Dane. Elizabeth Amber
a year later. Alone and without any recollection of who’d abducted them or any of the events during the time that had elapsed since then. With no recollection of what had happened to Luc.
If he was still alive these twelve years later, Luc would now be a month shy of his eighteenth year. In four weeks, another Moonful would come, and his young body would alter for the first time in his life. It would put him in danger of exposing what he was to his captors.
Luc. Gods, where are you? If you’re alive, please hold on a little longer. I’ll find you.
A shout came from nearby, yanking Dane back to the present.
“Fishermen,” Bastian murmured. “They’ve spotted us.”
“Summon the polizia!” Sevin called, going to meet them. “We’ve found a body.”
Managing to get to his feet, Dane glanced downriver, dragging fresh air into his lungs. In the distance, he saw a faint flash of iridescence—the two nereids heading westward to the Tyrrhenian Sea, where they would then turn north toward Tuscany. After wending their way through a labyrinth of sea, river, tributary, and stream, they would journey overland again for a short distance and then pass through the gate to ElseWorld.
No doubt they would swim swiftly, anxious to deliver their juicy morsel of gossip. The whereabouts of a defector—him. He had two maybe three weeks at most until the Council sent Trackers after him. He would not hide from them. But he wouldn’t allow them to take him either. Yet he could think of only one thing that would stop them. This solution had come to him earlier, back at the temple. And now the scroll he’d crumpled and stashed in his pocket weighed heavily on his mind.
The fishermen had arrived and were exclaiming over the body, crossing themselves and muttering as they awaited the arrival of the local authorities.
“They’re handling it,” said Bastian from behind him. “Let’s go breakfast and bathe. You’ll be more yourself.”
Dane nodded and the three of them headed homeward. “I’ll need a lift to Capitoline later when you go,” he said matter-of-factly.
“What’s on Capitoline?” asked Sevin.
“A wife,” Dane replied.
At the first blush of dawn, Eva’s Shimmerskin lover departed her bed, returning without complaint to the ether that had spawned him. As her world swam back into focus, she lay there naked amid tangled covers, her skin still flushed from his attentions. Except for her quickened breath, all was deathly quiet. She was alone. Melancholy. She shifted and felt a pleasant, residual tenderness in her private places.
Last night under the full moon, her body and spirit had been driven by a primal instinct to mate. She had been satisfied dozens of times, both by her own ministrations and by those of her conjured lover. With no true Will of his own, he had obeyed her every command. He’d warmed her body with his, but he hadn’t warmed her soul as she imagined a flesh and blood lover might have. Whenever she’d lost herself to the pleasure for even a moment, her instruction to him had waned. At such times, he had a tiresome habit of slacking off in his attentions. It was a difficulty that plagued the ritual every month, and one for which she knew no cure.
She’d dominated him and he had submitted to her Will. It was the opposite of what she wanted from a lover. She would have much preferred one who would command her and take charge of matters. One who would lead her with his strength and spirit, into a deeper pleasure of the mind and heart, as well as flesh. For when all were equally involved, would not the pleasure be exponentially increased? This was something she longed to discover for herself.
It was a luxury to wallow in these yearnings for these few moments. She only permitted herself to do so in the immediate aftermath of this monthly event, in the privacy of this room at the coming of dawn. In the full light of day, she’d leave such foolishness behind and go about the business of living a respectable life.
Until next month, when the fullness of the moon came again, reminding her of what she could and could not have.
The lock clicked, admitting Odette. Bearing a silver tray set with a teacup, a teapot, a small basket covered with a linen cloth, and a mortar and pestle, she came to stand beside the bed, staring down at Eva. Just beyond her, the sky was striated with fingers of pink and orange fast giving way to the blue of daylight.
Eva smiled, inhaling blissfully. “Mmm. I smell beignets.”
“You always like them since you were une bebe.” Odette sent her a fond glance as she set the tray down on the bedside table. Eva stretched her tired muscles, making no attempt to cover herself, uncaring that Odette saw her in this state. For this was the woman who’d helped raise her for the past twenty-two years, and Eva had no secrets from her. Except one.
Her green eyes flitted guiltily to her maidservant, then away. If she told her what had happened in the grove last night, Odette would hound her even more about her safety and would try to curtail her freedoms. After so many years in the family, the woman was more an aunt than a maid or governess, and she would have no qualms about making free with her advice. It was too early to have the incident dissected and criticized. Something about it was too private.
Odette set the basket of pastries on the bed next to her. Then, turning her attention to the mortar, she tossed in a few pinches of herbs and an oval, button-sized seed, and began grinding them together.
Eva pulled a warm, flaky beignet from the basket beside her. Nibbling, she left Odette to her task and rolled onto her stomach toward the opposite side of the bed, the covers tangling around her bare legs. Pulling the table’s small drawer open, she found her mother’s diary and flipped to the page she wanted. Resting on her elbows, she studied the spidery feminine scrawl.
“Why you read Fantine’s prattle?” Odette asked, gesturing to indicate the book. “You got it committed to memory by now, eh?”
Eva shrugged, tracing a finger over the loop of a “y.” She’d only found the book after her mother had died four months ago, and she’d read it a dozen times since. “It still smells of her perfume. And I like to see her handwriting. It makes me feel closer to her.”
Her eyes slid down the list of names, all male. Fantine’s innamorati. By now, she had narrowed her suspects to three candidates among the wealthy society here in Rome, based on the dates her fey mother had been with them. One of them had to be her father.
But here was the puzzle. None on the list bore the surname of Satyr. And there had been no satyr in Rome at the time of her conception. She’d concluded that her father must have used a pseudonym. If so, he might prove reluctant to reveal himself to her as satyr, even if she found him.
She tugged at the thin length of gold chain that draped her neck and sawed it between her lips. “What sort of man abandons a beautiful woman full with his child, leaving her to fend for herself?” she mused.
Odette sent her an inscrutable look, continuing her grinding. “A bad one. One you better off not knowing.”
“I don’t want to know him. I only want to make him admit himself to be my father and to explain his desertion of us.”
“So you say,” scoffed Odette. “Finding him isn’t gonna make things right. Don’t expect his heart will open to let you in. You were a love child, but he won’t love you.”
Leave it to Odette to find her weakest point and probe it. “Believe what you will, but it won’t stop me from looking for him.”
Thanks to her bedding of this mysterious man, her mother had become with child. Eva’s conception had occurred on a night of the full moon, for this was the only time a satyr male could impregnate a female. Yet, even on such a night, the satyr could control his seed. It therefore followed that her father had either been unforgivably careless, or that he’d given Fantine his child on purpose. But it was what happened next that truly confounded her. And had confounded Fantine as well. Eva ran a fingertip along her mother’s words, penned twenty-two years ago:
September 1, 1858
I