As soon as the sharp words flew off her tongue, she wished she could have called them back. Colum’s temper had an ugly edge, and though he was usually careful to hide the worst of it from her, she knew better than to prod him into a rage.
He crossed the room in two strides, grabbing her by the upper arms and shaking her so hard the pins in her hair fell out and her curls tumbled around her shoulders and down her back. “I bargained for a wife, not some Fey’s whore who’ll take my name and title, then lock her legs against me. You want to talk about bargains?” He shook her again. “You made a bargain, too, Lady diSebourne. Before your family, a priest, and half the nobles of the northern lands, you swore an oath to be my wife, and by the gods you are going to honor your word.”
With a snarl of rage, he threw her on the bed. The bed frame knocked the night table and sent the bucket of ice chips and the bottle of pinalle crashing to the floor. Talisa rolled across the bed to the side opposite Colum. He lunged for her, but she evaded him, snatching up the candle lamp and raising it like a weapon as she backed towards the open window.
Her teeth bared in a smaller, more feminine version of her father’s wolfish snarl. “Do this and I’ll loathe you forever, Colum diSebourne,” she hissed. “You’ll never have anything of me that you don’t take by force. Never!”
For one dreadful moment, she thought he might take what he wanted anyway; but then, with a bitter oath, he spun away and stalked to the opposite side of the room, his chest heaving, his fists clenched.
“Gods, Talisa, you drive me mad.” For a moment, the boy who’d been her friend was there in his voice, hurt and lonely, too proud to ask for the kindness his heart ached for. “This isn’t what I want between us. I want what we had beforehecame.”
When they’d first wed, before Adrial had come into their lives, she’d shared Colum’s bed, if not with joy, at least with loving friendship. Now even the thought of that was more than she could bear. “Colum…I’m sorry….”
“As am I.” He drew a deep breath and his shoulders squared. “But you’re my wife, and you’re going to honor your vows.”
Before he could expand on that, a knock sounded at the door, and the muffled voice of Talisa’s brother Luce called, “Is everything all right in there? We heard a crash.”
Without taking his eyes from her, Colum called, “We’re fine, Luce. Your sister just knocked something over.”
“Ah. You all right, Tallie?”
Talisa clutched her robe tight. “I’m fine, Luce,” she called, but she didn’t lower the candle lamp still clutched like a weapon in her hand. “Colum and I were just…roughhousing.”
“Ah. Well, keep it down, would you? Parsi, Sev, and I have the room next door, and we’re turning in for the night. You know how cranky Sev gets when he doesn’t get his beauty sleep.”
Clomping boots marched down the hallway, and a door opened and closed. Then the sound of cheerful whistling filtered through the thin walls, accompanied by the voices of each of her brothers calling, “Good night, Colum. Good night, Tallie.”
“It seems your brothers are determined to afford you the time you say you need,” Colum observed with a bitter sneer. “Very well, then. You shall have it. We reach Kreppes in a week. I suggest you use that time to forget about your Fey lover.” Colum’s gray eyes, which at times could seem soft as doves, glittered like hot steel coins still glowing from the red-orange flames of the forge. “Because, one way or another, Lady diSebourne, our estrangement ends your first night on Sebourne land.”
He stalked from the room. He didn’t slam the door behind him. He closed it with very deliberate calm. Somehow, that seemed worse. Talisa sat there in silence, dragging air into her lungs as shock set her body trembling and tears burned her eyes.
She covered her face with shaking hands. A gasping sob burst from her throat and the tears fell from her eyes like hot rain.Oh, gods, what am I going to do?
In the woods a mile away from the Celierian inn, Adrial vel Arquinas fought his brother Rowan’s hold. “Let me go, scorch you!”
“And let you slit therultshart’s throat?” Rowan snarled back. “Flamed if I will!” He shook his brother hard, hoping to shake some sense into theshei’tanitsa-crazed madness of his mind. “Don’t you remember what Rain said? You can’t touch diSebourne. You sure as hell can’t kill him. You do, and you start a damned war.”
“He’s frightening her!” Adrial howled.
And for that Rowan wanted to slit the miserable maggot’s throat himself. No warrior worth his steel could watch another Fey’s mate suffer abuse without feeling the surge of killing Rage all Fey called the tairen rising in their souls. Though only the rarest and most powerful Fey, masters of all five magics, would ever see his tairen sprout wings and spout flame, that didn’t lessen the fierce, predatory killing instincts of the rest of them.
Rowan’s jaw clenched tight and only his desperate hold on his brother kept him from reaching for steel himself. Fire, Rowan’s own strongest magic, kindled in his eyes. Blessed gods, he ached to teach that spoiled, spinelessrultshartdiSebourne a scorching lesson about respecting women.
“Talisa!” Adrial cried out. Wild, whirling cones of Air spun around him, shredding leaves and branches from the nearby trees, while overhead a strong wind howled across the forest canopy. “She’s crying, Rowan.” His lips drew back in a snarl, brown eyes flaring bright with deadly magic. “He laid hands on her. If he does it again, I’ll kill him. War or no flaming war.”
“He’s her husband, Adrial,” Rowan reminded him. “To his mind, he has the right to lay hands on her.” Up until now, they’d been lucky. Talisa had managed to keep her husband at bay, but it was clear that brief blessing had ended. Rowan closed his eyes, offering up a quick plea for strength. Ah, gods, what a tangle.
Adrial’s body suddenly went limp and sagged in Rowan’s arms. Alarmed, Rowan loosened his tight grip on his brother. “Adrial?”
The blast of Air caught him off balance. He flung his arms out instinctively as his body flew backwards into the trees. As he tumbled, he saw his brother racing towards the Celierian inn.
«Adrial!» he cried. “Krekk!”He grunted as his body slammed into the trees and slid to the ground. By the time he cleared his head enough to follow, Adrial was gone.
“You shouldn’t be here.” Talisa turned to face Adrial as he slid his leather-clad legs over the sill of her open bedchamber window.
“Here is the only place in the world I should be.” The creaky slats of the inn’s wooden floor didn’t make a sound as Adrial crossed the room to sit beside her. When he drew her into his arms, she didn’t protest, but instead pressed her face into his throat and began weeping softly. For those tears alone, he could kill diSebourne without a qualm. If diSebourne hadn’t gone downstairs to cool his temper in a pint of ale…
“Oh, Adrial…what are we going to do? I don’t know how I can bear to let him touch me when the only man I want is you.”
