Free 02 - The Barbed Rose by Gail Dayton

when the marked one wasn’t with us when he was marked. Like you. It didn’t happen with Aisse and Torchay at all.” Kallista lifted her head again, and when the dizziness remained at bay, she sat up, resting her head against Joh’s shoulder in case it returned.
    Joh cleared his throat. “Never everyone at once?”
    She took a deep breath. “You smell good. They didn’t bring us scented soap.”
    “Doubtless because I had more odors to scrub away and disguise.” The smile was audible in his voice.
    “At the weddings,” she said, finally answering his question. “When we all took hands at the end, something like that happened, but not so…intense.”
    “Ah.”
    “And of course, we were all there together and holding hands. That was before Torchay and Aisse were marked, of course, which could be the difference. That they weren’t part of the magic then. But I think it happened this time because my magic has been asleep for so long. When your mark woke it, I think it needed to—to make sure we were all still together. All still bound.”
    “What happens next?” Joh asked.
    “I get the key to those shackles of yours.” Still tying up his trouser laces, Torchay came out of the far right-hand bedroom, the one he’d briefly shared with Kallista when they were here before.
    Joh tensed when the red-haired bodyguard spoke, but the sergeant strode past them, paying more attention to his pants than to his naitan snuggled in the lap of the man who had almost killed her.
    “What is he doing?” Joh did not understand.
    “Getting the key.” The captain rolled her head off his shoulder. “Look at me. Let me see your eyes. Are you all right?”
    “Quite well.” Obedient to her word, Joh looked at her, let her search his eyes with her lightning-bright gaze. “Other than feeling I’ve been beaten with washing paddles, wrung out and hung to dry.”
    She snuggled in again, her hair soft and damp on his shoulder. Why? He had no right to questions, had no right to anything, but his mind buzzed with them. Joh tipped his head back in the chair and closed his eyes, trying to calm the buzz. It didn’t work. The captain’s presence distracted him, kept the questions coming, kept his mind twirling with a thousand contradictory thoughts.
    “I don’t understand.” Joh’s words slipped out through clenched teeth. He couldn’t hold them back. “Why has Sergeant Omvir left you alone with me? Why am I still alive? I almost killed you, for the One’s sake.”
    “If She forgave you, how can we do less?” Then Kallista shook her head, her dark hair sliding across his skin in a damp caress. “But it’s not that, Joh, not truly. It’s more. We know you now. We know .”
    Something ran icy fingers down his spine where it pressed against the warm velvet of the chair. West magic was as much a gift from the One as East healing. He knew that. He believed it. Now, after his long study and thought in prison, even more after what just happened. But it still unnerved him when he saw it in action.
    “We were all together in the magic.” The captain was still speaking. It was getting difficult to think of her as the captain , with her half-lying in his lap like this and him wearing little beside chains and a smile, especially since the magic. But he had no right to think anything at all.
    “I know you now, Joh,” she went on. “ They know you. And you know us. There’s no room for lies in the magic.”
    He felt her face move against his skin and thought she might have smiled as she spoke again. “There is room for misunderstandings. Great, big, stinking enormous ones. But we do know for certain that you mean us no harm—and never did. And now, you’re bound to us so tight that no one will be able to take advantage of—of any confusion.”
    “No.” The guard lieutenant’s voice rang through the chamber with such force, Joh flinched in spite of himself. Lieutenant Tylle had regulations written on her spine and nothing but