WINDHEALER by Charlotte Boyett-Compo

Author:Charlotte Boyett-Compo [Boyett-Compo, Charlotte]
Format: epub
Publisher: Amber Quill Press, LLC
Published: 2010-12-24T00:00:14.806000+00:00

Chapter 2

* * *

Conar let the chilled wine flow down his throat. The sweet, tart taste of plums exploded on his taste buds and he closed his eyes, savoring the taste. The meal he had just finished had been superb, nothing like the good but substantial food on board the Boreas Queen or the native fare along the islands where they had stopped for provisions. His aunt had ordered all his favorites prepared, down to the triple chocolate cake that had been his one addiction and culinary weakness as a child. He looked at the velvety crumbs sprinkled about the tablecloth and smiled.

Dyreil carefully watched her nephew. Despite the battered condition of his face, the leanness of his body and the haunted despair in his beautiful eyes, she could still see the young man who had held the world in the palm of his hand all those years ago in Serenia. There was strength of will within him and she knew the vital animal instinct of survival he had leaned upon at the penal colony would help him deal with the problem of Liza.

She frowned, looking into her wineglass. Liza was a subject he had yet to broach with her. Brelan told her about a conversation with his brother prior to leaving the Labyrinth, but since then, on the long journey to Chrystallus, Conar had studiously avoided any discussion of things in Serenia and especially of his ex-wife.

"How's the wine, little brother?" Brelan asked, as his aunt nudged his foot under the table and nodded toward Conar.

Conar shrugged. "So-so."

"Aye," Dyllon snorted, "so-so good he's on his fourth glass! You'd better watch him, Uncle Tran. He doesn't hold his liquor well!"

"And you know what plum wine does to the McGregor libido," Coron remarked.

Tran chuckled at the pale pink blush that spread over Conar's face. "Your great-great-great grandfather had some problem with plum wine, if I recollect accurately, didn't he, Conar? Was that not what started the War of the Zones?"

Conar nodded, absently, looking into the golden swirl of his wine. "He bought; he tasted; he drank the whole bottle; he pillaged a town." He turned to his uncle. "Typical McGregor male reaction."

"Aye, well," Coron said dryly, "if pillaging the town had been the only thing great gramps had done, we'd still be four separate countries within Serenia. I believe there was a female or two abducted in there somewhere?"

Brelan chuckled. "Maybe one or two."

"Like maybe our great-great-great-grandmama-to-be?" Dyllon reminded them.

"He saw her; he liked her; he took her," Conar answered. He frowned into his wineglass again. "Typical McGregor male indulgence."

"And started a war when her father and brothers and uncles and cousins went after the raiding party," the Empress put in.

"Well, she didn't seem to mind being taken," Coron remarked. "If the tales are true, she seduced her Boreal warrior before they were two leagues out of Eurus."

"He allowed her to fight him; he surrendered; she conquered him," Conar mumbled. He drained his glass, reached for the bottle in front of him.

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