“The only servants who enter my home are ones on their hands and knees,” he says, the words filling every corner of the too large room.
Mother promptly kneels, but that defiant angle of her chin doesn’t change. The woman behind us grips my shoulders and tries to draw me backward, but Mother and I’s hands are clasped too tight, and I find myself kneeling beside her.
“We’ve come to beg you for a loan, my Lord. My husband and son need a healer, and they need one now,” her hand trembles as she speaks, but that’s the only sign of her fear.
“I don’t give loans to servants who can not repay them,” the Lord draws out the words, a disinterested and malicious stab to them.
“We have no coin, but I can repay you with anything you want.”
“I want the girl,” he says, waving a finger toward me.
But the way his gaze stays on my mother, that crooked line of evil from the corner of his lips to his eyes, I wonder if he’s actually talking about me at all.
Mother swallows and nods. “When she turns ten, she will come to serve you.”
The Lord smiles. “And I want you, now.”
A shiver of revulsion runs through my mother. But the words that leave her mouth are strong.
“The healer is three golds, and we need a cart to get to Hirana.”
The Lord moves to the mantle, where a coin purse sits as if to tease the servants.
He slips coins from it, before crossing the room and holding them out to me. I possibly should have been scared, but it was coin. I knew its value, but had never seen a single one myself. So I snatched them up in my little fingers.
The smile on the man’s lips broadened and, in a snap, his fingers were tangled in my mother's beautiful dark hair. Pulling her across the room.
Her terrified eyes sought mine. Locked on. Turned hard.
“Go,” she said, her voice firm despite the Lord throwing her to the ground.
Despite the practiced movements that had his belt off.
The woman behind me snatched me back, but the sound of leather on flesh rang through the stairwell. Through the sitting room.
Ripping and slicing through the whole damn building.
I sat on Cook’s kitchen bench for I have no idea how long. Waiting.
When my mother finally staggered toward the hay cart, her dress torn, I moved in utter terror and pure confusion behind her, the coins still clasped in my hand.
Clasped so tight that when the Lord seized me by the hair and snatched them from my grip, they dug in and drew blood.
I didn’t care about the blood. Only cared for the hand in my hair, and the series of events that I’d begun to witness. Not that, at that age, I truly knew what those events were. My growing mind had filled in the gaps, nightmare after nightmare.
“I will pay you the coin, when you deliver her to me,” he said, his voice stone-calm.
Then he turned and walked back into the Manor.
My mother scooped me up, despite the welts I could see on her back and neck, and ran to the hay cart.
“I will hide you, my child. I will put you back where you came from before I give you to that man,” she whispered.
And died a month later.
The dream begins to fade.
Strong arms wrap around me and lift me straight up into the air.
Real arms, holding me against a real man’s chest.
I freak out, in true peasant-girl style, throwing myself away from the person and landing ready to run before I’ve even opened my eyes.
Seth chuckles lightly.
“Quite the reaction,” he says.
I spin, realizing the rest of the Elorsin brothers are still in the room. Sitting on hay bales arranged in a square around two more bales that are being used as a table. A table that’s littered with the remains of a small feast.
Roarke levels his dark eyes on me and makes no attempt to pull his long hair back from his face. The smile lingering in the corner of his lips plays at pure innocence.
Killian stretches, then leans back against the stall wall behind him, running his gaze over me from feet to forehead – calculating, but what, I can’t tell. His features are like granite, and the scar that cuts deep across them makes it impossible for me to think of him as calculating anything but pain.
“I was going to put you in the bed,” Seth says, motioning with one arm toward where four beds have been crafted from more hay bales and draped in horse rugs. “You looked uncomfortable,” he adds, motioning back to the small sitting chair in the corner that has left me with a cramp in the neck.
“Not tired,” I declare, crossing the room and sitting on the makeshift couch next to Killian.
He’s the only one I can trust not to make this more awkward. Seth was the one just holding me, so I’m not sitting in the empty hay bale couch right beside where he’s about to sit. Pax and Roarke aren’t options, either. I snatch up a half-eaten roll, curl my knees up to my chest, and wrap my spare arm around them. There’s plenty of room between Killian and I, but I angle myself so he can’t misconstrue my choice in seats as an invitation.
He huff-grunts, smiling, but not actually looking at me.
Something that, for some stupid reason, makes Pax’s frown deepen as his attention swings from his deadly brother to me.
“The sootling doesn’t like being comfortable?” Pax inquires.
“The sootling doesn’t like being touched,” I counter.
“You can put yourself into a bed; the night’s only young,” Roarke says, as Seth sits on the spare couch in exactly the spot I predicted he would.
The high windows that line the space between the walls and the roof angle out onto the night, a glimmer of stars between clouds, and the silhouettes of trees dancing gently in the breeze.
Even my bones feel tired, but I don’t feel comfortable in my own skin, and after Seth scaring the bralls out of me, the last thing I can do is put myself into the most vulnerable position possible. Laying down in the middle of this open space, with four guys in here, screams of stupid.
Pax leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees.
“We have rules,” he begins.
“I can follow rules,” I say, my mouth half-full.
He looks up, his golden eyes piercing me from across the room.
“Best you just listen, lass,” Roarke says.
I swallow and nod. The asshole sounds reasonable when he’s not using me as entertainment.
When they’re not using me as entertainment, they fall into four categories. Scary-as-venom Killian, then reasonable-but-still-scary Roarke, pleasant-but-still-dangerous Seth, and hates-me Pax.
Not hates – loathes. In the same kind of way that a dog loathes the crow who stole his bone. A really big dog. With really big teeth. That sneaks up on that crow and rips him to pieces… her. Rips me to pieces.
“You are where we can see you at all times,” Pax says, waiting for me to nod before he continues. “You don’t talk to any-bloody-one. Not even a servant, and you’re never to act like you’re being held against your will.”
“Why?”
“We can commandeer any servant, any time, but not against their will,” Killian explains.
“But it is against my will. I just want to get out of here,” I shoot a glare at Seth – who winces.
“What?” Pax asks.
“I forgot. I did promise to get her over the border.”
“Not happening,” Pax says.
Two very important issues with this growing dynamic begin to freeze over my soul. One, no group of SaberSeed warriors want a sootling who only knows how to scrub things clean following them around. The novelty will wear off, and since I can’t leave their company with an invisible wall in the equation, the only logical solution is that they’ll end my life. And then, if my dead body still wants to follow them around, they’ll set fire to it and turn my flesh and bones to literal ash and soot. Which will still want to cling to their shadows. They’ll either become known as the
Shadow Brothers and people will fear them even more for the freaky magic around them – or they’ll bottle me and wear me as some kind of decoration.
I swallow hard – because none of that scares me more than issue number two. A strong, powerful, male can only stand being alone in a room with a female for so long. For Lord Martin, it was less than an hour. My gaze flickers to Roarke.
“I won’t be the one you stay in the room with. I’ve been banned,” Roarke says, but with the same confident air that he uses to try and make people do what he wants.
Killian clears his throat.
“And I’ll respect your free will,” Roarke adds, not in his Allure tone.
His face sobers to the point where I actually believe him, which makes me even more worried. The only way I’d believe the man is if he made me believe him.
Somewhere in my sleep-deprived brain I know I heard them discussing this – but I press for more information.
“Anything else?” I ask Pax.
“You’ll respect his space,” Pax says, pointing at me then Roarke in turn.
My eyes go wide with horror at just the notion. Horror, not shock or surprise, but seriously-can’t-breathe-or-move horror.
Not because Roarke isn’t good looking, or the kind of man that other servants dream about bedding. Not because I never want to sleep with a man in my life – like maybe I want to die with my virginity still intact – because I don’t.
No, the emotion running through me is because making advances on a guy, on someone who looks and acts like a god, on someone who is the equivalent to a prince, is… impossible. It’s only ever going to happen if said guy, in this case Roarke with the ability to magically lure someone into doing things they don’t want to, has done something to me. Like when I was under his bed and my ability to keep my buttons fastened had vanished. Would he do that to me now? Would he make me cross that line so he doesn’t have to?
Can he do that?
I still can’t breathe.
“Pax,” Killian warns.
“Follow the rules, sootling, and you won’t get hurt,” Pax says, already getting up, grabbing his weapon off the ground by his feet and storming out the door.
That’s when I manage to grab in a lungful of air, my mind scrambling for a way to get myself out of this room and into the real air outside. I need an excuse – and a shower, even a cold one, would really feel good right now.
“Someone needs to walk me down to the servant’s bathroom because I can’t go there myself,” I say, my tone more accusatory than I intended. More demanding. “Please.”
“No,” Killian says.
“I need to bathe. I need fresh clothes.”
Killian picks up two weapons and leaves the room, so I turn to Seth.
“It’ll take me five minutes. Wash, grab some clothes, get back here.” Now I’m practically begging.
“Pax wouldn’t like it,” he says.
“Since when does my showering affect your commander’s specific tastes?” I demand.
“Since he gave you his shirt.”
“What does that matter?” I demand. “And he didn’t bloody want to. None of your clothes would even come close to fitting me.”
“No, the second time. After our ranks were stripped – he gave you his shirt.”
I throw my hands up in the air with frustration, getting off the couch and walking toward the door with every hope that Seth will follow me.
In a weird way, I trust him. I shouldn’t, he bloody got me into this mess, but I do. I’ve been alone with him, I’ve actually been alone in a very tight spot with him holding me in place – and none of it was tinged with him seeing me as an object to be conquered.
“Then I’ll give it back to him,” I say.
I grab at the neck of my shirt, tugging it violently to make the fabric shiver. Pax appears out of nowhere, like the guy just slipped through the door without any of the others even hinting he was coming, and yanks the waist of the shirt back into place.
A low grumble rolls through his body.
“You wouldn’t understand,” he says.
He steps around me and marches across the room, picking up another sword. Whatever he and Killian are planning on doing, they’ve decided it involves two weapons each.
The door into here is closing, but I hadn’t heard it open or his footsteps.
Roarke chuckles.
“We don’t play well with others,” he says softly.
Pax lets out a grunting noise, then walks back to me. If it’s Pax who has the issue here, then it’s him I need to talk to.
“Then you need to take me. I need a wash. I need clothes.”
And I need to pee about as desperately as I’ve ever needed to. I found servants’ toilets dotted around the palace yesterday, that is up until the point when an invisible wall restricted my movements.
I’ll deal with the fact that they’re being awfully weird about my clothing after I’ve peed.
The man tosses his blades across to Seth without even looking, and Seth snatches the things gracefully out of the air.
“Go keep Killian from destroying the training yards,” Pax says, adding a stern point toward the door just for me. “Go.”
I turn on my heels, scuttle the short distance to the wall, and run my fingers along the smooth branches. Branches without leaves, but with all the bumps and imperfections, as if they’re still attached to their trees.
Pax reaches across and touches a spot nowhere near my hand. Instantly there’s movement and the doorway begins to open.
“Sootlings don’t have Seeds of power,” Pax mutters.
“I’m going to the Citadel Library to research invisible walls, and maybe speak to the Citadel dignitaries – see what they know,” Roarke says.
“Don’t linger,” Pax says.
“I’ll grab and go,” Roarke agrees, followed by the sounds of a horse being saddled.
“What is this place?” I ask. “Some kind of secret room inside the stables?”
It’s a question that entered my mind when we got here, but was pushed aside by exhaustion and all those other things.
“We grew up between this castle and the Black Castle,” Pax says. “Mother let us build as many hidey-holes and hidden nooks into the castle’s magic as we wanted. The Stable Master knows it’s here. One of three tack-boys never leaves it unattended. It will do for a phase.”
As he talks, he overtakes me, then practically glides down the various halls. He’s that quick and that graceful. My soot-servant legs fail to keep up and an invisible wall suddenly knocks me down.
“Argh, hello,” I groan, talking to the wall.
Pax stops, he’s about eight horse stalls away from me, just standing there on the slate stones. There’s still very little for light in here, but the honey color of the raw timber-tree-branches, the pink and blue hues in the slate stone floor, and the gentle scent of horses make the building feel calm and comforting. Not that Pax shows any signs of being either of those things.
I rush to catch up and fall into place a servant’s distance behind him before he starts walking again, out into a night barely lit by the big waxing moon smothered in patches of heavy clouds. We begin to cross the grassy expanse littered with various training yards, horse jumps, obstacles, and so on, between the horses and the castle. A nice, safe, distance apart, and the stables themselves are huge. Seven or eight jagged buildings all connecting to each other, like maybe they built one small barn, but then they needed a bigger one, so they attached a second building at an angle. Then they thought, ‘You know what, let’s build a castle here, and make the stables a maze for our entertainment.’
The castle itself is an odd mixture of awake and asleep. The lower levels are dark, lights out, but the upper levels are dotted with lights, and through the perfectly clear and stupidly huge glass windows, I can see a few people moving around.
Instinctively, I fold my hands in front of me. Taking in my surroundings with darting looks. Checking my pace so I ne
ver walk faster than he does. All habits a good servant should have.
Pax stops suddenly, and I freeze obediently in place.
“Get in front of me,” he orders.
“Wait, what?” I blurt.
My mouth’s never been terribly obedient. My body – yes. My mouth – not so much.
But there’s no way I’m walking myself up in front of scary-ass-Alpha-Commander Pax unless I’m very sure that that is exactly where he wants me.
He turns, looking into my eyes and making sure he has my full attention.
“I don’t like you being behind me,” he says, pointing to a spot a few arms lengths ahead of him.
I obey, giving him a wary glance.
“It’s not like I could actually hurt you,” I say.
The side thought that maybe if I kill them, I’ll be free to leave this place crosses my mind. Which would never happen – me versus anyone only ends in me getting hurt. The reality would be if they’re dead I get tethered to the cemetery with a leg stretching distance not much wider than a pigsty.
“Not the problem,” he says.
I’m about to say something else when a figure in the upper windows catches my attention. Just standing there, watching us from three stories up. Greasy hair, the kind of square jaw that looks flawed, and a lopsided sneer on his lips – the kind that makes my skin crawl.
Logan.
He’s framed by two other guys – his triune I guess – just watching us.
I hear Pax step forward and do the same, matching his pace and trying not to look terribly nervous about having a lethal killer stalking behind my back.
Pax offers a few tart commands as we walk. ‘Turn left’, ‘hurry up’ and so on.
I roll my eyes at each one, more to distract myself from the presence of him at my back. People shouldn’t feel this dominating or powerful – I’m not even sure how to describe it.
He does manage to get us to a bathroom. Not the same one I was led to by Clara yesterday, unless someone put a chip in the frame since then. I open the door, fully expecting to see a bunch of naked guys, even if it is still in the dark hours of the morning. But the room is empty, silent, and as dimly lit as the other one was. It’s almost a calming dim, like it’s deliberate – which isn’t working on me at all. Could be to discourage people from getting a proper look at each other, or the clothes in the nooks before they pick something to wear.
Shadows and Shade Box Set Page 13