There’s movement around the room, all the subtle noises people make. Bare feet brushing loose straw, clothing being picked up, and a horse snorting.
“We can’t let the dignitaries know, the news will get back to Lithael too quickly,” Pax says.
“So we can’t utilize the resources in the White Castle. No help from the Potions Master or the Wisdom Keeper in the grand library?”
Silence hangs in the room. Either someone is nodding or shaking their head. Or they’re communicating telepathically – also a possibility.
“Not here,” Killian says.
Well, grumbles. Killian doesn’t actually say anything.
“He’s right. We need to get far from the White Castle. She won’t survive Lithael once he suspects her, it’s too easy to kill the little mortal,” Roarke says.
“Wake her up,” Pax orders.
“I will,” Roarke says, his footsteps growing closer. “Open your eyes, Kitten. Your eyes want to open.” His voice laced with Allure.
“Roarke, go away,” I groan – not opening my eyes.
“Did she just resist you?” Seth asks, and he sounds surprised.
“No,” Roarke snaps.
His tone makes me open my eyes – to a full view of Seth’s ass… In a pair of white braies, bent over, putting his pants on, still shirtless.
Lots of muscle. Smooth skin except for the black swirly image branded into the base of his spine. I pull whatever it is that’s covering me like a blanket up over my head. It’s not a blanket, maybe a cloak. It’s warm and soft and too thick for me to see through. That’s good, because I was enjoying that view – and that’s very dangerous.
“We have to work, Shade, so either you get up and throw some fresh clothes on or you get dragged out of bed by a wall,” Pax says from somewhere else in the room.
“Bubble,” I counter.
I throw the cloak off, confirming that I’m on one of the makeshift hay bale beds, a yellow and cream horse blanket underneath me. There are four beds in here, plus their rough attempts at making four couches. That’s about all that fits in this space.
And the four guys. All in various stages of pulling on shirts or boots. My breath stills.
Which chuckin’ gods decided to take me – practically afraid to be near a guy – and put me in a small room with four of them? So now I’m waking up to hotness-One, hotness-Two, hotness-Three and hotness-Four and I’m always going to be too scared to get close to them.
That’s a good thing, I tell myself. These guys will kill you.
“Why is she hesitating?” Killian asks as he slides a blade into the back of his belt, one in his boot, another one in a pocket inside his shirt.
“She’s dealing with some serious desire,” Roarke answers.
“What?” I demand, glaring at them both, but neither one looks across at me.
“And fear,” Killian says, inhaling deeply. “There’s a hint of ash in the air.”
“And lust,” Roarke says, his head tilted a little to the side as he approaches me, while in the background Seth starts to pull a shirt over his head.
“There is no lust,” I say, squeak actually, leaping backward into a crouch on the bed.
Pax hurls a boot, Roarke’s boot, across the room, but Roarke ducks and the thing sails into a horse’s stall.
“I wasn’t going to touch her,” Roarke says, forgetting about me.
He lets himself into the horse stall and snatches the boot from the ground.
“I’ve been behaving myself,” he says, balancing on one foot to pull his boot on.
I’m still perched on top of the bed, trying to decide what the bralls is going on here, when he lets himself back out of the stall and half-hobbles through the room wearing one boot – beelining the door. He makes hobbling look sexy.
“I can’t tell her not to think or feel,” Pax says, then he seems to realize something. “And you’re not telling her anything at all.”
“Two minutes,” Killian grumbles over the end of Pax’s sentence.
Two minutes – to get dressed?
I dash about, scrounging for clothes. All of the items that Pax chose, and the stuff I chose, are exactly where they were the last time I saw them – which is everywhere. It takes me three goes before I’ve found one of each, a tunic and tights, rather than two tunics or two tights.
Pax opens the wall, and they all file out.
“Wait,” I holler, the wall beginning to shift back into place before I’ve moved.
“We’re waiting,” Pax says.
Oh, right. They’ve given me the room.
“Or maybe we aren’t,” Seth says just as the last branches seal tight.
I almost trip, yanking my tights on.
“Can someone hit him for me?” I ask, followed so closely by an ‘oomph’ sound that I’m sure the hitting was already coming.
I don’t waste my time, yanking Pax’s shirt off over my head and pulling the fresh tunic into place. Slipping into my tights as quickly as the damned things will let me.
One boot, two boots, then as a last minute thought I snag a roll and two apples from their stash. Servants pockets are big enough for snacks. With a few quick strokes, my hair’s back in a tight, no-nonsense, got-stables-to-clean band. Ready in less than five seconds.
I touch the branch wall and just like last time nothing happens.
I hesitate because being asked to be let out of a room is an all-new experience for me – one that has only happened since I met these guys.
I’ve been locked up plenty of times, but always outside, rain, hail, baking summer sun – and I never once asked to be let out of my chains.
The branches begin to move.
“Did you find out who created it?” Pax is asking.
“I didn’t knock,” I say.
“You walked up to the door,” Pax says, leading the way into the stables.
“So in the future, if you’re still naked don’t walk up to the wall,” Seth says. “No one can hear anything that goes on in there.”
He takes a few quick steps, then effortlessly hops up onto the first of the stall walls. Balancing his way across the railing and still managing to walk faster than us.
“How’d you hear me walk up to the door?” I ask. “Nope, don’t worry. I’m guessing you smelled me.”
“Something like that,” Pax says, but he tweaks a smile and tilts his head just a little, before turning to Roarke. “So did you get a name?”
And since the conversation is off me, I busy my mouth with eating.
“Name and address,” Roarke says.
“What did it cost?” Pax asks.
Roarke rubs the back of his neck, looking at me like he’s not sure how to answer.
“They won’t remember – much – but they will recover,” he finally says. “We just need an assignment to get us out of here.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Because we can’t push past the Return Seal for long enough to get to the border. We need a Release Seal and they’re only administered with the fancy piece of paper signed by the council. We need an assignment. We physically can’t leave without one,” Roarke answers.
“But we left yesterday.”
“A stroll in the forest isn’t a challenge for our power,” Roarke says.
“How long before we can leave, then?” I ask, ignoring all of the stuff he’s clearly not saying.
Probably stuff to do with torturing people into sharing information. I don’t think I want to know.
“Won’t be long. Lithael hates the Elites staying here for too long,” Roarke answers, but by the look Pax gives him I can tell that’s already too much information.
Pax gets our orders from the Stables Master. Killian collects our tools and Seth stops using the walls as a child’s climbing toy long enough for all of that to happen. Soon we’re at the end of a hall on our hands and knees scrubbing the slate stone floor.
We work side by side, moving slowly backward down the hall. I can scrub
like the best of them, but their muscle, even just their hand strength, is clearly better suited to a simple servant’s task like this than mine. I struggle to keep up, to do the job with the cuts and pain in my left hand and arm, but I struggle in silence because a servant only complains about one pain if they want their masters to make it two.
I wait until it’s obvious that this section of the stables is empty and the other stable hands have chosen to avoid us again, before asking, “What do we do once you get an assignment?”
“Depends,” Pax says.
It’s me, then Pax, Seth, Roarke, and Killian.
Four in order again.
“On what?” I ask.
“On what the stakes are. If people might die, we complete the assignment first and run the risk of not getting to Eydis before the Release Seal dissolves.”
“Who?”
“The Potions Master who created the Rearrange Potion. Every potion is unique, so, to undo the potion we need her help.”
“What are your assignments, usually?”
“Elites don’t go on missions to eliminate the odd wieldron nest or guard a new dragon-wing.”
“I have no idea what that means,” I admit.
I’ve heard of wieldrons, the flying cats that once emerged from the forest to devour our sheep – all of them. Fighting one of them sounds incredibly dangerous, the kind of thing I would have expected these guys to be sent to do. I don’t want to think of what kinds of bad situations these guys are sent to if wieldrons are too tame for them, but I have to ask.
“What do you fight, then?”
“We used to fight rogue Seeds. When Saber triunes lose a member, the remaining two are free to return to society. To their families. Not all of them want to leave the adrenalin and the fighting behind,” Roarke says, his voice travelling along our line. “Some stay on as enforcement here at the Castle, or throughout the towns. Many aren’t happy with that option.”
“There are a few that kill a member of their triune to release themselves from their obligations,” Seth adds.
“Of course they do. There are assholes everywhere,” I mutter. “So where do the bad-Seeds go?”
“Tanakan Prison,” Pax says, dipping his scrubbing brush in the soapy water and working hard at what looks like solid mud, or poo, I’m not sure. “Or at least they used to. The prison was locked down nearly a hundred years ago.”
“Then what? People don’t stop stealing and hurting and killing overnight.”
“They do if there’s something bigger and badder out there.”
“Or in here,” I mutter.
Pax nods. “Orders are to kill, not capture, the worst of the Seeds.”
“What does a Seed have to do to get themselves killed?”
“Murder, rape, maiming. A ShockwaveSeed toward the southern border levelled a whole village ten years back. Some Seeds have put themselves up for hire, and Lithael takes advantage of them, but they never live long.”
“Nice,” I drawl.
What other Seeds are out there? Are the options endless? A NightmareSeed or a Freeze-you-in-place-and-have-their-way-with-youSeed?
“There’s little chance we won’t be risking other people’s lives if we detour before tending to the job,” Pax says, which wasn’t what I was asking.
The others keep scrubbing, a rhythmic scraping-brushing-splashing noise filling the building, and I try to keep up.
“What’s plan B?” I ask.
“We have a day or two after the mission expires before the seal dissolves and the pull toward the White Castle begins to build.” Pax talks with the kind of calm that I envy.
“You have to come back?” I ask.
“It’s a new measure,” Pax says.
“How new?” I ask.
“About eighty years ago.” He shrugs.
The information doesn’t click in for me. The White Castle makes them stronger, and yet a Crown whose control seems to be dependent on being stronger than everyone else wants them all locked up here.
“We can usually stretch it to a week. Some Sabers are in pain within hours,” Seth says, it’s the first time he has chimed in on the conversation.
“Of. Course. You. Can,” I say, exaggerating each word.
He smiles.
“No need to deny the awesome.”
Pax deflates in frustration, letting out a loud huff, so I try to steer the conversation back toward the important stuff.
“Job one – find Eydis. Job two – get rid of the bubble. Job three – get me back …” I swallow my last word.
“Job one,” Seth cuts in loudly. “Scrub the floors.”
“Job two – lunch,” Roarke adds.
“All right, I get it.”
And we keep scrubbing. Every few minutes Pax’s arm goes out and he pushes me back, leaning across to scrub parts of my section – trying to help me keep up with them. And even though we see only the odd stable boy, who doesn’t stick around, I’m still not terribly comfortable with moving backward on my hands and knees.
I keep glancing over my shoulder.
“Not happening,” Killian says from the other end of the line.
“What?” I ask.
“No one can sneak up on us, lass,” Roarke explains.
“They can sneak up on me,” I mutter.
“You’re with us,” Pax says, then in one fluid motion he stands, the scrubbing brush discarded on the floor.
Killian’s on his feet in the same instant, looking fierce – which is about the only way the guy can look – but the fact that his hand snakes behind his back and his fingers wrap around the hilt tucked into his belt has my heart racing. I shuffle backward for the nearest gap in the branches and shimmy my way through it. Seth perches on the balls of his feet, but he doesn’t stand up. He’s bouncing a little, his head cocked to one side. Watching the same corner as the others. Someone is coming, but Seth doesn’t look alarmed. Roarke just sits down on the wet slate, pulling his knees up and resting his arms across them. Definitely not concerned.
I slip into the deepest shadow in the stall, getting nudged once on the head by the horse and then ignored.
“Teegan,” Pax says, about a second before the tall blond turns the corner.
She’s dressed mostly in leather pants and a leather tunic. The riding and fighting kind. Several long and fresh looking gashes cover the chest guard and her forehead sports a purple bruise. Her hair’s pulled back into a tight braid, and in true Saber style, her features are beautiful as well as fierce, and the depth in her eyes is intense. Seductive.
“Commander Pax,” she says, offering a deep bow before she continues to walk.
“Teegan,” Killian rumbles a warning.
Two more women come around the corner and move to bow.
“Don’t,” Pax says.
“As it must be,” one of them sighs, but I can see she’s itching to do it anyway.
They approach my guys, and I could be imagining things but the heavy feeling of power around me deepens.
Killian had said that Silvari shouldn’t feel right. They definitely feel like something, but it’s not wrongness. For some stupid reason, being in the presence of this larger group feels more right.
“The council had us on the Southern border dealing with unrest,” Teegan says.
“The people?” Pax asks.
“We couldn’t pinpoint it. People going missing. Thefts. Maybe it’s the border? We were drawn back too soon.”
She flashes him her palm, as if showing him that there is nothing there. The other two women do the same.
“Have you reported to the council?” Pax asks.
“We sent the report, but I don’t know what news is making it to all of them – or any of them,” Teegan says, and one of the girls beside her rubs a hand across her brow, massaging the tension that’s building up.
“Commanders Imogen, Kaia, Zuri, and their teams are all along the border too,” Teegan says.
“Alarik’s team is here,” Pax says.
Her eyes go wide and the other two fidget nervously.
“That’s it?” she asks. “Of twelve Elite teams, only two are in the castle?”
“One,” Pax corrects.
She takes a second to register the scrubbing instruments and soapy buckets – to realize that Pax is doing the work of a servant – then bows again.
“My lord,” she says softly – like seeing Pax without his rank physically pains her.
Killian lets out his I-will-rip-you-apart growl.
She clears her throat, heat rising to redden her face and beads of sweat forming along her hairline. I think I’m underestimating Killian’s inner beast – whatever he has inside that’s just waiting to come out, it’s worse than any normal animal that I can imagine.
“What are we walking in to?” she asks once she has recovered, nodding toward the castle.
“Forty-two teams. Thirty-one are less than a century old,” Roarke gives the figures, but the girl’s eyes stay locked on Pax’s – almost forcibly.
“And Logan?” Teegan asks.
“He’s failing his tests all on his own,” Pax says, and though he doesn’t make it obvious, I can sense that part of that sentence was for his brother’s benefit. “He must attend his first trial on the next moon.”
“I don’t understand, trials make triunes stronger,” the girl furthest back says, then looks like she regrets talking as she grits her teeth and squares her shoulders.
“He won’t survive,” Roarke says. “He’s proven that.”
“I’ve seen him fight –” she begins, but Killian’s snort makes her stop sharply.
“But no brain,” Roarke explains, tapping his temple.
“Is there any news on Kyra?” Pax asks, getting all three females attention again.
“None. Still under lock and key at the Black Castle until she gets the call.”
“Forest help us,” one of the other girls adds.
“Leave and return,” Pax says.
“Just so you know, I really want to bow right now,” Teegan says softly, before turning and pretty much marching back the way she came.
“You can come out now,” Pax says, not looking at me.
“The council is losing its grip,” Roarke says, an uncharacteristic tension to his voice.
And just like that, they turn and get back to scrubbing, worry creased brows, thin lips, and distant gazes on all of them.
Shadows and Shade Box Set Page 18