Page 176 of Forbidden

“You will stay as long as you have hope,” Cassandra said.

Amber nodded.

“And then?” Cassandra asked. “What will you do when hope is gone and only a thousand shades of darkness remain?”

There was no answer.

“May I see your pendant?” the Learned woman asked.

Amber looked startled. After a moment of hesitation, she reached inside her robe to pull out the ancient pendant.

Transparent, precious, golden, it hung from the glittering chain. Yet for all its beauty, the amber had changed in ways so subtle that only a Learned person would see…darkness drawing a veil over light.

Cassandra touched the pendant with a fingertip that displayed a very fine trembling despite her best efforts at concealing the grief that raged beneath her Learned calm.

“You know that Duncan is destroying you,” the older woman said.

Silence was Amber’s only answer.

“Drop by drop, bleeding in secret,” Cassandra whispered, “until there will be nothing left of light and life in you, only darkness.”

Again Amber said nothing.

“It is destroying Duncan as well,” Cassandra said flatly.

Only then did Amber cry out, denial and pain and the same rage that Duncan knew. For she was trapped with him, and each day was another shade of darkness wrapped around them. Day after day, until there would be nothing left of light and life.

Only darkness.

“He must not set you aside,” Cassandra said fiercely. “I have never wished death on anyone, but I wish death to the Norman bitch who—”

“Nay!” Amber said sharply. “Don’t drag your soul into darkness over something I have done. You taught me to make choices and to live with those choices.”

“Or die.”

“Or die,” Amber agreed. “In any case, if it were not this heiress, then it would be another. We can’t be slaughtering hapless maids, can we?”

Cassandra’s laugh was as sad as her eyes.

“No,” agreed the Learned woman. “There aren’t enough rich maids in the world to slay before your thick-skulled lord will awaken to the riches that lie within his grasp.”

Not touching, yet close in every other way, the Learned woman and her chosen daughter went down to the lord’s solar. The sight that greeted them was illuminated by hearth, torches, and the misty light pouring through the solar’s high window.

Duncan sat in the chair of riven oak. Simon was carving a cold joint of meat with his dagger and deftly piling the thin slices on a silver plate.

At first Amber thought no one else was in the room. Only when Duncan spoke did she realize that Simon was slicing up food not for himself, but for another.

“Lady Ariane,” Duncan said, rising from the lord’s chair, “I would like you to meet my weapon, a witch called Amber.”

A woman dressed in a gown of black wool turned around. In her hands was a small harp.

At first Amber thought Ariane was wearing a cowl of darkly shining black cloth embroidered with silver and violet threads. Then Amber realized that the cowl was Ariane’s hair, thickly plaited and coiled. Silver ornaments gleamed in the midnight blackness, and amethysts glittered almost secretly with Ariane’s smallest movement.

“Go to her, Amber,” Duncan said.

For a moment Amber couldn’t force herself to move. Then her feet obeyed the commands of her mind rather than her heart. She walked up to the Norman heiress.

“Lady Ariane,” she said, nodding.