Had she been able to draw breath, she might have questioned him as to how those ghoulish flowers had ended up in his bed. “Can’t breathe,” she gasped out in a thin whisper.
Ballard cursed and shifted. Louvaen inhaled in relief and exhaled on a whimper as the invisible fangs that didn’t belong to serpents sank deeper into her arms and side. Wet ribbons trickled down her skin and pooled in her palm. Blood no doubt. More tickled her cheek and slid to her ear. Tears sprang to her eyes. “What is stabbing me?” Even through her pain, she heard the anguish and the fury in his answer.
“Thorns,” he said. “They’ve pinned us both. It’s why I need you to stay still, my beauty: so I can cut us free.”
Thorns? These weren’t thorns; they were coffin nails. Louvaen pictured the rose vine in the bailey, the flowers like bloodied mouths, the defensive thorns as long and pointed as mercy daggers. She bit her lip and took shallow breaths. The repulsive scent of flowers mixed with rot flooded her nostrils. “I hate those blasted plants!” The thorns dug in harder, and she groaned.
“Unless you want to keep suffering, you’ll stay quiet while I do this.” A hard snapping noise punctuated his statement, followed by several more. Pinned to the bed, Louvaen could only listen to the rustle of bed linens and Ballard’s quick indrawn breaths as he cut away their thorny shackles. The vines holding her captive loosened around her arms and her leg, yet the thorns remained embedded.
“Rise slowly,” Ballard instructed. “You should be able to leave the bed. I’ll help with the thorns in a moment.”
She crawled to the edge of the bed, muscles rigid while she waited for a hidden vine to lash out from behind the pillows and garrote her.
The bedchamber had brightened to a false twilight—just enough to reveal her injuries. Slashed vines hung from her arm and side and encircled her leg, anchored by the thorns embedded in her skin. The vines writhed and coiled around each other like vipers in death throes. The one wrapped around her thigh gave a muscular flex, driving the thorns deeper and sending rills of hot blood down her leg to puddle at her feet. She almost bit through her lip in the effort not to scream.
Her blankets had protected her from the worst of the plant’s insidious attack, with only the side of her body without cover taking the brunt of its malice. The urge to start ripping the vines off, no matter the damage or pain she’d inflict on herself almost overwhelmed her. She didn’t wait for Ballard to help, but she did control her revulsion and set to work on her arm, carefully sliding each hooked barb out of her skin. More blood pearled at the puncture wounds until her arm was washed red, and tears dripped down her cheeks.
“Louvaen, why didn’t you wait? I said I’d help you.”
Louvaen turned at Ballard’s voice and gasped. Like her, he stood bloodied and vine-covered. The roses had saved the worst of their savagery for him. Hundreds of thorns pierced his arms and legs, sank hooks into his belly and chest and coiled around his neck in a bristling collar. He plucked at one of the vines, and Louvaen’s eyes rounded. His nails, short and blunt the previous day, had grown overnight. They curved, black and pointed over his fingertips, as menacing and far deadlier than the thorns trying to bleed him dry. His feet suffered the same fate.
She blinked back her tears. “My gods, Ballard, worry about yourself. In fact, I should be helping you. You’re worse off than I am.” She unraveled the last of the vine from her arm and tossed it into the hearth’s cold ashes. “What caused this?” She worked at the cluster of thorns snarled into the skin along her topmost rib and clenched her teeth to keep from crying out.
“The flux has begun.” His lips curved into a humorless smile when her gaze dropped to his hands. He curled his fingers, highlighting the arch of the claws. “I once told you your efforts were wasted.” He clutched a vine attached to his chest and tore it away.
“Stop!” Louvaen limped to him and caught his wrist. A pattern of half-moon cuts decorated his chest, encircled a nipple, and marched diagonally across his ribcage to his back. Even in the growing daylight, his eyes retained their bestial color, the pupils black pinpoints in yellow irises. The whites of his eyes were so reddened, he looked as if he could weep blood. “Are you not in enough pain?” And she’d contributed to his mauling. His bottom lip swelled, sporting two livid cuts from where she’d bashed him in the mouth with her head. She glided a fingertip along his chin. “I’m sorry for hurting you.”
“Two black eyes, a split lip—what will you add to your list next?” He winked and stood peacefully while she carefully peeled the vines off his body. He did the same for her, his hands delicate as feathers. Louvaen bore the marks of dozens of punctures from the rose thorns but not a single scratch from Ballard’s claws.
By the time she pried away the last of the vines, her hands were slippery with his blood. Her own wounds had scabbed over in the cold air, making her itch. “We’ll need baths. We’re both a mess.” She glanced up when he didn’t answer her. He stared past her shoulder, a far-away expression in his owl-yellow eyes. She shook his wrist. “Ballard, where have you gone?”
He blinked, brought back from some mysterious distance by her question. He raised his arms to survey the rose’s cruelty. “They’re all gone then?” His voice rang hollow, and the morning light cast his pale features in sharp relief.
Louvaen frowned. “They’re gone, and I hope they don’t return.” She shivered, though she didn’t know if it was from standing naked in the cold bedchamber or watching her lover suddenly slip into a dreamlike lethargy. She retrieved her chemise from the bundle of clothing left on one of the chairs when Ballard undressed her the night before and pulled it over her head. The thin linen didn’t chase away the chill, but it helped and didn’t stick to her scabs.
“No time for a bath,” Ballard said. “I need to find Magda and have her prepare my cell.”
She gawked at him. “You’re covered in blood, my lord, and those wounds need tending.” Nausea settled in her belly as she turned her attention to his second statement. “What do you mean Magda is to prepare your cell?” The question was rhetorical; she hoped Ballard would give her a different answer than the one she expected.
He doomed her to disappointment with a humorless smile and luminous gaze. “You know why.”
“Does the flux really change you so much?” She prayed he’d tell her no.
“Aye, though I didn’t expect it this soon or to be so strong. The roses are the first to react—our warning of what’s to come. As you’ve just learned to your misery, they’re even more dangerous during the high tide.” He looked away. “As am I.”
The sickness in her gut roiled up toward her throat. This proud man, of enormous heart and strong character, was ashamed. She tangled her bloodied fingers through his and tugged until he met her eyes once more. “If I promise not to kick you in the face this time...” she paused and smiled wryly. “Or headbutt you, will you let me stay with you?”
His features softened, and he squeezed her fingers until the tips turned white. “Beautiful fishwife, how do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Give me back my dignity.”
Louvaen pulled one of her hands out of his grasp and wiped it down her shift, leaving a red smear behind. “Don’t be foolish, my lord. Your dignity is as much a part of you as your rather impressive nose. I give you nothing you don’t already possess.”
He laughed then and almost pulled her into his arms, stopping when she flinched. He settled for brushing his lips against hers. “Speaking of impressive noses...”
She frowned. “I’ll thank you not to. I’ll be hard pressed explaining to your household how you drowned yourself in your bath.”
A pounding at the solar door interrupted their banter. Ballard dragged a blanket off the bed and wrapped it around his waist. “In case it’s your sister,” he said. Louvaen followed more slowly behind him as he left the bedchamber to greet their visitor.
Ambrose stood in the corridor, barefoot, spectacles askew, and dressed i
n threadbare robes. His white hair stuck out from his scalp in spiny tufts, as if he’d danced with a lightning bolt. “Ballard, the flux has...” he paused at the sight of a crimson-washed Ballard and the bloodied Louvaen behind him. “Begun.” His gaze flitted to Ballard’s hand before returning to his face. “But I think you know that already.”
Ballard stepped aside and motioned for the sorcerer to enter. “The roses paid us a visit some time during the night. I was about to find Magda and ask her for witch hazel and the keys to my cell.”
“You’ll find her with Gavin. He’s taken to his bed.”
What little color remained in Ballard’s pale face leached away. “So soon?” he said, voice anguished.
Ambrose nodded. “I’ve brewed a draught for him to ease the pain. She’s making sure he drinks it.” He turned his attention to Louvaen. “Cinnia guards his door better than a dragon with treasure. He refuses to see her. I need you to coax her away.”
Louvaen crossed her arms and quickly uncrossed them at the sting of her injuries. “I’ll do no such thing. He wants her to marry him? Then he shows her what she’ll deal with if she does—a man made invalid by what should be neutral magic.” She eyed Ambrose, suspicious. “Though I’m guessing there’s nothing neutral about this particular sorcery.”
He met her narrow-eyed gaze with one of his own. “Magic is always more than it seems, Mistress Duenda.”
She growled under her breath. “Very clever, magician. And deceptive. Your answer smells as bad as those foul roses.” She turned to Ballard. “You’ll want to see Gavin, yes?” At his nod, she continued. “So will Cinnia. She’s more like me than any of you realize.”
Ambrose muttered “Gods help Gavin then.”
Ignoring the sorcerer, Louvaen laid a hand on Ballard’s forearm. “She needs to understand what he suffers during the flux. Protecting her from such knowledge does neither of them any favors. I can assure you she won’t run or cower away. If she does, is that truly the wife you want for your son?”
Ballard shook his head. “No.” He smiled faintly. “The men of Ketach Tor aren’t known for binding themselves to milksops.” He turned to Ambrose. “Let Cinnia into the room.”
“But dominus, Gavin doesn’t want...”
“Right now I don’t care what Gavin does or doesn’t want. If he intends to take her to wife, he’ll allow her across his threshold.” He captured a flyaway strand of Louvaen’s hair and ran it between his thumb and forefinger before releasing it. “Bath from a basin, mistress, nothing more. And a poultice for the wounds. We don’t have the time for anything else.” He stalked back to the bedchamber, leaving Louvaen with Ambrose.
The two sized each other up like hounds before a fight, Ambrose as sour as if he’d eaten a bowl of unripe currants. “Happy now? You got what you wanted.”
Louvaen snorted. “Hardly. I’m certain both Cinnia and I are being gulled by you and de Sauveterre regarding this flux or whatever you want to call it. This has all the signs of a curse.” The subtle shift in his expression—a blankness that smoothed his features—signaled she’d hit her mark. Her eyes rounded. “That’s it, isn’t it? This is curse magic. Admit it!”
He huffed, his outrage making his spiky hair quiver and his robes snap as he quit the solar. “I admit nothing,” he declared on his way out. “You want confessions? Ask the dominus, not me.” He strode down the corridor toward the second floor mezzanine and Gavin’s room, leaving Louvaen to smack the flat of her palm against the door.
“He told me to ask you, you gleedy old spitfrog,” she snapped.
“I heard that,” he called out without turning around.
“Good!” Louvaen yelled back and slammed the door.
She whirled to find Ballard standing not far behind her, already dressed in breeches. He pulled on a bliaud, not bothering with the laces. He hadn’t taken time to rinse away the blood on his skin, and pink stains blossomed across the shirt, speckling his chest and arms. He looked as ragged as she felt, the scars livid against his gray pallor. “Where’s Ambrose?”
“Returned to Gavin’s room.” She’d guessed right about a curse and burned to know more but kept her tongue behind her teeth. In the weeks she’d spent at Ketach Tor, she’d never seen fear in Ballard’s eyes until now. That fear was for his son. In his place, she’d have no patience for satisfying someone’s curiosity at the moment. “I’ll meet you there once I’ve dressed. I know you’re as anxious as Cinnia.”
He nodded, pausing long enough to brush a kiss across her brow before following Ambrose. Louvaen watched him until he disappeared into the stairwell. Her own dressing took longer than his, accompanied by a great quantity of cursing and hisses as her frock sleeves scraped the tears in her skin, and her stockings pulled on the scabs dotting her leg. She joined the parade of visitors to Gavin’s chambers and found Cinnia standing outside the bedroom’s closed door, wiping away tears with the corner of her sleeve. When she saw Louvaen, she threw herself into her arms. The sobs started anew.
Louvaen swallowed a pained yelp and stroked her sister’s back. “How is he?”
Cinnia stepped back and sniffled. Even with a red nose, swollen eyes, and skin blotched with tears, she was breathtaking. “In pain. Unhappy to see me.” She smiled crookedly. “You were right about his eyes. De Sauveterre admitted that Ambrose ensorcelled Gavin the last time so I wouldn’t become frightened.”
“Are you frightened now?”
“Yes, but not for myself.” Cinnia used her sodden sleeve a second time to scrub her face. “Gavin reminds me of Thomas when he first got sick.”
Louvaen swayed, dizzy with horror.
Cinnia gripped her arm. “It isn’t plague, Lou; it isn’t just the flux either.”
“I know.” Her sister’s eyebrows rose in question. Louvaen gestured to Gavin’s closed door. “I made a good guess and caught Ambrose by surprise. What did Gavin tell you?”
Cinnia plucked at her skirts. “Nothing, but Magda hinted at it when I was in there. Something to do with his mother Isabeau and curses.”
Once again, the de Sauveterre household danced around a revelation, saying just enough to fire the curiosity but leaving out the most important details. “Magda’s picked up some of her lover’s bad habits. Sly hints and half truths seem to be the order of the morning.” Louvaen wished she could shake one of them until the details spilled out. She returned Cinnia’s sudden stare. “What?”
“What happened to your cheek?”
Louvaen ran a fingertip gingerly across the deep scratch that marred her cheekbone. “You know those disgusting roses?”
Cinnia’s eyes widened. “They did that? How?”
“An unwelcomed dawn visit through a broken shutter. They’re sensitive to the flux the same way Gavin and his father are.” Louvaen paled at the image of Cinnia venturing too close to that seething mass of thorns and being ripped apart. “Don’t go anywhere near the roses, my love. I don’t care how beautiful you think they are.”
Distracted by the sound of the latch on Gavin’s door, Cinnia only nodded. Magda emerged from the room, closing the door gently behind her. Her pinched expression softened when she saw Cinnia, and she patted the girl’s arm. “He’s sleeping for now. The dominus insists on staying, even though he’ll need those cuts tended.” Her gaze settled on Louvaen, pausing at the scratch on her cheek before moving on to the injuries hidden by her wrinkled frock. “You too, I’ll wager.” She waved them along with her as she reached the stairwell. “Come downstairs. I’ll heat water and pour cyser. We can all use a cup a two, methinks.”
A tepid sponge bath followed by a slathering of yarrow ointment and two cups of cyser improved Louvaen’s mood from grim to anxious. As much as she wanted to indulge in a bit of pacing and hand-wringing, she put forth her best impression of a calm demeanor for Cinnia’s sake. The girl was doing enough worrying for two people.
“Do you think Gavin is feeling better now?” she asked for the fifth time in the past quarter hour. She helped Louvae
n strip the blood-stained linens off Ballard’s bed and pile them by the door.
“Maybe,” Louvaen replied patiently. “We’ll know soon enough.” Gathering laundry wasn’t the most interesting way of distracting her sister nor the most successful, but she needed something to keep her occupied and not pacing outside Gavin’s door.
Magda had sent them upstairs after Louvaen pulled her aside. “I’ll ruin Joan’s fine tare if I try to spin, and Cinnia will drive us all to madness before noon with her misery. There’s plenty to do here, but I want something harder than dipping candles to keep her mind off what’s going on in Gavin’s room.”
The cook gave her a knowing look. “Just her?”
Louvaen shrugged. “Me too, if you must know.”
“Hard toil does wonders for an idle mind,” Magda said with a faint smile. “You can wash those sheets and clothing you and Ballard bloodied this morning.”
They yanked the last of the sheets from the mattress and bundled everything in a blanket to drag downstairs. Louvaen kept a wary eye on the window as they made their way to the door, ready to snatch Cinnia and run if a thorny vine coiled through the shutter slats.
Magda had a barrel and bucket ready, along with a bucking cloth filled with ash. Cinnia threw herself into the drudgery of rinsing, scrubbing and beating with gusto, only halting when Louvaen threatened to take the washing bat to her head if she didn’t stop long enough to eat Magda’s dinner of stewed chicken. All the threats in the world couldn’t force her to do more than pick at her portion, and Louvaen didn’t push her. Her own food grew cold as she pushed it listlessly from one side of her plate to the other. She hadn’t expected Gavin to make an appearance, but she’d hope Ballard might. She’d even welcome Ambrose’s usual censure of her if it meant learning more about this latest flux. Unfortunately, only Magda kept them company, and she’d warned them no amount of charm, tears or demands would move her to divulge the household secrets.