The three men behind me exchanged looks, and Aiko chuckled.
“I get the feeling she likes her new strength.”
Twisting in the saddle, I grinned back at them, and then rode on.
At the door were dozens more bodies, piled and rotting. Older at the bottom, newest—a lot of newest—at the top.
The smell was horrendous.
Rilen and Roran were trying not to gag.
I was right there with them.
No wonder those front doors had always been shut.
“How do we get in?” Roran managed to gasp between gags.
Aiko shook his head. “Savion will not open the doors.”
“Then I will.” I smiled while, at the same time, I grabbed the magic with my power and threw a wedge between the closed doors. A hard yank and the doors not only opened but actually ripped off the top hinges.
Oops.
Rilen smirked as we all kicked our horses into motion. Riding through the doors, we pranced to a halt just inside.
There were a dozen bodies over the fountain, some freshly dripping, some gray and drained. The heads were all lined up in front.
Billan was still there, rotting. Another of the guards who had helped me as well.
Sick, sick bastard.
“Welcome back, Mistress Breaker.”
My eyes shot to the balcony.
Savion stood there looking regal, angry and insane. He tipped his head and grinned the grin of a madman.
“Where is Dorian?” I demanded.
“Oh, now come, Mistress Breaker. Don’t you at least want to give your father a hug?”
I gathered magic around me, and I could feel it snapping. “Where. Is. Master. Dorian.”
“Master?” His chuckle had absolutely no mirth in it. “Master. Of course, the coward went into hiding. There is no Master Dorian here.”
Savion extended a finger to the middle of the room and pointed toward the people hanging inverted and headless. “There is, however, a king.”
My eyes snapped up.
Dorian was hanging there.
He still had his head.
“Wake up, your majesty,” Savion taunted. He picked up a small rock—no, bone, from the railing and threw it at Dorian. “Wake up. Mistress Breaker has come to rescue you.”
Naked, bruised, and scored with a hunting knife to make him bleed, Dorian barely stirred at Savion’s taunts. He almost flinched when the bone hit him.
“Come on, Dorian, play along!” Choosing a bigger projectile this time, Savion hit him in a massive bleeding bruise on the shoulder.
“Stop it!” I screamed.
“Let him down!” Roran barked and leapt off his horse.
There were six guns all pointed at Roran in the next moment.
“Come up here, daughter. Say hello to your father.” Savion cooed the words. “Come up here, or the lead goes right into your lover’s brain. And no one survives that.”
I took a deep breath, glancing at Roran, then Rilen. They could handle themselves. I knew they could.
But I had to get Dorian down. He was tranquilized, probably with the same crap they had used weeks before. Savion had probably used it over and over.
The chain that held him was probably made with lead as well.
“Kimber…” Rilen whispered.
“Trust me,” I hissed as I walked by him.
I walked up the stairs I had been thrown down and nearly murdered on. Savion, my father, was waiting halfway across the balcony, watching me.
“Well, well. You survived, I see.”
I paused. “Fuck off.”
Savion threw his head back and laughed, long and hard. “Just as spirited.”
“Let Dorian down.”
“No, my decoration stays.”
I stole a quick glance at him. “How did you manage that? He’s the strongest druid…”
“Strongest druid.” His voice was mocking. “First you tell me you have no idea he’s king, and now…” The chuckle was derisive. “He came through those doors much the way you did, my dear. I offered a story about you being my prisoner. A lovely little tale I spun about you dying if he tried to escape me.”
He walked closer and put a finger under my chin to study me.
“I had him convinced you were at the end of the sword. He had his blade at my neck, and because I told him you would die if I did, he put it down. Three thousand years, one swing away from carrying out the death sentence he judged me to… and he couldn’t because of you. He was so convinced I would kill you.”
He’d given up the feud to save me. I could feel Roran and Rilen’s relief below.
I pulled my chin away. “Release him.”
“No.”
“Release him.”
“Do you not understand ‘no’? He’s mine, and I’ll make him suffer. What do you think he was planning on doing with me?”
“Nothing less than you deserve.”
He yanked his sword off his belt and held it at my neck. “Why do you say things like that? Daughter or no, I’ll have your head.”
I held my chin up. “Take it. I dare you.”
He tried to casually flick my head off.
My sword stopped his blade, and I cocked an eyebrow.
Savion laughed and circled as I held his sword immobile. “You really think you can best me?”
“I don’t care to think about it. I’d rather see if you can get my head off my shoulders.”
He smiled.
I smiled back.
Two could play that game.
I shoved the sword away from my blade and whirled back, meeting his again on the other side.
He advanced, swinging wildly against mine. I also had no idea why he wasn’t fighting me at speed. He would have had me down—even with his predictable patterns—in seconds. But he didn’t use it.
Slamming his sword down on the railing, I pulled close. “Let him down.”
Savion snarled. “You’re as thick as he is.”
I grinned. “He is thick, you’re right.”
Pure hatred raced through Savion. It was almost physical. “You fucked him?”
“Why do you think he’d give up your feud? For some random woman?” I let the blade up and danced back. “Oh, no, Father, not at all. You see, I love him. I fucked him. And I plan to continue doing both.”
“NO!” He stomped his foot like a petulant child. “No! No! No child of mine will sleep with Dorian Ni’aba! None!”
“Well, that’s fine,” I said, stepping to my left, circling him. “You don’t have a daughter anyway.”
“You are my blood!”
“I am your spawn. I am nothing to you.” I spun the sword so he could see the whole blade and handle. “I was born of Celine Stormbreaker. My parents were Willow and Dixon Raven. My father—”
“No!” Savion’s voice was terrified. “No!”
I heard Dorian chuckle and glanced up. He was smiling at me, grimacing from the pain.
“Shut up!” Savion yelled over his shoulder.
A bare whisper in the room, Dorian managed a few words “…the raven’s blade in the hands of the storm…”
“No! No!” he screamed and came at me again with the sword. In a desperate move, he tried to hit the cross guard to break the blade.
I spun it away. “Let him down.”
“I said no! I will watch him suffer! I will make him bleed! I will drain him again and again!”
Savion was in front of me in a heartbeat—vampire speed right into my face. There it was. “And I will kill you, dear daughter because you were fucked by that demon.”
“What did he do to you?” I asked, quietly.
“He judged me guilty!” the words were roared. “He would have put me to death when there was no death penalty in S’Kir. He would have me killed just like his wife!”
Roran spoke from the stairs. “He had Stone Castle prison built for both of you.”
I maneuvered our swords so I could see the top of the stair
s. I didn’t know how they did it, but the twins waited there.
Aiko was below, leading a handful of soldiers.
Vampire soldiers.
Savion pointed to Roran. “S’Kir has no death penalty!”
“That’s why he built Stone Castle!” Rilen answered.
“Then why did he kill Violet?!”
Dorian growled. “…selling children…”
I gasped and stared at Savion. Selling children.
“He hadn’t realized you all were stealing and selling the children into slavery,” Rilen finished. “None of you were innocent.”
“Violet and Niallan only brought me the children!”
Roran was suddenly in his face in a burst of speed. “And you turned the girls into sex slaves.”
My breath rushed out of my lungs. “Oh, my gods…”
Rilen quirked an eyebrow. “Do you really think they didn’t know that?”
“You can’t sentence someone to death when there is no penalty like that!”
It hit me like a rock—he didn’t deny what he did.
He and two other people had stolen children and sold them into sex slavery.
Savion was arguing a technicality.
He sold children.
I roared and shot forward. “You stole my mother! You kept her for your own perversions!”
He was barely able to stop my sword. I was driving the blade at him, over and over, mindless and pissed.
He was laughing at me.
Why was he laughing? I was going to kill him.
Savion’s blade sliced my side.
“Kimber!” Four voices.
If you wish to exact a win, you must be exact in your control.
How many times had my father—the man who raised me—drilled that into me?
I was not exact. I was being ruled by emotion and disorganization.
This vampire was going to win because I wasn’t exact.
I snapped back to myself and slammed his blade against the wall again. I needed one more moment to get myself completely under control.
Holding him there, I glanced at Roran and Rilen behind him. I shot a look at Dorian, who was starting to come around. I even took a quick glance at Aiko.
That was where I found my exact.
The scrape of metal on metal drew me back to my present situation.
Savion freed his sword from mine and swung again.
I parried. He swung, and I countered. Over and over again, back and forth.
Each and every blow was form perfect. High, low, parry, counter-parry—I had never met anyone with such perfect form.
And his perfection was his imperfection.
His weakness.
I put a hand to the slice he’d dealt me, starting to feel pain from it.
“You’re dead, girl. You’re dead. No crazy prophecy is going to determine my fate. I’ll kill you, and I’ll kill your demon lover, and I will take his crown and rule S’Kir forever!”
“Madman,” I whispered to him.
“I am not mad!”
“Only the insane never question their sanity.” I was apparently in the mood to poke the kraken today.
He didn’t answer, but instead, came at me again, still following all the rules of swordplay perfectly.
I sidestepped as he was about to try another perfect form, and slipped the blade between his ribs, and pushed through his body.
With a crunching tear that I would not forget for the rest of my life, I pulled the sword sideways, out under his arm.
Savion crumbled to his knees, staring at the gaping hole in his chest.
“No…” He looked up at me. “No…”
“You destroyed my mother. You’ve murdered thousands of people. You’ve ruined the vampires of S’Kir.”
“I am the… king…”
I leaned into him, holding my sword at my side. “I am the Princess Kimber Raven of the House Stormbreaker, Breaker of the Spine and the Bright Sword, Keeper of the Scar.”
His breath sawed in and out, and the blood gushed from the wound I had made. He grew pale and was sweating and shaking.
It didn’t mean he was dying, though.
It meant he needed blood to heal.
It meant I had to finish this.
All of this.
His voice was wavering, but his eyes held all the hate he had ever felt as he watched me. “You need to die with your demon lover!”
“Even the devil finds love,” I hissed.
Savion never saw my sword move.
His head rolled to a stop at the twins’ feet.
“CUT HIM DOWN!”
I ran toward the stairs, but Rilen caught me by the waist.
“Hold on, ilati,” he said.
Roran was racing down the stairs to where Aiko had raced to the ropes and pulleys.
“Cut him down!” I screamed again.
“They have to lower him, take it easy.” Rilen pulled me against him. “Take care of your sword, Kimber. There’s blood on the blade. You can’t leave it like that.”
I looked down, and there was not only blood but also a few pieces of gore.
…to the south…
Twisting my lip, I looked around for something to clean the blade with. I walked back to the body of my father, the dead king, and wiped the sword off on his pants.
A flight of soldiers crowded onto the balcony, grabbed the body, and tried to grab the head.
“No!” Rilen snapped.
The soldiers were all startled, and I held up my hand to relax them. “No. Don’t take the head. Leave it here.”
“The blood, Mistress Breaker,” one of them pleaded.
“No more of that,” I said. “Take his body out to the sun and let the scavengers have it.”
“Mistress?”
“Listen to her.” Kane dropped down the stairs, looking harried and worried like he had been running from stables. “Take the body outside and drain the fountain. We’ll have no more of that.”
…to the south! Hurry…
They bowed stiffly and moved like lightning.
Dorian slowly lowered from the rafters, more awake than I had hoped. He looked at me and whispered something. I pulled away from Rilen and ran down the stairs to the back end of the fountain where Roran and Aiko were waiting for him to be lowered enough for them to grab him.
As soon as he was, the two of them took his shoulders and laid him flat on the floor.
“Do not move, Dorian,” Roran said with no room for disobedience.
I knelt next to him, and without saying a word to him, kissed his forehead, his cheeks, his lips… I just wanted to taste him.
Smiling, I put a hand on his cheek.
“Kimber,” he finally managed. “Don’t bury Savion’s head. Put it in a sack. Wrap it.”
And here I was expecting some words of endearment. “Missed you too, asshole.”
He chuckled, and a cough took over and wracked his entire body.
Aiko leaned into my ear. “If you give him blood, it will help him heal.”
Dorian shook his head. “Not now. Get me in a carriage and let’s get going…”
“Going where?” Roran asked.
South!
“South,” Dorian and I chorused.
“Let Kimber heal you,” Aiko repeated.
He shook his head. “No. Not here. We have to go.”
“How about pants?” Rilen asked, walking over. “If you won’t let Kimber heal you, can we at least go with pants?”
Roran shook his head, helping Dorian sit up. “Always with the pants, brother. Live a little.”
“I’m happy to live a little. Without my dick spinning in the breeze, thank you.”
I shook my head. “Can we get a carriage? We’re being pulled to the south. To the Gate.”
Aiko stood and motioned one of the soldiers over, issuing commands as he went. Rilen and Roran helped Dorian sit on the fountain.
“Do not try to walk, khoba,” Roran snapped. “Your feet probably
still don’t have their circulation back.”
“We have to go,” Dorian said as Kane arrived with a pair of pants for him. “The Gate.”
I felt the pull as well. It was urgent, and I wished Dorian would let me heal him if that much was true. I shook my head. “He’s right. It’s urgent.”
Kane nodded. “The carriage will be here shortly.”
Dorian stood but kept going forward, and I was barely able to get a cushion of air under him to keep him from smashing his face.
“Damn it. I just told you not to do that. You have no circulation in your feet!” Roran grabbed him and plopped him unceremoniously onto the ledge again. “You know, for a thirty-five-hundred-year-old druid, you can be really thick.”
“Are we going there again?” I giggled.
Rilen pointed at me. “You get the honor of massaging his majesty’s toes to make sure he doesn’t lose them. Roran, Aiko, come with me. If we need to leave, we need to get the army set up with instructions.”
The three of them headed out the door as I helped Dorian into his pants.
“This is different,” he smirked.
“Why the hell did you come after me alone? You couldn’t have the twins back you up? You couldn’t trust me to escape on my own?” I purposefully pulled up the zipper on his cock.
“Ow!” Pushing my hand away, he finished fastening the pants. “I wasn’t thinking straight. Or calmly. Savion and I have been enemies for thousands of years.”
“So I heard.” I sat down in front of him on the floor. I grabbed his foot, and he jerked. “Are you really a king?”
“I was. A long time ago. The druids are ruled by the council now.” His tone was emphatic on that.
“We have a lot to talk about, don’t we?”
“Yes, we do, princess.” He jumped again. “Oh, this is going to hurt like hell. I can’t believe that bastard son of a whore drugged me and hung me up.”
“Naked.”
“And you just tried to filet my dick.”
“Well, you didn’t trust me. I was mad.”
Dorian grabbed my hand. “Ilati.” I met his gaze. “I did trust you. I didn’t trust him.”
I leapt off the floor and slammed my mouth on his as I wound my fingers through his hair. He was tired, unwashed, and worn out—but he was still Dorian, and I kissed him thoroughly.
Finally, I leaned my forehead on his. “Don’t you ever, ever do that again, Dorian. I love you, and I would be lost without you.”
Death of Gods (Vampire Crown Book 3) Page 32