WinterofThorns Read online

“I don’t intend to make an enemy of him,” Alden said.

  “Then get his permission before you provide me with any manner of comfort,” Seyzon told him. “As you can see he’s big on getting permission.”

  Alden nodded. “I would like to go now. Jana may need me.”

  “Tell her…” Seyzon began then shook his head. “Just take care of her for me.”

  “I will,” Alden vowed.

  When he was alone, Seyzon perched carefully on the edge of the extremely uncomfortable cot and winced. The springs sagged almost to the floor and were jagged spikes in some places. There would be no way to lie atop it without getting gouged by the rusty ends. He put a hand to the wound in his abdomen and sighed tiredly. Despite the ungodly throbbing that had not lessened between his temples, the pain of his incision and the horrendous worry making his heart ache miserably, he thought himself to be one fucked bastard.

  * * * * *

  At that moment Vindan Brell was climbing the stairs to the battlements. He was in a state of fugue that had him putting one foot ahead of the other and being unaware where it was he was going.

  And not caring.

  His hands were clenched tightly into fists. His jaw was set, teeth clamped so tightly he was giving himself an earache. Feet dragging, the scrape of his boot heels on the stone as he advanced up the steps echoed down the curving stairwell. Each step was harder to take than the one before it so that when he reached the archway leading onto the parapet, his legs felt like wet hemp. His entire body ached.

  His soul ached.

  Atop Riverglade Castle, the wind howled with fury. It lashed at him with icy fingers that made him squint as he went to the half-wall where the crenellations set like the teeth of a monster across the battlements. The discomfort was punishing and he reasoned he deserved no less.

  Hands on the stone wall, unseeing eyes on the distant horizon, he let the cold, brisk wind whip his hair around his head. Though it chilled him to the bone he stood braced there as the wind buffeted him, pushed against him like an invisible hand. He almost wished it would wrap its stinging fingers around him, pluck him from the wall and dash him onto the jagged rocks that poked up through the water of the moat.

  It had been years—years—since he felt as he did at that moment.

  And he knew it would be years before he could live with what he had done.

  If he ever could.

  * * * * *

  Jana lay in a fetal position in the middle of her husband’s bed. The pillow she clung to still bore the scent of Seyzon’s cinnamon-spiced cologne and the cedar soap with which he’d bathed. She cleaved to the pillow as though it were a lifeline, the only thing anchoring her to reality. The silken slip that covered it was wet from her tears. Beneath her, the sheet—and her thighs—were stained with a mixture of her blood and the prince’s seed.

  He had not hurt her. Had taken great pains not to. The entire time he had been with her he had apologized.

  He had begged her forgiveness for what he was about to do.

  “Forgive me, milady,” he’d said before he began.

  He felt guilty for what he was doing even as he thrust gently through the barrier that was not his to breech.

  “I am sorry.”

  And before he left, he begged once more for forgiveness for what he’d done.

  “Please forgive me, Lady Jana. I am sorry this had to be done.”

  But she could not forgive him. Would never forgive him. Would never grant him the absolution for which he had pleaded.

  “It was either you or him and I could not allow it to be him. I love him too dearly to have stripped the flesh from his body,” he had said, his eyes grave, lips tight. “I could not hurt him in that way.”

  Yet he could tear the soul from Seyzon Montyne by taking from him what was rightfully his.

  “As punishments go, this one will stay with him far longer than any tear in his flesh or the shedding of his blood,” he had told her before closing the door.

  Blood had been shed, she thought as she moaned into the pillow. Whether there had been a sharp, brutal piercing or a gentle easing that stung for barely a moment, blood had flowed.

  Worse yet, he had done something to her that was so shameful, so degrading to her spirit she wanted to curl into a tight ball and cease breathing altogether. Something that had been her husband’s right to do. Vindan Brell had taken something very precious from both her and Seyzon.

  The goddess help her, he had made her enjoy what he was doing to her, take pleasure in her first mating—with a man not of her choosing—and for that she would hate him ’til her dying day.

  * * * * *

  Alden had made good on his word and had sent a servant down to the dungeon along with the jailer. The mattress was lumpy but it covered the springs. The pillow was as soft as mush but if balled up just right, it levered his head from the mattress enough that his headache was somewhat eased. The blanket was scratchy but it kept at bay the chill that permeated the damp cell. Two more lanterns had been placed outside his cell so the darkness had been chased away but the light illuminated the beady-eyed rodents who came to stare hungrily at him. As low as the cot’s springs sagged to the floor, he feared if he fell asleep the gods-be-damned things would scurry all over him.

  He’d pulled the cot away from the stinking wall—concerned that what was growing there might drip on him. The stench from what he now knew for certainty was black mold made him acutely uncomfortable. Breathing in the airborne spores was not a healthy thing to do. The thought of them entering his lungs made him shudder. Only the gods knew what that might do to him.

  Cursing, he turned to his back and flung an arm over his eyes, wondering how long he would be jailed. Vindan was angry with him but Vindan had been angry with him in the past. The difference this time was he had gone against a royal edict—no matter that it made no rational sense—and his old friend needed to make an example of him.

  “You know he will not hurt her.”

  Gilbert’s words had stuck in his mind. Of course he knew Vindan would not hurt Jana. It wasn’t in the man to ever hurt or harm a woman. Vindan loved women. Perhaps too much. His conquests were almost as legion as those of his father—and that was saying something. The difference being that King Nolan was married and Vindan was still playing the field at the age of thirty-eight.

  “Too many women; too little time,” Vindan often quipped. “And only so much of me to go around.”

  As he lay there listening with one ear to the scampering rats and the steady, monotonous, irritating plink of water, he couldn’t help but wonder if it was the actual Joining that had pissed off Vindan and not the fact that he hadn’t gotten permission.

  “We’ll be two old bachelors sitting in the garden at Wicklow and musing about our dalliances,” he’d once remarked. “We’ll swap sordid stories of how many fillies we mounted and broke.”

  There had never been any serious female relationships in Seyzon’s past. He—like his boyhood friend—was a love-’em-and-leave-’em kind of guy.

  Until he’d met Jana.

  “Jana,” he said on a long sigh.

  He should be lying beside her, her sweet body spooned close to his. Her head would be on his shoulder, his arms around her, their legs entangled. He could almost smell the gardenia perfume she preferred and feel the supple softness of her arm as he slowly trailed his fingers along it. His body clenched and his cock throbbed at the thought of what was supposed to have happened this night.

  Vindan had ruined his wedding night. No doubt he had sat Jana down and lectured her—as only Vindan could—until he’d made her cry. Pressing home the seriousness of the offense he believed her husband had committed, he would then send her on her way to spend the most precious night of her life alone and lonely. He knew she would be worried heartsick over him, locked in her room so she could not go to her husband’s aid.

  “Damn you, Vin,” he hissed.

  He had no doubt that Vindan was sharing a bed with some
woman. The bastard had never known a solitary night since he reached puberty. It was a wonder the princedom was not overrun with royal bastards but then its prince was a cautious man. To Seyzon’s knowledge, no get of Vindan’s was running around out there.

  “I’m not like my father,” Vindan had told him long ago. “I’m not an irresponsible baby maker, scattering my seed willy-nilly. Serves him right he can’t produce anything save females. The best of him shot out to make me.”

  Seyzon doubted his friend would marry until forced to. Upon his father’s death, he would need to take a wife before he could claim the crown. The woman would be young and pretty and have the hips to give Vindan an heir—hopefully a male heir—with ease. Not that a wife would curtail the prince’s randy nature. There was little that could do that.

  “The right woman might,” Seyzon said. A sound close to his head made him lower his arm. He swiveled his head and snarled as he saw the large rat that was sitting on its haunches glaring at him. “Go. Away.”

  A twitch of the ugly thing’s whiskers seemed to be the rodent’s not so charming way of saying fuck you.

  “Come at me, you little prick, and I’ll stomp you into a greasy mess,” Seyzon warned.

  The rat whipped its skinny, disgustingly long tail then turned and sauntered off as though it had all the time in the world. Had it been a cat, it would have shaken a rear leg in insult as if to say it wasn’t afraid of the incarcerated human male and it could wait.

  “Eat shit and die, motherfucker,” Seyzon called after it and he could have sworn he heard the evil thing snort.

  Returning his arm to his eyes, he drew in a long breath. His headache wasn’t as bad as before now that he was lying down but it still nibbled at his brain just over his right eye. He forced his thoughts from the slight pain and pictured Jana’s face behind his eyelids.

  She was so beautiful, he thought. So kind and gentle and she’d become as necessary to him as the air he drew into his lungs. He had no idea how long Vindan would keep him locked away from her but he figured it would be a day or so at the very least.

  “Enough time to make me see the error of my ways and repent for them,” he mumbled aloud.

  Aye, he thought. Vindan would leave come morning. Joseph or Alden would come down to deliver the news to him that the prince had instructed them to keep him jailed for an unspecified time. Vindan took great delight in using the word unspecified. The vagueness of the time limit, the indeterminate state of the imprisonment was meant to undermine the prisoner’s confidence that he would once again see daylight. It was a tactic the prince had used time and again to punish those who had annoyed him. The dungeon at Wicklow might as well have revolving doors for all the men—and the occasional woman—who had been run through there on a weekly basis.

  Chuckling to himself despite being angry at his old friend and wondering about his new bride’s state of mind, Seyzon tried to relax so the headache would not escalate. Pleasant thoughts of the life ahead of him with Jana was just the ticket to help.

  Then a withering thought bored its way into his mind. He thought of Raymond deVille and dropped his arm behind his head, opened his eyes and stared at the dark ceiling above him. In that inky darkness he saw Raymond as he’d been the last time the man had been at Wicklow.

  Gilbert had marched Ray into the bailey where a scaffold had been erected earlier that day. Ray’s wrists had been manacled to the twin uprights and his uniform shirt ripped from his shoulders. Then the executioner had strolled from the barbican with a coiled bullwhip in hand.

  Those gathered—commanded to be there—watched in horror and sympathy as the lash had been laid to Ray’s back. Three lashes were thrown for each day since Ray had gone to his knee before the Lady Emily Donovan. By the time the whip lay idle on the ground at the executioner’s feet, Ray’s back was a bloody mess and he had spent fifteen minutes of his life screaming at the top of his lungs.

  And he hadn’t even married Lady Emily! He’d simply asked her to be his wife. What might Vindan have ordered done to the wretched man had he went ahead and Joined without the prince’s permission?

  A hard shudder ran through Seyzon. Had he escaped Ray’s fate or was he being left in this dismal cell to contemplate what was coming.

  “Shit.” Seyzon sat up. He plowed a hand through his hair.

  Would a scaffold be built in the bailey of Riverglade come morning light? Would he be strung up as Ray had been and the flesh shredded on his back? Or did a much direr fate await him?

  “Do you have any idea how angry I am with you at this moment, Seyzon?”

  Those words took on an ominous tone as he sat there in the semi-darkness behind rusted iron bars, anticipating an outcome that could light years worse than Ray deVille’s.

  “And when did you ask her to be your bride?”

  Had Vindan calculated the passes of the whip he would ask be applied at that moment?

  “Forty-five,” he whispered. He cringed. “Or more because I married.”

  Getting to his feet, he began to pace. Suddenly he was very concerned about what his friend—nay, his prince—was going to do to him.

  * * * * *

  Vindan leaned his elbows on an embrasures—the gap between the merlons, or upright sections of the battlement—and looked down at the moat four stories below. He was shivering from the cold but endured it. The discomfort kept his mind sharp for the thoughts that were plaguing him threatened to wreak havoc with his self-control. As long as he kept to the punishment he had set for himself, he would not do what he feared he might.

  “Why, Seyzon?” he asked the blistering wind. “Why did you not wait and seek my permission? If you had, this would not have happened!”

  He hung his head, bent over until his forehead rested against his clasped hands.

  “Had you done what you should have…”

  He squeezed his eyes shut, picturing what should have been.

  A message would have arrived from the field. Gilbert would have brought it to him. He would have known a moment of concern upon learning the message had come from his Adjutant General. Or perhaps Seyzon would have made sure the message bore his personal name only as sender and not his rank. Had that been the case, Vindan reasoned he might have been put at ease concerning the content.

  On opening the missive, he would have scanned it quickly—looking for bad news—then he would have been astonished at what was contained therein.

  He would have latched on to the word proposal then hooted with derision. Seyzon had found a woman? Nonsense! He’d have thought it a practical joke at first. Then the surprise would turn to shock, the shock to concern that his friend had impregnated some baron’s only daughter and was being forced to wed her.

  Then the realization would have set in that Seyzon truly wanted to marry the wench.

  That would have been when the disappointment—and perhaps a touch of envy—appeared.

  “You would have stated your claim clearly and precisely,” he said to the howling wind. “You would have told me you had found your other half, you heart mate, the love of your life.”

  Those three descriptive phrases painting the picture of the woman Seyzon had chosen as his own made Vindan Brell physically ill.

  He knew after an hour or so of chewing on the words in the message, getting alternately angry and envious of his old friend, mulling over the ramifications of Seyzon taking a bride, he would have sent word back to him that royal permission was granted.

  “And I would have asked you bring your lady to court so I could meet her. I would have insisted your Joining be held there and not at Lavenfeld where your lady-mother would have had all the say in the matter. I would have given you one helluva wedding and afterparty, my friend.”

  Regret pricked at his conscience as he opened his eyes and stared at the stone beneath his arms. Regret and guilt rode him like a cruel master who was quick with his spurs.

  Seyzon was the brother he’d never had. He loved him as one. His mother had been
the wife of a baron whose husband had died during the second war with Selwyn. She had brought Seyzon to court when he was a toddler and the two boys had become inseparable. Oh, the trouble the two of them had gotten into! The mean things they’d done to the half-sisters both he and Seyzon loathed!

  A sad smile stretched Vindan’s lips. If his oldest sister Magdalene had ever had her way, he and Seyzon would have been hanged, drawn and quartered before they ever reached puberty.

  “Gods, how she hates you, Seyzon,” he said.

  The smile slowly disappeared.

  “And now you are going to hate me.”

  Chapter Two

  “Did you get any sleep, milord?” Gilbert inquired.

  “What do you think?” Seyzon asked. He was sitting cross-legged in the center of the cot, eying the tray clutched in a servant’s hand. The old jailer was again fumbling the key in the lock and the sound made Seyzon grit his teeth. “If I’m being given food, I doubt I’ll be lashed today.”

  “There’s been no mention of lashing,” Gilbert said.

  “What is his frame of mind this morn?” Seyzon asked as the old man finally got the door unlocked.

  “I’ve not seen him as yet,” Gilbert replied. “I was told he broke his fast early then closeted himself in with Lord Alden. They’ve been in Lord Alden’s study for quite some time.”

  “I don’t know whether to be relieved or worried, hearing that.” He glanced down at the fare on the tray the servant brought and scrunched up his face. He detested half-cooked eggs and especially loathed the grits they were swimming in. The bacon was overdone and black at the edges. And wheat toast? Without butter or jam? The word cardboard went through his mind. Adding insult to injury, the cup of coffee was as dark as pitch and there was no sugar or cream on the tray to cut what he knew would be the bitter taste of the brew.

  “My thought is he’ll keep you here for a week or so then have you sent back to Wicklow.” Gilbert shrugged. “Your lady remaining behind for a while.”

  “Better than having my back turned into sliced beef I suppose,” Seyzon mumbled although the thought of leaving Jana at Riverglade was like a dagger to his heart.