And the poison was flowing freely.
The most frightening thing was, she didn't know what the poison was doing. With Hookeye's ability, he could be setting any kind of time bomb inside them, and they wouldn't know until it was too late.
Despite all that, she felt stronger than she had in years, in centuries. Stronger than she had in a millennium. Pleasure strengthened her, but what she'd felt in Kougar's arms went so far beyond mere pleasure as to be atomic in strength. She felt . . . reborn. Renewed.
Whole.
But as she watched him pace, her heart at once throbbed with the rightness of him with her again, and ached with the knowledge that they weren't right together at all. And never really had been. Even in those days when they'd been mated, she hadn't been entirely happy. At times, yes. When Kougar was with her, usually. The moment he'd touched her she'd forgotten everything but her joy in him--the love in his eyes and the gentle power of his body as he brought her to climax over and over again.
But those times they'd been together had been all too few. Even when they were together, there had been a distance between them she'd never been able to fully breach. He'd given her a part of himself, but never all. Never anything approaching all.
Right from the beginning, things had been difficult between them. Melisande's prejudice against the Therians and Ferals had infected her ranks long, long ago, her own attitude toward the shifters formed in the crucible of her friend's bitterness. So when she'd found herself attracted to the Chief of the Ferals, she'd been close to horrified.
The sparks had flown between them from the start, their courtship more battle than wooing. But in the end, she'd let her judgment be clouded by the excitement she'd found in his arms. And by his own insistence that they were fated to be together, that resisting him was useless. By that point, she hadn't wanted to resist. She'd wanted only to revel in the joy of his rare, earth-shattering smiles, and bask in the pleasure she'd felt beneath his hands.
They'd been joined together deep in the Ferals' ritual cave, surrounded by flaming torches and two dozen naked, antagonistic shape-shifters who'd watched coldly as Kougar had taken her, claiming her in a ritual of blood and sex, forming what should have been an unbreakable cord joining them mind and body--the mating bond. Though Kougar had invited her own maidens to witness the ritual and join in the accompanying feast, only Melisande had been there and, unbeknownst to Ariana, woven magic to keep the mating bond from binding fully.
Even when they'd been married, she'd felt marginalized in Kougar's life. A piece of his world, but only a piece. But she had loved him. Desperately, she'd loved him. With all that had come after--the grief and guilt and anger, then later, the bitter, awful loneliness--she'd forgotten just how much she'd loved him.
And how easy it would be to fall under his spell all over again. But never again would she sacrifice the well-being of her maidens for a man. Any man.
Kougar turned back to face her, his expression closed, shuttered once more. "Have you remembered anything more?"
Ariana lifted a hand to brush her damp hair from her face. "No." She tapped her head. "It's like a dust storm in here. It'll take time for the dust to settle before I can see what blew in."
A strange chill made her shiver.
Kougar stepped toward her. "What's the matter?"
"Nothing." But as a vision rose in her head, she stiffened. The eyes. Hookeye's eyes rose in her mind as they had when Kougar removed her moonstones, as they had all those times a millennium ago. In those eyes, she saw determination and triumph. And a raw cruelty she didn't remember from before.
Her pulse began to race with the frantic need to fight or flee, when she could do neither. She tried to close her mind to him, tried to force him away, but he simply watched her with cruel amusement as the chills grew worse.
Kougar was beside her, his hands grasping her shoulders. "Ariana?"
"Hookeye." And suddenly the eyes were gone. The shivers subsided, and she could breathe again. "He was in my head. I could see his eyes." Her hand fumbled for her wrist, her fingers sliding over the moonstone-encrusted cuff. "I'm still wearing the moonstones. How is he seeing me?"
"Did he do anything?"
"No. At least, I don't think so." Her gaze met Kougar's. "He's getting stronger."
"That bastard is going to die." Kougar's hands squeezed her shoulders. "Sooner or later, I'm going to kill him."
"We're going to kill him. But first we have to find him." She frowned. "I wonder . . ."
"What?"
"Maybe I could figure out where he is by walking in his dreams." The thought of meeting that male face-to-face, in any reality, made her skin crawl.
Kougar watched her thoughtfully. "He could be anywhere. And you don't even know who he is."
"No. But we're connected, though goddess only knows what kind of connection I have with that bastard."
Kougar stroked her head. "Once, long ago, you offered to take me with you into another's dreams. Can you still do that?"
"Perhaps." The thought of Kougar at her side as she faced the Mage calmed her uneasiness. And increased it. "He's powerful, Kougar. You've said yourself that the Mage have dark magic, dangerous magic. We don't know what he can do."
"It's just a dream."
She lifted an eyebrow. "I've been in your dreams, Feral. You know better than that."
His eyes heated, and she knew he was remembering just how real some of those very carnal dream visits they'd once shared had been.
She rubbed her hands together, feeling chilled again. To walk in Hookeye's dreams, she had to reach out to him, to find him through the unholy connection he'd formed with her. And she had no idea how to do that. Would he see her eyes rising in his mind as she saw his?
As if reading her thoughts, Kougar took her hand, squeezing gently.
With a deep breath and a nod, she closed her eyes and concentrated on Hookeye, on the poison she could almost see seeping into the mating bond, then followed its trail into total darkness, a wide, empty void.
In an instant, everything changed, and she was tumbling into a blinding chaos and just as suddenly, thrown back out again, Hookeye's furious eyes blazing at her in her mind.
"Ariana!" Kougar's voice sounded beside her, but all she could see were the eyes, copper-ringed Mage eyes glaring into hers.
She was trembling, on the edge of panic, perspiration running down her neck. Her pulse thrummed in her veins as the hated eyes bored into her.
He'd pushed her away. Somehow, she had to do the same.
Concentrating, she imagined shoving him back. For a moment, the eyes dimmed, then popped back into focus, brighter and angrier than before.
No.
This time, she didn't shove. She reached deep, digging up the hatred and grief for all he'd caused her and throwing it at him in a single powerful blast of pure fury.
A moment later, the eyes were gone. "I did it." The breath shuddered out of her as Kougar pulled her against him.
"What happened?"
"I'm not sure." But she told him what she could, about the eyes and darkness, and that bright chaos. "I can almost still see it." She met his gaze. "I think it's his consciousness. And I think I'm going to know when he falls asleep."
"Good."
"We could be here a long time, Kougar. You might as well get some sleep. I'll wake you when it's time." Pain bolted through her mind, another rush of new memories swamping the first.
Her hands went to her aching head. Kougar's warm knuckles stroked her cheek.
"I'm okay," she said. "Sleep."
"Later." Instead, he took her hand and led her to one of the pillars, sat and drew her down beside him. Gently, he pulled her against him, cradling her head against his chest until the pain finally slid away.
For a long time, they sat like that, quietly, his hand stroking her head, his fingers twirling her hair.
"Tell me about that day," he said finally. "I want to know what happened after you left me on the battlefield. I need to know."
She stiffened, pulling out of his grasp to sit beside him, but his hand followed her, his palm stroking her back in long, gentle strokes, easing the tension his words had caused.
Part of her didn't want to talk about it. Honestly, she wasn't even sure what to tell him.
"I thought we were dealing with dark spirit." She glanced at him, seeing a cautious warmth in the eyes that had blazed with such heat a short while ago. And glimmers of a pain centuries old.
She owed him this. He deserved an explanation, if she could figure out how to give him one.
"They were dying, Kougar. And not just a few. All of them. I returned to the Crystal Realm to find Angelique crazed with evil and in her death throes. She was the first, but as her life cord tore from mine, so did others. Dozens of others. And the maidens around me, maidens who'd been in the Crystal Realm with me, began to show signs of the same darkness. You can't imagine . . ."
His hand lifted to the back of her head, stroking, easing her back from those terrible memories.
"For the first time, I saw the poison in the life cords and how it was flowing into my maidens through me. And I saw it in the mating bond. It was then that Melisande admitted inserting a Mage potion into the bond. I began to suspect the Mage with the hookeye was to blame, that this was all a Mage attack. My maidens were dying around me, and I feared you were about to die, too. Melisande might have caused the vehicle of our destruction, but she'd also given me the means to save you. I severed the bond without a second thought, then turned to trying to save those of my maidens that I could."
She leaned back, Kougar's arm slipping around her waist as she rested her head back against his shoulder. "The only ones I managed to save were those in the Crystal Realm. And not all of them. Many more died when I turned to mist, before I reclaimed the poison. The palace had never been so silent. I thought I was too late. None of them were moving. All lay on the ground as if dead. Never have I heard such terrible silence.
"Finally, those who'd survived turned to mist, and I knew they'd live. But they didn't move. They didn't waken. I tried to help them, to heal them. I tried to strengthen them through pleasure, singing to them until my voice was hoarse. Nothing helped. I'd never comprehended what true solitude really meant. It was awful."
"You had me. Why didn't you come to me?"
She was slow to answer, uncertain what to say. "I don't know. Those days were a blur. I was numb. Moving in a daze. Shock, grief, depression, I don't know. I started to get weak, having spent too much time corporeal in the Crystal Realm, but I couldn't turn to mist to leave. It was almost too late by the time I found the last remaining moonstone manacle, wove a transport spell into the silver, and locked it around my wrist.
"I traveled to the surface, and sat in the temple until I was strong enough to go back. Over the course of months, I sent my dead friends off to the next world, one by one. And I tended the unconscious ones as best I could. Time ceased to mean anything. Nothing meant anything."
"I'm sorry," Kougar said quietly, his thumb stroking her ribcage. "I wish I'd known, Ariana. I would have helped you, you know that."
She turned, meeting his pained gaze over her shoulder. "I know. I wasn't the woman you'd loved anymore. I wasn't . . . anyone. I was dead inside. Lost." Settling back against him, she looked out over the small pool and continued. "Finally, the maidens who'd survived began to waken. They were still terribly weak, but they pulled me back into the world of the living. Almost two hundred years had passed by then, Kougar. Two hundred years that are little more than darkness in my mind. It was another eighty or ninety years before my maidens finally returned to full health and strength, able to move freely between mist and flesh. It was nearly three hundred years after the attack that Melisande strapped on her knives and set out to cut out the heart of the Mage sorcerer who'd nearly destroyed our race."
"She didn't find him."
"No. She's hunted him ever since and come so close numerous times, but luck's never been on our side. It's just a matter of time. But I guess time isn't something we have anymore, is it? It wasn't until Melisande began hunting Hookeye that we realized the world thought we were extinct. Once I'd started thinking clearly, I'd wondered why Hookeye had never attacked again. I couldn't be sure, but I thought he could probably reach me again even with the mating bond severed. Now I knew why. Like everyone else, he thought I was dead. We knew we had to keep it that way. As long as he didn't know the truth, Melisande might be able to get close enough to kill him."
"I would have happily killed him for you."
She pulled out of his arms and turned to face him. "I never forgot you. I always intended to find you again, when it was over."
His eyebrow shot up. "A thousand years?"
Ariana flinched. "I never dreamed it would take so long. Melisande was always so close to finding Hookeye. A few more weeks, a few more months, and it would be over. Except it never was."
"And you didn't think you could trust me with your secret?"
"It wasn't that simple." She dropped her gaze to his shoulder. "I don't even know how to explain it. I still loved you, but . . ."
"But?"
Slowly, she lifted her gaze to his. "Hookeye never would have attacked us if not for our mating. What I felt for you was no longer as simple as love. It was a tangle of grief and bitterness, regret and guilt. And so much time had passed. I told myself that someday I'd have to resolve things with you, but not when it could possibly hurt my maidens again."