by Nalini Singh
This one was a thin, handsome man, his face likely the reason he’d been able to persuade the young village maid at his feet to meet him in the thick black of night. She lay unconscious on the grass now, the sorcerer chanting incantations above her, a serrated blade in hand. That blade, Liliana knew, would go into the girl’s abdomen. A slow, torturous death, her blood seeping out drop by drop while her murderer kept her silent even in her agony and grew drunk on the force of her life, her death.
Power blazed in the air as the sorcerer made a sigil above the girl and Liliana realized he was one of the old ones for all that his face appeared young. Old and powerful. It was foolish, part of her said, to give up her life for this one girl when she had come to save a kingdom. If Liliana died, the Lord of the Black Castle would not remember, would not return.
And Elden would fall into her father’s clutches forever.
“No,” she whispered, fighting that voice, that part of her the Blood Sorcerer had attempted to turn rancid with his own evil.
One life was worth everything. For how could Liliana hope to save a kingdom if she was willing to bow down to evil when it stood in front of her?
Stepping out of the shadows, she stalked toward the sorcerer on silent feet. But he sensed her, turned. “Liliana!” Shock. “Your father seeks you.” Avarice glittered in his eyes. “Now I will be the one to take you home.”
“What reward has he offered?”
“Lands, riches, power.” He shuddered, in an ugly parody of pleasure. “The understanding with Ives is ended,” he said, referring to the man her father had intended Liliana marry—with or without her consent. “The one who finds you takes you to wife and to his bed.” Distaste he made no attempt to hide. “You are his daughter.”
That link to power, she thought, would make it worth his while to wed such a hideous creature. Bard’s knife hidden in the folds of her apron, she stepped closer. “Is that why you’re here, in this village?”
“The others, they scattered to the edges of the kingdoms, but I knew you would do the unexpected. I’ve been keeping an eye on you—you’re smarter than everyone believes.”
It made her skin creep to think he’d been watching her. “You know what they say happens to those like you who trespass in the Abyss.” Even her father feared it, wouldn’t dare step foot in this realm.
A skittering behind his eyes. “We’ll leave this place as soon as I replenish my power.”
“Yes.” With that, she struck out, going for his neck.
She failed.
The tip of her knife skated off his cheekbone as she was thrown backward with brutal force. Retaliating with her own magic, she managed to make him stagger on his feet, but he didn’t go down. Then, the skin of his cheek flapping grotesque and raw, he turned to the girl behind him. “First I will taste her. Then I will take care of you.” He kissed the girl, digging his nails viciously into her breast. “Pity I won’t have time to savor her.”
Unable to breathe around the pain in her ribs, Liliana nonetheless began to try to crawl toward him. The bastard thought her down, but she wasn’t. Except it was too late. The sorcerer’s incantations complete, he went to his knees, laid the edge of the blade on the girl’s neck.
“No!”
He began to laugh…and then his head was turned in her direction, his eyes bulging as his neck was broken in a single hard snap by powerful hands made of midnight shadows.
Heat on her face, a warm damp cloth. Hurt around her rib cage, the comforting smell of spiced tea. Raising heavy lids, she looked into the face of the brownie who was becoming her closest friend. “Jissa.” Her voice was hoarse, her throat dry.
“Oh, you’re awake, awake at last.” Tears, large and a haunting translucent blue, rolled slowly down Jissa’s face even as she helped Liliana into a sitting position and held a glass to her lips. “I thought you were dead. All dead.”
Pushing away the water after a few sips, Liliana touched her distressed friend’s hand. “The girl?”
“Safe, safe.” Jissa wiped away her tears, but they kept falling big and slow. “No memory, none at all.”
“Good.” Guilt heavy in her veins, she asked, “Bard?”
Jissa patted her hand. “He worries for you, hasn’t left the door all this time. So much worry.”
Liliana was quite sure that wasn’t why Bard stood guard, but she didn’t break Jissa’s heart by saying so. “How long have I been asleep?” she asked, realizing she wore her rough brown dress again.
“Since the lord carried you home last night. Now it’s morning, sun shining.” Jissa’s voice dropped. “Was angry, he was. So angry.”
“I’m sorry.”
Jissa shook her head, wiped away more beautiful tears. “Only quiet words to Jissa he said. But you—growls, there will be growls and snarls.” The last was a whisper just before the door slammed open.
Giving a startled squeak, Jissa glanced from Liliana to the green-eyed male standing in the doorway. Liliana saw her friend hesitate, knew the brownie was fighting to stay and confront the Guardian of the Abyss with her, but she shook her head. “Go, Jissa.”
Wide, wet eyes met her own. “Liliana…”
“Shh. I would love some lushberry juice later.”
“Yes, yes. I’ll make it for you. Sweet and rich and good.”
The Lord of the Black Castle closed the door very carefully behind Jissa’s form before coming to loom over the bed, gauntleted arms crossed over his chest. “You ran away.”
That wasn’t what she’d expected him to say. “Only to save the girl’s life.”
“You were not to leave the Black Castle.”
She couldn’t keep staring up at him, her neck tired. Looking down, she spread her hands on the sheet gathered at her waist. “You’ll have to put me in the dungeon.”
“You tore your dress.”
“No!” Her beautiful red dress, the most beautiful dress she had ever owned. A fat droplet crashed on the back of her hand.
“Don’t cry.” A snapped order.
She sniffed, fought to hold back the tears. It had never been difficult before. She’d learned early on that her father fed on her fear, and so she’d given him nothing. But today, the tears kept falling.
“I’ll get you another red dress.”
She wiped the backs of her hands over her cheeks at the snarl. “You will?”
He glared down at her. “Yes. But you must not cry. I won’t get you any dresses if you cry.”
“I don’t normally cry.”
“You will never do it.”
“Well, I’m afraid I may sometimes,” she said apologetically. “Women need to cry.”
Lines formed between his brows. “How many times in a year?”
“Maybe five or six,” she said, thinking about it. “But really, it’s usually a very small cry and not in front of anyone.” Always she’d hidden her tears, curled up in some dark corner of the castle.
At that, his scowl grew even darker. “I will permit you to cry four times a year. And you will do it when I am here.”
“Why?”
He didn’t answer her whispered question. Instead, sitting down on the bed, he lifted his fingers to her jaw, a delicate touch that froze her in place. “You taste of blood sorcery.” Something very shrewd in his eyes, a dark knowing.
Rocks in her throat, in her stomach. “Yes.”
“You are a blood mage.”
The panic that beat in her chest was a tight, fluttering thing. “I don’t kill,” she said, pleading with him to believe her. “I spill my own blood, as is my right.” There was nothing inherently wrong with blood sorcery, only how it was practiced.
Thrusting out her hand, she showed him the cut on her palm. Then, when he remained silent, she held out her arms. “See.” The thin scars bisected the brown of her skin—small, horizontal slices. “My blood. No one else’s.”
Dropping the hand on her jaw to her arm, he curved his fingers around it, rubbing his thumb over a scar. “Does
it hurt?”
“Yes, but only a small hurt.”
“My magic doesn’t hurt.”
Her breath stuck in her throat. This was the first time he’d referenced any personal magic, beyond that which came from his position as the Guardian. “That’s because your power springs from a different place.” It was the magic of the royal line of Elden, powerful and pure and infused in every cell of his body.
However, if her research, done in the Royal Archives, was correct, then the youngest Elden heir was also an earth mage. The instant his feet touched Elden, he’d be able to access the power of the land itself…if anything was left of it after her father’s defilement.
“This place is on the edges of the realms,” he said, instead of continuing with the topic that came so close to acknowledging his true heritage. “Not only do the evil ones fear it, there is little life here for blood sorcery—why did the sorcerer come here?”
Liliana had to swallow twice to speak past the knot choking her. “My father,” she said, taking a precarious step along the tightrope of truth, “is a powerful man, and he wishes me to return home.”
His expression turned black as night. “You don’t wish to go?”
She shook her head and hoped with all her might that he wouldn’t ask the next question. But of course he did.
“Why?”
Because he is the Blood Sorcerer. Because he stole your kingdom, murdered your parents, forced your mother to scatter your brothers and sister through time and space. Because he is evil.
She could say none of that, but she could tell him another truth. “He wishes me to marry one of his men.” Ives’s blood was as rancid as her father’s. He watched her with the eyes of a lizard, licked his lips when her father whipped her raw, and whispered the most obscene promises in her ear when he managed to corner her.
Though if the sorcerer she’d met the previous night had been telling the truth, she was now a prize to be won by any of her father’s men. It mattered little. “He is not a good man.” None of them were.
“You will not marry.” It was an order, cold and hard. “You belong to the Lord of the Black Castle.”
She blinked, stared. “You can’t own people,” she said, her fear waning in the face of his arrogant pronouncement.
A shrug, his hand tightening on her wrist. “Who will naysay me?”
Liliana was still furious as she walked to the village two days later, dressed in a chocolate-brown dress she was sure the lord had given her as punishment for “running away.” Except this brown was lush, exquisite, quite gorgeous—even if the man who’d given it to her was a maddening beast.
The only good thing that had resulted from the attack, and her subsequent confession, was that His Lordship no longer considered it a threat that she’d try to escape, so she’d been allowed to come with Jissa to do the shopping. “Who does he think he is? Just ordering me about that way. As if I didn’t have a single thought of my own!”
Jissa, who’d been looking over her shoulder ever since Liliana started ranting, shifted her empty basket to her other arm and used her free hand to squeeze Liliana’s hand. “You know who he is, Lilia—”
“He knows who we are, too!” Turning, she glared at the looming hulk of the castle before returning her gaze to the path that led into the Whispering Forest. “And we aren’t his slaves!”
Jissa didn’t say anything.
Liliana slowed her stride, anger transforming into a sickening lurch in her stomach. “Are we?” Had the youngest Elden royal been tainted by the evil that lived within the Abyss in the most subtle of ways?
Jissa shook her head. “Oh, no. Oh, no.” Her distress was apparent on her fine features. “He was very, very sad when he brought me back to the castle after…after.”
After you died again, Liliana thought, trembling as the lurching settled. “Will you be safe in the village?”
“Oh, yes. Just can’t stay all day and night.” Taking a deep breath, she began walking at a brisk pace through the Whispering Forest, touching her hand to the trees as if in greeting.
The tree branches shook, the leaves murmuring, Jissa. Jissa. Friend. Jissa.
“The lord,” Jissa said, patting the trunk of a sapling, “told me he wished he could send me back to my people, but that my people were gone. All gone.”
Liliana felt her heart twist. Her father had decimated the brownies, stolen their power too fast for those small, sturdy bodies to recover. “Do you believe him?”
“I do.” A sad, sad sound. “He doesn’t lie. Never, ever.”
“No, he doesn’t.” Yet he was not naive. He was simply without corruption—arrogant and spoiled, but without corruption. “Why did you go quiet at my mention of slaves?”
“The lord said he didn’t wish to make me a slave. I could just stay, he said, do nothing.” Jissa made a scowling face. “I told him, I will cook. That is fair.”
“I can’t imagine why you bothered,” she muttered, trying to work up her old ill humor. “Bad-tempered creature that he is.”
“Hush, Liliana.” A chiding look. “He is alone, so alone.”
Yes, but he was also a possessive beast. “Is the lord very rich?” she asked, to take Jissa’s mind off her sorrow. “Will we be able to buy any ingredients we need?”
Jissa nodded. “He has treasures. I saw once, after I woke. Sparkly jewels. He gave me.” Her eyes lit. “For me to keep, Liliana!”
Liliana’s throat thickened. The Guardian of the Abyss had been trying, in his own way, to return Jissa’s happiness, make her forget that she’d die after she left the protective magic of the Black Castle. “Will you show me your jewels?”
“Oh, yes, so pretty, pretty.” Jissa chattered about her treasures until they hit the village. “We are about to turn into the market square, busy, busy.” Even as the last word left the brownie’s lips, they found themselves in a bustling marketplace filled with stalls holding green beans, carrots, pumpkins orange with health and so much more.
Chapter 11
“Ye be from the Black Castle, then,” said a red-cheeked man wearing a crisp blue apron over his clothing.
Liliana looked at Jissa to answer but the brownie had ducked her head. “Yes,” she said to the man. “I’m Liliana and this is Jissa.”
“I knows Jissa.” He patted his large belly. “Wee thing doesn’t say much, then, does she?”
Liliana touched a protective hand to her friend’s shoulder. “She speaks when there’s something to say.”
A booming laugh. “Wish my missus would do the same.” Picking up a small, ripe peach, he put it in Jissa’s basket with a wink. “Enjoy now.”
The friendly comments continued as they shopped.
“Are they not afraid of the Black Castle?” Liliana asked Jissa when they stopped to examine some hard green fruit that Jissa said made a good jelly. “After all, it is the gateway to the Abyss.”
“At night, yes, oh, yes,” Jissa confirmed. “Doors shut. Windows locked. But the lord protects the village, too. Very well, he protects.”
“And he’s not like them others,” the stall owner said, having obviously overheard.
Liliana looked up at the raw-boned woman with the mass of twisting black curls and skin of ebony silk. “The others?”
“Heard stories, we have,” the woman said, “of the far-off realms. Past the plains and the bubbling lakes, beyond the mountains of ice, on the other side of the Great Divide.”
“What do these stories say?”
The woman folded her arms, lowered her voice. “That there’s them lords that come into a man’s house and steal his daughters away. And if she be comely, his wife, too.”
Liliana gave a small, quiet nod. Murdering, forcing carnal acts on those who could not defend themselves, abusing old and young with impunity, her father’s men were monsters clothed in flesh. “Yes, I’ve heard the same.”
“Well, then,” the stall owner said, “the Guardian is plenty better than that even if we don’t like as to b
e in the castle too much. Ghosts there, you know.”
As Liliana followed Jissa to a stall filled with exotic spices, she couldn’t help but wonder how the man who was the Guardian had managed to retain his honor, though he lived in the Black Castle, handled evil night after night.
A memory of ghosts, watching, listening…perhaps guiding?
“—big nose.”
“Told you she isn’t his mistress.”
Jerked back to the present by the hissed comments of two passing women, Liliana felt her face begin to color. Though she wanted to run, she pretended she hadn’t heard, and waited until the women were otherwise engaged before looking at them.
Tiny and dainty and doll-like, the golden-haired one was a princess dressed in the clothes of a prosperous shopkeeper’s daughter. Her friend was taller, slender, more elegant. Lush black curls swept back from her face with shell combs, her eyes sparkled with the confidence of a woman who knew she was not only stunning, but sensually so. “Liliana.”
She turned to Jissa. “Are there many beautiful women in the village?”
Her friend’s eyes filled with an unexpected fierceness, the rhythm of her singsong voice wiped away. “Don’t listen to those spiteful wenches. You’re the one he speaks to, not them.”
Only because, Liliana thought, her heart heavy, their parents likely didn’t allow them to consort with the Lord of the Black Castle. No, they’d only allow that when he was ready to make an offer. So she was his only choice, a big-nosed, ugly thing with a limp and no grace.
She’d always known that, been willing to swallow her pride to steal a few moments of happiness, but faced with the village women, women of beauty and sensual sophistication, women who had to have crossed his path, she realized he must know it, too.
Her heart broke with an audible crack.
Standing on top of the highest parapet of the Black Castle, its lord watched Liliana walking up from the village, laughing at something Jissa had said. He scowled. “Why does she laugh?”
Bard lumbered to his side, opened his mouth, sighed. It was as close as he ever came to a diatribe. The Guardian of the Abyss waited, knowing the other male had something to say, but Bard took his time; Bard always took his time, until most of the village thought him a big, dumb mute. It was to both their advantage to let that misapprehension continue.