The couple passed him where he stood within the shadows of one of the king’s castle walls. They laughed together, Isabeau’s lilting giggles playing harmony to Cederic’s seductive chuckles. Ballard watched them until they disappeared into the crowd milling about the inner bailey. Of all the lovers Isabeau took, none was more dangerous to him than Cederic of Granthing. A clever vassal of lesser power than Ballard but of equal ambition, his lands bordered the other side of Isabeau’s dower properties. Ballard suspected at some point in the near future, he’d have to kill Cederic. He looked forward to that day.
----------*****------------
Ballard liked the gloom of winter, its sickly light and the rattle of sleet against the horn shutters that kept the full blast of freezing wind out of the solar. Clotted in shadows thinned by the low fire in the hearth, the chamber held his secrets and hid his twisted figure. Here in the darkness he could almost forget the curse, the suffering it brought and the guilt that made him willingly bear it. His hands ached, as did his back and shoulders. Ambrose would tease and say age had finally reached him, though both men knew otherwise. The flux coursed through his blood in a poisoned tide, heralding the curse’s rise and the havoc it wreaked on his mind and body.
A set of stinging jabs along his shin and calf yanked him from his musings. A rose vine, so dark a green as to appear black had crept through the space left by a broken shutter slat and crossed the solar to reach his chair. It twined around his leg, sinking thorns like grappling hooks into his breeches. They pierced flesh, anchoring the vine to his inner thigh. Ballard swallowed a groan at the sharp tug of thorns on punctured skin but kept still. He had no wish to add to the scars earned from previous wrestling matches with Isabeau’s malevolent rose.
Blood trickled hot to his ankle as the vine finally halted its sinuous climb at his hip. Tipped by a flower as lush and red as royal velvet, the plant arched upward until it hung eye-level with his gaze. There it stopped, swaying gently back and forth. Petals, neither blackened nor withered by the freeze, curled in pristine beauty.
Despite the pain needling his skin from calf to groin, Ballard smiled. “Eager for the flux are we, witch’s pet? Want to see the beast chained?” The hypnotic swaying never altered. “Sorry to disappoint. Roses don’t grow in dungeons.”
The rose struck at him. Ballard jerked away a half second too late, and a curved thorn scored his jaw. He clenched the vine in his fist, ignoring the blood that seeped through his fingers and down the back of his hand as it looped around his wrist and spiked more thorns into his palm. The rose writhed in his grip, petals opening and closing on a hiss. He cupped the flower, admiring its soft caress against his palm and over his claws. The perfumes of rose and death drifted to his nostrils. He gently squeezed, stifling the angry hiss.
A reciprocal pain burst behind his eyes, making them water. He ignored the agony and crushed the rose a little more. How very tempting to strip every petal off the stem and smear each one under his boot. The side of his face throbbed, a twin warning to the pain behind his eyes. Ballard relaxed his grip, but the rose remained where it was, bound to his palm by the nest of black thorns embedded in his skin. He caressed a wet petal with a fingertip. “Whose blood made this so beautiful, Isabeau? Yours or mine?”
The vine wrenched itself free. Ballard gasped and arched in his chair as thorns ripped flesh and cloth, taking bits of both as it slithered along the floor toward the window. The rose, glowing scarlet in the hearth’s sullen light, offered a last hiss before disappearing over the sill.
Ballard followed the crimson trail left in its wake and limped to the window. He opened the shutters in time to watch the rose scuttle down the keep wall to entwine with the web of vines and blooms spread across the tower’s northern face. Even in the dead of winter, the brambles frothed with green leaves and flowers in full, ravenous bloom.
Ballard’s bloodied palm slipped over the ice-sheathed woof of the casement. “Mercy, Isabeau,” he entreated. The plant stirred once more, every blossom turning its face toward the fortress gates and away from him
He looked to the gates and caught sight of a cloaked horseman emerging from the narrow barbican. A pack horse plodded behind him. Both paused, and the rider raised a hand in greeting. Ballard saluted him in return. Hauled back to Ketach Tor by the rising flux, Gavin had returned from his journey to the outside world. All of Ballard’s hopes rested on the day he might see his son depart Ketach Tor forever, finally freed from the prison of his inheritance.
Shadows cast by torches trailed Ballard down the stairs that wound from the keep’s second floor to the great hall. He breathed in the fragrance of the rosemary and sage Magda used to scent the water she sprayed across the rushes. Gavin had finally given up wheedling her to abandon the practice and lay down the woven rugs he’d brought back from his many travels.
Ketach Tor’s formidable cook and housekeeper met Ballard in the kitchen. She held a mortar in one hand and wielded a pestle like a club with the other. “What do you want?” Her gaze traveled over him, pausing at his cheek and hand before moving on to the glistening ribbons of blood that striped his leg and splotched his low boot. She motioned to him to sit at one of the benches near the hearth. “The witch’s familiar come to visit you again?”
Ballard sat with a pained grunt and stretched out his bloodied leg. “Aye, and made sweet love to me.”
“One of these days, someone’s going to hack that blasted weed to bits, and I want to be there to help.” Magda pointed a finger at him. “Stay put. I’m off to get bandages and honey.” She abandoned him for the larder, and he took the time to shuck his boots and carefully peel off his torn breeches.
The wounds left by the thorns added to the mural of scars decorating his thigh and calf--souvenirs from long-ago battles when he’d fought men instead of demonic plants. These he could look upon and not have his stomach twist. The others he bore made him turn away. Wild magic, fueled by hatred hundreds of years old, had carved an illustrated testament of his failures into every part of his body.
He jerked when a pile of bandages landed in his lap. Magda set a crock next to him and dropped to her knees for a better look at his injuries. She motioned to one of her maids hovering nearby. “Fill a bowl with hot water and bring towels.”
Ballard held still as she poked and prodded first at his hand and then at the line of torn flesh gouged from calf to groin. He growled when she pressed on a particularly tender spot. “You’re about as gentle as a battering ram with those hands.”
She sniffed. “You complain more than a babe with a wet nappy. Now be quiet and let me work.”
The rustle of robes against the stone floor heralded Ambrose’s arrival. The sorcerer almost danced into the room. Ballard’s eyebrows rose. Gavin’s return trips to Ketach Tor were bittersweet for the remaining denizens of the keep—joy at his safe return, sadness that the flux drew him home. While Ambrose always celebrated Gavin’s homecoming as much as everyone else, he was practically jumping out of his skin with excitement this time. “Gavin’s returned,” he declared in the voice of a man announcing the arrival of a conquering hero.
Ballard spoke through clenched teeth as Magda did her best to excavate his veins out of his leg with a wet cloth. “I saw him from my window.”
“He’s brought someone with him.”
The breath in Ballard’s lungs froze. He didn’t notice when Magda spread a sticky dollop of honey across three of the puncture wounds and covered them with bandages.
She cast a doubtful look at Ambrose. “Has he now?”
Stupid boy! Stunned by the news, Ballard couldn’t wrap his mind around such a foolish action. Whip-smart and cautious, Gavin had never shown a hint of impulsivity, but this—to bring someone with him to Ketach Tor, and during the rise of a flux... “Tell him to get rid of them,” he snarled. “Now.”
“I’m afraid it’s not so easy.” Ambrose spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “He’s brought a woman. She’s waiting in the hall with him.”
This time Magda abandoned her role of nursemaid and stood. “The hall?” She tossed the bandages on the table, and Ambrose took a wary step back. “With no fire and it sleeting outside.” She flapped a hand at her daughter hovering nearby. “Clarimond, get that hearth lit, and bring her to the kitchens to warm up!”
Ballard gaped at her. “Now?” He glanced down at himself, half naked, smeared in honey and wrapped in bandages, his scars and disfigurements on display. “Won’t this be a welcoming sight.”
Magda tossed his breeches and boots at him. “Hide yourself, you daft fool. I’ll physic you later.”
