“Make me.”

  “What girl?” Wyn asked.

  Tristan’s lips pursed. “Well, if you must know,” he answered, glaring at Regan who had the audacity to smirk at him, “it’s Sentian’s daughter, Lillie.”

  “She’s eleven,” Regan said, rolling his gaze to the heavens.

  “Almost twelve!” Tristan corrected.

  “She’s the one that was born while Senti was in the Labyrinth,” Wyn said, “his youngest.”

  “Talking about Papa not approving,” Regan snorted. “He sure as hell wouldn’t approve of Tris courting Heil’s daughter.”

  Tristan glared across Wyn at Regan. “You don’t like Lillie because she’s Senti’s daughter!” He turned his furious stare to Wyn. “He doesn’t like Sentian because Sentian doesn’t like him for trying to kill Papa!”

  Wyn sat up, a heavy scowl on his face. “We aren’t to mention that, Tristan,” he reminded his brother. “You know that.”

  Regan sat up, too. “Oh, he never lets me forget it!” the seven year old snapped.

  “Let’s drop it,” Wyn ordered with all the authority his being more than twice Tristan’s age brought along with it. “What’s passed stays in the past.”

  Tristan tore his angry gaze from his brothers and stared out across the meadow. “You didn’t answer me, Wyn.”

  “About married life?” Wyn smiled. “I’m enjoying it. Kym’s a wonderful woman.”

  “She’s not as bad as I would have thought,” Regan commented in a grudging voice. “Her being that old bully’s daughter.”

  The minute the words left Regan’s mouth he gasped, looking up at Wyn with fear of reprimand, but he found Wyn looking at him with twinkling eyes and lips pressed together.

  “Little brother,” Wyn advised, putting a hand on Regan’s shoulder. “That old bully could teach you a thing or two if you’d but ask him, couldn’t you, Shalu?”

  Regan’s face lost all its color as he followed his brother’s gaze and slowly turned his head to see the Necroman leaning negligently against a tree not ten feet from then.

  King Shalu Taborn made a rude clucking sound with his upper lip and pushed away from the tree. “I came out here,” he said in his deep, booming voice, “to tell you men there is to be a meeting of the Wind Force to decide what must be done about your father.” He leveled his gaze with Regan’s. “You think me a bully, brat?”

  Regan held the dark man’s stare. “You ain’t never been nothing but that to me,” he answered.

  “You ain’t never given me reason to be no other way.”

  “When’s the meeting?” Tristan asked, standing up and dusting the grass from his breeches.

  “Half an hour. In the library.” Shalu hadn’t looked at the young heir to the throne of Serenia as he spoke. Instead, his fathomless gaze was still on Regan. “Come see me tomorrow. I’ll show you what the word bully really means, brat.”

  Wyn watched his father-in-law lumbering away, his massive shoulders set in a tense shrug, his thick hands crammed into the pockets of his breeches. He, alone, of the three McGregor males knew how much that request, and it HAD been a request, not an order, had cost the older man. Shalu still held a great deal of anger toward Regan for what the young boy had tried to do years before.

  “I wouldn’t be you for all the tea in Chrystallus,” Tristan whispered, also watching the Necromanian King.

  “You want to be a warrior,” Wyn commented, “you train with the best.”

  “Who says I want to be a warrior?” Regan asked in a small voice. Wyn laughed and reached down to pick up Little Brelan who was crawling around on the grass, ignoring his elder brothers, and cramming things into his mouth with glee. “I don’t see that you have much choice, brat,” Wyn chuckled.

  “From Conar’s letters,” Rylan Hesar remarked, “he’s doing well enough. If I understand anything from all this mumbo-jumbo he’s written calling himself ‘allaying’ our fears, he’s quite content over there, now.”

  “And happy as a lark with that little Outer Kingdom pigeon,” Tyne quipped. He chuckled. “Wonder how he did at the tourney?”

  Shalu growled at him. “He won, fool!”

  “So, we’re all agreed Conar isn’t the problem here,” Grice commented. He looked at his brother and frowned. Chand hadn’t wanted to come. As a matter of fact, the young man had steadfastly refused to come to Boreas until Grice had literally threatened him.

  “Conar can damned well take care of himself,” Chand snapped, feeling his brother’s gaze on him. “If you’ve just GOT to worry about someone, worry about Jale!”

  “We are,” Roget answered quietly. He looked about him at those gathered, wishing not for the first time that Teal, his own brother, was there, but no one had heard from Teal du Mer in over two years, not even his own wife.

  “Should we send someone to find Storm?” Thom asked. “If so, I’ll be willing to go.”

  Legion shook his head. “You’re newly married, Thom. We need to send someone unencumbered by family.”

  “Like who?” Holm van de Lar asked. “Who among us don’t have family here?”

  “I don’t,” Chase Montyne answered.

  “Do you really think it’s necessary for one of us to go?” Sentian asked. “We’ve got resources.” He looked at Roget. “You’ve got spies you can send.”

  Roget nodded. “Aye, but each of us knows we won’t rest easy until one of us has seen for ourselves that Conar is all right and we find out what has happened to Storm. We can send all the spies at our disposal, but will it really make a difference?”

  “No,” Shalu answered for them all. He stared at Heil. “Why don’t you want any of us going?”

  Sentian glanced at Legion. “He’s going to be madder than hell when one of us shows up over there.” He sighed. “Did it ever occur to any of you that Storm reached him and Conar got so pissed about it he had the man jailed?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past him,” Chand groused. “The man’s capable of doing it.”

  “Without letting us KNOW he did it?” Paegan asked. “You all know Conar. If that had happened, he would have made damned sure we knew about it.”

  “To warn us not to do it again,” Holm grinned.

  “Something’s wrong over there,” Legion said, getting up from his chair to pace the room. “I don’t think Storm ever reached Conar.” He looked about at the faces staring back at him. “If he didn’t, where is he?”

  “And what’s happened to him?” Thom asked.

  Chase Montyne turned away from the mantle where he had been staring down into the flames. “I don’t see we have any choice but to go find out.” He swung his head around and looked at his fellow Wind Force members. “The logical choice to send is me.”

  Jamael nodded. “He’s right. If there’s trouble, Chase can handle it.”

  Shalu shifted his gaze to the three McGregor sons. “What do you men think?”

  For the first time since coming into the library with the men of their father’s army, Wyn, Tristan, and Regan became the focus of every man in the room. The younger boys looked to the older to answer.

  Wyn cleared his throat. “I think we need to send someone and Chase seems the best choice.”

  “Then it’s agreed that I go?” Chase asked, searching the faces of the others.

  One by one, the men solemnly nodded their approval.

  “It’s settled, then,” Chase said. “Holm? Can you get me there?”

  Holm van de Lar glanced at Paegan Hesar. At Paegan’s quick smile, the old sea captain

  mumbled his answer. “Aye, Chaseton, we’ll find a way to get you to that heathen place.” Legion walked to the mantle and put his hand on Chase’s shoulder. “You’ll be careful?” Chase grinned. “As careful as Conar always is.” Shalu groaned. “The gods help us!”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  He had once feared captivity. Now, he feared even more his release from the prison into which his own mind had locked him. Kahlil Toire had taken away from him the only thing in his life that had made that life worth living. And with the loss of his most precious of possessions, he had forced his emotions into a tiny, dark and lonely cell deep in the vault of his mind. The pain of his loss ate at his soul and hurt so intensely at times he often woke gasping for air, unable to get back to sleep, his nightmares paralyzing his lungs. That one dehumanizing act had taken away his will to live for awhile, had stripped him, leaving no heart inside him to feel. Once he had begged for the inability to feel, and he wished for again when he had lost Liza, but the gods had not been so kind.

  They had never been kind to him, he thought as he walked the battlements of the Palace of the Tzars and stared out at the rolling tide of the Baldus Sea.

  He had tried so hard to break Kahlil’s hold over him. He had put a vast distance between them. But the chains had been too strong, forged with his own sweat and blood and tears. Those chains still bound him to Toire. The old fears and the old guilt ran too deep in his savaged soul to get over them so easily. Miles had not erased them, nor dulled the taste of Toire’s poison in his soul.

  The bastard was still out there, somewhere, biding his time, and Conar knew once he set foot on Serenian soil again, the call would come to him—Kahlil’s revenge beyond the grave.

  Leaning on the cold stone wall before him, the Serenian Windwarrior asked himself if he had the right to drag Catherine into this mess that he called his life. It was not only his fear for her safety, where what was left of the Domination was concerned, and Robert MacCorkingdale to be precise. It was also the strong suspicion that Jaleel Jaborn would come after her, as well. Such thoughts worried him and chased him from his sleeping.

  The tide crashed against the shoreline and he inhaled the tang of salt spray. He still loved the sea, but now that love was tinged with unforgiving, with a large amount of resentment. It was waters such as these that had stolen his love, his precious love, his life, from him. The sight of the swirling, tumbling waves turned his heart to stone. Never again would he be able to look at a rolling wave and not feel what he was feeling at that moment. Never again would he view the sea as his friend. He wondered if the sea would take Catherine from him, as well.

  “Stop it!” he ordered himself, looking away from the crashing waves. He turned his sight to the heavens and looked up at the twinkling stars. It was a safer sight to view than was the sea.

  “Ah, Cat,” he sighed, thinking of the day they had met. “What evil have I brought into your world, little one?”

  In a way, it had hurt him terribly when he found himself desperately wanting Catherine to notice him. He’d done everything he could to draw her attention. When she ignored him, or seemed to, it only made him that much more intent on gaining her regard. In ways he knew had been thoughtless, rude and, aye, Liza, churlish. In the back of his mind, he viewed his trying to win Cat’s admiration as a horrible betrayal of Liza. The thought had not set well with him, had pricked at his sense of honor and had brought him time and time again, in the middle of the night, to the very spot where he now stood.

  When, he thought with brooding bitterness, had he allowed himself to fall so helplessly in love with the woman? How could he have been so indifferent, so blind, to the budding spark of hope that had brought his battered soul out of its numbing darkness into the bright glare of sunlight? How could he have allowed her to fall in love with him?

  That she did, he did not doubt. Conar had had enough experience in his lifetime to know real love staring back at him. After all, he had known one of the greatest loves of all time.

  And he thought, with worry and dread, the love between him and Cat was going to come awfully close to being what he had shared with Liza.

  What if you lose her, too, Conar, his inner voice probed at his heart. How will you live with that?”

  Icy winds skirled down from the Uralaps and wrote melodies of piercing notes through the gaps of the battlement walls. It broke Conar’s concentration and made him turn up the collar of his jacket against the chill. A wry smile touched his lips when he thought of another time, long, long ago, when he had stood atop the battlements of Boreas Keep and watched a ship take away what he had thought was his last chance at happiness.

  “Will you take Catherine, too?” he asked the silent heavens. “Will it ever be my destiny to have what I love taken away from me?”

  Aye, he thought with sorrowful irony, he had had many such losses in his lifetime. He had experienced first hand that ultimate despair that drove many men to madness. His losses had plunged him down through the abyss of human misery and kept him there a long time. He had hit rock bottom depression once when, for one wild moment in time, he had known no reason to go on living. When he had seen no future for himself save years of crushing loneliness and mind-sickening pain. It had been at one of those low points in his life, when full realization that he had been the sole cause of many of his loved ones dying, that he had meant to end his own life on the craggy rocks of the North Boreal Sea. Had it not been for Meggie Ruck, the love she had for him, and his respect and love for her, he would have done just that, consequences be damned.

  Now, as he leaned against the cold stone wall of Catherine’s home, he wondered if he was doing the right thing by courting her.

  The gods knew he loved her. They knew he wanted her and needed her. They knew he was lonely and aching inside and ready to let go of his past to embrace the future Catherine promised. But would They allow him the chance? If his past was any indication of his future, he might just as well step off the battlements and plunge to his death rather than have one more person he cared for suffer because of him.

  “Don’t you ever sleep?”

  Startled by the intruding voice, Conar jumped. His heart leapt against his rib cage and he shook his head at the man walking toward him.

  “If it was your hope to win her hand by giving me a heart attack, nomad, you almost got your wish.” Conar took in a long, steadying breath. “Warn a fellow next time, will you?”

  Sajin came to stand beside his friend. He leaned out over the half-wall and whistled. “A long way down, eh?” He looked sideways at Conar. “Thinking of jumping, were you?”

  Conar found himself answering before he thought. “That did cross my mind.” He blushed, not daring to look at his companion.

  “Stupid way to die, my friend.” Sajin pushed away from the wall and leaned his back against it, crossed his arms. “Cowardly, too.”

  “I wasn’t going to do it,” Conar snapped.

  “If I thought you had been, I’d have had to do something about it.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like telling Cat what you were up to.”

  Conar shivered. “A fate worse than jumping,” he exclaimed. He turned to Sajin. “What are you doing up here anyway?”

  “Looking for you.” Sajin smiled. “Sybelle wants to go home. She’s bored here.” He shrugged. “I guess I’ll have to take her.”

  “When do you leave?” Conar missed the man and he hadn’t even gone.

  “I’m going to leave the horses here and take her home by ship. I’ll come back and we can go on with our quest for Catherine’s hand.” His grin was infectious. “I trust you won’t undermine me while I’m gone?”

  “Leave at your own peril, nomad,” Conar growled.

  Sajin looked at him for a long moment. “Maybe you ought to sail down the coast with us? That way I can keep an eye on you.”

  Conar laughed. “For what purpose? I had no real intention of flying over the wall, Ben-Alkazar.”

  “No,” Sajin drawled, “but I wouldn’t put it past you to pull some dirty stunt to make Cat forget all about me while I’m gone.” He nodded. “But with you along, I won’t have that worry to nag at me.”

  “Why not invite Catherine to join us?” Conar asked, eying his friend with humor. “That way neither of us would worry about her.”

  The smile slipped from Sajin’s face. “Do you think someone might try to harm her while you’re gone?”

  Conar shrugged. “I would hope not, but I know I wouldn’t feel easy if I left her behind.” He looked the nomad in the eye. “Would you?”

  Sajin didn’t need to think about that. “No.”

  “Then we ask her to go along?”

  Ben-Alkazar could hear the boyish hope in his friend’s voice. “Do I have a choice?”

  Conar grinned. “Nope.”

  “He’s going with us?” Sybelle accused as Sajin told her the next morning.

  “Yes,” her brother replied. He folded one of his shirts and placed it carefully into his valise. “Do you have a problem with that?”

  “I don’t like him.”

  “You don’t know him,” Sajin reminded her.

  Sybelle bit her tongue before answering. “I know all I wish to know about that demon’s spawn! He will be trouble for you, Sajin.”

  “Don’t start with that again, Sybelle,” he warned her. They’d gone through this the night after Conar had wounded Jaleel Jaborn.

  “Did you know that bastard was here?” he thundered at his sister. “Did he come to see you?”

  It had taken Sybelle a long moment to answer and when she did, Sajin had not been pleased with her answer.

  “We are lovers, Sajin. We have been for years.” She lowered her gaze, hoping to hide the lie of her next words from her brother, but Sajin had heard the falsehood in her words. “He did not know McGregor was here.”

  “One of them is going to wind up dead, Sybelle,” Sajin had told her. “And I don’t believe it will be Conar.”

  Sybelle had looked up, her face flushed with anger, her eyes flashing. “Jaleel is a great warrior!”

  Sajin had heard all he had wanted to hear of the man. “We have been at war with the Rysalians of the Northern and Middle provinces for decades, Sybelle! How can you treat with an enemy and call him ‘lover’?”

  “The same as you can treat with McGregor and call him your ‘friend’! There are those of the emirates that would see the noose around that man’s neck or have you forgotten that?”

  There had been disgust on Sajin’s handsome face when he had answered his sister. “The only bastards who want such a thing are Guil Ben-Shanar Gehdrin and Jaborn, and even then it is over something Conar had no part in!”

 

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