“He is dead. Beyond punishment. He slit his wrists and bled to death in our mother’s rose garden. I was ten-and-eight.” The implications of what she’d revealed hung between them. She met his gaze and didn’t look away.
“Then you’ve never had an ahavatara,” he said quietly. “No first true lover whose duty it is to open your body to love and your soul to the glory of the thrall. You were forced.”
She nodded. She had never spoken to anyone of the things Des had done to her. Never admitted her shame. Not since the day in her mother’s garden when she’d lied and told Connell she didn’t and would never love him.
“Elspeth, you are not to blame.”
She nodded again. “I know.”
“But you don’t believe.”
She gave a small shake of her head, a shrug. “It was a long time ago.”
The Instructor Primus stared at her for a long, silent moment. He sighed, and again she caught a glimpse of the man he hid from everyone else. “’Tis not my place to tell you that you must take a lover who will open you to the thrall in the proper way, how it is meant to be done. I do well understand your reluctance to do so. But you do understand that the damage he did you need not be permanent, do you not? You need not forever mishandle your magic because of one man’s disservice? There are ways to remove his tithe upon you and replace it with one more proper.”
“I didn’t know. I thought—” She’d thought she was destined to be this way forever. Ruined.
“Come here.” He stood, and she obeyed, her heart hammering.
He waited until she stood in front of him. He was a tall man, and he put a finger beneath her chin to lift it. He bent to kiss her, his lips pausing before they touched hers. “You trust me, don’t you?”
“I do, sir.”
“And yet you are shaking, and not from desire.”
She looked into his eyes. “I plead your mercy.”
He ran a hand along her neck, down her shoulder, brushing the hair off it. Then he stepped back. “You need plead nothing from me, Elspeth. I would not force attentions upon you. Tithed to me you would achieve great power, but it must be your choice. Without true desire, no matter how brief, binding us, what I can give you would be worthless. I understand why you shield yourself.”
Looking into his eyes, she thought he did. Riordan de Cimmerian had his own demons, his own reasons for keeping his heart as closed as hers. That he had been willing to help her meant all the more.
She thought of Connell. The courtyard. His bruising kiss and the inside of her lip still wounded from it.
She looked at de Cimmerian. “I made a mistake ten years ago, and threw away the love of a man who would have given me everything.”
“A magicreator?”
She shook her head. “He was the son of my parents’ butler and cook. We had known each other since infancy. We played together as children. And when we got older…” She smiled a little. “We were foolish. We thought nobody would know.”
“But you could not take him as your ahavatara because he did not have magic.”
Again, she nodded. “Yes.”
“Did he know what happened to you?”
She hesitated, remembering. “Yes. He knew. He blamed himself for not protecting me. But when he tried to love me, I couldn’t let him. I ran away.”
“And now?”
“Now,” she said slowly, “I have found him again.”
“Then might I suggest, Mistress Valerin, you don’t let your opportunity slide away again?”
Once again he was the Instructor Primus, distant, though now his consideration of her had disappeared. Because he knew, she thought. She was no longer a mystery to him. He understood her now, and he did not despise her for her past.
She’d experienced moments of revelation in her work when the columns of figures had formed a picture so clear and precise it was impossible to ignore. Now, even without the equations, she understood something so clear and shining she felt the worst sort of fool for being blind to it before.
Riordan de Cimmerian, a man neither kind nor generous by any description, knew her truth, and he did not hate her for it. He did not turn from her in disgust, and he did not even love her.
If a man who did not love her did not turn from her in disgust, neither would a man who did.
“I understand, sir. And, sir, if I might be so bold…” She paused. “You might take your own advice.”
His eyes narrowed, and again she caught the glimpse of the man who so many feared. “You are bold.”
She nodded. “I plead your mercy.”
He stared at her a moment longer, the weight of his gaze unreadable. “You’re dismissed, Mistress Valerin.”
“Thank you, sir.”
He nodded, not looking at her any more. Elspeth left his office with much to think about.
Arithmancy was a far more precise practice than Divination. Divination used signs and portents to predict the future, while Arithmancy used numbers and calculations to determine how choices would affect outcomes. The difference of something as simple as one number could result in an end completely different than if one used another number or calculation to figure it.
She spent several hours at her desk, running numbers. She factored every possible equation, ran every scenario she could think of, added and subtracted every element. It was, perhaps, the mathematical equivalent of “he loves me, he loves me not”, but it was what she knew best how to do. In the end, it came down to two results, the difference of one small equation, one factor, a single number that when used or eliminated in the overall formula created two results. One, positive. The other, negative.
When it came down to the line, there was nothing she could do to determine which of the sums was going to be accurate. No choice she could make to sway the results. Two outcomes seemed equally likely.
She couldn’t put a numerical value on love; couldn’t use addition and subtraction on the human heart. It didn’t work. She could fact and figure her way into an assumption of the future, and use the numbers to lead her choices toward positive or negative, but in the end, it all came down to something she could not control.
Either Connell loved her, or he did not. And no matter how many times she looked at the numbers, she wasn’t able to decide which of the two most likely results were going to happen.
“Connell.”
His eyes opened wide to darkness and he sat up. The curtains blew in the open window. The chill, salt-scented breeze made him shiver.
“Ella?”
A portion of the darkness peeled away from the doorframe. In the next moment she slid under the covers and into his arms. His nose filled with her scent, while the dark silk of her hair tickled his bare chest. She wore a thin flaxene gown, and his hands told him she was bare beneath it. The points of her nipples rose hard against the cloth, and at the feeling of them, he was hard too.
“Make love to me, Connell.”
Oh, how badly he wanted to. Her mouth was already on his, her tongue darting between his lips with the delicate aggressiveness that never failed to stiffen his cock and make his heart pound. His hands tangled in her the glory of her hair, and she moaned when he tugged it. She moaned louder when his teeth found the soft flesh of her throat.
He had no fear they’d be overheard. His secluded rooms over the garden shed meant only someone standing down there in the night, listening on purpose, could possibly hear her. Yet something made him hush her. He put her from him a little more roughly than he’d intended, and the whimper as his fingers gripped her arms made his heart lurch with grief.
“Ella,” he said. “I want to make love to you. But we can’t.”
She sat up. Moonlight filtered through the window and flashed in her eyes. She was crying. “We have to.”
Connell shook his head, pushing her hair away from her beautiful face. He was dreaming this as he’d dreamed so many other times. He already knew her reasons for seeking the safety of his bed when they both had always known he could not be her
first lover. Her ahavatara.
Connell didn’t have magic. Giving him her virginity meant she’d tithe herself to him forever, her use of the thrall would be compromised and she would never reach her full potential as a magicreator. They’d always known it. They’d always known their desire needed limits. One day she would no longer be his Ella but belong to someone else.
“I don’t care,” she whispered. “I love you, Connell. You. And I want to be with you. I don’t care if I never harness the thrall, I don’t care—”
She did care. He knew that. She had to. She had no choice. Elspeth had magic, and it couldn’t be denied. He had nothing but a strong back and hands that could build. Nothing but sweat and effort. She had the chance to have it all, but not if she wasted it on him.
“Ella, I can’t let you.”
“Please, Connell!” Tears choked her voice, and she shook in his arms. “Please, before it’s too late! Once it’s done, he’ll be able to do naught about it.”
“Who, Ella? Who?”
Silver tears slipped down her cheeks like trails of star fire. “He said he’d make sure Mother and Father put you out…and your parents too. And that he’d kill you himself, if he knew you’d laid a hand on me again. He said I’m bringing shame to our family, that I’d better not disgrace him by tithing myself to someone with no magic!”
“Your brother doesn’t scare me,” Connell said angrily, but the sight of her face made him fall silent.
For the first time, he saw why his Ella had gone so pale and thin the past few months. Why she’d stopped smiling. His fingers tightened further, and her small cry made him relax. His heart lodged in his throat. “I’ll tear him apart.”
“I’ll give it all up. I don’t care.” She sounded hoarse, her voice like glass, brittle. Ready to shatter. “Make love to me, Connell, and all I’ll lose is the thrall. I can live with the rest of my life doing only low magic. I can. But I can’t live the rest of my life tithed to him. I can’t! Not that way!”
He hushed her, gathering her into his arms, burying his face in her hair. He didn’t want to ask her what Des had done or what he was trying to do. He didn’t want to believe it. His stomach twisted, but the words she’d said no longer mattered. She was with him now. His Ella, the only woman he would ever love.
And then, another figure appeared in the doorway. The shouting began. Desmond Valerin, his parents’ pride and joy, and supposed defender of his sister’s virtue. He’d cried of scandal and threatened to kill Connell, and because Desmond was a magicreator and Connell not, the fight had been brief and unfair. By the time the binding spell wore off and Connell could leave his room, much had happened. The rose garden had been painted with Des’s blood.
And Ella had been lost.
“Connell.”
His eyes opened wide to darkness, and he sat up. He was no longer dreaming. A shadow in his doorway had him on his feet in moments, fists raised.
She murmured a word and the fire flared. She pushed her hair off her shoulders and looked at him, her eyes glimmering in the light. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“You didn’t.” He ran a hand through his hair, then looked down, self-conscious at his bare chest and the loosely tied sleeping trousers he wore. “What are you doing here?”
Ella—Elspeth, he corrected himself, looked hesitant. “I came to plead your mercy. For everything. All of it. I have no excuses. I was cruel then. You deserved better.”
This wasn’t what he’d expected, and though her words softened him inside, he did his best not to show it. “You have my mercy. Now you can go.”
She did something he had not expected. She crossed the room and went to her knees in front of him, head bowed. “Connell, please, please forgive me.”
And he could no longer hold onto his anger. It had burned through him like a hot coal in a napkin, leaving behind a hole, but no more heat. He got down in front of her, unable to bear seeing her abase herself like that. “I forgive you, Ella. I told you that.”
She looked up at him. “Do you still hate me?”
“I could never hate you.”
Her smile was small. “You told me you hated me.”
“You told me you’d never love me.”
“I didn’t want to hurt you.” She looked at him. “Des was dead by his own hand. My mother—”
“I remember.”
Her mother had given her favored child a funeral full of pomp and circumstance, of glitter and glory. Amarata Valerin had slapped her daughter’s face in front of the mourners, called her a whore and blamed her for Desmond’s death.
“When you found me in the garden afterward and took my hand, all I could do was think how my mother was right.” She took a deep breath and reached for his hand. She linked their fingers together. “How it was my fault Des had died. And how I couldn’t let her know how much I loved you, Connell, or else she’d send you away or find a way to hurt you out of spite for me. So I told you I didn’t love you, and I pushed you away because I didn’t know what else to do, and I went away because I couldn’t bear to live with how much I’d hurt you.”
He pulled her into his arms. “You weren’t crying. I thought you meant it. I shouldn’t have believed it, Ella. I should’ve known different.”
Against his cheek, she shook her head. “You couldn’t have.”
He held her tight against him, stroking her hair and losing himself in her scent the way he’d done so many years ago, when they were no longer children and not quite adults. Tears wet his face, and he wasn’t sure if they belonged to her or to him, only that she was laughing and crying at the same time, and then she was kissing him.
“Make love to me,” his Ella said to him once again, after all this time. “Please, Connell.”
And this time there was no hesitation, no reason to say no. This time, he took her in his arms and carried her to his bed where they fell, both of them laughing until the laughter became sighs.
He laid her down and covered her with his body. His hands came up to cup the sides of her face and brush the hair away. He looked into her eyes. Then he kissed her with such gentleness it made her want to weep again.
She gave him the tears she’d been unable to shed for years, and he kissed them away. He kissed her eyes, her cheek, the line of her jaw. Connell nuzzled her ear, then the curve of her shoulder, and she tipped her head back to give him access to her throat, and he kissed her there too.
His mouth, wet heat with a hint of teeth, made her gasp. He took her skin in his teeth and she arched into his bite. His hands moved down along her sides, then up to cup her breasts through her gown. She moaned his name.
“Ella,” he whispered, “I never stopped loving you. Not ever.”
“I never stopped loving you either.”
He paused in kissing her to prop himself on his elbows and look into her eyes. “I should’ve protected you.”
“Shhh.” She shook her head. “That’s all gone. He’s gone. It’s in the past. Let’s make the present, here. Now.”
She reached up to pull him down to her. Their mouths met, opened, tongues darting, and it was as though no time had ever passed between them. He set her on fire as he always had. As no other man ever had. She took his hand and brought it again to her breast.
He shivered and bent back to her neck, kissing and nibbling. She arched into his touch, encouraging him with small moans. He knew already how to touch her, how to urge her passion from her, only now each touch, each lick, each stroke and nibble, was magnified because it had been so long for her without pleasure, without passion, so long without the ability to feel.
He moved down, undoing the small pearl buttons that lined her dress from throat to hem. Connell laid open the throat of her gown, baring her skin to his kiss. He found the curve of her collarbone and nipped it, earning a gasp, then smoothed his tongue along the place his teeth had already found. He kissed further down, his hands undoing the buttons without hesitation.
He undid the buttons to her wa
ist. Under her gown she wore a thin flaxene shift tied at the throat with ribbons. Connell unlaced her slowly while he kissed her mouth. The heat of his hands on her bare skin made her gasp.
“Your skin is like silk,” he whispered.
His fingers circled her nipples, already hard, and he rolled them in the way he used to. The way that made tingling sparks of pleasure flood her veins, move along her body with each beat of her heart. Something had happened to her that made her gasp at the realization.
“I’ve stopped,” she said.
He looked at her. “Stopped what, love?”
“Counting,” she said, and kissed him again.
He left her mouth and moved downward again, lips sliding over her skin until he replaced his fingers with his tongue upon her nipples. He suckled first one, then the other, and she shivered under his touch. His hands slid down along the curve of her hips. His mouth kissed her ribs, then the hollow of her naval and the slight curve of her belly. He licked and kissed and nuzzled her skin.
He paused to take her hand and pull her up so she could slip her arms out of her clothes. Sitting, she bared herself to him, nervous for the first time. She was no longer the girl he’d loved. Time had been kind to her, but her body had changed. She pushed the material down over her hips and watched him watch her, his dark eyes gone darker with passion.
“By the Astria, you are beautiful.”
Other men had told her so. Ones she’d ignored or avoided. Being told of her beauty had always made her stomach twist, made her turn away. Made her go cold inside.
Not with Connell. His words made her smile. Heat bloomed inside her, sending a flush along her chest and up her throat to paint her cheeks. She wriggled the rest of the way out of her gown and lay back against the headboard, holding out her arms to him.
He stretched out along her once more. They kissed. Long ago they’d spent hours kissing, tongues stroking, lips nibbling. Hands touching first over clothes and then, when it became too much to bear, fingers sliding beneath to pet and rub. And finally, clothes removed, mouths and hands arousing each other, doing everything but the one thing they couldn’t do because it would change their lives forever.