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 Ca.s.sandra.

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. "Ca.s.sandra?"

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? d.a.m.n it, Ca.s.s, 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 b.u.mps.

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 Ca.s.sandra 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 Ca.s.s 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 Ca.s.sandra and then the other. "Do not make the mistake of transferring human attributes to my kind, b.a.s.t.a.r.d. 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 Ca.s.sandra 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 gra.s.s and dark soil. "I can no more keep her out of this than you can, b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Take my advice. You cannot fight the hand of fate."

"The h.e.l.l 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, b.a.s.t.a.r.d. 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 Ca.s.sandra 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.

Ca.s.sandra 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. "d.a.m.n you for telling me of that, Ador. d.a.m.n 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 ma.s.sive 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 Ca.s.sandra 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.

Ten.

Ca.s.sandra woke to the sound of a haunting melody and the feel of warm arms about her. Her eyes fluttered open to the sight of her husband's beautiful calm face. She caught a flicker of emotion in those midnight eyes, a sadness that startled and confused her. He blinked, and they returned to their usual cold hardness, but Ca.s.s still sensed something vaguely different in his demeanor.

"What the h.e.l.l did you think you were you doing?" he said in dulcet tones.

Ca.s.s sat up, and he dropped his arms, moving a bit away from her. "Where am I?" she asked, knowing perfectly well the answer, for the melody she'd heard from within the walls of the garden now rang clearly in her ears. But it gave her time to collect herself, and she glanced around with wide eyes.

The storm she'd predicted had broken, and they sheltered in a pavilion that looked to be made of marble but felt soft and pliable beneath her bottom. The rain created a sheer curtain beyond the roof and fell atop what she thought might be flowers of some sort, but their flat, round surface also reminded her of drums, except that when the rain beat upon them, they made ringing notes. The wind blew strongly now, and the whistling she'd heard before accompanied the ringing in harmony, and she searched for the source of that sound, her eyes widening even more as she discovered it.

The wind lifted the lavender petals of a plant and expanded them into long tubes that appeared to produce that whistling sound. As they waved and danced with the breeze the harmony changed, like the way fingers on a flute produced different notes. Just beyond that bed of flowers lay a patch of scarlet petals shaped like bells, the wind swaying them and producing the sound of thousands of tinkling chimes.

Ca.s.sandra looked up at Dominic in wonder. "Is this what Elfhame is truly like?"

His usually unexpressive face softened, and again Ca.s.s thought she detected an odd sort of sadness intermingled with anger before he quickly looked away and leaned against a pillar, the surface giving slightly with his weight. "I suppose."

Lady Ca.s.sandra stood and walked to the edge of the pavilion, breathing in the strange scents while her brain tried to match them with something familiar to her. Honey and roses, cinnamon and vanilla... perhaps clove and brandy? A myriad of fragrances she couldn't identify, and yet they seemed somehow familiar...

She glanced over her shoulder at her husband. "It smells like you."

He blinked, a sweep of long black lashes. "I come here often."

Ca.s.sandra looked out over the garden. Strange trees shaped into perfect circles, peculiar bushes growing in neat rows, white sparkling stones raked into smooth grooves, still ponds beneath miniature waterfalls, and cl.u.s.tered betwixt and between, tidy beds of bizarre flowers. "It's so... orderly."

"Indeed." His voice dropped so low, Ca.s.s strained to hear his next words above the sound of the music. "Father once told me that's why he made this place. To remind him of what he left behind."

She turned and faced him. "He must miss his homeland very much."

"Father finds order very boring, Lady Ca.s.sandra."

She frowned, trying to puzzle that out, but he moved closer to her and her body tingled with awareness and she lost her thought. He wore no coat, just fawn breeches tucked into brown boots and a white linen shirt carelessly b.u.t.toned, revealing his smooth throat and the upper contours of his muscular chest. The cloth, and even his leather boots, had been punctured and torn, a testament to the fight he'd waged to save her from the vine guardian.

"What are you doing here?"

She blurted the truth. "Looking for you."

"Why?" He reached out for her hand, fingering the damp sleeve of her gown, revealing the jagged tears in the fabric from the grip of those deadly vines. "It could have killed you, you know."

Ca.s.s shuddered. "This place. Everywhere I turn there are hidden dangers. How do you manage to live like this?"

"You get used to it." His beautiful face lay perilously close to her own. "What do you want from me?" he murmured.

Ca.s.sandra looked into the devil's face. If only he didn't have the beauty of an angel, her body might not have betrayed her. All thought of the Rebellion and her task and even the plight of England faded from her mind. She almost hated herself for the way she longed for him, and shyness made her admit it in a roundabout manner. She blushed. "You have been neglecting your duty."

He narrowed those deep black eyes. "I forget you're anxious to secure your place here as mother to my children."

Fie, she liked that excuse. "Indeed. I do not want to give your father a reason to be angry with me."

"Father's anger is nothing to fear. His boredom and suspicion are another matter." He stepped away from her, leaned casually against the pillar again, looking out over the garden. The wind plastered his linen shirt against his chest, blew his loose silver hair in streams behind his elegantly pointed ears. "But you needn't have worried. Father's attention is... elsewhere."

Ca.s.sandra hugged her shoulders. The temperature had dropped considerably with the storm, but her chill came from his manner. "He left the palace?"

"Aye."

"What for?"

"That's none of your concern. You should have just been grateful his absence allowed me to stay away from you."

She should never have admitted to herself that she was half in love with him. That realization prevented her from dismissing his rejection as she once had... and suddenly Ca.s.s could no longer keep up any pretense with him. She felt as if he'd run a dagger through her heart, and she allowed her voice to reflect her feelings. "I did not believe you found your duty so distasteful."

He continued to stare at the falling rain, but his muscular shoulders stiffened beneath the white linen. "Do not-"

"I am a fool," confessed Ca.s.sandra. "I thought you found pleasure with me. Despite everything... I thought you had come to care a bit for me." Why had she even imagined she could ever mean anything to him? She collapsed on the soft surface of the pavilion, hugging her shoulders even harder.

"Stop this," commanded Dominic.

"What?" Ca.s.s almost laughed. "Admitting what a simpleton I've been? I should have listened when you told me you had no human feeling. But I have no standard to judge a man, no experience with courtship and love games. Instead, I run after you like some love-struck little schoolgirl. I allow myself to become a laughingstock among the ton."

He turned toward her then; she could feel his eyes upon her but she refused to look up into that cold black gaze.

"You do not understand," he whispered.

"Oh, but I do. This shall be my final lesson, sir. I should thank you, I suppose, for teaching me the different ways a man can tell falsehoods with his touch."

"Stop it," he commanded again. She felt him crouch next to her. His warm hands fell on her shoulders and gave her a gentle shake. "I can bear no more of this."