by Angel Payne
“It was unnecessary,” I returned coolly. “But if it makes you all feel better, then we understand.”
The man flashed a friendly smile before leading the way toward a larger room. Instantly, we were drenched in what seemed like stadium floodlights. Close. They were stage lights, equipment commonly used in television studios. I’d been in enough campaign commercials and interviews with Dad to know that much. Not surprisingly, a professional-quality TV camera was set up on a tripod in the room’s corner, pointed at a grouping of cozy furniture where three more men waited.
I took their leader’s lead, and smiled.
They didn’t. Nor did any of them rise. Or speak.
Keep. Calm. Keep. Calm.
“As you can see,” my guide said, “we have already made arrangements to record everything. This way, nobody will recall the meeting inaccurately.”
Talk about subtext that banged a girl over the head. “I see,” I finally murmured.
Time for calm queen to get her groove on again. A nervous glance from Dillon encouraged it. Thanks a lot, brother.
“We know you do see, Your Majesty. And we are humbled by the gift of your time tonight. We simply wish…to talk.”
I forced my feet forward…wondering why I suddenly didn’t believe him. Also puzzled why the other men seemed glued to those damn couches. And why nobody introduced themselves by name. And why their gazes were all so focused and narrowed, reminding me of the guys back at the Center when we’d group up for war games…
“Please,” bade beard guy. “Come in, come in.”
“I’m already in, thank you.”
His angular chin notched up. “We mean you no harm, Majesty.”
“Then you won’t mind if I stay right here.” Just steps from the door from which we’d just entered. With nothing but the small kitchen at my back. Still, the hairs on the back of my neck wouldn’t relax. My gut knotted tight, just as it had the night of the royal ball…in Jayd’s suite at the Residence Rigale. Just before the wall had imploded and the ninjas from hell broke in…
Shit, shit, shit.
Had any of these stony, solemn bastards been part of that raiding party? Had two of them even been part of the attack on Camellia? If so, why had I expected that pair to just be neatly tied up, ready to be surrendered?
Calm the hell down.
I drew in a careful breath. This was all simply nerves getting the jump on me. Just because the room looked like an inquisition didn’t mean it was one. I didn’t see any stretching rack or waterboarding equipment. On the other hand, all they’d laid out for snacks was a wrinkled bag of cheese crisps. Who invited someone to a party and didn’t even put the cheese crisps in a bowl?
People who threw parties inside mouse traps.
Shit, shit, shit.
Why did I suddenly feel like I’d sprouted long whiskers and a tail?
And why had I listened when Dil insisted Palais security couldn’t know about this?
Because, at least about that, he was right.
Because you still know that Syn’s teams are loyal to Syn—and they’d have informed him about all this without thinking twice. Right now, you’d be joining Jayd in restricted quarters, instead of trying to make things better for Arcadia.
I hoped.
Oh dear God…I hoped.
Big girl panties.
I was, as I’d just said, already in. Now, for better or worse, I had to face the consequences of this crazy leap…whatever they were.
Dillon hung back with me, next to the table in the dining area of the little house. I looked across the table at him, struck by the surreal feeling of all this. Even with the cheese crisps, the set-up in the living room made me think of surgery prep. In here, cozy and homey reigned. The table supported a bowl of whole fruit. Beneath that was a folded copy of yesterday’s paper.
But next to that was a pair of themed salt and pepper shakers. A dolphin and a shark.
Holy shit, I hated fitting symbolism.
“Hey, you guys.” Calm queen received an infusion of peppy Brooke. Just as fake but twice the fun—or so I prayed. “All that sitting room formality gives me the heebs. Tell you what? Grab one light and the camera, andcome in here. We’ll just sit around the table and talk.” Which would keep Dil and I closer to the door. Which made me feel a hell of a lot better—
Until I scooted back, closer toward that door—to be stopped by a figure who stepped out from the kitchen. Graceful as a gladiator—and as huge as one. Calm as a Caesar—and as dominant as one. He’d even cut his hair into a “Roman bowl” style—but that changed nothing about the disgusting excuse for a “leader” he was.
To my dread, everything else about his face was the same. His dirty yellow gaze, filling my blood with dreading maggots. His slow, knowing smirk, turning my knees to liquid. His clicking cattle call, spurring all the men in the room to motion—except Dillon, who was paralyzed by the same horror as me.
Paralyzed by horror.
Frozen in fear.
It wasn’t just a trite twist of speech.
Oh God…it wasn’t.
Move. Now! You are a warrior of Arcadia, Brooke Cimarron. You know what to do. You know how to move!
Only…I didn’t. I couldn’t. Not when I gaped at the monster who lived in so many of my nightmares. The devil from a hell I never imagined visiting again.
“You heard our guest’s request, gentlemen.” Rune Kavill snapped his fingers, like a king calling for wine—except his men brought only menacing strides, determined grunts, and the smell of stale beer. “She’s more comfortable at the table. So make her…and her brother…comfortable.”
His regal drawl of the word tumbled raw panic through my senses. My lungs, heaving now, saved enough for a scream—
Silenced.
Suffocated.
Buried by the smell—don’t breathe don’t breathe don’t breathe—sweet, clean, chemical—that pulled me all the way down to darkness.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
‡
“RUN IT AGAIN.”
Samsyn flung the snarl at all dozen people in the Palais conference room, including Shiraz, Jayd, and half the High Council. That was twenty-four hands. Two hundred and forty fingers—every one of them capable of tapping the big green button on the digital playback.
Yet no one heeded his command.
Perhaps because your command is stupid? Because you can push any international news feed on the laptop in front of you and see every minute of that recording, complete with callous commentary? Fucking talking heads. “Analyzing” and “interpreting” and “probing” the images of his evisceration in the name of almighty ratings.
At least he could control the delivery method of the torture.
“Dammit.” He pounded a fist to the table. There had been more compliance when he hadn’t been king. “Somebody run it again!”
He was aware of movement to his right. A shadow, small and soft, just beyond the crack now fissuring the table. He vowed to split the fucking thing down the middle if someone did not punch the play button again.
“Samsyn—”
“Shut up, Jayd,” he snarled at the shadow.
“You are driving yourself mad!”
Madness. Fuck, if it were only that easy. If he could only succumb to that blistering darkness, holding the promise of final escape. Wooing him with sanctuary from the rage butchering his composure, the anguish ripping his guts, the helplessness turning him inside out, a carcass baking in the glare of his stupidity.
His stupidity…that had driven hers.
He had been a complete ass. Had been so strangled by his fears, begun the moment he slid the ring onto her finger, tightening every moment he was lucky enough to call her wife. The happiness had been too good to be real, but he had kept going back for more, approaching the feeling like a caveman with fire. It was strange and new but it was good, so good—right until the moment he was burned. Logic had fled. Compassion was impossible. He had only wanted someone to pay
for his pain, and she was the target that made sense. The one person who could take his ugliness, and still love him.
Loved him…and needed to show him. Felt that she needed to prove it…by stepping into the lion’s den for him.
He had fucked up. Beyond measure. And now, fate was poised to exact the highest price for it.
But if he watched the footage one more time—endured the torment all over again—maybe the Creator would think twice about that debt.
“Run. It. Again.”
Someone—finally—moved to obey him. Everyone in the room groaned softly. He lifted his head to give weary thanks to the brave soul. Wasn’t stunned to meet Jagger’s determined gaze—though one of those eyes was still half-swollen beneath black and purple bruises. He did not begrudge Jag his feelings—what man could logically not fall in love with Brooke?—he only had a problem with the bastard acting on them. They were square now. More than square. Jag was the only one who’d watched this playback with him, every damn time.
And endured the agony of her face on the screen—eyes wide and terrified, skin streaked and clammy, teeth gritted, bottom lip spliced open. Her jaw looked puffy and red, as if it would start to swell soon.
Because they had hit her. Hard. Likely because she had refused to sit before their camera like a puppet. His chest swelled, so fucking proud of her. His gut wrenched, chopped apart in horror. If he learned they had touched her in ways beyond that, they would all enjoy a meal before he killed them. Their own cocks, stuffed down their throats.
On the playback, an off-camera voice spat a direction. “Please begin, Your Majesty.”
Brooke sucked in a quivering breath. Her eyes moved, obviously reading a cue card. “I—I am Queen Brooke Cimarron. I am here, as the guest of the Arcadian Pura movement, and their new leader—”
She sobbed. And broke his heart.
Dropped her head. And shattered his soul.
The camera wobbled, yanked upward—to focus on a face that still made everyone in the room gasp. Except Jagger, who growled. From his own lips, there was no sound—but from his nostrils, the violent huffs of wrath were strong and violent.
“Oh, look. Her Majesty is verklempt with the joy of seeing me again.” Rune Kavill’s sneer was stretched on a canvas of smooth. No comic book cackle as conclusion. The worm only smiled as if newly slithered from a hole in the gardens of hell. “Hello, world. You had all written me off, hadn’t you? Thought I’d politely disappeared into the baseboards, to stop bothering you with my menace?” He swirled a hand up, a magician with evil up his sleeve. “Surprise, surprise. I’m not in a cute little cave anymore. I have been invited as a guest myself, of the good Pura of Arcadia, to help…let us say…guide along their important cause. Though I’ve been here for a few months now, things have certainly gotten…interesting on the island lately.”
He punctuated that by clenching a hand to Brooke’s hair. With a savoring growl, forced her head back up. Though her face twisted in pain, she jerked and spat. The shot landed across Kavill’s black T-shirt. “Don’t fucking touch me, you bowl-haired freak.”
Kavill shoved her away. The sharp snap of her head and the pained press of her lips confirmed another observation: the vermin had her tied up, pretty damn tightly. “Isn’t she charming? Can you imagine what a thrill it was to learn all the Valens didn’t disappear, either—and that the Cimarrons had kept them snug and safe for me all these years? What an interesting time we are all going to have now.”
Everyone in the room tensed. The hardest part of the playback was now here.
As Kavill paused, inserting a stare for “dramatic emphasis”, he was butted clear from the frame. Brooke reappeared, snarling and hissing, her face desperate and wild. She peered frantically into the camera lens…the look of someone who knew they were damned, seeking meaning before the ax fell over their neck.
“No! Don’t listen to him! Syn! Don’t you dare give in to this fucker. I don’t care what he demands! Syn, I swear to God, if you love me at all—”
And then she was gone. Dropped by the plunge of a needle in her neck.
He was half-grateful for it. If she had finished the sentence, he would be bound to promises he could not keep.
If you love me at all…
She was his all.
His raismette.
On the screen, Kavill reappeared. “Only sleeping,” he said smoothly. “But next time, we may not get the dosage so correct.” He shrugged. “Oopsie.”
“Fucker,” Jag muttered.
Kavill signed off with an assortment of bowing and postulation and bullshit, but that part was useless. The damage had been done now. The price had once again been paid. He had been drawn, quartered and gutted, and now fought through the process of trying to jam himself back together again. There was nothing else to do until Kavill and his worms contacted them again. The footage did not lend one damn clue about where they held her. Tryst and his team had already tracked her cell phone signal—to a trashcan at the Palais’ own main gate. Kavill hadn’t missed a single opportunity to ram his victory into all their faces.
All they could do now was pray.
And he did.
On his knees in the Palais chapel, he could almost smell her on the air, floral and soft. He gazed at the stained glass stars and saw the shining lights of her eyes. He watched his fingers in the streaming sun, pretending it was the silk of her hair—
Before bowing his head, and whispering words from the depths of his heart.
“Creator mine, keep her safe. Keep her whole. Keep her alive.
I need her.
Créacu yardim met…I need her.”
He jerked to his feet when someone burst into the chapel.
“Majesty!” The page looked like she could be Brooke’s little sister, with huge bright eyes and a choppy blonde haircut. But unlike Brooke, she moved like a frightened fairy, approaching him with mincing steps. “There are—errrr—there are men here to see you, King Samsyn.” She whispered “men” as if blurting a profanity. “They—they arrived on a private jet. They were searched by the airport guards, and were not armed.”
He blinked. Her words made no sense. “A…private jet?” Bearing unarmed men?
What the hell was Kavill up to?
“Yes, Your Majesty,” the fairy returned. “They said they needed to see you at once. Demanded to, actually. The main gate guards informed them you are not available because of the crisis, but—”
“They did what?” His voice throttled to a bellow. Fuck. Fuck. Kavill was a cocky fuck, sending emissaries straight to the Palais, but he did not care. It was action. Some kind of action he could take, instead of sitting around with his dick in his hand and his guts on the floor. “Are they still here?” he demanded, stomping toward the visitor rotunda. “If they have been sent away, Creator help you all. Do you have any idea who the hell we are dealing with—”
He skidded short on the rotunda’s marble floor. Gawked at the two men planted in front of him, flanked by a pair of Palais guards who grimaced like bulldogs. He had no idea what kind of soldasks to expect from Kavill’s camp, but these two were definitely not it.
The first stranger looked like one of the dolls Brooke had told him about from her childhood: neatly combed hair, chiseled face, too-perfect posture. He wore tailored business pants and an equally fitted white shirt. The second man was just as perplexing. Though he wore a plain green T-shirt and camouflage pants stuffed into combat boots, he appeared more appropriate for a rainforest loincloth and a poison-tipped spear. Regardless, they both notched their jaws higher despite his menacing glower, earning them a new degree of his respect.
“King Samsyn.” The suited one spoke first. “My name is—”
“I do not want to know your name,” he gritted. “Just tell me what Kavill wants then take your leave.” He nodded toward the doorway, where fairy girl had been joined by Mishella, Jagger, Grahm, and Shiraz. “Once they are gone, somebody ensure the halls are disinfected.”
“We’re not with Kavill.” The darker man cocked his head. “We’re here to help you catch that fucker.”
As he eyed them with fresh bewilderment, the suited one stepped forward. “Maybe we can try again. My name is Daniel Colton—”
“Of Colton Worldwide!” Shockingly, the fairy spoke with confidence. A lot of it. “I knew he looked familiar. You just purchased Bortel and SpecOptical, officially expanding Colton Steel beyond just steel.” She flashed a sheepish look. “I…like following the global business pages.”
Colton gave her a quick smile. “Impressively so.” His composure hardened. “But I’ve flown here because you need help—and I want to give it. That purchase she just mentioned has given me access to some very special software.”
Jagger eyed him, openly skeptical. “What kind of software?”
“Programs that will help us tear apart Kavill’s video footage, frame by frame, and isolate all the tactile elements of it.”
“Tactile…elements?”
“Everything from lighting sources to wall paint to background noise,” Colton confirmed. “In order to piece them all together, to determine exactly where that bastard is holding your bride.” When disbelieving silence reigned, the man fanned both hands. “The program will work, Your Majesty. Before I ran Colton Worldwide, I was CIA—and damn good at it. I was in on the ground floor of testing for this stuff.” He cocked his head, showing that he wasn’t the pretty boy Syn had originally assumed. A burn scar mottled a swath of his face from forehead to jawline. “And I know a thing or two about being in deeper than you originally intended.”
He found himself as wary as Jag. “Why?” he charged. “Why have you come all this way…to help me?”
Colton’s head jerked the other direction. Clearly, the query puzzled him—at first. After a second, his logic clearly clicked. “Because we’re on the same side, Your Majesty. Because terrorists don’t get to win.”
“Boo-yah.” Though it was just a mutter, the man next to him dotted it with a pumped fist.
Speaking of him…
“And who the hell are you?” Grahm demanded.