This is how I die.
A part of her wanted to call out to the dragon, beg him to be with her when she met her end.
He’d been with her in the prison cell.
Why had he left?
With her dead, he would never be free. Mayhap he had the power to see the future, and had abandoned her to her fate, alone as he was alone beneath the seas.
Ouros.
She whispered the name like a prayer—
Steel clashed against steel, the sparks from the blades striking lit the air above her cheek.
Ven opened her eyes to the sounds of battle.
Standing over her prone body, practically straddling her head, stood a man in a heavy scarf, scimitar in hand, defending her against the assault of the two remaining soldiers bent on her death.
No one called out or made a cry for reinforcements.
Her protector grunted once at a well place blow to his forearm, but that was all the sound he made.
Even the soldier, when pierced by the lone male’s blade, didn’t beg or plead for mercy.
The young one dropped his blade, fell to his knees.
When Ven looked up to meet the terrified gaze, she wondered what he saw in her stare as their eyes met.
The moment was severed with the man’s head.
If her assailants wouldn’t scream, she had no compunction not to do the same.
Her lips peeled back, eyes squeezed tight, and she let loose the horror in her belly, the wail echoing in the small cell, cutting through the sound of the swords meeting for a moment before there was a final thump, and the body above hers fell over her.
The heavy weight of the male pressed into her shoulder, stole the last of her breath she would have gladly used in her cry.
It wasn’t in death that he fell.
His hand crashed over her mouth, forced her head back against the flagstone, made sparks dance before her eyes when she opened them to see what fate this protector had bought for her.
He reached with his free hand, pulled away the blood splattered cloth that covered his lower face, the yellow-orange of his eyes distinctly familiar to her, though his stare held none of the captivation she remembered from his father’s.
“Father would have your entire line put down, no witches to supplant his rule if he had his way. But there is more to you than that, isn’t there, girl? Tell me I did not just risk my father’s wrath for nothing.”
She frowned up at the scowling face above her, his words meaning nothing to her shattered psyche.
What in the serpent god’s name was he talking about?
“Damnit.”
He stood swiftly, the hand he’d held over her mouth leaving only to move to her shoulder, haul her from the ground.
The prince pushed her against the nearest wall, the wall with the door, still open, to her right.
She couldn’t see what he did, but the moment her hands came free, panic took over and she tried to flee.
Better had she not attempted the maneuver.
The phai swept her feet from beneath her, tumbled her back to the floor where her numb arms could not catch her fall, flopped uselessly before her and barely broke her crash into the stones.
Her chin struck the hard ground.
She tasted blood in her mouth from where she’d bitten her tongue.
Please, not something horrible! Don’t let the bite be bad.
He flipped her to her back, straddled her waist once more.
His hands were gloved.
She’d not noticed it when he fought nor when he covered her mouth the first time. The leather of his gloves was tanned as dark as his skin, though the scales on the material suggested a snake rather than the rare hides one might hunt in the desert.
“Stop it. I’m trying to help you, foolish witch.”
Being told to stop, to yield, against a man who was a trained fighter, one she did not know, gave her little will to obey. She wanted to thrash, to lash out.
The prince struck her face.
Ven jerked.
Her head glanced off the ground, further clearing her thoughts, though the tension running through her body didn’t break, and despite the prince’s apparent aid, something in his golden eyes didn’t sit well with her.
Perhaps it was that they were gold and not the burgundy she was hoping for…
“Father will kill you, girl. Give me a reason to save your life!”
I haven’t done anything wrong!
But of course, as her mother had said, she’d been born a djinn, which was enough to have her outcast without a crime being committed.
And she had opened the temple to the public.
Not to mention consorted with a dragon.
“Please.”
Even she didn’t know what that please was meant to engender.
The phai growled but relented. He pulled her once more to her feet, replaced the scarf across his face, drew a fold of dark cloth from a pocket and shook it out to wrap around her head as well. “It’s the best I can do for now. I have people in the bazaar waiting to give us aid. We’ll find help there before we flee the city.”
“My mother—”
“Your mother has been taking care of herself for years. Compared to you, she is harmless.”
“You said my entire line.”
“And your mother cannot produce another heir to it.”
Before she could ask another question, the phai gripped her arm and dragged her through the cell door. The darkened hallway was a shadowed quagmire that had Ven’s throat tight, waiting for a moment to scream.
They moved too quickly for her to gather enough breath to try.
The passages they took were none that she’d seen before. Servants routes, she assumed, though even late at night she would have expected some people about attending to their masters. Wasn’t night when her mother had most often been shuffled from place to place to perform her duties? Beyond the sight of those who would sneer at one of the blood djinn without their need of her?
The prince had said that he had people waiting beyond the walls to aid him.
He very easily could have commanded them to clear the passages to their escape as well.
What about his guards?
They took a corner closer than she expected, not having seen the turn approaching.
Ven grazed over the wall and hissed when the slash on her arm scratched against the stone work. Even to her night-blind eyes, she knew there would be a mark left in her passage to denote where she’d been, a trail easily followed for those who would hunt her come morning’s light.
“Wait.” She pulled free of his grip.
The phai growled at her in response.
“I struck the wall.”
“So?”
“My arm is bleeding. I struck the wall. If we’re followed, they’ll know the way.”
“Selish take you!”
She certainly hoped not. Ven had no love for the snake goddess most of the Khanastani worshipped.
No desire to worship or be brought to the deity’s attention.
He pushed her out of the way, always pushing or pulling, never asking her to move or explaining his actions…
He pushed, and she stepped aside, wondering if he could see any better than she, though he obviously knew the path well enough, light or no light, to lead them away from the cells where she’d been caged. “I can see no blood.”
Yet she could feel the drip of the same down her arm, the wound reopened in their flight.
It had to be there.
“We don’t have time to wait and see if it leaves a trail in daylight. We will have to pray we are far enough away by then that we won’t be found.”
Away?
Not to mention the more important “we” of his comment.
The house he led them to was in a district of the city she’d not seen upon her entrance. Where the main streets were layered with sandstone apartments built three and four stories high, windows sparse, barely slits in the golden facades, easily
barricaded should a sand storm arise, these homes were carved for far greater luxury.
Gone was the yellow of the sandstone of the tenement housing. In its place stood buildings of carved rocks in pale pinks and blues with greens and oranges marbled throughout. Not even the citadel was made of such lavish stone, but then, the citadel had stood since the beginning of time, and these palaces were of newer make.
“Home” did not do these monstrosities justice.
But still, they sat in a world of sand, and so what was truly worth the added cost of marble blocks when the owners, politicians and dignitaries and whoever else called these buildings their own, were as poor of water as any other?
Or were there other hidden reservoirs she had not unearthed to the public here?
“Get inside.”
She obeyed the whisper-growled command.
He shut them inside the building after following at her heels.
There was only silence to greet them.
“This way.”
He did not take her arm this time, and she was grateful to be left off the leash of his hand.
It didn’t stop her following him where he led, but at least she had the pretense that she trailed of her own free will.
They moved through the palace, down corridors that were painted white, blue and green and red frescoes decorating the walls with scenes that seemed more out of a fantasy than any reality that had ever been.
Trees that flourished with green leaves. Bushes that grew as tall as houses.
No prickly spines on anything.
Pools filled with the bluest of waters in the middle of grass plains.
There was not a dark cloud or deadly flying beast in sight.
No hint of the desert that was become of their homeland.
“Don’t fall behind. We must hurry.”
Ven turned from the paintings and raced to catch up with her savior.
He didn’t wait for her to reach the top of the staircase before turning down a wing of the building and the faint squeal of dry hinges telling that he had opened some door.
She didn’t dare tarry further, not wanting to become lost in this place.
Chapter Sixteen
Ouros roared.
She called his name.
He’d heard her call his name in his mind, felt the pull to return to her, smelled the scent of blood in the air, human blood, blood on steel.
Just a moment, a prayer.
And she was gone, and there was no way back to her.
He could not reach her.
He would never know her fate, whether she survived the villains’ attack or succumbed, since he relied on her to make the connection between their minds.
The last who could release him, and he would not know if she lived or died.
His gill slits ruffled in the ocean current. The breath that steamed from the delicate membranes carried with it the scent of sulfur from the deep pits of his chest where his fire burned brightest.
If he’d been free…
The muscles in his back tensed, wanting to stretch his broken wings.
If he was free…
He should feel nothing for the girl.
He should hate her above all others.
He only cared if she lived or died because she was the means to escaping his watery hell.
That was it.
That was all.
He didn’t care if she was hurt, that he couldn’t protect her, that he sensed no ill-will in her, despite the history of their lines, and that she called to him with something like hope in her voice, a wish that he would come to her, save her as she was meant to save him.
He didn’t care about any of that.
Only that she lived long enough to shed her blood in the sea.
Summer Squalls, let her live.
He could not face an eternity alone after knowing her.
Ouros growled and settled down to wait.
Chapter Seventeen
The prince led her to a room with a massive wardrobe against its far wall. The bed and the furnishings were impressive enough, but the wardrobe was unlike anything she’d ever seen.
Not that she’d ever seen such luxuries before.
But it was what the opened doors of the closet revealed that made her jaw drop open in shock and not a tad bit of awe.
Never once in her life had she wished for more than she had, not truly.
She was satisfied with thrice mended clothing passed from grandmother to mother to her, some pieces even older than that. Her clothing was as colorless as the city the khan ruled, but more suitable to life on the seashore and desert island.
The clothing here was neither of those things: suitable or colorless. From what she could see, the fabrics ranged from every color of the rainbow, more colors than she’d seen in her sun-bleached existence thus far, than she’d seen worn by those few she’d been privy to seeing within the halls of the citadel. Fabrics that looked as heavy as the drapes covering the windows, barely swaying despite the wind outside; fabrics so sheer that the light of the prince’s torch shown through them and she thought them more veil than garment.
“Put on one of these. It will be easier to move throughout the city if you look as though you belong there rather than a dirty prisoner of the citadel.”
She did not mention that her skin tone was unlike that of any other within the city’s boundaries.
No outfit would make her look akin to his town folk.
The black shrouds seemed the most obscuring, and she’d seen plenty enough of the women in the city wearing similar garments, faces neatly garbed against the sands.
Men wore their headwraps pulled down into scarves when needed.
She would don the veil and use it to hide her flesh against eyes as the Khanastani guarded against the winds.
Her feet made no sound over the flooring, the thick carpet underfoot silencing any noise she might have made in crossing the room and standing before the plethora of garments. If her hands trembled in reaching out, she blamed it only on the weakness of lack of water for the past however long and the stretch of her arms gone numb behind her back for a time.
The phai watched her, his gaze a hot thing that lingered on her as she made her choice, judging, perhaps, she couldn’t say, but she felt him watching her and prayed he did not realize how greatly she was unnerved by it.
He was to be her husband.
Or was that no more, now?
Had he wanted the title? Is that why he saved her? This boy who knew her no more than she knew him, only rumor to offer answer to questions she had about him.
He grunted, and she turned her head enough to watch him move to the opposite bureau, draw out clothing meant for himself.
Was this his house that he owned outside the palace his father ruled from?
Then whose clothing did she steal?
“Hurry. We need to be out of the city by daybreak.”
Which had to be nearing soon, though she had no true concept of time, having been locked away in darkness and seeing the same upon her release.
She nodded and pulled out the garment, the pants full enough to be considered a skirt though the fabric was lightweight in her grip. The top that came with it was…well, she wasn’t sure she would actually call the wrap a top, though clearly it was meant for her chest. It had a jacket. And she’d made her choice, she couldn’t very well sit and look for another one as she heard fabric rustling at her back, the man changing his garments with the speed he expected her to display.
There was nowhere to turn to hide her changing from his gaze if he should look.
He’d not taken the moment to hide from her if she turned to him.
She stripped quickly, glad to be rid of the filthy clothing she’d worn since meeting the dragon, since feeling his power fill her and being summarily imprisoned for using the same.
The thin sandals on her feet caught on the fabric as she tried to pull the pants on over the top of them. Sandals would be little benefit in the s
ands outside the city. Surely, there must be boots somewhere in this place she could use in their stead?
A question for another moment.
She kicked off her shoes and pulled the slacks over her legs, the waistband sitting low on her hips. The wrap shirt took more effort, but she managed it, covering her breasts and tying the material at her back in a tight enough knot that it would not slip from her in her travels. She was more than happy to pull the coat on. At least it managed to cover the exposed skin of her ribs and navel, the bare expanse of her back from behind.
The brand over her breast peeked out from the neckline of the ensemble.
Nothing for it.
Ven bundled her hair into a messy knot at the base of her neck, missing the weight of the scale that she’d hidden in the heavy strands once upon a time. Barely a week ago. Barely a week, and the changes of her life were more than she’d ever imagined.
She turned towards the prince, pulled the scarf around her head like a cowl, drew the fabric over her mouth and chin, clipped it to the head wrap over her left ear, the remaining material left to trail over her should, a secondary covering against the cold if she needed it.
She hoped she wouldn’t need it.
The phai was staring at her. She could not read his expression, his gaze in shadows despite the torch he held, or perhaps because of it.
He nodded once, “Follow me.”
“I need boots.”
She thought his eyes might have narrowed at being interrupted, but he gave pause, handed her the torch when he passed to rummage in the bottom of the bureau and draw forth a pair of heavy shoes that would serve the purpose of protecting her feet better than the sandals she’d kicked away.
“We must go.”
Havence finished the lacing on the shoes and nodded in consent.
Still, no one approached them. None of the men or women he’d said were waiting to offer aid.
No time to hesitate now.
Best to think on it later.
After she was thrust onto the back of a horse, and he climbed onto a steed next to her own.
She barely remembered leaving the manse or finding the beasts saddled and waiting outside.
But the horses were there, and there were saddlebags on the creature’s backs and he kicked his heels into the side of his mount before she could ask after them and her steed followed his.
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