Of Drag Kings And The Wheel Of Fate Part 21

"I want your word that you won't tell her. I may not have any choice about my body, but I have a choice about how I deal with it. It isn't your decision to make," Rhea said harshly.

"I think it's wrong."

"You imagine I care what you think? Leave me be." Rhea walked back to the table and sat down.

"We haven't finished this conversation."

"I have."

Rosalind knew she had been dismissed. Rhea sat with her teacup in her hands, as if Rosalind had already left the room. The stubborn strength emanating from the small woman was staggering, a strength of will gained from lifetimes of facing down death. "There has to be a way to end this differently. We can't be p.a.w.ns, repeating the same mistakes over and over. I won't let that be it," she said desperately, facing the woman at the table. She wasn't prepared for Rhea's reaction.

The witch stood, her face gone dark with rage. "You won't? You are taking away everything I value, including my life. You are robbing Joe and Goblin. I will not speak of what you are doing to Taryn. You have always done this. I have some small time left, and I won't let you steal that as well. Get the h.e.l.l out of my kitchen and leave me be before I forget myself and curse you."

Taryn rolled over as she crept into the room. "Where'd you go?" Taryn mumbled, eyes shut.

"To get a cup of tea."

Taryn smiled. "You're turning into Rhea."

Rosalind froze. She was full of broken gla.s.s. She didn't know if she could sit on the bed without turning to dust and blowing away. The need to feel Taryn's skin overwhelmed her. Rosalind lay down next to her and took Taryn's face in her hands.

"You act like you're memorizing my face," Taryn said, leaning into the caress.

"I am," Rosalind confessed, drawing her fingers along the firm jaw, the hidden softness of the skin underneath. This might be the last moment she had with her lover. "You feel like home. But I'm still partly in shock, only knowing you a week. My body is still getting used to having you near. I keep jumping, expecting to find out it's all been a dream."

"Yeah. Me too. People don't get to be this happy. I don't." Taryn rolled off into the blankets and lay on her side. "Like, who did I bribe in heaven to get that? You looking at me like that, across the pillow."

"How do I look at you?" Rosalind asked, folding her hands under her head.

"Like you'll never stop loving me," Taryn said, her tone like a cat's paw.

"For as long as I'm still breathing. And for everything that comes after."

Taryn went still as death, all at once. Her eyes opened, the glitter in them dangerous, feverish. The blood drained away from her face, leaving it white as a funeral mask. "Don't."

"Baby, what is it?" Rosalind reached out to Taryn automatically, but saw her move her body out of the way. "Honey, please. Talk to me."

"Those words. They're like an echo of something I heard a long time ago. But they make my blood cold. Like I can't believe them."

It was terror that Rosalind saw on Taryn's face, naked terror. In that moment, she saw Taryn, knowingly or not, relive their last parting. She saw Taryn's heart break, saw her give up and decide not to go on. The willful retreat from life was there, under the surface of her skin. Maybe not her, this time out. But the memory of it made her go pale as alabaster.

"Taryn, sweetheart. Come back. Stay here with me, baby." Rosalind reached for Taryn as she spoke and found her flesh chill. She rubbed her hands against her back, calling the blood to the surface. Rosalind saw her eyes swim, unfocused, saw her face go slack. It wasn't like watching Joe as he listened to the voices. It was far more frightening. Taryn was gone, her body a gorgeous toy, empty and limp on the bed. Rosalind pulled Taryn into her embrace frantically.

"I don't give a d.a.m.n who you think you are right now, you come back!" Rosalind growled, the ferocity in her voice making it almost unrecognizable. "Who the h.e.l.l do you think you are, giving up on me? You did this to me before. I left you, but you left me, too. You walked out on the ice, and you never said goodbye. It took the rest of my life to forgive you for that."

The words were coming from somewhere. Rosalind didn't have time to a.n.a.lyze them. She focused on Taryn's face, the blue tinge to her lips, as if she had gone under the ice. Rosalind sat up, cradling the body in her arms. It felt wildly unfamiliar, but it was something a part of her had longed for all her life, the chance to hold this form, bled of life as white marble, black hair like a spill of ink. She had come back into the flesh to kill her own anger and shame, to move them, as a stone in the road might be moved, to open the way.

Taryn had done this to her before. She wasn't a girl then. She'd been older, but as willful and as stubborn as this arrogant youth. In her hurt, in her pride, she'd given the final reprove to the lover who'd abandoned her. Rosalind didn't separate these thoughts from the ones that screamed for Taryn to wake up, to stop acting like a sullen teenager and open her eyes. Taryn wasn't responding to endearments or touch. Rosalind, panic eating into her stomach, bent over her, her hands digging into the slack muscle of her arms.

"You get one shot at life, moron. We found each other again, don't you dare squander it. Stop acting like a child and face me!"

There was a hint of blue about Taryn's lips, the human frost of life retreating. Rosalind's reason gave in. She shook her violently, calling out to her in words she would never remember later. Her mouth closed over Taryn's, sealing them together, forcing air into her lungs. Her mind had narrowed down to one impulse. She would not be cheated by life. Not this time. The stars could veer from their paths and fall, the earth could tilt off her axis, but her mouth would not leave Taryn's, she would not leave her. In an act of will stronger than the stubborn pride of Taryn, Rosalind forced breath into her lungs.

Taryn coughed. A simple thing, in the scope of the world, but it reduced Rosalind to tears. She coiled herself around her body, sobbing. The heat of her body transferred to her lover; the chill of memory receded with each indrawn breath. Taryn struggled to sit up; Rosalind refused her, keeping Taryn in her arms. "You're not moving," she said, her voice choked with weeping.

"Rosalind?" It was strange, like hearing Taryn's voice from a great distance, but it was her voice.

"Yes, G.o.d d.a.m.n it, it's Rosalind. I'm not letting you do that to me. If you ever try to leave me like that, I swear on Christ's blood I'll kill you."

Taryn gave a choking laugh. "You'll kill me, if I kill myself?"

"Yes, a.s.shole."

"The endearments are smothering me." Taryn pushed, and this time Rosalind did let her sit up. She pressed her hands against her eyes. "I used to wonder why Rhea was glad I couldn't see the way she did. I think I know." She opened her eyes and drew her hands away, slowly. "I didn't try and kill myself. I had a memory of when I did. Not me, but-before."

"I got that part. I'll still kill you." Rosalind let out a shaky breath. "You scared the h.e.l.l out of me, you know that?"

Taryn looked at her for a long moment, her face an open wound. "You left me," she said at last. "I saw it. You left me, and I didn't make it. I went out onto the ice."

"I didn't leave you. I mean, that was before...I don't remember any of that."

"You know what I'm talking about," Taryn said. It wasn't a question.

Rosalind exhaled heavily. She'd known it would come to this. "Yes. Rhea told me that she thought we'd been lovers before. And that I left you, and you...did what you did. It's why she warned you against me."

Taryn's eyes went wide. "When did she say that to you?"

"A few minutes ago, in the kitchen. I had a dream. I remembered telling you I was leaving."

"f.u.c.k!" Taryn sprang back off the bed as if she'd been branded. She stood, shaking, in the center of the floor. "You knew that, and you didn't say anything to me?"

She started pacing, a tiger in a cage, leaving no room for Rosalind to reply. "I should have known. Rhea's never wrong, and I ran against what she said. That's why I've been feeling so weird. The memory. You're going to do that to me again. It's happening. All that bulls.h.i.t about loving me forever. I'd heard that before, just didn't know where. I let you in. Now you're going to rip me open." Taryn's voice rose as she paced, as she worked herself into a frenzy, ignoring the woman on the bed. Her emotion rose with her voice, like a dog slipped off the chain.

Rosalind pushed off the bed, landing directly in Taryn's path. She got right in front of her lover and stopped still. "Taryn!" she yelled in her best professor tone.

It worked. Taryn looked slightly stunned, reminded that there was another person in the room.

Rosalind pointed to the bed. "Sit yourself down. Now."

Taryn sat on the edge of the bed, looking warily up at Rosalind. Rosalind was acting like she'd never seen her, angry, in control, commanding. It captured her attention.

"I didn't tell you because I didn't know it yet. I've just recovered the memory of it. I don't see things the way Rhea does, or Joe, or you. What was I supposed to say, sorry I betrayed you in another life? You didn't seem to have any connection to it, and Rhea said it was too hard for you to remember. And it broke my heart, the thought of causing you pain. I couldn't face it."

Rosalind's voice softened. She stood in front of Taryn, not letting her look away. "I do believe it now. There's too much between us that speaks to it."

"So what does that mean for us now? Are you going to leave me again?" Taryn asked, her voice nearly a whisper in the dark room.

Rosalind reached out and caressed her face. "Oh my sweet boy. What Rhea saw, that memory of yours, that's the outcome of choices made in another life. It can't be undone. Maybe it was us, or part of us, but that doesn't have to mean we live the same thing over and over. I won't let it. All I have to go on is what I know. I know that I love you, and not even Death will change that. I think we get to do it different this time, if we choose to. I made my choice tonight, when I bid on you at the auction. If my mistake was leaving you, I won't make the same one this time. I choose you, baby."

Taryn's face was as smooth as marble, unreadable. In the silence that followed and pooled around her, Rosalind waited. She let the fear gnaw at her, let the terror come. She had declared herself, and she told what she knew to be true. It was up to Taryn to choose, now. Trusting her, trusting in the promise she held out, meant going beyond her own fear. The memory that had possessed her was an old one, and Rosalind didn't know what it had been like, experiencing it. Pain like that, even dulled with the pa.s.sage of time, might be too much to risk again. But that was always the choice. Love or fear. You couldn't have both.

Rosalind took a step back from the bed, then another. She stood, unknowingly, in a shaft of light from the street lamp, sparks of pale gold and scarlet showing in her hair like a nimbus of fire. Taryn looked up at her lover and saw the look of certainty, of grace, that allowed her her own response. She was struck through with this woman, the light that shone from her. Her greatest fear, the one that all but crippled her, was losing this woman. Her lover.

In that moment of recognition, Taryn decided. She took a step, staggered, then fell to her knees, embracing Rosalind. Like a knight, she knelt before her liege and bowed her head. Rosalind's hands were in her hair, combing around the shape of her skull. Taryn, gone nearly blind with longing, raised her eyes to Rosalind. Her fingers closed on Rosalind's waist. Taryn looked up into the face of her lover and laid her heart like an offering on the altar. "Don't go. I choose you."

Rosalind's hands were gentle on her shoulders, light as the touch of a sculptor learning the stone, firm as gravity. With the impartation of her will through her fingertips, she told her to stand.

"Taryn." She said that name, and nothing else had form in the universe. By saying it, spirit was made flesh, delight made visible. She felt a burden lift from her soul, one she'd been carrying before memory was fact. Its weight was so much a part of her that the lifting of it left her giddy, vertigo-struck. Rosalind's soul remembered it had wings and stretched them, yearning upward, set free by the welcome in her eyes. For me, she thought recklessly, after all, for me. The time had come to set the next burden down. The Wheel was turning.

Taryn kissed her, in the silence that widened like the silence in the moment before creation. Taryn pulled back and put her arms around Rosalind, lifting her in one smooth motion.

Rosalind put her arms around Taryn's neck as she held her, midair. "Baby, we need to talk."

"No," Taryn said, walking toward the bed.

She could let that be answer enough. She could drown in her kiss, forget her resolve, and let the words wait for the morning. It would be easy, and Lord, it tempted her, the chance to forget and join her flesh with Taryn's. But Rhea had been right. There were some kinds of knowledge that changed you. In this moment of Taryn's choosing her, she had taken on a responsibility.

Rosalind let Taryn set her down on the bed, marveling at her strength. She sat, curling her legs under her. Taryn stalked forward, ready to push her down.

Rosalind held out her hand. "Trust me, love. There's something you need to know."

The tone held a warning edge and a glimmer of sadness. Taryn reacted to it, instantly. She sat down on the bed, cross-legged, and squared with Rosalind, eyes narrow. She expected the blow; the tightness around her mouth gave her away.

"This is going to hurt," Taryn said. "You don't have to answer, I can tell from your face."

Rosalind told her the story of her meeting with Rhea, the warning, the past lives, and Rhea's part.

Taryn listened stoically, not twitching a muscle.

"She said she dies when I show up. That's the pattern. The original died from an arrow wound, setting the whole chain in motion," Rosalind said, into the mask of Taryn's face.

"You're here, and Rhea's here," Taryn said, seeing the same glimpse of hope Rosalind had first seen.

She was breaking her word to Rhea. But looking at Taryn, she couldn't deceive her. She was her lover, she had chosen her. This was something that would have to be confronted. Taryn would have to know. It was no longer her place to keep it from her. It was her place to tell her and pick up the pieces.

Taryn didn't give her a chance to finish. She moved with the blurring speed Rosalind had seen her use on rare occasion. One moment she was still and thoughtful, mulling over what Rosalind had said. The next she was off the bed, across the floor and down the stairs, moving as if all the devils in h.e.l.l were on her heels.

"Taryn, wait!" Rosalind called, grabbing the nearest piece of clothing, Taryn's black shirt. She struggled into the shirt as she flew down the stairs, glad for the height difference between them. The shirt was almost as long as a dress on her.

Taryn went through the bedroom door like a whirlwind, slamming it aside. It rebounded from the wall, half closing again. Rosalind had to catch it to avoid being struck.

Joe sat up in bed, the sheet falling away from his naked torso. Rosalind could see the scars on his chest, outlined with the tattoo of a dance of snakes. He ran a hand across his face, squinting. "T? What the h.e.l.l is going on?"

Taryn stood in the center of the room, facing the bed, quivering like a horse run too hard. Joe blinked and focused, recognizing the state she was in, taking in the sight of her, wearing only her suit pants, trembling. He spotted Rosalind in the doorway, wearing only Taryn's shirt. Taryn said nothing, just burned in her silence, staring at Rhea.

Rhea sat up and arranged the sheet over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Her hair was disordered from the pillow, reminding Rosalind of Medusa. She had a flashback to Taryn's story of their first meeting, when Taryn was sixteen, how this woman with the wild hair had simply walked up to her and touched her cheek. They faced one another now, the burning youth and the contained elder, straining the silence beyond its limits.

"So you know," Rhea said, leaning back against the headboard. "Your lover told you."

"Why." Taryn made the word a statement and punctuated it by walking closer to the bed, her feet silent on the polished wood floor of Rhea's bedroom. Rhea raised an eyebrow, the expression so similar to Taryn's that it hurt Rosalind to watch.

"Why? Because the pattern is older than any of us. Because seasons change."

"No. Why didn't you tell me? Joe knew, right?" Taryn glanced at Joe and read the answer on the man's face. "So what makes it okay for him to know and not me?"

Rhea kept looking at Taryn. "Joe, would you put on a pot of tea? This has the look of a long night."

The man nodded and climbed out of bed. He cast an apologetic look at Rosalind and crossed the floor in his boxer shorts. Rosalind pulled down at the edges of the black shirt.

Taryn exploded. "What the f.u.c.k, Rhea! I asked you a question, and you tell Joe to go make tea?"

"Joe is an adult and he understands balance," Rhea said, in answer to one, or both, of Taryn's questions.

She threw back the sheet, displaying her body with a carelessness that shocked Rosalind. Taryn didn't bat an eye or look away. It reminded Rosalind that this bedroom had probably once been Taryn and Rhea's, that she had slept where Joe now did. It hadn't been all that long since she was Rhea's lover, not long enough for there to be any shame or awkwardness between them at nakedness.

Rhea crossed the floor, as fierce as Taryn, her presence blunting Taryn's rage. She stood in front of Taryn, her dark eyes locking with the volatile blue. "Joe knew because he is my lover. You did not, because you would react the way you are reacting. I asked your lover not to tell you. Evidently she felt more loyalty to you after a week, than to me. I should, I suppose, applaud that. It means she'll be there for you in the hard times."

"Rhea..." Taryn dropped her eyes to the floor.

The woman moved away, crossing to the bed and picking up a blue robe. "Laurel and Goblin are sleeping. If we are going to have this conversation, we are going to have it in the kitchen, over a cup of tea, not standing naked in the middle of the bedroom. Put on a shirt and meet me in the kitchen."

Chapter Fourteen.

The kitchen was lit from one end to the other-from the table by the wall, to the counter under the coffee mug wall, to the cat dishes near the sink-by the time Rosalind and Taryn dressed and went down.

Rhea was in her blue robe, seated at the table, a queen waiting to hold court. Her hands were folded in front of her, the fingers laced, waiting for the water to boil.

Joe had snagged a pair of jeans and a T-shirt from the laundry basket near the foot of the stairs. He stood, not in his accustomed place near the stove, but by the counter, absently petting the calico who nested on a pile of magazines. The caress of his large hand drew Rosalind's eye, the way he would begin the motion again whenever the cat b.u.mped against him. It was the reflex of a man used to caring for the needs of everyone and everything around him, she thought.

Taryn had been deadly silent when they went back up to the third floor. She hadn't shrugged off Rosalind's hand on her back, but she hadn't responded to it, either. She had pulled on a sweatshirt and headed for the stairs, moving like a sleepwalker.

Rosalind thought about taking off the black shirt, but her hands refused to unb.u.t.ton it. She lifted the collar and sniffed. It smelled of Taryn, of the cologne she wore. A shiver went through Rosalind, unbidden. She'd never liked it when her erstwhile husband had worn aftershave, but...She left the shirt on and grabbed a pair of jeans.

The four people looked at one another, waiting for a signal to position themselves in the room. Taryn stood awkwardly in the doorway, hands in her pockets. It took Rosalind's hand on her arm to move her into the room. She took a stance against the counter, facing the table, and folded her arms.

Joe abandoned the calico, who lashed her tail and jumped to the floor. He went to the stove and deftly plucked the kettle off the flame, pouring the hot water into a teapot of deep blue, with a gold embossed dragon entwined about the rim. Ritually, he set a cup out for each of the people in the room and poured the tea. He handed Taryn's to her first, then walked to Rhea, setting it before her on the table. Last, he took his cup and stood next to Rosalind, near the doorway into the hall.

Rosalind accepted the teacup from him, grateful for something to occupy her hands. There was a comfort to the ritual of it, the order that the precise action brought to the room. It was as if Joe had prepared the s.p.a.ce for the conversation to begin.

Taryn held the cup in her left hand, ignoring it. She gazed steadily at Rhea, her look bruised and sullen. Rhea concentrated on her teacup and avoided looking at the brooding girl leaning against the counter. The silence lasted for two full minutes, while Rosalind and Joe pretended to be very interested in the designs on their cups.