Temptress Unbound by Lisa Cach Page A

might be anywhere upon the seas. I hadn’t the skill yet to see any of them, though. There were glimpses, fleeting images and emotions, but I couldn’t be sure I had truly seen that moment of a delighted Theo grasping at and pulling Basina’s silver-streaked hair; of Jax feeling a rush of bloody pleasure as he stepped onto the deck of a galley just conquered; of Clovis sitting alone with a flagon of wine, loathing the thought of his Christian betrothed, Clothilde, and remembering with longing and regret the feel of my body against his, and silently fueling a hurt anger that I had left him.
    It seemed more likely that I had created such visions out of my own wishes, than that they were real. Maerlin had warned me that the greater the distance, the greater the difficulty. In his years of trying to master the skill—impossible, apparently, for a Phanne male except with his Phanne kin—he had had many such imaginary contacts that he’d hoped were real, but had often proved to be false.
    So it was not without self-doubt that I tried to reach into the mind of Brenn, this man who had fathered me but whom I knew so little. I searched; I pressed with my mind; I listened and tried to open myself.
    Nothing.
    Maybe it wasn’t possible with non-Phanne kin; Maerlin hadn’t known whether it was or not. The blood tie might not be enough. There was too little shared; he was male and I was female. All we had in common was my mother, Ligeia.
    As I had the thought, I sensed a ghost of my mother in Brenn’s mind. Yes, there : a flash of memory, of Ligeia lying pressed up against his side, asleep, naked in the mountain sunlight. His feeling of disbelief that she was real, and a dread that this might be a fever dream from which he’d wake, alone.
    And one day, he had.
    Ligeia was the key with which I unlocked his mind. I followed that day on the mountain to the battle that had cost him the eye and the arm, and the moment when Ligeia had spoken to him as he lay close to death from infection. I saw him meet Maerlin, and felt his reaction to the spiral tattoos. I followed him across Europe with Maerlin, meeting other Phanne and asking, always asking, after Ligeia. I saw him come to Britannia.
    I saw that at the final moment, the moment when he could have gone in person to Mona to ask after Ligeia, he had faltered. Too many years had passed, too much had happened. The dream had become greater than any possible reality. To find her risked shattering the dream forever, and leaving him in a raw waking world without the comforting magic memory of a week in the mountains with a woman too beautiful to have been real.
    Deep inside, he knew that they were not meant to be together. He was a man who had found his place in the world, and he had wisdom enough to sense that both that place and his own hard-worn self would be a poor fit for the ethereal Ligeia.
    And then I’d come to Corinium and his world had tilted, threatening to spill him off its edge. He saw parts of himself in me; he also saw Ligeia in me; and still he felt astonishment that I could be his, and exist. Just as I continued to feel astonishment at him.
    He was wary of me. Intrigued. He feared I would leave. Feared he would disappoint me, or had disappointed me. He worried over my future. He wished I could have Arthur, a man of honor, strength, and kindness . . . but suspected Maerlin might be the better match. One of my own kind, and yet—
    Yet he could not wish Maerlin on any woman, much less his daughter. He loved the man, respected him, was his friend; and knew him well enough to know that a woman would be hard-pressed to find a crumb of joy at his side.
    Then there was Terix. He’d dismissed Terix as a clown at first. Useless. An actor, an entertainer, his one redeeming feature being that he was as loyal to me as Bone was. His estimation had gone down even further when Terix came to be trained, and Brenn discovered how woefully