within.
“Hello, kitty.” Sorcha was actually taunting the creature a little, but green light was dancing on her Gauntlets, throwing her features into eerie angles.
The Rossin snarled, making the tunnel shake with its rage. It did the taunting, not any foolish mortal. Raed screamed inside, but the Beast was utterly in control now. He could feel the muscles of its great legs bunching. Sorcha was going to be shredded and he could do nothing about it but watch in horror. The feeding would be the worst bit, the sensual joy of it that he would be unable to avoid. Raed remembered everything from the previous nightmare, when it had been his mother beneath the beast’s claws.
No need for stealth in this corridor. The Rossin snarled again and leapt at her. Claws skittered and found marginal purchase on the steel and leather of her armor, but the weight of the Rossin bore her backward. Tumbling onto the ground, the Beast tightened its grip on Sorcha and lunged toward her throat.
The Deacon was strong. She managed to hold the Rossin off with one hand, though her angry cursing belied the ease of it. The beast pressed harder, snarling and snapping, eager to taste her blood.
Sorcha brought up her other Gauntlet, still streaming eerie green light that almost burned the Rossin’s eyes. The great cat flinched, caught in midsnarl, and the Deacon thrust her hand, Gauntleted power and all, into its throat. Raed heard the Deacon grunt, “Enjoy the taste of Shayst, kitty cat.”
The pain was immediate and exquisite. Green fire bloomed in the snapping jaws of the Rossin. Sorcha was screaming, and her cries mingled with the howls of the Beast. Raed felt what the great cat did; a pulling sensation as if his soul were being sucked away from him. Surely his body couldn’t take that much pain.
Something snapped and broke—something had to. The Rossin struggled, but the power it lived on was being yanked away from it into the Void that the Deacon controlled. As swiftly as it had come, the Beast disappeared.
The abruptness of it left Raed gasping, awash in the emotions of the Rossin: rage and anger. It had to have an outlet, and with Sorcha still pinned to the ground beneath him, he shook her hard and screamed in frustration.
“Holy Bones,” she swore and slapped him hard. “Get a grip on yourself!”
His head rang with pain and his blood still raced with the power of the Rossin. Beneath him, Sorcha was gasping in shock as well, her armor clawed and marked.
She jerked upward just as Raed bent. Their kiss was rough and hungry, more a struggle than a display of affection. Brutal desires still swirled in the Pretender, mixing with his own barely contained lusts. Raed heard Sorcha moan, just as the tingle in his body subsided from anger to something else just as primitive.
They struggled on the floor of the tunnel, a tussle rather than an embrace. Her lips were soft and hot on his—it had been a long time since he had kissed anyone like that. Yet it was Raed who pulled back. The Rossin had always ruled him, and he wouldn’t let it take him down a path that he hadn’t chosen for himself, as enjoyable as it might be.
With a shuddering breath, he scrambled backward, suddenly aware that he was completely naked. In the flickering light Sorcha’s eyes were wide and feral, just as he imagined his own were. She licked her lips and he could see her heartbeat racing in the corner of her neck. His eyes couldn’t seem to stop watching that.
The Deacon cleared her throat, then unhooked her dripping cloak to hand it to him. “Put—put this on.”
It was very cold down here—Raed remembered that—yet his body was burning from the flood of the Change and from something else closely linked: desire. The cloak, wet as it was, would help cool him. He put it on, unable to look directly at her. She wasn’t going to mention what had just happened—she was just going to ignore it. That was what he would do, as well.
“I see Merrick was wrong,” he muttered, trying to reclaim his dignity. “You didn’t spot that geist at all.”
A frown darkened her brow. “I am not sure that was even a geist . . .”
That made him snap. He held up hands that had only just reverted back from claws. “Not sure! Not sure . . . Well, I can tell you that I am!”
Sorcha shook her head, looking more confused than he’d ever known a Deacon to be. “I need to talk with Merrick.”
“We’re not going back,” he growled, turning and stalking away down the tunnel. Stooping, he picked up the remains of his clothes. Everything was destroyed. “By the Blood, this was my favorite shirt.”
“The boots are still usable,” Sorcha pointed out. “I have some spare lacings. Put them on so at least you won’t be hobbling.”
He frowned. The Deacon’s tone was almost gentle. He wondered if it was guilt or desire that moderated it. Nevertheless, he was surprised when she dropped to one knee and laced up his boots for him. Surely that was to save his modesty—the cloak was not offering that much to protect it—but he felt another rush of warmth travel his spine.
As she worked on getting his boots secure, Raed cleared his throat. “No one has ever managed to dismiss the Rossin. How did you do it, exactly?”
Sorcha glanced up. “It was Shayst, the rune of drawing, usually used against geists to take away their power.”
“There was a Deacon who tried that rune before.” Raed clenched his teeth shut, lest he tell her how that had ended.
It would have been in the textbooks, however. From the way Sorcha nodded, but did not look up at him, she probably knew. “I would hazard he wasn’t quite close enough.”
Raed let out a muffled laugh, but the image that flashed into his head of exactly how close they had just been made him deeply aware of her nearness now.
“There you are.” Sorcha patted his foot, and it must have been his imagination that her hand lingered there a moment. He would much rather have had her slide her hand up his leg . . .
Those thoughts were dangerous and foolish. The Pretender cleared his throat. “Thank you. It will make the going that much easier.”
Rising to her feet, Sorcha wrung out her damp hair and examined the deep scores in her armor. “It was certainly interesting to see the Rossin close up; I studied the Beast as a novice. Quite something to tell them about in the Abbey.”
“But can you explain what just happened?” Raed clenched the damp cloak around him. “Aulis is, after all, the only one who knows we are down here . . .”
Her face clouded over, those blue eyes seeming almost capable of shooting him dead where he stood. “I don’t like your implication, Pretender. The Order is under attack; that much is obvious. Now, do you want to save your crew, or shall we continue arguing?”
Standing in a wet cloak, with nothing but a pair of boots on, he was hardly in a position to break into an argument with the Deacon, especially with the frisson of desire still tugging away on him. He gave a small bow. “By all means, let’s get on.”
The rest of their progress through the tunnel was thankfully both uneventful and silent. The initial warmth from the Change wore off very quickly, and Raed was soon shivering underneath the cloak. When they emerged in the hills just to the south of the town, his teeth were actually chattering. A strong wind was gusting from the sea.
Sorcha glanced across at him, and while her expression was hard to read in the moonlight, he guessed she was smiling. “Not enough clothing for you, Pretender? Would you like some more of mine?”
One comment was enough to send a jolt of physical reaction through him. Raed drew the cloak closer around him. It was one thing to have the Deacon at a disadvantage, as he’d had when she’d been plucked from the sea. It was another altogether to be on the receiving end of it. “I’ll be fine,” he replied stiffly.
“Don’t be an idiot.” She jerked her head toward the faint lights of the town. “We still have a long walk to go. You’ll be frozen solid before we get there.”
“What do you suggest?” Now his limbs were trembling with the cold.
Before he knew it, she’d found a little cave a few yards away. Settling him there, she strode off, and returned a few minutes later with arms full of both dry wood and fresh fernery. While he sat silently, feeling utterly miserable, she built a fire. He found that most interesting, since they had no tinder. He’d always imagined the Deacons using their runes only for things of great importance, but she used her Gauntlets without any fanfare. “Pyet,” she whispered. A fingerling of flame leapt out to catch the dried wood. To extinguish the flame she simply
