by Eve Langlais
“No, they keep us separated with their archaic laws. The tribunal is outdated, and I for one don’t approve of the secrecy. Things that are hidden can corrupt. Which is why I say fuck the tribunal and their rules.”
“You can’t say that. You’re a Dark Lord, an example to be followed.”
“It’s because I am a Dark Lord that I can say it. Fuck. The. Tribunal.” He said it slowly and firmly. “They went beyond their own rules when they sentenced you. I want everyone to know that I’m coming for them. That I hold them accountable for what happened.” Desmond stalked towards her, every inch of him vibrating.
“It’s not your fight.”
“Oh, but it is, arammu,” he purred. “When they hurt you, they hurt me. We are one.”
“I told you—”
“Don’t bother saying it.” He backed her into the wall and bracketed her with his arms. “We. Are. One.”
He stared at her. Intent. His lips so close. She waited for the kiss. Yearned for it, the heat of it.
Instead, he whispered, “Not yet. I haven’t earned the right.” He moved away and headed outside. “Get some rest. We leave at dawn.”
She stuck out her tongue. Bossy Dark Lord. But then again, she could be just as commanding. It was why they were both well and mis-matched. Two stubborn people who should never get along. Yet she found pleasure in their butting of heads. He didn’t let her run roughshod over him. And he respected her enough to not force her to his will either.
Even more amazing, he was looking at her. He knew what she’d suffered. Knew of her shame. The taint on her body.
And he wanted her in spite of it.
She was tempted to march after him and demand a kiss.
Logan was watching, though. A flush of guilt heated her cheeks. “Don’t look at me like that. I never made you any promises.” But she could feel his disappointment through her mark. She really needed to free him like she’d done with Titus. But not yet.
She couldn’t bear to lose two in one day.
“I’m going to find a comfortable spot to sleep.”
Which turned out to be a few stories up in Mustafa’s bedroom. She took a moment to change the sheets, pulling off the dirty set and throwing the fabric in a corner. Laundry wasn’t her problem.
She found a clean set in a closet, musty but folded neatly. As she shook the linen, something clanged to the floor. She stared at the key, the metal green with age in the crevices of its ornate design.
A key for what? Or where? They’d searched every inch of the tower and had come across no locked doors.
So, why hide it? She grabbed the metal key and returned to the linen closet to inspect it. The shelves were nailed tightly to brackets, and there was no sign of a keyhole. She wracked her brain for possible locations for the lock. The top level was ringed in bookcases tight to the wall. The kitchen level only had one door, and that led to the tiny room for the gnomm slaves. The levels after that had storage under the stairs, even the bottom level. The only place the stairs didn’t have a cupboard was the bedroom.
That brought a thoughtful expression. Erela moved to the wall hiding the stairs. It appeared seamless, painted in a lascivious fresco, parts of it raised from the stone to give it dimension. Some sections were even pitted for shadowing and depth. The holes drew her eye and attention.
Some proved deep enough that she could wiggle a finger inside. None were the right shape. She kept searching, almost blushing at some of the scenes. The artist truly liked the enlarged phallus.
She saw it in a nest of vines, holding a female bound and spread. Between the thighs, a slitted shadow.
Holding up the key, she inserted it and turned. She waited for creaking, stone sliding, maybe even a zap of magic. Instead, the wall in front of her vanished.
Magic. Good magic since she never even noticed it was there. This had to be it. The thing they’d been searching for.
It occurred to Erela that she should call Desmond, but what if it turned out to be nothing? Just another closet. She should check it out first. She immediately shook her head.
Dumb idea. What if there was something worse than slaves in there?
I should call Logan. His wolf could stand guard. She went to turn from the gap in the wall only to hesitate. Nothing had rushed out.
And given the space under the stairs, it couldn’t be very big. Erela pulled her sword, just in case, the magic of it a bright beacon.
Still, nothing emerged to attack. There wasn’t a single sound.
She stepped close to the doorway and noted there wasn’t much to see in the tight space. Certainly, no hiding spots. The walls were covered in a strange opalescent material. Seamless and smooth. The floor had a pattern inlaid with silver. Intricate with many nodes and loops.
No magic hummed in this space. However, she could tell that it was meant to channel power. Power to do what, though?
She knelt in the silver diagram and noticed that each of the thirteen points had a different symbol. Waves. Flame. Wing. All kinds of sigils including one she recognized.
She placed her palm on the symbol and pushed some magic at it. The stone heated, swallowing the power, and for a second, the walls lit.
Then they extinguished, and the stone cooled.
Erela poured more magic into the sigil and was rewarded by the entire room glowing. The hair on her body lifted. Every ounce of her being quivered. The light grew brighter, and she had to shut her eyes against it. There was a whoosh as the air was sucked away and then returned in a rush.
She gasped and opened her eyes to see the same floor under her.
What had the spell done?
Standing, she noted the little room, the walls now dull.
Only when she exited did she pause and mutter, “It worked.”
She wasn’t in the tower anymore.
Exiting from the small chamber, so similar to the one she’d stepped into, Erela found herself in a storage room. An unused one judging by the dusty cobwebs draping the forgotten furniture.
But not completely unused given the path through the dirt to a door out of the closet.
Click. The sound had her whirling, and she gaped at the suddenly seamless wall. The portal room had sealed itself. Her only way back to the tower.
Alarmed, she pried at the seams, but the empty lock set between the mortared stone mocked her.
She didn’t have a key, the one she’d used having not transported with her. She had no idea where she was. This was bad.
Very bad. Or so Erela thought until she poked her head outside the storage room for a peek. It was night, and this part of the building she found herself in didn’t merit illumination. She edged her way along the wall, hugging it, holding her breath since it seemed too loud.
Reaching the end, she encountered another door. She half expected it to be locked.
It wasn’t.
Opening it carefully, she braved another glance, found another empty room with stairs going up. The crumbling steps held a bit of illumination from above, and a nagging sensation of familiarity filled her.
Exiting into the dusty corner of an unused hall, she recognized where she stood. The old keep. Generations ago, the king of Babylonia had abandoned it for one bigger and better. Neglected, it fell into deep disrepair, yet remained a popular place for clandestine meetings hence the single flickering torch.
I’m home.
So why did she suddenly shake?
Leaving the old keep, she kept to pockets of shadow. While the old castle might not be a busy location, it did prove popular with lovers. Not that she’d ever come. She and Desmond had kept their trysts a secret.
But someone knew.
Someone had told.
She wondered what would have happened had she gone to the king first. Told him of her love for Desmond and their desire to forge a bond that would unite their two worlds.
Would Marduk have enveloped her in a hug and planned a party? Or would he have turned her into the tribunal himself?
> It bothered her that she didn’t have a clear answer, which proved to be a reminder of why she’d never told anyone in the first place. How many times had she heard Marduk disparage the Ifrits? Calling them lesser beings. Equating them with savages.
Which gives me my answer. My king would not approve. Their love was always doomed.
The entrance via the catacombs remained unguarded. The dead weren’t known to cause a commotion. An oversight that was Erela’s fault. She’d known of this hidden hole in their security for a while now, having discovered it by accident while playing hide and seek in her youth. She’d kept the secret to herself, used it whenever she wanted to slip the protocol of court or the attentions of an unwanted suitor that she wasn’t allowed to kill—like that simpering prince from the ocean kingdom to the south.
The closer she got to her destination, the more her heart raced. Dots danced in front of her eyes. A throb started in her forehead, one that seemed to beat out a message.
Turn around. Go back.
Go where? This was her home.
Forsaken have no home.
A part of Erela screamed that she should run to the border. Return to Ha’el. Beg Desmond for a chance.
But Erela was no coward.
She crept farther into the palace, knowing when to tread quietly as the secret passage went past walls that were thin enough that she could hear conversation.
Eventually, she had to exit because where she had to go couldn’t be reached discreetly.
This time of night, most of the castle slumbered. A good thing. Once a place she’d run through with her head held high, she now scurried through its halls, ducking and hiding, her heart racing out of fear she’d be found.
Because it occurred to her that the presence of the teleportation chamber near the capital meant that there was a tribunal member nearby.
Perhaps even someone Erela knew.
The corridor housing the king’s suite of rooms had more activity. From the servants still bustling about ready to act if their king should demand it, to the guards stationed outside his door and at each end of the hall. She wouldn’t make it by unnoticed. Hence why she ducked into a room not oft used given its small size, but the window was perfect.
She opened it and slid out onto the ledge. A narrow stone lip, enough to cling to using her toes. She edged over, pausing before windows to ensure that no one looked out. She headed quickly across, silently praying no one on the ground glanced upward and noticed.
Luck was with her.
She made it to the balcony belonging to Marduk’s bedroom. Thick curtains hung over the door. Only a dim light glinted from the seams. She placed her ear to the glass and listened.
Not a sound.
She waited a moment longer. When it remained quiet, she carefully eased open a door just enough to slip in. She held her breath behind the curtain. Nothing stabbed her.
She dared to look around the edge of the drape, and her heart stopped. Someone leaned over the sideboard, pouring a glass of wine.
“My lord?” Erela said softly as she stepped out.
The king, the man she’d known all her life, the one who’d raised her as a daughter, turned to face her.
There was no sudden joy in his face at finding his long-lost ward. Instead, he said, “How dare you invade my chambers. Who do you think you are?”
“It’s me. Erela. Your daughter. I’ve found my way home.” She took a hopeful step forward. A short one faced with the unwelcoming scowl on her adoptive father’s face.
“I have no daughter. The only one I had betrayed me. Betrayed her people.”
The harshness of his words stung. “I can explain. Please.” Tears pricked Erela’s eyes as she held out her hands. “It was a mistake. I did nothing wrong.”
“You slept with a Dark Lord.” The disgust emerged quite clearly.
“We were in love.”
“You are a whore!” Marduk snapped. “And the tribunal punished you as you deserved.”
Despite the tears stinging, she didn’t allow herself to bow or accept his words. “I was attacked and imprisoned. Tortured. And then sentenced without a chance to even defend myself!”
“What did you expect?” The sneer took her aback, especially since she’d never seen it aimed in her direction.
“I did not deserve what happened.” She stood tall, the little girl suddenly seeing her guardian and king in a light that did not favor him at all.
“That day I found you on the steps, I should have killed you like they told me. You’ve brought nothing but shame on my name.”
“I’ve brought shame?” Her laughter was hysterical. “Are you sure it wasn’t your whoring with everything that walked that did that? How many by-blows do you have running around now that you won’t acknowledge?” The cruel words poured from her, and she couldn’t stop. Not when the hypocrisy was right there in his own actions.
“I am not the one who committed a crime. Nor am I abetting a Forsaken. Guards!” He yelled for them, and Erela saw her mistake in coming here. Began to realize just who might have turned her in.
She turned and ran for the window, only to gasp in pain as someone threw a dagger at her, embedding it deep into the muscle of her thigh.
She went to her knees, her hands scraping stone as she broke her fall. Before she could rise and fight, bodies tackled her. Pinned her to the floor. Something jabbed into her skin. A strange lethargy overtook her limbs. Her eyes drooped as the drug took hold. Panic gripped her.
Desmond. I have to tell him…
Chapter Twenty
The sudden sundering of his bond to Erela stole Desmond’s breath.
He ignored Logan’s barked, “She’s dead.”
“No. She’s not.” He refused to believe it. Wouldn’t believe it. The last time he’d accepted the missing link as proof, he was wrong. He wouldn’t stop searching for Erela until he found her body.
And she better be alive. He raced up the stairs, calling her name, looking in each room, wondering if they’d missed a threat.
“This way.” Logan dropped to all fours, his wolf pouring forth in a display of shifting that involved cracking bones, rippling skin, and the sprouting of hair not often seen outside a demonic orgy.
The wolf bounded up the stairs until he reached Mustafa’s bedchamber. He ran back and forth a bit before planting his furry butt in front of the wall by the stairs.
“Where is she?”
The wolf scratched the floor with his paw.
“There’s nothing here,” Desmond growled as he slammed the wall with the fresco.
Shifting back to his man shape, Logan yawned. He’d been flipping forms too often and hadn’t had a proper chance to recover. A limitation on a shifter’s ability and just another reason they were inferior.
“We might not see anything, but this is where her trail ends. Right in front of this wall.” Logan stared at it, as did Desmond.
“One of your ancestors perhaps?” Desmond said with a wave at the depiction of the wolfman—more wolf than man—having sex with what appeared to be a human woman with green hair.
“Let’s focus less on the art and more on where Adara went. She can’t have vanished into thin air.” Logan paced.
“Unless someone took her.”
“Assuming she was kidnapped.”
“If she was…” The solution seemed obvious to Desmond. “Then we get her back.”
“Could be she went off on her own. Didn’t want our help.”
Left unsaid but seen in the other man’s expression was the fear that he would be abandoned, just like she’d severed her tie to Titus.
Desmond wouldn’t be discarded so easily.
“Let’s say she went away, how did she go? Where?” Desmond swept a hand. “The night-mares remain tethered, and I saw no sign of a stable.”
“Yet dude must have had a way of travelling.” Logan crouched and touched the floor before looking up.
“It could be he used magic and created some kind of port
al.”
“Can you do that?”
It pained Desmond to admit. “No.” That kind of magic was lost a long time ago. Ancient stories spoke of the wonders they used to do. Desmond glanced at the wall and noticed an interesting item jutting. “What is that?”
“Changing the subject.” Logan chuckled as he stood. He leaned close to the metal nub jutting from the wall. Sniffed. Declared, “Adara touched it.” He put his hand on the key and turned. The wall disappeared, and Desmond cursed.
“A room hidden by spells. I should have suspected.” The disgust ran deep. He’d never even thought to look for a hidden chamber.
Entering, Logan crouched and sniffed. “She was in here.”
“And now she isn’t.” Desmond glanced around, spending extra time staring at the floor.
“What’s wrong? You look pissed.”
No doubt the wolf noticed the simmering anger. But Desmond hoped he couldn’t smell the trace of fear.
“This is bad. I think we just found a portal chamber.”
“Meaning?”
“A teleporter to other places.”
“I’ll be damned, she found it.” Logan chuckled.
“And used it,” Desmond snapped, sobering him.
“You think she’s in danger?”
“Yes.” Desmond stalked out of the chamber, his mind whirling. What to do? What. To-fucking. Do.
“Hey, hold on a second. Where are you going? Shouldn’t we go after her?”
“Go where?” Desmond whirled, his eyes blazing. “Did you see how many sigils were on that pattern?”
“A lot.”
“And we have no idea which one she activated.”
“So, we try them one by one.”
Desmond snorted. “Are you truly so dense as to think that would work? We have no idea where those rooms exit. Could be a place with no air. A volcano.” Within a realm that would as soon see Desmond dead.
“I get it. It’s dangerous. But we can’t just do nothing. Adara might be in trouble.”
“Erela,” said with emphasis, “will have to handle herself until we can pinpoint her location. If anyone can beat the odds, it is her.” How far would her luck go, though?