And ecstasy turned her world into a single, endless white blur.
She felt her body arch against her bonds, and was helpless to stop it. The pleasure wasn't merely sexual-although it was that, too intensely so to believe. But atop that rapture were layers and layers of other sensations. The simple satisfaction of a hot drink on a cold morning. The heart-pounding excitement she felt when seeing Bernard for the first time in days or weeks. The joy of soaring up through dark, heavy clouds into the clear blue sky. The fierce pleasure of victory over intense competition in the Wind Trials, when she had been at the Academy. The bubbling laughter that followed after the third or fourth excellent joke she'd heard in an evening-and a thousand more, every single happiness, every single joy, every wonderful thing that had ever happened to her, every individual gratification of the body, mind, and heart, all blended into a single, sublime whole.
Brencis, the courtyard, the Vord, the Realm, even her husband-none of it mattered.
Nothing mattered but feeling this.
She knew she'd be weeping if she'd had thought enough for such inanities.
Someone was whispering to her. She didn't know who. She didn't care. The whispers didn't matter. All that mattered was drowning in the pleasure.
She came back to herself, slowly, inside a warmly lit room. It looked like an inn room, a fairly lavish one. There were soft hangings on the walls, and an enormous bed. It was warm-blessedly warm, after the hideous cold of the courtyard. Her fingers and toes were tingling, so intensely that it would have hurt, if anything she felt could have been interpreted as anything but pure pleasure.
She was standing in a tub, and one of the barely clothed girls was taking off her travel-stained blouse. Amara stood in blissful disinterest. The girl began bathing her face and neck and shoulders, and Amara reveled in the warmth, the feeling of the soft washcloth against her skin, the scent of soap in the air.
She became aware of Brencis walking in a slow circle around the tub, unbuttoning his shirt as he went.
Despite his faults, she thought, he really was quite beautiful. She watched him, though the effort of moving her head simply became too much to sustain. She let her eyes follow him, tracking his movements through her lashes when the simple pleasure of feeling herself being cleaned of weeks of grime became almost too delicious to endure.
"Lovely, Countess," Brencis said. "You are lovely."
She shivered in response to his voice, and her eyes closed completely.
"Don't forget her hair," Brencis said.
"Yes, my lord," murmured the girl. Warm water cascaded over her head, and a gentler, softer-scented soap was applied to her hair. Amara just reveled in it.
"It's too bad, really," Brencis said. "I had hoped that you would put up more of a fight than this. But you were brittle, Countess. The ones who go this far under, this swiftly-they don't come back. Do they, little Lyssa?"
Amara felt the girl standing close beside her shiver. "No, my lord. I don't want to come back."
Brencis stopped in front of her, smiling slightly. "I'll bet she has pretty legs. Very long, very slender, very strong."
"Yes, my lord," Lyssa agreed.
Amara found herself sleepily returning Brencis's smile.
"Take the trousers, off, Amara," he said, his voice holding a quiet, snarling promise in it.
"Yes, my lord," Amara said drowsily. The soaking-wet leather was stubborn against her pleasure-numbed fingers. "I... it's too tight, my lord."
"Then be still," Brencis said, his voice amused. "Very still."
A dagger, its tip glittering with fascinating, wicked sharpness, appeared in his hand, and he knelt by her side. "Tell me, Countess," he murmured. "Were you here on Gaius's orders?"
"Yes, my lord," Amara murmured. She watched as the knife's tip, doubtless enhanced by Brencis's furycraft, sliced effortlessly through the hem of the leather flying trousers over her ankle. He began cutting slowly upward, his knife opening the garment as readily as a boy might peel a fruit.
"And your husband," Brencis said. "He isn't dead, is he?"
"No, my lord," Amara said sleepily. The knife slid over her calf. She wondered if she would feel it if such a sharp blade opened her flesh. She wondered if, in her current state, it would feel good.
"Where is he?" Brencis continued.
"Nearby, my lord," Amara replied, as the knife moved past her knee. "I'm not sure where, exactly."
"Very good," Brencis said, in approval, and placed a kiss on the naked flesh at the back of her knee.
Amara shuddered in anticipation.
"What are his intentions?" Brencis asked, returning to cutting his way up Amara's leg.
"He's waiting for my signal," Amara said.
Brencis smiled grimly as the knife opened the leather encasing Amara's thigh, slicing slowly up toward her hip. "To do what?"
"Free the captives, my lord."
Brencis laughed. "Ambitious of you. And what is to be the signal for him to begin? There doesn't seem to be much left of you, but when we take him, I can at least make sure that you are the one to whisper in his ears when he is captured and recruit-"
Metal scraped on metal, and Brencis paused, frowning in puzzlement.
Amara looked down, to see that his knife had parted the leather over the top of her thigh-where the discipline collar her husband had bound to her, hours before, nestled tight against pale flesh.
Brencis's eyes widened in stunned realization.
Amara called upon Cirrus, her hands lashing out. She caught Brencis by the wrist of the hand that held the knife, twisting toward his thumb, the motion taking him by surprise, so swiftly that he had no time to resist with his normal strength, much less with fury-enhanced power. The knife came free of his grasp, and Amara seized it with what seemed like lazy precision to her own accelerated senses before it could even begin to fall.
Brencis had seized upon his own wind furies by then, his hands beginning to rise to defend himself-but he had not been quick enough. Amara slapped his hand aside with one hand and with a flick of her wrist, passed the fury-sharpened dagger through both of the arteries in his throat.
Blood flowed out in a torrent, a cloud. It splashed over Amara's naked leg and torso, hot and hideous, as she stumbled, thrown off-balance by the speed of her own movements, and fell back out of the tub and out of the reach of Brencis's hands.
The young Aleran lord arched his back, his hands thrashing out wildly. One of his clenched fists struck the wooden frame of the tub and shattered it, sending soapy water, the bubbles stained with spraying blood, rushing out over the floor. He twisted, flailing toward Amara, and one of his thrashing shoulders struck a dazed Lyssa in the stomach, flinging her back like a doll.