Spellbinder (Moonshadow #2)

Back in the large, familiar room, she left the doors open, lit a fire in the fireplace, and also lit several candles in nearby candelabras. Picking the lute up from its cradle, she plucked at the strings and adjusted the frets until she was satisfied with the tuning.

Would he come? Did he dare?

If he did, and she killed him, it was going to look premeditated. There was no hiding the knife she had strapped to one arm, or taking back what she had said in the inn.

So be it. This was now the pair of dice she had to throw.

Settling on the footstool, she began to play, easily, gently, the kind of songs one might choose to play for practice, if one needed to practice. Angling her head, she listened for sounds outside the door.

She heard people pausing to listen, comment to each other, and then move on. Nobody stepped inside the hall to disrupt her at her music. That was okay. She wasn’t in any hurry.

Then there was a single pair of footsteps that stopped outside the doors. They didn’t move on.

Like the afternoon, a shadow passed over her again, and the light from the fireplace and the candles dimmed. A dark, gentle voice whispered, He will be faster than you, and stronger. Be ready.

She caught her breath. Now she knew for a certainty Lord Azrael had heard and responded to her prayer.

She had set her telepathy earrings aside, so that Morgan couldn’t distract her from her purpose if he found her. Still, she reached out to the dark voice, whispering back, I’ll be ready.

The darkness settled around her like a cloak of shadows. It was a hell of a thing to know a god had taken the time to notice you. Her fingers shook, and she had to concentrate fiercely to steady her playing.

Valentin walked into the room, and unhurriedly, he closed and locked the doors behind him. Taking in deep, steady breaths, she told him, “You’re not welcome here.”

“I am welcome wherever I choose to go in this place,” Valentin responded. “You speak above your station, musician.”

Strolling toward her, he looked the epitome of Light Fae entitlement, confident, arrogant, and relaxed.

Anticipatory.

Her muscles tightened. He was not the only one who was anticipating the encounter. She murmured, “If you don’t leave now, this will turn out badly for you.”

“So much cockiness for a human,” he said, circling around her. “How could you possibly think this might go badly for me? I am stronger, faster, and far older than you. I am trained and experienced.”

After a moment’s hesitation, she gritted her teeth and set the lute aside. While not her instrument of choice, it was still far too beautiful to allow it to be ruined. Standing, she turned to face him.

“So you rape,” she said. “You are a rapist. You believe you have the right to take anything and anyone you want. To force your will on them. To make them do your bidding. To deny them their own free will.”

He smiled. The light from the fireplace glittered in his eyes. “You protest too much, my dear,” he told her. “This doesn’t have to be an unpleasant encounter. I believe you will enjoy this far more if you simply let yourself go.”

She tilted her head as she studied him. “You know, I think you’re right. Come take me if you can.”

“You are a true delight.” He laughed. “And, oh yes, I can.”

When he walked toward her, she strode forward to meet him.

*

Morgan was glad to leave another frustrating day behind as he climbed over the rooftops to Sidonie’s room. That afternoon he had finished going through the last of the texts. There hadn’t been anything useful to use in summoning Azrael, and he continued to fail to create a summoning spell himself.

He had tried various tricks, but nothing worked. He couldn’t even successfully create a general summoning spell for any god. The geas had clamped down, disrupting his thought patterns and hampering his Power.

Despite their best-laid plans, he might have to go to Earth after all to search for a spell. Isabeau could have something useful in her personal collection, but she had never allowed him to see her books on magic, and she’d expressly forbidden him from accessing the library. Maybe when Robin returned, he could sneak in to look at the titles to see if she might have something they could use.

Sliding down the iron pipe attached to the inn’s gutter, Morgan leaped over the balcony railing. The rising moon was only half-full, but the pale square of the note pinned to the balcony table was immediately apparent. He didn’t have to glance inside to know the room was empty. He could sense it from where he stood.

Striding over to the table, he snatched up the note.

Go back. I can’t see you tonight.

Wrongness curled around him like the smoke from a burning building.

Sidonie didn’t write that Isabeau had asked for her hour of music late in the day. She didn’t ask him to wait for her. Instead, she told him to leave. Why hadn’t she asked him to wait?

The balcony doors were closed and locked. Looking in the room, he saw the sheets had been stripped from the bed, and a cleaning bucket sat on the floor by the door.

She had washed the room clean of his scent. She hadn’t asked for him to wait, because she wasn’t expecting to come back.

Placing the flat of his hand against the balcony door, he tilted his head as if to listen to whatever may have happened inside that would have made her leave.

It wasn’t something Morgan had done. He would swear to it. If he had done something, Sidonie would think through the issue, then talk to him about it, carefully hitting all the important points. Besides, when he had left her early that morning, she had been sleepy, relaxed, and affectionate.

No, something had happened during the day, yet she’d had enough freedom to clean the room and leave the note. She’d felt secure enough to write the note, and confident enough that he would find it, but she still hadn’t offered any explanation. Why?

Because she didn’t want him to know what she was going to do.

His hand tightened to a fist as he pressed it against the door.

She didn’t want him to know, because what she was doing was dangerous. She would have told him virtually anything else. She would have told him if it was something they could do together.

She would have told him if it was something Morgan could have fixed, but there were two things constraining him—the geas and his dwindling supply of hunter’s spray.

And anything related to those two constraints led back to the castle.

He didn’t have to waste time tracking her. He didn’t know why, but he knew where she’d gone.

If he followed her, he would be using the last of his hunter’s spray to avoid detection. She could have warned him to go home for that reason alone. But as he glanced back into the room, at how carefully she had left everything, the sense of wrongness washed over him again, and he knew that wasn’t true. Again, it was something she could have told him.