Matthew reached for the reins. “Better you discuss that with him.”
Mel gently pulled away the reins and walked Smoke toward his stable. “I can tend my own mount.”
He went with her. “I’m sure you can.” Dryly he added, “But so can I. And I’m afraid only you can tend to His Highness.”
Well, perhaps he had a point. With reluctance, she handed Matthew the reins.
Mel wasn’t certain where to find Cobalt. She heard no one in the training yard now. She climbed the North Tower to its fourth floor. The open room was the same as when she had crossed it earlier this morning, empty, just gossamer drapes, no people. She wouldn’t have been surprised to see a cloud drift in the window.
She returned to the East Tower and found Cobalt’s suite empty except for Fog, who was visiting the library. Mel scooped up the kitten and cuddled him until he squirmed out of her grasp and jumped to the floor. She laughed as he chased a wooden ball he had found somewhere. It was as big as his head.
“What have you there?” she asked.
“It’s a billiard ball,” a dry voice said behind her.
Mel spun around. Cobalt was standing in the entrance of the library, leaning against the door frame with his arms crossed. He obviously intended to present a stern demeanor, but it had a very different effect on her. The way he folded his arms made his biceps bulge and reminded her of the previous night. Her face heated and her body tingled.
“My greetings,” she murmured.
He scowled at her. “Where have you been?”
“Riding.”
“Smoke is no animal for a woman.”
“Why not?”
He seemed at a loss for words. It made her wonder if no one ever disagreed with him. She had a feeling he had assumed she would quake.
“What do you mean, ‘why not’?” Cobalt finally growled.
She walked over to him and set her palm against his chest, above his crossed arms. “He is a good horse. I like him. He likes me. It pleases me to ride him.”
“Matthew says you ride well.” Now he looked flustered. Or aroused. Maybe both.
“Of course I ride well.” Mel could feel the muscles of his chest through his shirt. She moved her hand in a circle and murmured, “Very well.”
“Saints, woman.” Cobalt pulled her against him. With one arm around her waist, he bent his head and tried to kiss her. He was too tall to manage with them standing, so he lifted her up with her feet dangling. Her tunic bunched up in his hands.
Mel laughed as she slipped. “Cobalt, stop!”
He made a frustrated noise and set her down on her feet. “Wife, you play with dangerous weapons.”
“Are you?” she asked, intrigued.
His face actually reddened. “Maybe my father is right.”
“About what?”
“You distract me.” He glowered. “Weaken my resolve.”
“Your resolve to do what?” Her voice cooled. “Will you be the weapon he uses to subjugate all the settled lands?”
“Do not speak ill of him.”
“I speak ill of no one. It was a question.”
He folded his arms again. “You ask many questions. You do many things. I don’t recall giving permission for any of it.”
“I don’t recall asking for permission.”
Cobalt sighed and lowered his arms. “No, I don’t imagine you would.” He put his hand under her chin and tilted her face up to him. “Would you ride at my side, like the warrior queens of your past?”
“Why a warrior?” Mel pulled her head away. “We have peace now. I would have it stay that way.”
“Why?”
“It is better than killing.”
He leaned toward her. “Battles are triumph. Not killing.”
“Unless you lose them.”
“Until a man dies, his battles are never lost.” The name Varqelle remained unspoken between them.
Mel felt as if walls were closing on her. “He demands too much of you.”
His gaze darkened. “He demands nothing. I freely give.”
She laid her hand against his chest, this time to hold him off rather than draw him near. “Honor the spirit of the treaty you proposed.”
“I do.” He folded his hand around her fingers. “You like that horse?”
“Smoke?” The change of subject caught her off guard. “Yes, I do.”
He pulled her hard against his body, still gripping her hands in one fist, his other arm tight around her waist. “Then ride at my side, wife. Not against me.”
“Do not ask me that.” Mel didn’t know how to deal with this force of nature she had married. He watched her with his sensuous dark gaze, compelling and indomitable, and she knew she could no more stop him than she could halt the ferocity of a blizzard or the thunder in the sky.
Cobalt paused outside his mother’s suite. The drape before him rustled as air gusted in the windows. He pushed it aside and went to knock on the door within the elegant horseshoe arch.
“Come,” Dancer called.
He laid his palm against the door and bent his head. Perhaps he should leave. Come another time.
The door opened, and he lifted his head. Dancer stood there in her silk tunic and trousers, wearing her spectacles. “Cobalt?” She smiled. “What are you doing?”
“I came to talk with you.”
She moved aside so he could enter her study. “You seem troubled. Is it your bride?”
“No.” He walked into the familiar room, but today it all looked different. He turned to Dancer as she closed the door. “He is not a monster.”
“Who?”
“My father.”
She stiffened. “I will not speak of Varqelle.”
Cobalt paced away, toward her desk. Her history scrolls lay open, weighted down by small statues of ice-dragons. “You deserted your husband and denied me my father.” He swung around to her. “You let Stonebreaker raise me.” His anger threatened to flare, but he kept control. “Why? You’ve always told me it was for my protection. Against what? I have met this supposed devil and he is no demon.”
“I told you the truth.” She took off her spectacles. “I have also told you that I will say no more.”
“Did he hurt you?” Cobalt knew he skirted the edges of decent questions. He was neither deaf nor dense. He had heard the rumors of his father’s appetites in the bedroom. He had no wish to know what cruelty might have gone into his conception. But if that was why his mother had fled his father, how could she look him in the eye and claim it had been to protect him? She had given them both a lifetime of hell.
Dancer spoke stiffly. “This is not a conversation I will have with my son.”
“You betrayed us both.”
She came over to him. “I did not.”
“Prove it!” His fists clenched at his sides. “How could you subject us both to that monster you call a father?”
Her voice snapped with anger. “You will not speak of the king in that way.”
“Why? He deserves it.” He was breaking the unwritten rule they always kept. Never acknowledge the truth about Stonebreaker. But everything had changed with Mel and his father here, and his world was shifting in ways he didn’t yet understand. Today he couldn’t keep the long-suppressed rage out of his voice. “The day will come when no man or woman dares to raise a hand against me.”
“Ah, Cobalt.” She seemed full of grief. So sorry. But she would never say the word. Never admit that vulnerability.
“Tell me why you left him!” Cobalt demanded.
“I have said all I have to say.”
His fury threatened to incinerate him and leave only cinders. He had to go before he lost control. He walked away, to the door, but when he went to turn the knob, his hand was still clenched. He stood and stared at his fist. He was so full of the rage, he felt as if he would burst if he even moved.
Dancer spoke behind him. “Don’t leave like this.”
Cobalt slowly relaxed his hand. Then he opened t
he door. He walked into that airy room of gauze and beauty and nightmares, the room where he had so often sought refuge. He would run to Dancer, and she would hide him, but in the end Stonebreaker always found them. Cobalt walked past the doorway of the closet where his grandfather had locked him as punishment for fleeing a king’s rage. He had spent hours there in the dark, terrified no one would ever let him out. The door was closed now, the closet used to store ladders and paint.
He strode across the room, whipping aside the drapes. It wasn’t until he was descending the spiral stairs of the tower that he stopped. He sagged against the wall and a sound escaped his throat, a half gasp, half sob. He slammed his fists against the stone. His rage welled up and exploded out of him. He hit the wall again, again and again, gouging his skin on the rough bricks, expending his fury until his hands were bloody and battered, his skin torn to shreds. He wasn’t his grandfather. He could never break the stone. His bones would shatter first. If the king of the Misted Cliffs had been here now, Cobalt would have turned his fists against him and brought on his own execution for attacking, even killing the reigning sovereign.
Finally his rage wore itself out. He sank down on a step and put his head in his bleeding hands. He grieved for what he would never have, for the friends he had never known, for the normal life he had glimpsed, however briefly, with his bride’s family. He had taken Mel and run from that place, unable to face the love that they all shared without apology or subterfuge.
Cobalt made his decision. Together he and Varqelle would create a world where no one could ever again harm him or anyone he loved. He would do this—no matter what price they had to pay.
12
The Tiled Pool
Mel went to the highest room of the Zephyr, a small tower west of the central Storm Tower. Its top floor had no furniture, no partitions, nothing but hanging gauze and windows open to the night. She sat on the floor with her back against the wall, drew up her knees, rested her elbows on them, and put her head in her hands, the heels of her palms braced against her forehead. Moonlight flowed through the windows and silvered the room. It was so quiet here at the Castle of Clouds. She could hear only the keening of wind outside the tower.
They had been such fools. Of course Cobalt wouldn’t break the treaty he had signed with Harsdown and Aronsdale. When they combined forces, those two countries had the strongest army in the settled lands, one controlled by the House of Dawnfield. Cobalt would keep his promise not to attack—for as long as he honored the treaty, so too did it bind the House of Dawnfield. They had vowed they wouldn’t fight the House of Chamberlight. Her marriage was a sham, a brilliant ploy to neutralize the only military force that had a chance of defeating the Chamberlight army.
Mel lifted her head. She had to warn her father. But how? She realized now that if she took Smoke and fled, as she had originally intended, it would negate the treaty. Another Escar woman would have deserted her husband. She doubted any army could stand against a force led by an enraged Cobalt. And he would come for her. She had seen the possessive fire in his eyes this afternoon.
Her body had betrayed her. Mel wanted his touch even now, as she dreaded his plans. This was no untried youth writing pretty sonnets. She hated herself for setting Aron aside in her thoughts, but Cobalt stoked a fire within her that could consume her heart, even her soul.
She had to take action. But she had no recourse here, no allies, nothing. Cobalt had called her a mage queen. Although he didn’t believe his own words, they had truth. She had done little beyond inconsequential spells, but she descended from warrior mages. She had always assumed she would learn her skills over the years and use them for the good of the realms she and Aron would rule, he as king of Aronsdale and she as queen of Harsdown. She had imagined her days spent in scholarly pursuits, especially mathematics. No longer did she have those choices. She had to learn her abilities now and in ways she had never expected. Ways of violence.
Mel focused on the chamber around her, a squat cylinder, three dimensions instead of two, small for the top floor of a tower but huge compared to shapes she had used in the past. Power surged within her, erratic and unfocused. She couldn’t focus any spell. It might be the imperfect shape; the open windows and drapes marred its form. Probably had more to do with her lack of skill.
Concentrate. What did she want? Green spells were within her ability. They revealed moods, and a skilled adept might send as well as receive them. She needed to relay her warning to her mother or father, to communicate her fear of what Varqelle and Cobalt intended. She had neither the power nor the gift for such a spell, and if she pushed too hard she could burn out what talent she did possess, but she could think of no other way.
Mel tried to imagine the fields and orchards of home, but those memories had dimmed. So she envisioned emeralds, cold and hard, brilliant. It was the highest level of green.
Power surged within her.
A door scraped open. Mel opened her eyes into a green haze. The mist filled the Zephyr Chamber. A woman was crossing the room in the shimmering light. Dancer. Her silks fluttered around her body and took an emerald tinge, as if she were a jewel herself. Mel felt her mood clearly; Dancer had seen the light from the windows and had come to investigate. Shock emanated off her: Until this moment, she hadn’t truly believed mages existed.
The queen stopped before Mel. Her mouth moved, but Mel heard nothing.
“Again?” Mel asked—and froze. Her words resonated with a volume and fullness nothing like her normal voice.
“Witch.” Dancer had fear in her eyes and her mood. “You will destroy us all.”
“I am no witch.” Mel’s words rolled through the room in defiance of her denial.
“You have turned my son against me.” Dancer lifted her chin and clenched one fist at her side, but her voice shook. “Will you drive him to his death in battle to satisfy your thirst for more lands than are your due?”
“I would have him stay home,” Mel said. “Raise a family, come to the hearth at night, work in the orchards.” She spoke with pain. “Can you see him living such a life? The thirst for conquest comes from him, Dancer, not me, and your husband feeds it because he knows of no other way to exist.”
“No!” She stepped toward Mel, then stopped when light flared around them. “Cobalt is not like his father!”
Mel heard the anguish in her cry. She wished she could help Dancer, but she could barely help herself. “Whether he pays for his father’s sins or becomes his father’s image, neither will change his nature. He was born a conqueror.”
“He must not,” Dancer said.
Mel rose to her feet. The mood spell was pouring into her and she felt as if she would go up like a torch with more power than she could control. Her voice echoed. “Varqelle gives Cobalt the paternal regard he has craved his entire life, and neither you nor I can stop your son from hurtling toward his destiny.”
“You know nothing,” Dancer said. “You would see him die, false Harsdown queen.”
Mel could have called Dancer the false queen, but she knew better. Dancer was every bit her heredity. “The throne will return to the House of Escar with the birth of my child.”
“That is too late.” Bitterness edged Dancer’s voice. “Varqelle wants it for himself. Do you believe he will be satisfied to see Cobalt as your consort? I think not.”
“We have a treaty.” Mel spoke as much to convince herself as Dancer. The resonance faded from her voice.
Dancer’s voice quieted. “What will that treaty mean when your lands are surrounded by the empire my son has conquered for his father?” She spoke with the sound of tears she was too proud to shed. “No more will we see peace in our lands.”
Then Dancer turned and walked away, leaving Mel alone with her fading spell and her fears.
Cobalt’s suite was empty when Mel returned. She felt worn out, numb from straining for a spell out of her reach. She hadn’t even thought she could use a shape with a level as high as a cylinder. Apparently so; nothi
ng would have happened if it had been beyond her ability. She desperately wished for Skylark, the mage mistress, but she had no one to help her here. She had to find her own way.
She went to the library. Usually it eased her mind, with its tomes, scrolls, and the globe of the world on its stand, but today it all seemed so frail. Historically, conquerors in these settled lands had killed scholars and burned libraries. It was easier to control a people if their intellectuals didn’t agitate against the new regime. Scholarship was such a fragile part of human endeavor. Now when it was too late to continue as before, she realized the gift her parents had given her with such a good education.
A rattle came from one shelf and a purple billiard ball rolled out from under it. Fog ran out after the ball, slipping and sliding on the parquetry floor.
“Ah, Foggy,” Mel murmured. “He doesn’t want you to play with those.” She picked up the ball—
Light flared around Mel. Pain seared her hand and she dropped the ball with a cry.
Her vision cleared slowly. Her hand throbbed, and a burn covered the palm where she had touched the ball.
“What the—?” She looked around. Fog had run under the desk and was crouched in the shadows watching her with large gold eyes. The ball had rolled against the doorstop. It was no longer purple; the paint had been scorched, leaving it black.
Mel crouched down and tapped the ball. An echo of power vibrated through her fingers. It wasn’t the ball. It was her. She hadn’t properly concluded her spell in the Zephyr Tower, so her power had discharged when she touched the ball.
Chills went up Mel’s back. A sphere was the highest mage form. This was a solid ball rather than a hollow sphere, but that made no difference. The shape was the same. King Jarid in Aronsdale was the only mage who could use a sphere in its pure form. Mel’s father was also a sphere mage, but his spells never worked with ideal forms, and they came out flawed when he used flawed shapes. Given the power of a sphere, Muller could do great damage with such a spell; as a result he almost never used his abilities.