Midnight's Daughter(81)
I finally found my voice, although it wasn’t completely steady. “What… what was that?”
“Fey wine,” he said after a moment, his voice hoarse. “It has… lingering effects.”
I stared at him, speechless. That had been the remains of a diluted drought imbibed twelve hours ago? No wonder the stuff was regulated! In its pure form, it could drive a person mad.
Even if I hadn’t had the memory of his emotions, it would have been obvious that he’d enjoyed his work. My hand ran over him, and I almost came off the bed from the echo of that simple touch. Under that soft cotton he was hard as a rock. I would have thought I was incapable of feeling anything more, maybe for days, but I resonated with his need as if it were my own.
“You could use some attention.”
“Cela m’est égal,” he murmured, removing my hand and placing a light kiss on it. I frowned. He didn’t mind? Who did he think he was kidding? I wasn’t accustomed to leaving partners unsatisfied, and at the moment I was feeling extremely generous.
I used my free hand to trace the lean line of a thigh muscle with a fingertip, stopping just short of the hem of the towel, and his whole body quivered in response. That was more like it. Louis-Cesare covered both my hands with his own, raising them back over my head as his lips met mine in a long, sweet kiss. “If you wish to please me,” he murmured when we parted, his eyes amused for some reason, “obey me in this.”
I was about to ask what he meant when I tried to move my hands. And found that I couldn’t. “I will send for a healer,” he said, getting up.
It took me a few seconds to process the fact that he had actually tied me to the bed. “These won’t hold,” I told him furiously, tugging on the sheets he’d used for rope. The high thread count didn’t tear easily, though, and despite the fact that the headboard was already cracked, it didn’t seem to be giving, either. I finally realized that Louis-Cesare had wrapped the sheets around the sturdier frame, and it was metal. “Son of a bitch! Let me go this instant—I mean it!”
“Do not thrash about, Dorina, you will only injure yourself further. I will release you when the doctor arrives.”
I lay back, preparing to squelch the panic I should be experiencing at being confined. It hadn’t risen yet, but I had no doubts that it was only a matter of time. “There won’t be anything of this bedroom left by the time she gets here!” I warned him.
“Under normal circumstances, perhaps not. But your strength is considerably under par at the moment.”
“When I’m sane maybe,” I said, wrenching on the sheets. All that did was to tighten them further. “But this is sure to bring on a fit. And you’ve seen how much fun those can be.”
“Your control is not so poor, surely,” he said with a frown. “Mircea did not mention—”
I glared up at him. “Claire has been missing for more than a month.”
“What does that have to do—”
“She exerts a dampening effect on my fits. Without her, my control is slipping. Fast. Now let me up!”
He paused, but his eyes held what looked like genuine compassion, the earlier humor dissipating in the face of my distress. After a moment, he reached for the restraints. “I did not realize that the woman was so important—,” he began; then both of us swiveled toward the door. I’d been so distracted that I hadn’t heard it open, but the cooler wash of air from the hall had gotten my attention.
“I hate to interrupt,” Radu said, “but I was wondering if either of you did anything to cause the wards to fail just now?”
Chapter Nineteen
“My lord… I can explain—,” Louis-Cesare began, looking less than certain that he could do anything of the kind.
Radu held up a hand. “I am sure there is a perfectly good reason why my niece is naked and tied to her bed. I am also equally certain that I do not wish to hear it.”
Louis-Cesare’s hands fumbled a little, but they managed to get my wrists loose. I snatched up my jeans. “What’s wrong with the wards?”
“They went down a few—” Radu stopped as the windows abruptly darkened, almost like night had decided on an encore. “Well, that’s not right,” he said crossly.
I got to the windows a half second before Louis-Cesare. The view wasn’t encouraging. The sky boiled with greenish black clouds, laced through with silver streaks. The air pressure built in palpable waves, like a snake drawing its coils in closer and closer. A flash hit a decorative planting of three palms near the driveway, splitting one in half. The reverberation rocked the floor, sending vibrations up through my feet straight into my skull.
“This isn’t the right time of year for storms,” Radu was saying behind me. I didn’t answer, being too busy watching shadows shift in the vineyards beyond the house. Dark shapes unfurled leathery wings like tattered cloth in a breeze. Cold little pinpricks started running up and down my spine.
“’Du—when you say the wards fell, which ones exactly did you mean?” The shapes converged on the house, sweeping toward the window with the heavy wingbeat of large black birds. Below, I could hear something scrabbling with swordlike claws for purchase on the stucco.
“Why, all of them.” He moved closer to see what had caught my attention. “They’re on a common power source. I—”