by Mel Teshco
The cotesh women, all three of them. The eunuch, along with three others. A wiry man she vaguely recognized as the driver of the horse carriage. And a handful of other men she’d never seen.
Please god, no.
It’d be massacre. All hope shriveled, cold, hard grief stripping what was left of her tears. Once again she’d have to watch someone she loved die.
Loved? I do love him. I really do.
Her breath caught. Emotions swelled. While she still had breath in her body, blood flowing through her veins, she wasn’t going to let anything happen to Judas.
She wasn’t leaving him.
Judas cupped her face, forcing her stare back to him. “Promise me. Promise you’ll go through the tunnel and not look back.”
The soldiers’ shouts, curses and fierce war cries grew in volume, echoing right along with the rhythmic clap of their horses hooves.
“I’ve heard the story of the larakyte princess, who as a little girl was locked in a room all alone.” His stare fairly glowed. “I love you all the more for your bravery right now. Just…stay strong. Do it for me, for your people. Promise me you’ll go through that tunnel.”
Heart splintering in a thousand pieces, she nodded.
He kissed her then. Hard. Passionately.
Oh dear god. Was this goodbye?
But she couldn’t yell out, couldn’t stop him as he retrieved the torch and turned away, plunging the rear of the cave into darkness. She clutched at the cold, damp stone, fighting back panicked sobs even as Judas barked out orders for his servants to shift shape and fight the enemy.
Shift shape?
Beneath the flickering lights on the farther side of the cavern, servants began to change. Slow but steady. Not the instantaneous shift that could well be fatal.
Her eyes widened, her mouth dropping open.
No. Way.
But of course the eunuchs were no larakytes. They were mylantites. Horse shifters, believed to be extinct.
The eunuchs’ poison-tipped spears thudded to the ground. Their muscled limbs evolved into the long, athletic legs of equestrians with shiny-tipped hooves, their torsos lengthening into the barrel-shape of a horse, with long white tails and manes.
She blinked. The eunuchs as horses were the one and same grays who’d pulled their king’s carriage.
The cotesh women had almost fully turned into eagles—golden eagles—their beady eyes focused overhead as they snapped the air with their huge, newly formed wings.
Kyskyts had once graced the air in the thousands, until humans had hunted the eagles from the skies, killing even the ones without shape-shifting blood to ensure they rid the world of all possible shifters.
The mylantites hadn’t fared any better. Even the ones who’d been unknowingly used as mounts by humans had to shift eventually. And humans had learned to put a stallion with a mare in season to bring about their change and vice-versa.
The eunuchs had clearly been gelded in their horse form, which had stilled their urge to mate and involuntarily shift. Hell. She could only imagine the pain they’d endured, as much by not shifting to stop the procedure as the agony of the act itself.
She didn’t have time to think anymore of the matter. The eagles took flight, their high-pitched screams echoing in the cavern as their wings beat through the air, taking them higher and higher until darkness engulfed them.
And just as the first soldier’s horse clattered into the room, a noise unlike anything Akeisha had ever heard roared from the ceiling and pulsed downward. Bats! Thousands upon thousands of bats clicking and flapping, escaping the eagles and descending toward the exit. The same exit the soldiers were coming through, single file.
She dropped onto her belly and covered her head, her ears, still able to make out the faint, high-pitched whinny of terrified horses, of soldiers yelling and cursing as they tried to control their mounts.
The bats circled en-masse, lower and lower, blocking out the light from the torches. But not before she made out Raffia on his panicked horse, Vasilous astride behind him, clutching at the captain’s torso even as the horse reared.
The bats swarmed toward the passageway and true darkness descended. She bit her lip, willing calm, though she was literally blind and death to everything but the bats. Only once the majority of the creatures had escaped did she peer ahead again.
Three of the torches had been extinguished by the bats, but there was enough light to see five soldiers were already dead. A gray horse lay unmoving, evidently killed instantly or the eunuch would have returned to his human form before death claimed him.
Her belly clenched. She’d seen much death. It never got any easier.
The remaining soldiers were all on foot, undoubtedly thrown by their horses who’d panicked into flight mode.
The remaining three shifter grays charged toward them, showing bared teeth and flashing hooves. Their long legs lashed out, more than once connecting in a sickening thud with flesh, before they danced away again, out of reach of the soldiers’ swords and fighting rods.
Her pulse filling her ears with a frantic beat, she scanned for Judas. Then she saw him. In a far corner where light barely penetrated, fighting both Raffia and Vasilous.
One of the eagles abruptly swooped from up high, talons outstretched. Vasilous looked up, reflexively thrusting out his sword. The eagle was set in its course, too bulky to evade the counterattack. It screeched, then went silent, thudding to the ground and lying unmoving.
Akeisha put a hand to her mouth, feeling ill. Only days ago that same cotesh woman had helped bathe her, waxed and plucked her body before dressing her for the king.
Fury for the now-dead woman; for Judas as struggled to hold the two men at bay, pumped adrenaline through her veins, blocking out the fact her body was not yet fully recovered.
She slipped from the boulder. She might have promised him to go through the tunnel, but she’d never promised to leave him behind. She’d go through the tunnel—alone if need be and face her fears—but she’d make damn sure Judas escaped too!
Keeping to the shadows, she part-shifted, her eyes reverting to panther vision to better see in the darkness. Superior sight would tax even more of the strength she’d regained, but the advantages far outweighed any disadvantage.
The grays had killed another couple of soldiers, but they were busy fighting off the remainder when she secured a poison-tipped spear. She crept behind Vasilous and Raffia. Judas’ moves had weakened and become defensive, countering their dual thrusts and jabs, using his gold cuffs more than once to deflect a blade.
Guilt cut within. She was the very reason his strength had ebbed. He’d expended precious energy saving her from the desert and then caring for her after the ordeal.
I’ll not let you die.
Spear raised, she said aloud, “Psst. Vasilous.”
He spun around, caught by complete surprise. Without hesitation, she hurled the spear forward, straight and true. And as it pushed through his chest and out his back, she said, “That’s for all the larakytes you’ve killed and tortured.”
“No!” Shock, then crazed hate and finally, a stunned realization he was going to die, jolted across his features.
In her peripheral, she saw Judas pause, his anxiety clear. “Angel, run!”
No. Not this time. Not without you by my side.
She stepped forward, clasping the spear embedded in Vasilous’ torso and wrenching it free, doubling the evil man’s agony. “And that’s for the children of the tikal mines,” she added.
Vasilous blubbered incoherently, blood pouring from his mouth, his wound. He staggered, and then pure horror flashed in his eyes, as though he’d witnessed his coming hell. With a vile gurgle, he crumpled to the ground.
Immune to his comrade’s death, Raffia lunged at the king, his sword slashing downward, slicing Judas from sternum to hip.
She froze, mouth agape, pulse pounding in her ears.
Judas. No! Please, no!
The king glanced down a
t his wound, then looked up at her, his eyes anguished. “I’m sorry, angel.”
Akeisha froze. Then everything came back into sharp, terrible focus. With everything she had, she screamed. “Judas!”
Raffia power-kicked him in the chest. Blood arced through the air, following Judas before he sprawled to the ground, his face alabaster pale, his body gushing crimson.
She sucked in a horrified breath. Her throat closed up, her voice no longer able to escape past the thick ball of grief lodged deep within. She shook her head. No! No, no, no!
Death would be preferable to facing the rest of her days without him by her side. Days spent remembering the one man she loved…and betrayed.
“How pathetic,” Raffia sneered, taking a step toward her. “You survived the desert—had your chance to escape and go back to your people—yet here you are, choosing to die right alongside a king who’s not even your own.”
Her stare didn’t waiver from the captain, though movement in her peripheral caused her breath to hitch, her senses stunned right to the marrow of her bones. She raised her bloody spear. “Who said anything about dying?”
“Hey, Raffia.”
The captain spun at Judas’ voice so close and strong behind him.
Akeisha stepped back, out of the war zone, her spear clattering unnoticed to the ground from a nerveless hand.
Raffia froze. “So it is true.”
Of course it was true. How hadn’t she realized? Judas’ natural grace. His knowledge of how long a shifter would take to recuperate. Hell, even his sexual prowess and the way his tongue had roughened and brought her to climax should have given her a clue.
Even as the pieces of the puzzle fell into place inside her head, the king’s part-shift had already evolved to full big cat. Twice the size of any full-blooded panther and as velvet black to the larakytes silver white, he was pure, bristling menace.
His midnight color bespoke a being of legend. A nightmix. A one-in-a-million child born to parents of different species—a human and a larakyte gone rogue.
Little wonder he’d not sired any bastard children. If his mixed birth had been remarkable, then his having progeny would be even more inconceivable.
With a roar, Judas leapt at Raffia. Panther claws unleashed, he ripped and slashed into the captain’s flesh, teeth and fangs gouging deep into his throat.
Chapter Six
Raffia didn’t stand a chance. He died without putting up a fight, a coward without honor; his throat ripped out and horrified disbelief etched into every hard crevice of his face.
Judas stepped away, staggered, and then fell to his side. His mouth and paws bloody, the wound that had been inflicted while in his human form gushed fresh blood.
He began the involuntary change back into human and Akeisha forced her limbs into action, sprinting to Judas. In that moment she cared less he’d lied to her too and kept his true identity from her. In that moment all she knew was she couldn’t let the man she loved die.
Though shifters wounds healed faster when cells regenerated and changed, she’d heard a nightmix didn’t have that ability. She could only pray it wasn’t true.
Ripping off her tuktuk robe, she collapsed onto her knees beside him, wrapping the worst of his wound to help stem the blood. “Don’t you die on me, Judas. Don’t you dare die!”
Behind her hooves echoed through the main tunnel as the grays galloped after the fleeing soldiers. Treason would undoubtedly be the rebels’ death sentence, if the desert didn’t claim them first. Both were clearly preferable over facing their king.
If he survived.
Tears welled. She chocked back a sob. Of course Judas would live! If he didn’t…she’d die right along with him.
She cradled his head in her lap, refusing to cry, to give in as she watched his face grow more ashen by the second.
Still her thoughts tangled from one scenario to another. Who was the king, really? How hadn’t she recognized one of her own?
Because though he wasn’t a human, he wasn’t a shifter either. Not really. He was a famed nightmix, the dark to her light. She shivered. Judas’ heart throbbed to the beat of a dangerous predator.
Urgent, lone hoofbeats alerted her to the fact one of the grays had returned. She waited precious minutes as he shifted into his human form, into eunuch. The one and same who’d guarded the outer palace door.
Striding forward, the eunuch crouched beside her and his king. “I’m strong enough to hold Judas on one of the other mylantites and get him back to the palace. If we can get him to our healer as soon as we can, he’s got a chance.”
She swiped a gentle hand over Judas’ brow. He was cold. So very cold. She nodded. “Take him. Please, hurry.”
“And you? Can you ride?”
She turned to him. His forearm muscles bulged, blood and sweat glistening under the dying torches. “Yes. But I won’t. Take your mylantites with you. The kyskyts too. You’ll need to swap horses with your combined weight, and the eagles will guide you to the most direct route back.”
The eunuch nodded, respect gleaming in his eyes. “We’ll come back for you, princess.”
The grays returned with clattering hooves. And as the eunuch lifted the king, she took hold of the brightest torch and shook her head. “No. I’m going through the secret tunnel. I’ll alert the healer to be ready for the king when you arrive.”
She didn’t look back at the king, didn’t say goodbye. She didn’t have any more time to linger. His survival may well depend on her moving fast and not giving into her fear. Besides which, her full strength was returning now, like a thick sludge pushing faster through her veins.
She scrambled onto the rock Judas had hoisted her onto such a short time ago. And torch in hand, she ducked her head and sidled carefully into the tunnel leading to the palace.
Silence surrounded her. She gritted her teeth and forced her way through the tomb-like walls that pushed in either side of her, scraping her back and shoulders raw, her breasts and her knees.
Her sanity.
* * * * *
Judas became conscious of two things. One, that Akeisha was with him—he’d sense her boldness and warmth of spirit anywhere, and two, the joyous relief that coursed through him knowing she hadn’t left him—a relief so strong, so vivid, for a moment it wiped out all pain.
Then a vision intruded—his angel facing off Vasilous and Raffia with nothing more than a poison-tipped spear.
He sucked in a jagged, pain-filled breath. The physical stuff he could handle. The emotional, mental stuff, not so much. She’d risked her life for his. And risked the future of her people had she not survived.
Hope, sharp and sudden, sped through his body, eliminating despair. Was it possible that she had forgiven him for keeping his secret from her? Was it possible that…she loved him?
“Angel?” he croaked.
“I’m here, Judas.”
He forced his eyelids apart. Light cut into his pupils, as though daggers. He closed his eyes, breath hissing from his lungs. “Why didn’t you…leave while you…still…could?”
Her hands were warm as they clasped one of his, her voice steady, sure. “You know why.”
His heart lurched. Joy almost suffocated him in its radiance. Had the impossible happened? Could someone love him, despite knowing what he carried within? Love the real him? Not the powerful king, but the man. Words failed to form and, instead, he squeezed her fingers. She squeezed back.
Someone nearby cleared their throat. “She’s not left your side for two days.”
Fontaine. Healer. Human. And closest ally. He’d recognize her crisp, no-nonsense voice anywhere.
Two days? He’d been out for that long?
He gritted his teeth, pushing aside the pain lancing inside his body. “Fontaine. How’d you get to the…caves.”
“I didn’t, Majesty, you were brought here by the mylantites.”
He squinted, forcing back a wave of torment, where seemingly a hundred ants trekked across his eyeball
s with feet dipped in acid. The sword Raffia used must have been coated with something highly prohibited.
The bastard had planned his attack well.
Fontaine wavered before his vision, then came into full focus. A wooden stirrer clanked in a medicinal cup as she infused the herbs she was about to pour down his throat. She smiled. “You can thank Akeisha for saving your life.”
He blinked, turning his head slightly until his angel came into focus. “Brave,” he rasped with difficulty, “fighting off those…monsters.”
Even when the healer held his head up a little, coaxing some of the foul-tasting chunks down his throat, he didn’t take his eyes off Akeisha. He’d never get tired of looking at her.
Fontaine withdrew the cup. “She also crawled through the secret tunnel to warn me of your arrival. I was able to have everything prepped and ready to use when you arrived.”
Something in his chest warmed as he digested the truth. Not only had she risked her life for him, she’d faced her fears so that he could live.
Angel. She really is my angel.
* * * * *
Akeisha stared unseeingly out the alcove windows overlooking the beautiful gardens and orchard, aware she couldn’t stay any longer. No matter how much she loved Judas. No matter how much her people needed her to secure their safety.
Unlike Judas’ loyal servants, she couldn’t hide her true self. Not anymore.
His mother had evidently had an affair with a larakyte—a rogue—who’d chosen to forsake his own brethren and lust after a human, a queen, endangering the whole shifter race.
She swiped a hand over her face, feeling almost faint. Of course humans hated shifters. The queen’s affair had all but killed their once beloved king. Many must have wondered if Judas was spawned by a larakyte despite the odds being so high.
Little wonder Judas had mentioned there were some who’d see him harmed. Undoubtedly those were the same people who still wondered about Judas’ parentage, who were still raw from their king failing them.
Just as she wouldn’t be tolerated by any of the humans once her secret was out, neither would Judas be tolerated by her own people. History showed the true colors of a nightmix. His was a tormented soul, a savage beast struggling against everything human—until the beast won out.