“So he tells you!” Sybelle had scoffed.

  Sajin had reached out to grab his sister’s arm in a punishing grip. “There was no more love between Conar McGregor and his twin than there was between me and Asher!”

  Sybelle had drawn in her breath. It had been years since Sajin had mentioned their half-brother. To have him do so at that moment, was an indication of how angry the man was.

  Sajin had let go of her arm, furious at himself that he had spoken the hated name. “You can believe whatever the hell Jaborn and that bastard Guil want you to believe, Sybelle, you will anyway. But I tell you Conar had nothing to do with Cyle Alla-Jemann’s death. He never even met the girl.”

  Sybelle said nothing as Sajin finished packing. Her brother was still angry at her for admitting her love for Jaleel Jaborn, for helping to hide the man at the palace until the day of the tourney.

  “If what you told me is true,” she said, drawing a frown from Sajin, “McGregor thinks Jaleel means Catherine harm. Why take her with us, too, if that is the case? Do you not fear one of the men Guil left behind will report this and Jaleel will be waiting for us in Kensett?”

  “He’d better not be,” Sajin ground out, slamming the valise shut and buckling it. He looked up at his sister. “I won’t stop Conar from killing him if they meet there.”

  Sybelle stared at him. “An infidel harming an Inner Kingdom prince on Kensetti soil is punishable by death. Have you forgotten that?”

  Sajin smiled, but it was not a smile that held either warmth or amusement. “From the moment we step foot on that ship, Sybelle, I intend to make Conar my personal bodyguard. He need not know that since he certainly wouldn’t find the title endearing, but it will protect him should anyone try to harm me or the lady I am escorting to our homeland for a visit.”

  The look on his sister’s face told Sajin she understood well what he was attempting to do. “So if someone attacks him or he attacks someone else, you can say he was but defending your life.”

  Ben-Alkazar’s smile widened. “Exactly.”

  A hard gleam of hatred flowed through Sybelle’s lovely face and she turned away before her brother could see the look. Her gaze went to the intricately carved jade ring on her left hand, a ring that had been a gift from Jaleel for sending word to him that Conar McGregor was in St. Steffensburg. She twisted the ring around with her thumb and little finger, feeling the deep carving of the ribbed edges.

  “The ship will leave at first light. What isn’t packed properly, doesn’t go with us.”

  “Yes,” she answered, barely listening to him. She stiffened as his hands cupped her shoulders.

  “Conar is a good man, Sybelle. If you would but let your heart open up to him, you would see that. He is not the ogre Jaborn makes him out to be.”

  Long after she went back to her room to do her own packing, Sybelle thought of what her brother had said. While it was true the two men got along better than most, there was still something between them that Sybelle wished had never been acknowledged—their mutual

  respect for one another. It was a bond that was going to be hard to break. The Ravenwind tacked southward off the coast of Oceania and headed for the foggy bank of mist off the leeward side of the sleek black ship. “Jasmine Cay,” Paegan remarked. “We’ll meet up with the Outer Kingdom ship at the island.”

  Chase nodded, but didn’t answer. Looking at the wide, thick bank of fog they called The Sinisters, he felt uneasy. There had always been something about the fog, he thought. When he was a little boy he had feared the shrouds of thick white mist rolling across his homeland’s meadows.

  “There be things in the fog, young Prince,” he remembered his old nanny saying. “Best you stay clear of the fog, you do.” “It had to be fog,” he thought with a sigh.

  His back was on fire, blood dripping down his sides and arms as he hung between the uprights. God, he thought with diminishing awareness of his surroundings, how did you stand it, Conar?

  Another lash landed across his bare, bleeding shoulders and he cried out, gagging with the pain and the feel of his nails gouging ravines in the wooden post overhead. He clamped his lips shut, clenched his teeth to keep from crying out again. They liked to hear him cry.

  Just as Lydon had liked to hear Conar cry.

  “Where are you?” he asked as darkness swept up to claim him with its fiery brand of agony. “Why won’t you come, Conar?”

  Storm Jale slipped beyond the pain of his existence and fled to a sweeter, calmer place, a place where tall snow-capped mountains loomed on the horizon, where velvet glades of emerald grass waved in the cool breeze. Where friends gathered and laughed and played and loved and, occasionally, fought. Where life had been good and the world had been right side up.

  “Conar ….” “Take this to His Majesty, now!” Rasheed Falkar told the spy. “Tell him I will find a way to get on board Prince Sajin’s ship.” The spy nodded, then bowed low to the woman sitting in the shadows of Falkar’s room. There was no need to see the Kensetti woman’s face to know who she was. Rasheed waited until the spy was gone before he turned to his visitor. “It was not safe for you to come here, Your Grace.” Sybelle stood and smoothed the wrinkles in her silken skirt. “I will find a way for you to

  board, Rasheed. All I ask is that you help me dispose of McGregor before we reach Kensett.”

  Falkar’s face went deathly still. “But Your Grace, Prince Jaleel will ….”

  “Not meet his fate at McGregor’s hands!” Sybelle snarled.

  She glared at the man cowering before her. “Would you have Prince Guil know you could have prevented his dear friend from being harmed and yet stood by and did nothing?”

  Rasheed trembled, knowing well enough that if Prince Jaleel were denied killing McGregor himself, there would be one less Falkar in Rysalia.

  “Do not think to cause me trouble, Rasheed,” she warned him. “I do not take kindly to interference.”

  The Rysalian’s eyes grew wide as the woman in front of him lifted her hand and fire flew from her fingertips to light the candles by his bed. He watched with horror as she conjured some black fiend from the leaping flame and sent it flying about his room, ducking as the beast flung itself at him with the shriek of a jinn. Dropping to his knees with a whimper of dread and true terror, he covered his face and promised to do whatever she asked.

  Sybelle smiled. “I thought perhaps you might.”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Catherine hid her grin as he came toward her, but her nose quivered at the smell. She saw him smile, a little boy’s silly smirk, and knew he wouldn’t feel so well the next morning when it was time to set sail.

  “You are walking none too steadily, milord Conar,” she told him as he stopped before her and bowed, losing his balance, but recovering with exaggerated precision.

  “That blasted younger brother of yours tried drinking me under the table,” Conar mumbled, grinning at her.

  “And where is Mikel now?”

  Conar’s grin grew wicked. “Under the table.” He wobbled on his feet. “Shouldn’t have tried that.”

  “And you shouldn’t have been drinking,” she admonished.

  He knew, but for some reason he hadn’t been able to explain to himself, he had accepted the glass of brandy from Mikel. And another from Peter. And another from Mikel. It was the fifth one that had set his ears to ringing and his mind to spinning and he realized what he had done.

  “Have a problem with booze,” he’d explained to the boys. He had seen the brothers looking at one another with guilt and he had tried to shake his head, had earnestly wished he hadn’t. “Don’t worry ‘bout it,” he’d said.

  “Are you going to ask Cat to marry you, Conar?” Peter had asked.

  “You betcha!” He’d been a little surprised when Peter slowly slid to the floor in a smiling heap, but it didn’t bother him overly much.

  Not until Mikel had joined his brother.

  “Uh, oh,” he’d sighed, knowing his own capitulation to the brandy wasn’t long in coming.

  He’d wanted to get out into the cool air, to wash away the liquor fumes and try to evaporate the brandy from his system. He hadn’t counted on Catherine being out there, too.

  “Do you need help in getting to bed, milord?” she asked.

  Conar drew himself up. “‘Course not, woman! Who you think I am?”

  “A drunken lord, Conar,” she answered and took his arm in hers to help him back inside.

  “Don’t need no help,” he grumbled, leaning heavily against her.

  “I rather think you do.”

  “Gonna marry you, Cat,” he told her, swinging his head around to look at her as they walked.

  Catherine smiled. “Is that so?”

  “Sure ‘tis,” he stated.

  “We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” she told him, supporting his weight until she could get the door into the drawing room open.

  “Gonna take you back to Bo’rs with me.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Cat?” He stopped dead still inside the drawing room and tried to focus on her.

  “Yes, milord Conar?” Her body jerked as he stopped, for her forward momentum had been carrying them both along.

  He tried to smile and couldn’t. Tried to walk and couldn’t. Tried to talk and found himself gasping.

  “Don’t you dare!” she warned him, looking around quickly. She let go of him, not at all concerned when he crashed to the floor, and hastily grabbed up a spittoon. She barely had time to get it under his chin before he threw up.

  “Don’t shake the bed, Toad!” she heard him mumble.

  His words made no sense to her.

  “What the hell did he drink?” Sajin asked as he came into the room and knelt down beside Catherine who was holding Conar’s head.

  “Brandy, I think,” Catherine said, her nose crinkling. “An entire keg from the amount coming out of him.”

  “You go on upstairs and turn back his bed. I’ll bring him up.” Sajin put his arm under Conar’s shoulders and hefted the drunken man to his feet.

  “You’re killing me, Toad!”

  “Who’s he talking to?” Sajin asked as he shifted Conar’s weight.

  Catherine shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  Between the two of them, they managed to get him in bed and partially undressed. As Sajin pulled the cover over his friend’s naked chest, he shook his head at Conar’s incoherent mumblings to the unknown ‘Toad’.

  “I hope to the Prophetess we have a smooth sail tomorrow.”

  Catherine laughed. “With any luck at all there will be a gale!”

  Sajin winced. “Don’t even think that, lady!”

  She stood over his bed, staring down at his sleeping face and felt a great love well up inside her chest. She’d come in only to check on him, to make sure he was asleep and well, had not choked on his own vomit during the night. The sour smell still clung to the clothing Sajin had removed, but the Kensetti had been kind enough to bathe Conar and see that he had not gone to bed befouled.

  “You really care for him, don’t you?” she’d asked the nomad.

  “Look at him,” Sajin had countered. “Who couldn’t help but care for such an imbecile?”

  Who, indeed, she thought as she reached down to tug the sheet up over his shoulder? She smoothed back an errant lock of golden hair and straightened up, smiling as she watched him sleeping.

  He looks so gentle, she thought, so gentle and so vulnerable, like a little boy. There was just a hint of a smile on his full lips. She wondered what it was he dreamed as she watched his lids fluttering.

  She leaned over and kissed his brow then turned to go.

  “Don’t leave,” he mumbled and she looked back to find him watching her.

  “You should be sleeping,” she said.

  “Stay with me.”

  She sighed as though much put out with him, although his request had made the pulse leap in her throat. “If I do, you won’t sleep.”

  “I don’t need to.”

  She came back to the bed and looked down at him. “How are you feeling?”

  He frowned a little boy’s unconcern. “Like a hundred little men are playing bat-a-ball inside my head.”

  “Serves you right,” she replied.

  “I know.” He smiled crookedly at her. “I haven’t drunk like that in years.”

  “And you shouldn’t have started tonight.” She studied his face. “Why did you?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered and she could hear the real surprise in his voice. “I knew better, but I just couldn’t seem to stop from doing it.” He looked down at the covers. “Alcoholics are like that, Cat.”

  Her heart went out to him. To admit something so personal to her must have been hard. She sat down on the bed beside him.

  “Will you promise me not to do that again?” she asked.

  He glanced up at her, sensing something more in her voice. She was looking at him like Liza use to when he’d done something singularly stupid and wanted his oath that he would not do it again under penalty of her displeasure.

  “I don’t intend to,” he answered, truthfully, “but I hadn’t ever intended to do it again, either.”

  “Then,” she said, reaching out to caress his cheek, “I will just have to make sure you aren’t given the temptation then, won’t I?”

  There was in her soft and soothing voice, a commitment he heard and understood. He lifted his hand and covered it where it pressed against his scarred cheek.

  “What are you saying, Catherine?” he asked, holding his breath for her answer.

  Her smile was like the softest of touches. “Sajin called you an imbecile, but I think perhaps you’re just a little slow.” Her fingers smoothed his flesh. “If you do not know what I am saying, milord Conar, perhaps I should go find Prince Sajin. He seems to be ….”

  “The hell you will!” he ground out, reaching up for her, pulling her down to him in a fierce hug that took her breath away. “You are mine, lady!”

  Never could Catherine have imagined the passion his words instilled in her, inflaming her senses like the wind can fan the flames of a roaring fire. She clung to him, her lips claimed by his, and felt herself turning, moving slowly and languidly to her back. She looked up into his face and saw the question in his dark eyes.

  “Yes,” she answered, wanting him as much as he wanted her.

  “Are you sure?” There was patience in his face, a firm reminder than he would wait if she was not ready.

  “I have never been surer of anything in my life, Conar.”

  Her arms closed around him and drew him down to her.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  “Sweet Merciful Alel!” Conar gasped as the bright morning light invaded his eyes with piercing shafts of steel. He groaned and looked down at the ground where he was walking, hoping he wouldn’t vomit before he could reach the safety of the ship.

  “I don’t envy you the trip,” Yuri was telling him. “I know how you feel.”

  “Aye, well you do,” the Serenian muttered. He flinched at a loud sound and heard Andreanova laughing.

  “If I could get my hands on some of that lavender brew, I would,” Yuri chuckled, unknowingly voicing a sympathy Conar had made on their way over to the Outer Kingdom.

  “If I could crawl into a hole, I would,” Conar returned.

  “How’s he faring, Yuri?” Sajin called down from the ship.

  “Tell him to go to hell,” Conar whispered, his skull caving in from the loud words.

  “He’ll live,” Yuri answered.

  “Don’t be so sure,” Conar mumbled.

  Sybelle watched the man come on board the ship and wished she could use her magic to push him overboard. As he looked up, unerringly finding her and her wayward thought, she clamped down on her emotions and turned from the rail, disappearing from his sight. She didn’t think he had enough presence of mind to try probing her and was relieved when he did not.

  “She’s not too happy with you,” Sajin told him when Conar was on board.

  “I’m not too happy with myself,” Conar assured him. He glanced carefully around him, squinting with the effort. “Is Catherine on board?”

  Sajin nodded. “She’s below.” He regarded his friend with an arched brow. “Are you responsible for the glow on her face this morning?” At Conar’s quick blush and hasty look away from the nomad, Sajin clucked his tongue. “Conar, how could you?”

  He looked up, found humor in the nomad’s eyes. “You owe me a golden Ryal.”

  Sajin scowled. “I owe you an ass whipping,” he answered. “Could you not have waited ‘til your wedding night?”

  Conar grinned.

  The nomad snorted. “I suppose not.”

  “Welcome, Prince Conar.” A tall, thin man with a mustache as rail thin as he was came forward to greet the newcomer on board. “It is my pleasure to have you on board.”

  Conar held out his hand, taking the smiling man aback for a moment before the Captain of The Golden Dawn took Conar’s strong wrist in his firm grasp. “You have a fine ship, Captain.”

  Captain Abdul Hajib’s smile widened. “I think so.” He nodded toward Yuri who was still on the docks. “The Shadow-warrior tells me you like to sail.”

  “I had a good teacher. Perhaps you have met him. Captain Holm van de Lar?”

  The Captain shook his head. “Sadly, I have not, but I am acquainted with his ship, the Ravenwind. I have passed her a few times on the open sea.” He sighed wistfully. “A most beautiful lady, she is.”

  Conar laughed. “And deadly. She bears six forty pounders.”

  Impressed, the Captain assured Conar he had no intention of ever engaging the Ravenwind in battle. “We would trade with Serenia if the bans against doing so are ever lifted.”

  “Perhaps Prince Conar and I can discuss that when we reach Kensett,” Sajin commented. “I think it would be a good idea, as well.”

 

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