Dragon Rose(47)

I pushed those thoughts away and continued doggedly forward. Whatever had happened between Theran and me could wait. For the moment I only wanted to enjoy this brief taste of freedom, even if I knew it couldn’t last.

Had any of the other Brides come this way? Surely they, too, must have longed for their freedom, wished to flee. I wondered then at my easy escape. Did Theran not worry that one of his unwilling Brides might try to run away, run from the confinement of the keep and its cursed lord?

The forest fell away from me, and I emerged into a clearing, pale with the last remnants of summer’s straggling grass. Then I blinked and looked more closely at my surroundings, and realized it was not a true clearing…or at least not a natural one.

It was a graveyard.

Rows of grey headstones marched away from where I stood. They all appeared to be more or less uniform in size, coming up to around my knees. Some force seemed to compel me to approach the closest stone, although the dread rising in my throat had already begun to tell me what I would find.

Liselle, Beloved Bride.

“No,” I said aloud, although some part of me knew my denial was foolish. What else could have happened to all those young women, so that Theran would need a new wife every five or seven years or so?

Footsteps dragging, I moved to the next one. The name was different—Delianne—but this stone, too, said, “Beloved Bride.”

How could he have loved any of them? There were so many…so many, I realized. I tried to count, found the landscape blurred as my eyes filled with tears. At least sixty, probably more, but I could not tell for sure. And how much longer until I lay there as well, beneath a stone that read, Rhianne, Beloved Bride?

“My lady!”

The voice was male, but not Theran’s. Besides, he had never addressed me thus. I turned and saw Mat stumbling from the edge of the forest, his broad, handsome face tight with worry.

“Sar sent me to find you,” he said, pausing a few feet away from me. I noticed he studiously avoided looking at any of the headstones.

“Why does that not surprise me?” I responded. “How on earth did she even know where to look?”

“Dellah saw you go out through the door in the hedge, and she told Sar.”

So there had been eyes watching me, even though I hadn’t noticed them. No real surprise; Dellah’s domain was the kitchens, and I should have guessed that she might be able to note my comings and goings from one of that chamber’s several windows.

Not that it really mattered, considering what I’d found. What did any of it matter?

“Come, my lady,” he continued. “This is not place for you.”

“Not yet, anyway.”

His eyes widened a bit, and I saw him cross his fingers behind his back, making the sign against the evil eye. He did not, however, contradict me, but said only, “’Tis cold, my lady, and the clouds are coming back in. Best to get you back home.”

Home? I thought. Is that what Black’s Keep is supposed to be for me? It seems only a temporary way station, a stopping point before…before… And my mind hesitated and stuttered to a stop there, for I could not bear to give the horrible notion any further shape and form.

“All right,” I said wearily, for I had no doubt he would throw me over his shoulder like a sack of meal and carry me back that way if necessary. I might have been the Bride of Black’s Keep, but I was not the one who issued the orders.

The look of relief that passed over his features might have been comical under different circumstances. He nodded, said, “Very good, my lady,” and did not move until I had turned away from the forlorn little graveyard and begun moving toward the southwest, down the narrow trail that had brought me here.

It seemed in this, as in all else, I could only do as I was told.





Chapter Eleven





“So he did kill them,” I said baldly, as Sar set my muddy boots by the fire so she could brush the dirt away once they had dried.

She straightened and shot me an indignant look. “He did not lay a hand on any of those poor girls.”

“Do you really expect me to believe that they all died of an ague, or a fall down the stairs, or from eating the wrong type of mushroom? I know there are many ways to die in this world, Sar, but it does rather stagger comprehension to think they all died under perfectly innocent circumstances!”

Her hands tightened in her apron. “Believe what you like, but his lordship had nothing to do with any of their deaths.”

“Hmph,” I replied, and drank of the spiced wine she had brought me.

There had been no words of recrimination, no scolding. I’d had to remind myself that Sar was, in fact, a servant, and that it was not her place to question my actions, for I’d been certain I was about to receive the sort of dressing-down I hadn’t gotten since the time I was eleven and thought it a good idea to use my father’s glazes to paint my fingernails red. I’d overheard one of my mother’s acquaintances describing such a procedure taking hold in the court, after a visit by a Keshiaari princess who tinted her fingernails, and had thought it sounded like a jolly fun idea. My mother hadn’t thought it jolly at all, of course.

Sar hadn’t been jolly, either, her jaw tense and her mouth more than a little strained. She said nothing as Mat handed me over to her. I wasn’t exactly marched upstairs, but her manner told me that I had better not suggest anything else besides going straight to my rooms.