Gaelen Foley - Ascension 02

by Princess

  “Darius!” she cried as he wrenched out of her arms.

  Moving lightly, he descended the stairs, then stalked to the door, bloodlust pounding in his veins, for he had such wrath to vent.

  “Darius!”

  He paused on the threshold but did not turn around. “Do not be here when I come back. Go home, the way you planned. If you don’t leave first, I will.”

  She cried out as he lurched out the door and ran down the front steps, going blindly to the waiting wagon. He flung himself up to the driver’s seat next to Rafael and cracked the whip over the horses’ backs.

  He was going to die today. His mind was made up on the matter. He only prayed that he could stave off his own disintegration long enough to save Lazar and his men from massacre.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Powder kegs secured, the wagon careened over the rough roads, winding west. Darius drove the wagon with Rafe watching over the barrels. The men rode in formation behind them. After a breakneck race of nearly two hours, they arrived at the high, sparse pine woods that shielded the mouth of the tunnels’ western branch.

  Leaving the wagon on the road, for half an hour they searched the boulder-strewn thicket, unable to find the cave’s entrance, it was so well concealed. At last, Rafe found it.

  They tore away brambles and vines to reveal the cave’s mouth. Darius lit the torch that was always left just inside every tunnel’s entrance, because the subterranean passages were as black as tar.

  This tunnel, he saw as the flame leaped to life, was wide enough that three men could climb abreast through it. By torchlight, they began the backbreaking labor of carrying the powder kegs through the woods, up the hill, picking their way around the boulders, and deep into the tunnel. The sweat on his skin turned clammy in the tunnel’s cool depths.

  Darius held his breath every time anyone passed the torches, gingerly carrying their payload of explosives. They stacked the barrels, pyramid-fashion, about three hundred yards into the cave. As the last barrel was unloaded from the wagon, Darius ordered Sergeant Tomas to take his men over the ridge farther up the road so they would be a safe distance from the explosion.

  Again the men mounted their horses while Darius kicked the final barrel until the side of it cracked. Then he and Rafe carried it into the tunnel, the barrel leaking a sandy black trail of gunpowder.

  Just as they set it in position, their arms straining, faces beaded with sweat, they suddenly fell silent, hearing dull, muffled echoes coming from deep inside the cave.

  They both turned, staring into the eerie, echoing blackness. They could not yet see the light of torches, but they could hear voices and the scrape and shuffle of countless boots.

  “Poor bastards,” Darius breathed. He hoped the mountain crushed them before the fire consumed them, he thought. Burning was no way to die.

  He didn’t know exactly how far the fireball would roll in both directions when the barrels blew, any more than he knew how many hundreds of unsuspecting soldiers would die when the mountain collapsed on them.

  “Come on.” Rafe tugged his sleeve.

  They ran. Darius grabbed the torch on the way out of the cave.

  “Get out of here,” Darius ordered the boy, shoving him toward the wagon with one hand, holding the torch in the other.

  Rafe stopped him. “I shall do it. Go with your men.”

  Darius scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m expendable. You’re the heir to the throne. Get the hell out of here. I’ll catch up.”

  “I caused the problem. It’s my responsibility,” Rafe said in an odd, hard, crisp tone that did not sound at all like the royal rogue Darius knew.

  He stared at him. “Raffaele! Don’t be a fool. This is extremely dangerous—”

  “I know it is. Now go. That’s an order, Santiago.”

  “You’re giving me orders?” he asked incredulously.

  Rafael held his stare coolly. “That’s right. Go—now. Wait for me with the others.”

  Resistant and rather angrily amazed, Darius surveyed the ground, searching for cover, then glanced at his young brother-in-law with a newfound measure of respect. “There’s a cluster of boulders over there.” He pointed. “I suggest you run like hell for them.”

  Rafe merely jerked a nod for him to leave, his gold-green eyes hard as the wind tousled his gold-streaked hair. Darius realized this was something the young man had to do. Even so, he didn’t like it. Darius climbed up onto the wagon, picked up the reins, and slapped them over the horses’ back, but he looked over his shoulder as the carriage began pulling away.

  Rafe stood in the middle of the dusty road. “Gonna kill a hundred, maybe a thousand men with one blow, Santiago,” the royal rogue called after him with a grin. “That’s even better than your average.”

  “Just don’t blow yourself to smithereens,” he muttered. Then he urged the horses into a gallop and drove the carriage over the ridge.

  “Hit the ground, hit the ground!” he ordered his men.

  Several minutes later, the massive explosion tore through the belly of the mountain. The horses screamed in terror, rearing in the harness. Darius covered his ears, feeling the blast of heat. The roar went on and on as the hill fell in on itself, but when the noise finally rumbled to a halt, he was already on his feet, running back over the ridge.

  “Ra faele!”

  “Your Highness!” the men called.

  Some began running back down the road. Darius joined them, his heart pounding. As he approached the site, he saw the tunnel’s mouth no longer existed. Also, fortunately, they had planted the explosives deep enough inside the cave that fire had not spread to the woods.

  The dust was settling, the men running toward the boulders. Though some of the birds were still screeching in the trees, the place was otherwise shockingly serene, as if nothing had happened.

  “Rafe!”

  Squinting against the bright late afternoon sun, he looked down the road and saw a figure climbing out from under the small, flat den between the boulders. The boy came out coughing and covered in dust and ash, but he was unscathed.

  Sergeant Tomas hastened to give him his canteen. Rafe took a long drink.

  “Victory!” he croaked with a weak grin, but his face was pale beneath the grime. “Let’s go check on my old man.”

  Amid the men’s congratulations to the prince on his feat accomplished, they walked back to the wagon and were soon under way.

  They could hear the cannon fire rumbling from miles away, but when they finally rolled up into the shadow of the towering defensive wall from which Ascencion’s fine long-range guns were blasting the ships in the blue-green harbor below, the skirmish was already drawing to a close, judging by the sound of things.

  Darius shaded his eyes, gazing up at the wall’s battlements, swathed in clouds of smoke from the cannons. Through the floating smoke, he saw the powerful figure of the king stalking back and forth behind the gun crews.

  “Damned hothead,” Darius murmured, shaking his head. As king, Lazar had no right exposing himself under fire, but Darius knew he was venting his wrath as outraged papa on the enemy.

  By the look of it, the meager exchange with the French had only whetted Lazar’s appetite for battle. He was ordering his men to fire and fire again, though the enemy had stopped shooting.

  Rafe and Darius exchanged a grim, knowing look.

  “Let’s get this over with,” the prince grumbled.

  “Right.” Darius jumped down from the wagon.

  As they strode toward the tower and up the stone stairs leading to the battlements, Darius felt that familiar clench of anger in his stomach, knowing he was about to face Lazar for the first time since their break. He felt rather like he used to as a boy, called before his father for some bewildering, tiny transgression.

  Upon reaching the top of the steps, they walked onto the breezy battlements and looked out to sea. Darius ignored the stares aimed at him and considered the situation.

  The French were
retreating to their blockade positions, a wary distance beyond the guns’ range. He surveyed the battleships’ formation, but his thoughts were far distant, on Serafina.

  Right now, he thought, the five guards he’d left to look after her were probably loading onto the coach those traveling trunks she had been packing. He dreaded facing the empty villa when he went home. Home. Whatever that was.

  He was glad he had told Serafina his disgusting secrets, driven her off forcefully rather than waiting around for her to leave him, he thought as he searched the sky. At least now it was over, no more waiting for the blade to drop. One day she’d thank him for this. For him, there was nothing left to do but get on with his life. If Ascencion didn’t want him anymore, he would go to Sicily and help Richards in his “intriguing enterprise.”

  He was still brooding on his loss when a deep, cold voice rose behind him.

  “You.”

  Darius whirled around, his back to the low stone wall. Lazar stalked toward him like a grand, angry lion.

  Darius lifted his hands calmingly. “I just came to help.”

  “Don’t you try to play me, Santiago,” he growled.

  Darius dropped his gaze, incredulous at the man’s sustained hostility. “Fine. I’m leaving. Excuse me.”

  “You’re not going anywhere till I’ve had a piece of you!”

  He very nearly laughed. “Sire.” He edged away from the wall, for there was a very long drop to the sea on the other side of the wall, and one never knew what an outraged Italian papa might do. “I’m getting out of here, don’t worry,” he said. Turning his back, he started walking away calmly, coolly.

  Lazar tackled him.

  “Ouch,” Darius grunted as he hit the ground, banging his knees, his hands thrown out to catch himself just in time.

  The big royal clod didn’t know his own strength. Darius rolled, dodging a blow.

  “Leave me alone! I married her, didn’t I?”

  “Only because I caught you, you schemer!” The king took a swing at him.

  Darius ducked and kept trying to back away. “That’s not true! I would have married her anyway!”

  He realized only after he’d said it that it was the truth.

  “After all I’ve done for you, this is how you repay me—you seduce my innocent baby girl!”

  Darius laughed. “Oh, I have news for you about your innocent baby, old man. You want to see her claw marks on my back?”

  Lazar let out a wordless bellow of fury and cuffed him alongside the head with his fist.

  Darius caught himself against the tower wall and whirled back to him, taunting him. “That’s it, isn’t it? You can’t accept that your little girl has gone and grown up on you!”

  “I trusted you with her! You think I’m deaf and blind, that I don’t hear of your conquests? You’ve had every hot-blooded bitch in the kingdom, but you couldn’t leave one innocent young girl alone! You seduced her just like your countless others!”

  “No!” He stepped toward Lazar and shoved him. “Not like the others! You know nothing of it!”

  “How dare you?” Lazar uttered, shoving him back.

  “Why don’t you stop putting your own blame on me? Can’t you just admit you made a mistake, promising her to Tyurinov? You had no right signing that betrothal before you heard from me, but you were taken in by him! If it weren’t for me, that mistake could have cost us her life. I’m the one who cared enough about her to learn the truth. You’re the one who sold her for an easy way out!”

  Lazar made a sound of fury and hurled himself at Darius again. They went scuffling across the flagstone.

  “Why didn’t you come to me at once when you learned about Tyurinov’s first wife? I could charge you with treason for keeping it from me!” Lazar bellowed.

  “Because you, Your Majesty, are a hothead. Look at you now. The situation called for subtlety. Damn it, leave me alone, I’ve had enough!” Darius shouted as he elbowed Lazar hard in the kidney, spun free, and caught him a in a choke hold from behind. Trusting he’d proved his point, Darius dropped him and walked a few paces away, raking a hand furiously through his hair.

  As soon as he turned his back, he was tackled again.

  This time, the bigger man got the best of him, pinning him in a headlock. “What about the chaperons?” he demanded.

  Darius shoved uselessly at the stonelike choke hold around his neck. “I’m sorry, I lied! But it was what she wanted.”

  “She put you up to it? She told you to lie?”

  “No,” he growled. “But I know how those people just gnaw at her spirit. Nobody has ever known how to manage that girl but me, you know that. You never bloody could! You let her walk all over you and twist you around her finger! I just wanted to be with her. Is that so wrong? Damn it, Lazar, she was my only hope.”

  The king stared down at him for a minute.

  “That I believe,” he declared, slamming him onto his back on the flagstone. Fists on his waist, Lazar stood over him like a wrathful Jehovah, his foot planted on Darius’s chest.

  Darius didn’t really feel like fighting anymore. The flagstones were almost comfortable, tired as he was.

  “Answer me one question,” Lazar said ominously.

  “What?” he muttered, lifting his head.

  “Do you love her?”

  He dropped his head back against the sun-warmed stone, then winced at the bang, and just lay there, eyes closed in defeat.

  “Do you love her?” he demanded.

  “Why do you think I went to kill Napoleon, you clod? I only wanted her to be free.”

  “You knew there was no way you could come back alive.”

  “Yes.”

  “And yet you went there.”

  “Yes! I love her! What do you want to know? I love her more than I love my own life.”

  Her father folded his arms over his brawny chest and stroked his chin, glowering down at him. “You really piss me off, Santiago.”

  “Mutual, Sire.”

  “Santiago.”

  “What?” he growled.

  “If you love my daughter so much you were willing to die for her, why the hell did you never come to me and ask me for her hand?”

  “Because you would have said no,” he said wearily.

  “Is that so?”

  “Maybe you would have said yes out of obligation, because of the bullet I took for you.”

  “I’m the king. I don’t have to do anything.”

  Darius fixed him with a sullen, moody stare.

  Lazar shook his head. “You’re a proud, obstinate fool, magnifico. I would have said yes, and been damned glad of it.” He removed his booted foot from Darius’s chest and bent to offer a hand to help him up.

  Darius watched him warily, too weary to move. “You would have said yes? To me?”

  Lazar only chuckled softly, sadly, and shook his head, his hand outstretched. “Get up, son.”

  “You like to help me clean up, don’t you? Yes, that’s a good kitty,” she murmured softly to her fluffy white cat, petting the crouched animal as it hungrily gobbled the scraps of Darius’s breakfast, which she had splattered against the wall many hours ago.

  The yellow villa was quiet under the gathering sunset.

  While the cat feasted, Serafina stood, her expression mournful as she wiped down the soiled wall with a wet cloth. All she could think was how awful her temper tantrum must have made her look in front of Darius. He had known starvation, and here she was, throwing a perfectly good plate of food across the room so it was fit only for a cat.

  Spoiled, rotten brat, she thought in self-contempt.

  Many times she had marveled at his capacity for violence, but tonight she was awed, looking back on the gentleness he had always shown her, both as her lover and as her guardian when she was a child. He had endured a nightmarish existence, yet somehow he had always managed to keep the small, pure flame of his humanity alight in the darkness. That was the fire that burned, always, in his onyx eyes, and the
poignant sweetness that spoke to her in his guitar’s tender music.

  She knew he did not want to face her again after the things he had revealed, but there was no way she was leaving him now—or ever. He would never have to be alone again, nor face the demons of his past alone. He had only told her his secrets as a means of driving her off, she realized, but it had sealed her devotion to him. At last, she understood so many of his actions and reactions which had bewildered her before. She loved him completely, both the shining knight in him and the lost little boy. At last, she was needed and wanted for herself. She had found her purpose in giving to him.

  When she was done cleaning up the ruined breakfast with her cat’s help, she went searching for the medal of the Holy Virgin, which he had torn from his neck.

  She found it all the way over by the entrance to the morning room. Picking it up, she discovered the chain was broken beyond repair. She brought it to the pink bedroom where her jewelry box sat on the bureau. She poked around in the jewelry box, determined to find a suitable replacement for the relic. Still sniffling, her nose stuffed up and head throbbing from so much crying, she carefully extracted a sturdy gold chain from the knot of tangled necklaces.

  The gold chain was even finer than the original silver one. It did not match as well, but it was stronger. Carefully, she restrung the medal on the gold chain, then put the necklace in her pocket, savoring the thought of putting it on him anew.

  Perhaps it was mere superstition, but she did not like knowing he was out there doing something dangerous without its protection.

  Bored and a little lonesome, the necklace wrapped loosely around her hand in her pocket, she wandered from room to room, restless for his return.

  Everywhere she turned, the yellow villa offered images for her to meditate, memories of moments that Darius and she had shared in this magical place, both the good and the bad.

  She toured the library where she had teased him and tweaked his pride. She lay awhile on the shiny dining room table, gazing up at the fresco of Mars and Venus caught for all to see in Vulcan’s golden net. At length, she decided to go back up to her room and try to make herself presentable for her husband’s return, but upstairs, she took a moment to continue her exploration. Out of curiosity, she went to the one room she had never entered, a narrow door at the end of the hall.