Willower hung at the doorway to the feasting hall, her hands able to wring themselves in anxiety now that she was out of full view of the guests inside. She knew her presence by the door would be seen as anxious in of itself but she could no longer reply cordially to inquiries as to the lack of Judd LaMogre’s presence and her smile’s brilliance had diminished with every nod of the head, as though it was to be expected that she would be abandoned.

  So when Willower saw Judd striding towards the feasting hall, crossing the ante chamber in long strides, she couldn’t help herself. She darted towards him, relieved beyond all comprehension.

  “Judd, I was becoming worried,” and yet, even the midst of her own anxiety, Willower recognised there was something terribly wrong with LaMogre, “what is it? What is wrong?” His skin was pale, his eyes were glassy and there was a tautness about his presence as though he was wound up and ready to strike. He could not be seen in the feasting hall like this. Willower knew her father, who had proved beyond a shadow of any doubt, would take advantage of even the smallest weakness in the man he perceived to be his competition. He would not hesitate to pounce on Judd’s wretched appearance. She grasped his hands and pulled him away from the doors to the stone pew where she drew him down to sit. He sat with his face down, his hands hot beneath her fingers. He wouldn’t even look at her. “Judd…please,” she put her cool hand on his rough cheek and bade him to lift his chin though his eyes were still cast aside, “what is it? What can I do?”

  And then…his eyes met hers and the air escaped her lungs at the intensity of his gaze. Before she could even gasp, Judd cupped her face and kissed her passionately. His lips covered hers and his fingers pushed up from her face into her hair, curled so tight they were grasping at her scalp. Willower, with her lonely and love impoverished heart, did not hesitate apart from being momentarily stunned and she threaded her arms around his neck and returned with equal passion.

  It was everything she had ever dreamed of, to be desperately, completely, almost scandalously wanted by a man. She was in his arms, being devoured by his need for her and for a moment, a glorious, fantastical moment, Willower’s greatest wish was fulfilled.

  Yet even as she kissed Judd, Willower sensed something was off. His hands were tight, almost bitingly so and his lips were hard. Even her inexperienced body knew that something wasn’t right. And though it pained her more than she could ever say, when he drew back to inhale sharply, Willower whispered,

  “Who are you kissing, Judd LaMogre? For I know it is not me.”

  His brown eyes flickered briefly to her own and for the first time in her life, Willower saw a man weep. Tears filled his eyes and trickled down his cheeks, his hands covering his face, shoulders quaking in pain. Willower could feel offence and hurt in her heart…but they were overwhelmed completely by compassion. She leaned forward and wrapped her arms around him, drawing his head to her shoulder and rested her cheek against his brown curls, much in the same way that she had comforted her young siblings from time to time.

  Lyla Borelia was not lying when she said she was not much of a dancer but despite her inexperience, their impromptu turnabout was entirely delightful, probably more so because they knew it was never going to be a meticulous success. They put feet wrong, turned in the opposite directions to each other and sometimes collided when they least expected it. However, Giordi couldn’t begin to imagine when he had laughed more.

  “No more…” He waved his hand as the other clutched his ribs. “I can’t…”

  “Me either.” Lyla walked her stitch off by doing a lap around the gallery. “Oh that hurts.”

  “My apologies…”

  “Oh no, I do not regret it.” Lyla insisted and he smiled at her. “That was wonderful fun.”

  Giordi leaned back against the legs of one of the statues and gazed at her with naked admiration. “Do you know something, Lyla Borelia?”

  Immediately her gaze became guarded though Giordi couldn’t fathom why. “What?”

  “You are just about the best fun I have ever had.”

  Her arms immediately relaxed and the tension in her expression softened. “Same to you, Giordi Gavoli.” She sighed and looked at her cloak which she had flung over a suit of armour when she had warmed up to the dancing. “Well…I suppose…”

  “Oh, well, allow me…” Giordi hastened to take it and, holding it up with a flourish helped her into it. Lyla turned towards him as he brought the front together, slipping the toggle through the loop, his fingers accidentally yet thrillingly stroking the exposed skin of her neck. He swallowed, his eyes glancing upwards at her blue gaze, a blooming blush spreading across her cheeks. She licked her lips and Giordi’s instincts and overwhelming desire took over as he slid his hand up her throat, fingers tangled in her hair, moving in to press his lips to hers…

  “No!” Lyla gasped, recoiling.

  Giordi closed his eyes. “Damn…damn, damn, damn…Lyla…I’m…”

  “Sorry,” he paused then looked at her, confused, “I…oh…by Astaril…what am I doing?” Lyla sank onto the nearest pew which was at the opposite end of the gallery to where they had entered. Her long fingers slid up her face, her ringlets tumbling forward like a veil and her shoulders bowed sharply.

  “Lyla, forgive me…” Giordi groaned, walking away then turning back towards her. “I…lost myself in the moment.”

  “I have lost myself completely.” Lyla lamented.

  “But I should not have presumed that I would be permitted to kiss you.” Giordi scrunched his eyes shut, mentally kicking himself. “I mean, you are a woman of nobility,” this phrase only seemed to invoke a lamenting moan from Lyla, “what right have I, a low class birth minstrel and a rather shabby one at that, to imagine that I could take such a liberty? You have every right to be disgusted and I blame you not for your rejection for it is only fair...”

  “Oh would you just shut up!” Giordi was stunned as Lyla stood up and walked away from him. “For once…let someone else speak!” Giordi clamped his lips together. Lyla looked at him with bright blue eyes, her mouth opening to say something but she was suddenly stricken with mutism. “I…” She stammered several times then groaned and turned to flee…

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  …and Giordi was resolved to let her. He watched her reach the doors and slip out of the gallery, the hem of the blue gown the last thing he saw go. He closed his eyes and slumped onto the pew, leaning forward and sighing so deeply, he probably filled the cavity of the gallery with his wordless lament.

  He was so lost in his self pity he didn’t hear footsteps approach him and only knew someone was in the room with him when they sat so close on the pew that their heat mingled with his. Giordi sat up and twisted, Lyla’s blue eyes gazing into his.

  “Lyla?”

  She scooped her fingers through his blond curls and pressed her soft lips against his in a long, tender kiss. Giordi sank into it, even leaning forward slightly when she drew back. He opened his eyes and saw Lyla stand and hurry to the door, this time looking back at him once before she disappeared again.

  This time Giordi’s sigh was filled with tremors of pleasure that rippled through the atmosphere, brightening the hues of the paintings and coating everything with a sheen of brilliance.

  Verne fled from the gallery, down the stairs, around to the right and waited in a shadowed alcove in case she was followed. Her heart was hammering and her mouth was dry yet she knew it had nothing to do with exertion or exercise. Not even dancing with Giordi had had such a powerful effect on her…well, it had been profound…then she had kissed him.

  Verne closed her eyes and refused to entertain the memory. She had to concentrate and make sure she could slip back to her room without being seen. It would be hard to explain away her presence in a part of the fort that she had no business being. She dashed down the corridor towards the door, wrenched the handle and pushed it open, flinging herself in and closing it behind her.

  “Verne?” Aalis’ voice was quivering with concern.

  Verne closed her eyes and breathed in and out. “I kissed Giordi.” The words leapt out of her mouth without pause or consideration. It was as though she had to tell someone or else it might not have happened.

  “You kissed…” Aalis paused. “You mean, he kissed you?”

  “No, I mean…he was going to…then I kissed him.” Verne ran her hand through her ringlets, pulling them out of their tight curls into looser strands. “I…what was I thinking? I must have been out of my mind!”

  “To kiss the man you love?” Aalis huffed sadly. “No, out of your mind would be not kissing him.”

  Through the haze of heightened adrenalin and reeling senses, Verne heard heavy grief. She stood upright and peered into the room, finding Aalis sitting on the window seat at the far end.

  “Aalis?” Verne moved closer. “Are you alright?” Aalis nodded even as tears trickled out of her eyes. Verne hurried forwards. “Aalis? What happened?”

  Aalis licked her lips. “Judd was here.”

  “Here?” She nodded. “Why?”

  She gave a small huff. “He saw the dress. He knows, Verne.”

  Verne sank onto the window seat, the tremor of horror that someone else knew her secret coming in second to the concern she felt for her friend. “That can’t be all,” she probed gently, “surely?” The stream of tears down Aalis’ face traced the line of her jaw, collected at her chin and dripped into her lap. There was quite a damp patch on her dress. “Was he angry?”

  “No,” Aalis sniffed, “not at first…not until I told him…” She sobbed brokenly, unable to say what she had said.

  “You told him you couldn’t love him the way he loves you.”

  Aalis nodded. “Verne…you should have seen his face! I broke his heart! After everything I have done, I still ended up wounding him!”

  Verne grasped Aalis’ hands and held firmly to them. “Aalis…why did you break his heart?”

  She looked up, aghast. “You know why.”

  “Aalis…” Verne went to protest but was silenced as Aalis held up her hands. All her nails were dark and cracked. “No…” Verne grasped them and stared. “But…they weren’t like this before!”

  “I know,” Aalis drew her hands back and shivered, “ever since the channel…since the sirens…my toenails were the first to change and after the hydra the fingernails on my left…but now all of them…”

  Verne studied Aalis. “You never said…and we’ve shared a room anytime it was possible…and you still kept them hidden?”

  “I…was…frightened.”

  It hurt that she hadn’t been confided in but Verne could see how distressed Aalis was. “Do you think,” she said, offering some kind of logical thought, “that the sirens did this to you?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Why? They might have tainted you somehow. I mean, the water couldn’t have been tainted or else my nails would have blackened from when I fell in but maybe one of them…”

  “I killed one.” Verne’s word died out. Aalis gazed at her sadly. “The men were all tied together, you had fallen into the water and the siren closest to me mocked my impotence, laughing because no matter what I did to defend any of you…I could not touch them. I lunged for its neck and actually felt it beneath my fingers so I squeezed…and sucked the life out of it.”

  Despite the fur cloak, Verne shivered. “I take it the rest of the sirens didn’t want to risk your ire?”

  “I guess so.” Aalis gazed out of the window at the black sky through the thick glass.

  “But…if you’ve never touched taint and it can’t be passed down from parent to child…”

  “That is according to the Order of the Grail,” Aalis admitted then sighed, her tears drying out on her skin, “although, that being said, I know my family were never tainted…but ever since I was a child, I have been different.”

  “How so?”

  Aalis hugged her body. “I…I can hear voices.”

  “Voices? Now?”

  “No, when I was a child. Always talking, always filling my head with overlapping noise. I could not sleep and I became so desperate I tried to knock myself unconscious.” Verne’s usually quite reserved heart broke at her tale. “I thought I was insane and I think others felt the same way. But after a while I started to realise that the voices were actual conversations between people around me, in other rooms…people who were nowhere near me at all.” Verne swallowed, not sure she could say anything of any relevance to what Aalis was speaking about. “I seem to absorb sound through objects that we both have in common with.”

  “Like…”

  “Floors.” Aalis pointed. “Everyone in Fort Mavour stands on a floor somewhere and if I were to put my hand on the stone here,” she rested her fingers against the wall next to her, “and concentrated, I could hear conversations and…other encounters, in almost every corner of the fort.”

  “But…this place is huge!”

  “I know.” Aalis dropped her hand. “It is not just sound but I absorb other things as well.”

  “Such as?”

  “Toxins from blood, even infections and when I touched the water in the Fort Faine forest, I could tell it was contaminated.”

  Verne’s head reeled. “You’ve been able to do all this since you were a child?”

  Aalis nodded. “In the end, the only relief I found was to be isolated in a room, far, far away from anyone else. I slept on a bed suspended from the ceiling where the only things connecting me to anything else were the loops the chains of the bed hung from. It did not stop the chaos in my mind but it was a great deal quieter.”

  “I can’t imagine…”

  “Then, as I grew older and into adolescence, I seemed to become better at managing the absorption, even to the point where I could be among others again.”

  Verne glanced at her hands. “Were your nails like this then?”

  “No.” Aalis shook her head.

  “If you began to be able to control it and you could interact normally…why hide in the forest and call yourself a witch?”

  Aalis closed her eyes. “Because…I have killed with these powers.”

  “The siren, sure…”

  “No, before the siren.” Aalis closed her eyes, tears slipping out from beneath her lashes. “I…lost control and blacked out. When I came too and I saw what I had done…I ran away and ended up cared for by the witch, Dragoslava. And that is how Judd and Caste found me, years later.” She shivered, the warmth of the fire fighting against the chill of the outside world and Aalis was pressed up against the glass. Verne removed her cloak and draped it over her. “So you see…after we leave here, I will return to the village I came from because I am too dangerous to be around people permanently.”

  “And Judd will leave you there, broken hearted.” Aalis flinched and looked away. “Because that’s what he is going to be, Aalis. That’s what he already is.”

  “What would you have me do?” Aalis cried softly. “If it is uncovered that Judd has had an association with a witch, his knighthood would be revoked! I would be responsible for ruining his life!”

  Verne opened her mouth to argue…when she realised she couldn’t.

  “I…I don’t know.” Verne blurted then sagged against the window frame. “I don’t know.” She admitted softly and they both sat on the window seat, each overwhelmed by the fullness of their hearts yet the lack of fulfillment of their souls.