Nightborn

“I am not a spy.” She jerked her chin away and turned her face back toward the road.



“At the château, and later, in your room, you were not bespelled.” When she said nothing, he demanded, “If I cannot compel you, they why did you behave as if I had?”



She moved her shoulders. “I serve the council.”



“Is that your answer to every question?”



“There is nothing more I can tell you.” She pressed her lips together before she asked in a softer voice, “When your master gives you an order, does he explain it to you? When you command your guard, do you offer them reasons as to why they should obey?”



“No,” he admitted. “Never.”



“It is the same for us.” She touched the place on her sleeve that covered the tresoran tattoo on her inner arm. “We take an oath. We are commanded; we obey.”



She wasn’t lying—her scent would have changed—but he sensed that a much more complicated version of the truth lay concealed by her simple statements. Since he could not bring her under his influence, he couldn’t compel her to elaborate, either.



“You have never engaged the enemy,” he guessed out loud, and was surprised again to see her nod. “That is why the council ordered you to bring me along. To serve as your guard and your blade.”



One corner of her mouth curled. “You sound as if you are insulted.”



He should have been, and would be, had he not come to the same conclusion. “The Kyn are more accustomed to having mortals serve us.”



“We must both do things unfamiliar to us,” she agreed. “But we can take comfort in that we serve the same purpose.”



They both lapsed into silence. She had clipped short the nails on her long fingers, Korvel noted, and more of the faint, odd scars covered both hands from knuckles to wrists. Despite the evidence of the wounds she had suffered in the past, her hands looked strong and capable, as they had felt when she had touched him. He dragged his thoughts away from those moments and instead wondered why her fingers were bare. She should have been wearing the traditional plain gold band presented to a novice when she took her vows and became a bride of Christ.



Perhaps she left it behind at the convent, with her habit and her rosary. Why had the council permitted her to become a nun in the first place? Because no one would suspect her.



She did not look at all like a nun now, however. Korvel eyed the boy’s cap on her head, wishing she would take it off. No mortal female he had ever known, not even Alexandra Keller, had possessed such long, beautiful hair.



“Why do you never cut your hair?” he heard himself ask.



“It is a personal vanity,” she said. “My father always kept it short when I was a child. Why was yours so long?”



“I kept forgetting to attend to it.” Korvel decided her father was an idiot. He wanted to unpin her braids and unravel them, one by one, so that he might comb his fingers through the fiery golden strands and feel their silkiness against his skin once more.



Stop thinking about her damn hair.



She turned off the road from Garbia to take a ramp onto a wider, busier roadway. “Do you know Marseilles?”



“I have not been here since the monarchy fell,” he said, glad for the distraction, “and then came only to smuggle my kind across the channel.”



She frowned. “That was a terrible time to visit.”



“It was.” He didn’t want to think about the mortal madness and mass murder he had witnessed during the French Revolution. “How did you come to be so familiar with the city?”



“My father frequently traveled there on business.” She pulled into the next lane to pass a slower-moving van and just as deftly changed the subject. “I have never been to England. Is it as miserable as my countrymen say?”



Korvel felt amused. The poor opinion the French held of his homeland was one that had been perpetuated since the time of William the Conqueror, and still showed no signs of ever changing. “Most of our cities are as old and crowded as yours, and the people equally self-absorbed. Our weather is not as fair as yours, but the countryside is not so different. Garbia reminds me of the village where I was born.”



“Never tell anyone in Garbia that,” she advised. “Do you ever go back to visit your people?”



“No.” Korvel’s eyelids drooped as he thought of the night he had been dragged from his bed by the old baron, who had informed him of his mother’s death simply by tossing him out into the snow before bolting the doors against him. “The last of my mortal kin died many centuries ago.”



“I forget how long you have lived.” She glanced at him. “I don’t mean to offend you, Captain. I know that I should speak only when spoken to in your presence; I have simply never met one of you in person.”



“I do not mind your talking to me.” Something about what she said vexed him, but he didn’t know why. Nor did he want to talk about the Kyn. “What is it like living in a convent filled with blind women?”



“I’m never scolded for getting a sunburned nose when I forget to wear my hat in the garden,” she said, her voice wry. “Nor does anyone complain about the stains I can’t get out of their aprons, or the poor quality of my mending. Well, except for the time when Sister Paulette forgot to close a gate, and Saint Paul decided to pay a visit to the laundry.”



“You had a visitation from a saint?”



“A goat,” she advised him gravely. “The sisters named them all after the apostles. Saint Paul is the largest and noisiest, and he hates everyone but Father Robere. I think that’s why he’s always the first one to stray. He’s forever trying to escape all these women around him.”



Korvel watched her face as she described some of the wayward goat’s antics. Every nun he had ever encountered had been stern faced and thin lipped, but not Sister Simone. As she spoke her pretty features came alive, while her mouth curved and pouted and framed every word as if it were something delicious to be tasted. In her chamber she had not fought nor returned his kiss, but her lips had parted for him and surrendered her mouth to his. He imagined her atop him, her mouth caressing a path down his chest, her breath warming his flesh, her hair entwined in his hands as he guided her, gently but deliberately, until she opened those lovely, soft lips to taste the aching swell of his cock head—



God in heaven, would he never stop thinking about having her?



Simone seemed oblivious to his silent plight as she continued her story. “.…#x200B;and, of course, I had to lure them out of the vegetable garden. Luckily for me they like blackberries more than turnip tops. It wasn’t until I had the last of them penned that I noticed Saint Paul was still missing. I am boring you.”



“No.” That came out too harshly, so he tried again. “Not at all. What happened next?”



“I searched the fields, the barn, the drying sheds, and even the house, but there was no sign of him.” She sighed. “By noon I decided he had made good his escape, and went to start the laundry. There I discovered every basket chewed and trampled, and shreds of what had been the laundry scattered to the four corners. All of the aprons had vanished. Finally I found Saint Paul sleeping peacefully under the washbasin, his belly swollen, and an apron string still caught in his teeth.”



“They will eat anything,” Korvel said. “What did you do with him?”



“First we waited to see whether he would explode,” she admitted. “When he didn’t, Mother said the crime would also be the punishment. And it was, for Saint Paul soon learned that what goes in must also come out.”



“How many aprons did he eat?”



“After three days of bloating and belching, he finally slung out three in his cud, strings and all.” Her lips twisted. “Now all I have to do is flap my apron at him and he runs for the pen.”



Chapter 6



S



imone liked the sound of the Englishman’s laugh. It curled around her, silky and warm, like a cashmere shawl. Like his voice, it also had a rasping quality to it, as if it hadn’t been used in a long time. As soon as it trailed away she wanted to hear it again, to feel its deep resonance before the coldness of her duty froze the last feeling from her heart. My duty. Her eyes stung, and her throat grew tight.



For all the years she had lived at the convent, Simone had always known this would someday happen. She had carried the threat of it every day, like an invisible yoke. The weight of her duty, like the irrational guilt she felt over failing to be a true Derien, dragged at her. Not once in all the generations that preceded Simone had anyone refused to carry on the family’s obligations; her rebellion had put an abrupt end to seven hundred years of tradition held sacred by the Deriens. She carried so many unforgivable sins, but the bargain was the worst. She had tried to convince herself that it was the price of her freedom, but she had been its prisoner ever since making the promise to her father.



Simone didn’t have to look at Korvel to know he was watching her again. He would also know how miserable she felt; Flavia had said the Kyn could smell emotions and lies. But he would assume that she was merely missing her home, and she could divert his attention as simply as he had hers. “What is it like being captain of the high lord’s guard?”



“I never sunburn or garden,” he admitted gravely. “But once a hungry mare forced me and the entire garrison to improve the quality of our mending.”



He told her a story about a practical joke played by one of his men on another that backfired badly. The warrior had borrowed a mare from a neighboring farmer and left her in the quarters of another Kyn with whom he had quarreled. Scattering grain around the room in hopes that she would wreak havoc on the man’s possessions, the joker had left to join the rest of the garrison for training. His only mistake was not securing the door, or knowing of the mare’s fondness for eating anything shiny.



“She got out and went from chamber to chamber. By the time we returned from the lists we found she had been at every coat, shirt, shoe, and pair of trousers left out within her reach. Not a single button remained on any of them.” He shook his head, remembering. “Only when I sent for the wardrobe master to repair the garments was I informed that he was away in London on a buying trip, and would not return for another week.”