Page 88 of Forbidden

“If you die on Duncan’s sword, you won’t go into the darkness alone,” Cassandra said softly. “I will send Duncan after you with my own hands.”

Startled, Erik looked at the serene face of the woman he thought he knew.

“Nay,” he said. “That would bring a war Lord Robert couldn’t win.”

“So be it. It was Lord Robert’s arrogance that caused much of what might come. He is overdue to sleep on a bed of thorns and regrets.”

“He wanted only what all men want. A male heir to hold his lands undivided.”

“Aye. And he would have set aside my sister to achieve it.”

For a moment Erik was too surprised to speak.

“Yoursister?” he asked.

“Aye. Emma the Barren.”

“Why wasn’t I told?”

“That I’m your aunt?” Cassandra said.

Erik nodded curtly.

“It was part of the bargain Emma and I struck,” she said. “Lord Robert fears the Learned.”

Erik wasn’t surprised. The breach with his father that had come over Erik’s pursuit of Learning had never been healed.

“Once Emma married Robert,” Cassandra said, “he barred me from her presence. He lifted the ban only once, when she came to me as Emma the Barren.”

“And went home to conceive soon after,” Erik said dryly.

“Yes.” Cassandra’s smile was as chilly as the day. “It was my great pleasure to give Robert the Ignorant a Learned sorcerer for a son and heir.”

The smile changed as Cassandra looked at Erik, permitting herself to show the love she always felt and rarely revealed.

“Emma is dead,” she said quietly. “I owe nothing to Robert but my contempt. If you die at Duncan’s hands, I will declare a blood feud.”

For once Erik didn’t know what to say. Of all the patterns and possibilities he had foreseen, this hadn’t been one.

Wordlessly he opened his arms to the woman who had been his mother in spirit if not in flesh. Cassandra returned the hug without hesitation, savoring the strength and vitality of the man whose birth wouldn’t have been possible without her Learned intervention.

“I would prefer a different monument to my passing than the beginning of a war only my enemy can win,” Erik said after a few moments.

“Then examine your enemy with an eye to future good. Dominic le Sabre might make a better ally than your cousins do.”

“Satan himself would make a better ally than my cousins.”

“Aye,” Cassandra said ironically. “It is a thing to think upon, is it not?”

Erik gave a crack of laughter and released Cassandra.

“You never give up,” he said, smiling, “yet you call me stubborn.”

“You are.”

“I am merely following my gift.”

“Stubbornness?” she asked dryly.