by C. L. Wilson
Somehow that made him even more terrifying.
When she was finished, he wiped her face with a cool, moist cloth that smelled improbably of lemon and some exotic tropical scent she didn’t recognize.
“Better?” He brushed a dark hand along the edges of her hairline, pushing back the limp curls. She flinched. He gave a small, good-natured chuckle. “I take it you’ve heard of me.” The thought that she knew his name and feared him clearly gave him pleasure.
“P-plea—” Her abused throat closed up. She coughed—froze a moment when she thought she might be sick again—then swallowed painfully and forced the words out. Her voice was hoarse. “I am an Heir of the Rose, a princess of Summerlea. My brother-in-law is the Winter King . . . Whatever you are being paid for us, my family will pay double—triple—even more to get me and my sisters back.” She tried to put a push of Persuasion in her voice, but her throat was too sore, and trying to focus enough to call her magic was like swimming through glue.
Balat regarded her with an unwavering gaze. “As a businessman, I’m normally quite open to a better offer, but in this case, as tempting as that sounds, my pearl, there’s not enough money in the world to induce me to return you or your sisters to your family. You are simply far too valuable to me. Not, of course, in your current, filthy condition, but that’s easily remedied.” He clapped his hands and a door slid open on the side of the room, and three women entered carrying a basin, a large steaming ewer, and a basket filled with cloths and a variety of small bottles and containers. All three women were clad in pristine white skirts that were slit up to their thighs. Naked from the waist up, their blue-black skin was covered in a strangely beautiful, flowing design of gleaming silver symbols. Runes of some kind. Their hair was burgundy, their eyes peridot green, and each wore a silver collar around her throat.
“Clean her up,” the man commanded. “And take care of this.” His slippered foot nudged the pail beside the bed.
Wordlessly, one woman picked up the pail and carried it away while the other two approached Gabriella. Working in concert, they set the basin down on a small table beside the bed, filled it with steaming water from the ewer, and drizzled a thick blue liquid into the water. The third woman returned, and together, the three of them untied Summer’s wrists, holding her firmly. She didn’t resist them. The tzele hadn’t fully worn off, but the infamous Mur Balat had made a vital mistake.
He’d put a daughter of the Sun in a room with windows. Uncovered windows. In broad daylight.
The sunlight was bright and warm and revitalizing. She could feel herself getting stronger, more lucid with each passing moment as the sun-born magic in her blood burned the remaining tzele out of her system.
“My sh-sisters,” she murmured, the slurring only slightly exaggerated. Helos help her. That tzele, whatever it was, packed quite a punch. “Where are they? What have you done with them?” With effort, she managed to send a tentative tendril of power billowing outward, tasting the winds in an effort to locate Autumn and Spring.
“They are alive and unharmed, my pearl. Never fear. I pride myself on taking excellent care of all my treasures.”
After removing the chafing hemp rope Gabriella’s abductors had used to bind her wrists, the peridot-eyed women replaced it with loops of sturdily braided silk and pulled Gabriella’s arms over her head, tying the rope to a post behind the headboard. Her ankles were next, but when it became clear the women intended to spread Gabriella’s legs and tie each ankle to opposite bedposts, panic set in hard.
There was only one reason to tie her in such a manner. To make it easier for her abductors to rape her.
Summer’s mind was still clouded with tzele, but that didn’t matter. There was no way she was going to submit to rape without a fight. She began to struggle, bucking and kicking out.
“Get off me! Let go of me!” She tried to fill her voice with Persuasion, but her mind was still too blurred by drugs to muster the focus that power required.
Fire, however, was a different matter. Even though she’d spent her life hiding the true strength of all her magic gifts, Summer had the strongest affinity with the sun of all her sisters. When she called, all desperation and wild fear, the sun came roaring in response.
Summer gave a guttural cry as power pulsed through her, hot and fiery. Her Rose went white-hot, a searing ember against her skin. The ropes around her wrists burst into flame. The unlit oil lamps hanging from the ceiling burst into fire and shattered, sending flaming oil spraying across the cabin floor. The three slave women went flying, slamming into the walls and sliding down, hair singed, clothes smoldering. Every drop of moisture in the cabin evaporated, leaving the room so hot and parched, it hurt to breathe. Outside, the sea grew rough as storm clouds boiled across the sky, and the ship lurched sideways on a sudden gale-force wind.
Freed from her bonds, Summer lurched to her hands and knees, then nearly collapsed again. The remnant effects of the tzele had burned away in an instant, but the sheer force of what she’d just channeled left her dizzy.
Mur Balat took a step towards her. She drew a deep breath of the hot cabin air and focused on Balat—intending to scorch him to cinders—when her magic just . . . evaporated. One instant, her power was a palpable force inside her, the next it was as insubstantial as smoke—impossible to grasp, let alone wield.
A desperate, wrenching pain exploded inside her, as if her skin were being peeled from her body.
“Incredible!” Mur Balat exclaimed. He loomed over her, palms outstretched, eyes glowing furnace red. Rivers of glowing, golden light were flowing from her body into his, forming a shining halo around him. “Truly exquisite. One of the most delicious powers I’ve ever tasted. And nowhere near as insignificant as I was led to believe.” He clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “You, my pearl, have been hiding your gifts under a bushel.”
She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t scream. The three slave women gathered around her and, working quickly, tied her back up, hands above her head, legs spread and tied to the bedposts, and there was nothing she could do to stop them. When they were done, they hurried around the room, throwing sand on the fires she’d sparked.
Only once the fires were extinguished did the golden aura around Mur Balat begin to dim, then to blacken. Then the now-shadowy aura sank into his flesh and was absorbed. His fiery red eyes went black once more. At last, Gabriella was free of whatever arcane hold he’d trapped her in, but she was so weakened she couldn’t lift a hand or manage more than a whimpering protest as the three women cut away her nightgown and began to wash her with warm, scented water.
She tried reaching for her magic again, but nothing came to her call. Frantic, she pulled again, reaching deeper, and again
Balat had stolen her magic.
The slaver licked his lips and his gaze roved over her exposed body with open appreciation. “I must say, you are every bit as lovely as that magic of yours is delicious. Had I more time, I would gorge myself on you for hours. Alas, there is no time to indulge. I have an urgent task to attend to.” He stroked a hand down the side of her face, ignoring her shuddering flinch. “Normally, after I’ve eaten someone’s magic, they remain incapacitated and incapable of accessing their powers for days, but your sisters have already proven exceptional in their abilities to recover from my little indulgences. And therein lies my dilemma.”
Sitting down on the edge of the bed, he skimmed a hand along the curve of her bare breast.
“I can’t keep dosing you with tzele. You Seasons don’t tolerate it well and the effects wear off too quickly. If I give you more, I run the risk of overdosing you—the results of which would be . . . well, unpleasant, to put it mildly. But as you have proven more than once, if given the opportunity, you’ll use your magic to cause trouble. I must, therefore, employ a different method to control you until I return. Sadly, I don’t think you’ll like it very much.” He squeezed her breast.
Terror and outrage combined gave her the st
rength to hiss, “Let me and my sisters go now. Let us go, and you may survive this. If you don’t, Dilys Merimydion and Wynter of the Craig will hunt you to the very ends of Mystral, and when they find you, they will destroy you.”
Balat rose to his feet. “I wouldn’t pin my hopes on that, my pearl. But if, by some miracle, they do manage to track this ship down, my friend here is more than capable of sinking any ship on the sea.” He crossed the cabin and opened the door. A tall, dark massive figure filled the doorway. As the newcomer stepped out of the shadows of the doorway into the room, Summer felt the simultaneous blows of shock and dread as she realized Balat’s “friend” was a Calbernan.
He wasn’t one of the ones who’d come to Konumarr this summer. Of that, she was certain. This was a man who, once seen, you would never forget. He was tall, like all of his kind, his skin a deep, dark bronze. His chest and shoulders were broad and muscular, his build every bit as impressive as Dilys’s. But where Dilys’s and his men’s ulumi were all iridescent blue, more than half of this man’s tattoos had been inked in matte black, making it appear as if he were surrounded by swirling shadows.
“Your Royal Highness,” Balat addressed Summer with courtly graciousness, “allow me to introduce you to the Shark.”
Dilys smiled with grim satisfaction as a pod of dolphins sang out their news. Summer’s kidnappers must either think themselves safe or whatever magic they’d used in Llaskroner Fjord had run out because the concealing fog surrounding their ship was gone. They were sailing full speed towards the coast of Frasia. The dolphins and porpoises riding the bow wave of the ship happily called out the details of the vessel as they swam, and Dilys’s network of oceanic spies promptly fed those details back to him.
The name of the ship was the Reaper. A three-masted caravel, built for speed and maneuverability. The type of vessel favored by the pirates who had long-plagued the reefs and shallower waters of the Carmine Islands that bordered the southern Olemas Ocean and the westernmost Varyan.
“Pirates?” Commander Friis echoed in disbelief when Dilys shared the news. “You honestly think a band of pirates would sail halfway round Mystral and invade Wintercraig to make off with the Winter King’s sisters? No pirates I know of would ever dare such a thing.”
“You weren’t meant to think it was pirates,” Dilys reminded him. “You were meant to think I did this—and you were all ready to believe just that, remember? It’s only luck that I came back when I did and was able to prove what really happened.” He cast a grim look in the direction of Frasia. “Ono, this was another targeted strike against House Merimydion.”
“And the Seasons? What are they going to do with them?”
“I don’t know. Use their weathergifts to take control of every ocean in Mystral. Or sell them. That’s what I’m hoping for.” He gave Friis a grim glance. “If they’re being sold, their abductors will be more likely treat them gently, so as not to devalue the merchandise.”
“So, what’s the plan?” Friis asked.
“We catch up to them.”
“And then?”
Dilys’s battle fangs descended, and he gave Commander Friis a cold, savage smile. “Then I teach them the price of laying hands on a Calbernan’s liana.”
After Friis left to check in on his men, Dilys folded his arms over the ship’s railing and stared grimly out at the vast ocean.
If the krillos who’d stolen Gabriella and her sisters were minions of the Shark—and he was almost certain they were—then it was Dilys who’d brought that danger to the Seasons’ door. Dilys who’d made Gabriella, Autumn, and Spring the targets of his enemy.
Even if the Shark wasn’t behind the abduction, Dilys should have known that his much-celebrated bride-finding trip to the Æsir Isles would have drawn the attention of his enemies. Uncle Calivan was right. He should have brought extra ships and warriors who had not yet earned their ulumi-lia to provide security. He should have summoned an entire fleet the first moment he’d heard Gabriella’s Siren’s call. He should have gone to Wynter Atrialan, told him of the power Summer possessed, warned him that it would make her a target.
Most of all, he should never have left her side. Not for an instant. Not until she was his, and he was hers, and she had the whole of Calberna dedicated to ensuring her safety, her protection, and her happiness.
What was wrong with him? He was supposed to be a prince of Calberna, the spear that protected the ones he loved. And yet, when it was most important, when the ones he loved most were in danger, he somehow always seemed to come up short. His father, Nyamialine, Fyerin: all dead. His mother was Fading, and Dilys was helpless to stop it. Now, the woman he loved and her precious sisters had been taken . . .
If he couldn’t stop that . . . if he couldn’t save them . . .
His claws dug into the wooden ship’s rail.
To the sky, on the air that somewhere Gabriella was breathing too, he whispered a solemn vow, “I am coming, moa kiri. No matter where they take you, no matter what happens, I will find you. Be strong, moa halea, and do whatever you must to stay alive.”
To the sea he sent a prayer, “Numahao, guide me. Grant me speed and strength to find and free her. And, please, I beg you, watch over her until I do. Keep her safe from harm.”
“I’ll be back in a few hours,” Balat told the Shark. “She’s yours to enjoy until then. Don’t leave any marks like you did on the other two, though. There won’t be time to repair damages.”
“No marks,” the Shark agreed.
“And I expect her to be fully intact when I return. I promised to deliver a priceless royal virgin, not some randy pirate’s leftovers.”
The three collared slaves picked up their equipment and followed Balat out of the cabin, leaving Summer alone with the rogue Calbernan. The Shark crossed the room to sit on the bed beside her.
“Can you believe in this day and age, there are still so many men in the world who object to treading a path already cleared by others?” the Shark asked in a conversational tone. “As if a woman’s greatest value lies with an insignificant bit of flesh. And they pay such exorbitant prices for the opportunity to be the first.” He reached out and gently cupped her breast, ignoring her flinch as he circled the aureola with a featherlight touch. “It’s good for my purse, of course, but does so interfere with my fun.”
With shocking abruptness, he went from gently tracing her nipple to pinched it so hard she couldn’t stop a pained cry. A cold, cruel smile curved his lips. “Not all my fun, of course.” Holding her gaze, he leaned down and dragged his tongue over each of her breasts, laughing at her outraged gasp that ended as a snarl of vengeful fury.
Gabriella reached for her deadliest power, intending—for the first time in her life—to deliberately Shout a man to pieces, but the expected flood of terrifying magic never came. That firestorm of power that had swirled within her all her life was still. Mur Balat hadn’t just eaten the magic she’d thrown at him. He’d somehow stifled her strongest and most devastating gift. What weak magic did rouse in answer to her call was drawn out of her the instant the Shark closed his mouth around her breast and suckled her in an obscene imitation of a lover’s caress.
Gabriella gave a broken, gasp of realization.
This vile Calbernan was a magic eater, like Balat.
And she was helpless against him.
She was bound to this bed, stripped of her clothes, her dignity, and her ability to defend herself. For the first time in her life, she was utterly vulnerable and completely defenseless. Tears welled in her eyes. She squeezed her eyes shut tight and turned away. She couldn’t stop the Shark from violating her, but she didn’t have to look at him while he did. Her horror only seemed to feed his sick enjoyment.
“You all do that,” he noted a moment later. “Close your eyes. As if not seeing will make something not happen. Your sister Autumn didn’t at first. She glared at me the whole time. Yes, just like that.” He chuckled and released one breast to give Summer’s cheek a pat when she snapp
ed her eyes open and fixed him with an incinerating look. The other hand continued to squeeze and stroke in a foul mockery of a lover’s touch. “I think she would have burned me alive, if she could. I admired that about her. But even she closed her eyes in the end.”
The thought of him touching her sister, of breaking the haughty pride Autumn wore as her mask to keep everyone but family at bay, made Summer ill. She would gladly consign this despicable, gloating beast to the hottest fires of Hel—and send him there herself, if she could. But she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of her rage, as that only fed more magic to him. Instead, she closed her eyes again and concentrated on blocking as much of her power as she could from him, trying desperately to shore up the fortress that surrounded the fiery energy at her core. In that regard, the lifetime she’d spent suppressing her powers served her in good stead. Her internal barriers were strong, and she had long ago learned how to separate her mind from emotional triggers.
She couldn’t keep everything from him, though. While Balat had ripped her magic out of her without laying a finger on her, the Shark drained it through physical contact. And he reveled in finding the most invasive, intimate, obscene ways to take it, biting, licking, and sucking at her flesh. Worse, with each lewd lave of his tongue and each drawing pull of his disgusting mouth, it felt as if he stole not only her magic but something else, something more vital. He hollowed her out, bit by bit, leaving her dazed and despairing.
Hours later, Summer lay shivering convulsively, her wrists and ankles still bound, her head turned to one side. Heavy sheafs of her dark, unbound hair lay across her face, hiding red-rimmed eyes and the streaky remnants of tears she hadn’t been able to stop herself from shedding. A broad, now-familiar hand stroked gently up one leg, and a fresh wave of convulsive shudders wracked her frame.
It had been hours since Mur Balat abandoned her to the Shark. Hours since Summer had braced herself for rape only to breathe a sigh of relief when Balat warned the Shark that he was not to damage her virginity. Hours in which the Shark had taught Gabriella just how naive that brief surge of relief had been.