Thank the gods it is Grace standing here, and not Noah. The thought rocked Jack, and made him realise as nothing else how radically his life had altered in the past year.
Thank the gods, he whispered into Grace’s mind, that it is you standing here, and not your mother.
Then Jack stepped forward and took Grace’s right wrist in his right hand.
TWO
Ambersbury Banks
Sunday, 22nd September 1940
GRACE SPEAKS
Thank the gods, he said, that it is you standing here, and not your mother.
I’d been nervous to that point, not much, but enough to unsettle me. I’d never been so much the centre of attention, I’d never had such a vital role to play, I’d never been all-but-naked before Jack, and what we were about to do would be such an intimacy that I hadn’t been able to quell a nervous fluttering in my stomach as I’d walked out from the cover of the trees into the glade.
But, oh, what a wonderful thing for him to say. Suddenly there was nothing for me but him. All my awareness of the watchers vanished as if they were not there. All my self-consciousness vanished. All my doubts faded, and I was overwhelmed with the sense that what I was doing was something absolutely right.
He reached out, and slid his hand about my right wrist, and with that touch he became my entire world.
His hand moved up my forearm, his fingers very lightly tracing out the lines of the scars.
His eyes didn’t move from mine, nor allow mine to drop away.
His hand slid over my elbow, then up to my biceps. There it stilled, and I felt both its warmth and its pressure increase.
Grace…he whispered in my mind, and I felt the power of the labyrinth curl about me.
Through me.
Grace…
I closed my eyes momentarily—surrendering to the power—then let my own power rise to meet his.
Grace.
Oh, it felt good. During my time with Ariadne, Silvius had occasionally touched me with his Kingman power, but it was a pale shadow compared to how Jack’s power now enveloped me. I remembered how I had felt when last we’d been together atop Ambersbury Banks, the night of the parish hall dance, and that also was a pale shadow to what I experienced now.
Jack touched me, and tears misted in my eyes, because I had never, never thought to experience anything this beautiful.
Or this intimate. I can barely explain it, the sense of someone pervading deep into your being. It should have felt intrusive, and maybe if it had been anyone but Jack, then it would have been.
But Jack took so much care. Everything—his expression, his touch, his power—was so gentle that I felt nothing but serenity. I trusted him utterly, and he me, for we were both completely open to each other, both completely in the other’s hands and power.
The warmth and pressure of his hand increased, and I felt the sensual thrill that, so Ariadne said, always existed between a Kingman and Mistress of the Labyrinth when they entwined their powers. I hadn’t felt it before with Jack—there’d been attraction, but I hadn’t experienced this sexual connection that a Kingman and Mistress experience when they touch each other with their power.
I’d never been this relaxed with anyone in my life.
Jack’s eyes had darkened, and I knew he was feeling it as well, but along with that sexual awareness came a sense of humour. I saw the skin about the corners of his eyes crinkle a little, and I smiled, and we shared both humour and peace and thrill and stillness.
The pressure of Jack’s fingers increased yet further. Their touch burned through my skin—
Grace.
—and I surrendered to that, and surrendered to it what was demanded.
The first of the golden bands of Troy.
The golden metal rose up through my flesh from where it had been resting.
Oh, gods, the arousal of it! What had I said to Ariadne when she and Silvius had shown me the vision of the ancient Kingman drawing forth the bands from a Mistress of the Labyrinth? That this was the ultimate intimacy a Kingman and Mistress could share? I understood that statement now as I hadn’t been capable of understanding it then. It was a sexual intimacy, and thus the arousal, but it went far beyond that.
Way beyond it.
It was the complete opening of oneself to another person, and it involved absolute trust between both people.
And we both felt it. We stared at each other, sharing completely this astounding experience, and the fact that the golden band had now risen almost into his hand was almost irrelevant. Far more important was this opening and sharing.
The band had formed completely now; I felt its cool weight encircling my right biceps. My eyes filled with tears—at the overwhelming sensations flooding through me, and at the expression on Jack’s face—and thus I could not see very well, but I felt Jack’s hand slide between the golden band and my skin, and then I felt the band begin to move.
Infinitely slowly, but move it did, sliding over Jack’s hand and somehow, in the process, separating itself from my own arm. He kept his hand resting on my biceps, his eyes on mine, but both of us felt that band move up Jack’s forearm, over his elbow, slowly, slowly up his arm until it reached his biceps.
Where, waiting to greet it, were Jack’s marks, slithering about almost in a frenzy, wrapping themselves about the band, caressing it, bedding it down so that it would never move again.
Never again be taken from his flesh.
“Oh, gods, Grace,” I heard Jack whisper, and then I felt his left hand reach out and slide up my left arm, up to my biceps, so that Jack now stood very close to me, his arms crossed over (and grazing against, with every breath I took) my breasts.
The second band, that which lay deep beneath my upper left arm, began to rise up to meet Jack’s hand.
Again, that almost overwhelming sexuality combined with the far greater intimacy of complete trust.
When that band had risen from my flesh and had moved to Jack’s left biceps, then Jack slid his crossed hands down my arms—so slowly, so sensuously—to just below my elbows, where waited two more of the golden bands of Troy.
They rose together—the sensations now so overwhelming that I think I would have fallen were it not for Jack’s gentle grasp on my arms—moving over Jack’s hands and up to a point just below his elbows where, again, his marks waited to greet them.
When it was all done, I had to swallow in order to find the strength to speak.
“It is done, Jack,” I whispered.
There was something in his eyes, something unknowable. He was a different man, now. He had four of his kingship bands, and they empowered him, deepened him, more than I’d thought possible.
At that point I wanted badly to move away from him, to somehow cope with all the emotions and sensations that still surged through me. To evaluate what had just happened.
I tried to lean back, to break the contact between us, but his grip firmed a little.
Trust me, he whispered in my mind.
“No,” he said, “we are not yet done.”
Then he finally lifted his eyes away from mine and looked to where Malcolm stood.
“Prasutagus,” he said, “will you bring forth the box from the briefcase?”
Prasutagus? I’d heard the name somewhere previously. It had a strange familiarity about it, and it made my stomach turn over, but I had no idea why.
Why call Malcolm “Prasutagus”? What was happening?
There was a sound behind me, then Malcolm appeared at my side. In his hands he bore a wide leather box of some six inches in depth. It was beautiful, its hinges and clasp made of twisted gold, and I felt Jack shudder as he looked at it.
About us I felt the watching circle stir. I had been unaware of their presence until now—all I’d seen was Jack, all I’d felt was Jack—but now I sensed their curiosity and bewilderment.
Finally Jack’s hands slid away from me, and now it was I who shivered.
He ran his hands over the box, lovingly, then, one hand still resting on the box, looked back to me.
“Grace,” he said, “do you remember I said I would give you a birthday gift?”
It had been that night we danced here, that night he said he had felt that our powers were matched.
I nodded. I was so overcome with emotion that he had remembered, and thought to give me a gift now, before all these people, that I didn’t think I could speak.
“Then this is my gift to you,” he said, and with his hand he opened the box.