The clouds faded from her blue eyes as she stood, and she sighed. “It seems clear.” She made to swing herself down the ladder.

Raed caught her elbow, so that her movement turned her around to face him. “I need to know one thing: why exactly are you doing this?”

Her lips crooked in a wry smile. “You saved my life, Captain Rossin, and I believe in repaying all debts.”

Raed knew he was playing with fire, but he said it anyway. “Are you sure that there isn’t any other reason?” His raised eyebrow and broad grin were deliberately goading.

Sorcha favored him with a long look and then sighed. “You do enjoy testing my patience, Captain Rossin. Now, let us go.” She clambered down into the cool tunnel.

He joined her below, and the Brother dropped the hatch above them with a loud clang. Now it was just the two of them, standing in a rough hewn stone chamber lit only by the flickering light. It was cold and slightly damp.

Sorcha handed the lantern to him. “If I am here to protect you, then you’d better carry this.”

And the woman accused him of trying to irritate her. Raed snorted, but took their illumination into his care.

“How long do you think this tunnel is?” he asked, suddenly aware that he’d spent a long time avoiding dry land. Now here he was, surrounded by it.

“Not frightened of enclosed spaces, are you?” Sorcha asked, pulling her dark blue cloak tighter about her against the cold. “If you become hysterical, I may have to slap you.” It was hard to tell if she was serious or not.

“I think you would like that,” he whispered to himself as she peered down the tunnel once more, her clouded eyes indicating the use of her Center.

Sorcha did not laugh. “Considering your . . . problem, I shall go first.” Her voice bounced commandingly off the walls.

Aachon was the only person whom Raed was used to having keep an eye on him, and even that rankled. Still, it was impossible to argue with logic. With a mocking bow, he swept his arm before him. “By all means, my lady.”

She brushed past him in the narrow confines, the faintest scent of jasmine tickling his senses. Did Deacons wear perfume, or was it his own tormented imagination? He’d been a long time at sea, after all.

The tunnel was very tight, and at certain points it ran with water. Raed and Sorcha had to bend low in several portions, and gained a few bruises at tight bends. “Whoever this was built for, was obviously not a tall man,” the Pretender commented with a wince after knocking his head on the ceiling.

“Don’t worry. I can give you a kick if you get stuck,” Sorcha quipped, glancing over her shoulder. In the glow of the lantern he could tell she was definitely smiling.

He’d not expected a Deacon to be so witty, so prickly, or so pretty, and he was very glad Sorcha Faris was not much of a Sensitive. He would not have liked her to know that he was watching the fiery glint in her hair, or the sway of her hips ahead.

She’d mentioned to one of the crew and gossip had brought it to his ears: she had a husband. Thinking disreputable thoughts of a happily wed Deacon . . . That was a complication he did not need. One curse was more than enough for him.

Raed was so busy contemplating that he almost stepped on Sorcha. The Deacon had stopped suddenly, and his heart began to race; luckily, it had nothing to do with the closeness of the lovely woman. They had come to a slightly wider portion of the tunnel. They were actually standing side by side and perfectly straight. Raed’s back appreciated that last bit.

“Do you think there are rats in this tunnel?” she asked, taking the lantern from him and swinging it around. As Sorcha turned her head back the way they came, her eyes were as milky as cataracts. This, combined with the weird tilt to her head, poured ice down his spine.

“Why?” he asked, his mouth dry as drought.

She raised a finger to her lips. “I hear scampering,” she whispered after a moment.

“And do . . .” He cleared his throat. “Do the unliving scamper?”

The film on her eyes cleared, until they were that clear blue that he’d first been struck by. Her little laugh eased the clenching feeling in his stomach. “Generally, no. They tend not to have any feet. I do believe, however, that we are about to have some company.”

Raed stood stock-still, and now he could hear them tumbling nearer; a wave of chattering rodents pouring down from the direction of the Priory. He saw Sorcha slam her eyes and mouth shut before bracing herself against the wall, so he did the same. The bodies streamed about them, squeezing past and over the motionless humans. Certainly the sensation was shudder-inducing, and the flow of bodies was horrifying, but it was over quickly. The feeling of furry bodies sliding over him would give his nightmares plenty of ammunition, yet none had even paused to bite him.

Finally, when they had passed, Raed shook himself. “Well, that was unpleasant.”

“Not just unpleasant,” Sorcha whispered. “Confusing. Why would—”

They both felt it, an unsettling breath of cold air pouring down on them from the same direction as the rats. The Deacon’s eyes were once again covered and white. “Not unliving . . .” she assured him. “Just water. They must be flushing something up there—explains the rats.”

She might have just thought it was sewage, but Raed knew otherwise; not because he could See as she could, but because he could feel it in his bones. The water was from deep in the earth, ice-cold and shocking when it smashed into them. If that had been all it was, Raed would have been delighted. But something lived in that water, something geist that stirred what lived in him.

The Curse was uncoiling itself from his core, wrapping its dark tentacles through bone, blood and flesh. Light flared in the back of his brain, blinding him for an instant. His worst fears were being realized and yet he managed a gasp from his tormented throat. “Run Sorcha—run now.”

Then his body was drowning under the Curse. It sucked away logic and control, and yet Raed clawed desperately at it, trying to at least slow the Change so that the Deacon could escape. Trapped in the tunnel with the Rossin, she would have no chance. Swinging his head around felt like a monumental task, and he was horrified to realize that she was still there. She’d put the lantern into a niche and was shoving on her Gauntlets. The Order had tried once to tame the Rossin, and those deaths were still deeply etched into his conscience. However, his human voice was gone, so his attempt at a shout came out as a primal howl. He managed to get his Changing body to turn and run a little. In his heart he knew he wouldn’t get far, and sure enough, after a few staggering steps he collapsed. The Change was now wrapped all around him.

That was the worst of it: he was well aware and conscious, trapped in the body of the growing animal. Primitive function took over, and he could only watch in disgust as he was wracked by the demands of the shift.

It should have been painful; muscle and sinew dancing into new forms, skin rippling as fur punctured it from within. However, the Change felt very, very good; shamefully good. The ripple of his own Changing flesh was as sensual as any feeling he’d had in bed with a woman. The howl from the Rossin’s mouth was not one of pain.

The clothes on his back ripped and the lacings on his boots snapped and broke apart as Raed’s form doubled in size. His body gained the bulk of the Beast while hands became paws and his head twisted into a jaguarlike snarl. The Rossin’s earth form, the great cat with patterned fur and long mane; he’d seen it as a young boy, painted on the ceiling of his bedroom. It was a beautiful thing. It was also a thing that the artist had never seen, only read of.

The Rossin was indeed a great patterned cat, but what a painter could never capture, what no one understood, was the hunger. The flame of it burned so deep in Raed that it consumed all. The Rossin had to feed, had to live on the blood and fear of others.

In this tight corridor, there was only one person that the hungering Beast could feed on. With a snarl, the Rossin turned and crept toward where Sorcha still stood. The closeness of the corridor meant that its shoulders were constricted slightly, but in the wider portion of the passage it could still pounce upon her.

Through the golden eyes of the beast, the Deacon burned like warm embers just stirring to flame. While it would take many normal humans to sate the urges of the Rossin, a Deacon would drown them for a while. Raed, buried deep within, tried to halt the great cat’s advances on her, but it was like trying to claw his way out of a sand trap. The Rossin had him, and now it would have her too. He could only watch. In these close confines and against the Beast, her sword would be nigh on useless. Even gunshot had no effect on the creature. She had to know that.

The Rossin liked fear—that too fed it—but there was little of that coming from the woman. As a Deacon, she must have seen many horrors, so the great cat stalking toward her couldn’t have been the most dreadful. However, unlike a geist, the cursed Rossin was more than capable of ripping her body apart to feast on the fire within.

“Hello, kitty.” Sorcha was actually taunting the creature a little, but green light was dancing on her Gauntlets, throwing her features into eerie angles.

The Rossin snarled, making the tunnel shake with its rage. It did the taunting, not any foolish mortal. Raed screamed inside, but the Beast was utterly in control now. He could feel the muscles of its great legs bunching. Sorcha was going to be shredded and he could do nothing about it but watch in horror. The feeding would be the worst bit, the sensual joy of it that he would be unable to avoid. Raed remembered everything from the previous nightmare, when it had been his mother beneath the beast’s claws.

No need for stealth in this corridor. The Rossin snarled again and leapt at her. Claws skittered and found marginal purchase on the steel and leather of her armor, but the weight of the Rossin bore her backward. Tumbling onto the ground, the Beast tightened its grip on Sorcha and lunged toward her throat.

The Deacon was strong. She managed to hold the Rossin off with one hand, though her angry cursing belied the ease of it. The beast pressed harder, snarling and snapping, eager to taste her blood.

Sorcha brought up her other Gauntlet, still streaming eerie green light that almost burned the Rossin’s eyes. The great cat flinched, caught in midsnarl, and the Deacon thrust her hand, Gauntleted power and all, into its throat. Raed heard the Deacon grunt, “Enjoy the taste of Shayst, kitty cat.”

The pain was immediate and exquisite. Green fire bloomed in the snapping jaws of the Rossin. Sorcha was screaming, and her cries mingled with the howls of the Beast. Raed felt what the great cat did; a pulling sensation as if his soul were being sucked away from him. Surely his body couldn’t take that much pain.

Something snapped and broke—something had to. The Rossin struggled, but the power it lived on was being yanked away from it into the Void that the Deacon controlled. As swiftly as it had come, the Beast disappeared.

The abruptness of it left Raed gasping, awash in the emotions of the Rossin: rage and anger. It had to have an outlet, and with Sorcha still pinned to the ground beneath him, he shook her hard and screamed in frustration.

“Holy Bones,” she swore and slapped him hard. “Get a grip on yourself!”

His head rang with pain and his blood still raced with the power of the Rossin. Beneath him, Sorcha was gasping in shock as well, her armor clawed and marked.

She jerked upward just as Raed bent. Their kiss was rough and hungry, more a struggle than a display of affection. Brutal desires still swirled in the Pretender, mixing with his own barely contained lusts. Raed heard Sorcha moan, just as the tingle in his body subsided from anger to something else just as primitive.

They struggled on the floor of the tunnel, a tussle rather than an embrace. Her lips were soft and hot on his—it had been a long time since he had kissed anyone like that. Yet it was Raed who pulled back. The Rossin had always ruled him, and he wouldn’t let it take him down a path that he hadn’t chosen for himself, as enjoyable as it might be.

With a shuddering breath, he scrambled backward, suddenly aware that he was completely naked. In the flickering light Sorcha’s eyes were wide and feral, just as he imagined his own were. She licked her lips and he could see her heartbeat racing in the corner of her neck. His eyes couldn’t seem to stop watching that.

The Deacon cleared her throat, then unhooked her dripping cloak to hand it to him. “Put—put this on.”

It was very cold down here—Raed remembered that—yet his body was burning from the flood of the Change and from something else closely linked: desire. The cloak, wet as it was, would help cool him. He put it on, unable to look directly at her. She wasn’t going to mention what had just happened—she was just going to ignore it. That was what he would do, as well.

“I see Merrick was wrong,” he muttered, trying to reclaim his dignity. “You didn’t spot that geist at all.”

A frown darkened her brow. “I am not sure that was even a geist . . .”

That made him snap. He held up hands that had only just reverted back from claws. “Not sure! Not sure . . . Well, I can tell you that I am!”

Sorcha shook her head, looking more confused than he’d ever known a Deacon to be. “I need to talk with Merrick.”

“We’re not going back,” he growled, turning and stalking away down the tunnel. Stooping, he picked up the remains of his clothes. Everything was destroyed. “By the Blood, this was my favorite shirt.”

“The boots are still usable,” Sorcha pointed out. “I have some spare lacings. Put them on so at least you won’t be hobbling.”

He frowned. The Deacon’s tone was almost gentle. He wondered if it was guilt or desire that moderated it. Nevertheless, he was surprised when she dropped to one knee and laced up his boots for him. Surely that was to save his modesty—the cloak was not offering that much to protect it—but he felt another rush of warmth travel his spine.

As she worked on getting his boots secure, Raed cleared his throat. “No one has ever managed to dismiss the Rossin. How did you do it, exactly?”

Sorcha glanced up. “It was Shayst, the rune of drawing, usually used against geists to take away their power.”

“There was a Deacon who tried that rune before.” Raed clenched his teeth shut, lest he tell her how that had ended.

It would have been in the textbooks, however. From the way Sorcha nodded, but did not look up at him, she probably knew. “I would hazard he wasn’t quite close enough.”

Raed let out a muffled laugh, but the image that flashed into his head of exactly how close they had just been made him deeply aware of her nearness now.

“There you are.” Sorcha patted his foot, and it must have been his imagination that her hand lingered there a moment. He would much rather have had her slide her hand up his leg . . .

Those thoughts were dangerous and foolish. The Pretender cleared his throat. “Thank you. It will make the going that much easier.”

Rising to her feet, Sorcha wrung out her damp hair and examined the deep scores in her armor. “It was certainly interesting to see the Rossin close up; I studied the Beast as a novice. Quite something to tell them about in the Abbey.”

“But can you explain what just happened?” Raed clenched the damp cloak around him. “Aulis is, after all, the only one who knows we are down here . . .”

Her face clouded over, those blue eyes seeming almost capable of shooting him dead where he stood. “I don’t like your implication, Pretender. The Order is under attack; that much is obvious. Now, do you want to save your crew, or shall we continue arguing?”

Standing in a wet cloak, with nothing but a pair of boots on, he was hardly in a position to break into an argument with the Deacon, especially with the frisson of desire still tugging away on him. He gave a small bow. “By all means, let’s get on.”

The rest of their progress through the tunnel was thankfully both uneventful and silent. The initial warmth from the Change wore off very quickly, and Raed was soon shivering underneath the cloak. When they emerged in the hills just to the south of the town, his teeth were actually chattering. A strong wind was gusting from the sea.

Sorcha glanced across at him, and while her expression was hard to read in the moonlight, he guessed she was smiling. “Not enough clothing for you, Pretender? Would you like some more of mine?”

One comment was enough to send a jolt of physical reaction through him. Raed drew the cloak closer around him. It was one thing to have the Deacon at a disadvantage, as he’d had when she’d been plucked from the sea. It was another altogether to be on the receiving end of it. “I’ll be fine,” he replied stiffly.

“Don’t be an idiot.” She jerked her head toward the faint lights of the town. “We still have a long walk to go. You’ll be frozen solid before we get there.”

“What do you suggest?” Now his limbs were trembling with the cold.

Before he knew it, she’d found a little cave a few yards away. Settling him there, she strode off, and returned a few minutes later with arms full of both dry wood and fresh fernery. While he sat silently, feeling utterly miserable, she built a fire. He found that most interesting, since they had no tinder. He’d always imagined the Deacons using their runes only for things of great importance, but she used her Gauntlets without any fanfare. “Pyet,” she whispered. A fingerling of flame leapt out to catch the dried wood. To extinguish the flame she simply clenched her fists around the Gauntlets before taking them off.

Then she built a bed of the fresh greenery, and held out her hand. “Give me the cloak and I’ll dry it.”

Her tone was anything but erotic, yet Raed felt curiously reluctant to give it back to her. She rolled her eyes. “Your virtue is safe with me, pirate Prince, but a night in that wet clothing and your ship will need a new captain.”

The smirk on her face said she knew she was right, and the worst thing was that he knew it as well. With as much dignity as he could muster, Raed handed her the cloak, and hoped his body wouldn’t betray him. He quickly did as she bid, and lay down close to the fire. Carefully, she covered him with more of the ferns.

Then he gulped, because she was taking her own advice. A better man would have looked away, but Raed was unable to. Sorcha used a framework of sticks to hang her cloak close to the fire, and then she too stripped off her clothes. Raed swallowed hard as she unbuckled her armor. Then Sorcha peeled off her sodden underclothes, and draped them over the sticks to dry along with the cloak.

He was going to say something about being suddenly grateful to the Rossin, but as she shook out her hair and revealed her nakedness, all without the slightest sign of embarrassment, his mouth went dry. Her body would not have been proper in the court of Felstaad or probably the Empire, with scars and muscles that spoke of a hard life, but it was certainly beautiful. He was entranced by the flicker of the firelight over the soft curves and harder planes of her form.

Padding over to where Raed lay curled in the greenery, Sorcha dropped her Gauntlets to the ground nearby and slipped in behind him under the ferns. Raed felt his body spring to life at the press of her against him. The sharp line of her hip and the soft swell of her breast made him draw a ragged breath.

“By the Ancients,” he whispered, completely unsure what to do or what the protocol of having a nude member of the Order right next to him was. What was the Deacon thinking? Should he turn around and kiss her or would she blast him into charcoal? All these thoughts raced through his mind as his body screamed in favor of action. Against his back, he could feel that she was tense too.

“It won’t take long for our clothes to dry,” she whispered, her tone uncomfortable. “As soon as they are, we can get going.” The way her breath tickled the back of his neck was incredible torture. If it had been any other woman, he would have rolled over and let those chips fall where they might. But this was a Deacon, a married Deacon, and one that he was relying on to keep the Rossin from taking hold. It was taking every ounce of his willpower not to turn around. The world narrowed down to simple and torturous sensations: the smell of her skin and the feeling of her breasts pressed into the small of his back. Raed let out a long breath as every muscle in his body clenched. He tried to keep the memory of the Rossin and the Change in his head, tried to drive away the surging blood he could feel everywhere.

It seemed, however, that the same could not be said of Sorcha. After a minute, he was able to tell by her breathing that she’d actually fallen asleep. His male ego was more than a little pricked by that. It had been a long while since he’d had a naked woman anywhere near him. Raed was sure that she had kissed him back in their tussle in the tunnel.

With a groan, Raed curled tighter. He really shouldn’t have recalled that memory. The next hour or so was spent miserably as he suffered the tides of desire. Just when he thought he had conquered his body and mind, Sorcha would murmur in her sleep and brush differently against him.

Finally, some sort of internal clock must have gone off, because she got up and stretched. When she dressed, she was thankfully quick. “Nice and dry,” Sorcha said, tossing her cloak to Raed. “Now, let’s get down this hill and find that reprobate crew of yours.”

Every supposition that the Pretender had about Deacons had been blown out of the water. He’d had only one miserable experience with one to go on, of course; yet he’d always imagined they lived staid, boring lives; ascetics who only studied and never actually experienced life. When Sorcha had told him that there was nothing they couldn’t do, apparently she hadn’t been joking.