"Exactly."
He sat close to me, going up on his knees, but he spoke to my reflection not directly to me. "But that is a very specific ritual. You can't invoke mortality by accident."
"The ritual for a duel binds the two participants together in mortal combat. Among the Unseelie sidhe they share blood before they fight."
His eyes went wider still, until they were like two huge pools of darkness. "When they drank your blood, they shared your mortality."
"Yes."
"Did they know that?"
I smiled then. I couldn't help it. "Not until Arzhul died with my dagger sticking out of him."
"You must have put up a hard battle for him to try and change your form. It's a major spell for the sidhe. If he didn't fear death, then you must have hurt him badly."
I shook my head. "He was showing off. It wasn't enough that he meant to kill me. He wanted to humiliate me first. For one sidhe to force a shapeshift on another is proof that they are the more powerful magician."
"So he was showing off," Roane said. It was the closest he would probably get to asking what happened next.
"I stabbed him, just hoping to distract him, but my father always told me never to waste a strike. Even if you know you face an immortal, strike as if they could die because deathblows hurt more, even if they won't kill."
"Did you kill the one who scarred you here?" His hand came from behind to trace my ribs.
"I shuddered at his touch, and not because it hurt. "No, Rozenwyn is still alive."
"Then why didn't she crush your heart?" His hands slid around my waist, holding me against his body, cradling me. I let myself rest in the curve of his arms, the solid warmth of his body.
"Because her duel was after Arzhul, and when I stabbed her, she panicked, I think. She called the duel won without making the kill."
He rubbed his cheek along mine, and we both watched the colors mingle as our skins touched. "It was the last duel then," he said.
"No," I said.
He kissed my cheek, very softly. "No."
"No, there was one more." I turned my face to him. His lips brushed moot quite a kiss.
"What happened?" He spoke the words in a warm breath against my mouth.
"Bleddyn had been one of the Seelie Court once, before he did something so awful that no one will speak of it, and he was cast out. But he was so powerful that the Unseelie Court took him in. His true name was lost, and he became Bleddyn. It means wolf or outlaw, or did once very long ago. It meant he was an outlaw even among the dark court."
Roane kissed the side of my neck where my pulse beat just under the skin. My pulse sped at that light touch. He raised his face enough to ask, "How was he an outlaw?" Then he began to kiss his way down my neck.
"He was subject to horrible rages for no reason. If he hadn't been surrounded by immortals, he'd have killed people, friends as well as enemies."
Roane's kisses had worked down to my shoulder, then my arm. He stopped just long enough to say, "just rages?" Then lowered his head and kissed until he found the bend in my arm. He lifted my arm so that he could lock his mouth around the fragile skin at the bend. He sucked sudden and sharp on the skin, teeth sinking into my arm enough to hurt, enough to make me gasp. Roane didn't care for pain, but he was an attentive lover, and he knew what I liked, as I knew what he liked. But I suddenly couldn't concentrate on what I was saying.
He raised his face from my arm, leaving a round, nearly perfect imprint of his small sharp teeth. He hadn't broken the skin. I'd never been able to persuade him to go that far, but the mark against my flesh pleased me, made me bend toward him.
He stopped me, asking, "Was it just rages, or were there other things that marked Bleddyn as dangerous?"
It took me a second to remember. I had to sit back from him. "If you want to hear the story, behave yourself."
He lay on his side, one arm flung underneath his head for a pillow. He stretched his body so that I had to notice the way the muscles moved under that gleaming skin. "I thought I was behaving myself."
I shook my head. "You'll make me forget myself, Roane. You don't want that."
"I want you tonight, Merry. I want all of you, no glamour, no hiding, no holding back." He sat up suddenly, peering so close to my face that I started to move back, but he grabbed my arm. "I want to be what you need tonight, Merry."