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Key of Valor (Key Trilogy Series #3) by Nora Roberts
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(Mass Market Paperback)
- Pub. Date: December 2003
- 352pp
- Sales Rank: 17,989
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Product Details
- Pub. Date: December 2003
- Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
- Format: Mass Market Paperback, 352pp
- Sales Rank: 17,989
- Series: Key Trilogy Series, #3
- ISBN-13: 9780515136531
- ISBN: 0515136530
Synopsis
#1 New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts presents the stunning conclusion to the all-new trilogy of destiny and desire...
Join Zoe in the ultimate quest for courage.
Annotation
Zoe is about to discover her true courageous spirit. She must find the key of valor--on the last of three dangerous quests that will force her to confront her darkest fears ... or suffer immeasurable loss.
Publishers Weekly
This book concludes Roberts's Key Trilogy, in which mortal women quest to unlock the spellbound souls of ancient demigoddesses. The third and last woman to make the attempt is hairstylist Zoe McCourt. Like her friends Malory and Dana-heroines of the previous installments (Key of Light, Key of Knowledge)-Zoe has a single month and a cryptic set of clues with which to find her key. The angry sorcerer Kane fights her efforts as friends both mortal and immortal lend their support. As she searches, Zoe is courted by Bradley Vane IV, the sexy heir to a home improvement empire. She's not sure which is more difficult: accepting that she's magically linked with Brad or trying to quell her suspicions long enough to accept his love in the here and now. When she finds the courage to do both, the souls of all three goddesses are finally released. Smart but struggling single mom Zoe is an appealing heroine whose working-class grit finds a perfect foil in Brad's patrician confidence. Scenes involving her feisty son, Simon, temper the story's mysticism with humor, and the joining together of the trio as a family is genuinely moving. When it comes to combining sweetness, sexiness and the supernatural, Roberts proves once again that she is the most powerful spellbinder of all. (Jan.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
More Reviews and RecommendationsBiography
One of the most prolific and popular writers in the world, Nora Roberts (who also writes as her edgier alter-ego J. D. Robb) publishes multiple books a year. Not that it’s enough for her fans, who tear through her unconventional romances. With her trademark mix of fantasy, mystery, and romance, Roberts has created her own genre -- and romance fans are grateful for it!
More About the AuthorCustomer Reviews
- Reader Rating:
- Ratings: 68Reviews: 38
- See All Reviews
A Good read!by Aprile74
Reader Rating:
See Detailed Ratings
October 30, 2009: A Great way to end the series!
Great Trilogyby Anonymous
Reader Rating:
See Detailed Ratings
June 21, 2009: Great to escape from reality.
I Also Recommend: Circle Trilogy Boxed Set (Circle Trilogy Series), The Sign of Seven Trilogy Boxed Set, Nora Roberts Key Trilogy CD Collection.
Fact File
Name:
Nora Roberts
Also Known As:
J. D. Robb; Sarah Hardesty; Jill March; Eleanor Marie Robertson (birth name)
Current Home:
Keedysville, Maryland
Date of Birth:
1950
Place of Birth:
Silver Spring, Maryland
Awards:
Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame, 1986; Romantic Times Career Achievement Award, 1991; Romance Writers of America Centennial Award, 1997; Romance Writers of America Golden Medallion Award (seven times); Quill Award for Blue Smoke, 2006
Biography
Not only has Nora Roberts written more bestsellers than anyone else in the world (according to Publishers Weekly), she’s also created a hybrid genre of her own: the futuristic detective romance. And that’s on top of mastering every subgenre in the romance pie: the family saga, the historical, the suspense novel. But this most prolific and versatile of authors might never have tapped into her native talent if it hadn't been for one fateful snowstorm.
As her fans well know, in 1979 a blizzard trapped Roberts at home for a week with two bored little kids and a dwindling supply of chocolate. To maintain her sanity, Roberts started scribbling a story -- a romance novel like the Harlequin paperbacks she'd recently begun reading. The resulting manuscript was rejected by Harlequin, but that didn't matter to Roberts. She was hooked on writing. Several rejected manuscripts later, her first book was accepted for publication by Silhouette.
For several years, Roberts wrote category romances for Silhouette -- short books written to the publisher's specifications for length, subject matter and style, and marketed as part of a series of similar books. Roberts has said she never found the form restrictive. "If you write in category, you write knowing there's a framework, there are reader expectations," she explained. "If this doesn't suit you, you shouldn't write it. I don't believe for one moment you can write well what you wouldn't read for pleasure."
Roberts never violated the reader's expectations, but she did show a gift for bringing something fresh to the romance formula. Her first book, Irish Thoroughbred (1981), had as its heroine a strong-willed horse groom, in contrast to the fluttering young nurses and secretaries who populated most romances at the time. But Roberts's books didn't make significant waves until 1985, when she published Playing the Odds, which introduced the MacGregor clan. It was the first bestseller of many.
Roberts soon made a name for herself as a writer of spellbinding multigenerational sagas, creating families like the Scottish MacGregors, the Irish Donovans and the Ukrainian Stanislaskis. She also began working on romantic suspense novels, in which the love story unfolds beneath a looming threat of violence or disaster. She grew so prolific that she outstripped her publishers' ability to print and market Nora Roberts books, so she created an alter ego, J.D. Robb. Under the pseudonym, she began writing romantic detective novels set in the future. By then, millions of readers had discovered what Publishers Weekly called her "immeasurable diversity and talent."
Although the style and substance of her books has grown, Roberts remains loyal to the genre that launched her career. As she says, "The romance novel at its core celebrates that rush of emotions you have when you are falling in love, and it's a lovely thing to relive those feelings through a book."
Good to Know
Roberts still lives in the same Maryland house she occupied when she first started writing -- though her carpenter husband has built on some additions. She and her husband also own Turn the Page Bookstore Café in Boonsboro, Maryland. When Roberts isn't busy writing, she likes to drop by the store, which specializes in Civil War titles as well as autographed copies of her own books.
Roberts sued fellow writer Janet Dailey in 1997, accusing her of plagiarizing numerous passages of her work over a period of years. Dailey paid a settlement and publicly apologized, blaming stress and a psychological disorder for her misconduct.
Feature Interview
Excerpted from the March/April 2002 issue of Book magazine.One afternoon when Nora Roberts was four, her two oldest brothers broke into a violent argument while they were baby-sitting her. "I peeked out of the bedroom, and they're beating the hell out of each other," Roberts says. Then her mother walked in, with a grocery bag in each hand. "One bag goes here, one bag goes there, she steps right in the middle of these two six-foot guys and she goes, boom, bam. Two backhands. And both of them go, 'Maaaaaawwwmm.' I thought right then, There's the power. She's the power."
Elly, as her family still calls her, the youngest of five and the only girl, was a quick study. "She bossed her brothers around," says her mother, Eleanor; today, "her brothers have got her on a throne." Roberts reigns over more than her family, which now includes her husband and two sons. Since her writing debut in 1981, she has helped lead American romance away from its clichés of simpering heroines and heroic rapists toward more complex characters and contemporary, multifaceted plots. Of course, sex -- passionate, tender, delayed, avoided, forced, in castles, in fields, in treetops -- continues to be a central hook. And often, the prose remains purple; Roberts herself has a propensity for phrases like "she rocked them both toward madness." But the genre with which her name is synonymous is one -- the only one -- that always puts women at the center of the universe.
***
Two Mercedes -- a Kompressor convertible and an M-Class SUV -- and a Chrysler PT Cruiser are parked outside the rural Keedysville, Maryland, home Roberts shares with her husband. Inside, several gauzy photographs of nude models hang above the bed in the ground-floor master bedroom, and a rendition of the Casablanca movie poster -- with the couple painted in as Ilsa and Rick -- is prominent above the fireplace. Three ebullient dogs and one gnarled old mutt track in dirt and litter the house with deer bones that they've found outside.
Since moving here twenty-nine years ago, Roberts has divorced her first husband, raised their two sons (Dan, now twenty-nine, lives with his wife down the lane; Jason, twenty-six, is just over an hour away) and remarried. She has also added on a few rooms and an indoor pool; a few years ago, she bought twenty adjoining acres so she could continue to shoo deer out of the garden in her underwear without worrying about neighbors. She and her husband own a tiny bookshop in nearby Boonsboro, but Roberts spends most of her time in an upstairs office where she types, smokes and drinks diet colas eight hours a day, five days a week. It's a routine that's produced an average of seven books a year since 1981, many of them bestsellers.
Roberts knows that her work is commercial fiction and doesn't lose any sleep waiting for National Book Award nominations. The high-art literary tradition isn't what's gotten her to where she is; what has is her "real talent for storytelling," as author Jennifer Crusie (Fast Women; Welcome to Temptation) says, and a commensurate skill with plot and pacing. Readers are pulled into her story lines (which often bounce from one continent to the next) and her well-drawn characters. Fans especially admire Roberts' tough, independent heroines. "When they fit with your own circumstances," says Elizabeth Mayfield, a database administrator from Norwalk, Connecticut, "you think, Gee, there's hope for me." Roberts, however, contends that she's not writing to provide role models for anyone. "I'm gonna tell a good, entertaining story," she says. "I'm not looking to change the world."
Roberts was born Eleanor Marie Robertson, and she grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland, about an hour from where she lives now. Her father worked as a projectionist at the local movie theater and as a stagehand until 1964, when he started a lighting company -- which is where most of the Robertson family still works. Her mother ran the family. "Mom was a very strict disciplinarian," says Roberts' brother Buzz, who is now the president of his dad's company, "but as long as you followed the rules and were polite, you didn't have a problem." He says Nora had it a little easier than her brothers. "Us boys, we knew we were low men on the totem pole. Mom was tickled pink when she had Nora."
"Her daddy worked two jobs all his life, and during the Depression, I took in roomers," says Eleanor Robertson, who at eighty-five still lives in Silver Spring and is now secretary-treasurer of the company her husband started (Bernie Robertson died in 2000). "She knows how hard we worked to give them an education and a nice home." Roberts went to Catholic schools as a child and credits much of her success to the nuns who taught her -- the discipline and guilt in her formative years did her a lot of good.
In her sophomore year of high school, Roberts transferred to public school, where she met Ronald Aufdem-Brinke; she married him at seventeen, in 1968, right after graduation. The young couple moved to Keedysville and had a small house built in the woods. While Aufdem-Brinke worked at his father's sheet-metal business and later the Robertson lighting company, Roberts took care of their two children and the house. "Oh God, I had craft addictions," Roberts says, taking a drag on a cigarette. (She runs through a pack of Winstons at a pace that doesn't quite catch up to chain-smoking but runs several steps beyond casual.) "You name it, I made it. I macraméd two hammocks once. I did ceramics, I sewed the kids' clothes. I even put flies into overalls -- that is sick. I was a sick woman. I baked bread once a week. I canned jellies and made my own spaghetti sauce using my own tomatoes."
Sometime during the next decade (she calls the period her "Earth Mother" years), Roberts started to read Harlequin novels -- the short books were easy for her to finish while the kids were napping. During a blizzard in 1979, trapped inside with little more than her three- and six-year-old sons and a game of Candy Land, Roberts sat down with a pencil and wrote a manuscript of her own, a romance that she's since described as "very bad." In the next year and a half, while her kids were napping or at T-ball practice, she wrote at least six manuscripts in longhand. She submitted some of them to Harlequin, which at the time was using mainly British writers. Roberts didn't hear back, but her enthusiasm wasn't subdued. "I became a writing junkie," she says. Although she was rejected several times, she continued to write -- but started filing her manuscripts in a back drawer rather than submitting them.
Roberts then heard that a new romance publisher, Silhouette, was looking specifically for American writers, so she sent in her work. In 1980 she got a call from Nancy Jackson, a Silhouette editor, saying she had plucked one of Roberts' manuscripts -- Irish Thoroughbred, a slender love story about an Irish stable hand and her boss -- out of the slush pile. Jackson told Roberts she wanted to publish it. Eleanor Aufdem-Brinke changed her name to Nora Roberts because she says she assumed all romance authors used a nom de plume. The book "didn't make waves when it first came out," says Isabel Swift, her current editor, but it sold well in reprint. Roberts was hooked on the process, though, and published five more books the following year, eight the following and ten the year after that.
Roberts hit it big in 1985 when she wrote the first of her MacGregor family series, Playing the Odds. The book, which focuses on a matchmaking Scottish patriarch and his brood, became an immediate bestseller. Romance readers began associating the name Nora Roberts with multigenerational sagas: In addition to the MacGregors, she has written about the Donovans, a modern family of Irish magicians; the Calhouns, a family of pigheaded sisters in Maine; and the Stanislaskis, tempestuous Ukrainian immigrants.
***
From the beginning, Roberts' heroines were not content to wear aprons or take dictation. In Irish Thoroughbred, though Roberts' heroine was young (early twenties) and virginal (well, she was a virgin), she was a horse groomer with an independent streak. Roberts wasn't alone in giving her female characters more authority in the workforce; other American romance authors -- like Jayne Ann Krentz, Sandra Brown and Elizabeth Lowell -- were doing the same. "I think one of the great things the American writer has brought to the romance novel," Krentz says, "is a modern interpretation of women's roles and women's values." Author Janet Evanovich adds, "The genre reflects the increased power and opportunity afforded today's women. We see more variety in the genre in terms of heroine age and occupation. And today's heroine is stronger, more self-reliant. Of course, Nora was always ahead of the pack. Her heroines were always strong."
Rebecca Sullivan, a heroine in Roberts' latest romantic suspense, Three Fates, is a quintessential Nora Roberts lead: She runs the family business (giving boat tours off the western coast of Ireland) and engineers the search for the family's lost treasure. Rebecca's a smart, capable lady with a sense of humor. In the course of the story, she falls in love with a computer expert who eventually marries her -- the book ends in Ireland with the assumption that the husband will help her with the business. "I'm not interested in telling stories about weak women," Roberts says. "Or if they're weak, I want to show how they grow and how they become strong. I'm not writing about Cinderella sitting waiting for her prince to come and take her away. She'll get out of it herself. The prince is a bonus, a completion, another element -- but it's not the answer to all of her problems."
***
Perched on a stool next to her kitchen counter, Roberts doesn't look like a purveyor of dreams. She could be any of a million women, taking a break from a million jobs, looking toward the end of a million days. Right now, her husband is outside, working in the yard before heading to town. Later on, he'll pick up groceries, and Nora will cook dinner; favorites are pasta with red sauce or Cajun chicken. Around 7:30, the two will retire for the evening, probably settling down for a while in front of the television -- it's Thursday, so they'll probably tune in for some of Friends or ER. And that's a typical end to a typical day for the world's most popular romance author. "I always wonder if they asked Agatha Christie if she was homicidal," Roberts says with a laugh. "I don't have a romantic lifestyle."
Still, she says, it's romance books she turns to when she wants to escape reality, so maybe the queen of the realm is, finally, one of its true citizens as well. Roberts, after all, spends her days holed up in her office, writing, researching and investigating the backgrounds for her books. She loves it, she says, but it's work. And when she's done, she's done. "When I read for pleasure," she says, "give me a story."
If today's romance is escapism, millions of its readers would argue that it is also girl-power between pastel covers: adventures that belong to characters who are at their strongest -- and sexiest -- because they are women. So Roberts essentially shrugs off the contempt reserved for romance novels as sexist and ignorant. Still, she recognizes that the genre carries a lot of baggage -- even she finds herself sneaking reads when she's out in public. A lot of the embarrassment, she says, has to do with the way the books look. "It's mostly hard for me when she's falling out of her dress, and he has his mouth on her tit," Roberts says, describing what she calls "nursing mother" covers. She taps her lighter against the counter and rolls her eyes. "To sit on an airplane and read that?"
From the Publisher
#1 New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts presents the stunning conclusion to the all-new trilogy of destiny and desire...
Join Zoe in the ultimate quest for courage.
Publishers Weekly
This book concludes Roberts's Key Trilogy, in which mortal women quest to unlock the spellbound souls of ancient demigoddesses. The third and last woman to make the attempt is hairstylist Zoe McCourt. Like her friends Malory and Dana-heroines of the previous installments (Key of Light, Key of Knowledge)-Zoe has a single month and a cryptic set of clues with which to find her key. The angry sorcerer Kane fights her efforts as friends both mortal and immortal lend their support. As she searches, Zoe is courted by Bradley Vane IV, the sexy heir to a home improvement empire. She's not sure which is more difficult: accepting that she's magically linked with Brad or trying to quell her suspicions long enough to accept his love in the here and now. When she finds the courage to do both, the souls of all three goddesses are finally released. Smart but struggling single mom Zoe is an appealing heroine whose working-class grit finds a perfect foil in Brad's patrician confidence. Scenes involving her feisty son, Simon, temper the story's mysticism with humor, and the joining together of the trio as a family is genuinely moving. When it comes to combining sweetness, sexiness and the supernatural, Roberts proves once again that she is the most powerful spellbinder of all. (Jan.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Although Key of Light (see Audio Reviews, LJ 4/1/04) effectively set up these two subsequent romances, Roberts completed the trilogy without losing the suspense. Knowledge is Dana's story: the librarian-cum- bookstore owner is determined to cling to the misery of her failed romance with author Jordan Hawke, but it is he who holds the key to her heart. Valor is Zoe's mission: she will protect her son at all costs, but after that she is willing to risk almost anything to save the Daughters of Glass. But both Dana and Zoe must offer up their hearts in order to free their souls. Susan Ericksen only improves as a narrator; she is as comfortable with Zoe's Southern charm that masks a will of iron as she is with Dana's prickly nature. All of Roberts's heroes have their flaws, but under Ericksen's guidance they are very appealing. Public libraries would want these even if Roberts weren't a powerhouse.-Jodi L. Israel, MLS, Jamaica Plain, MA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
School Library Journal
Adult/High School-Roberts treats readers to entertaining tales that revolve around a quest to free the trapped souls of three Celtic demigoddesses. Legend states that they must be freed by three mortal women. Thus, three women get an invitation for cocktails and conversation that reads in part, "you are the key, the lock awaits." They are three very different people with different talents and strengths but, ultimately, strong wills and a determination to succeed unite them. Though the women frequently appear in one another's story, each book centers on one of them. In the first book, Light, the scene is set as readers meet the key players. The book then focuses on Malory, whose strength is an eye for beauty. In Knowledge, Dana's passion for books is a vital part of her story. In Valor, Zoe completes the quest and finds her special key. Readers are never really in any doubt that the women will be successful but that doesn't matter. How and where their key is found and how they get to know themselves better in the process make for entertaining reading. Fantasy aficionados who also enjoy a good love story will no doubt be the prime audience for these books.-Peggy Bercher, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Loading...Product Details
- Pub. Date: December 2003
- Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
- Format: Mass Market Paperback, 352pp
- Sales Rank: 17,989
- Series: Key Trilogy Series, #3
- ISBN-13: 9780515136531
- ISBN: 0515136530
Table of Contents
Read an Excerpt
Key of Valor
By Nora Roberts
Thorndike Press
Copyright © 2004 Nora RobertsAll right reserved.
ISBN: 0786261323
Chapter One
BACK in the parlor, where they found coffee and wedges of apple pie thick enough to make even Simon's eyes bug out, Malory rubbed a comforting hand up and down Zoe's back."Are you ready for this?"
"I've got to be, don't I?"
"You've got us all with you. We're a good team."
"The best. It's just that I thought I'd be prepared. I've had the most time to get prepared. I didn't think I'd be this scared."
"It was easiest for me."
"How can say that?" Baffled, Zoe shook her head. "You went into this knowing almost nothing."
"Exactly. And you've got everything we've learned and experienced in the last two months running around in your head." Her smile sympathetic, Malory gave Zoe's hand a squeeze.
"Plenty of it's scary. And there's more. When we started this we weren't as involved. With each other, with Rowena and Pitte, with the daughters. Everything matters more now than it did two months ago."
Zoe let out a shaky breath. "You're not making me feel any better."
"I don't mean to. You've got a big load to carry, Zoe, and sometimes you're going to have to carry it yourself, no matter how much we want to take some of it off your hands."
Malory looked up, pleased to see Dana coming toward them.
"What's up?" Dana asked.
"A quick pep talk before we get started."Malory took Zoe's hand again. "Kane will try to hurt you. He'll try to trick you. In fact-and I've thought a lot about this-because this is the last round, win or lose all, he's going to be only more determined to stop you."
Dana took Zoe's other hand. "Feeling peppy yet?"
"I've thought a lot about it, too. I'm afraid of him." Zoe squared her shoulders. "I think you're telling me I should be afraid. That if I'm really going to be prepared, I should be afraid."
"That's exactly it."
"Then I guess I'm as ready as I'm going to get. I need to talk to Rowena before she takes us into the portrait room. I've got one stipulation before we move to the next stage."
She looked over, hissed under her breath as she saw Rowena already in deep discussion with Brad. "Why is he everywhere I want to be?"
"Good question." Dana gave her a quick pat on the back.
Malory waited until Zoe started across the room. "Dana? I'm scared, too."
"Well, that makes three of us."
Zoe stopped in front of Rowena, cleared her throat. "I'm sorry to interrupt. Rowena, I need to speak to you for a minute, before we get started on the next ... thing."
"Of course. I imagine it concerns what Brad and I were just discussing."
"I don't think so. It's about Simon."
"Yes." In invitation, Rowena patted the cushion beside her. "Exactly. Bradley's been very insistent that I do something tangible, something specific, about Simon."
"Kane's not going to touch the boy." There was steel, cold and immovable, in Brad's tone. "He's not going to use the boy. Simon is to be taken out of the mix. That's not negotiable."
"And you are setting terms now for Zoe, and her son?" Rowena asked.
"No." Zoe spoke quickly. "I can speak for myself, and for Simon. But thank you." She looked at Brad. "Thank you for thinking about Simon."
"I'm not just thinking about him, I'm making this crystal clear. You and Pitte want the third key," he said to Rowena. "You want Zoe to succeed. Kane wants her to fail. There were rules, you said, about causing harm to mortals, shedding their blood, taking their lives. He broke those rules last time, and would have killed Dana and Jordan if he could have. There's no reason to think he'll go back to fighting fair this time. In fact, there's every reason to believe he'll fight even dirtier."
The muscles around Zoe's heart seemed to clench, leaving her breathless. "He's not touching my boy. You have to promise. You have to guarantee it, or this ends now."
"New terms." Rowena lifted her eyebrows. "And ultimatums?"
"Let's put it this way." Before Zoe could speak again, Brad silenced her with one sharp look. "If you don't do something to remove Simon from the board, if you don't shield him from Kane, he could be used against Zoe and cause her to fail. You're close, Rowena. Too close to let one stipulation stand in your way."
"Well played, Bradley." Rowena patted his knee. "Simon has a formidable champion in you. And you," she said to Zoe. "But it's already been done."
"What?" Zoe looked across the room at Simon, who was sneaking Moe a bit of crust from his pie.
"He's under protection, the strongest I can make. It was done while he slept, the night Dana found the second key. Mother," she said gently, touching a hand to Zoe's cheek, "I would not ask you to risk your child, not even for the daughters of a god."
"He's safe, then." She closed her eyes against the sting of relieved tears. "Kane can't hurt him?"
"As safe as I can make him. Kane would have to go through me, and Pitte. I can promise you, such an attack would cost him dearly."
"But if he got through-"
"Then he'd come up against us," Brad put in. "All six of us-and a big dog. Flynn and I talked about it earlier. You should take Moe with you, keep him around the way Dana did. An early-warning system."
"Take Moe? Home?" That big, clumsy dog in her tiny little house? "I'd think you'd consult with me before you made such decisions."
"It's a suggestion, not a decision." He angled his head, and though his voice was mild again, his face was set. "It's just a sensible and reasonable suggestion. Besides, a kid Simon's age ought to have a dog around."
"When I think Simon's ready for a dog-"
"Now, now." Swallowing a laugh, Rowena patted Brad's knee again, and Zoe's. "Isn't it silly to argue when you're both only thinking of what's best for Simon?"
"Can we just do what comes next? I'm getting all twisted up waiting for it to be official."
"All right. Perhaps Simon could take Moe out for a walk around the grounds. He'll be watched," she assured Zoe. "He'll be safe."
"Okay."
"I'll arrange it. Then we'll move into the next room."
Zoe found herself sitting on the sofa with Brad, without Rowena as a buffer between them. She linked her hands in her lap as he picked up his coffee cup.
"I'm sorry if I sounded ungrateful and rude," she began. "I'm not. Not ungrateful."
"Just rude?"
"Maybe." Knowing she had been brought heat to her cheeks. "But I didn't mean to be. I'm not used to anybody-"
"Helping you?" he prompted. "Caring about you? About Simon?"
There was a bite in his voice, but there was something both careless and cool about it that made her feel small. She countered it by shifting and looking him dead in the eyes. "That's right, I'm not. Nobody helped me raise him, or feed him, or love him. Nobody helped me put a roof over his head. I've done it myself, and I've done a decent job of it."
"You haven't done a decent job of it," he corrected. "You've done an extraordinary job of it. So what? That means you have to slap away every helping hand?"
"No. No, it doesn't. You get me so mixed up."
"Well, that's a start." He took her hand, and had it to his lips before she could protest.
"For luck."
"Oh. Thanks." She got quickly to her feet when Rowena came back into the room.
"If everyone's ready, we'd like to continue the tradition of beginning the quest in the next room."
Brad kept his attention on Zoe. She was a little pale, but she was holding her own. Still, as they started down the wide hallway, he noted how Malory and Dana moved in to flank her.
They'd become a team, a triad, even a family over the last two months. He didn't think anything would change that now. They would need that unity through what was coming.
His heart took a bump when he stepped into the next room and looked up at the portrait that dominated it.
The Daughters of Glass, moments before their souls were stolen, gathered close. Just as the three women who shared the faces of those tragic demigoddesses now gathered close.
Venora, with Malory's vivid blue eyes, sat with a lap harp in her hands and a smile just blooming across her face. Niniane, with Dana's strong features and dense brown hair, sat beside her on a marble bench and held a scroll and quill.
Standing, a sword at her side and a small puppy in the crook of her arm, Kyna looked back at him. Her hair was a long fall of inky black rather that the short, sharp, sexy style Zoe wore. But the eyes, those long, topaz eyes, were the same.
They pulled at him, as if they'd dug hooks into his heart.
The three daughters radiated beauty, joy, innocence, in a world sumptuous with color and light. Yet, a closer look showed the hints of darkness to come.
In the thick green forest was the shadowy shape of a man. Just slithering onto the bright tiles was the sinuous figure of a snake.
In the corner, the sky was bruised with a brewing storm that the daughters were yet unaware of. And the lovers who embraced in the background were too wrapped up in each other to sense the danger edging close to their charges.
To look closer yet was to see the three keys worked cleverly into the painting. One, disguised in the shape of a bird, seemed to fly through the cerulean sky. Another hid itself within the lush green leaves of the forest. And the third reflected deep in the pool behind the daughters who were sharing their last moment of peace and innocence.
He'd seen how they'd looked after the spell. White and still as death in the crystal coffins as Rowena had painted them.
He'd bought that painting, titled After the Spell, months before he'd even come back to the Valley or known of this quest and these women. Been compelled to buy it, he thought now, as he'd fallen in love, or into fascination or obsession-he wished to God he knew-with Zoe's face.
"Two keys are found," Rowena began. "Two locks are opened. Now there is but one." She moved to stand under the portrait as she spoke, with the fire snapping gold and red flames behind her.
"You agreed to this quest because you were curious, and you were each at a point where aspects of your life were unsettled and dissatisfying. And," she added, "because you were paid. But you've continued to quest because you're strong and you're true. No one else, not in three millennia, has come so far."
"You've learned the power of art," Pitte continued, and stepped over to join Rowena. "And the power of truth. The first two journeys bring you to the third."
"You have each other," she said to the women. "And you have your men. Together you make a chain. You must not let him break it." She stepped forward and spoke to Zoe as if they were alone in the room. "It is for you now. It was always for you to finish."
"For me?" Panic wanted to gush into her throat. "If that's true, why did we pick before? With Mal and Dana?"
"There must always be choice. Fate is the door, but you choose to walk through or turn away. Will you walk through?"
Zoe looked up at the portrait, and nodded.
"Then I'll give you your map, your clue to the key, and pray that it guides you." She walked over and took up a scroll.
"Beauty and truth," she read, "are lost without the courage to hold them. But one pair of hands can grip too hard, so that the precious slips through the fingers. Loss and pain, sorrow and will, blaze the rough path through the forest. Along the journey there is blood, and there is the death of innocence and the ghosts of what might have been.
"Each time the path forks, it is faith that chooses the way or doubt that blocks it. Is it despair, or will it be joy? Can there be fulfillment without risk of loss? Will it be an end, or a beginning? Will you move into the light, or return to the dark?
"There is one who stands on either side, with hands held out. Will you take one, the other, or close your hands in fists to hold what is already yours until it's ground to dust?
"Fear hunts, and its arrow strikes heart, mind, belly. Without tending, wounds fester, and scars too long ignored harden into shields that block the eyes from what needs most to be seen.
"Where does the goddess stand, her sword in hand, willing to fight each battle in its time? Willing, too, to lay down the sword when the time comes for peace. Find her, know her power, her faith, and her valiant heart. For when you look on her at last, you will have the key to free her. And you will find it on a path where no door will ever be locked against you."
"Oh, boy." Zoe pressed a hand to her stomach. "I can keep the paper, right? I'm never going to remember all that."
"Of course."
"Good." She worked hard to keep her voice calm and even. "It sounded a little ..."
"Violent," Dana put in.
"Yeah, that." Zoe felt better, considerably, when Dana's hand came to rest on her shoulder.
"But, it seemed, compared to the others, that my clue was more a lot of questions."
Rowena held out the scroll. "Answer them," she said simply.
Continues...
Excerpted from Key of Valor by Nora Roberts Copyright © 2004 by Nora Roberts. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
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