Sara Douglass - Sinner

“No!” She could not move, and her mind voice seemed to have vanished. She was trapped, trapped … he was too powerful …

“Yes! Zenith … here … let me remind you.”

He was close now, gathering her stiff body in his arms, and Zenith struggled uselessly, wondering if he was intent on rape.

She felt his arms about her, and it was good.

No, no it wasn’t good! Yet something seemed to have taken possession of her, some part of her mind willed her to cease resisting and let WolfStar slide her to the floor, some part of her was saying … you have bedded with him previously.

No! She twisted her head away but WolfStar was too powerful for her, both his body and his power were too strong, and she felt his mouth close over hers …

And something happened. Something broke free, something struggled free within her. Memories, voices, scents, laughter not her own crowded her mind. Faces, experiences, songs she’d never seen or heard before leaped out of hiding. A desire she’d never felt flooded her body. She …

felt him enter her body, move within her, and she had never believed it could feel this good, had never believed that such intimacy could engender such feeling, and …

No! No, what was wrong with her? His mouth was on hers, that was all. All? She could not escape it, she could not escape him, she …

twisted under him, encouraging him with body and voice, willing him on to even greater effort, willing him to merge so completely with her body and soul that they would indeed become one and not just two bodies briefly conjoined in an act designed only for child engendering.

Zenith tore her mouth from his. “No!” Broke away from him, yet even as she stumbled five or six paces away from him she felt …

the fire that he had seeded in her womb explode into new life and …

She screamed and fell to the floor, doubling over, clutching at her belly. Her wings beat futilely behind her, and almost knocked WolfStar over as he leaned down and grabbed her, holding her tightly against him, trying to stifle her sobs.

“Zenith, your mother was wrong not to tell you this before –”

“Tell me what?”

“That you were born to be my lover, Zenith. Meant for no-one else. Why else are you still a virgin at your age? Here I am, Zenith. Accept me. Zenith, you love me … accept me.”

And the dreadful thing was Zenith could feel that love, could remember the nights she had lain in her lonely bed, wishing he would return to her, crying as the night lightened to dawn and he had not appeared. She could remember years spent loving him, and she could remember months spent watching her belly swell with his child.

“No!” she shouted once more, and lunged from his arms, using both limbs and wings. Her hip struck the sharp edge of the parapet over the courtyard, and she cried out, her arms flailing. WolfStar lunged for her, but he was too late, and Zenith tumbled over the edge of the roof, gaining control of her wings only within feet of the ground and landing roughly enough to scrape hands and knees.

Help me! Help me!

And suddenly, Drago was there.

“Oh, Stars!” he cried, and fell to his knees, gathering her in his arms. Two guards from the gate had started to run towards them, but Drago waved them back. “A slip! Nothing more!”

Then, her sobbing face pressed into his chest, he held her tight, rocking her back and forth. “Zenith, what is it? What is it?”

Zenith clung to her brother, sobbing, letting his closeness and warmth and touch drive away her memories and the feel of WolfStar.

In the rectangle of light behind Drago another figure appeared. “Zenith!”

Caelum.

“Zenith! Drago, what have you done to her? Let her go!”

“Caelum,” Zenith sobbed, trying to say it was alright, that Drago was helping, not hurting, but the words would not come, and Caelum reached down and literally tore her from Drago’s arms.

“Get you gone from here!” Caelum snarled at Drago, who had backed away, his eyes swinging between Caelum’s face and Zenith, now clinging to her eldest brother.

“I was only helping –” he began, but Caelum reached out with his power and cut off Drago’s words.

“I do not want to hear your excuses! Get you gone from here!”

Drago’s face twisted, trying to form words, but Caelum would not let them come, and with a gesture of half rage, half frustration, he disappeared inside the kitchen door.

“Sweetheart,” Caelum whispered, gathering Zenith more tightly into his arms, and then the music of a Song of Movement rippled about them, and they disappeared from the courtyard.

She came to her senses, still wrapped in Caelum’s arms, but now sitting on one of the commodious couches in the inner private chamber of his apartments.

“Where’s Drago?” she said, sniffing and wiping her nose with a cloth Caelum handed her.

“He fled. Did he push you?”

“No! No, I stumbled from the rooftop. WolfStar … WolfStar was there.”

“Ah! WolfStar! He is truly the bane of our lives. Did he hurt you?”

“No,” Zenith said, but she spoke so hesitatingly that Caelum took her shoulders and pushed her back a little so he could see her face.

“He did,” he said slowly. “He did hurt you. How?”

Zenith probably would have confessed to the first person who showed her kindness, be it Caelum or unknown dairy maid. Words came tumbling out of her mouth.

“WolfStar … on the roof … kissed me … thoughts, images, not mine … crowded me … frightened me.”

Caelum pulled her close again, stroking her hair. “Go on.” His eyes were distant.

Zenith gripped her hands together in an effort to stop them shaking. “He appeared suddenly, and that surprised me, but then I felt as if I was in a … chamber of some kind. The Dome of the Moon. It was very dark. I felt there was something there, clinging to the roof. It frightened me, terrified me, I was there, I saw that place – and yet I have never been inside it in my life!”

She raised her head, enough to look Caelum in the eyes. “I felt as though I was someone else. Memories crowded my mind. Memories that were not mine! Oh, Caelum …!”

And in another flood she told him of the lost hours and the nightmares and the fears. Who was this who crowded her mind, and who sometimes took such possession of her that she could not remember what she had done? Who?

“Caelum, I do not know what to think, what to do!”

“Hush,” Caelum said, holding her tight, stroking her hair, her back, kissing the crown of her head. “Hush.”

Thoughts and memories crowded his own mind, but they were not of someone else’s making. He remembered the time, nine years ago, when Axis and Azhure had handed control of Tencendor over to him. True, there had been a glittering ceremony on the shores of Grail Lake, but there had been a far more private afternoon, when his parents had handed into his keeping some of the most precious items of their lives.

The Rainbow Sceptre, now carefully secreted within Sigholt.

The Wolven Bow, for Azhure had said she no longer needed to ride to the hunt.

The enchanted quiver of arrows, which never ran out.

A Moonwildflower.

And a letter. A letter addressed to Azhure, and written by her long dead mother, Niah.

No-one save Azhure could remember Niah, for she had died when Azhure was only about six. Niah had been the First Priestess on the Island of Mist and Memory when one night WolfStar had appeared to her, lain with her, and got Azhure upon her.

Within seven years Niah was dead, burned alive at the hands of her Plough-Keeper husband, Hagen, in the cursed village of Smyrton. But she had left Azhure a letter, and when Azhure had given it to Caelum she’d told him that one day he must hand it to Zenith.