Love

As soon as Darken laid hands on her, Kahlan spun into action, teeth bared in a snarl, though her eyes were still empty. She drew one of her daggers, twisting Darken's arm behind his back and placing the steel at his throat in one swift movement. He tilted his head back to keep his skin from the blade, surprised at her unnatural speed and strength.

"Tyrn moves through her!" Jarl crowed, face bright with mad zealotry. "I prayed and he has answered me!"

The monk stood, bald head sweating, face purple.

Cara's lip curled in a scowl to match the growls coming from the Fenrisulfr, her Agiels leaping into her hands.

"If any of them move, slit his throat!" Jarl called to Kahlan. She nodded, moving the blade closer to Darken's jugular.

The breath of life could not restore someone with a damaged throat.

"You're a monster," Jennsen spat, her bloody face a testament to the insane hypocrisy of the man.

"No," he said softly, eyes frighteningly earnest, "I am right."

Kahlan began to drag Darken from their circle, taking him to Jarl. Darken could call fire, could cover his skin with it, could bring lightning down on them both and he would remained unharmed.

He watched his brother's anguished face, Cara's calculating stare, and he couldn't do it.

He couldn't deprive Richard of Kahlan.

He locked eyes with Cara, overtaken with an ominous feeling that something monumental was about to happen, a deep foreboding that made him cling to the sight of her. She stood proud, fierce in her red leather, her blond hair flying around her face.

She filled his heart. If he ever lost her…

He could not do that to Richard.

Cara watched the first woman outside the Sisterhood she had ever called friend threaten the life of her child's father. Time seemed to stop, darkness became light, and she knew what to do.

She would save them both.

She signaled Haden with a small twitch of her fingers, glancing at her out of the corner of her eye. The Mord'Sith tilted her chin down, a minute movement.

She understood.

As one they lunged, Haden's Agiel digging into Kahlan's back as Cara slid around Darken to strike the Confessor in the temple with the butt of her Agiel.

Kahlan screamed, releasing Darken as her veins burned with torture magic. She opened her eyes.

And they were clear.

Haden removed her Agiel.

Kahlan's eyes clouded again then swirled black as she spun, her white sleeves flowing around her. She grasped Haden's face, deaf to the cry of "No!" that burst from Jennsen's lips.

Then she was screaming again, convulsing as another Agiel was forced against her skin, this time by Darken.

"Step back, she can't confess me!"

Jennsen held Richard's arm with all her might, becoming a dead weight hanging from his side to keep him from knocking Darken to the ground.

Cara advanced on the cowering Jarl, sweeping a vicious kick across his chest then cracking her Agiel across his jaw. "Fix her!" she demanded.

He laughed, loudly. Obnoxiously.

Deliberately.

She struck him again, crunching bone and grinding cartilage.

He held his hand to the bright red stream that poured from his nose, his laughter edged with pain, tears streaming from his eyes.

Behind her the struggle continued, Darken forcing Kahlan to her knees, the Agiel against her neck.

"Stop it; you'll kill her!" Richard was a mad creature, not to be reasoned with. He could see only Kahlan.

"We are in the company of Mord'Sith, brother," Darken observed in an attempt to be soothing.

"No!" Richard shook Jennsen off, not noticing how hard she hit the ground, rushing forward to seize the Agiel that Darken held.

Cara kicked Jarl again, a cacophony of screaming Agiels piercing the air as she drove one of hers into his ear.

Once the Agiel left her skin, Kahlan's eyes clouded into the glazed mask of the bewitched. Her hands shot out, gripping both brothers by the throat.

"She can't confess you," Richard said, wrenching the Agiel from Darken's hands.

"But she can confess you!" Darken protested, voice a guttural growl.

Kahlan's eyes swirled black. Darken clipped her under the chin with a sharp jab of his elbow, forcing her away from his brother.

She fell back, dazed, but then came at them again. Darken wrapped his fingers around Richard's hand, the hand that held his Agiel, and drove it up into the Mother Confessor's heart.

The magic spread in a web across her chest, her lips open in a silent wail. She focused on Richard, falling to her knees, the Agiel still held against her breast by both brothers.

Voice a crack, so low that they almost couldn't hear her, she gasped, "Richard?"

"Kahlan!" he exclaimed, tears gathering in his eyes as he tried to pull the Agiel away.

"N-no…" she trailed off, hands coming up to clasp the screeching weapon to her skin.

"Kahlan, I love you."

She didn't answer, her lips beginning to turn blue as the Agiel's magic crawled up her neck.

She muttered something.

"Kahlan?" Richard asked.

Her world narrowed to one point. All that existed was Richard. She wanted to stay with him. To serve him. To guide him.

Always.

Even if that meant trusting his brother.

Quietly, haltingly, she pledged her fidelity to the House of Rahl.

"Masters Rahl, guide me. Masters Rahl, p-protect me."

Jarl stopped laughing.

"Fiend!" he hissed, realizing that the soul-stealing woman must have gleaned some things from the mind that controlled her.

Kahlan finished her oath just before her heart gave out, shoving the Agiel away from her flesh as she took in painful gulps of air.

Her eyes remained clear.

Richard cradled her to his chest, wiping sweaty hair away from her forehead.

"The oath… I heard them in my head," she explained, "it protects."

Richard laughed, then cried, a hiccupping mass of hysterics, clutching Kahlan as if he would never let her go.

Darken stood, sheathing his Agiel. He watched the two together, but refrained from commenting.

Haden and Jennsen advanced on the bloody Jarl, Haden silently cataloging Jennsen's wounds.

She would be sure to revisit all of them on the man who had caused them.

"Lord Rahl," Haden's voice echoed flatly through the clearing, "what shall we do with him?"

It wasn't Darken's voice, but Richard's that ordered, "Kill him."

Haden looked to Darken, who nodded.

Cara stepped aside, sensing Haden's need for vengeance. She had already taken her pound of flesh. She would be satisfied to watch his death dealt by another.

"You don't have to watch, Sparrow," Haden said.

Jennsen smiled grimly, her various bruises and scabs making her resemble a goblin.

"Yes," she said, "I do."

Her eyes burned.

Haden nodded, then slammed her fist into the side of Jarl's head without warning, giving him a bruise to match the one that Jennsen wore.

Jarl shook his head, his mad laughter starting again as he fought to keep from screaming.

"You call me a monster, you stupid woman!" He slathered at Jennsen, bloody spittle flying from his lips, "Look around you. You are the monsters!"

Haden slapped him.

Hard.

"We've all killed. It's a war," Kahlan said from Richard's arms, her voice a faint whisper.

"But have you killed children? Hmm? How many of you have hurt a child?"

Haden drove her heavy red boot into his sternum, knocking the air from his lungs. He gasped and flopped like a fish.

"Stop playing with him, Haden," Darken ordered, all of the hairs on the back of his neck standing at attention, his internal sense screaming that the monk could not be allowed to continue.

Cara clenched her teeth, a hand on her belly. How many girls had she shaped into Mord'Sith? How many had she eliminated for not being strong enough?

"You risked so much to save him. You're Mistress Cara, aren't you?" Jarl asked once he had caught his wind.

"Silence him, Haden," Darken demanded, crackles of electricity sparking over his skin and frizzing his hair as he was overcome with a feeling of dread. "I grow impatient."

"Do you know what he did, Mistress Cara?" Jarl continued in a stage whisper. "Do you know who killed your son?"

For a moment Cara panicked, thinking Jarl somehow knew of and had harmed the child she carried. But then her mind cleared. She brought her fingers up to caress the bones at her throat, the amulet that was all she had left of her Nicholas.

"Who?" she asked, her voice strong and clear.

"His father," was the hissed answer, delivered with an evil smile. It was the look of a cornered creature, a man who knew he was causing pain and enjoyed it, a twisted mask of bitter rage.

An evil wraith.

Cara felt sick. Lightheaded. Nauseous. Emotionless.

She felt nothing.

"Is it true?" she asked.

No one answered.

"Is it true?" came a hoarse scream.

She realized it was her voice when her Agiels began to whine, though she had sheathed them.

Kahlan remembered hearing of Richard's suspicions while lost in her waking nightmare. She believed it. Darken Rahl had proved himself to be ruthless over and over again. He had ordered the slaughter at Brennidon, the genocide of the Confessors, the burning of the Forest of the Night Wisps.

And he had saved the world, and her life. He made Cara happy. His bloodline protected those who swore to them from the mind magic that had imprisoned her.

She looked into his eyes.

Darken was plummeting, spinning out of control. A rush of wind sounded in his ears. Cara could not leave him. He would not let her leave him.

It was more than possession, more than loneliness. It was more than a body breathing next to his in the dark. It was more than oaths, more than debt, greater than fear.

It was a yawning hole inside of him that he had been trying to fill for his entire life.

His throat constricted and he couldn't clear it. His eyes burned and he couldn't blink.

He couldn't find his center.

He loved her.

So simple. So difficult.

How had it eluded him so long?

He loved her.

The Mother Confessor peered into the soul of the man she had been raised to hate, raised to kill.

And saw true remorse.

She looked at Jarl.

"He's lying."