The light hurt her eyes—that much was clear as the basket rose—but Ryona looked remarkably well as she left the darkness of Level Thirteen behind. She was filthy and frightened and her clothes were in tatters, but she was not gaunt like the others, and there was still life in her eyes.
When the girl and her baby were on solid ground, Liane gave her orders to Gant. “Send down the Panwyr and food I promised as soon as we’re well away from here.”
“Yes, my lady.”
“And for God’s sake, when the other sentinels return, send down that basket again and collect the dead bodies.”
“It’s not time—” He began to argue, but did not get far.
“They’re dead,” Liane said sharply. “Removing their bodies will not in any way commute their sentences!”
“Yes, my lady.”
Ryona shuddered. She was malnourished, anxious, and possibly permanently damaged by the Panwyr, which was always administered to the prisoners before their descent into Level Thirteen. The baby, while small and dirty, looked to be healthy enough.
They left Gant behind. Ferghus helped the girl along the hallway, his arm around her in needed support. Liane would’ve carried the baby, but Ryona refused to release the hold on her child. Liane opened the door to the stairwell to find three surprised sentinels staring at her and the rest of her party.
“Speak of this to anyone, and I will know,” she promised. “It’ll be the last secret you spill.”
They nodded, obedient and frightened. Were they frightened of her because she was empress, or had whispers that she’d once been Sebestyen’s assassin drifted through the palace? In either case, their fear would keep them silent. Climbing the stairs with a depleted woman and a child was difficult, but soon Liane and Ferghus were in the lift once again, this time with Ryona and a baby who couldn’t be more than six months old along for the ride.
With his hand on the lever, Ferghus asked, “Where shall we take her, my lady?”
“Level Three.”
Ryona flinched and held her baby tight.
“You’ll be safe there,” Liane promised.
As they began moving upward, Liane turned to an obviously shaken Ferghus. “I ask you for one favor,” she said softly. “If Sebestyen ever decides to throw me into Level Thirteen, kill me.”
“My lady,” the sentinel said, obviously shocked by her request. “I could never do such a horrible thing.”
Ferghus was fully grown, a man perhaps somewhere between twenty-five and thirty. He was a few years younger than she, but eons more naive.
Liane turned her gaze to a shaking Ryona. Was the child Sebestyen’s? Is that why the girl had been tossed into Level Thirteen? No. For years, he’d been desperate for a child. If this baby girl was Sebestyen’s daughter, Ryona would likely be empress instead of Liane. She had believed for many years that she was the only woman Sebestyen called to his bed at night, other than the empresses which were his duty. But then again, she had been proved wrong about Sebestyen of late, so anything was possible.
Had the inexperienced girl been thrown away for some small slight, and the child she clutched to her chest conceived down there in that wretched place? It was a terrible thought.
“Did you look into the pit?” Liane asked.
“Yes, my lady,” Ferghus answered.
“Would you let me suffer there?”
He swallowed hard. “No, my lady.”
“Promise me,” she said softly.
Before they reached Level Three, Ferghus muttered a very soft, very uncertain, “I swear, my lady.”
Most mornings they woke with the sun and began their journey quickly, but not today. Today was different. Juliet knew she would forever remember today.
She had always been the one of the three Fyne sisters to most easily accept what was meant to be. For so many days and nights she’d been fighting what Ryn swore was destined, but now she could accept that he had been right all along, to some extent. She could not see herself living forever among the Anwyn, a willing slave and wife to a man who wanted her body and her soul.
But this—the wanting and the lying together—was very nice. She would have missed this moment if not for Ryn, for she could not see herself lying with any other man in this way.
She had not bothered to dress last night after she and Ryn had finished coming together on this bearskin bed. He and the fire kept the chill from her body. She still felt no psychic connection with him; the break in the tendril that connected them remained. In an odd sort of way, she missed it She missed him. But she could not risk the power of joining with him in body and in mind.
He slept still, long after the sun had risen in the sky.
Juliet found she was in no hurry to rush to an unknown city filled with strangers and a destiny she had not yet accepted and might never accept. But this moment was a good one. It was warm and alive and special.
She laid her hand on Ryn’s chest. His body was lovely and hard and not quite as warm as she had thought in those first days. She traced a muscle with her thumb. Yes, he was a fine specimen of manhood, and at the moment he was hers. She raked her hand upward and touched his throat with the back of her hand, and his eyes slowly fluttered open. She didn’t move her hand away, but traced her fingers over his jaw. She didn’t have to worry about abrasive morning stubble, since no hair grew on his cheeks or his jaw. It was smooth and hard and finely shaped. He was beautiful in the morning light.
“We slept late,” he said simply.
“Yes, we did.”
“Our laziness will delay our arrival in The City.”
“Is that a problem?”
For a moment he was quiet, and then he said, “No. It is not a problem at all.”
Since he did not seem to mind the way her hand explored his face and neck, she allowed the other hand to caress one hip. He watched her as she learned his curves and found the tender places on his body where the softest touch aroused him.
Her hand looked pale against his sun-bronzed skin. It looked soft and dainty against the muscles that rippled through his body. She remembered what he said about her being soft and him being hard. She had not known that gentleness combined with harshness could create something so wonderful.
Ryn shuddered when her fingers brushed against his inner thigh; he quivered when she raked her palm along his lower belly, her fingers just out of reach of his erection.
With a growl, he rolled her onto her back. They fit very nicely this way, with her legs spread and his body cradled there, so close to being inside her again.
Ryn tilted his head slightly and offered her his throat, his beautiful, soft, hard, tasty throat, and with the blue sky above them and the energy flowing between them, the dream came to life. The good part of the dream, not the nightmare that had frightened her for so many years. There were no claws awaiting at the end of this journey, no pain, no blood. Only pleasure.
Last night there had been a little pain and a little blood, but her virgin’s blood had been drops, not the river of her dreams, and the pain had been so quickly replaced with pleasure that it had already been forgotten.
The claws were nothing more than the remnants of a nightmare. They were not a sad omen, not a portent of something violent to come. Perhaps those claws had only been a warning that the man she’d give herself to would be different. Ryn did have claws, on the three nights out of the cycle of the moon when the moon was full, but they would never harm her. She believed as strongly as she had ever believed anything that he would not hurt her.
She had misinterpreted the dream; she had made the glimpse of her future into a nightmare all on her own. There was nothing within Ryn to incite fear.
She lifted her head to gently touch his throat with her tongue, and as soon as she tasted him, her body responded with a wild and uncontrollable need that only he could satisfy. He responded, too, with a deep shudder that whipped through his fine, naked body.
When she took her mouth from Ryn’s throat, he kissed her. His
lips moved over hers, his tongue danced and fluttered, and her lips parted to urge and accept a deepening of the kiss. Like the tasting of her throat, the kiss touched her everywhere, more deeply than she had imagined possible.
His fingers teased her—her sensitive breasts, her tender stomach, the folds that grew wet when he touched them—and within minutes of waking he plunged inside her with a fierceness unlike last night’s gentle joining. They were one, in body and in this quest for release and pleasure. The mental barrier Ryn had constructed remained strong. She did not touch his mind; he did not invade her soul.
Today they were just a man and a woman, with no magic between them.
Chapter Ten
Liane escorted Ryona to a guest suite on Level Three. There were moments when she did not completely trust Mahri, even though the girl seemed loyal enough. Her years in this palace had taught her not to trust anyone completely, and that had not changed. She would likely always feel more at home on Level Three, where pleasure was more meaningful than politics, and love never entered the equation.
Ferghus was as loyal as anyone else around her, more loyal than most, and together they would keep Ryona’s rescue and whereabouts a secret for as long as possible. Until Liane was sure that Ryona and her child were strong enough to travel, she couldn’t allow them to leave. And until she knew why the girl had been thrown into Level Thirteen, she couldn’t allow anyone to know that she’d been rescued.
Ryona perched on the edge of a fine blue and green striped chair in this small guest suite that was reserved for visiting dignitaries intent on sampling the emperor’s greatest delights. Liane had taken care not to be seen by the crone who had wrongly informed her that Ryona had gone home months ago. The old woman might’ve been told by someone else that Ryona had gone home, in order to cover up the girl’s disappearance, but that wasn’t a chance Liane cared to take. Only two concubines, women Liane could trust because she had once been in their shoes, knew this room was now occupied. They would keep her secret, because they knew they’d pay a high price if they did not.
The young mother shook. She sat, trembling and watching Liane with open suspicion, as if she expected a knife to appear at any moment to end her suffering. The luxurious surroundings only made the girl’s skin seem dirtier, her eyes wilder, her dress more ragged. Ferghus was discretely fetching food, while the women who knew Ryona was here were getting clean clothing for mother and child, along with warm water and soap for both. It would take a while to accomplish such things in true secrecy.
“Why were you down there?” Liane asked.
Ryona’s head snapped to the side, and she stared out the window, squinting against the sun. “You know,” she whispered.
“I don’t,” she said gently.
“You know everything that goes on here, so you must...this is a trick,” the girl said beneath her breath. “He said it was a trick. You’ll make me think I’m rescued and then you’ll put me back down there with the demons and the monsters, and the screaming and the death. Or else you’ll make me lie with him again.” She shuddered. “Bastard. I’d rather go back down there. I’d rather face a demon than let that horrible man touch me again.” She lifted her head and looked Liane in the eye. “Just don’t make Dorie go back.”
“Dorie is your daughter’s name?” Liane asked.
“It’s short for Dorantha.”
Liane made an effort to remain calm, to keep her voice low and even so she wouldn’t frighten Ryona. Poor girl, talking irrationally about demons. Maybe the Panwyr had caused her to suffer delusions, or else those sad prisoners in Level Thirteen seemed like demons to her. They were certainly no longer men.
As for the bastard she spoke of...he was likely very real, and more a demon that any imagined monsters in the dark.
“Dorantha. That’s a very pretty name.”
Ryona glanced up suspiciously. “Thank you.”
Liane reached out and very gently touched the baby’s soft head. “Who told you the rescue was a trick?” she asked. Obviously someone in Level Thirteen had been protecting the girl. She was healthier than the prisoners who’d gathered beneath the portal, and the way they’d grabbed at her...yes, someone had been looking after Ryona in the depths of Level Thirteen.
Ryona just shook her head. “I won’t tell. You can send me back down there, but I won’t—”
“It’s all right,” Liane said calmly. “You don’t have to tell anything you don’t want to. But I would like to know who put you in that place, and what you did for such a thing to happen.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Ryona said with a frantic shake of her head. “It wasn’t my fault.”
“I’m sure that’s true. But I would like to know so I can help you.”
Ryona glared at Liane. “Why?” she asked caustically. “I don’t recall you helping when I was sold onto Level Three. You didn’t feel obligated to help when I begged that awful man not to touch me. I wasn’t ready. I hadn’t had any training at all and I hadn’t started taking the medications to make sure I didn’t get with child. I told him, I was just supposed to fetch towels and lotions and things for the concubines, not become one. Not yet. But he said he didn’t want a trained whore, he wanted a nice girl to warm his bed.” Her lower lip trembled slightly. “And then he said he could love me and take care of me, that he could give me a good life if I would only do as he asked.”
Ryona had been seduced or raped. Before training, before she’d started taking the drug that was meant to prevent unwanted babies like Dorie. Such a thing wasn’t supposed to happen.
“You didn’t help when I told him I was carrying his child and he hit me.” Ryona’s voice got louder and more fierce. “You didn’t help when he said he was taking me home, but instead he threw me into that awful place and left me and my unborn child there to die.”
“I didn’t know,” Liane said softly. “I swear, I didn’t know. Tell me who did this to you, and I’ll kill him.” And if Ryona told her Sebestyen had done these things? Would she kill him? Yes. Of course she would. But he wouldn’t have done such a thing. Even if he had known the child Ryona carried was a daughter and not a son, he would’ve welcomed it. And as Ferghus said, Even Emperor Sebestyen…
Even Sebestyen wouldn’t toss a pregnant child into Level Thirteen.
“Tell me.”
“Will you really kill him?”
“Yes.”
Ryona shuffled her feet and cut her eyes to the floor. She held her baby close and whispered a few bars of a lullaby. And then she said, “It was Nelyk.”
Liane almost jumped out of her skin. “Father Nelyk?”
“Yes.” The expression on Ryona’s face as she finally looked Liane in the eye convinced her the girl was telling the truth.
Liane and the young priest Nelyk had never been on the best of terms, and she was quite sure that he despised her for the part she played in Sebestyen’s life. But she’d never imagined that he could be so cruel.
She doubted Ryona was an isolated case. “Are there others?” she asked.
“Other what?”
“Girls in Level Thirteen. Girls that Father Nelyk put there.”
Ryona shrugged her shoulders. “Not anymore,” she said softly. “There have been a few over the years, but he said they all died. The babies, too. They died down there in that awful place.”
He again. This time Liane didn’t bother to ask who. “We’re going to keep you here until you’re strong enough to travel, and then you and the baby are getting out of the palace once and for all.”
Ryona’s eyes went wide, and in that instant, filled with hope, she was impossibly beautiful. “I can go home?”
Liane’s heart sank. The girl’s father had sold her to Sebestyen to be a sexual slave to him and his ministers and guests, and still she wanted to go home. “That might not be such a good idea, not at first. After Nelyk is dead, then if you still want to, you can go home. Until then, you’ll have to stay out of sight.”
Ryona nodded.
After Ferghus delivered food, Liane returned to her rooms. She was tired of waiting around for things to change. She would make things change. Nelyk would die, though that would take some time to plan and execute. The priests were almost as heavily guarded as Sebestyen.
More immediately, she would no longer spend all day every day trapped in her pretty prison. If she was to be empress, she would do something with her days besides rest and try to learn to master the boring pastimes of embroidery and painting flowers.
And she would find out, one way or another, if her husband cared for her in even the smallest way. She had been pushed out of his life and his bed, and she had allowed the situation to go on for too long. Liane was not a meek girl who would cower in her rooms, and she never had been. She was not a sexless woman content to sleep alone. Her marriage would be consummated.
Tonight.
Juliet smiled as she walked quickly and surely along the path. She had an easier time keeping up with Ryn today. There was a lightness of spirit within her that had not been there before, and that lightness spurred her forward. She was no longer achy and tired, but was full of life as she followed Ryn along the narrow path that led upward.
When she’d dressed this morning she’d left off the nightshift, though she had saved it in case she needed bandages or rags along the way. She had rolled her cloak and the remains of the nightgown in the bearskin bedroll, since the air seemed milder today and she didn’t have need of the layers of clothing.
She did not suffer visions of any sort. Not only did Ryn maintain the break with her, but she had gone deep into her mind and found the silver tendril that connected her to all other living things, and she’d mentally tied a knot in the thread. She didn’t know if such an attempt would be successful for very long or not, but if it was...
She could have what she’d always wanted. Isadora loved her magic, and Sophie had accepted hers well enough. Juliet had always acknowledged her own witchcraft, but she had never embraced it. She had never loved that part of herself.
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