A low pitiful groan spilled from the well room followed by Ballard’s voice, now raspy and gasping. “Mercy, Isabeau,” he said. “I beg you.”
“Mercy, Isabeau,” Louvaen and Ambrose repeated in unison. They stared at each other, Louvaen wide-eyed and sick to her soul; Ambrose paler than milk.
Ballard’s brief remarks about Isabeau had hinted at an enmity between them. Still Ambrose’s tale stunned her. Not because Isabeau had cast the curse against Ballard—plenty of spouses hated each other enough to wield curses, knives and skillets against each other—but against Gavin as well. “She hated her own son.”
“Just as much as she hated her husband—which was a lot as you can tell.”
“How old was Gavin when the curse manifested?
“Twelve and fostering with a lord’s household a few leagues from Ketach Tor. He was still a page and eager for the day he’d become a squire.” Ambrose ran a hand through his spiny hair. “The curse took him without warning, turned him into a beast both cunning and violent. He killed two men before he changed back to a boy—bloodied, terrified and a prayer away from being put to the sword. Only Ballard’s long friendship with the fostering lord saved him.
Louvaen shook her head. “My gods, that poor child.”
Ambrose sighed. “Indeed. Ballard paid blot wite to the slain men’s families and took Gavin home, but word passed swiftly and soon everyone from the borderlands to Waleran’s court heard that the only child of the Margrave of Ketach Tor carried a curse. The curse struck again a fortnight later. We had to tie him to his bed and post guards at the door. After that, people left Ketach Tor.”
Another round of shrieking swelled up from the bottom of the stairs. When it stopped, Louvaen thought she’d need an iron crow to pry her clenched teeth apart. “Is there nothing you can give him to ease his suffering?”
Even in the buttery’s frigid air, Ambrose’s brow was beaded with sweat. “No. I’d have to brew the draught so strong, I’d end up poisoning him.”
They waited for more of Ballard’s howls, but it remained quiet. Louvaen exhaled a shuddering breath. “If the curse is supposed to manifest in Gavin, how does Ballard shoulder the brunt of it?”
Ambrose’s eyes closed for a moment, as if he prayed for strength. “The situation was unacceptable, and Ballard was willing to do whatever was necessary to shield Gavin from Isabeau’s malice.” His gaze turned bright and watery. “I told him it would be a mercy to just kill the boy. Isabeau had no hold over the dead, and Ballard’s part of the curse—a woman not loving him—was of no importance.” He chuffed. “I hate being wrong.”
“I can’t imagine Ballard would even consider killing his own son.”
The sorcerer’s humorless smile hid a world of secrets. “That’s just it. Gavin isn’t Ballard’s son by blood. Granthing sired him, and Ballard knew it.”
Louvaen’s thoughts reeled. “My gods, did Isabeau not know? What good was all that son-destroying-the-father twaddle if Granthing was already dead?”
Ambrose’s eyes lit behind the reflective spectacles, and a tiny smile played around his mouth. “Ah, Mistress Duenda, you do have a way of humbling the most epic notions.” He shrugged. “I don’t know if she knew. She may have guessed. I personally believe she was exacting her revenge on Granthing as well, in case Ballard lied and Granthing lived. I think she knew in the end he didn’t love her any more than Ballard did; he only pretended. His betrayal was worse than Ballard’s indifference.”
“She’d destroy the heir Ballard so desperately wanted for Ketach Tor and turn him into the instrument of Granthing’s death in the event Ballard hadn’t actually killed him.” Louvaen sighed. “Not so much twaddle then.”
“No, but there was a way out for Ballard. He could marry again, father a child on another wife. Love is no requirement for siring a child. He’d still have his heir and keep Isabeau’s land.”
“My son is why I breathe, Louvaen.”
She stared at the door between the buttery and the well room, imagining the tormented man imprisoned in the dark cell with only his pain for company. “Who sired him has no meaning here. Gavin de Lovet is the true son and heir of Ballard de Sauveterre.”
“Aye, he is.” Ambrose followed her gaze to the door. “I couldn’t break the curse, but I could manipulate it. I redirected the symptoms onto Ballard. Everything Isabeau would have burdened Gavin with, I shifted to his father—the disfigurements, the pain, the physical bonds tethering him to this castle and lands.”
Louvaen pressed the heels of her hands against her aching eyes. She wouldn’t weep. Not now. Not even later. Maybe when the flux ebbed and the curse’s effects with it, she’d cry. For Ballard, for Gavin, and for Cinnia. Most of all for Cinnia who had the towering misfortune of falling in love with a cursed man. She might even cry for herself for falling in love with the ruin of one.
“Are you all right, mistress?” For the first time since she’d met him, Ambrose’s eyes were soft with concern—for her.
She answered with a question of her own. “Are Gavin’s eyes always yellow during the flux?”
Ambrose shook his head. “No. We’ve battled this curse for a long time. As Ballard says, he’s like a bucket filled to the brim. Some spills over and rebounds back to Gavin. So far only his eyes have changed.”
“How long is a long time?”
Ambrose hesitated. “Three-hundred and seventy two years, give or take a week.”
Louvaen gaped at him. “Are you jesting?”
His earlier wry smile reappeared. “My powers aren’t unlimited, mistress, but they’re still formidable. We sit in a river of wild magic. Curses cast by vengeful women have teeth, and sorcerers like me can slow time.”
Ice water slid down her spine. She’d known he was powerful. Not just the potions brewer she first assumed or a clever magician who fooled a gullible lord, but he surprised her at every turn. By all rights and every stricture of common sense, she should be terrified of him. The gods knew she’d irritated him enough on several occasions to at least warrant a mute spell. “Tell me something, sorcerer. How often did you imagine me as a toad in your brew pot?”
He flashed her a grin. “Oh mistress, nothing so pretty as a toad. More like a slug and me with the salt cellar in hand.”
She nudged him with an elbow, not quite daring more contact. “For an old squint-a-pipes, you’re useful to have around.”
Ambrose sniffed. “I don’t squint. And for such a scold growing fat on our favors, you give yourself a lot of airs.”
They stared at each other before breaking into grins. The pressure that had thrummed in her chest all day eased a little. She’d needed this bit of silliness, and by the look of him, so did Ambrose.
“For a man nearly four hundred years old, you’ve aged well. When did you start meddling with time?”
“I’m over four hundred years old, and I built that spell once I directed the curse’s symptoms to Ballard. I needed time—time to find a way to defeat Isabeau’s vengeance. Ballard, Gavin, Magda, Clarimond and Joan—and I of course—we’ve seen countless seasons pass. The world moves by in years while we age by months.”
Louvaen calculated in her head and came away confused. “I don’t understand. If times flows around Ketach Tor and you don’t age, wouldn’t Gavin still be a young boy?”
Ambrose swept his arm wide to indicate his surroundings. “He would be if he always stayed here. When he travels beyond the borders I’ve set around Ketach Tor, he’s subject to aging. I’d guess he’s now Ballard’s age when he was born—six and twenty.”
Louvaen wondered if Ambrose realized the gift he’d given Gavin—the chance to grow up and experience the world beyond Ketach Tor, free of his mother’s vindictive legacy, even if only for short periods.
She worried a loose thread on the embroidery of her sleeve. “A small freedom for him and maybe a way to break the curse. That is if you believe in the stories of true love and true love’s kiss breaking curses. I always thought those ch
ildren’s tales.”
Ambrose blew out a loud sigh. “Interpreted simply, they are. But that’s where you start and work from there. I just wish it were as simple as a kiss.”
A nagging thought tickled the back of her mind, flitting out of reach each time she tried to capture it. “So if Cinnia loved Gavin, the curse would break.”
He nodded. “If her love is true, yes. Or so I first thought. A well-sprung curse isn’t that simple.”
While Louvaen considered Isabeau a spiteful creature, she admired the thoroughness of her wording. That bane was wrapped in layers and tied in knots, a complicated puzzle with deceptively easy requirements for breaking it. Nearly four hundred years later, and the powerful Ambrose still hadn’t defeated it. She jerked the thread free. Lovely. This was just lovely.
The sudden heaviness of the air around her made her stiffen. Ambrose’s expression had turned guarded, his gaze piercing. “Gavin brought to Ketach Tor not just one woman who could break the curse; he brought two.”
Louvaen frowned. Ambrose did love his annoying, cryptic proclamations. She returned his stare and the elusive thought flitting along the fringes of her memory held still. “No woman born will ever love you,” she said softly, repeating the part of the curse that addressed Ballard directly. Her eyes widened. “I’m nonborn.”
Ambrose inclined his head. “Yes you are.”
He didn’t ask her if she loved Ballard. Louvaen understood why. There were rules to curse breakage, and he wouldn’t risk jeopardizing a possible victory. Louvaen recalled the odd ear-popping noise she heard in Ballard’s chamber two nights previous, followed by the pitch and roll of the bed though the frame never moved out of place, the roses’ attack and the sudden sharp rise of the flux. She paled. “This flux—I think it’s my fault.”
Ambrose clutched her arm. “What are you talking about?”
She shook him off and lurched to her feet. He rose with her, far more graceful in his ascent than she was after sitting on the hard step for hours. “I told Ballard night before last that I loved him.”
The sorcerer’s face flushed and then paled. “You did?”
She gathered her skirts and trotted up the stairs with him close on her heels. “He didn’t hear me. He was asleep,” she said over her shoulder. “But something happened after I said it. A sound or...” She snapped her fingers. “No, more like a feeling as when a ship hits a bow wave and you can feel the boards quiver under your feet.”
Louvaen halted just before she reached the kitchens. Ambrose swept nimbly around her to avoid walking into her back. “What is it?”
She wrung her hands. “I said it first. I told Ballard I loved him. What if, by doing so, I actually made the curse work faster to fulfill its purpose before we could unravel the rest? Another flux hard on the heels of this one...”
As if her revelation summoned the event, a familiar pressure thrummed in her ears, and the steps seemed to ripple under her feet. Ambrose looked down and then at her with wide, startled eyes. “Cinnia,” they said at the same time.
Her name had hardly left their lips when multiple terrified cries echoed from the great hall, and the usually unflappable Magda’s panicked voice rose in a shrill plea.
“Ambrose! Ambrose, come quick!”
They tore through the kitchen and rounded the screens in time to see Joan and Clarimond’s frightened faces as they tried to squash themselves into a shallow niche under the stairs leading to the second floor. Their wide-eyed stares were riveted on the far corner of the hall. Louvaen’s heart stopped at the sight before her.
Magda stood with Cinnia next to the largest trestle table, clutching a rolling pin like a cudgel. A creature stalked them. It was of a man’s size, but all resemblance to humanity ended there. Black fur covered a body deformed into a demon’s plaything. Curved claws tipped large hands and toes hideously stretched into thin, flexible digits that dug splinters of stone out of the floor as it shuffled closer to the women. Elongated ears flared from either side of its head, and transparent membranes of veined pink skin webbed the underside of the arms to the ribs. It slowly turned its head, and Louvaen choked back a scream.
Ballard, with his twisting scars and reptilian eyes, was breathtakingly handsome compared to this abomination. Brimstone eyes blazed in a face melded together from both bat and wolf. Teeth, long and sharp, glistened in a lipless mouth as it snarled at the newcomers before returning its attention to Cinnia and Magda.
Her sister held still, her features bloodless but curiously unafraid. “Gavin,” she said in a pitying voice.
Gavin. Louvaen clapped her hand over her mouth. Merciful goddess, despite the father’s desperate efforts, the curse had fully taken the son. The charming young lord who had courted a merchant’s daughter was no more, subsumed by this thing that edged ever closer, sniffing at Cinnia with a split, leathery snout.
“Gavin, it’s Ambrose. Look at me, boy.”
In those frozen moments while Louvaen watched Gavin corner Cinnia, Ambrose had stolen away from her and eased his way closer to the women. The Gavin creature growled low in its throat and swiped a hand at the sorcerer in warning. Ambrose halted but never took his eyes off Gavin. “Gavin,” he said softly. “Remember who you are, son. Come back to us.” His words had no effect other than to make Gavin’s enlarged ears tighten against his head and a line of hackles rise on his hunched back. Ambrose glanced briefly at Cinnia. “Girl, did you tell him you loved him?”
Cinnia and Magda stared at him as if he had transformed as well. “Yes,” she said.
“Don’t say it again. If you value our lives, you’ll keep your mouth shut.”
“But...”
“For gods’ sake, Cinnia,” Louvaen snapped. “Do as he says.”
A collective gasp echoed in the hall as Gavin spun about and loped toward Louvaen, hackles bristling even higher as he drew closer. He stank of dark magic and bog water. Never in her life had she wished for something so much as she did for her flintlock right now. Her legs quivered, every muscle and instinct shrieking at her to flee.
“Don’t run, Louvaen. He’ll kill you if you do.” Ambrose, so deceptively calm, edged carefully along the wall, motioning to Cinnia and Magda to get toward the stairs and relative safety of the second floor.
Alerted by the soft flap of skirts and scuffle of slippered feet, Gavin forgot about Louvaen. His low-pitched growls swelled to an enraged bellow when he caught sight of Cinnia scampering up the stairs. He sprang toward them.
Every terror Louvaen held for her sister’s safety exploded within her, leaving only blind reaction behind. She threw herself against Gavin, hitting his back hard enough to make him stumble. She went down hard in a cloud of dusty rushes. A cacophony of sound—more screams, shouts, and above all Ambrose’s commanding voice—filled her ears. Gavin crouched over her, lipless mouth split wide, a clawed hand raised to strike her. She covered her face and head with her arms, waiting for either the blow or bite that would rip her apart.
A flash of intense light seared her closed lids before a heavy weight slammed onto her, knocking the breath out of her so hard she could only wheeze. More cries swirled around her, human ones beaten into silence by the most awful, plaintive howl that rose from the depths of Ketach Tor and threatened to shake the castle’s very foundation loose. Louvaen cautiously opened one eye. Were she not already half suffocated into silence she’d be struck speechless by what filled her vision.
Gavin lay atop her, fully human, unconscious, naked, and crushing the air out of her lungs. Black spots danced in front of her eyes, expanding until her vision narrowed to a thin tunnel and a ringing in her ears grew louder. She blinked, trying to focus. The last thing she saw was Ambrose’s pale, sour features over Gavin’s shoulder.
“Daft shrew,” he said. “There isn’t a woman in this entire castle who listens to a damned thing I say.”
Louvaen fainted.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The small animal spat and howled, thrashing against the glo
wing bonds imprisoning it on the bed. Wiry fur covered a gaunt body of striated muscle and dark, leathery skin. The lipless snout peeled back to reveal a set of fangs that shone a yellowed ivory in the chamber’s semi-darkness. The creature’s clawed hands and feet had savaged the bedding, sending up a blizzard of feathers. They spun in flurries before cascading to the floor. Ballard stared at what was once his son and wished his wife was alive right now so he’d have the satisfaction of killing her.
“Do something,” he said in a low voice.
Ambrose stood beside him, covered in down feathers. “This is all I can do for now, dominus. Restrain him so he doesn’t hurt others or himself.”
Ballard ran his hands through his hair, horrified at the scene before him. The curse had struck a second time in as many weeks. He hadn’t seen the first manifestation, when Gavin had transformed and torn two men to pieces in Aelfric Haseldane’s bailey. He understood now why that easy-natured lord had almost executed the boy. “My gods, Isabeau, what have you done?”
The sorcerer tapped him on the arm and inclined his head toward the door. Ballard followed him into the hall.
“I can’t do anything at the moment,” Ambrose said. “But I can after the flux.”
Hope soared. Were Ballard of a more affectionate nature, he’d embrace his sorcerer. “Do what you must.”
Ambrose held up his hand, his features grim. “Wait. It’s a poor solution at best, and honestly, I think you should refuse.”
Ballard scowled. “What is it?”
“Before I tell you, I want you to consider another choice.” Ambrose’s voice was as hard and flat as his expression. “Granthing sired Gavin.” He paused at Ballard’s glower. “Blood wills out, dominus—stronger than curses. Marry again; sire a son of your blood.” He pointed at the door. “That thing in there isn’t Gavin; show mercy and put a bolt through him.”
A dullness settled inside Ballard followed by a surge of impotent rage. A growl erupted from his throat, as bestial as the sounds his tormented son uttered in his bedroom. He slammed a fist into the wall’s unyielding stone. His eyes watered as a shockwave of pain surged up his arm and into his shoulder. Ambrose didn’t flinch before his lord’s anger. He waited quietly as Ballard paced in front of him, cursing and cradling his hand.