Sarah A. Hoyt - Heart of Light

Contents

To Alicia Lopez, Alyson Lee, Cindy Cannon,
Jennifer Prohaska, Rita Hasenauer, Sofie Skapski
my e-daughters, aka the Bennet girls
who believed in this book and supported it
when all hope seemed lost

MAIDEN IN DISTRESS

A scream split the warm, dark night.

A woman's scream, high and desperate, full of fear.

And the voice was, unmistakably, Emily's.

Nigel plunged headlong into the fifth-floor hallway and came to the door with the room number that had been assigned to Emily. He knocked for a second before reaching for the knob. The door sprang open. The room was deserted, but the door in the far cornerthe door that presumably led to his own roomstood open. Scarcely pausing to draw breath, Nigel ran through it. And stopped.

The scene within was like a scene out of a fable.

Emily, young and innocent, like the fairy princess in a childhood tale, in her velvet dress, her dark hair spilling down her back, stood by the window struggling with a dark, insubstantial being, seemingly composed of shadow and black cloud.

The creature was twice as large as life and twice as dark. It roared and clawed at her with massive talons. Its mouth ripped into Emily's shoulder, and she screamed and writhed in pain, though her body looked unharmed. Her power, on the other hand, oozed a hazy halo of leaking magic clearly visible to Nigel's mage sense.

The attacker looked like a hyena, but a hyena woven of shadow or darkness. It was as though all the darkest nights of the world had coalesced and taken form. Emily's bright, shining power, which twined her physical form in light, was in a life-and-death struggle.

The beast attacking it hunched and reared and roared, and sought for the throat of Emily's magic. This thing, visible only to Nigel's mage sight, was as much a part of Emily as a heart or a brain. Without it, Emily would not survive....

THE WEDDING NIGHT

What is wrong? Emily asked.

She sat, naked, on her bridal bed, the waves of her dark hair falling like a dusky veil over her golden shoulders and small breasts. Over it, wrapped around her, she clutched a multicolored flowered shawl, a legacy from her Indian grandmother.

Nigel, her husband of ten hours, stood at the foot of the bed, trying to arrange his blue dressing gown with shaking hands and only managing to twist it, so it hung askew and displayed a portion of his pale, muscular chest.

He had turned away from her, but she could see his face reflected in the full-length mirror. It showed a complexion splotched by sudden high color, pale blond hair on end where sweaty fingers had run through it again and again and gray-blue eyes animated with an odd passion and rimmed by red as if NigelNigel!were near tears.

Emily pulled her long legs up till her knees came right up to her pointed chin, and clutched her arms around them as she took a deep breath. It wasn't possible that Nigel would cry. Proper gentlemen didn't cry, and Nigel was as cool and collected as a gentleman could be.

Have I done something? Emily asked. Her voice wavered and trembled, sounding too childish in this sumptuous suite, all red velvet and heavy mahogany furniture. Failed to do something?

Nigel's back remained turned. He didn't seem to hear her. He was tying and untying his dressing gown as if it were the most important task in the world.

Emily wished to shout, to scream, to ask him what had happened and why. But proper young ladies didn't rail at their husbands. Instead, insecurity trembled in her voice as she said, How did I fail you?

Fail? Nigel's head jerked back at the word. He looked at her, startled, then quickly away.

Mr. Oldhall, Emily said, making her voice as formal as she dared.

The family name, which she hadn't used since they'd become engaged, made him give her a look of undisguised horror. Emily felt blood rush to her cheeks, though she knew the blush would show only the color of sunset against her golden skin. Nigel...

Nigel pulled a packet of tobacco from a dressing gown pocket and a pipe from the other. Yes?

No one ever told me what should happen on our marriage night. She paused. My stepmother did tell me it was all worth it for the children, but... Her voice floundered and she shook her head. I have seen... A deep breath to gather courage. I was raised in my father's country house, Nigel. We had dogs and horses and... desperately, trying to avoid being explicit, she said, geese. And it seems to me the interaction between men and women cannot be all that different from what happens between... animals. Even horses and cats... and... Deep breath. Geese.

She glanced up to see Nigel staring at her, his mouth half-open, his face an odd mix of shock and amusement. Slowly, he turned and drew a long breath that echoed noisily in the room. Turning his back on her, he fumbled. She smelled tobacco and saw him, in the mirror, pushing shreds of it into the bowl of his pipe. He struck the flint to light the wick of his lighter, then lit his pipe and inhaled deeply. The lighter clicked closed and Nigel exhaled, a breath like a tremulous sigh forming a gray, aromatic cloud in the air in front of him. He put the lighter back in his pocket.

I... I understand your disappointment, he said at last. He pulled a heavy draft from his pipe and expelled it in increasingly neater rings. Emily, I do understand how in your innocence, you might believe something untoward has happened, or... He cleared his throat, and a slight flush tinged his pale cheeks. Or failed to happen, but... Emily, now that you are a wife, you should understand that marriage... isn't always perfect. He cleared his throat again. There are moments when the body will not... obey the mind.

He smiled suddenly, but his smile vanished just as quickly, and it was only after another puff on the pipe that he managed to shape his mouth to his normal, aloof smile. Don't let it disturb you, my dear. We're just both tired. The day started devilishly early with the wedding breakfast and... with the parties. You've been trotting too hard, my dear, and no mistake. Let's have a good night and then we'll... we'll both feel better in the morning.

He reached over to pat her arm, then strode toward the closed door between their two rooms. He'd no more than set his hand on the polished brass doorknob when the whole room shook.

Emily stopped, holding her breath. It had felt as though, three floors beneath them, the magic carpet that supported the luxury carpetship, cruising above the clouds toward Cairo, had fluttered unsteadily on some air current.

It's just the magic field we're crossing, Nigel said. Or the weather. I'm sure the flight magicians...

But the curtains danced again and a rattle echoed through the ship, composed of stemware and crystal mage-light chandeliers colliding in liquid notes, crockery clashing down in the kitchen, and the groaning of wood in framing and floors and furniture. Emily clutched at the bedcovers. She remembered this noiseit bought back memories of her first trip to England. Every little current, every jolt had terrified Emily then. The ship had been all strange and scary. And her mama had been in her room, very ill, leaving no one but a cool English nurse to tell Emily not to be a goose.