The Golden Apple (2 page)

Rane didn’t clamp down on his hatred fast enough. Some of it must have flashed across his face for Jasper’s eyes to narrow.

“Any hint of a double-cross, Rane, and you’ll never see your good-for-nothing brother again.” Jasper paused and his face hardened. “Except maybe in little pieces.”

Chapter Two

W
ith a scream, the horse slid down the mountain on its side, flailing and bucking as it went. Its rider hung on desperately, staying in the saddle until they hit the ground.

The horse rolled, and with a scream of his own, the rider was crushed beneath it.

When the horse scrambled up and ran for the fence, the knight lay still, and there was a moment of silence from the crowd.

Then, as if released from some dark spell, everyone began to shout and move at once. Two men ran to the fallen knight, far more tried to get the horse under control.

Kayla lifted her stricken gaze from the disaster below and looked across to her father. How many more? She wanted to scream the question. How many more must leave maimed or dead?

He stared back, his face impassive, tight with control. He lifted his hand, gave a wave.

On with the contest.

Kayla blinked against the tears that threatened to spill. She was so weary of tears. She sat stiff and unyielding. Refusing to wilt.

She wondered which victim would be next. There were only four left, but when she turned to the holding pen, she saw three of the final number leaving. Deserting the field.

Leaving only the knight in black.

Rane De’Villier.

Secretary and aide to Jasper of Harness. He sat on his horse well, looked comfortable in his armor, but Kayla knew he was a man of poetry and words, not action. He had not been trained in the ways of a knight.

Her heart thundered in her chest. She could not pretend it didn’t thrill her that he had come today.

His determination to win her set her senses alight, more brilliant and blinding than the midday sun off the glass mountain.

It made last night real. Perfect. Not a hastily snatched tryst, but true love.

The cold truth was, though, he should not attempt it.

She was glad he wanted to win her, but she did not want it to cost him his life.

He came out of the holding pen, horse prancing, and looked up at the mountain, sizing it up, taking its measure. Steeling himself.

His horse danced under him, eager or nervous.

The noise from the stalls was a dull roar. Like an ocean in full storm.

He raised his hand in salute to the crowd, and urged his mount forward, gathering speed, taking the run faster, straighter, than any knight before him.

His horse’s hooves hit the glass with a high pitched ‘ting’, the sound of the most expensive crystal hit with a silver spoon, and it seemed to gain a grip, as if there were studs on its shoes.

His visor was up, and Kayla could see the intense focus in Rane’s eyes, the pure determination.

He was close. Closer than any other had come, perhaps more than halfway up the slope. She looked down at the gleaming apple. Thought back to what it had done to her earlier and braced herself for the pain.

In a single, smooth movement her fingers closed over it, and she threw.

Light arced again from the apple to her palm, a white-hot connection of agony. As she cried out, Rane raised a black-gloved hand and snatched it from the air.

The light strobed from between his fingers, its connection to her stronger than before, the pain flaring to a peak, then winking out. Replaced by a terrible sense of urgency. But Kayla did not know what she must do to still the thundering of her heart.

As if in some strange dream, where every action is slowed by half, she watched Rane turn the horse, lifting from the saddle as it plunged down the slope.

As they slid away from her, she felt the pull of the apple, like a hard jerk, trying to yank her out of her chair.

She fought it, her lips a white, clenched line of panic, her hands clinging to the chair arms, her feet scrabbling for purchase.

Rane’s horse hit the ground, galloping and dancing in terror away from the mountain, pulling her with it, the arc of light stretched to its elastic limit.

The force hauled at her, strong as ten men. Kayla teetered on the edge of the precipice. Her gaze clashed with her black knight’s as he turned back to her, apple held high, and then, with a wild cry, she fell.

* * *

There was a thin white chain of light pulling Kayla from her chair. Rane saw too late it was connected to the apple, that it had somehow manacled her hand and dragged her with it as he rode across the field, his prize held up for all to see. To witness.

The mountain throbbed more malevolently than before as she flew over the edge and down.

He urged his horse forward, but it refused to take what it thought was another run at the mountain. It raised its forelegs and tried to dislodge him, and with a curse he leapt from the saddle.

Kayla was sliding down the slope, her skirts fluttering and lifting, her arms spread wide. Her face stricken.

He ran towards her, but she was coming too fast. Her feet hit the ground and she pitched forward, her eyes wide with fear. Her body slammed into the ground with a thud, sliding in the mud churned up by the horses from the spongy, wet earth.

When he reached her, he realized the damned apple was still in his hand, and he dropped it beside her as he knelt.

She opened her eyes, but they were unfocused, her forehead smeared with mud. She struggled to roll onto her side, to curl up in an instinctive movement of self-protection.

Her hands accidentally brushed the apple as she moved, and her body gave a jolt, as if she’d been bitten by a viper.

Her eyes opened again, this time with a snap, their focus clear and sharp. She blinked at the sight of him, then her gaze fell to the apple, resting against the back of her hand.

“It healed me.” Her voice was a strange mixture of horror and relief.

Rane looked down at the thing. Thought of how badly Jasper wanted it. How he was willing even to let Soren go in exchange for it, and understanding hit him.

“What did it heal?” He drew off his glove and laid a finger on it. Felt a strange, unpleasant tingle, and lifted his hand.

“My legs, my feet. They were broken.” She struggled up, bent a knee and kneaded her slippered foot with a hand. “I hit the ground so hard, I heard the bones snap.”

Suddenly, she gasped. “What is happening?”

Rane frowned. There was nothing happening, and that was wrong. The King’s men should be here, the princess’s ladies-in-waiting. He turned, and saw the crowd standing ten feet away from them.

They were staring in open-mouthed amazement.

Rane stood, held out a hand, and helped Kayla to her feet. The front of her gossamer white dress was caked in mud, her body plastered with it.

She barely came to his shoulder.

Standing there, he felt the creeping sense there was something undone. Some task he needed to complete.

“The light,” she said.

He looked down at her. “The light?”

“From the apple. It’s keeping the crowd back.”

Rane focused on the apple, still lying in the mud at their feet. It glowed like a fire, its light difficult to see in the bright sunshine, but there all the same, encasing them in its golden rays.

Kayla shivered, then clutched him as the day seemed to dim and flicker, as if the sun were a candle flame, blowing in the wind.

“The light’s gone now,” she said.

Rane looked up and saw what had replaced it was much, much worse.

Chapter Three

A
man strode onto the field, pushing aside anyone in his way, using his staff to clear his path, sending men and women tumbling.

Kayla’s grip on Rane’s arm tightened.

The man stopped just short of them, and Kayla saw he was incredibly handsome. His hair was almost white blond, his eyes shockingly dark.

“What is this?” He spoke as if he had a right to ask, as if he’d ordered them to do something else, and they had disobeyed him.

Kayla felt a flare of anger at his tone, and from the way Rane stiffened under her fingers, he did, too. But beneath her sense of outrage, was another, hovering sense that this man did have a right.

She saw his eyes flick over both of them, as if searching for something, and then focus on the ground. On the apple.

He took a step closer, to pick it up, and Rane stepped to block him. His movement spoke of suppressed violence. Of perfect control.

It occurred to her that he did not seem very like a secretary and a poet any more.

“You will regret standing in my way.” The stranger’s eyes narrowed.

Rane bent and picked up the apple with his other, gloved hand.

“I took this apple from the princess of Gaynor in a test of skill.” Rane lifted the apple up and looked at it curiously. “It belongs to me.”

Kayla gaped at him. Of all the things she’d expected him to say, this was not it. What did either of them care for the odious apple? He had fought to win
her
, surely? The apple was irrelevant.

“Something isn’t right.” The stranger was staring at them both. His black cloak rippled about him, and Kayla felt the icy hand of fear brush the back of her neck. The breeze had died half an hour ago. The mid-morning was airless and there was no playful wind to make his cloak dance.

He drew both hands up, his staff raised, and the day darkened again, just as it had when he’d arrived.

“Halt.”

Her father’s voice carried enough weight, enough power, to make even the stranger freeze.

“Step back, Eric the Bold.”

At the mention of the stranger’s name, there was a gasp from the crowd, and as a single body, they backed away from him. Some ran.

“King Haren. What mischief have you wrought?” Eric lowered his arms, and the daylight seeped back into the sky. “What have you done to my golden apple?”

“The question is what have you done, Eric?” Her father looked gaunt. Years older than he’d been just yesterday. “It was a simple prize, you said. The initial lure, a foretaste of what could be gained. They would know even if I found a way to weasel out of my promises, it was a solid reason to enter the contest.”

Eric’s lips thinned. “I hold the power here, Haren. I told you what I wished to tell you. You do not question
me
.”

“Lure?” Kayla heard the chill of a midwinter wind in Rane’s voice. “What do you mean, lure?”

Was it her imagination, or were his words weary and bitter. Disenchanted.

Eric the Bold turned back to them. She noticed his hand gripped the top of his staff, his knuckles showing white.

“You cheated,” he said, his lips drawn back over his teeth like a snarling dog. “You must have cheated.”

Rane looked at her. The first time since he’d stepped forward to claim the apple. There was deep regret in his eyes, and she suddenly felt cold little shivers of fear, of panic, running down her spine.

“There was no other way to win. The task was impossible.” He kept his eyes on her, but she could not hold his gaze.

“I expected the winner to cheat. To be inventive. But you ruined it, somehow. What did you do?” Without warning, Eric lifted his staff and pressed the end to Rane’s chest. “What did you do?” He tapped the staff against Rane with every word.

Kayla looked from her father, stark-faced, a stranger to her now, at the powerful stranger he’d called Eric the Bold, and at the darkest stranger of them all, Rane De’Villier.

She swallowed, tried to focus through the ringing in her ears, the heavy weight of betrayal pressing on her chest. What a fool she had been. What a fool.

She stepped forward, waited for every eye to be on her. Drew herself tall.

“He used
me
.”

* * *

Rane realized the dark wizard called Eric the Bold was still pointing his staff at him, and with a sharp movement of his arm he flicked it away.

He knew who Eric was, no one who’d ever lived in Jasper’s stronghold could escape that name. But he’d always imagined he’d look like Jasper’s brother, Nuen. Thin, crabbed and sly.

That he stood as high as Rane himself, was as broad in the shoulders and well-muscled, should have been in his favor. But his eyes took away any advantage of his physique. They were pure evil. Power concentrated to a point of no return.

Rane reluctantly looked away from him to Kayla, felt guilt tighten his chest.

She stood with her hands crossed under her breasts, and he realized she had forgotten she was covered in mud. Her posture regal, every line in her body screamed contempt and disdain for all of them.

“As the princess says, I gained my aid from her.”

Eric’s attention fixed on Kayla. “Princess?”

“She was ripped from her chair and slid down your mountain.” The King spoke in tones so measured and cold, Rane glanced at him, waiting for him to lose hold of his control. “You guaranteed she would not be hurt. I have to say I’m amazed to see her standing.” His voice broke on the last word.