A Witch's Beauty (Daughters of Arianne 2)

There was no denying David was a striking man. All angels were, but human-born angels, unlike born angels, retained the human characteristics of the eye, complete with iris. David's eyes were a rich brown, and his hair was a pleasing complement of brown and chestnut streaks that fell to his shoulders. He had a tensile strength to him that Jonah could evaluate with a commander's eye. The lad wasn't overly bulky, but his shoulders had a good breadth for the knife work he did. The fine length of arms and legs were well integrated with smooth, toned muscle.

He'd always liked the character in his lieutenant's face, even in the beginning when he was little more than a train wreck in the vessel of a fourteen-year-old's soul. Sharp-bladed nose, well-cut chin and jawline, high brow. Then there was his most impressive trait-his silence. David was serious, quiet, which made his sudden fierceness in the thick of battle so at odds with his contemplative nature and the flickers of humor that could ease the occasional tensions among the angels.

When David finally investigated other heavenly skills, it was found he was a deft musician, with impressive skills in magic wielding through the playing of instruments and singing. But he'd been clear that his preference was staying on the front line, fighting the Dark Ones until a higher purpose appealed to him. Jonah was glad to have him there, though at times he had an equal desire to send him into the safer climate of composing music. He'd become very fond of him.

"If this witch gets you killed, I will not think well of her."

"You don't think well of her now."

"True," Jonah admitted. He sighed. David's thinking on the matter was sound, even if there were things that made Jonah uncomfortable about it. He was running out of options, pure and simple. And he reluctantly admitted that David's reticence on so many things made his outspoken support of the witch even more significant.

"If I agree to your request, I need to be sure you can accept my terms."

David straightened. "I accept."

"Young idiot," Jonah repeated irritably. "Listen first. As much as I love Anna, there's a larger reason we're expending resources on protecting the witch. Over the Canyon, we saw evidence that the powers she can command are formidable. From the energy I felt when the Dark Ones had me, I believe she's only tapped into a tenth of her capabilities."

David's attention sharpened. "She was hiding her full range of power?"

"Anna said her mother died when she was seven years old and she's been on her own ever since. She may lack training, confidence. A goal." Jonah gave him a pointed look. "So far her goal appears to be survival. Much more might be possible if she has a greater aim."

"And that worries you as much as it gives you a reason to protect her."

"It worries me more than it gives me that reason to protect her," Jonah warned. "Anna insists Mina's heart is good. Much as I don't wish to admit it, you're right. Your connection with her might provide us valuable insight on whether she is an ally, an enemy or"-he held up a hand at David's expression-"could be used by our enemies."

David's eyes flashed. "So I could be the doorway to her death warrant."

"If she grasps that power and turns it to an evil purpose, she'll be the one who opened that door. You'll simply be the messenger."

David went back to a squat on the tiles and stared at the design. "Nothing's ever easy here, is it? Never like the storybooks, where you can just ride in, swinging your sword, save the day and the girl."

"No. You know that as well as any of us." Though Jonah regretted saying it, particularly when he saw David's head bow, the pain that crossed his face. Moving across the room, he laid a hand on the young man's shoulder, offering simple comfort for the unintentional prick at an old but nearly fatal wound. "Can you accept the task?"

"If we leave her alone, she might focus only on surviving and never grasp any potential, good or bad. Neutral."

"When it comes to power, there is no neutral. If the Dark Ones take her, they will force the decision."

"So we watch over her until she decides. If she makes the wrong decision, we kill her." David rose, facing his commander. "I guess I thought there was another reason we were protecting her."

"I've told you the reason this Legion must protect her. We serve the Goddess." Jonah's tone was sharp, all commander again, and David automatically shifted to respectful attention. "I've no problem with your desire to protect her for her own value. But if I order you onto this detail, it will be because I'm certain you can focus. Beyond the swinging of your sword."

David had the grace to flush and take a step back. "That's not-"

"It is some of it. There's no shame in wanting a female, and certainly not in wanting to protect her. Unlike Marcellus, I don't wish any harm upon the girl, though I wish she was a problem we didn't have." Jonah's expression hardened. "But no matter the personal feelings any of us have-you, me, Marcellus or Anna-it doesn't change the fact she has the power to be a strong ally for the Dark Ones. If she can become our ally instead, she'll be a lot safer. That I can promise you."

The Prime Legion Commander pinned David with his dark, direct gaze that could see through any lie, rationalization or half-truth. "Will you be able to stay clear enough to make the right decision? Can you accept the responsibility that comes with her protection? For you to get the answer you want, I need the answer I want."

JONAH had over a thousand years of wisdom on his shoulders. On many things, he was unambiguous as a sword point, but expressions like "the right decision" could have multiple levels, David knew. Like one of those flaky biscuits he'd liked to split open and eat, layer by layer, when he was a mortal child.

Ah, Goddess, over sixteen years and he could still smell the things. Well, in truth, he kept the memory fresh by sometimes hovering over one of the fast-food restaurants that made them in the early dark hours of dawn. Angels didn't eat human food because they couldn't taste it, but oh, the smell... It hurt and pleasured at once.

When he was six years old, he remembered reading The Littlest Angel, the tale of the young angel who longed to be a human boy. Had Mina ever wished for the life of a normal mermaid child? What did mermaid children do that was the equivalent of human children's wish to wade in a creek or play ball?

He didn't miss it, really. Not the way that poignant little angel had. The last eight years of his human life had been a taste of Hell that eradicated much of the pleasure of the first six. But being the youngest of the Dark Legion and a made angel, he sometimes longed for the familiar, something that was a true part both of whom he'd been and who he was now. Something to tie those two things together and fill the emptiness that still existed in the lingering part of his human soul.

Maybe what drew him to the seawitch was his belief that Mina faced a similar struggle. He was tired of hearing she wasn't worth saving. That disastrous first time he'd met her, he'd tried to heal her after his attack, and she'd scathingly refused his aid. But there'd been such a stunned look in her eyes, as if no one had ever offered her such a kindness, a look that only grew more confused when he told her she could call on him if she needed aid.

Call me if harm threatens you...

On the other hand, he suspected she'd never take him up on it, even if the Dark Ones captured her and promised her a thousand years of torture.

"An eternity of hugging and having to share her feelings with someone," Anna had remarked. "That would be Hell to Mina."

Despite Anna's wit, he knew she worried about Mina. She'd been able to give him her sense of Mina, but little that was solid and concrete about or from Mina herself. So whether David liked it or not, Jonah's pessimistic predictions couldn't be discounted.

Until his meeting with the Prime Commander, David hadn't realized leaving Mina to her own devices was no longer an option. Ironically, by revealing her power during Jonah's rescue, she'd identified herself as a strong weapon-for whichever side could use her.

David had no question that the service of the Goddess was for the greater good. Free will was vital as well. But now Mina

had only two choices. Fight for the angels, or fight for the Dark Ones, and if she chose the latter, they'd take her out the same way they would any Dark One. She could be dead or cooperative.

No one would call Jonah a warm and fuzzy angel. He knew his enemy and wasn't going to risk Mina being used by them. He not only had a universe to protect, but also a mate pregnant with their first child. And the ferocity he could wield to protect them was formidable.

But he was fair. So David just had to make sure that Mina was given a good chance. Tightening his jaw, he focused on what he did know of her. She was a shapeshifter, capable of human and dragon form, as well as a somewhat aberrant mermaid, with two long and deft dark tentacles in place of a tail. She'd demonstrated shielding capabilities that repelled the archery attack of a Dark One army for an amazing duration, though that and Jonah's blade would have cost the witch her life had it not been for Anna's sacrifice on her behalf.

Her spell-casting abilities were impressive, for she'd proven herself a capable fighter when he tried to corner her. She'd combined magic with physical strategy in a manner that nearly kicked his ass. Marcellus's wing had been just a whimsical taste of what she could do.

"Potions," Anna had added, on one of his visits. "She does potions for the merpeople. Love spells, sleeping, good fortune, all the usual things. I'm not sure why she does them, but maybe it amuses her, or what passes for amusement to Mina."

"Like pulling the wings off flies," Jonah had murmured, earning a sharp look from his mermaid.

If she had to be executed, would David volunteer to do it, no matter how much it would tear him apart? Was it better to be murdered by the one who'd hoped to save you, rather than by someone who considered your existence a mistake?

Stop it. He couldn't keep vacillating between the worst possible outcome, which he saw far too clearly, and the best one, which was murky at best. This is not a thinking matter.

When he saw her, he'd know the best way to handle it.

Two

MINA stared at the stolen dagger. The blade was nine inches long with a grooved grip. Pure silver with a stream of gold following the spiral pattern. A symbolism easy to decipher, the metals representing the Lord and Lady, the fiery gold of the sun's light forever connected to the ascending path of the silver moonlight. Steel lay beneath the overlay. A handsome exterior, a formidable core.

When she'd wrapped her hand around it, her fingers barely overlapped, a reminder of how much larger David's hands were. It also made her think of other parts of his anatomy in an embarrassingly obvious way. But still, she couldn't help gripping it and having such thoughts, once a week or so. Maybe more frequently. Sometimes the day got away from her and she couldn't remember how long she'd been thinking on one topic versus another, or how long it had been since she'd visited that same thought. One of the hazards of spending so much time alone, a hazard she'd accepted. The passage of time didn't bother her anymore.

Letting go of the grip, she ran a light fingertip down the edge of the spiral, following its smooth course to the pommel. Then against the grain, feeling the bump of the ridges up to the guard, a crescent curve of steel.

He wasn't the tallest or broadest angel she'd seen, but he had an earnest intensity, a denseness of personality, so to speak. It resonated, made her vibrate in a disturbing way. He was so young. A child, really, compared to the others. He knew nothing. And yet he wasn't innocent. She liked that he didn't have the solid-colored eyes of the other angels, that his eyes retained the chocolate brown coloring of his mortality, reminding her he'd been human once. It suggested he might know what it was to truly fight darkness.

Could that be why he'd tried to heal the wounds he'd inflicted when they first met, all those months ago? Wounds made with daggers like this one. She'd only let him heal one before she got away. Studying the two sleek black tentacles that extended below her hips like a human woman's slim legs, but were more powerful and much more versatile, she touched the scar his dagger had left on the right one.

Returning her attention to the weapon, she moved from the grip to the blade, slipping off the medial ridge to one of the edges. Razor sharp, a lethal tip. Once he'd freed her, she'd managed to hide it in her cloak and take it with her. The darkness of her nature made her dwell on that moment, look past the agonizing pain and fear to the way he'd thrust that dagger into her flesh, held her pinned...

Closing her eyes, she drew her hand down the edge, a long, slow glide where the nerves shuddered and her body shivered, caught between longing and pain as the blood flowed across the steel, some of it drifting away in a cloud in the water, but most clinging to her skin, a unique adhesive trait that she possessed.

Evil wasn't comprehensible to good. She knew that. Knew Anna considered herself Mina's friend, never realizing that there were so many times Mina had found the younger mermaid's proximity so difficult she had to drive her away. Visions would fill her head of wrapping golden brown silken hair around her fist, taking a knife like this, drawing it across the milk white throat... If Jonah knew how often Mina had fought that particular vision down, he would have already killed her.

Opening her eyes at a burning sensation, she saw she was squeezing the hilt again. She concentrated, making her blood follow the spiral path to the guard, but the exercise didn't steady her churning mind. It was an effort to let go and press the cut palm to her forehead, seeking the balance from the energy center there. As she sank back into the nest she'd made herself in the crevice of coral reef, the dark tendrils of her cloak settled with her, like a spider drawing its legs in to wait for prey.

She was in the place most of the merfolk called the Graveyard, and avoided. When she'd discovered it years ago, the vestiges of the child she was at that point had given it the name the Forgotten Realm. The ghosts that floated through here caused her no harm, even though some were angry. Lost. Vengeful. Others were confused. While sometimes her presence soothed, mostly she suspected they thought she was one of them.

She called this part the castle. Jagged and tall protrusions of coral had brought the ghosts here, wrecking their ships. Whether a decade ago or centuries, vessels that had once known the sun were now forever covered in sand and silt, laid to rest in the dark green murky waters. A table shelf of rock above, populated like these reefs with thick growths of tube sponges and sea fans, concealed the preserved timeline of seafaring history from human instruments.

She'd tried on the metal helmets on the decaying Viking long-ship, a drakkar. The shields, half-buried in the sand nearby, had come loose when the ropes holding them to the ship's sides had rotted away. She'd sat upon a cannon on the lower deck of a British ship of the line, staring at the Realm through an open hatch, reducing it to a limited square of reality. From moments like that, she'd learned that breaking things down into small components made it easier to figure out how they worked. Complex spells were only steps, individual ingredients, put together with one unwavering focus.

A movement in the water snapped her mind to the present. Just a barracuda, gliding through. She wasn't worried about anything that came from the sea. She could pass through a forest of man-o'-war tentacles without a single sting, make a pack of sharks veer off course to avoid her. They knew better. It was the angels she dreaded seeing, not the Dark Ones they were so worried about. Her kin. Her lip curled.

When she'd died, Mina's mother, like her mother before her, had transferred all her knowledge and memories to Mina's mind, a way that the seawitches carried and built upon the magic of the matriarch before them. The first time she'd slept after her mother's death, she'd experienced the nightmare of her own conception. The Dark One's rape, which had plunged the seawitch's mind into an abyss of desolation. She'd confronted an unending darkness that brought no peace, only nightmare after faceless nightmare. Striking out through the darkness, screaming with pain and fear as her body was invaded, Mina's mother had known no one would help, no one would come. The world went on, apathetic. It was no wonder her mother had always had difficul

ty looking at her. Mina didn't blame her.

She had that Dark One's blood, that very endless darkness, within her. Instead of shunning her entirely, however, her mother had taught Mina how to fight it. Staring into the face of what Hell was supposed to be, Mina's mother had become convinced clinging to life and its meager offerings as long as possible and not allowing anyone or anything to dictate how that life should be lived were the point. The greatest kindness she'd offered Mina had not been love, but harshness, teaching Mina in seven short years the tools to control the bloodlust within her.

The evil would never leave her, but it couldn't have her, either. That was that.

As blood gathered beneath her palm, still pressed against her forehead, it dispersed down her face to touch her lips. The metallic taste mixed with the salt water made her wonder what David's blood would taste like. His firm, muscular flesh. His body. Her own tightened, caught between hunger and fear. Why was he in her head so much?

When she floated out of the crevice again, restless, she saw him standing on a trawler, not more than a hundred feet from her.

Blinking, she wondered if she'd gotten light-headed from blood loss and he was some kind of illusion. Or perhaps a Dark One had tapped into her mind and was trying to draw her out. He'd seen her, despite her ability to blend with the coral formations, the shadows of deep water, which had little light to illuminate a dark-cloaked creature that seemed just another element in a floating, wavering landscape of sea fans, human shipwrecks and craggy coral. Unlike her mermaid brethren, she could see at the much deeper levels of ocean darkness. But so could angels.

As he came toward her, she knew he wasn't a Dark One. Even a Dark One couldn't pull off the way angels moved through water. A relaxed flow of movement, unimpeded by the density of the water. Her thoughts dipped from baseline evil into a sensual well of wickedness.

She didn't want to dwell on his body, but of course with him moving toward her, it was impossible not to. Angels, much like sea creatures, had little use for modesty. Therefore, the angels of the Dark Legion wore only a half tunic, essentially a short, belted battle kilt, and their weaponry. Mina couldn't think of any female that would object. They were all finely made. With a twinkle in her eye, Anna had noted, several times, that it was proof the Deity in charge of their creation had to be female.