by C. L. Wilson
When there was nothing left to destroy, nothing more whole than the shattered pieces of her heart, she curled in the ruins of her destroyed bed and wept.
Ser Vale hurried down a servants’ stairway to the under-palace, where an entire invisible city worked industriously to keep the palace operating smoothly and Their Majesties’ courtiers well served and sated.
Lord Hewen, the royal physician, had been in to see the queen. Vale’s informants told him she was sleeping fitfully. There were no obvious signs of distress with the child, though Lord Hewen had not performed more than a cursory visual examination for fear of waking the queen. The ministers wouldn’t even allow a single servant in to tidy the mess Annoura had made of her apartments for the same reason.
Vale was perhaps the only person in the court for whom the news of the king’s death was neither surprising nor unwelcome. He expected similar news to arrive any day from Great Bay, and once it did, Vale’s star in the Celierian court would go sharply on the rise.
It was time to tie up loose ends.
Celieria ~ Kreppes
5th day of Seledos
“I’m worried, Rain.”
Ellysetta paced the floor of her room in Kreppes Castle. Ever since she’d stood on the Fired battlefield outside Kreppes and realized that one of her dreams had come true, fear had been a constant companion, eating away at her peace of mind, tormenting her as fiercely as any nightmare ever had.
She’d kept the fear to herself these last days. Rain had been so busy. He and Lord Barrial had spent most of their time scouting Great Lord Sebourne’s lands in search of Mages, and at Gaelen’s suggestion, Cann had summoned his dahl’reisen friends and asked them to check all the remaining Sebourne inhabitants for Mage Marks. In the meantime, armies from the surrounding border estates were sending troops to secure the lands until the new King Dorian could decide what to do with them.
But Moreland was secure now, and Rain was back. Ellysetta couldn’t keep quiet any longer.
“I’m worried that if that dream came true, some of my others might, too.” Like the dream she’d had last month about Rain dying by Ellysetta’s hand while Mage-claimed Lillis and Lorelle danced in a shower of his blood. “I’m worried about all those people I killed and how I felt when I killed them.”
Ellysetta dragged her palms over her face and eyes, as if that simple gesture could shut out the world. But shutting out the world—pretending it wasn’t there—never solved anything. If she’d learned nothing else, she’d learned that. Hiding from the monsters only made them stronger.
“Hawksheart said I was the double-edged sword. He warned you that I have just as much capacity for evil as I do for good. I believe him, Rain. And I’m so afraid—so terribly frightened—that the evil is winning.”
“Shei’tani…”
“Nei, Rain. Listen to me. There’s something dark inside me—and it isn’t all the tairen, and it isn’t all the High Mage either. You want to pretend it’s not there, but it is. Some horrible, vicious part of me was glad to kill those people… I thrived on murdering them. Worse, I didn’t just want to kill them. I wanted to make them suffer. I wanted to hear them scream and beg for mercy. I wanted to see the terror in their eyes and know I put it there!”
“Ellysetta, they’d just killed Rowan and turned our own people against each other. They made friends slaughter friends. Your Rage was understandable. Do you think I felt any different? What do you think Steli would have done if the Eld had turned tairen against tairen?”
Ellysetta bit her lip. She knew what Steli would do. The fierce white tairen would shred, scorch, and maim every living creature on the battlefield. “I’m not Steli, Rain.”
“Neither was I when Sariel died. Yet you’ve told me so many times that what I did didn’t make me evil. Was that all a lie?”
Her gaze shot to his. “Nei, of course not!” “Then how am I to be forgiven for what I did in war, yet you are not?”
She hated when he turned her own arguments against her this way. “You weren’t Mage Marked, Rain. You weren’t told you’d been born either to save the world or destroy it.”
“True. I wasn’t born to save the world. I was merely born to slaughter millions.”
“You were born to end the Mage Wars,” she corrected sharply, “and in doing so to save all those people the Eld would have enslaved if you hadn’t done what you did.”
His hands cupped her face, and his eyes brimmed with sorrow and love and such understanding she nearly wept. “Aiyah, shei’tani. That I was. And though I will never forgive myself for what I did, every day when the doubts creep in, I remind myself that the gods made me for their own purpose. That no matter how seemingly dark and terrible that purpose was, they trusted me to fulfill it. And I remind myself every day, that somehow, I must have proven myself worthy in their eyes because they sent me you, my soul’s mate and the beacon that drew me back from Shadow.” His thumbs brushed lightly across her lower lip in a tender caress. “Perhaps, shei’tani, it’s time you began to believe the same about yourself.”
Her lashes fell to cover her eyes. Almost since the first moment she’d met Rain, she’d been telling him to forgive himself, to see the Light in his soul that even the Scorching of the World had not been able to dim. Now their roles were reversed, and she was bewailing her own sad plight as if no one in the world had ever walked so Dark a path.
And yet, the doubts were there. She could not deny or ignore them. “What if I’m not strong enough? What if I’m not good enough? What if Tenn and the Massan were right, and I’ve already done all I was meant to do, and the only way to save the world is for someone to kill me before I fall to Darkness?”
His thumb brushed against her lower lip, and though sorrow shaded his eyes, there was a steady calmness, an acceptance about him, that she’d never seen so strongly before.
“Then we will die together, Ellysetta.” The corner of his beautiful mouth titled slightly upwards in a mournful ghost of a smile. “Whatever your fate, I will share it. Wherever your Path leads, there, too, walk I. Ver reisa ku’chae. Kem surah, shei’tani.”
She wrapped her arms around him and held on tight, not so much embracing him as trying to merge her body into his until there was no part of them that stood apart. She kissed him with desperate passion, as if his lips could wipe out the pervasive sense of doom that sapped her courage and filled her with fear.
“Kiss me, Rain. Love me.”
“I will. I do.” He touched his mouth to hers in a kiss of gentle devotion, but she would have none of it. Her lips parted, and she took his mouth with urgent need at the same time her body surged against him. Earth weaves spun from her hands, and his armor dropped from him like leaves from an autumn tree.
He pulled back, frowning. “Ellysetta?”
“Ssh. No more talk. I don’t want any more talk. I just want you. I want this.” Her nails raked down his naked flesh, teasing him, scoring his skin with a combination of pain and pleasure that made him gasp and his eyes turn bright as stars. She wanted heat, wild and passionate, not tenderness. She called his essence with ruthless command and shared hers in such an unfettered rush that he cried out, barely managing to remain on his feet as every muscle in his body went hard as stone, then began trembling uncontrollably.
She pushed him back onto the bundles of fur that served as their bed, stripping her own leathers with impatient weaves. Naked, she crouched over him. Nails and teeth raked and nipped. He reached for her, but she evaded his hands. Fire and Air danced across his skin in alternate waves of heat and cold. He reached for her again, and she growled a warning in her throat. He bared his teeth and growled back. He caught her in a firm grip, his fingers sinking into her flesh and driving her inexorably towards union.
Passion unraveled the tight barriers in his mind, and his escaping thoughts intruded on her own, memories of the fire and screams of great, winged tairen coming together in the sky in a fierce mating.
She inhaled sharply, feeling the burn in
her flesh, the hunger tightening her womb and inner muscles. Hands gripped her hips, and he plunged inside her in one swift thrust, wrenching a ragged cry from her throat. Oh, gods. Her eyes closed. Flames consumed her as her body stretched and burned to accommodate him. His hips thrust again.
“Rain!” She clawed at his shoulders, fought him for control, as a tairen female battled her mate for sexual supremacy until he proved his strength and dominance and established his right to mate her and father her kits.
Stars exploded against the back of her eyes, and it was her turn to tremble uncontrollably as his hands and mouth and magic and the pounding rhythm of his hips drove her to first one peak, then another and another until she could not think, could not speak. Until she could barely even breathe without setting off yet another deep, shattering orgasm.
In the end, even that was not enough. Because when they were spent, and Rain lay sprawled and sleeping beside her own limp, perspiring body, she could still feel within her a spreading black ice deep within her core, chilling her from the inside out.
Celieria ~ Celieria City
Master Gaspare Fellows, the Queen’s Master of Graces, held a scented handkerchief to his nose and rolled his eyes. The wharfs. Why did questionable personages always arrange their nefarious assignations at wharfs? Of course, since the nefarious person in question was a ship’s captain, he supposed it made sense. But, gods have mercy, the stink of sweat, bodily excretions, and rotting fish offal was blinding.
Then again, would he rather be blinded by stink and battling the heaves, or lying on the floor of his well-maintained palace apartment, clean, perfumed, and utterly dead?
In the days since they’d learned of King Dorian’s demise, a string of tragic deaths had afflicted the palace. Lady Nadela, Prince Dorian’s betrothed, had tumbled down the marble steps of the grand staircase and broken her neck. She died instantly. Lady Jiarine Montevero, who’d been among the ladies walking with the future princess at the time, had been so terrified of being declared Lady Nadela’s murderer that she’d written a hysterical note proclaiming her innocence and hanged herself in her room to avoid being tortured again in Old Castle Prison. Two of the late king’s most trusted ministers had perished in horrible accidents.
Gaspare, himself, had narrowly escaped not one, but three, brushes with death, including an attempt to poison himself and Love at breakfast this morning. Only an open window and an unfortunate, hungry thief of a sparrow had saved them. Life in the palace had become a risky business since King Dorian’s passing, and considering that Gaspare’s breakfast was prepared and tasted by Her Majesty’s own servants, he greatly feared that the assassin was someone very close to the queen.
The king was dead, the Fey had left Celieria City, and the queen was possibly in league with an enemy of the crown.
With nowhere to turn in the city, Gaspare had decided his only viable course of action was to leave. That decision had brought him here, to the wharves. Or, more specifically, to the Crown and Cutlass Pub in the wharf district.
Tugging the collar of his greatcoat closer, Gaspare pulled down the brim of his dark hat, ignored the blinding smells around him, and marched towards the Crown and Cutlass. The burning lantern over the pub’s door swung in the strong night breeze off the bay, and the wide circle of its light rocked back and forth, like a pendulum, casting the door in and out of shadow as it moved.
“Be brave,” Gaspare muttered to himself. “Be brave. Be brave.”
“Mmrow?” A small, warm, furry head poked out of the edge of his greatcoat. The little skull beneath the fur nudged his throat as it twisted and turned to get a good look at their surroundings.
“Yes, I know, Love,” Gaspare sighed. “You’re brave enough for the both of us. Now get back in there. This is not a nice place. The men in here probably eat pretty kittens like you for a morning snack.” He pushed his kitten’s white head back into his coat and suffered the punishment of her tiny, needlelike claws sinking into his chest.
The pain of Love’s displeasure helped him summon the courage to open the pub door and step inside.
Crowded, dimly lit, and smoky, the interior of the pub fit Gaspare’s image of a pub of ill repute to perfection. The swarthy, dangerous-looking men idling inside looked up as he entered, as did the blowsy pleasure girls sitting on their laps and leaning low to whisper in their ears. Although, Gaspare noted, the term “pleasure girl” was something of a euphemism in this establishment. He doubted there was a single female in the place under the age of forty. Most were missing several teeth. And likely most of their hair, too, judging by the number of dirty wigs he saw.
“Hallo there, handsome.” A hand clapped on Gaspare’s shoulder, and he turned to find the grandmother of all pleasure girls standing beside him. Gaspare’s eye for detail captured the woman’s garish caricature of beauty in one horrific glance. A frizzy yellow mop for hair, greasy eye makeup that had melted and settled into the lines around her eyes, flaccid breasts propped up on display by tight stays: The sight was indelibly seared upon his brain. “Lookin’ for some company? “
He stifled a shudder and tried not to breathe the fetid air gushing from the woman’s red-painted lips.
“Thank you, my good woman, but no,” he declined politely. “I’m looking for Captain Sarkay. I was told he would be here.”
“Har!” The woman near felled him with a heave of odorbefouled laughter. “Eren’t you the fancy gent? ‘Thank you, my good woman,’” she mimicked. “More’s the pity. Looks like you could use a good hoist of your mainsail. Ah well, some other time, perhaps.” With a prosaic shrug, she waved a thin hand towards one of the tables at the back of the pub. “Sarkay’s over there. The handsome one in green.”
Handsome was as relative a term as girl, in this place, Gaspare decided. The only man in green he could see at the back table was a swarthy giant, with a long black mustache, bald head, and tattoos curling around every inch of his beefy forearms.
“Many thanks, madam.” Gaspare gave a short bow out of ingrained habit, then wished he hadn’t when he noted the pub patrons eyeing him with speculation. If he wasn’t careful with his court Graces, he’d get himself clubbed and robbed and rolled into the alleyway.
He made his way as quickly as possible through the crowd to the green-clad giant at the back. “Captain Sarkay?”
The giant looked up slowly. “Who’s askin’?” Up close, the fellow was even more intimidating. Black brows arched with a wicked flare over dark, dark eyes. Scars curled around his head and down the side of his face—as if he’d stopped more than one sword blow with his skull.
“The name is…” Gaspare racked his brain for a name that sounded suitably tough and street-wise, “… Fist. Ruffio Fist.” He started to hold out a hand, then thought the better of it and grabbed the back of a nearby chair instead. “I understand you have a boat for hire? No questions asked?”
The captain arched one demonic brow. “Aye. I’ve a ship. Where is it you’re looking to go, Goodman Fist?”
“King’s Point.”
“No one sails to the Point these days. There’s a war on, haven’t you heard?”
“Well then, what’s the closest village with an open port before the Point? Take me there. I’ll pay extra if we can leave tonight.”
“Leave me.” Annoura commanded in a cold, emotionless tone.
Her Ladies-in-Waiting instantly obeyed, dropping deep curtsies as they backed out of what had been the king’s bedchamber. Since destroying her own bedchamber, Annoura had taken to sleeping in Dorian’s. The decision had been a matter of convenience at first, but she realized almost immediately that being here, among his things, soothed her as very little else could these days.
Annoura rose from the dressing table and crossed the room to Dorian’s bed. She felt closer to him here. One of his robes lay on the coverlet. She wrapped herself in it and crawled into his bed, laying her head on his pillow. His scent surrounded her, almost as if he were here, holding her in his arms. Huggi
ng that illusion close, she closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.
As she had every night since his death, Annoura dreamed of Dorian. Not the cold and distant Dorian he’d been their last weeks together, but the Dorian as he’d been when they first met. Dazzling. Seductive. Devoted. The most intensely passionate man she’d ever met. With hazel eyes that could glow like stars and a mouth that drove her mad when he whispered kisses across her skin.
Tonight, like the other nights since his death, she dreamed they were back in the secluded garden terrace in Capellas, where they’d shared their first kiss. The lilac trees were blooming, as they’d been that day so long ago. Dorian stood on the terrace’s stone pavers, older than he had been on the day of their first kiss, but still a dark, lustrous jewel, framed by the lilac’s soft hues. The wind ruffled his hair and blew the hem of his rich velvet surcoat about him. He held out a hand, his hazel eyes full of love, and spoke her name. “Annoura.”
“Dorian.” She reached for him and nearly wept when the warmth of his hand closed about hers and the familiar heat of his mouth possessed her lips. Unlike the day of their first kiss, the dream Dorian didn’t simply kiss her and declare his love. Instead, he bore her down upon a bed of soft lilacs, and cool, intoxicating fragrance enveloped her with dizzying sweetness.
Dorian’s hands smoothed burning paths down her body. She arched against him, calling his name, pleading with him to join his body with hers. Fearful that, like every other night, the dream Dorian would once again drive her to a frenzy of need, then evaporate, leaving her empty and aching and sobbing into her pillow.
Tonight, however, as her need reached its peak and the Dorian of her dreams started to fade and pull away from her, she clung to him, weeping and pleading for him not to go. “Please, dearling, don’t go! Stay with me. I’ll do anything, only please don’t go. Don’t go!”