Rebel's Honor(43)

"Yes, we have." Axel leaned in and brushed Lynx's lips with his.

A small moan escaped her before she stopped it. He slid his hand around  her neck and kissed her again. His mouth was firm, warm, and demanding.  Instead of pushing him away, her traitorous lips parted, allowing his  tongue to slide into her mouth.

He tasted sweet . . . and hungry, for her.

It brought her to her senses, and she jerked away. "This is crazy. I'm  marrying Lukan . . . in . . . in too few days to mention."

Axel rested his forehead on hers. "I like you. You like me." He grazed a  kiss across her lips. "I want you. You want me. What's so crazy about  that?"

"I made my father an oath," Lynx croaked, "that I would marry Lukan in  exchange for letting my brother raid again. I've told you before, I  don't break my word."

Axel frowned. He had no clue of what she was talking about, but then,  how could he? He wouldn't have known about Clay's failed raid.

She added something he would appreciate, "And what about Lukan and Mott?"

"Leave my uncle and cousin to me. I promise, when I've finished, Lukan won't touch you with a ten foot pole."

"He doesn't want to touch me now," Lynx pointed out. "And that's a serious problem."

Axel burst into laughter. "Oh, he wants you. The lust is destroying him.  But the Dmitri Curse probably looms large in his world. The idea of his  wife bearing a son who could kill him must put him off his stride."  Axel's voice hardened. "But I'm working on him. He's so weak, it doesn't  take much to manipulate him."

After seeing Lukan and Axel together, Lynx didn't doubt his words. "And Mott? What about him?"

"More difficult," Axel conceded. "But I have some ideas." He ran his  fingers over her mouth. "Just trust me, Lynx, and it will all work out."

"What about my oath to my father?" His fingers fluttered against her mouth as she spoke.

"Things have changed. Surely pragmatism is also part of the Norin code?"  Finger still brushing her mouth, he cocked his head to the side,  studying her with a quizzical eye.                       
       
           



       

She pulled her face away from his mind-shattering caresses. "You don't  understand. It would take more than pragmatism to change an oath. We  live and die by honor, Axel, and nothing destroys one's honor quicker  than breaking an oath. I don't think I would survive it."

"You Norin certainly know how to make life difficult for yourselves."

Lynx shoved his arm. "It makes us good people. Unlike you Chenayans."  When he grinned at her, she added seriously, "And what's more, I've  already told you, Mott has threatened to kill my family. What about  that?"

Axel took her face in both hands. "If I told you the troops stationed at  Tanamre were redeployed moments after our train departed, would that  help?"

A wave of relief flooded her. But then doubts assailed. Could she  believe the man who had ordered his guardsmen to attack her tribe? Lynx  gnawed her lip, staring into his eyes, trying to read his soul.

It seemed like a closed book.

Then again, he had shared the secret of the ice crystals with her, and  he'd shown her the images of herself and Uncle Bear on the train. That  had to mean something.

But there were still too many unanswered questions.

As if reaching out to a wild animal, she touched the ruby next to his  eye. He didn't even blink as her fingers probed the stone. "Tell me what  this does."

"Absolutely nothing. It denotes rank and looks pretty. That's all."

"No superhuman hearing? No ability to move like lightning?"

Axel shook his head. "And no loss of a healthy sense of  self-preservation, either. We Avanovs are too smart to inflict our own  devices upon ourselves." He took her wrist, pulled her hand up to his  face, and kissed each of her fingers, making her squirm with want. "I  struggled to hear you and Bear talking on the train. I suspected it was  dynamite, though, so I kept the footage until it was translated. The  sound came through perfectly." He gave her a wry smile. "You were  sitting right next to a wall sconce."

Of course she was. No doubt he'd planned that, too. Still, what he said  about his ruby made sense. What didn't was why she was attracted to him  when he supported an empire that used such horrific methods to suppress  its subjects.

Lynx cleared her throat and asked her final question. "So when will  someone be installing my ice crystal leash? Or trying to, I should say."

"Never. You're too old. The device must be inserted within the first five years of life, or it tends to malfunction."

"And we wouldn't want that, would we?" Lynx asked, pushing as much  sarcasm as possible into her tone. It struck her that she sounded just  like Axel. She cleared her throat. "I suppose that's why the priestesses  also work as midwives and nurses?"

He grinned at her and then said, "To answer your first question-ideally,  no. Malfunctions result in the elimination of the subject. And to your  second question, yes, that is a primary function of the priestesses. To  insert ice crystals into the faces of qualifying toddlers. Their  moonstone shockers are there to subdue any mother who might complain."

Lynx choked back a gag. "You know what's the best thing that could happen to this empire, Axel?"

"Let me guess . . . the Dmitri Curse comes true, and you and your son kick all our arses to hell?"

"That day can't come soon enough." Lynx stood and stalked to the door.  "Thank you. It has been a most informative evening. And, as for your  offer to be my lover . . . never in a million years." She opened the  door and waved imperiously for him to leave.

With no sign of offense, Axel laughed as he gathered his things  together. When he reached the door, he slipped his arm around her waist  and kissed her as if she had been his forever-and would be for an  eternity to come.

"You cocky Avanov," Lynx gasped, pulling away from him.

He released her, laughing. "That's just the start, my Lynxie."





Chapter 27





Once clear of Lynx and the ballroom, Lukan tore through the gardens  until he reached a side door into the palace. Thanks to the ball, few  people traversed the passages and hallways tonight. This route led him  to another of his favorite hiding places-his observatory in one of the  turrets.

He took the narrow, winding stairs at a rush, arriving at a heavy wooden  door at the top. He pressed a knot in the wood, and a tiny reader  scanned his thumb. The door opened and then closed behind him. His  massive telescope, centered in the expansive space, gleamed in the  moonlight. Unable to risk electric lights in this domed observatory, the  only other illumination came from candles on sticks he had to light  himself; an added benefit was freedom from Felix's cameras.                       
       
           



       

Hands pressed to his knees, Lukan paused to slow his galloping heart.  Then, he stood and kicked the wall with his boot. It dislodged a chunk  of plaster. He kicked it again and again. His jaw still ached from  Lynx's punch and would probably be bruised in the morning. A sign  shouting his humiliation to the whole palace. He pulled up short as his  toes began to ache, too.

Didn't she realize the honor it was to marry him? He was heir to the most powerful empire the world had ever known.

But then, he reminded himself, Lynx was a Norin, perhaps the woman  destined to initiate the destruction of him and his empire. As much as  he hated to admit it, her hostility added credence to his vision-and not  the part where the lightning defeated her son.

What to do about it was the fateful question.

Would he survive his father's rage if he rejected her? Or would that  become moot if he married her, and she gave birth to a traitor?

His eyes rested on his telescope. Lynx's angry words came back to him: A Norin will never worship a dragon.

Hands shaking, he rasped his flint, igniting a taper he used to light a  candle. He picked up the holder and walked to a wall-mounted chart of  the heavens, drawn in his careful script with ink mixed by his own hand.  He had been plotting the constellations on that board for years. This  map, an enigma to the few people he'd shown it to, spoke to him in the  way charts depicting troop deployments probably did to Axel. Yet again,  Lukan lamented that if he wanted his empire to flourish, it was maps of  conquests that mattered.

His hand drifted to the dots representing Nicholas the Light-Bearer, the  constellation blazoned on the flag Lynx's son had unfurled in his  vision. It stood to the west of the Dragon and, if his observations and  arithmetic did not fail him, inched across the sky to replace that  constellation in the northern point.