Master of the Shadows by Lynn Viehl Page A

“Is there something going on in there?”
    “Nothing to concern us.” Will guided her away from the office and into the short hall beyond it, where he deliberately shed some scent. When her pupils expanded, he said, “Leave the gallery and return to your home. Think no more of this night.” He glanced at her vivid locks. “And please stop putting that color in your hair.”
    “Leave. Forget. Color.” She nodded vaguely and wandered off toward the front entrance.
    Will resumed his listening post in time to hear Chris say, “Someone is going to come looking for me any minute.”
    “Let them try.”
    “Robin.” Garments rustled. “Please stop.”
    His master’s next words came as tentative as the hurt coloring them. “Did it truly mean nothing to you?”
    “Maybe it started out that way,” Chris told him, “but when I woke up and saw you sleeping next to me, and remembered…I didn’t know I would feel like that.” She hesitated before she added, “I didn’t even think about you, not really. I got dressed as fast as I could, and I ran.”
    Will understood her actions then. She hadn’t used Robin and left him. She’d fallen in love with him, and run.
    “You can’t regret being with me,” his master said, sounding appalled. “Not how we were together.” When the woman didn’t answer him, he said, “Chris.”
    “No. No, I don’t.”
    Her voice went too low for Will to hear as she murmured to his master, but he felt a wave of relief. Now that she had explained, surely it would dispel Rob’s anger.
    “If that is true,” Robin said, “why did you run away?”
    “Haven’t you ever done something amazing and dangerous and exciting,” she asked him, “that you later wished you’d never done at all? Because you know it could change everything you have, everything you are?”
    Reese , Will thought, awash in his own regret. If he had let her go two months ago, when he had first sensed that their affair might be coming to its conclusion, she might now be happy. Was that it? Had he held on to her too long?
    “So you ran away because you wanted more.” Robin uttered a bitter laugh. “Yes, actually, I have done that myself. I believe this is where my severely bruised pride takes a tumble.”
    “It’s not you. It’s me. My life. My choices.” Chris sounded better now, more sure of herself. “I am glad you understand. I’ll never forget you, or the night we spent together.”
    The bluntness of her rejection made Will rub his eyes.
    “Before you send me on my way,” Robin told her, “and go back to living your life as it was, there is something else I want you to remember.”
    The sounds of their embrace compelled Will to reach for the knob again, until another idea occurred to him. As angry as he was, Robin would not disgrace himself in front of his old friend. Will looked across the gallery for the contessa, but she no longer stood by the book. Frowning, he walked away from the office and turned, searching the crowd for her.
    A painfully loud screech shattered the air, and icy water showered down over Will, drenching him. As the patrons screamed, his head snapped up to see the streams of water spraying from the overhead metal spout in the ceiling. He blocked the spray from his face with his hand and noticed that every other ceiling spout had activated, and then he felt an icy sensation pass over him.
    Across the room, glass shattered.
    Frost bloomed over his sodden garments as the cold sank deep and burned against his flesh. Then he couldn’t feel his hand, and looked up to see it encased in a spray-shaped sheath of ice. At the same time, the streams of water pouring down instantly froze all around him, crackling as they formed thick bars. The same happened around the gallery, until every one of the patrons had been trapped in a frozen cage.
    Only one Kyn had the talent to turn water to ice in a heartbeat—his master’s oldest enemy, Guy of Guisbourne.
    Will wrenched his hand free of the