Hours later, outside the room, he heard a meaty thump. And then a second one. The door opened, and he braced himself for what was to come.
Slender fingers wrapped around the edge of the door, and in crept Bryanna.
Amazement, fear, hope.
“What the fuck are you doing here? Run. Get away now, while you still can.”
Bryanna crossed the room and placed a lantern on the floor. She tugged at his chains. “How do we get these off of you?”
“You can’t, they’re spelled on. Only Agrona can take them off now.” He gazed at her beautiful face and a strange sensation of gratitude swelled his heart. He’d been able to see her one last time. “What did you do to the troll-kin?”
“Is that what they are? I’ve heard of them, a cross between trolls and elves, right? Is that what the female is, too?”
“She’s more elvatian than troll, but yes, essentially. What did you do to them? How much time do we have?” He searched her face, anxiously checking to be sure she hadn’t been hurt by the brutal soldiers.
“I blew a sleepy-time herb into their eyes. Hope you don’t mind that I scavenged your magical supplies.” She tugged on his chains. “We should have a little while. I took the time to cast a charm on it. How are we to get you to the workroom so we can undo your spell?”
Gratitude soared through him. “You came back to cure me?”
“I came back because you were right. My family will do better if I have you behind me. Now help me figure out how to get you to the workroom.”
“It’s too late.” He’d made his decision. He would have to sacrifice his men and his integrity as a leader to save the rest of Underhill from the predations of his mother. “Tomorrow she’ll cast the next spell on me, and I’ll be a monster permanently. I’m not sure even you will be able to cure that.”
“What kind of power does she hold over you that you’ll sit there and take this from her?” Her forehead wrinkled as she struggled with the iron locks. “What is she?” She paused, and he became lost in the unique depth of her eyes.
Her earnest human values would never comprehend the complexities of the way he’d been raised, but under her gaze, he had no choice but to tell her the truth. “She’s my fiancée.”
“You’re engaged?” Betrayal chased itself across her face, and he knew he could never tell her all of it.
If she ever found out he was the queen’s son she would hate him. She wouldn’t understand he’d had nothing to do with the deaths of her family and tribe.
Her face went blank. “I guess you forgot to mention that when we were doing the bump and grind.”
“Don’t do that.” He nearly growled. “Don’t demean what we did by crudity.” He hoped she’d listen to him as he explained. “We’re forcibly engaged. It’s legal in my realm and binding. And it never would have happened if the queen had not realized that Agrona has a skill. She’s mixed race, part-elvatian, part-troll. She has no beauty and little magic of her own. But the Gift she does have is the ability to siphon magic from her mates, leaving them empty and pliable, soulless husks.”
“You didn’t ask her to marry you?”
“No, the queen did it all. And that’s why I’m here. Her Majesty, thinks to force my hand and marry me to Agrona. With her magic, once we have sex, I’d lose my will, and they could steal all my Gift.”
“Why would she even need your permission? Couldn’t she just take you?”
“You mean rape me?”
Bryanna’s eyes dropped. “Well…yes. I’m sure there are magical ways.”
“There are. But magic is tricky. Your Gift is such a part of you that you need to give your permission for someone to take it. I don’t know how she coerced the others, but she was unable to break me.” He rolled his neck and tried to give his burning shoulders a break. “Until now.”
And they’d tried. He’d been tortured. They’d hidden him away so none would know and spent days, weeks, months trying to break his will. But it hadn’t worked. His will, his hatred, had only grown stronger until finally, the queen had cursed him so no woman would want him, and thrown him here until he changed his mind.
And here he was, about to throw all his hard work and resistance away.
“I’m not letting her take you.” Bryanna stopped fiddling with the locks. “I’ll head to the library and find a spell that will break the chains. Then we’ll try again to cure your curse. When you have your full power back, we’ll both be able to leave.”
Her face was a study of bravery and compassion and an intensity that, for some odd reason, he hoped might be more than lust. He hated to burst her optimism.
“There’s not enough time. The moon is nearly set.”
“It’s my fault.” She rubbed her eyes, suddenly she looked tired. “If we’d done it when you wanted to, you would have been ready to face her.”
“No. More than likely she would have walked into the middle of it, and then she would have you, too. You need to go and save your mother and sister. Go. Now.”
“Come with me.”
“Even if you break the chains, have you forgotten I’m tied here by a spell? No.” He shook his head. “The queen has given Agrona something to get me through the barrier if I cooperate, but otherwise, I’m stuck.”
“Leave with her.”
“What?”
“Convince her you’re cooperating. Let her get you past the spell. I’ll find you and break the chains, and tomorrow night, we’ll have a last shot at the full moon.”
“But how will you defeat them? Leave me, Bryanna, save yourself.”
She threw her arms around him and pressed the length of her body against his. Desire, and a deep thankfulness for her, rushed through him.
“Trust me,” she said, so close her breath stroked his lips. “Go with her, and I’ll come for you.” She pressed her mouth to his. He sank into her and let her kiss hope into his lips.
She stole to the door, checked the hall and left.
Optimism soared within him. Optimism, anticipation, and a deep fear for Bryanna. If she failed, they would both be screwed.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
He was nearly oblivious from spending hours with his shoulders twisted, chained high from the wall sconces, but as the sun rose somewhere outside of Cairngloss, Kian roused. His tongue clung to the roof of his mouth, and his lips stuck together. And if the Goddess herself had stood between him and a glass of water, he would have committed any number of sins to get to it. With the coming of the dawn his muscles roiled under his skin, bunching and morphing, shifting back into his cursed animal form. The shackles binding his narrow fae wrists constricted around his thickening hairy arms and cut off what was left of his circulation in near screaming agony.
The door opened. The musky smell of the troll-kin had him trying to open his eyes. One of the guards unhooked his chains from the wall and Kian collapsed onto the floor, his nerves flaming to agonizing life.
“I see your transformation is only temporary.” Agrona’s heavy boot kicked him in the side.
He curled into a ball around his vulnerable gut and groin, unable to move his still-manacled arms and shoulders.
“The queen will be interested to know how you managed to do it without your Gift.” She curled her thick upper lip. “That stupid gnome seemed to think you have a witch hidden around here, but we’ve yet to find her.”
Agrona leaned over him and he flinched. She snickered, and with a whispered word and a touch from a small, ebony wand she loosened his spelled cuffs. He barely heard her continued conversation as he concentrated on not groaning aloud, wishing he couldn’t feel his arms and hands stabbing with the sharp needles of returning pain.
“Have you reached a decision, my prince?” She pulled the black diamond from her pocket and tossed its gleaming shape from hand to hand. “Do I use my bauble here to keep you in this form permanently, or do you come back to court with me and become my loving groom?” In the shadows of the wall behind her, Beezel crept in and wedg
ed himself into a corner, cradling his ineptly bandaged arm. The gnome’s set face swam in and out of Kian’s focus.
“Well?”
Kian’s answer, “Fuck off,” was barely a whisper.
“Speak up.” She kicked him in the back. Agony flared in his kidneys, racing up his back. “I can’t hear you, lover,” she crooned.
“Take me to the queen,” he gasped.
“You’re giving in?” She leaned over and stared at him, a furrow of confusion rippling her wide brow. “You’ll marry me?” Her voice trembled, and he realized she teetered on a fine edge.
“Take me to the queen. We’ll settle this at court.”
Anger flashed over her bulky features. She straightened, pulling her foot back again. “Not the answer I want.”
He braced himself for the next wash of pain.
She dropped her foot, gripped the gem, and raised her arm, ready to throw the diamond at him. “I’m tired of waiting, Prince Kian.”
He panicked. His eyes squeezed shut against the spell he knew was coming. Once she hit him with the gem he’d be cursed forever. He couldn’t lose the precarious foothold he had on his old self, not now, not when he knew what it was to be elvatian again. This might be temporary, it might not last past the night’s full moon, but he wanted every second. Wanted his own skin and fingers. Wanted to walk like a man. Wanted to touch Bryanna one last time.
He struggled to sit up. “This is between the queen and me. It began at court and it will be settled at court.”
Agrona’s lips trembled, she clenched and unclenched the diamond in her fist. She was angry and the pain in her aura pulsed in magenta waves from her skin.
The thought of sharing a bed with her turned his stomach, but if he left here, and Bryanna didn’t manage to stop them, he would face having to endure her leathery touch, her foul breath, her total dominance. All, once he’d lost his soul.
Maybe at that point he wouldn’t care.
He took a deep breath. “Agrona, once you turn me into a monster I’ll have no reason to marry you. It will be too late.”
She lowered her fist and pocketed the gem, but the waves of anger kept coming. “This has gone on too long, Kian. They make fun of me at court. My cousins are treated as second class citizens.” She waved at the guards, who shuffled and nodded agreement. “When I’m your bride, I’ll be respected. The entire court will bow to me, fairies, gnomes, and elvatian. All the Tuathan lords will have to do as I say, and the queen will listen to me as a princess!” Her narrow forked tongue licked out and cleaned the spittle dripping down her chin.
Kian did his best to hide his revulsion. “Then take me back to court,” he growled.
At court, his mother would have to explain to all the lords and ladies where he’d been for the last fifteen years. Explain where all his followers had gone. He’d drag his mother down with him if he had to marry Agrona. Or he’d die trying.
Agrona wiped her mouth on her sleeve and straightened up. “Very well. Bring him.”
The burly troll-kin dug their fingers into his aching shoulders and dragged him toward the door. Agonized pain shot down his muscles into his spine and neck.
“Give me a minute,” he gasped, his claws scraped along the stone floor as he struggled to gain his feet. “I’ll walk.”
“Fine.” She waved her hand and the guards helped him to stand.
She glanced at his wrists. The flesh of his arms had swelled around the deep grooves from the manacles. “It would be a shame if you lost the use of your hands before our wedding night.” She leered at him, her tongue flicked out and he jerked away. The guards laughed. One dug his elbow into Kian’s side. He stumbled, and fell to the floor.
Every nerve in his body screamed with pain
“Get up,” the guard kicked him.
He lay there, panting and trying to recover. He didn’t think he could stand a second time. He wasn’t sure he wanted to try.
Agrona glared at the guards. “Help him. He has far to walk to get to the stone gates, I don’t want to be late for the portal.”
They grabbed his arms and hoisted him to his feet.
“Wait a minute.” Agrona stared at the grotesque penis his mother had gifted him with in this shape. A last insurance that he would be alone until she lifted the curse.
She snorted, tossed him his cloak, and said, “Cover yourself. No one wants to look at you like that.” He struggled to get the cloak over his shoulders and fastened at his neck, anger at his mother burning deep in his belly. Even Agrona, outcast and part-troll, wanted no part of him. If it became permanent, no woman would want him.
“You.” She turned to the shadows. Beezel flattened against the wall, seeming to grow even smaller as he pressed away from her jabbing finger. “Come with us.” She turned and exited the room.
In the corridor, Agrona moved quickly ahead, tapping her fingers impatiently at each bend in the hall, waiting for him and the guards to catch up. After a long excruciating trip, during which he finally regained feeling in his feet and wrists, they reached the barred door to the goblins’ kitchen.
They entered the room. It was empty of the teeming mass of goblins. The fireplaces were cold and the foul stench of rot hung in the air.
“What happened to the goblins?” he asked.
“The Brethren cleaned them out.” They moved deeper into the room and he saw what that meant.
Twenty or so goblins had lived here. He’d fought them. Raged at them. Sometimes he’d even diced and drank with them. They’d never been friends but their rough companionship was all he’d had over the years. Besides Beezel. They’d respected him. Given him a place to fight. Been allies—of a sort. Weak, but he’d hoped they’d be on his side when the fight with the queen came down. Perhaps even bring their relatives as reinforcements.
Now, he walked past a stinking charnel house of ghostly pale bodies piled in the hall, and it was all he could do to pay them the respect of looking and not shut his eyes against the loss.
“There are that many of you?” he asked.
He’d thought Agrona had only come with two guards but even the troll-kin couldn’t have done this with only two men. Bryanna had no clue there were more of the vicious creatures, and he had no way to warn her.
“Worried about the Brethren, Kian?” Agrona stared at him, her brows knit close together in suspicion as they moved through the smell of the fallen and into the main hall of Cairngloss. “Did you think you could win free once we were out of the warren? Did you think the stinking, thieving goblins would come rescue you?”
Her laughter echoed off the broken fragments and rubble that was all that remained of the glory of the massive main hall. The two guards laughed too, evil rumbles he was sure would linger in his ears every time he remembered the bodies and the reek of the dead.
“There are no goblins to rescue you, Kian. The iron around your wrists will hold a giant, let alone scrawny you,” she said. “You’ll be getting back to the queen safe and sound, never you fear.”
His fear for himself leached away as they approached the barrier spell, and worry about Bryanna’s fate grew larger. The massive, iron-bound doors leading to the outside world were twenty feet away when he hit the queen’s spell. Agrona kept walking, never noticing her guards struggle to tug him through the invisible barrier.
“Agrona,” he said. She turned. It was almost humorous to see the bafflement, then slow realization, cross her wide, ugly face at the sight of him mashed against the invisible tingling wall. “The barrier spell,” he ground out.
“I’d forgotten.” She walked toward him, ebony wand extended. “I can see you’re stuck here.” She sniggered and extended the wand until it touched the spell. The vast tangle of magical webbing became visible, stretching up to the ceiling and across the floor, the last of the purple webs disappearing into the distant shadowed corners of the hall. “Release,” she commanded, and the spell that had held him here for years shattered into mist.
Kian fell forward,
the troll-kin guards toppling with him, and they crashed onto the stone floor. He lay exhausted, freedom from Cairngloss a bitter taste in his mouth.
The guards climbed to their feet and pulled him up by his chains, savaging his already damaged wrists and pulling him forward. He slowed. Ten more feet, and they’d be at the large pillars guarding the entrance. His pulse pounded in his ears and sweat dampened under his arms. He was nearly outside, and Bryanna was nowhere in sight.
From behind one of the enormous pillars, she sprang, a glorious blond goddess tossing a shimmering black net.
The net dropped down, tangling around Agrona and taking her down. She shrieked and struggled, every movement binding her tighter until she lay trussed up, unable to do more than blink her rage.
The guards dropped Kian’s chains. He stumbled, throwing himself at the closest troll-kin, missing, and crashing back to the floor. Both guards charged Bryanna. Kian bellowed and lunged to his feet, but he was too late.
Bryanna stuffed her hands into her pockets, and pulled out rounded fists. Kian could do nothing, but watch as she opened her fist, flattened her palm, and blew green dust into first one, than the other guard’s face.
The dust wafted into the air. Kian buried his nose in his arm fur, the musty smell of dried catnip, and something else less familiar, filled the air. The guards’ eyes rolled up, and they dropped like stones.
Bryanna ran toward him, her face alight, but there was no time to celebrate her success. He held his manacles up. “Get the wand.”
She nodded, but instead, she retrieved a second net and threw it onto the two troll-kin, binding them tightly together. “Just in case they wake up too soon,” she said, flashing him a quick grin. He pulled his lips back from his fangs in the closest thing he could to a grin, and she laughed.
Then she slowly approached Agrona. “Now where would you keep a wand?” Agrona rolled and thrashed, spitting ineffective curses and names while Bryanna searched through her abandoned satchel.
Prince by Blood and Bone: A Fantasy Romance of the Black Court (Tales of the Black Court) Page 14