Winds of Fate by Mercedes Lackey

Author:Mercedes Lackey
Format: mobi, epub

Chapter Thirteen

INTERLUDE

Nyara huddled before her father, abject terror warring with another emotion entirely.

Pure, wanton desire.

She hated it, that need, that fire that drove her to want him - and even as she hated him, she hated herself for feeling it.

Even though she could not control that need, even though she knew it was built into her; as he had sculpted her flesh to suit him, he had also sculpted her mind and her deepest instincts.

It didn't matter; none of it mattered. Half the time she suspected he had inserted that same self-hatred into her, purely for amusement.

And when he had called her this night, she had obeyed the call. That was built into her, too, for all that she had run away from him, for all that she had deluded herself, telling herself that she could, would resist him. She could not, and had not, and now she groveled here at his feet, longing for his touch, hating and fearing it. Despising herself for thinking that she could escape him so easily.

It had been no trouble to deceive the little hertasi who guarded her; they were not creatures of the night, and a simple illusion of her slumbering form in the darkness of the little cave they had given her was enough to satisfy them.

She had not lied. Until tonight, she had thought she could escape his reach. She had not purposefully misled the hertasi Healer, either - her weakness and pain were not feigned, nor were her injuries. But what the Healer did not know, was the extent to which she could ignore pain and fight past weakness when she had to.

That was how she had found the strength to counter her father's magic and free the dyheli herd. That was how he had forced her to come to him when he called, overriding the pain with his own commands.

And, as usual, he said nothing at first; merely smiled and waited until she had abased herself sufficiently to drive home how helpless she was, how much of her life lay within his power.

If she resembled a cat, Mornelithe Falconsbane was a feline; one that stood upon two legs, and walked, and talked, but there his connection with humanity ended. Long silky hair poured uncut down his back, the color a tawny gold that he maintained magically, else he would have been as bleached-silver as any Tayledras Adept. Long, silky hair grew on most of his face, carefully groomed and tended by a made-servant whose only role was to brush her master whenever he called. His slit-pupiled eyes were a golden-green, like watery beryls; his canines sharper and more pronounced than hers. His pointed ears were tufted at the tips, and the silky hair continued down his spine in a luxurious crest, ending at the clefts of the buttocks. For the rest, he was as perfectly formed and conditioned as a human could be, with a body any sculptor would have wept to see.

As Nyara knew, intimately.

Since he had emerged

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