“He will be most welcome,” Regis said. With a bow, Gabriel withdrew back into the Castle.
Regis and Danilo headed for the town house in silence. Regis drank in the comfort of having Danilo once again by his side. There was still work to be done, work that only Danilo could do.
“Danilo, once you accomplished wonders gathering together a temporary Council when we debated the question of Federation membership,” Regis began, hearing the heaviness in his own voice. “I would not have it said I dealt with my brother secretly or through subterfuge. As it is, there will be too many vacant places in the Crystal Chamber—”
“Don’t,” Danilo said.
Regis paused, raising one eyebrow in question.
“Don’t ask me to leave you so soon. I’ve hardly—” Danilo’s voice caught in his throat. His eyes were wide and dark, filled with emotion. When he spoke again, his voice was so soft that no one but Regis could have heard: “I’ve clung to hope for so long, without even a word.”
They had come to a halt, standing very close, leaning toward one another without conscious intent. Regis felt the warmth of Danilo’s breath on his face. He thought of Linnea at home, of this moment, of Kierestelli hidden in the Yellow Forest. Of Felix’s blood, sticky beneath his fingers. Of the flare of light and power beyond his own.
Too much, it was too much for one human heart to bear alone.
Not alone, came Danilo’s thought.
Regis drew in a breath. Danilo raised his hand, quick as a dagger in the hands of a master, and brushed Regis on the lips with one fingertip. It was only a fleeting touch, but enough to shatter doubt.
Bredhyu.
Always.
“Now let me take you home,” Danilo said, with the hint of smile. “I cannot in good conscience allow you to wander the streets unguarded.”
Still, Regis did not move. “Home. To Linnea.” And to all the questions implicit in those few words.
“Home,” Danilo agreed, “to whatever has changed and not changed. For many years, we have both known that you must marry. I wished it were not so, but it is the way of the world. You are Hastur. Your destiny was laid down before you were born.”
Regis did not know whether to laugh or weep. “Then I should have chosen my parents more carefully.”
Danilo did not rise to the old joke. “I would not have you other than you are. In any way.” He paused. Then: “You once said you would not marry any woman you could not respect and cherish, who did not return those feelings. I think you have found her.”
Understanding rose slowly, trailing inexpressible relief. Danilo and Linnea might never be close, but neither would question the other’s devotion. Or place in his heart.
Although the day was mild for spring, a chill wind curled through the street. Danilo, dressed only in indoor clothing, shivered. Regis glanced back at the Castle.
Danilo followed the movement of his eyes. “I would not willingly set foot in the Castle again, except at your side. Tomorrow, either I will be able to retrieve my possessions or it will not matter.”
Regis unclasped his own cloak and draped it over Danilo’s shoulders. Danilo looked as if he would protest, that he could not accept the cloak while Regis had none, that Regis looked like a wild man with his stained, torn clothing and disheveled hair. The blood on his shirt had dried to a crust.
Danilo said nothing to repudiate the gift of lord to liegeman, of lover to beloved, and the two went on together.
When Regis and Danilo arrived at the townhouse, Linnea asked no questions, although she must have had many. She took a brief, hard look at the two of them, then summoned servants and issued orders for hot baths, hot food, and hot spiced wine, enough for a company traveling in the Hellers in winter.
Danilo bowed to her. “Lady Linnea, I thank you—”
“Danilo, we are friends. We have no need of such formalities.” Linnea did not touch Danilo, for as a Tower worker and Keeper, she had been trained to avoid any but the most deliberate physical contact, yet the warmth of her voice was as welcoming as an embrace.
“Lady, I was not sure—”
“There will be time enough for discussion once you are settled. Food and hot water will take a short time. I shall return presently with someone you want to see.” With a smile, she glided from the room and shut the door firmly.
As Danilo turned to Regis, his expression melted like ice in spring, giving way to wild joy. The next moment, they were in each other’s arms, holding one another as if they could never let go. Danilo was thinner than Regis remembered him, his muscles rigid from long- held tension.
“Regis, when you did not appear at the coronation, I was so afraid—” Danilo said in a choked voice.
“I never thought—I’m sorry I put you through that—and the whole dreadful business of becoming Rinaldo’s paxman.”
“You owe me no apologies.”
“I—”
Danilo put an end to further protest. Time fluttered on gossamer wings for Regis as Danilo captured his mouth with his own.
The kiss began hard and urgent, driven by pent-up longing. Desire catapulted into tenderness and demanding physical need and relief and feelings beyond words.
Without breaking away, Regis ran his hands over Danilo’s body. He pulled the front of Danilo’s shirt loose. Danilo’s skin was taut and fine-grained over hard muscle and the soaring arch of bone.
Regis buried his face in the curve between Danilo’s neck and shoulder. Heart racing, heat throbbing in his blood, he inhaled the musk of arousal and clean masculine sweat.
With an effort, Regis wrenched away, not wanting to have Linnea return and find them so. She was a telepath, surely she could feel the sexual hunger between the two of them. Reaching, he sensed a wall like polished quartz where her mind should be. She had closed off her psychic awareness, even as she had physically closed the door.
They fell on the divan, tugging at each other’s clothing. Regis could no longer tell where his own sensations ended and Danilo’s began: the fire that fueled every touch, demanding again and more and deeper, the convulsive opening of one heart to the other. Only the flimsiest barrier separated them, like the border between a flame and its reflection.
As their bodies joined, Regis felt an electric pulse blaze up in him like living lightning. It soared through them both, swift and bright and vital. One moment, it seemed to rush from Danilo into himself, past throat and heart and groin. The next, it was Regis who poured himself out and felt Danilo’s ecstatic response as keenly as if it were his own.
Afterward, they lay panting and replete, half on the divan, half on the floor. Danilo chuckled, soft and deep in his chest. Regis, who had been sprawled with his head on Danilo’s chest, stirred.
“Best to get dressed,” he murmured, reaching for his underclothes. “There will be time again, later.”
Danilo regarded him with a slow, provocative smile. “We have all winter to make up for.”
“Count on it.” Regis snatched up Danilo’s pants and tossed them at him. “But first, there’s work to do. Make yourself decent. Or would you rather be in your current state when my wife walks in?”
When Linnea did return, both men were fully dressed. Even the divan cushions had been replaced in their proper order. A discrete touch of laran and a tap on the door signaled Linnea’s request to enter.
She carried the baby on one hip and a towel draped over her shoulder. “Come and meet your namesake, Danilo.”
Danilo took a step closer. Amazement tinged with awe spread across his face, and Regis was struck yet again by how handsome, how expressive he was. How quick to delight as well as to despair.
When Linnea held out Dani, Danilo raised both hands with an expression of consternation. A moment later, she had arranged him on the divan with the baby on his lap. Dani looked up, eyes wide. The two Danilos stared at one another. Regis watched, unsure whether his son was on the brink of glee or wailing. Then the baby’s mouth curved in a blissful smile, and Danilo too
was laughing.
Baby Dani gave a little burp. Linnea swept him back into her arms, facing the towel on her shoulder, just in time for him to bring up a small amount of milk.
“Now, enough of that,” Linnea laughed. “The bath water is hot. Off with you!”
A short time later, Regis had bathed and eaten, and was sitting before a comforting fire with a steaming goblet. For the sake of a clear head, he had insisted on jaco instead of wine. Danilo was still upstairs, soaking, and the bustle of the household had quieted.
“Tell me what happened.” Linnea pulled up a bench to sit beside his knee, almost close enough to touch.
Regis told her as directly as possible, leaving out nothing important, yet not dwelling on personal emotions. She would sense what lay beneath his words. She listened, gray eyes somber, holding him like an anchor through the storm of reliving the rescue and its aftermath.
“It is too bad I was not permitted to monitor Bettany, or that sad part of the affair would have been settled earlier,” she commented.
Regis shook his head. “I doubt Rinaldo would have accepted your findings. He was firmly convinced of the miraculous nature of his wife’s conception. I wronged poor Bettany in my thoughts when I learned the Terran medical tests had confirmed that Rinaldo was sterile.”
“At least he did not blame her pregnancy on some other man. Regis, you don’t suppose he suspected Danilo?”
“How could he do that and then condemn Danilo for being a lover of men?”
“Your brother is hardly rational, with his faith in supernatural intervention,” she replied. “The real miracle is that Felix Lawton wasn’t killed. If he lives and if he is still in need of a teacher, I must help him.”
As Linnea spoke, she allowed her own feelings to surface. Like all Comyn, she found a violent assault on a child unspeakable. She and Regis had first opened their hearts to each other following the murder of two of his own nedestro children.
Regis remembered thinking, A child of Linnea’s would be too precious to risk to fate . . .
Hard on that thought came another, darker still: Would there ever come a time when it was safe to bring Kierestelli back? Dared he risk it? Ever?
He had kept his mind guarded, but Linnea must have sensed his fear. She said, “Since Bettany is not pregnant, and never was, the Domain of Hastur once more passes through you. You already have an Heir in Mikhail. He is well-grown and trained to protect himself. But little Dani—must we expose a helpless babe to those dangers?”
“You suggest that I leave Mikhail as Heir to Hastur in order to protect our son?” Memory, bittersweet, brushed his thoughts. “When I took Mikhail from my sister, I swore that I would not set him aside, not even if I produced an Heir of my own flesh. I will not go back on my word or dishonor my sister’s sacrifice.”
Linnea held herself still, her only concession to relief the slow closing of her eyes.
“We should not tell anyone,” Regis said. “At least, not until Dani is grown enough to understand. Mikhail will do well enough for the present as Kennard-Dyan’s paxman.”
“He’ll learn the wise uses of power much better from that perspective,” Linnea agreed.
“Yes, and although Dani must of necessity be exposed to the politics of the Comyn—or whatever takes our place—I would hope—” Regis stumbled, caught between his own tormented childhood and his dreams for his son, “that he not grow up as I did in the shadow of such crushing responsibility.”
“He will always be your son, Regis. As much as we and Danilo can manage it, he will grow up in a loving family.”
Within his heart, Regis felt the easing of a tension he had not known existed. He could not, as the old saying went, put banshee chicks back into their eggs or change the world into which he had been born. But he could do his best to make sure none of his children ever endured the same.
He, and Linnea . . . and Danilo.
In a short time, Danilo would come down. He and Regis could never return to the life they had lived here together. Would Danilo resent the trust and intimacy that had grown between Regis and Linnea or Linnea’s a role as his wife, in which Danilo had no part?
It came to Regis that each relationship—wife and leronis, paxman and bredhyu—had its own intrinsic honor and value. Loving one person could in no way diminish his devotion to the other.
Linnea rose, smoothing her skirts. “You and Danilo will have much to discuss. What’s left of today will be hectic, to say the least. I will leave you to it. I have my own work, making sure Danilo’s chamber is comfortable and that he has everything he needs.”
As mistress of the household, Linnea had the right to arrange quarters as she chose. Nevertheless, Regis felt a tinge of dread. Would she use this power to place herself between him and Danilo? Then she gave a little teasing laugh and he realized he was seeing the world through the lens of the day’s horror.
“Of course,” she said, “Danilo must have his old chamber next to yours, as is proper for a paxman. I’m quite comfortable where I am.”
“Linnea—”
“Regis, this will not be the first time I have shared a lover with someone else, although never before with another man . . . or one who was as dear to me as you are. In the Towers, we learned how to manage such things. The best practical arrangement to begin with is for each of us to have our own chamber. Later, we’ll work out a schedule and psychic shielding.”
Regis had forgotten how forthright she was. “I’ll leave the arrangements to you . . . with my thanks.”
She walked briskly to the door, then paused and turned back. “Regis. Promise me one thing.”
He heard the unsureness in her voice and waited.
“You will not walk into the Crystal Chamber without me.”
She asked not only because she was Comynara in her own right. Not only because as one who had once been Keeper at Arilinn, her voice still commanded respect. Not only because she might be of support to him. Not only because, if things went badly and turned violent, she had the right to face that danger with her husband.
Danilo would be there, as paxman and Comyn. Linnea’s presence would state, in clear and irrevocable terms, her own rightful place.
Am I truly an equal partner?
Smiling, he nodded.
A short while later, Danilo came into the parlor, flushed from the heat of the bath. His hair, still wet, tumbled over his shoulders. Regis recognized the shirt, a bit large but clean and pressed, as belonging to the coridom. Linnea must have borrowed it for him.
“There’s hot wine as well as jaco,” Regis said, gesturing.
Danilo poured half a goblet of wine and sat down. “I suppose jaco is more sensible, but, Holy Bearer of Burdens, I need this more. I still can’t believe I’m here.”
“You are,” Regis grinned. “Or else we’re both hallucinating. Are you easy, Danilo? Is there anything we need to discuss before we turn our minds to plots and schemes?”
Danilo hesitated, studying the garnet surface of the wine. “There’s nothing more to be said. Life itself will unfold. But—even if you set me aside,” lifting his gaze, his eyes filled with light, “what you have given me is more than I ever dreamed. You came for me, even as you did so many years ago at Caer Donn. You restored my honor as well as my life.”
You were willing to die for me.
“Having risked that, do you think me such a blockhead as to cast away the finest paxman of our generation?” Regis tried to keep his tone light. “We are what we are to one another. Even as Linnea and I are.”
Danilo looked away, blinked once or twice, nodded. Inhaled. Cleared his throat. “So we are to resurrect the extinct Comyn Council once again?”
“I’m afraid so. I would prefer not to rely on the ghosts of the old order, but not even Varzil the Good could convene the Telepath Council in the Crystal Chamber. To be seen as legitimate beyond question, these proceedings must have the full and indisputable authority of the Domains. I must also speak with Dan Lawton withou
t delay, to forestall a military coup by the Terranan before I can get things straightened out.”
“Well,” Danilo replied with a ghost of humor, “what is one more miracle on a day such as this?”
The crimson sun sank behind the rooftops of Thendara. Shadows deepened, staining colors into gloom. Regis and Danilo, muffled in woolen cloaks, made their way to the Trade City.
The day had been clear, and not a cloud blurred the twilit sky. Darkness, dense and swift, swept across the heavens like great soft wings. Leaping out in sudden brilliance, the crown of vast white stars and the two smaller moons glittered like gemstones set asymmetrically against the galactic plane.
The two men stopped outside a walled compound that revealed nothing to the outer world except that its owner was rich enough to ensure his privacy.
“You’ve outdone yourself, Danilo,” Regis muttered. “I don’t think even Valdir Ridenow would look for me here.”
Danilo pulled the bell rope. The gate cracked open. A servant carrying a torch ushered them through a small garden and into the house beyond.
Regis and Danilo followed the servant into a richly furnished room. Lights came on, not the tallow candles of poor people or even the laran-charged glows of the Comyn, but a bank of yellow globes of Federation origin. Regis recognized a hanging of Thetan sea-silk, a carpet with an intricate Dry Towns pattern, and a chair that could only have come from the pleasure world of Keef. Historically, Darkovans had little interest in off-world goods, except practical things like lenses and small metal implements. For the most part, the Comyn discouraged interstellar trade. As he surveyed the chamber, Regis could not deny the beauty with which off-world and Darkovan cultures could combine.
A moment later, their host entered, followed closely by Dan Lawton. The host, a member of the Pan-Darkovan League, wore a floor-length robe of emerald wool belted with a chain of enameled medallions of curious off-world design.
“Vai domyn,” he said, bowing first to Regis and then to Danilo, “you lend grace to my humble establishment.”