick beating a drum full of water. Dominic shook himself, black ash flew, and he raised his arms again, calling the red fire back to his fingertips alone, burning a wider swath around Cassandra.
When Dominic had burned all the limbs surrounding the trunk that held her, the tendrils hastily withdrew from her flesh, leaving small puncture wounds of dark dripping red on her soft pale skin.
He stopped the flow of fire just before she fell into his arms.
Dominic sank to the ground, cradling her body, looking for any sign of life. "Cassandra?"
Her lashes did not stir. Her breast did not rise.
He called forth blue fire, ran his hands quickly over her body, caressing, healing with a desperation that he'd never felt before.
The small puncture wounds closed; the droplets of blood dried and flaked to the ground. And still she did not breathe.
Blue fire could heal, but it could not call back the dead. Still, Dominic fed his magic to her, refusing to give in to the overwhelming despair that threatened to overtake him.
A weight settled in his chest, a pain far worse than his father's black fire. This pain would drive him mad. He could not lose her. He had barely just found her.
"You must live," he whispered to her. "For without you, I am done. Done and done with this torment that I have been living. You cannot bring such light to my life and then take it from me, do you hear? Damn it, Cass, do you hear me?"
And suddenly her chest rose on a sigh. And rose yet again.
A wash of sweetness flowed through him, the likes of which he'd never known. A shiver that raised the flesh on his arms to little bumps.
Dominic could not ever recall shedding tears. If he had once known how, they had dried up long ago. But his eyes burned and he had to blink to stop it. He gathered her up in his arms, whispering nonsense and rocking her like a child.
His outburst had astonished him. It had come from his heart, which he had ignored for so long that he wondered at his words. Had his life indeed become brighter since Cassandra had come to share it with him?
Despite the turmoil she brought to him, the struggle to maintain his distance from the world, he realized that in his fear for her he'd spoken truly for once. The time before he'd kissed her in the abbey seemed like a smoke-shrouded dream. He would not wish to go back to it.
So and so. Her life had become precious to him, and yet she brought the threat of the greatest despair he could ever imagine.
The wind twisted his hair with hers, made the garden beyond the walls ring and chime with their haunting melody. Dominic kissed her hair, the smell of roses filling his senses. He ran his lips across her smooth forehead, gently fluttered them over her lashes. Kissed the tip of her pert nose and the softness of her rounded cheek, at last finding her lips and hoping she would wake.
But she only sighed and Dominic feared she might not ever wake. But he refused to allow his emotions to overwhelm him again.
He would just have to be patient.
The wind suddenly changed direction and Dominic looked up with a frown. A flash of black wing shadowed him for a moment, and with another burst of conflicting currents, Ador landed near. The beast should have looked less enormous out in the open. He did not.
Dominic held Cass tighter, tucking her head beneath his chin. "Your timing is impeccable, dragon. Have you come to gloat?"
The beast folded his wings close to his sides, blocking the gale that had battered Dominic, and turned first one doleful eye on Lady Cassandra and then the other. "Do not make the mistake of transferring human attributes to my kind, bastard. Besides, what would I have to gloat about?"
"That you were right. That I cannot stop from caring for her."
Ador snorted, gray smoke dispersing like spinning dervishes in the wind. "I am always right. Does she live?"
"Of course. She is but asleep." Dominic narrowed his eyes up at the great beast. "Why does it matter so much to you?"
"She is important."
"Important how?"
Ador widened his eyes in a human attempt to look innocent. He failed miserably.
Dominic did not like the dragon's interest in her. He did not want Cassandra tangled up in whatever schemes might be afoot. "Keep her out of this."
Ador huffed, filling the wind with noxious fumes. His talons raked the earth, deep gouges of uprooted grass and dark soil. "I can no more keep her out of this than you can, bastard. Take my advice. You cannot fight the hand of fate."
"The hell I can't."
That enormous scaled head wove back and forth. "You have been forced to become a warrior. To fight for your survival. But there are some things you cannot fight. The girl is caught up in this as surely as you, because love binds you both."
"I will not let it," insisted Dominic.
"Still you fight it. Human stubbornness defies all reason!" The sky chose that moment to rumble with thunder, the wind increasing with the sound, ruffling the edges of Ador's leathery wings. He spread them, pitting his strength against that of the tempest. "Heed my advice, bastard. Stop fighting your love for the girl. Allow it to strengthen you, for I fear that you will have need of it. And do not fight the girl's role in your life. You will have need of that as well."
"I am tired of your advice, Ador. It has brought me nothing but confusion. Nothing but pain."
"You speak of more than the girl. You have seen inside Mor'ded's door to Elfhame."
Yes, Dominic had seen. And he wished he hadn't. Guilt and sadness washed through him. "Does Elfhame really exist somewhere?"
The sky crackled again. "Of course it does. But it takes more than one elven lord to open the gate."
A drop of rain smacked Dominic on the head. He rose, his wife a negligible weight in his arms. "I must get her to shelter." He walked along the vine-covered wall, noting wryly that Cassandra had been but a few steps away from the gate. Of course, she would not have recognized it as such, nor would she have known the elven word to open it. He would have to teach it to her. "Shez'urria."
The vines shuddered, untangling leaf and thorn, peeling back from a wall with naught but a jagged crack between the stone blocks to indicate the gate. With a moan and a teeth-jarring screech of rock shifting on stone, the gate opened.
Cassandra stirred in his arms, a frown marring the smoothness of her brow. Dominic stroked the back of his hand across her cheek, and although she still did not wake, her skin smoothed and she returned to a peaceful slumber.
The sky rumbled again and Dominic looked back at Ador. A crack of lightning split the gray clouds, illuminating the dragon for a moment, the light reflecting off the black shiny scales, making them glow an unearthly hue.
Dominic took a few steps toward the gate and realized that Ador would not follow. He had never entered the elven garden.
"You never come inside," he shouted over the rising storm.
The wind buffeted the dragon's wings, raising him up and down, talons scrabbling in the earth. "No. The garden is but a sad, pale copy of Elfhame, as much an illusion as Mor'ded's doorway."
Dominic fought for calm, grief washing through him again. "Damn you for telling me of that, Ador. Damn you for making my life even more of a lie than it already is."
"I see you're in no mood to talk of it yet." The dragon bowed his massive head, as if he grieved as much as Dominic. "Just remember that Mor'ded has made your life. I but seek to help you change it." And then he quickly took flight. The wind robbed him of his usual smooth glide through the sky, throwing him back and forth, Ador battling to keep to his path back to the palace tower.
"Do you?" muttered Dominic, entering the relative shelter of the walled garden. "Will the changes you seek make my life any better?"
But the dragon was no longer here to answer him, and only the frantic melody of the garden responded to his words. He crossed the gravel paths, keeping close to the walls to shield Cassandra from the storm. The rain held its breath until he reached the shelter of the pavilion and then came down in a sudden deluge, as if the sky had tilted a bucket over the garden.
Dominic hoped Ador made it safely back to his tower.
He settled in the middle of the pavilion, warming the surface of it with his magic, and adjusted his wife in his arms. He did not have to let her go. Not yet, for his father's attention was elsewhere and he feared no spies in the garden.
He smoothed the hair back from her face, allowed himself to look his fill of her. The arch of her brow, the fullness of her mouth. She looked like a princess, despite her torn dress and wild hair. A damsel from some fairy tale, where wickedness could be fought with the honesty of a steel blade and evil spells could be broken with but a kiss.
He lowered his mouth to hers with a tenderness he did not have to hide.
But this was no fairy tale and she did not wake. He frowned down at her, quickly suppressing a rise of panic. She would wake. Soon. He would think no other way.
He spared a thought to heal his own wounds; then with the patience of a man who had won many a skirmish with the surprise of an ambush, the general settled in to wait, while the man reflected on his conversation with a dragon and the discovery of a lie too evil to be borne.
No, his life was no fairy tale with the promise of an easy happy ending.