Elisha Rex by E.C. Ambrose Page A

advantage.
    â€œDon’t taunt me with his name, Elisha.” Tears sparked at the corners of her eyes, and she flicked them away with her fingertips. Through their contact, she replied,
“Alaric was a schemer before I knew him. I never knew all of his plans.”
    True—their altercations in the New Forest had shown him that much. Elisha wet his lips, sending his trust even as he spoke, “Would Thomas have been next for you if he hadn’t remarried?”
    Brigit’s hand tensed in a tiny spasm, her eyes briefly hard. That question struck too close.
    â€œYou’re trying to win freedom for our people,”
Elisha said in the witches’ way, gently as with a nervous patient.
    â€œThat’s right,”
she snapped back.
“I would do what it takes. With you declared traitor, then dead—”
She shook off that thought.
    He went on carefully,
“But I’m not. I’m alive, and then some.”
    â€œEarth and sky and fire, Elisha, you—”
She shook her head again, but this time in wonder.
“Every time I think you’ve fallen, that you’re beyond all aid, you rise. It’s no wonder they stand in awe.”
She took his other hand then, her thumbs covering both scars.
“Let me help you this time. You have the power, Elisha, all the power now. Let me guide you, as I did back at Dunbury.”
    With a shock of heat and remembrance she showed him their kiss in the ruined church, the lessons they shared in the stream, and that moment she opened her body to his, embracing him body and soul. Or so he had believed. Her sending shot into him, a thrust of urgency and desire, and Elisha flinched. Her thumbs covered his wounds, but called up, too, the memory of the knife that stabbed his hands together. Elisha turned the memory, pulling it back before she saw too much. He broke contact, his heart thundering as he sucked down a breath.
    â€œWhat happened to you?” she whispered. Her hands clutched together, pleading, but her gaze, her lips, for just a moment, hardened against him.
    â€œYou met a man at my graveside—the man who tried to kill me.”
    â€œHe saved you before, from Alaric. It was the same man, wasn’t it? Some sort of magus.” She frowned then, concentrating, and Elisha’s doubts congealed, thickening in his stomach.
    â€œHe didn’t tell you what he did?” Elisha probed. “What he is?”
    â€œDo you know?” She tried to keep her voice sympathetic, but her lust had shifted, searching now for power, the things that others knew and did not share.
    â€œHe did this.” Elisha held up his hands.
    â€œI’m sorry,” she sighed.
    Elisha shrugged one shoulder. “I take it you didn’t talk long?”
    â€œWith the gravedigger?” She almost looked affronted. “Rather repulsive, wasn’t he?”
    An evasion, not an answer. “More than you know,” Elisha replied. He wiped at the smear of oil by his left eye, and Brigit relaxed toward him again.
    â€œBut you need rest, my king. Come, let me sing you to sleep.” She rose and held out her hand. After a moment, she spread the fingers and waved them. “Come, Elisha. You should have nothing to fear, not tonight.”
    He once said something similar to Thomas, before he even knew who he was, beyond the fear, the pain, the bone-weariness of hiding. Elisha, too, was hiding—especially from her. He took a deep breath, drawing back his senses, lacquering over the secrets of his heart as if he applied extra dressings to a wound, anticipating blood. Then he rose and took her hand to let her lead him. She allowed him close without moving, her breath stroking his face. “I burned the hanging rope, Elisha. It will never hurt you again.”
    And in her touch, he knew that was true.
    Brigit’s lips gave a rueful turn. “Don’t be so surprised, love. Have I truly been so cruel?”
    Elisha merely