Druids Sword by Sara Douglass

What he felt from Grace he’d never felt from Genvissa, and his gut instinct told him he’d never feel it from Noah, either.

“Dear gods, Grace,” he said, and she tilted her head back to see his face.

She looked puzzled at his intensity, and Jack realised she could not feel what he did. Disappointment overwhelmed him, and she saw it, for her eyes clouded over, and she tensed in his arms.

“Grace, don’t. It’s all right. Please, dance with me here, dance with me. Don’t go.”

She relaxed against him once more, and Jack closed his eyes and rested his cheek against her curls, trying to come to terms with what was happening. Vivid images and emotions and desires flooded his mind.

It was, in the end, the desire that undid him. The pairing and dancing of a Kingman and Mistress was a marriage not only of power, but also of desire— the desire almost always begotten of the mating of their power.

He gave a short laugh, discomfited by his arousal, and, breaking off the dance and the flow of his power, stepped back from Grace.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

The animation on her face drained away. “Jack? Did I do something wrong?”

He stared at her, still unable to believe that she had felt nothing. “No,” he said eventually. “You have done nothing wrong, Grace.”

She was very still, her eyes dark in this faint light, looking steadily at him. “Jack…”

“You’re a surprise, Grace. You know that?”

A smile trembled about her mouth, then died. “Is that good, Jack? I don’t know what you thought…if I…I know that I could not be as good as my mother, or Stella, but—”

“You’re very good, Grace,” he said quietly, finally realising what she wanted to know. “You’re very powerful, and you have no reason, none, to think that you can only ever exist in your mother’s shadow, let alone Stella’s.” He gave a short laugh. “You stepped out of everyone’s shadow tonight, Grace. Believe it.”

She smiled, relieved, and the smile was so lovely, and so transformed her, that Jack had to literally clench his fists in order to suppress the urge to kiss her. Gods, man, this is one road you don’t need to travel!

“Stella said I was good, but I didn’t know whether or not to believe it,” she said.

Jack was incredulous that she had, most apparently, felt none of the powerful emotions he had. Does she have no idea of her power, labyrinthine or sexual? Did I, until but a few minutes ago?

“Let me take you home, Grace.”

Apparently they had not been missed amid the dancers at St Margaret’s parish hall, for their “reappearance” there caused no great stir. Jack thought that somehow (amid his virtually total concentration on Grace) he’d kept a shadow of them dancing within the hall, and that their shadows had merely solidified back into a reality that had not disturbed anyone’s perception of them.

All Jack wanted was to take Grace home, and then get back to Copt Hall where he might sit and think.

Grace fetched her jacket from the kitchen, then Jack escorted her outside to the car, both nodding their farewells to the clergyman as they left. Jack thought it highly likely that the man would telephone the Savoy within half an hour, to make sure that Grace arrived home unscathed.

They didn’t talk in the car. Jack glanced at Grace from time to time as he drove, but she was apparently as reflective as himself.

She hadn’t put the jacket on, and whenever Jack glanced at her, his eyes always slid briefly down to her wrists before looking back at the road.

“Grace,” he said as he pulled up before the Savoy, “can I talk to you about May Day?”

She stiffened. May Day had been the day of the Great Marriage.

“About you, Grace. Not Noah. May Day was your birthday, wasn’t it?”

She looked at him, startled. “How did you know that?”

“Malcolm had mentioned it to me a while back, and, no, please don’t ask me how he knew, because I have no idea.” He paused, wondering how to put this. “I’m sorry we forgot that it was your birthday, Grace.”

“There were grander events that day. My birthday didn’t matter.”

I wonder if that is really so, Jack wondered. May Day was a powerful day for Grace’s birth. “Still, we should not have forgotten your birthday. Grace, will you let me give you a present?”

She gave a small laugh, discomfited. “You don’t need to do that.”

“I do, I think. Did anyone remember, Grace?”

She looked down at her hands in her lap. “My father did.”

Your father, but no one else? “Well, I shall make up for my tardiness. But give me a while.” He grinned a little. “I need to think of the perfect gift.”

Jack thought she’d protest once more that he didn’t need to give her a gift, but instead she only thanked him, her face and voice grave.

He nodded, got out, opened her door, and escorted her towards the steps leading to the residents’ private entrance. Just as they got to the top Jack caught gently at her elbow, stopping her before she opened the door. “Grace, I…ah, damn it. One half of me wants to demand that you stay here at home and keep safe, and the other half of me screams for you to continue to help me. I can’t do this by myself, and Noah is no help.”

“I will stay out of trouble, Jack. I won’t stay out late again.”

“No more going to dances to prove yourself, eh?”

She smiled. “Not without you, Jack.”

Jack drove a little way down the Embankment, then parked the Austin and sat in the car for hours, smoking and thinking, staring at the rising hulk of the Savoy.

It took him a long time to simply order his thoughts. To say that what had happened tonight was surprising was akin to saying Hitler had been a little bit naughty over the past year or so.

He was concerned about the attack—Grace had said very little about it, but Jack had fathomed enough to realise it had been terrifying. He wondered if Catling had indeed set the imps onto Grace, or if the pitiful creatures couldn’t resist snatching at Grace when they had the chance.

Jack repressed a shiver. He wanted to demand that Grace not help him…but, oh, he needed that help so badly.

And he wanted an excuse to keep seeing Grace.

Especially after what had happened atop Ambersbury Banks tonight.

Grace was…astounding. Every bit more that he got to know about her simply increased her mystery. Darkwitch and Mistress of the Labyrinth; daughter of Asterion; his perfect labyrinthine partner (to think of the harmonies they could create between them!); a woman inescapably tied to the Troy Game; a woman admired by ancient druids; a woman, a Mistress of the Labyrinth, who was the only one apart from himself who was capable of discovering the secrets of the shadow.

And the bearer of four of the golden kingship bands of Troy.

Jack had first realised this fact on the day he had come to the Savoy and tried to work out a means by which to free Grace of Catling’s hex. The instant he’d taken her wrist and infused her with his power, he’d felt them, buried under her skin. He didn’t think she knew they were there, but he had felt them buried deep.

Noah may have thought that Grace had merely carried them into the Faerie, but Jack knew Grace had actually absorbed them.

This wasn’t unusual. When a Kingman died, a Mistress of the Labyrinth often took his kingship bands into her keeping so that she could pass them on to the dead Kingman’s heir in a ceremony so imbued with power, it was second only to the creating of a Game as the most powerful ritual a Mistress and Kingman could undertake together.

What this meant, Jack realised, as he lit yet another cigarette, was that from very early on Grace had been “selected” as the Mistress to hand back to him the kingship bands.

The Mistress who was also his perfect match; who was the only one, except him, who could discover the puzzlement of the shadowed enchantment that hung over London.

That all these were connected was undoubted.

But who had done all this arranging and selecting? Not Noah. Noah had no idea of what she had bred.

Ariadne? Possibly. This had her stamp all over it, but Jack wasn’t sure that Ariadne had the power to arrange it.

Catling?

Who else?

Yet none of this had the feel of Catling, either…and if Catling had arranged it then she’d be screaming at Jack to take Grace as his Mistress for the final dance of the Troy Game. Together they’d make a much more powerful completion than the pairing of he and Noah.