Triane's Son Learning E-Book

Amy Lane

• Herausgeber: Harmony Ink Press
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 570

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Sequel to Triane's Son Rising Bitter Moon Saga: Book Two When Torrant Shadow fled his homeland of Clough, he hoped to leave its threats behind. He spent four years living with the Moons, making sure Yarri had a home; now it's time for Torrant and his foster brother, Aldam, to leave for the University of Triannon, where Torrant hopes to create a new life enmeshed in healing arts and politics. Torrant's new school friends Trieste and Aylan want to teach him about love as he settles in, and at first, Trieste's tenderness seems to make her the logical choice for an interim lover, while Torrant waits for Yarri to grow up. But Torrant has learned the hard way that nothing is simple when Clough still wields its influence over their lives. More and more, Torrant must call on the cold predator in himself, the part that Aylan most admires. The truth is, Torrant has certain gifts that give him an advantage of self-defense, but using them to protect the ones he cares for may destroy the part of him Trieste and Yarri love best. As the four schoolmates progress to life beyond education and the evil from Torrant's homeland becomes too pernicious to be ignored, Torrant must choose his destiny: Will he be a healer or a hero? Only Triane's Son can be both.

Leseprobe

Readers Love Amy Lane’s

Bitter Moon Saga

Triane’s Son Rising

“As for this world’s she created, that is pure art. The description of this world is awe-inspiring. The magic feels… pulsating, the elements almost alive, like sentient beings, vibrant. It was a wondrous place and I quite loved it.”

—MM Good Book Reviews

“This is a wonderful combination of Amy Lane’s lovely writing style infused into a high fantasy setting. It was quite the adventure. I am looking forward to the next installment of this series.”

—Live Your Life, Buy the Book

Copyright

Published by

Harmony Ink Press

5032 Capital Circle SW

Suite 2, PMB# 279

Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886

USA

[email protected]

http://harmonyinkpress.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of author imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Triane’s Son Learning

© 2013 Amy Lane.

Cover Art

© 2013 Nathie.

creationwarrior.net

Cover content is for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted on the cover is a model.

All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Harmony Ink Press, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA, or [email protected].

ISBN: 978-1-62798-337-2

Library ISBN: 978-1-62798-339-6

Digital ISBN: 978-1-62798-338-9

Printed in the United States of America

Second Edition

November 2013

First Edition published as Bitter Moon I: Triane’s Son Ascending by iUniverse, 2008

To thestudents who read this first, and to my family who still comes first.

Acknowledgments

This one,

A Map Through a Cold Winter’s Night

SPENDINGTHESamhain break at home in Eiran had been lovely. Painful and cathartic, but lovely. Torrant and Aldam remembered all over again why finding the Moon home after their exile from Clough had been the proof of Joy’s mercy. Returning to school at the end of the week was difficult, but not nearly as difficult as the first departure, and since their rush back to Triannon was so flurried in order to avoid the snow, Torrant and Aldam didn’t have time to dwell on the leaving.

Torrant kept safe the stiff card Yarri had stuffed in his pocket as he and Aldam had mounted their horses that cold winter morning. It was a picture of him, singing in the family room. The focus was on his eyes—hazel, a strange mix of brown, green, and gray, and shiny in the firelight.

“Remember that’s how I see you.” Yarri’s face had been serious and sober as she’d wrapped her arms around his neck. “Remember that I’m never sorry that you’re not Ellyot.”

He’d smiled gently. “Yarri—I’m never sorry that I got to grow up with you.”

But she hadn’t been fooled. “Say it.”

“I’m not fourteen anymore—”

“Say it.” She pursed her lips and narrowed her brow, and he was reminded, yet again, that she only looked like an angel.

“Yarri, it’s—”

“Say it!” she barked, and Torrant had flushed as the rest of the family looked their way with raised eyebrows.

Goddess, he loved them all.

“Fine!” he snapped, mortified but knowing at the same time that he had lost. “I’m not sorry that I lived and Ellyot didn’t. Are you happy now?”

“I’ll be happy when you believe it.” She’d burst into tears then, and he’d held her and comforted her, stroking her curling autumn-colored hair and whispering into her ears all the things she’d forced him to say, just to make her stop crying, just until he could believe it.

“You won’t forget?” she whispered. “It’s a long time until spring.” Odds were good they wouldn’t be coming back for the winter Solstice. Because of his heavier course load, he would still be finishing up finals, and the snows would make the trip difficult with the wagon. Lane promised them that for next year, he would make skids for the wagon so they could use it as a sled.

Roes and Aldam embraced quickly, bodies barely touching, and then the rest of the family was caught up in hugs as well. When Roes came to hug Torrant, she stepped on his foot to get his attention.

“He’ll follow you to the nadir and back, right?” She was not smiling in the least; she crunched her tanned, freckled face together at the brows in anxiety. “You need to lead him back to me.”

Torrant grinned. “Roes, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he could no more wander away from you than the moons could leave their orbits.” But to his dismay, this only made her cry.

“Don’t you understand, cousin? The Goddess moon doesn’t wander because she’s faithless. She wanders because she follows her brothers. You’re his brother, and he’ll wander away from me if you don’t send him back.” She dashed her hand across her eyes, and Torrant grimaced and hugged her close.

“Right, little rose, right. I’ll send him back when we’re done with our wandering, I promise. You just remember that he might want you to wander a little on your own.”

Roes sniffled against his shoulder in response, and then it was Stanny’s turn, and Cwyn’s and Starry’s and then Bethen’s, who sniffled too. “It won’t be Solstice without you two.”

“We’ll be back for Beltane,” Torrant reassured her and then nodded at Lane, who had already given his permission. “And we’ll bring friends, right?”

“Aylan can stay with me!” Stanny said excitedly—meeting someone from out of town had sounded very exotic to Stanny.

“And Trieste can stay with me,” Roes said sententiously. Bethen elbowed her and shook her head in warning. There were more hugs and kisses all around and then….

They were off, and Torrant was touching the card inside his cloak pocket as though it were his last link to everything he loved.

THENIGHTTorrant and Aldam got back, Trieste greeted Torrant with such a fervent kiss that he found himself closing his eyes in odd moments just to savor her taste.

They continued kissing, learning the joys of bodies pressed close in corners, of the brief touch of lips in greeting and farewell, of cold hands on warm tummies and the squealing and laughter that ensued. He loved the way her eyes closed before he put his lips to hers, and the feel of her breath on his face just before that happened. He enjoyed the dark feeling of her fine hair as it spilled around his fingers, and the terrible sensitivity of his body, hard and full and aching under his clothes, as she pressed on top of him. One touch, he often thought in a delicious ecstasy of agony, one touch of her soft cool hand against his bare skin and his body would explode in a scorch of fireworks behind his eyes and in his pants and possibly even out his toes.

The anticipation was as wonderful as the smug knowledge that someday soon, it would happen, it would happen between them and he would feel her skin on his without interruption or excuse and the thing, the glorious warmth between them, would wash over his body like a velvet wave.

Aylan watched them with amusement, indulgence, and a certain amount of patient jealousy.

“Why don’t you just do it and get it over with!” he demanded one day in exasperation. Torrant and Trieste had met as Torrant was sprinting toward their fencing class—after a brief kiss and rolled eyes to indicate that it wasn’t enough, Torrant caught up with Aylan, and they walked shoulder to shoulder to the changing rooms.

“Maybe, Aylan,” Torrant said smugly, “it’s not just something you ‘do to get over with.’ Maybe it’s something special.”

Aylan grunted with disgust, and Torrant urged them faster. The fencing practice room could only be accessed from outside the building, and the snows had come. They were gentle and forgiving snows in the Triannon valley—not even comparable to Eiran’s sea-cold, and certainly nothing to Clough and Hammer pass—but the young men were outside with nothing but scholars’ robes and scarves to protect them from the cold.

“Besides,” Torrant continued when they were inside undressing, “it has to be her decision. She’s still at risk for getting her head lopped off in a public ceremony if she’s wrong about Alec of Otham.”

“I doubt it—Alec’s a nice enough sort, if you like benevolent rulers bent on changing backwards countries.” Aylan donned his fencing tights in record time and leaned back against the wall to enjoy watching Torrant struggle into his. Most noblemen were not as broad shouldered as Torrant, and their chests weren’t thick with the muscle gotten by wrestling and hauling crates in warehouses. Torrant may have lost a great deal of weight, as well as his self-consciousness around Aylan, but Torrant got the feeling that Aylan’s perusal of his body was still a treat.

Torrant noticed his regard and flushed, more so when his body began the stirrings of a response, something made obvious by the tight fencing clothes. “Knock it off—I thought we were over that shite.”

“I’ll never be over that shite,” Aylan returned seriously. “If you don’t want me to look, then go dress somewhere else, but don’t expect me to just turn the whole works off because you’re about to get a woman. My offer still stands, and probably always will. Just because I’m not stalking you anymore, Triane’s son, doesn’t mean I’d mind if you wandered into my room one night and dropped your drawers.”

Torrant grimaced at the crassness of the offer but looked seriously at Aylan because he respected that Aylan was serious. He also knew, now that Aylan had become a friend, that his friend’s heart was probably as engaged as his desire, and Torrant wouldn’t hurt him for all the world. “I appreciate that,” he murmured, “but now is not the time.” There was a quiet between the two and then Torrant came to himself to stand and pick up his mask. “What was that bit about ‘Triane’s son’?”

Aylan laughed and picked up his own gear. “You’re gifted, you’re a midwife and a healer, and you wouldn’t mind kissing another boy. If you’re not the son of the Goddess, I’ve got no idea who would be.”

“Get stuffed!” Torrant replied amiably and went off to beat Aylan soundly in three matches.

THEIRCLASSESgrew busier, more intense, as everybody prepared for finals after the Samhain break. Finals came, and even though his schedule had calmed down, Torrant still grew so lean studying that Trieste, Aldam, and even Aylan took to bringing meat pies to their classes so they could urge him to eat. He rolled his eyes at them—“Not one of you looks like Auntie Beth!”—but he still ate the food. It was bad enough Professor Nica had started giving him food in the library—the room he loved most in the school, and the one place he was not supposed to be eating. Of course, he wasn’t supposed to be sleeping there either, but four nights out of five, one of the three would go fetch him from the stacks, where he was quietly snoring in the clutter of bound parchment.

And still he passed his finals—in all classes—with marks high enough to make Aylan sigh with disgust.

“I’ve been working this system my whole life, and I don’t get marks that good!” he complained at dinner when the term had ended.

“You’ve been interested in other things,” Trieste replied with so much dryness that he threw a roll at her. She ducked and stuck out her tongue, and Aldam tried to make the peace.

“If you’re going to throw food, throw some more at him. He’s still too thin, and I don’t think he’s slept in four days.” Instinctively all three of them looked over to Torrant to make sure he was eating. He wasn’t. His head was pillowed in his arms and around his stew, and gentle snoring issued from his slightly open mouth.

The three of them hung their heads and sighed. “Weren’t you two planning to leave tonight?” Aylan asked, grimacing as Torrant let out a particularly loud snore.

Aldam sighed so heavily that Trieste patted his back in sympathy. The snows had come late, and for a breath they thought they might have a chance to go home, but a big storm was rolling in from the west. The hard truth was, if they didn’t leave in an hour or so, they wouldn’t get another chance to see home until spring.

“He can’t go like this,” Aldam said fretfully. Another five months before they could return home. Another five months without seeing Roes. He swallowed hard, and Torrant suddenly jerked awake.

“Goddess, Aldam—we’ve got to leave!” he said clearly, focusing his eyes, and Aylan and Trieste both looked at Aldam questioningly. Aldam winked at them.

“Certainly. Is all our gear upstairs?”

Torrant had to think about that; it was clear the effort was painful. “Except for what I sent last week.” They had sent their gifts ahead of time with the militia messenger, in case the snows got there before they were allowed to leave. He nodded decisively. “I’ll go upstairs and look.”

He still wasn’t quite awake. In fact, he stumbled a bit and bumped his knee on the bench as he stood to leave. Aldam turned toward Aylan and Trieste and gave them a small nod to follow. When they got to their room, Torrant bent over to get his duffel off his bed, and Aldam put his hand on the back of his neck and whispered, “Sleep” in his ear. Torrant’s weight carried him all the way over, and Aylan deftly pulled the duffel bag out of his way before he hit the bed.

“I did well in my finals too,” Aldam said with a certain amount of pride, and Trieste and Aylan nodded in bemusement. Aldam bent and started stripping Torrant of his shoes and his sweater so he could sleep more comfortably.

“But, Aldam…?” Trieste asked softly, folding the sweater and putting it on his desk chair. “Doesn’t this mean you can’t…?”

Aldam shrugged unconvincingly and looked outside, where the dark was beginning to fall and the snow was beginning to dump down in great drifts. “He would have ridden tonight until he fell off Hammer, and then he would have turned into the snowcat and finished the ride.”

“What are you doing?” Trieste asked Aylan sharply, and Aylan hushed her and continued to strip off Torrant’s breeches.

“I can’t sleep in them, and I’d bet he can’t either. Turn away if your maidenly modesty can’t take it.” The breeches came off to reveal two leanly muscled legs with a smattering of fine hair up the calves. His shirt came down to barely the tops of his thighs, teasing her eyes with what wonders lay beyond that Trieste, at the least, had never seen, and she made a little whistling sound in the place between her nose and her throat. A little slower than her usual movements, she covered him with a green-and-tan throw that was obviously well worn and hand knit.

“You enjoyed that!” she accused weakly, and Aylan rolled his eyes.

“And you didn’t?” With that—and a last, lingering look—he clapped Torrant’s brother on the back. “Aldam, my boy, are you aware that after the younger ones have gone to bed, during the breaks the kitchen serves hard cider?”

“I’ve never had a drink like that,” Aldam confessed shyly, and Trieste came beside him, wrapping a companionable arm around his waist.

“Well, it’s time we all did, isn’t it? And you know, the cider they serve pales in comparison to the store that Aylan has stashed in his room.”

“You know about that?” Aylan asked, closing the door quietly behind him with a pained expression.

“Oh, Aylan, even the professors know.”

LATER—MUCHlater—Trieste tiptoed down the hallway in the dark between midnight and dawn. Her feet were exceedingly steady: she made sure of that. Yes, she had drunk more than usual—Aylan had, among other things, this very tasty almond liqueur she had never had before that packed a little bit of a kick—but she had stopped drinking as soon as the idea had possessed her.

She liked this idea, and she didn’t want to be drunk when she thought about it again.

So she’d sat and sipped water, and chatted idly with the blonde daughter of some Lord of Clough, and together they’d watched Aylan lose to Aldam on purpose through several games of backgammon and one painful game of chess. But Aldam was simple and not stupid. After the chess game, he looked reprovingly at Aylan and said, “I am not drunk enough to believe that.”

Aylan had apologized and proceeded to get Aldam just a little bit drunker.

When Trieste had slipped quietly out of Aylan’s room, Aldam was curled up in a well-sedated ball, whispering “Roes” to himself as he fell sadly asleep. Aylan had given her a little bow and a salute and had smiled at the lord’s daughter who was plump, not too bright, and obviously not leaving soon, and Trieste knew her time had come.

Apparently so did Aylan.

“Trieste?” he’d murmured as she opened the door.

“Hmm?”

“Let him lead.”

She’d flushed and shut the door, but she hugged that bit of advice close as she walked down the hall.

Now, before her courage could fail her, she turned her hand on the knob and whispered into Torrant’s darkened room. Triane loomed large through their window, so close that she could be seen even through the sheeting snow and frosted by the cold that made even the bowl valley frigid. Trieste said a little prayer to her namesake. Please, Goddess, just a little joy that I’ve chosen for my own before the life chosen for me begins. Just a little. Just let it be joy.

The Lady was so close that Trieste could swear she actually winked and then closed sleepy silver-cream eyes. That was a sign if Trieste had ever seen one.

Breathing in shallow hushes, she undid the button at the neck of her simple, blue wool dress and pulled it over her head, and then she pulled off her girdled stockings and her panties. She stood a moment, stark pale in the moonlight, and looked at Torrant, who was still asleep, the sharpness of his cheekbones casting shadows against his intriguingly sculpted mouth. He looked tense and intense, even in sleep. She wondered if she could ease a little of that, calm some of that drive, yet leave a little of that flame burning for later, so when Yarri came of age, he wasn’t yet all burned out.

She could try.

TORRANTWOKEup abruptly when Trieste’s cold and pointed nipples brushed up against his bare back. He said something witty, like “ergglapek?” and heard her soft laugh behind him just as her hands came up to his abdomen and pushed the front of his shirt up as well.

“My pants….” Because her cool legs entwined his from behind and then a soft kiss was planted directly between his bare shoulder blades.

“Believe it or not, Aylan took them off,” she murmured. “Right after Aldam willed you to sleep.”

“Why would he do tha-at?” He finished with a squeak because, of all things, her hand was on his stomach, and then it was not, it was lower, it was under his undergarments, and it was… cool… and firm… and stroking…. “Goddess…Trieste… don’t you have a betrothed king and a virginity law…?”

“It’s been repealed,” she breathed into his ear. “And right now”—stroke—“right here”—stroke—“you need rest”—stroke—“and you need to relax.”

“Ahhh-ahhhh….” He was not feeling relaxed, nor like resting, and he certainly did not feel like arguing. He didn’t want this moment to end quite as soon as Trieste was bent on ending it, either. “Ah gods.” He rolled over and over her, fitting his hips between hers and rubbing up against the juncture of her thighs, getting slick with her. He smiled into her grave eyes as she “Oohed” into the night.

“I don’t want to relax right now.” His movements were slow and controlled, but his jaw was clenched, and his teeth were gritted against the wildness that wanted to take him where they both wanted to go.

“Fine. Great. Good.” She gasped, arching up against him, her body pleading for the act between them that had no words.

“But first….” And he slid down her body, kissing, tasting, and looking at her curves in the moonlight, touching softly everything that looked like it might have nerve endings, tasting everything that made her hiss or pant.

Trieste had spent a great deal of her life in the school, where sex was spoken of in hushed tones, as gossip, or in the occasional, awkward class. Torrant had spent his life among the Moons, both in Clough and in Eiran, with unapologetic girls who would discuss frankly what it was a lover should do and with gleeful older brothers who would explain in graphic detail how that should be accomplished. Although technically a virgin, by the time Torrant slid his body up along Trieste’s and kissed her on the mouth, allowing her to taste herself with a wicked and sober little shiver, he made it clear he had studied the charts of this unfamiliar country, and he was definitely more qualified to lead their exploration therein.

“Are you sure?” he asked, poised at Triane’s gate.

“Are you mad to ask that question right now?” she groaned, wrapping her legs around his hips and doing her best to sheathe him inside her as he held himself steady.

“We could keep doing what we were doing….” But now he was teasing her, because he knew she was sure and because he knew she was ready and because now that he knew it was going to happen, he could linger a moment to watch her want him in the moonlight.

“Oh gods, Torrant!” she practically sobbed. “Please….”

And then there was no more talking because he was sliding, and it was heaven, and the gates were already stretched by his fingers and tongue and they parted as though they had been oiled by their desire. And then he was in, and she was biting his shoulder and urging him with her hips and her feet wrapped over his buttocks and he was moving and moving and moving, and the night spun away as they shuddered and moaned and spent.

And again.

And playing, touching fingertips to skin, murmuring, laughing softly, watching the moon set in the window, watching the window turn an opaque gray.

And again.

And sleep.

TORRANTWOKEup with the sun glancing in through his window, feeling as though a horse were sitting on his chest. He looked sideways, and Trieste was sleeping peacefully, but even as he stretched a tender finger to stroke her cheek, he fought for a panicked breath, and another, and he pulled back that tender finger to run his hands through his sweat-soaked hair and wonder what was wrong.

Instinctively, he looked to Aldam’s bed. The covers were pulled up neatly to the pillow, and the throw Roes had made him for their second Solstice (not as polished as the one Bethen had made, but by no means no less loved) was arranged squarely at the foot.

“Aldam?” Torrant breathed and felt him, on the edge of his gift, and Aldam was cold, and he was frightened.

“Trieste!” Torrant wrenched her name from his tortured lungs. “Where’s Aldam?”

He stood up, finding his breeches and pulling them on, while Trieste sat up, pulling the covers up to her chest and pushing her dark hair out of her focusing eyes.

“Torrant?”

“Aldam!” He could hear the desperation in his voice and couldn’t find words for where the desperation came from.

“Aylan’s room?” She shook her head muzzily and his bare feet thudded on the hardwood floor as he pounded down the hall to Aylan’s quarters and hammered on the door.

“Torrant? By Dueant’s balls, brother, show a little compassion!” Aylan’s eyes were bloodshot, his curly yellow hair was standing straight on end, and his breath could have knocked a sparrow out of her tree from a mile away, but all Torrant could see was the color of Aldam’s fear.

“Aldam?”

“He’s here… he fell asleep on my floo….” Aylan looked behind him to where the lord’s blonde daughter had rolled over in his bed, her breasts covered by his pillow. She met his eyes in a furtive, half-fleeing sort of glance, and Aylan blinked in puzzlement when his eyes scanned the pallet of blankets on the floor and realized Aldam was not there. “Gods! Where?”

But Torrant was sprinting back toward his room and the parchment on his table. When he got there, Trieste was dressed and looking unmistakably mussed, but Aylan didn’t even look at her ironically when he came pattering in, barechested and just as mussed as she was. “Aldam’s missing, and you’re writing him a letter?”

“Maps,” Torrant muttered. “We need a map.” With rude slashes of his pen and ink, Torrant drew a big square and labeled it “school” and then drew an “x” and labeled it “Aldam,” with another one in the school that represented himself. He closed his eyes and whispered, “Aldam… where are you?” Then he stumbled a little because his worry had shot an awful lot of will through the parchment, and the map he’d created was so detailed that the pictures on it raised themselves and formed geographical features on the paper. Trieste and Aylan gasped at the Goddess’s magic, but Torrant wasn’t even paying attention to the miracle he’d wrought with desperation.

“Torrant, it’s worked its way into the wood. It’s part of the desk now!”

“Here’s Aldam! Gods, he’s outside the bowl valley—what’s he doing there? And who are these….”

But the map was still forming as they watched, and even as he saw Aldam’s “x” turn into a tiny, pebble-sized figurine of Aldam himself, he watched other pebble-sized figures rise out of the map and turn into mounted horsemen. They were moving east, and they must have been outfitted for snow because they were moving quickly. The one in front had Rath’s teal-and-black banner.

“Rath!” Torrant’s voice shook, and Aylan and Trieste stepped back because it held an unmistakable yowl and growl in it. Torrant’s shirtless back was suddenly not smooth, brown-tinted skin anymore, but mottled white-and-black fur.

“Torrant?” Trieste was terrified, but she risked a touch on his back. “Torrant, sweetheart, you need to calm….”

“Rrowwrrll!” His howl shook the window, and before the echoes had died down he was fully a snowcat, hurtling down the halls of Triannon.

“Goddess!” Trieste breathed, trying to fight tears. “Aylan—what do we do?”

Before he answered, Aylan wheeled around and started pounding down the hall. “Get dressed, get Prof Gregor, and get me my clothes off the floor!” he ordered as his bare feet made panicked slapping sounds down the hall.

Trieste padded next to him, breathless because she didn’t fence like the boys did, but she did have just enough breath to ask a question. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to go let him out of the damned school before he makes some poor teacher piss himself!” Aylan answered back, disappearing down the stairwell and leaping the steps four at a time. “Now move!”

And Trieste had no choice but to obey.

Blood on the Snow

AYLANMADEit to the door just as Torrant raised a giant paw to knock it down. The hinges were saved, but there were four deep scores in the heart of the wood for as long as that door stood in Triannon.

Torrant went bounding into the snow in the general direction of Aldam and those teal-and-black specks. Aylan wound up halfway to the stables, barefoot and barechested, before Professor Gregor and Trieste caught up with him.

“Oueant’s little blue balls, Aylan, you’ll catch your death out here,” Gregor scolded, and Trieste’s eyes got big at the profanity before she remembered there were other things to worry about. “Where were you headed?”

“The stables,” Aylan chattered, pulling on thick wool socks Torrant and Aldam had given him for Solstice the day before. “I was going to get Torrant’s monster and Aldam’s fat mare and follow that damned cat to the bloodbath.”

“Bloodba….” Trieste’s voice trailed off, and she lagged behind Aylan and Gregor. Aylan was struggling into a stout sweater and cloak even as they both headed for the stables together.

“Grow up, Trieste!” Aylan barked over his shoulder. “Whose colors were those surrounding Aldam?”

“Rath’s.”

“Do you really think Torrant’s going to let any of Rath’s people live?”

And in spite of herself, in spite of the magic with the sad and handsome boy in the moonlight, Trieste found her footsteps stalling completely as Aylan and Gregor disappeared into the stables. He was going to kill those people. Her gentle poet, the sweet, laughing lover in her bed—he was going to kill with speed and prejudice and just as coldly as those glacial eyes might suggest. He was going to spill blood in the snow and spill no tears to go with it. A sudden shudder, not at all to be confused with the cold, swept over her, immobilizing her. Standing in her wool stockings and riding boots in the gray predawn, she wondered if she could bear his touch on her skin again, knowing the things he would surely do on this day.

Suddenly the stable doors burst open, and Aylan came out riding his own horse—a fine-boned, bay-colored, temperamental animal who could have used some of Courtland’s genetic solidity—and leading Hammer in his wake. Gregor followed him on the school’s riding horse, holding Clover’s reins

Gregor looked at her, confused, but Aylan knew exactly what had crossed her mind.

“I know it’s not forever, Trieste,” he said with as much gentleness as he could manage while wheeling his prancing animal in a circle and deftly avoiding entangling the reins. “But you were planning to love him for right now. Is ‘right now’ consigned to last night already, darling? Because you know I’d be glad to step up and pick up the little pieces of his heart out of the bloody snow.”

“Aylan….”

“You were always timid, darling”—he sneered at her hesitation–“but I never figured you for a coward!”

And as he wheeled the horses toward the eastern side of the valley, Trieste made a decision with her feet and her voice that she had not consciously made with her heart.

“Aylan, you arse, wait up!” she called, and although he didn’t stop his own horse, he did let Hammer’s reins fall so she could swing up on the gelding’s back—a terrifying height for someone who had only ridden occasionally—and catch up with the two men who were riding off to save her lover from himself.

TORRANTCOULDrun as the snowcat. His massive, dinner-plate-sized paws padded down the snow like a child’s hands, and he floated up the gentle whitescape of the valley in winter to the jagged blizzard conditions of Cleant proper and the Old Man Hills.

It didn’t matter. His knowledge of the map had given him Aldam’s general direction, and as soon as he’d found that, the snowcat’s sense of smell told him everything—including Aldam’s stark, gibbering terror. His muscles bunched and stretched cleanly under the insulating fur, and he pounded in a flurry of power and fury to the source of Aldam’s fear stench.

His snowcat’s heart beat out a tattoo of death as he ran.

ALDAMKNEWhe was not brave. He hadn’t been brave when they had made their way through Hammer Pass when he was eighteen—he had just followed Torrant’s lead. As long as Torrant was there, and he took care of Torrant, Torrant would keep him safe.

He hadn’t been brave when he was a child and the horse trader had been alone with him in a fetid, darkened horse stall. He had whimpered and screamed as those rough hands pawed over his child’s body, and sobbed when he’d been bent over and violated. He had spent years after that moment startling at shadows and refusing to leave the house alone, until his mother had lost patience with him and sent him to work with his Aunt Stella so he could be of use. Torrant hadn’t been there to protect him then, but Aldam was sure if he had been, Torrant would have made sure that afternoon of madness and terror had never descended upon him.

And now, surrounded by guardsmen and tied to an unfriendly, bony nag who kept nipping at his bound leg, the only thing he was certain of as he jounced, head down across the white ice swirl of the mountains, was that Torrant would come save him.

It was the only thing that kept him from dissolving into a puling wail of fear and pain and terror.

That, and the thought that if Torrant got to him, no matter what was done to him in the meantime, he would get to see Roes again.

It had been the thought of Roes that had called him out of bed that morning, sad and hungover, and still a bit drunk. Aylan had produced a bottle of aged whiskey that he’d mixed with the lemon punch served in the dining hall, and the results had been mostly a fog in Aldam’s mind after Trieste had left. He could remember the plump blonde who had kept wiggling closer and closer to Aylan and looking at Aldam as though he were something that needed to be laundered, and he could remember Aylan mostly ignoring her in an attempt to make Aldam feel at home. And he could remember missing Roes.

Solstice celebrations in Hammer Village had been secret sorts of things: a few muttered prayers under a candle the color of the silver-cream moon and small, shy, and secret gifts, usually given by children who were patted on the heads by mothers and asked “Aren’t you getting a little old for this?” Torrant and Yarri celebrated the Solstice as though it were special, but until Aldam had caught their infectious excitement in the Moons’ house in Eiran, he had thought nothing broke up the grimness of winter but the books and games his Aunt Stella had played with him when she wasn’t working at the inn.

As he’d fallen asleep on Aylan’s floor, not the least bit interested in the noises coming from Aylan’s bed, one of the last things to impinge on his consciousness was his mother’s voice saying Stella, it’s fine for you to come here and be the boy’s hero—I have to worry about what will happen when we hear soldiers clattering up the hill to take him away.

Of course, the very last thing he remembered before he fell asleep had been his aunt’s reply: Sara, don’t let worrying about what will come take the joy away from what is right now. Right now he’s a boy who would like to laugh.

He’d fallen asleep in an alcohol haze and had dreamt of his mother as she’d sighed that night and sat down to play a game with him and Stella. When that dream was over, he’d dreamt of Roes, as she’d been at Samhain—happy. Happy to see him, happy to dance with him in front of the bonfire, happy to play games with him, and happy to hold his hand as they’d walked by the violent and faithful salt wrath of the autumn ocean. Roes had been happy, right up until he’d hugged her good-bye.

He’d awakened with a terrible sorrow that he would not see Roes until spring.

He stirred a little, grunting, and had been embarrassed to find the lord’s daughter looking at him intensely from her place in Aylan’s bed.

“What’s wrong?” she asked flatly, and he shrugged.

“Homesick.”

He stood then, because he was thinking he would be more comfortable in his own bed, and the girl’s eyes narrowed. What was her name, he wondered suddenly? It had a “z” sound in it—Zella? Zolna? Zorina? Those all seemed too dramatic for such a characterless creature. Aylan’s taste had been improving lately: he usually only bedded people who were fun to talk to at dinner, but this girl? She must have been a spur-of-the-moment choice.

“Maybe if you went outside,” she said, her look becoming sly. “You know, go outside and look toward home. It will help you feel better about home.”

It sounded like a good idea. Aldam was surprised. He hadn’t expected her to have a good idea. He certainly didn’t expect anything nice from her when she looked like she was about to drop a kitten in a dog kennel.

“I’ll do that,” he told her, pleased, but the look that crossed her face as she nodded and turned back toward Aylan had been indecipherable.

He’d dressed then and gone to his room, tiptoeing in to get his cloak and warmest sweater. He’d been happy to see Trieste’s dark head on Torrant’s shoulder. Sweetness, Aldam thought fondly. His brother needed sweetness before his destiny bit him on the scruff of the neck and dragged him to face his demons. On that thought he’d gone outside into the razor-breathed chill of predawn. Feet crunching through snow that was fortunately too dry to wet his breeches, he’d traveled up the hill of the bowl valley, planning to stand and watch the sunrise on this Solstice day, knowing it would hit Roes first, and when its light hit his face, it would have her colors in its thin goldness.

Seven soldiers were waiting behind the trees at the top of the rise, and their rough hands on his arms as they sprung on him and bound him were not nearly as terrifying as the ground disappearing beneath the hooves of the horse as he dangled over the saddle. Every step took him farther away from Torrant, farther away from Roes, and farther away from home and sanity.

“This isn’t the one we want!” one of the men argued as he was being trussed, unresistingly, like a turkey.

“No, but word is Ellyot Moon has a hard-on for this’un…. He’ll be after ’im.”

“Word from who? Who do we know in this whore-loving bitch house?”

“No one you’d be lucky enough to screw. Now get dummy there on the horse, and let’s go!”

Aldam jounced across the horse, feeling his ribs and abdomen getting pounded to powder, and prayed to the Goddess that Torrant wouldn’t get hurt when he killed these awful men.

TORRANTDIDN’Teven yowl to warn them.

He had smelled his brother’s tears as he’d run, and the scent of them made his fur stand up in porcupine-stiff quills along his back. The taut metal string that held any self-control he’d ever had in this form poing-snapped across his chest, and he barely felt it go.

He could smell the horses, smell their fear as they caught scent of a predator, and then he saw them. His muscles bunched, the pain of the coiled spring releasing with the joy of controlled destruction. He fell on the last man in the pack, knocked his helmet off, and ripped his throat out before he could scream. The snow masked the sound of his fall, and when he was dead, the only sound left was the blood spraying from a shredded artery onto the nearest tree and pattering to trace bright designs in the snow.

Torrant moved on to the next two men in the column.

This time, one of them got out a shout, but he didn’t get his sword out in time to give more than a warning to his fellow, and within seconds Torrant had left them bleeding their last while the horses whinnied and bolted to the front of the column. The men in front of Aldam had enough to do with calming their mounts and looking for the men attacking them that they did not see the snowcat stalking under the trees, his fur a perfect camouflage in the thin sun’s cold shadows—even with the fur stained crimson at his mouth and paws.

Torrant did not count in this form. He did not think Three down, four more to go. He just saw the men he wanted to kill and ranked which ones he would kill first. He could see the teal-and-black banner, hear the captain giving orders, smell the fear of the other prey. Shadow to tree he stalked, watching as the men gathered around the captain, all of them turned toward the rear of the column, from where the attack came.

This time, when Torrant sprang from the top of a tree alongside his chief prey, he snarled, because he knew the sound would terrify his other victims and make them easier to kill. The captain went down easily, and the others were too surprised to see what they were fighting to do more than jab ineffectually in horizontal patterns while Torrant bounded like a kitten on bedroom furniture—from the top of one horse to the branches of a nearby tree to the tops of another horse…. Someone got a jab in, and his howl of pain and anger was punctuated with a savage rip across an exposed jugular. And another howl and another slash and a bite, satisfying with ripping of flesh and blood and screaming and writhing….

And abruptly, it was over.

Torrant stood, four feet splayed, chest heaving, and surveyed the damage. The humans who had smelled of anger and death were now dead, and all that survived were the whinnying, panicked horses.

The horse that bore Aldam on its back had not gone far—it was mostly a pack animal. Without anyone at the reins, it had run a few hundred yards and then stopped, then looked around at its brethren and the stony silence of trees and snow. When Torrant tracked closely enough as the snowcat to smell the raw nervousness of the animals, he was suddenly a blood-spattered young man, barefooted, bareheaded, and bare chested in the snow.

His vision wasn’t right, he realized. It was still cold and clear, and the horses still smelled like dinner and not like friends, but since he wasn’t shivering and he still had some ways to go before he was done, he kept his vision icy and crunched through the snow to Aldam’s horse.

Aldam started sobbing as soon as he saw Torrant’s feet, red and chafed in the snow, and Torrant fought, hard, not to sink to his haunches and howl outrage into the champing, horsey quiet. His brother was hurting, his brother was scared, and if he could have, he would have yanked the dead soldiers back into life by the hair so he could kill them again, slower and with pain.

He won the battle inside himself but kept his eyes cold and blue as he fought with the ropes holding Aldam trussed like a turkey. It was hard going—his fingers were stiff with the chill, and even though his gift kept him from feeling most of the cold, his body was still operating under its limitations. Finally, out of frustration, he looked at his hand and allowed it change into a lethal set of living blades in a massive paw. With one or two careful swipes, he sliced through the ropes under the horse’s girth and pulled Aldam on top of him, into a snowdrift, to get him free from the horse and the bonds and the helplessness.

Aldam wrapped shaking arms around Torrant’s chest and wept unashamedly in relief.

“I knew you’d come,” he said again and again, and Torrant could hardly bear it.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” he said, trying to contain his self-directed anger, and Aldam pulled back and wiped a careless hand over his tear-stained face.

“It’s not your fault, brother. I’m just glad you came for me in the end.”

Torrant lifted his upper lip in a small version of his trademark grin. “I can’t believe you’d doubt it.”

Aldam took a deep, shuddery breath and pulled his usual serenity around him. “I can’t believe you’d think I did.”

His grin went from the small version to the large version, and in that moment his eyes went from blue to brown, and he suddenly contracted in a fit of shivering.

In one smooth movement, Aldam caught his brother behind his shoulders and under his knees and swung him bareback on top of the horse before Torrant could finish his first full shudder. Then he reached into the snow and found the saddle and blanket that had come off when he had and threw the blanket over Torrant’s shoulders.

“Th-h—t-th—th-h—”

“Don’t worry about it.” Aldam grinned quietly, secure in his boots and his cloak and his sweater as he swung up on another vacated horse. “You’re ever welcome.”

Torrant nodded and took the reins in his cold-stiffened fingers. “We… we’re going to hav—have to come back….” he chattered, taking some comfort from the horse’s warmth and from the warmth of the itchy blanket across his shoulders. “I—I—I—need to—to—clean up—”

“I think you’re going to need to sleep.” Together they swung the horses past the other milling animals and along the wide swathing path that marked the way the horses had come in the first place and defiled the fresh fall of snow.

“Too many dead men.” It took an act of will, but Torrant was able to speak without chattering now. It was too bad what he had to say didn’t give him any comfort.

Aldam blew out a breath. “If we let them stay where they are, the predators will leave nothing but greasy armor by the next time someone comes through here.”

Torrant nodded, still troubled. “There’s a drop-off yonder,” he said thoughtfully. “I’d feel better if I could manage to push them off of it.”

Aldam looked away, ashamed. “I can’t look at them again, brother.”

His voice was fretful, and Torrant nodded in understanding. Aldam shouldn’t have to be punished by looking at the corpses of the men who had attacked him, but Torrant was unhappy about not having one last look. He needed to see it, he thought punitively. It wasn’t right to spatter justice on the heads of his enemies like blood in the snow and not look back to see what pattern it made. It would make delivering vengeance far too easy, if he didn’t imprint the image of destruction on his heart.

After about ten minutes of riding, he and Aldam rounded a stand of trees and came face to face with Aylan, Trieste, and Professor Gregor, who were standing in the muddle of hoofprints Torrant had spawned when the horses had first spooked at his scent and arguing heatedly about which way to turn.

Torrant’s and Aldam’s appearance in the middle of all that shocked a silence, and Torrant spoke to all of them carefully, keeping his eyes away from their stunned faces.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he murmured in a voice that sounded weak to his own ears. “Aldam—” He looked carefully at his brother. “Aldam, I need you to go with them. I need to go….” He looked behind him and made a worried face. “Can you do that?”

“Alone?” Gregor asked anxiously, and Torrant wondered if it had occurred to his professor exactly what it was he had to do. It had occurred to Trieste and Aylan, he was certain. He could tell by the way Trieste kept looking away from him that she knew exactly what he had been doing, and it terrified her.

“Yes.” Torrant shivered. “Although… if any of you have anything I could wear….”

“I brought clothes,” Trieste said lowly, “But, Torrant—” Again she glanced away. “You’re going to need to wash first.”

Torrant looked down at himself and shivered harder. The horse blanket Aldam had thrown over him was sticking to the gore of the dead soldiers, and now Torrant realized why it had been so hard for her to look at him. Aylan, on the other hand, had been staring at him with hard, fascinated eyes.

“Yes.” He shivered again, and Aylan spoke angrily into the sudden snow-coated silence.

“I’ve got clothes and a cloth—come on, Torrant, we’ll go take care of it.”

Torrant looked at him gratefully but shook his head. “I’m sorry, I can’t ask you to—”

“I’m not waiting for your permission, brother! Now let’s go before Trieste’s offended senses make her head explode!” Torrant nodded and took one last look at Aldam to make sure it was all right. Aldam nodded bravely, so he wheeled his horse and cantered off behind the copse of trees. When he could no longer see Aldam’s misery or Trieste’s repulsion, he threw the blanket down so he’d have something to stand on and slid off his horse.

AYLANTOOK one last glare at Trieste. “Goddess, girl! You’re awfully eager to take the good and leave the bad. I pity the king who’s going to have to freeze his balls off in your bed when he does the blood work ruling needs.” With that, he wheeled off and rode behind the trees, where he found Torrant standing woefully on the blanket, trying to clean his chest with handfuls of melted snow.

“Dueant’s blue balls, Torrant, wait a moment,” Aylan swore, then swung down and took the cloth from Torrant’s shaking hands. Reaching under his horse’s saddle, he pulled out a skin full of water that had been warmed by his horse’s sweat as they labored to follow the trail of Aldam’s abductors. Aylan soaked the cloth and went to work on Torrant’s chest and throat while Torrant stood there and tried to make his teeth stop chattering.

It didn’t work. Aylan swallowed as his hands worked on Torrant’s cleanly muscled chest, set his jaw, and continued working stoically at the gore. With gruff, impersonal movements he set his hands on Torrant’s shoulders and turned him so he could work on his less saturated back. When that was done, he turned him back around, taking in the sharpened nipples and the blue tinge to the skin on a body that had lost far too much warmth but none of its appeal.

Aylan gave a martyred groan. Torrant may have looked like a man, but there was something very young about Aylan’s friend, shivering away his willpower in the cold. Aylan gathered his cloak around them both and pulled Torrant’s unresisting body into the shelter of his arms, then rocked him until the shudders eased a bit.

A darkened hollow was created between the bright-cold skin of their faces and the breath that commingled in shadowed pants between their chests. Aylan sighed and almost giggled when the chill of Torrant’s nose grazed his stubbled jaw. But their torsos were still not touching, and the shroud of Aylan’s arms and cloak was not enough to stop the shivering that racked Torrant’s body from the taut depths of his stomach to the blue-tinted tan of his skin.

With a tortured sigh and a muttered curse that probably offended all three gods, Aylan seized Torrant’s frigid, wet hands and shoved them under his shirt, clamping them under the pit of his arms with a decidedly unmanly shriek. Then he extended his forearms and pulled Torrant tight against him—so tight he could feel the line of his abdomen muscles through sweater and shirt, and the ripple of the terrible shivers syncopated Aylan’s breathing. So tight that when he felt the bulge of Torrant’s body along the crease of his thigh, and his own answering engorgement along his stomach peeping into the cave of dark outside his breeches, he knew neither one of them was particularly surprised.

The moment was abruptly fraught with the intimacy of warmth and dark inside the brutal white of the frozen world around them. Then Torrant spoke, and Aylan cursed the streak of nobility he would have sworn he didn’t possess.

“Trieste will probably never touch me again,” Torrant mumbled into the muffled wool span between their bodies.

Ah, Dueant, god of compassion, have mercy. “Sure she will,” Aylan replied briskly, rubbing his hands up and down Torrant’s muscled arms and mostly succeeding in not letting the touch of warmth become a caress of attraction.

“She was appalled,” Torrant whispered miserably, and Aylan gave up trying to make his touch impersonal. His palms slunk along the hardness of Torrant’s biceps and glided up to the velvet-columned blades of collarbones.

“Spots won’t want to move on to another lover—you took all the courage she has.” His hands were kneading now, and he leaned just enough that he was talking with his lips against Torrant’s temple, his breath stirring the fallen streak of white at Torrant’s brow.

“I-I don’t want anybody who’s afraid of me,” Torrant stammered, only now it wasn’t the cold that made him stammer, and he too leaned forward, just enough, and tasted the saltiness at Aylan’s neck, and Aylan’s eyes drifted closed in what was the closest thing to exquisite pain he would ever want to imagine.

“Then you want a fool,” he murmured with the barest touch of soft lips at the whitened temple. “Because only a fool wouldn’t see that you are an extremely dangerous young man.” With an effort that cost more of his heart than he’d imagined he had, Aylan lifted his arms and pulled Torrant into an embrace that was more brotherly than loverly, except that it brought the head of his erection in contact with the warm skin of Torrant’s belly.

“I’m not dangerous.” Hot tears plopped down Torrant’s flushed face, burning through Aylan’s sweater and scorching his skin.

“Of course you are, baby,” Aylan murmured, closing his eyes against the awful tightness in his throat. So quickly Torrant couldn’t counter the movement, he backed away and whisked a shirt and a sweater over Torrant’s now warmed body. As he helped his arms through the sleeves and looked at Torrant’s stunned, awakening eyes, he was grateful he’d had the clothes ready on top of the horse, and his hands had neither faltered nor fumbled.

“For instance”—Aylan added, wiping a hand across his damned wet cheeks—“right now, you are in serious danger of breaking a friend’s heart.”

Torrant opened his mouth to say something, but Aylan jerked his head sharply—the only indication besides the wet cheeks that his emotions weren’t under control. “No!” he said more gruffly than he meant to. With a deep breath, he took Torrant’s warmed hands in his own and placed a delicate kiss on the cold-reddened knuckles.

“No,” he said again, more gently this time, handing over Torrant’s boots. “Trieste will forgive you later, and now we have a job to do.”

TORRANTBOTHwanted and didn’t want to see Aylan’s expression as he led him to the clearing where the bodies lay, but that curiosity died as soon as they entered the terribly silent space. He was not prepared to view the carnage with his own eyes.

In order to kill the armed men, he had needed to reach claws or fangs under hauberks and under helmets, ripping, gouging, and tearing with force to reach jugular veins and rip out stomachs and hearts. The result was seven men covered in the blood that had fountained spectacularly from severed throats and destroyed intestines, spread over the ground. The least horrible ones stared heavenward at what had once been their own spraying blood as their emptying bodies chilled in the snow. The most horrible ones had died writhing, churning the snow into a dark-pink mush, cradling their spilling entrails and fighting the weight of their armor to turn protectively on their sides in order to leave the world in the same positions in which they entered. The agony twisted and scored into the muscles of the faces of these men was more awful than the effluvia that they died in.

Torrant stood and surveyed the ravages of his anger, fighting hard with his own stomach to bear this, at least, like a man. It took several silence-shrouded heartbeats for him to lose that battle and fall to his knees to vomit into the snow.

Aylan held his hair back from his face until he was done, and neither of them spoke until Torrant stood, moved to the captain who was the farthest away, and hefted him by the armpits, grunting a little as he pulled the body out of sight from the initial battle.

“Where are we going?” Aylan asked. He was dragging a body of his own and his grunts rang in the brittle cold hush of the woods.

“There’s a cliff over this way,” Torrant panted, “with an overhang of snow. As soon as it gets even a little warmer, that overhang is going down in an avalanche. By the time anyone finds the bodies….” His words trailed off: he didn’t want to voice what came next.

“They’ll be mangled, frozen, decomposed, and chewed on,” Aylan finished for him. “No one will even guess what hit them.” There was frank admiration in his voice, and Torrant shook his head violently against it.

“It’s awful,” he muttered. “It’s awful even to think that way.”

“That’s because you haven’t been raised as a court spy,” Aylan disclosed breezily and then could have smacked himself when Torrant dropped the body he was dragging in surprise, stumbled back, and fell into the dry snow with a crunchy plop.

Aylan pulled a sardonic smile from the pit of his stomach, and with a posture as armored as the dead man he was dragging, he swaggered over to his friend and offered a hand. He was surprised when Torrant took it and used Aylan’s weight to lever himself out of the snow, and even more surprised at the gentle kiss on his own knuckles, a touch that seemed to tingle on his skin the rest of the day.

“We cannot choose where the gods leave us to be raised as men, Aylan,” Torrant said quietly, looking him square in the eyes. Torrant’s eyes remained a steady, human hazel at the moment. “If you think I don’t know the sheer dumb luck of being orphaned twice and ending up with good men to father me both times, you’re mad.”

Aylan flushed deeply, and for the second time that day he fought tears. He and Trieste had carefully never mentioned their parents or the cold, manipulative homes that only very rarely sent letters, which were usually orders. Trieste’s last letter from home had been years ago—it told her she had a very meaningful date with Alec of Otham. His had been the year before. He had sent the rest back. So neither he or Trieste mentioned home, but both of them fed deeply on Torrant’s and Aldam’s easy banter of the Moon clan. Aylan hadn’t realized how pitifully transparent that love-hunger had been.

As it was now he nodded hard, and the two of them resumed their burdens and edged the bodies as far out on the snowy overhang as they dared, then trudged back the way they came.

INALL,