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.She could clearly smell the damp earth and something old rising up like a tendril of smoke.Celestine sucked in a deep breath when the mist cleared.An old woman, as thin as a straw of hay, stood in Angelet’s place.To Celestine’s surprise, Leuric turned into a mass of quivering flesh.His eyes bulged outwards and his cheeks turned ruddy.“Where is the elixir?” he ground out from between gritted teeth.“What a man won’t do for eternal life,” the old woman snickered.Leuric rushed forward and grabbed her by the throat with two powerful hands.“Bitch! You promised me!”The old woman laughed.“Odo overheard your conversation with me one day, not long ago.He cut me a deal, although I have no need for them.”“I knew you were up to no good,” Kerrich said to Angelet, his voice matter-of-fact.“I should have killed you when I had the chance.”Angelet laughed as he stared into Kerrich’s bold eyes.“How can you kill me? I’m of the old ways, a goddess who goes where she pleases.You have no power to harm me.”“You forget something, you old hag,” Leuric interrupted.“I have my hands around your scrawny neck.”The old woman showed no fear.“Mark my words.If you harm me, you will pay for the deed.The land will become as dry as a mother’s breast without milk and the people will learn to kill without a second thought.”“I care not what happens to these beggars.Where’s my elixir?” Leuric shouted, shaking her so her eyes rolled back in her head.Shocked by his lack of concern for those he ostensibly ruled, Celestine looked to Kerrich, who motioned ‘no’ with a barely perceptible moment of his head.“You should watch your back, Leuric,” Angelet continued.“There’s nothing like a servant taking your place.”“Where is Odo?”“Didn’t you see he had the power you thought would be yours?”Leuric tilted his head to the sky and roared.“How dare you cheat me?” Without further warning, he squeezed the old woman’s neck.Celestine heard bone crunch against bone.Leuric kept shaking her and shouting, “You cheated me! You cheated me!”Kerrich strode up to him and disentangled the lord’s hands from Angelet’s neck, who sank to the earth in a heap of skirts.With a low growl, Leuric turned on him.“Who are you to interfere in my affairs?”The pieces of the puzzle slid together more forcefully as Celestine watched the exchange.Kerrich was a noble knight, not a poorly-dressed serf.That meant that if he had told her the truth in the hayloft, and Leuric really had been a killer for hire, Kerrich stood higher in rank than he did.She breathed a sigh of relief.It also meant that she wouldn’t have to marry old Guermont.She would be able to hold onto her much-valued freedom.“I dare since you killed my mother and father.” Kerrich raised his dagger.“No!” Celestine rushed forward.“I beg mercy for his sake.”Kerrich gave her a strange look from darkened eyes.“You mean after all he’s done to you, you would spare his life?”She nodded, swallowing the lump in her throat.It had been enough to find out that the person she had trusted the most, had betrayed her.Kerrich nodded.“As the lady requested, I will spare your miserable life but as you did to me, so I shall do to you.You shall spend the remainder of your days as a serf upon my lands.”Leuric mumbled, “But the lady shall be mine.”Celestine frowned.“Has he gone mad?” she asked in a voice barely above a whisper.“I will bring her back to life,” Leuric motioned at Angelet’s body.“She will give me the elixir.”A group of guards ran up to Kerrich.“Take him to the dungeon,” Kerrich ordered.The guards seized Leuric and hauled him off as he kept shouting, “The elixir is mine! The elixir is mine!”Celestine leaned against Kerrich’s chest and gazed into his face.“I don’t understand.Didn’t the elixir die with Angelet?”He trailed a lazy line of feathered kisses across her forehead.“It’s a long story, sweetheart, but what I can make out of it is that your maid acted out two different roles.”Celestine watched his gray eyes lighten.“When she came to me to arrange a meeting between us, I labeled her a ‘goddess/witch’.She had an unfailing kindness but also a heartlessness.Such opposite traits in a person don’t go unnoticed.She knew who I was, that freedom meant more to me than my life but she told me she had heard the wind whisper my secrets.“At first I told myself this wasn’t possible but then I realized that when she said that, she was referring to the fact that she could read my mind.”Celestine gasped, and jerked away.“What do you mean?”“Just that.She could read your thoughts, my thoughts, Leuric’s thoughts.Each person she came into contact with, she knew what they wished for the most.For example, she knew your dearest wish was to make love to a man who understood your needs and would treat you gently.She understood my wish to stay hidden so I would remain free until I could avenge my parents’ death.So she persuaded me that if I didn’t want her to go to the sheriff with who I really was, then I had to make sure to meet you.”“How can this be going so wrong?” Celestine murmured.“What do you mean?”Kerrich extended his hand but she brushed it away.She felt a blush blossoming on her cheeks.He didn’t love her after all.This was all an act.“You were forced to make love to me,” she whispered, tears forming in her eyes.“It’s not something you would have done of your own free will.”“No, that’s not true.”Celestine couldn’t take any more.As the tears spilled down her cheeks, she stumbled towards the castle.She thought she had fallen in love with this man who knew how to make her body respond to his hands.It was all a farce.Nothing but a joke and she was the brunt of it.Chapter FifteenKerrich didn’t know what to think as the woman he had fallen in love with ran from him.He drew in a deep breath and hung his head.It was too much to expect his life to turn around for the better.He was a free man now since Leuric’s treachery had been exposed but what did freedom mean without Celestine?The small clearing he stood in, abruptly became a maelstrom of men shouting orders and armor clanging.Kerrich found himself being held by two strongly built men.As if out of a nightmare, Leuric faced him, his tiny eyes points of madness.“By the time I’m finished with you,” he said his voice icy cold, “you will wish you had never been spewn forth into this world [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]