Dragon Rose(66)

I did not know what the words meant, but something about them transfixed me, kept me from pursuing my headlong flight to destruction.

The tower trembled, as if some giant’s blow had shaken it to its very core. I stumbled and put out a hand to grasp one of the bedposts, clung to it as the shuddering increased. Behind me I heard a tinkle of broken glass as the goblet on my bedside table crashed to the floor. Theran fell to his knees, hand still clutched at his throat. Even through the commotion I could hear his labored breaths.

Then he let out a wordless cry, piercing as the dragon’s keening I had heard before, only this time somehow worse because it emanated from a human throat. At once the shaking eased, and all went still again. I remained clinging to the bedpost, unsure as to whether the earthquake or whatever it was would begin again.

Theran put out both hands on the rug beneath him, using them to force himself slowly upward. For a long moment he stood there, unmoving, and at last he reached up to push back the hood of his cloak.

I gasped then, and let go of the bedpost. Unwise, because my knees trembled so violently I wasn’t sure I wasn’t about to collapse to the ground myself. It wasn’t possible. This had to be yet another vision from a fevered mind.

For the man who stared back at me was the stranger from the portrait.





Chapter Fifteen





“It can’t be,” I breathed. “You aren’t real.”

“Oh, but I am. You have broken the curse, Rhianne.”

I shook my head. This was all happening too fast. And yet, somehow as I gazed at him, I felt something within me shift, as if some alien presence removed its hand, allowing me to return to myself. That fog of madness, of delusion, seemed to be burning away, lifting like the morning’s mist.

“Yes,” he said, and stepped forward before pausing, as if unsure what my next reaction might be. Instead, he gestured toward the painting. “That was the stipulation the mage laid down, so many years ago. I would wear that dread form until the woman I married could see past it to the truth of my being. He did not seem overly concerned that such a thing would ever happen.”

No, I supposed I could understand that. After all, the odds were not very good that any given Bride would have any artistic talent, let alone my odd true-seeing dreams. And I supposed that was what the portrait had turned out to be, as if some force had guided that strange gift of mine and channeled it all into the portrait. No wonder it had consumed me…

Seeing him like this, hearing the voice I so loved emerge from the face that had possessed me during the last few months…well, it was almost more than I could bear. I sat down on the bed abruptly, as if my legs could no longer support my weight.

“I know it must be a great deal to take in,” he said, as he moved around so he faced me more or less directly. “It’s a bit overwhelming for me as well.” And he grasped one of the gloves and pulled it off, then stopped to stare down at his exposed fingers as if he had never seen them before.

Not in five hundred years, at least.

He was pale, very pale, as anyone would be whose flesh hadn’t seen the sun in centuries. Otherwise, though, he looked exactly as he did in the painting. His hands were beautiful, too, with long, clever fingers. I thought I should very much like to sketch them.

Later, I told myself. At least, I supposed there would be a later. We were still husband and wife, even if he was no longer the Dragon.

I could not let myself be distracted, even though every movement, every shift in expression, revealed something of him that I had not yet painted. The portrait had not captured the true glint of his blue-green eyes, or the lift of his eyebrows. And I could not let myself focus too closely on his mouth…

“What happened to me?” I asked him. “Why was I behaving in such a way?”

If the questions surprised him, he did not show it. A slight tightening of his lips, perhaps, before he replied, “It was the curse, Rhianne. It was all the curse.”

“Then perhaps you should tell me something of it. Or is that still forbidden?”

“No. All those constraints are gone now as well. I am free.”

Then I will be free…

Only this was not the freedom that poor, doomed Bride had imagined, and not the freedom the curse had tried to impose on me. I shivered then, thinking of how close I had come to being yet another grave in that quiet, lonely cemetery.

“You are cold,” Theran said, apparently noticing my shudder.

“No, I am fine.” I realized then I faced him clad in my chemise and my dressing gown, which had come halfway undone during our struggles. To tighten it now would only draw more attention to my disarray, and so I did my best to ignore it. “Please, tell me what happened. I think I deserve to know.”

“Of course you do.” He turned away from me for a moment so he could fetch one of the side chairs from where it sat under a window, and positioned it so he could sit facing me. “Many years ago, not long after I had inherited Black’s Keep, I went to visit Lystare. Like many other young men visiting the capital for the first time, I amused myself with the usual carousing and wild living. It was a chance to taste freedom, if only briefly—I knew at summer’s end I must return home and choose a suitable wife from the candidates my father had chosen for me before he died. It was my duty, and I did not have any notion of shirking it. However, I met a young woman in Lystare.”