by Raven Dark
“Forget about that, the servants can take care of it. Come.” There was a mix of annoyance and amusement in Damien’s eyes, and I hoped he only thought I was stalling in order to avoid being alone with him. He snapped his fingers at a hunched over Steel and gestured to the mess.
While Steel kept his head down, his face hidden from Damien, Doc went around the table to clean up.
Out of ideas for ways to stall, I took my time walking to the head of the table to Damien.
“Julian’s men will be here soon,” he was saying as I slid my hand into his. “I want a few moments alone with my favorite slave before they barge in and ruin my evening.”
Behind me, the lid on the keg popped. A few paces from the table, I heard the keg fall over with a clatter. I spun around, and Damien did the same.
“What in the—” Damien started.
Sheriff had rolled out of the keg and onto his feet. Damien leaped backwards in surprise. The guardsmen jumped up from their seats, chairs toppling. While the guards drew steel, Sheriff grabbed a sword from one guard who was slower to reach his weapon and then jumped onto the table with a smoothness I’d have expected of Hawk, putting him out of reach of the guards.
“You won’t have to worry about Julian ruining your night, Captain. That’s my job.”
Near-giddy relief swept through me, almost making me dizzy.
“You,” Damien snarled. He pushed me behind him, out of reach, and started to back up.
“Don’t move, asshole.” Steel had somehow made it to his side before Damien had noticed him. Using his good hand, he held a blade to the captain’s throat.
Damien stiffened, his chin raised up out of the way of the knife.
While Sheriff kept the guards who tried to swipe at him or leap up onto the table at bay, Steel nodded toward me. “Hand her over,” he growled.
Damien’s grip on my wrist tightened. Steel pressed the blade harder to his throat until he stiffened and hissed.
“Well played, Sheriff,” Damien said, slowly letting go of me. “How many of your men are hidden here, I wonder?”
Sheriff’s face gave away nothing while Steel pulled me to him and gradually took the blade from Damien’s throat. Funny how his grip on me, however awkward because of the splint, didn’t feel any less secure or make me feel any less safe. He removed the knife from Damien’s throat completely only when Sheriff put the tip of his sword under Damien’s chin.
“Have a seat, Captain.” Sheriff’s voice was deadly dark.
Damien made no move to return to the seat near him.
Behind Sheriff at the other end of the table, one of the guards started to climb carefully onto it. My heart went into my throat; Sheriff didn’t seem to be aware of him.
The moment the guard drew close, Sheriff stepped back from Damien, spun around, and swung his sword in such a way that it disarmed the guard. The sword flew out of his hand and Sheriff caught it.
Holding one blade out toward the guard on one side and the other toward Damien, he pushed the tip of the sword against Damien’s throat before the captain could draw his own weapon.
“Don’t. Even,” Sheriff rumbled, shaking his head at the guard.
When another guard made his way toward me and Steel, Sheriff glared at him.
“Move and your Captain dies.” He nodded to Damien.
The guard halted.
“Captain, I believe I told you to take your seat.”
Damien wore a sickening smile. “You can’t win, General.” He lowered himself into his seat almost casually.
“Watch me,” Sheriff boomed. He lowered his weapon with Damien’s movements, keeping it under his chin.
Damien sighed as if his opponent were nothing more than an irritant, then leaned carefully back in his seat.
“Now what, Sheriff? There are more than a hundred guards here. All I have to do is let them in and you’re dead.”
Even I had to admit Damien had a good point. Steel, Doc, and Sheriff would have a hard time getting me out of the mansion with the number of guards around the place. Without having seen Hawk or Pretty Boy around, I hoped they were somewhere close at hand. Maybe they were meant to come into the room after Sheriff had Damien under control, backing the General up. But if they were, when?
With Sheriff’s eyes on Damien, another guard started toward me. I shouted a warning to Steel, but I didn’t have to. Without releasing his grip on me, Steel grabbed a golden plate off the table and whacked him in the face with it so hard the plate dented and blood sprayed from the guard’s nose as he fell to the floor.
“What did the General say?” Steel snapped.
The guard didn’t move. Neither did anyone else.
“What happens next depends on you, Damien,” Sheriff sheathed the sword he’d been holding on the guard in an empty scabbard on his hip. He lowered the other blade and slipped the tip of the weapon under the grip of Damien’s sword, slowly lifting it from the scabbard on Damien’s hip. He caught it in his hand.
“Steel, tie the Captain up and relieve his men of their weapons.”
While Doc came over to guard me, Steel pulled ropes from inside the pockets of his servant’s uniform, going in behind Damien. Steel tied his wrists tightly to each of the chair’s arms.
When Steel was finished and had gathered the weapons from the guards, Sheriff tapped Damien under the chin with his blade until Damien looked up at him.
“Die easily, or die bloody, Captain. You choose.”
“Wrong.”
Damien threw himself backward, sending the chair clattering to the floor and him with it. The chair broke under the fall. Damian jerked his arms sharply upward, and the arms of the chair broke free before Damien rolled backward off the chair and to his feet.
Putting several feet between him and Sheriff.
“Neither, General. I’ll give you one chance for a rematch of our fight on that castle roof. You want to kill me, do it in a real man’s fight. You win, and you walk out with Setora and your hide. You lose, and you and your men spend your lives rotting in my jail while she stays with me.”
As he talked, Damien crossed to the back of the room and took one of two swords mounted on the wall there. He spun toward Sheriff, sword raised at the ready.
“Not a chance.” But I’d noticed that while Damien was arming himself, Sheriff had glanced at the entrance to the room. Perhaps he was only checking Steel and Doc’s positions, as well as mine, but I saw the impatience in his eyes. As if he were waiting for something.
For Hawk and Pretty Boy, my mind shouted, worry for them pricking me.
“Are you afraid to fight me, Sheriff?” Damien goaded, stalking across the floor toward him. He stopped a good ten feet from him, too far for Sheriff to gain the upper hand.
Damien was buying time. Sheriff didn’t rise to his bait.
“It appears we’re at a stalemate, Damien. Which one of us will make a move first?”
“I can wait forever, General.” Damien held his arms out.
“So can I.”
Now I had to assume Sheriff was buying time, waiting to take off his head and have Steel and Doc take me out of here when Hawk and Pretty Boy were here to even the odds with the guards.
“Whoever you’re waiting for, they must be delayed.” Damien’s smile made my stomach drop. He made no move toward Sheriff, waiting, I thought, for him to make the first move.
There was nothing else to do. Sheriff leaped down from the table, his own blade at the ready. “If you’re so eager to lose your head, Captain, let’s get it done then.”
While the two men circled, Steel returned to me and Doc. Both men guided me toward the edge of the room, guarding me near the wall and keeping an eye on the J’nai.
“None of you interfere,” Damien ordered his men while his and Sheriff’s swords flashed and clanged. “I don’t want anyone killing him except me.”
No one moved.
Sheriff ducked a blow and came up, slicing for Damien’s head. Damien rolled toward the ba
ck of the room, evading the strike. He came up onto his feet.
Sheriff danced forward, waited for an opening. Damien moved backward again. Sheriff lunged forward. Weapons clanged and clanged again.
Both men took another step, Damien backward, Sheriff forward. Damien’s eyes connected with someone else’s across the room near the front door. I saw a guard near the doors turn a moment too late. He yanked on what looked like a bell-pull hanging near the door.
Instead of ringing a bell for a servant, a large square hatch in the floor dropped open under Sheriff’s feet. I saw him drop, heard him shout, followed by a loud splash.
“Master!” I screamed.
“General!” Steel shouted.
“Damien, you fuck.” Sheriff’s voice carried from inside the hole, drifting up from somewhere below the dining room.
Damien ignored him, watching his men work. Four guards were on Steel, Doc, and me in an instant. Steel and Doc tensed as if they were going to beat them back.
“Are you going to take all of us on at once, Gigantore?” Gromm sneered at Steel. “With two busted fingers and only one man to back you up? Try, and your General will die.”
Steel let out a low, angry noise. I felt his arms go slack. Doc dropped his arms in resignation. Gromm grabbed me, pulling me away from Steel. Steel had no choice but to relent.
Maker’s mercy, where were Hawk and Pretty Boy?
I looked back at Steel.
“It’s going to be all right, Petal. Don’t be afraid.”
“Enough talk,” Damien ordered. “You and the other, come here.” He gestured to Steel and Doc.
“Steel, no!” I reached for him, but Gromm yanked me back.
Steel gave me a reassuring look. Silently ordering me not to interfere. Then he and Doc stalked over to Damien. They stopped at the hatch in the floor Sheriff had fallen through. At a nod from Damien, Gromm pulled me over to join them.
“Now.” Damien squatted at the hatch, hands clasped patiently between his knees, his eyes on his prisoner below. “You and I will have a talk, General.”
I looked down into the hole.
Twenty feet below the hatch, Sheriff was standing waist-deep in murky water at the bottom of what looked less like a hole and more like some sort of underground chamber. He was soaked to the bone, his face and hair dripping with water.
“I’m not telling you shit, Damien,” Sheriff spat.
Maker, I could see his breath. The water must have been freezing.
“You will if you want to spare your two men the same fate as your own.” Damien inclined his head to Steel and Doc.
“You touch them and—”
“I’m afraid you aren’t in a position to threaten me, Sheriff. Now. I know you didn’t come into this place to face as many guards as I have with only two men. Where are the others?”
Sheriff glanced at me, then looked at Steel and Doc. “Let them go, Damien. My men and Setora.”
“That’s not how it works. Where are they?”
“Let—”
“Sheriff, don’t tell this piece of shit anything,” Steel growled. He turned his eyes on Doc, Doc nodded, and then Steel glared at Damien. “Whatever you’re going to do to us, get on with it. Just let him and Setora go.”
“Not a chance.” Damien nodded toward the hatch. “In. Both of you. Now.”
“No!” I snapped, twisting in Gromm’s grip. “Damien, please.” When he glanced at me, I shook my head. “Don’t do this. Whatever it is you want from me, it’s yours. Just release them.”
“Petal, be quiet!” Steel bit out.
Damien ignored me and gestured for Steel and Doc to follow his order. “In, or the next few hours for your General will be a lot worse than they are now, and what happens to Setora will make you wish you had obeyed.”
Steel and Doc took one look at Sheriff, then one look at me. Doc closed his eyes and dropped into the hole with a splash.
Steel’s shoulders dropped. The look in his eyes, full of protective warmth and pain, sliced at my heart.
He stepped forward and jumped.
There was another splash before Damien came around the hatch and took my elbow in a painful grip. “However they got in here, they won’t be getting out. They have more men here, and when I find them, I’ll make sure you see them pay for their actions.”
“Damien,” Sheriff bellowed. “When I get my hands on you, your halls will run red with your blood!”
“Damien, stop!” I gritted out. “You don’t have to do this. I—”
Damien’s fist hit me full on in the face before I could finish. Agony hammered through my skull as if someone had slammed a battering ram into my head. The force of the blow sent me spinning away from him and across the floor beside the hatch. I heard my own scream through a haze of pain, along with Sheriff’s shout.
“Setora!”
I tried to shake the pain off and stand, but I couldn’t get my feet under me. Damien jerked my face to his. He was squatting in front of me, and when he spoke, his voice was eerily calm.
“I told you before, the sooner you learn to address me properly, the better off you’ll be.” He traced my bloody lip with his finger, his eyes almost sad. “I don’t like to hurt you, Little Dove, but a man does what he must. You are the weapon of the future, Setora.”
Weapon? What…
Damien pulled me to my feet, straightening my dress and then jerking my chin up so that I had to look at him.
“You think I’m evil, I know. But soon you will free this world from a real monster. There is a reason they call you the Worldmaker. This world is meant to belong to men like me. I’d rather you face what’s coming unscathed as my queen. But if you won’t face it on your feet with me as your king, then you will face it on your knees as a prisoner. It’s your choice.”
He nodded to Gromm.
“Close this hatch and take her to her rooms. The rest of you, search this place until you find the rest of the Legion, but don’t harm them. I want them to see what happens to their General and the woman they tried to take from me.”
Damien stormed out of the room without another word.
Chapter 20
Between Two Rocks and a Cold Place
No more than a minute after the hatch on Damien’s freezing, watery hellhole was closed, I had to wonder how the fuck Hawk had managed to swim for fifteen minutes in this water without freezing to death.
As soon as the hatch had shut and a heavy lock clanged home above it, one of the guards had muttered something about frozen pirates not being able to cut off anyone’s heads. Refusing to let the words affect me, I worked with Steel and Doc to find a way out.
My chest was already tight from the cold, making it hard to breathe, much less think. My knees were scraped up. With the hatch twenty feet up from the floor, it was lucky I’d tucked and rolled before I’d landed or I would have shattered my ankles.
We had checked the walls for any openings. There were two large boulders in the cell, jutting up from the water like miniature islands in a black sea. I had a bad feeling I understood their purpose, but I forced myself not to think about that now.
There was a door at one end of the fifteen-foot by fifteen-foot cell, but it wouldn’t open, even after Steel had thrown himself at it numerous times. Made of what looked like solid steel just like every wall in the chamber, the door didn’t appear to open from the inside. Heavy and wide, the bottom of it disappeared under the water.
There were no windows, and the only light came from two torches flickering near the metal ceiling. Even if we could have reached the hatch—which we couldn’t even when we stood on those rocks—judging by how heavy the hatch had sounded when it had been shut, it probably wouldn’t have budged.
Earlier when I’d stood up, my palms had touched what felt like a large drain in the middle of the floor. The water was too dark to see the bottom, so I felt around where I’d dropped into the room until my fingers brushed across a recess in the floor. At the center, there was a metal gri
lle. I didn’t feel anything I could pull up on, nothing to let the water out of the cell.
“Damn,” I muttered. My arms were starting to grow tired and numb from the cold.
“What the hell are you doing?” Doc stopped in the middle of feeling along one of the walls for an opening, looking at me.
“There’s a drain in the floor here. I was trying to see if I could get it open.”
“Even if you could, with the amount of water in here, when it drained out, it would suck us under. We could drown.”
Good point. I straightened, running my hands down my face. It had been stupid to even expect there to be a way to open the drain from here. It was probably set up so that some kind of control device outside the room allowed Damien’s men to drain the water before they entered the room. Otherwise the door to the cell would never have opened, and even if it did, the water would have come flooding out on them.
Moving around didn’t help ward off the cold. Five minutes had passed, and all of us were shivering. My clothes felt like they were frozen to my skin.
“Fuck.” I looked pointlessly up at the hatch. At least the thought of Setora with that fuck fueled my blood, making it run hot and momentarily driving away the cold.
Damien had hit her. I hadn’t seen it, but I’d heard the thwack of a fist against bone, heard her scream in pain and hit the floor. The thought made my fists clench. When I got my hands on him, there’d be no more fucking around. No more sword fights. I was going to end him once and for all.
I shut the thought of Setora out and focused on the task at hand. Finding a way out of here before…
Steel roared in rage and threw himself at the door with a thud. It had to be the third time he’d done that.
“Steel, stop.” Water sloshed and Doc took his shoulder. “I already told you, it won’t do any good. You want to add a broken shoulder, too?”
“I’m not going to just sit here freezing my ass off while he’s up there with her.” Steel shook Doc off and slammed himself into the door again.
It still didn’t open.