Giacomo nodded, joining her on the bed and taking her into his arms. He kissed her, stroking her arms and her back, making no comments about the thick scars he encountered. Kett supposed he must have seen much worse than a few scars.
His body was hot and hard, and smelled pleasantly of some woody scent. He touched her with strong, assured hands, stroking and caressing with expert skill. He kissed a hot, wet trail down her body, tongue tracing erotic patterns on her skin.
Kett had felt more aroused during medical exams.
She was just about to suggest he give it up as a lost cause when the door opened-and her eyes slammed open to see Bael standing there.
In about a second, his expression went from tortured and sorry, to disbelieving, to shocked, and then cycled up through the stages of anger until he got to absolute fury.
And Kett had nothing to say.
Bael didn’t shout. He didn’t fight. He didn’t even say a word. He just turned and walked away, the door slamming shut behind him, and Kett lay there with a stranger, tears burning her eyes like acid.
Night fell. Bael stormed back through the city, intending to find Marisa and beat the shit out of her, but she was nowhere to be found and no one at the tavern had even heard of her. Bael threatened the bartender for five minutes solid, but it didn’t help.
Even if he never found her, even if he’d just imagined it, he couldn’t possibly have imagined Kett and that-that man-whore, for gods’ sakes! She was fucking a damn whore! Shallow, meaningless sex; not even an affair, not even a relationship-no, she was
If that wasn’t a rejection, he didn’t know what was.
Bael flew west to his house in Galatea, intending to get very, very drunk.
He was gone when she got back to the tavern. She’d slunk in disguised as a cat, just in case, but the only trace of Bael in the room they’d shared was his faint, lingering scent.
A scent laced with tears and anger.
He’d left her things exactly as they were. Hadn’t thrown them around or torn them or even touched them. His scent was nowhere near them.
Kett wanted to cry, to scream, to howl. She needed to do something constructive or she’d end up doing something destructive instead. She’d go back to the cave in Nihon and look around, use some of her animal senses to see if she could figure out anything else. She’d talk to the local kelfs and see if they knew anything. She’d run all the way there, exhaust herself, because maybe if her body was aching and tired she wouldn’t notice the pain in her heart as much.
“My lord!”
The guard saluted and Bael snarled at him, understanding why Kett hated being called “my lady” so much. He wasn’t a lord, hadn’t done anything to deserve being a lord, and-
And he was thinking about Kett again.
He punched the guard in the face but it didn’t make him feel much better.
The courtyard was cold and damp, small drifts of dirty snow piled up in the corners. His house in Galatea on the other side of the mountains was at a high altitude and suffered from the cold during the winter months. In his absence, the staff clearly hadn’t bothered to do much about clearing the ice and snow from the stone courtyard. Someone would probably slip and fall and hurt themselves if it wasn’t done.
Bael was feeling so savagely angry that he hoped they would.
“Albhar!” he roared as he neared the crumbling stone edifice. “Old man! You there?”
A steward came dashing up, half-dressed, trying to fasten his sword belt as he ran. “My lord-”
“Can it,” Bael snarled. “I want a hot bath and a change of clothes. Now.”
“Yes, my lord. My lord-”
“I
“Uh, yes sir. Lord Albhar isn’t here, sir. He’s in Vyiskagrad.”
Bael stared for a second, puzzled, since Albhar vastly preferred Euskara to Asiatica. “Right,” he said. “Didn’t I say I wanted a hot bath? I’m leaving as soon as I’ve had something to eat. Go cook something!” he snapped, and the man ran off.
The courtyard was suddenly full of people who recognized Bael’s mood and were desperate to avoid it. He ignored them and grabbed the scryer Kett’s stepmother had given him.
“Albhar? Where the hell are you?”
“Vyiskagrad.” The old man peered through the scryer at the buildings behind Bael. “Where are you? Galatea?”
“Yeah,” Bael said surveying the usual level of chaos as animals and people milled around the courtyard. “Not for long. I’m going west. Feel like killing something.”
“Not the house in the Bascano mountains? Bael, that’s the one that burned down last year.”
“Burned down?” Bael asked. “No one told me this.”
“I did, but you didn’t listen. I know you have a lot of houses, Bael, but really-”
“Look, I don’t care,” Bael said. No wonder Albhar thought he was an idiot. “I’ll stay here and hunt. I just need to kill something.”
He narrowed his eyes. Var could change into any one of several lethal creatures, but Bael liked firing weapons. He yelled to a page for his hunting bow.
“You’re going hunting? Wonderful!” Albhar said. “Take some of the knights with you. Bael,” he leaned in close, as if imparting a wonderful secret, “the shapeshifter is nearby.”
“Wow,” Bael said flatly.
“Aren’t you excited?”
“Sure. Maybe I’ll come to Vyiskagrad and eviscerate it,” Bael said. “Where’s my fucking bow? I want arrows too.”
“No, don’t kill it,” Albhar said. “We need it alive. You will be coming back, won’t you? To see the ritual?”
“The fabulous power one?” Bael asked, as the page scurried back with a hunting bow Bael didn’t recognize. “What the hell is this? This isn’t my bow. Bring me
“Female, we believe,” said Albhar. “I don’t know whether it will have aged, but your father said it appeared to be a woman of about forty.”
“That was twenty-odd years ago,” Bael said. “Do I go around shooting every old woman I see?”
“Bael, you’re a Mage,” Albhar scolded. “Use your senses.”
“I’m too fucking mad to use my senses,” Bael spat, because the anger, the rage, the hideous humiliation inside him was so murderously powerful he could barely see.
“Why?” Albhar asked curiously, as if he hadn’t noticed. Or as if Bael’s anger was an interesting research subject.
“A fucking
“Ah,” Albhar said, and Bael wondered if the old man had ever even had a fucking woman. “You should find a mate, Bael.” Bael looked at him sharply, but the man he regarded as his godfather went on, “A good woman, a wife. Children. Settle down.”
“It’s on my To Do list,” Bael said, as the page scurried back carrying so much weaponry he kept dropping bits of it. Snatching up his crossbow, he discovered he couldn’t load it with the scryer in one hand.
