by Nalini Singh
She tried to shake her head, but his hold was firm, his grip unbreakable. “I am too curious, my lord,” she managed to grit out. “It is my besetting sin.”
For some reason, that made him soften his hold. “What would you see here?”
“I wanted to know if you had any more prisoners.”
Black tendrils spread out from his irises and back again, eerie—and a sign of the sorcery that held him captive. If she didn’t find a way to reverse it, he would soon be utterly encased in impenetrable black.
“Why,” she said when he didn’t reply, “is that creature here and not in the Abyss?”
“Opening the doorway is difficult work,” he said, rubbing his thumb almost absently over her chin, the sharp point brushing against her lip in a caress that could turn deadly in a fragment of a moment. “It’s less trouble to collect several of the condemned and deliver them together.”
“Aren’t you afraid of what they’ll do to your servants?” It was hard to speak with him touching her, his body so big, so close.
“My servants are intelligent enough to know not to wander the dungeons once night has fallen.”
She colored, wondering why he stared at her so; she knew she was ugly, but did he have to watch her with such focus? As if she was an insect? “I won’t make the same mistake again.”
Releasing her, he said, “But will you be curious again?”
Perhaps it would’ve been better to lie, but Liliana found her mouth parting, the words spilling out. “Yes, this castle is fascinating.” As was its lord. Who would he have been if her father had not seized the throne of Elden? A prince golden and true? Sophisticated and elegant and learned?
She couldn’t imagine him thus, this man with the ice of death in his gaze, his voice, his touch. “Did you complete your hunt?” He hadn’t been gone long…or she’d been caught in the creature’s snare for longer than she’d realized.
“Yes, for now,” he said, his eyes still that eerie midnight shade. “Come. I will show you my castle.”
Startled at the offer, she began to head after him.
“Beware, sissssssster,” came the sibilant whisper from beyond the mirrored glass. “No maid is safe with the Lord of the Black Castle.”
She felt more than saw anger sweep across the face of the lethal male at her side, but she snorted. “Clearly, you do not have good vision,” she said to whatever lay beyond the locked door. “Or you’d know that I’m not a maid any man would want to ravish.”
Turning to look at the Guardian of the Abyss, she found him staring at her again. Once more, she felt like a bug, an insect. But she straightened her shoulders and said, “Your castle, my lord?”
A long pause that made an icy bead of sweat trickle down her spine before he led her back up the winding stairs and into the dark heart of his domain. Stopping in the hall of black mirrors when she hesitated, he said, “Do you want to see?”
Everywhere she looked, she saw reflections. Him, so tall and sun-golden and piercingly beautiful—and her, so short and badly formed. “What?” she asked, looking away from her own image.
“The Abyss.” He swept out a hand without waiting for a response and the mirrors filled with images of churning horror. At first there was only a wash of black and green flame, an impression of things burning. But then she began to see the faces. Contorted faces drowning in pain. Clawing hands asking for help before they dug out their own eyes in an effort to escape. Limbs floating in the black, twitching as if sensation remained.
And the screams. Silent. Endless. Forever.
Clapping her hands over her ears, she shook her head. “Stop it!”
“Do you feel pity for them?” He touched his finger to the image of a face flayed and torn, its eyes red orbs bulging with terror as a basilisk feasted on its body. “He sold his children to…a sorcerer. The…sorcerer tortured and murdered them because that is how he gains his power. The man knew.”
No matter that she stood in the midst of such violent anguish, she caught his hesitation. “Blood Sorcerer,” it seemed, was something he couldn’t say. But if he remembered her father, even if only in the most hidden depths of his psyche, then there was a chance he’d remember his family, remember what he had to do before it was too late.
“Please,” she whispered, feeling as if her ears were bleeding from those silent screams that reverberated relentlessly in her head.
“This one,” he said, pointing to another face so burned the flesh was melting, but with eyes of perfect alertness, “trapped those creatures he considered lesser—brownies like Jissa, the wise gazelles of the plains, cave trolls so small and shy—and butchered them for his own amusement. And this one, she poisoned an entire wood so that the creatures tied to the earth would curl up and die and she would have their land.”
Unable to take the pressure of the screams any longer, her gut twisting from the horrors he was painting onto the walls of a mind that already held too much, Liliana ran forward to press her face to his back, her hands fisted against the hard carapace of his armor. “Stop, or I won’t cook for you again.”
A moment’s pause.
The images disappeared.
Peace.
“You will cook for me.” An order—but there was a thread of what she might’ve almost called disappointment in the tone of his voice.
Blinking, she wondered if he had been trying to show her something that was important to him, something he’d thought she would like to see. Surely not, for he was the Lord of the Black Castle, and yet…he was alone. A monster who stood as the last defense against the other monsters. “They say,” she whispered, “that once there was no Abyss, that the world was innocent and its people, young and old, untainted.”
He shifted away to face her, his eyebrows heavy over eyes become that beautiful winter-green. “You tell night-tales.”
“Perhaps.” In truth, regardless of what she wanted to believe, she’d seen too much not to understand that there would always be those whose souls were malevolent. “I do know many night-tales.”
He cocked his head. “How many?”
“Many,” she said, seeing in his intrigued expression a way to reach the boy who lived within the lethal Guardian, who had to live within. If she was wrong, if that boy was long dead, crushed beneath the weight of years and the soul-chilling armor of her father’s twisted spell, then they were all lost. Her father would rule and Elden would become another Abyss.
Having been “permitted” time enough for a meal, she found herself in the great hall, perhaps half an hour later, able to feel hundreds of eyes on her—as she had the day she’d landed frail and disoriented on the marble floor. But when she raised her head in stiff pride, ready to stare down the audience, she saw only emptiness. “Who is watching?”
The Lord of the Black Castle turned from where he’d put one booted foot on the steps that led to the throne colored the same eponymous shade, as hard and lacking in ornamentation as the man himself. “The residents,” he said, as if that were self-evident.
“The residents?” she pushed, fighting the urge to hug her arms around herself. “From the Abyss?” Legend said that despite the pitiless task that was his nightly duty, the Guardian was always pure of heart. In this ancient legend she’d placed her faith, but if he allowed the putrid souls destined for the Abyss to linger above…
“Of course not.” A grim stare that raised every tiny hair on her body. “There are other souls who are drawn to the Black Castle.”
“Why?”
“They come and they do not leave.” An answer that told her she was trying his patience with her questions. “The Black Castle welcomes them.”
Liliana felt a glimmer of understanding, wondered if she might have more allies than she believed.
“You will tell the tale now.” It was an order as he took his seat on the throne.
Hairs still standing up in alarm, she nonetheless put her hands on her hips and said, “It would be easier if I didn’t have to shout, my lord!
” He sat high and remote, an arrogant emperor.
He gestured her forward. “You may sit at my feet.”
Dropping them from her hips, Liliana fisted her hands by her sides, her entire body rigid. Sit at his feet? Like an animal? No. If her father hadn’t broken her after a lifetime, then the Guardian of the Abyss surely would not! But when she would’ve opened her mouth, given voice to her fury, she felt ghostly fingers on her lips, almost heard a whisper in her ear.
The shock of it cut through her conditioned response, tempered her rage, made her think.
Looking up into the face of the dark lord who’d commanded her, she saw impatience, saw, too, a quicksilver anticipation. “Is it an honor, my lord?” she asked, realization shimmering a golden rain through her veins. “To sit below your throne?”
“You ask strange questions, Liliana.” It was the first time he’d said her name, and it felt akin to a spell on its own, wrapping her in tendrils of black that gleamed with bright green highlights. “This throne is only for the Guardian. Any imposter who dares sit here will die a terrible death.”
And so it was a great honor for her to be allowed so close.
Keeping that in mind, she swallowed her pride and climbed the steps to the throne—but instead of taking a seat at his feet, for that she couldn’t do, not for anyone, she perched herself several feet away, so she could turn and face him. “Once upon a time,” she began, her blood thunder in her veins—because it could all end now, with a single misstep—“there was a land called Elden.”
Whispers rolling around the room, ghostly murmurs gaining in volume.
“Quiet!” The lord cut the air with a slicing hand.
Silence reigned.
“Continue.”
Curiosity about the ghostly residents danced nimble and quick through her veins, but she kept it in check. First, she must discover if the Abyss had saved the last heir—or if it had consumed him. “This land, this Elden, it was a place of grace and wonder. Its people grew old at so slow a pace that some called them immortal, but they were not true immortals, for they could die, but only after hundreds of years of life, of learning.
“Because of their great love of this last, they were renowned for their knowledge and artistry, their libraries the finest in all the kingdoms.” She carried on when her audience didn’t interrupt, the ghosts as motionless as the green-eyed man on the throne of black. “Elden was also a land overflowing with magical energy, its people’s bodies touched with it.” That energy had given Elden its strength—and made it a target. “All of Elden’s grace and prosperity flowed from the king and queen. King Aelfric, it is said—”
“No!” The Lord of the Black Castle rose, his hands clenched, his eyes black, the tendrils spiraling out to run across his face. “You will not say that name.”
“It is only a name in a tale,” she said, though the merciless cold of his gaze made her abdomen lurch with the realization that he could end her life with one swipe of that razor-gauntleted hand. “It is not real.” Better to tell a small lie, if it would help her slip under the viscous cobweb of her father’s spell. “Surely, you aren’t a child to be scared of tales.” It was a chance she took, that he wouldn’t kill her for such insolence, but the stakes were too high for her to walk softly.
“You dare challenge me?” Quiet words. Deadly words. “I will—”
“If you send everyone to the dungeon, my lord,” she said, brushing an imaginary speck of dirt off her tunic in an effort to hide the trembling in her hands, “it’s a wonder you have any friends at all.”
His eyes turned green between one blink and the next, the tendrils of armor disappearing from his face. “The Guardian of the Abyss has no friends.”
She understood loneliness. Oh, yes, she understood how it could cut and bite and make you bleed. “I’m not surprised,” she said, rather than offering him her friendship. That would most certainly get her thrown back down into the bowels of the castle—he was a man of power and pride, of arrogance earned through dark labor. “It’s a dicey business,” she said, taking her life into her hands for the second time in as many minutes, “talking with someone who locks up anyone who disagrees with him.”
Anger turned his bones stark against his skin, but then the green gleamed. “Tell this tale, Liliana. I promise, whether it is good or bad, you won’t have to spend the night in the dungeon.”
Liliana didn’t trust that gleam, her heart thudding against her ribs as her hands turned damp. “What are you planning to do to me?”
Chapter 5
He smiled. And she caught her breath at the heartbreaking beauty of him. Now she understood, now she glimpsed the child he must’ve been, the one who had won a kingdom’s heart. However, his words were not those of a child, but of an intelligent, dangerous man. “You must imagine what the Guardian of the Abyss might do to you.”
It took every ounce of her will to find her voice again when all she wanted was to stare at him, this lost prince who had become a dark stranger. “King Aelfric—” she saw him clench his hands over the arms of the throne but he stayed silent “—was wise and powerful. It was written that his people would do anything for him, they loved him so much.” She’d spent many an hour in the archives, a place her father never went, though he kept a chronicler on hand to record his “greatness.”
“Kings are not loved.” A rough interruption from the Guardian of the Abyss. “They rule. They cannot play games of nicety.”
Liliana rubbed a fisted hand over her heart. “Some kings rule, and some kings reign,” she whispered. “Some are loved and some are not. Aelfric was loved, for he was just and treated his people with a fair hand.”
“Fairness alone does not engender love.”
She looked into that gaze turned inscrutable, wondered if he was asking a question, or simply stating a fact. “In Elden,” she said, “it did.” When he didn’t interrupt again, she continued. “Its people, hungry for knowledge, did love to roam. Some even found a doorway to a realm of no magic and came back with the most fantastical tales.”
Ghostly whispers of disbelief, but it was the Lord of the Black Castle who snorted. “A realm without magic? It’s like speaking of a realm without air.”
“This is my tale,” Liliana said with a prim sniff, smoothing her hands down the wrinkled black of her tunic. It was as shapeless as a potato sack, but better than that ugly brown dress, he supposed.
“If you don’t like it,” she continued, putting that large hooked nose of hers into the air, “you don’t have to listen.”
No one said such things to him in such a tone, but though part of her tale caused a primal fury within him, it was an intriguing story, far better than anything he’d heard these past several years. There was a storyteller in the village, but the old man quaked and trembled so when invited to the Black Castle that the Guardian of the Abyss was afraid he would shake apart. And his teeth chattered the entire time, a constant clattering accompaniment.
“Continue,” he said to this curious storyteller of his, this Liliana who had appeared from nowhere and was stroked by a magic he knew he should recognize, a magic that aroused a shadowy curl of anger…of hidden memory.
He shook off the thought at once—he was the Guardian of the Abyss and had been so since the instant he woke in the Black Castle. There were no other memories within him. “Liliana.” It was a growl when she didn’t immediately obey.
Her head lifted. “In this land of no magic—” a stern frown when the ghostly residents of the Black Castle twittered in amusement “—it is said that they do everything with mechanical creatures. They build monoliths with fearsome metal beasts and even have birds that fly through the air on steel wings.”
Cold. Cold. Cold, the residents whispered, but the lord wondered what those towering structures might look like. However, when his lashes drifted down, what he saw instead was a castle tall and strong, with many-hued pennants flaring above the parapets while firedancers circled, the birds voices a shimmering chorus
to the dawn. The windows were made of glass so fine they appeared created of air, the building growing out of the pure blue waters of a pristine lake.
The entire scene was drenched in a golden glow.
Impossible, he thought. No light such as that had ever touched the Black Castle, or the barren desert and bubbling pools of lava that were the badlands. Perhaps he’d read of that golden castle in another tale as a child.
But…he had never been a child.
“My lord.”
Turning, he met Liliana’s quizzical gaze. Such an in-between shade were her eyes. Neither blue nor gray. “Enough,” he said, getting to his feet. “You may sleep in the kitchen tonight. Bard!”
Liliana was already rising. “You didn’t like my tale?” she asked as Bard lumbered into the great hall from where he’d been standing watch outside.
He stared at her, at those strange eyes that seemed to penetrate the hard shine of the black armor and see things in him that should not, could not, exist. “You will make me breakfast when you wake.” Then he turned and walked to the doorway that would lead him out into the night-dark world.
As Liliana followed Bard’s hulking presence to the kitchen, she felt a ghostly finger tug at her hair. Then another. “Stop it,” she muttered under her breath. When they persisted, she halted, knuckled fists against her hips, foot tapping on the black stone of the castle floor. “I have no intention of continuing the tale until the lord wishes it.” She glared at the air. “If you pester me, I’ll refuse to do even that.”
Turning back around, she found Bard staring at her with those liquid eyes so wise and deep. “Don’t pretend you can’t hear them,” she said, folding her arms.
Bard said nothing, simply carried on to the kitchen.
The ghosts, at least, whispered away, leaving her in peace.
“Thank you,” she said when he pushed open the door that led to the cozy room.