Considering his words carefully, Dalaric scowled when Aegwin rolled his eyes.
“Enough,” Aegwin demanded. “No, do not growl at me,” he said when Dalaric’s eyes narrowed. “Listen to me. Do not think about what you are going to say and just tell me honestly what is in your heart.”
“She reminds me of the nobility of character our females used to aspire to. Gentle. Of a nature that begs to be protected from harm yet rises to shield those she loves from the damage she suffers willingly in their place. Emersyn houses a power that refuses to bow its head to mine without proof of my greater strength.” Dalaric paused, staring at the calloused palms of his hands as he turned them over. He met Aegwin’s eyes. “I have never met a female who holds such power inside her yet also retains such an innocent desire to please others. Emersyn claims two women for sisters not her own and has born the scorn of my nephew for the sake of one. She said she would help Caelwin not only for his sake but for my own. To ease a father’s heart.”
Aegwin cocked his head to the side and kept his gaze steady on Dalaric. “She sounds delightful and I do not tease in this.” He shrugged. “We long ago stepped from the common route of Akkadian nobility, my Sydae-Ra. If this female is worthy enough of you to claim your Ki then why allow confusion to cloud the matter. If she calls to it, surely your Ki would not overly damage her. She is born of a temple line. If they can bear the touch of our youngling’s Ki, surely a marking and claiming will not kill her as it would another human.”
Dalaric fell silent to process Aegwin’s words. Aegwin regarded him for a moment then chuckled. Dalaric arched a brow and Aegwin grinned. “When do I get to meet this paragon of feminine wiles? If I am made hard by the barest hint of her smell, I can only imagine how my instinct will rise to her in person.”
Smoke curled from Dalaric’s nose and Aegwin laughed in full. “She really has you in a bind, doesn’t she?” he stated with obvious admiration for the absent female. “Just remember we will be sharing her so hurry it along if you please. I am already hard imagining finally getting to play the dominant once you claim our Sydae-Va.”
Dalaric shook his head but could not think of an appropriate reply his second would not turn into more innuendo. Aegwin was possessed of a brilliant mind but had also inherited the same sense of spirited frivolity of his sister. Luckily, Dalaric’s Sydae-Ta was equally determined to work three times as hard as he played. Until Dalaric was sure, himself, what he would do with Emersyn, Dalaric would keep Aegwin from her. He did not need the desires of his second to rush him into a rash decision.
Into The Woods
“A contract is only worth the paper it is written on until it is stained in blood.”
-Matron Firni, High Matron of Liindre-
Emersyn felt as miserable as she ever had. Not even the shame of knowing she had not been able to pull her mother's heart from the deep hole it had fallen into upon the death of her father had felt so terrible.
She had endangered Caelwin.
The rage. The anger. That was not her. Was it?
It had been Alvin who had told her what had happened after she woke up. The last thing she remembered was Sarah yelling at Bannon. She never wanted to hurt anyone! Not even stubborn, horrible domineering males. She still shied away from Alvin’s red-faced confession on how Dalaric had brought her under control. She did not remember it. Just a heat that had burned through her mind with an uncontrollable frenzy.
Alvin told her she had been asleep for a day and a half. With a sheepish look, Alvin had run a hand over the stubble on his face. He explained that Dalaric had forced him to vow he would not come back to Bannon having been near her.
Not that it had been needed to assign Alvin as her protector. Once Jaela had come back from a day hunt to provide meat for the celebration of Sarah's daughter's birth, she had not left her post at the cottage door. Alvin told her Sarah had come to see the infuriated woman. Their whispered words had been interspersed with violent stabbing motions and scowls dark enough to scour the paint off stone.
After the last heated exchange, Jaela had given a sharp nod and squeezed Sarah's shoulder before dropping to a crouch next to the door. Evidently Jaela had been satisfied Sarah would handle the matter of Bannon's punishment.
Alvin confided to Emersyn that he was certain that whatever frayed respect Jaela had once felt for Bannon had been destroyed. Sarah had been Bannon's only protection from the warrior woman and Wraith.
Emersyn had argued herself sick to convince Jaela to allow her to find the Akkadian and apologize two days after she woke up. Her headaches from the mana had splintered her head for the first day, but only throbbed in time to her heart by the second morning. Jaela had refused and vowed no more Akkadian blood would be getting anywhere near her.
Regarding her mark, Jaela and Bannon were of like mind but for different reasons. Emersyn was her sister by right of saving her life; therefore, she was hers to protect. No male would be allowed to steal her life force, her mana.
Disaster loomed. Lord Dalaric would never let anyone order him around or deny him. Jaela was too stubborn to bend, either. If they came to blows it would be on her head.
Will had been her salvation. He had promised to sit with her long enough for Jaela to relieve herself while Alvin was gone for a much-deserved bath and a shave. Jaela still gone, Paelia had come to the cottage in need of a helping hand and Emersyn had told him to go with the older woman.
Free from supervision, she had run for the woods to find Lord Dalaric and make everything right again.
Emersyn felt sick. Her head was killing her. But she had to find him. She had to explain. She cupped her hands and yelled, "Lord Dalaric?!"
Everything was all wrong. The trust that had once seen everyone working together to protect and provide for the people of Gilvern had been shattered by her weakness.
∞∞∞
Careful not to upset the contents of the silver bowl rimmed with amethyst, fingers gnarled with age gripped the edges. A wicked smile curved thin lips, revealing teeth that had long fallen to decay. Nialle's dark eyes glinted in satisfaction as she watched the witch wander further and further into the forest.
Once the little lost lamb passed the invisible barrier of Paelia's protection over the village, the crone called her slave to her. She had waited a lifetime for this opportunity. Her beloved daughter would finally be avenged.
Attention never wavering from the vision within the bowl's waters, the witch addressed the male who materialized at her side on silent feet. "It is time, Jocale. Do not forget your place in this or the punishment will be severe," she ordered.
Briefly glancing up from her precious scry bowl, she quirked a brow at the male when he did not move. "Need a reminder of your place?" she asked. "Perhaps The Red Sorrel could use you once more.”
He left as quietly as he arrived with a swirl of purple silk.
Veiled eyes squinted over the bowl, Nialle chuckled at his swift exit. He was so predictable. Garbed in a bright purple tunic that complimented his slim physique, emerald eyes and ebony hair, the slave was beauty personified. His fine-boned features were absolute perfection.
It was too bad his mother and her mates had been killed by humans, leaving Jocale unguarded as a child. After a few years with the human slavers who had found him he had been trained to obedience. The collar around his neck that she spelled for pain and to retain his youthful beauty helped keep him that way.
Jocale's desire to be free was always well known to her despite the submissive demeanor he presented. Before her procurement of the male, he had been a favorite amongst the patrons of a brothel that catered to humans of a particular taste. The Red Sorrel operated under the sole idea that some patrons would pay, and pay well, to express their rage at being treated as lower caste out on powerful males made into slaves. The comelier the better.
Jocale's last customer had been a horse merchant who had bought the male’s time for her daughter as a coming-of-age gift. He had not performed to her
lovely girl's expectations. As a result, the patroness had gelded him.
For obvious reasons he had been deemed no longer useful to the establishment.
Nialle had been offered Jocale's papers at a discount. It had been a rather excellent business transaction. Her last boy had been a nuisance. Too large and clumsy, she had decided he would serve her more for parts than as a servant. Akkadian blood and bone were necessary to craft the dark curses her clients required of her.
Jocale's slight frame was more suited to the long hours spent in close quarters beneath the bog gathering herbs. He became proficient at hunting for the rarer ingredients she required. Her collars were one of her best sellers. The Red Sorrel was not her only client. Bound to blood, they would decapitate the wearer if they attempted harm to their owner or tried to step outside of the perimeter of its control.
Lately, his subtle attempts to manipulate her to release him had grown tiresome. She was too old for such nonsense. She had been waiting a long time for Meghara to show her monstrous face.
She had seen it all. The fight with the half-breed. Then the arrival of the Lord. Marked. Oh yes. She knew all about the blasted mark. Not even Paelia's mana barriers could hide the truth of the witch.
Paelia had always been a meddling sort. She was still a believer, despite all the proof that they had been abandoned. She, Nialle, had once been as naïve. And then her daughter was killed by an Akkadian.
The beast never even knew.
Her daughter had been Alendria's closest friend. Louisa had been allowed to visit her to celebrate the summer solstice. The flames which had killed the Akkadian and his wife had murdered her daughter.
If she could not have her daughter, she would slice her pound of flesh from the hide of the dragon who had murdered her.
Just days. Mere days ago, her world had changed. Vengeance had finally landed in her lap.
After burning the bones of an orphaned girl who had been buried in a pauper's grave, she had cast the spell of sight on her witch bowl in time to see the whore Akkadian take hold of the babe. She watched the events unfold, unable to leave her scry bowl for a moment. Then the Lord arrived, young witch in hand, and she finally felt the terrible fingers of joy squeeze her bitter heart.
The perfect revenge would not be outright death to the Akkadian, Meghara. Rather she would be made to suffer.
She had searched all over the lands after Louisa's death for dark knowledge to bring her daughter back to her.
In a grimoire she stole from the grave of a witch who had killed herself, she found salvation instead. It was forbidden to take from a witch's grimoire without permission. A book bound in leather and inked in the witch's blood, it held all their deepest secrets and most powerful spells. Nialle called upon the spirit of the deceased and promised retribution for the wronged if the pages would make themselves known. The pages filled with the memories of the fallen witch.
She had been tortured by the Akkadian Rite. She had failed in the passage of power and had been overwhelmed by the pain. The child had died. Instead of attempting it again, she told the Akkadians to enjoy the time they were given with their children and revoked the vow she had given to help them. They tried to force her hand. Rather than face such pain again, she wrote in her grimoire that she would kill herself.
Given Nialle found her grave outside consecrated ground, the witch had been successful in her suicide. Only the murder of an innocent was a more sacrilegious offense to the Mother. It would not be sanctioned by even a fellow witch.
How beautiful a revenge the forbidden knowledge had gifted to her. The dragons were all dying. Their breeds were weakened by the inability of their children to find their power.
She, Nialle, would snatch that dream from beneath their very noses. Let Meghara know what it was to watch, helpless, as her grandchild succumbed to the madness of bound Akkadian blood.
Hope. What would it do to the bitch's heart to know hope only to have it snatched away?
The Lord was handling a challenge on his border. The Liindre woman and the sage, both believing the other was guarding the witch, were chasing the golems made of soil and Akkadian bones Nialle had sent to draw them away from the village. The hag, Paelia, was now attending a breeding villager while the little orphan boy gathered herbs for her basket alone in the field.
Just a push. A nudge. That was all the little witch needed. Barely contained, still wild and hidden behind shredded barriers, the young witch's mana seethed. It was ready to burn into a conflagration of righteousness once more.
No witch could survive a second mana storm. Most could not survive a single event.
Nialle stroked the edge of the bowl, eager to see her slave find the poor, poor little lamb still bleating her heart out in the middle of the dark woods so that she could act.
∞∞∞
Jocale's mind raced as he tried to find a means to turn this new development to his advantage. Impressions, fleetingly garnered through a handful of decades of rumor and whispered tales in The Red Sorrel, were warning enough to the male not to underestimate the Akkadian most feared. Lord Dalaric's power and cunning were unmatched by any who had attempted the boundaries of the continent.
To send him, an inexperienced slave, to harm one the dragon warrior protected was to guarantee his death.
Too much was at stake. Freedom or death. He would not leave the wood without one or the other. This he promised himself. He just hoped the former did not come at the cost of the latter. He walked through the deep woods but suddenly stilled when clumsy footsteps that crunched dead leaves reached his ears.
Hopelessly lost, Emersyn began to worry as the sky darkened into the familiar shades of red and gold that signaled sunset. She had been wandering for hours and became disorientated quickly. Only the hope that Dalaric or Jaela would find her kept her from panicking.
Jaela would be furious, but she would understand. She had to. Emersyn knew the woman had excellent tracking skills and all Akkadians could use scent to find a drop of blood a mile away. She kept trudging on through the thick underbrush while sending up silent prayers for discovery.
Stumbling, Emersyn fell to her knees. "Ow!" she yelped. The skin of her knees was still raw from the small rocks that had scraped them at the Falls, and she had managed to trip onto a thorny vine.
She winced and pulled herself up on a young sapling. A quick search revealed that, other than a small puncture that only bled a single drop, she was fine. Looking back at what had orchestrated her fall, Emersyn grimaced. A deer. Its corpse had been concealed by the thick undergrowth and she must have tripped on the horns that stuck up from the mass of rotten flesh.
She coughed into her hand, the smell hitting her just at that moment. Holding a hand over her mouth, she stumbled away from the cloud of insects that had flown up once she disturbed their meal.
Yards away, she got sick into the bushes. She wiped her mouth on the sleeve of her tunic and tried to take deep breaths. Sweet basil. That had been a noxious smell. She had been raised in the woods. Never had an animal corpse emitted such a putrid odor.
A cough brought her attention up to the right.
Standing only a few feet away from her was an Akkadian youth. If it were not for the lack of breasts on the slim chest, displayed by an almost transparent tunic, Emersyn would not have known him to even be a male. His short pants did not hide the inhuman calves or feet.
The setting sun haloed his ebony mane as it flowed about his shoulders. From this distance she could not make out the color of his eyes, but saw they were wide with a deceptive air of innocence. The maturity of his Ki belied his youthful appearance. Another secret his Ki held gave her pause.
He was a slave. Bound. It was a dark, horrible mana spell.
She watched him take up a position on the path she had just walked. Warily, she asked, "Can I help you?"
His expression flickered briefly with undefined emotions. His voice was a smooth alto. "I have come to request your services to perform the Rite, Wit
ch," he said.
∞∞∞
The brush of wind through the feathers of his wings sent tendrils of pleasure through Dalaric's stomach and eased the tension that had been a constant companion for the past few days. Since Emersyn's barriers had been torn open by the foolishness of his nephew and his nephew's wife.
Her mana had come to the fore because his nephew had threatened her sister. Had broken faith with his sacred duty to protect.
The words of Bannon's wife echoed in his consciousness every night since the mana had threatened to overwhelm Emersyn. They reminded him of Alendria. She, too, had refused to submit to her husband. But unlike Bannon, Varian had been deserving of his female's respect. Alendria had refused Varian's decision to rejoin the clan. Had vowed to keep their child from him if he did not stay with her in the village, far away from the palace and what it would mean for her.
During the confrontation, Emersyn had not known what to do. Had frozen in place once the words grew heated. Her small form had shaken beneath the anger, unable to even function as its weight pressed in on her. But her mana had responded to the threat. Had surged to the fore and, had he not been there, would have overwhelmed her and everyone around her in a fiery inferno.
The first day he returned to the palace and had Aegwin’s wisdom still echoing in his ears, he had acknowledged that, had Emersyn been born Akkadian, she would be considered a jewel without compare. A gentle creature that possessed the heart of a warrior when roused in defense of loved ones. None of the books on the subject had touted such nor could Aegwin nor his memory recall any of the temple witches being of like temperament. It was an anomaly. She was an anomaly. Witches flaunted their power. Reveled in controlling those around them under the guise of greater ascendancy toward the false goddess. Witch and sage used mana as a tool without appropriate respect for its true source.
The second day of sparring with Aegwin to release the tension that had overtaken him had forced Dalaric to peer beyond the scenarios of ‘what ifs’ and look at what possibilities lay before him in the now. He, Dalaric, had sworn to take no mate. He had never met a female worth the Ki. His father knew of many Ascended males on other continents who refused to mate for that reason. Only low caste females were tempted to join with those males in mating, but their waspish nature and lack of power was an insult to the most powerful warriors.
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