Tithed Read online

“He is dead. Beyond punishment. He slit his wrists and bled to death in our mother’s rose garden. I was ten-and-eight.” The implications of what she’d revealed hung between them. She met his gaze and didn’t look away.

  “Then you’ve never had an ahavatara,” he said quietly. “No first true lover whose duty it is to open your body to love and your soul to the glory of the thrall. You were forced.”

  She nodded. She had never spoken to anyone of the things Des had done to her. Never admitted her shame. Not since the day in her mother’s garden when she’d lied and told Connell she didn’t and would never love him.

  “Elspeth, you are not to blame.”

  She nodded again. “I know.”

  “But you don’t believe.”

  She gave a small shake of her head, a shrug. “It was a long time ago.”

  The Instructor Primus stared at her for a long, silent moment. He sighed, and again she caught a glimpse of the man he hid from everyone else. “’Tis not my place to tell you that you must take a lover who will open you to the thrall in the proper way, how it is meant to be done. I do well understand your reluctance to do so. But you do understand that the damage he did you need not be permanent, do you not? You need not forever mishandle your magic because of one man’s disservice? There are ways to remove his tithe upon you and replace it with one more proper.”

  “I didn’t know. I thought—” She’d thought she was destined to be this way forever. Ruined.

  “Come here.” He stood, and she obeyed, her heart hammering.

  He waited until she stood in front of him. He was a tall man, and he put a finger beneath her chin to lift it. He bent to kiss her, his lips pausing before they touched hers. “You trust me, don’t you?”

  “I do, sir.”

  “And yet you are shaking, and not from desire.”

  She looked into his eyes. “I plead your mercy.”

  He ran a hand along her neck, down her shoulder, brushing the hair off it. Then he stepped back. “You need plead nothing from me, Elspeth. I would not force attentions upon you. Tithed to me you would achieve great power, but it must be your choice. Without true desire, no matter how brief, binding us, what I can give you would be worthless. I understand why you shield yourself.”

  Looking into his eyes, she thought he did. Riordan de Cimmerian had his own demons, his own reasons for keeping his heart as closed as hers. That he had been willing to help her meant all the more.

  She thought of Connell. The courtyard. His bruising kiss and the inside of her lip still wounded from it.

  She looked at de Cimmerian. “I made a mistake ten years ago, and threw away the love of a man who would have given me everything.”

  “A magicreator?”

  She shook her head. “He was the son of my parents’ butler and cook. We had known each other since infancy. We played together as children. And when we got older…” She smiled a little. “We were foolish. We thought nobody would know.”

  “But you could not take him as your ahavatara because he did not have magic.”

  Again, she nodded. “Yes.”

  “Did he know what happened to you?”

  She hesitated, remembering. “Yes. He knew. He blamed himself for not protecting me. But when he tried to love me, I couldn’t let him. I ran away.”

  “And now?”

  “Now,” she said slowly, “I have found him again.”

  “Then might I suggest, Mistress Valerin, you don’t let your opportunity slide away again?”

  Once again he was the Instructor Primus, distant, though now his consideration of her had disappeared. Because he knew, she thought. She was no longer a mystery to him. He understood her now, and he did not despise her for her past.

  She’d experienced moments of revelation in her work when the columns of figures had formed a picture so clear and precise it was impossible to ignore. Now, even without the equations, she understood something so clear and shining she felt the worst sort of fool for being blind to it before.

  Riordan de Cimmerian, a man neither kind nor generous by any description, knew her truth, and he did not hate her for it. He did not turn from her in disgust, and he did not even love her.

  If a man who did not love her did not turn from her in disgust, neither would a man who did.

  “I understand, sir. And, sir, if I might be so bold…” She paused. “You might take your own advice.”

  His eyes narrowed, and again she caught the glimpse of the man who so many feared. “You are bold.”

  She nodded. “I plead your mercy.”

  He stared at her a moment longer, the weight of his gaze unreadable. “You’re dismissed, Mistress Valerin.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  He nodded, not looking at her any more. Elspeth left his office with much to think about.

  Arithmancy was a far more precise practice than Divination. Divination used signs and portents to predict the future, while Arithmancy used numbers and calculations to determine how choices would affect outcomes. The difference of something as simple as one number could result in an end completely different than if one used another number or calculation to figure it.

  She spent several hours at her desk, running numbers. She factored every possible equation, ran every scenario she could think of, added and subtracted every element. It was, perhaps, the mathematical equivalent of “he loves me, he loves me not”, but it was what she knew best how to do. In the end, it came down to two results, the difference of one small equation, one factor, a single number that when used or eliminated in the overall formula created two results. One, positive. The other, negative.

  When it came down to the line, there was nothing she could do to determine which of the sums was going to be accurate. No choice she could make to sway the results. Two outcomes seemed equally likely.

  She couldn’t put a numerical value on love; couldn’t use addition and subtraction on the human heart. It didn’t work. She could fact and figure her way into an assumption of the future, and use the numbers to lead her choices toward positive or negative, but in the end, it all came down to something she could not control.

  Either Connell loved her, or he did not. And no matter how many times she looked at the numbers, she wasn’t able to decide which of the two most likely results were going to happen.

  “Connell.”

  His eyes opened wide to darkness and he sat up. The curtains blew in the open window. The chill, salt-scented breeze made him shiver.

  “Ella?”

  A portion of the darkness peeled away from the doorframe. In the next moment she slid under the covers and into his arms. His nose filled with her scent, while the dark silk of her hair tickled his bare chest. She wore a thin flaxene gown, and his hands told him she was bare beneath it. The points of her nipples rose hard against the cloth, and at the feeling of them, he was hard too.

  “Make love to me, Connell.”

  Oh, how badly he wanted to. Her mouth was already on his, her tongue darting between his lips with the delicate aggressiveness that never failed to stiffen his cock and make his heart pound. His hands tangled in her the glory of her hair, and she moaned when he tugged it. She moaned louder when his teeth found the soft flesh of her throat.

  He had no fear they’d be overheard. His secluded rooms over the garden shed meant only someone standing down there in the night, listening on purpose, could possibly hear her. Yet something made him hush her. He put her from him a little more roughly than he’d intended, and the whimper as his fingers gripped her arms made his heart lurch with grief.

  “Ella,” he said. “I want to make love to you. But we can’t.”

  She sat up. Moonlight filtered through the window and flashed in her eyes. She was crying. “We have to.”

  Connell shook his head, pushing her hair away from her beautiful face. He was dreaming this as he’d dreamed so many other times. He already knew her reasons for seeking the safety of his bed when they both had always known he could not be her