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An Excerpt From: PHANTOM OF THE WIND
 CHARLOTTE BOYETT-COMPO, 2006.
All Rights Reserved, Ellora's Cave, Inc.
“Graih my chree,” he said with just a touch of frustration.
Translated in his native Cengusian High Speech it meant love of my heart.
“Why won’t you listen to me, Quinn?” she asked.
“I am listening, Lhiannan,” he responded. “I hear
every word that comes out of your pretty little mouth.”
He always called her his Lhiannan, his sweet
lover, and when he spoke to her in his sensuous Cengusian brogue—not matter
what he said—she melted, all resistance gone. The only Cengusian she had
managed to master up until then was ta graih aym ort which meant I
love you. That phrase and the one that named him what he was—Scaan.
“The Burgon has offered amnesty and you took that. Why
won’t you take the amnesty offered by the Coalition?” she asked.
“Because the offer is bogus,” he answered. “The minute I
walk into Fleet Command, they’ll arrest my Cengusian ass and throw me to
the wolves on the High Council.” He tweaked her nose. “I’ve no desire to
have my neck stretched, Lhiannan. Thank you just the same.”
“You can’t know that, Quinn,” she grumbled.
“Donal Brell took them up on their offer and he and his
crew were arrested on the spot and thrown into prison within the hour,” he stated.
“That was a year ago and they’re still sitting in prison—where they’re
likely to be until the Gatherer swoops down to claim them.”
“Donal Brell and his men were murderers. They weren’t
just pirates,” she said. “They were rapists too if memory serves. If you’re
that concerned about the Coalition playing you false, contact King Gabriel
Leveche of Storia and get him to vouch for you. Or what about Prince Cair
Ghrian of Amhantar?” She flung out a hand. “Or better yet King Ruan Cosaint
of Gaelach. You’re all High Warriors in the WindWarrior Society and aren’t
you also in the Order of Taibhse with King Ruan?”
“Aye, wench, but I’ll not trade on my relationships with
such men,” he said with a deep frown.
“Why not? They’d help you,” she said, annoyed with the
whine in her voice.
“Aye, but at what cost?” he inquired. He shook his head.
“I won’t do it, Kenni. Just let it go. Besides, Leveche may be a friend,
but he has no love for pirates. I doubt he’d help me.”
“Merciful Morrigunia! You are an idiot!” Kendall threw
her hands up in the air and stalked off. Some days the man could be more
stubborn than a Diabolusian jackass and today was one of those days.
He jogged behind her then reached out to tug gently at
her long red gold braid. “You’ve got your dander up, haven’t you, Lhiannan?”
“You’re impossible, Rory Quinn,” she accused, jerking
her waist-length braid out of his hand and over her shoulder.
His midnight blue eyes twinkling, Quinn snaked an arm
around her waist and pulled her against him. “I can be, aye,” he agreed,
“but I’m lovable.”
“Not to me,” she groused. “Not at this particular
moment.” She tried to wriggle out of his hold, but he tightened his grip.
“Everything will work itself out, Lhiannan.
You’ll see.”
“I’ll see what?” she snapped. “You being hanged in the
Courtyard of the High Council?”
“Ain’t gonna to happen,” he replied.
She stopped and turned so she was facing him. She put
her hands to either side of his face and stared him in the eye, her own
dark green orbs flashing. “If you don’t strike for amnesty, they’ll
continue to hunt you until they bring you to ground, Quinn. Why can’t you
see that? You’ve made some very powerful enemies—”
“Like General Alphon Morrison,” he said on a long sigh.
“Aye! Morrison and half a dozen more influential members
of the Coalition. What if Morrison decides to send one of his Riezell
Guardians after you?”
“And you think he hasn’t already?” he countered.
Kendall’s eyes flared. “Quinn! Please tell me that was
you just being facetious.”
He just looked at her. “Don’t worry about it, Lhiannan.”
Kendall felt the tears springing up to cloud her vision.
She dropped her hands from his cheeks and laid them on his chest. “You’re
going to make me a widow before you ever make me your wife,” she
prophesied.
Quinn wrapped her in his arms, pressing her head to his
heart. “Will you please stop borrowing trouble, Kendall? I’m not a green
lad who’s never gone up against the powers of the Coalition before. I do
know what I’m about.”
She had taken leave from the med evac ship to which she
was assigned and had met him in the highlands of Aduaidh Prime, one of the
few places she knew he’d be safe. She held his life far dearer than did he.
She worried about him constantly and had since the day they’d met four
years earlier.
“Do you remember that day?” he asked.
Kendall sighed. She was accustomed to him reading her
mind. It was one of his remarkable abilities as a Scaan, but
sometimes it truly annoyed her.
“I remember it as if it were yesterday,” he said. “I
even remember what you were wearing.”
“You do not,” she muttered.
“It was a dark green gown with that strappy thing on one
shoulder while the other shoulder was bare. The strappy thing had sparkling
copper rhinestones along the edge and swooping across the neckline. Angled
down the skirt of the gown the gems had been sewn to resemble a dragonfly
in flight.” He snapped his fingers. “And there were gems on the hem of the
gown as well.”
“What kind of shoes was I wearing?” she asked.
“Copper-colored kid boots with very high heels,” he
replied.
She lifted her head and looked up at him, amazed he
remembered what she’d worn to the Burgon’s ball. “Earrings?”
“Green and copper-enameled dragonflies on little copper
chains that dangled down your neck,” he whispered, running the tip of his
index finger from the lobe of her ear to her shoulder, “and brushed your
collarbone.”
“And my hair?”
“Braided in one of those mind-altering creations that
are such a treat to unravel,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “You had
copper silk ribbons running through the braid and it was perched atop your
head so precariously I kept waiting for it to fall. I spent the entire
evening wanting to take the pins out of your hair and let that fiery red
gold hair hang free.”
“You spent the entire evening with the Burgon and his
friends,” she accused.
He put his lips to her ear. “I danced three dances with
you as I recall so I can’t have spent the entire evening with Ryden and his
friends.”
“You were this close,” she said, holding her thumb and
index finger close together, “to being called out by my escort.”
Quinn made a rude sound with his lips. “Your escort,” he
scoffed. “It would have given me great joy if that twerp had called me out,
but he wouldn’t have done that, Lhiannan. I hate to break it to you
but he had eyes for another lady there.”
Kendall sighed. “I know,” she said. “Every man was
ogling Chastain Cosaint. She’s too beautiful for the rest of us to compete
with.”
“She wasn’t the only beautiful woman in the room and I
wasn’t ogling her,” he denied. “I was ogling you.”
And he had been, she thought, as she felt his lips on
the side of her neck. His rapt attention had brought color to her cheeks.
No matter where he was in the room, no matter with whom he was
speaking—Burgon, king, prince or general—his gaze followed her every move.
“As I recall,” he said, running the tip of his tongue
across the hollow at the base of her throat, “I asked you to run away with
me that night.”
“That was just after I learned who you were,” she said.
“Damn Ruan Cosaint and his big mouth,” Quinn
complained. “He scared you away before I even had a chance to win your
heart.”
“King Ruan merely mentioned that you were a pirate and I
should be careful around you.” She grinned. “His lady wife told me that
pirates make the best lovers so I shouldn’t listen to her husband.”
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