A Love Untamed (Feral Warriors #7)(64)

“Can you share with me . . . anything? Were you in love with Castin?”

“No. But I thought we were friends. We’d been lovers for nearly a year. He was one of the cheetah clan chieftain’s lieutenants. I met him when I attended one of the war-council meetings with my queen, Rayas.”

He stilled beneath her, his breath catching, his palm freezing on her head. “Mel . . . how long ago was this?”

She lifted up, peering down into his shocked face. “Five thousand years. In the weeks after the Sacrifice.”

He stared at her as if she’d grown a second head.

Melisande scowled. “Are you horrified that you just made love to an ancient?”

Slowly, he shook his head. “Awed. You were there at the time of the Sacrifice, in the time of the Daemons.”

“I was. And for almost a thousand years before. I’m quite old, Feral.” She started to push off him, and he lifted her, setting her beside him. Together, they rose and donned their clothing, boots, and weapons.

As she began to plait her hair, Fox strolled to the cave’s mouth and peered through. “The snow is piling up. We’re going to have trouble getting out.”

“They have no intention of letting us out. And where will we go if they do?”

Fox turned back and placed another couple of logs on the fire. The smoke rose instead of filling the cave, telling her there must be an opening high in the ceiling they couldn’t see.

As Fox knelt to stoke the fire, he glanced at her, his eyes deep wells of compassion and curiosity. “Will you tell me more? About the past? About you?”

The barriers she’d erected were all gone now, burned away in the warmth of her newfound love. No longer did she feel the need to hide the past. Instead, with this male, she longed to share everything.

Fox knew he wasn’t going to like what Melisande had to say. The thought of anyone hurting her had his hands shaking with the need to rip off heads. But there was so much turmoil inside her, so much torment. He needed to understand what was going on if he ever wished to help her. And he wanted to help her, desperately.

As he stoked the fire, Melisande took a long, shuddering breath, her fingers plaiting her hair with quick, tense efficiency. “The Daemons were newly defeated, the Sacrifice but weeks old.”

Everyone knew the story, that both the Therians—all of whom were shape-shifters back in that time—and the Mage had pooled their great power to defeat the Daemons and lock them in the enchanted Daemon Blade. They didn’t call it the Sacrifice until years later, once they’d realized the horrible truth—that little of that power would ever return.

“I knew that the shifters were having trouble accessing their animals, but I didn’t know the extent of it,” she told him. “None of us did. When Castin extended an invitation to the cheetah clan’s celebration at the end of the war, I gladly accepted. He asked me to bring seven friends, and while requesting eight Ilinas to attend their event, and only eight, was odd, I didn’t question it. Most Ilinas can sing quite well and are born dancers and courtesans. We were highly sought out at such gatherings, as you can probably imagine. Highly prized. Requesting all that wished to attend, I would have understood. But he asked for eight.”

She looked away, a ripping sadness in her eyes that made him want to smash something. “I brought my seven best friends with me that night.”

Castin was going to die ten thousand deaths. Fox joined her, sitting beside her on the hard-packed dirt, where he could at once see her face and the cave’s entrance beyond the fire. He gave her knee a gentle squeeze.

Melisande continued. “At the end of one of our dances, the chieftain ordered his guards to bestow a gift upon each of us, a silver bracelet set with what appeared to be lumps of tar. He claimed it was a cheetah tradition to honor beloved guests with such, and he stood beside me as his warriors placed a bracelet around each of our wrists, Castin giving me mine. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the tar hid the red moonstones that stole an Ilina’s ability to mist. As soon as they got the moonstones around our wrists, they turned on us, knocking us out. They moved us miles from their caves and warded the new caves so that our sisters and queen would never find us. And they never did.”

“Why?” He’d tried to remain quiet while she spoke, but he couldn’t. “Why would they do such a thing?”

Melisande turned her delicate face to him, the anguish in those eyes slaying him. “Because the chieftain believed that Ilina power might be able to restore their animals if only he found the right way to access it.” Her braid complete, she tossed it over her shoulder and looked down, drawing a thin line in the dirt with her fingernail. “And because I was a Ceraph.”

Fox frowned. “A Ceraph?”

She looked up. “It’s hard to explain. Most Ilinas are born through magic and ritual, as I was. But every dozen millennia or so, an Ilina is born who is something more. It’s said I was touched by divinity, by the goddess herself. And they call Ilinas like me Ceraphs.” She shrugged. “Angels.”

He stared at her.

A smile pulled at her mouth, but her eyes were sad. “Most of the Feral Warriors would have a laugh at that, wouldn’t they?” She shrugged. “My gift . . . to ease the torment of others . . . was considered the gift of grace from the goddess herself. It was that power the cheetah chieftain believed might heal his clan and restore their animals.”