The Demon's Game (The Guardian Series Book 4)

by Rain Oxford

  I made a mistake in not taking Dylan for myself when I had the chance, and while Nano was there to pick up the pieces of my broken heart, he couldn’t put them back together.

  * * *

  I tried to read the letter Nila had written to his uncle, but although I was pretty decent at speaking Dego, I had no literary skills. The messenger left before I could ask him any questions and since it looked like he had a difficult journey, I didn’t want to stop him. I set the letter down and leaned back in my seat.

  I missed coffee, for Dios didn’t have most of the simple comforts I expected from Earth. Electricity and indoor plumbing was still developing here, but Nano and I had the best.

  The house that had been constructed for us was quaint to a fault. It was little larger than a cabin with a full sized bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, and living room. We had no laundry room because there was a house nearby with servants who did our laundry for us. In fact, the only reason we had a kitchen was because I demanded it. I really didn’t like having servants; it felt awkward to boss people around.

  A wooden porch stretched around the entire house with a colorful rose garden out back. The floors were hardwood with thick rugs. There was a fireplace in the living room, along with a leather reading chair and couch. The walls were painted a pleasant tan color with dark wood trim. We had far too many windows, but it was expected after the entire population spent hundreds of years underground.

  The house overlooked the ocean, which Nano was absolutely terrified of. Since dile couldn’t swim, I knew the house had been constructed here solely for my pleasure. Sammy would have loved it, but I knew he was better off with… his other family.

  My heart stuttered as I thought of my baby’s face. I hadn’t seen him in five years. He had to hate me. The fact was, I didn’t want to be his mother. I loved him and I wanted to spend time with him, but I didn’t want to be responsible for him. Growing up with five younger siblings that I had to help my father raise was emotionally scarring. At an age where I should have been spoiled and coddled, I was bringing up five kids. I had to work, go to college, and raise them at the same time. There was no time for friends, no money for clothes, and no room for privacy.

  Every day was miserable and the only thing I ever looked forward to was my time with Dylan. Worst of all was that I could never see a better future. Then Dylan vanished on me and Nano showed up to enlighten me on how meaningless my life really was. Obviously, when he offered to take me to Dios and show me the universe, I jumped at the chance.

  But he left me, too. Not only that, but he left be with a child. I had to give birth to Sammy without a single person to be there for me. I juggled work and motherhood, not knowing if his father would ever return. Then Dylan arrived, not for me but for Sammy. Anyone else would have taken my baby and left, but he was too kind for that. Although he loved another woman, he was willing to take me with him. Instead, Nano came back, not for me but for Dylan. Nobody ever came back for me.

  Nano entered the kitchen where I sat at the table and got a glass out for some juice. I passed the letter across the table to him. “Will you tell me what this says?”

  He glanced at the name and dismissed it. “It’s from Nila,” he said, pouring his juice.

  “I know; I recognize his name. I just can’t read it.”

  “It’s not for you and you shouldn’t read other people’s mail.”

  “Not even my husband’s?”

  “I’m not your husband.” When I said nothing, he sighed and took the letter to read it. After a few minutes, he tossed it aside. “It’s nothing. Nila is having a difficult time getting the slaves free that are in the under cities. There’s no slavery here, so you don’t need to worry about it.”

  “What do you plan to do to help them?”

  “Nothing. It’s not my job and it’s dangerous. I really don’t care about them; they made this mess themselves.”

  It was true that the population of Dios was nearly destroyed by war. It was also true that their actions caused the scant remains to retreat underground. But that was generations ago. The only dile anyone knew that was old enough to remember the days before the war was Nano. Therefore, I believed it was unfair for slaves, including children, to be forced to stay underground just because they were too slow to get out.

  And that really was what it amounted to; the rich and powerful moved aboveground while those in servitude or who were too poor to move became slaves to the scummiest characters known to this planet. Nila was the exception. As High King, the most politically powerful man on Dios, he stayed where he was needed most.

  “Your nephew is braver than you,” I said. Somewhere in his heart, Nano cared about his people and his nephew deeply. Over the years, however, I saw his soft side less and less. I knew why, too, because it was my fault.

  “He’s their king; it’s his job. My job is to protect my book and I can’t do that if I’m putting myself and you in danger. If you like Nila so much, you should marry him instead.”

  I understood that marrying Nano was a permanent thing. He didn’t just want to marry me; he wanted me to be his life mate. He had gone so far as to strike a deal with his god to make me immortal if I married him. For that reason, I never did. I loved him, but I wasn’t ready to permanently attach myself to him for all eternity. I couldn’t even imagine living that long let alone being with one man forever.

  I knew it hurt him and every day was a little harder for him to accept. The coldness that grew in his heart was due to my rejection, but I could only ever make it worse.

  “He’s not Dylan.”

  The sharp pain across my cheek was startling. It was the first time he struck me, but I knew it wouldn’t be the last time. I didn’t want it to be. I wanted him to hurt me as I knew I hurt him. Maybe if the pain came from Nano instead of inside, I wouldn’t hate myself so much.

  “Neither am I. And you forget; he left you,” Nano said coldly. “He could have come back for you or even took you with him. He didn’t. Instead he upgraded. He caught himself a goddess.”

  There was that pain I needed. It was a pain I could fuel anger with and it would keep me alive another day, as opposed to the hopeless pain that came from my own head. Before I could say anything else, he left the room. He would take his anger out on himself and tear himself apart over hitting me.

  I looked around the room again and sighed. “I can’t do this,” I said aloud. Sitting around at home while my husband went to do… whatever he felt a Guardian should do… I wanted to help people who couldn’t protect themselves. As a lawyer, I was selective about my clients and gave priority to the rights of minorities and LGBT clients. Of course, maybe I was as wrong in selecting clients as Nano was in choosing not to help the slaves underground.

  I waited until Nano left and then I packed a bag. Luckily, Nano had let me take many of my personal items from home so I had clothes and a backpack to put them in. I also grabbed food, water, and a picture of Nano, Sammy, and me together. Last, I gathered some of my gems and gold jewelry just in case I needed something to trade with. I locked the door behind me and I made my way down the stone path to the servant’s house. It was a much smaller, one-bedroom cabin made with lower quality materials.

  I knocked on the door and Mreda let me in. Her husband sat at the heavy wooden table in the center of the room. By his scowl, I could tell that I had interrupted one of their frequent arguments. And I want to be married for eternity? “Vunhag un Nila seta?” I asked. To the best of my abilities, I asked where the High King, Nila was.

  “Muga debun,” she said.

  Probably dead.

  I stopped bothering to speak Dego. “How can you care so little for your king?! The only reason your people are able to live above ground again is because of him!”

  “Mind manners, Vivian, or Nano smack wife again.” She made the gesture of smacking me and I knew by watching mothers scold their children that making any hand gestures was considered rude.

  There were so many things I wan
ted to say to the woman, but I was in her home. Dylan taught me when we were teenagers that if we let someone goad us into attacking them, we were giving them control over us. With Dylan’s voice in my head, I inhaled and exhaled slowly, turned, and walked away.

  Unfortunately, Nano and I didn’t live in a populated kingdom like we did in the under cities, so the closest neighbors were an hour away. Faced with the choice of returning home to wait indefinitely for Nano or to walk indefinitely until I found a neighbor that could help me, I started walking.

  We lived on an island. There were walking paths everywhere, along with the occasional tree. In the center of the island was a forest, which I was still amazed by.

  I eventually made it to a quaint little neighborhood. The small farming community was different enough from Earth to make me feel homesick. People milled about in colorful work clothes, most trading raw materials or dragging them off to their houses to make things with. I stopped a middle-aged woman who was chasing her young child around.

  “Edva undrik,” I said. While dile didn’t normally say “excuse me,” to get someone’s attention on the street, I wanted to retain my human manners. “Vunhag un Nila seta?”

  “Dred vehkt,” she answered kindly.

  I knew that “dred” was the word for dark, but I wasn’t great at the language. “Trejka hetba… kre…” I tried to get the sounds right, but I couldn’t even tell her that I didn’t understand.

  “Endes?” she asked, attempting to pronounce my mother language.

  I sighed with relief. “Yes.” I knew the “l” sounds were very tricky for the dile to say in most English words, yet I have heard a few words with the letter, including their High King’s name. Nano once explained that it had something to do with sound perception. I did realize on my own that all words with the letter in it had an “i” before the letter.

  “High King in dark city,” the woman told me.

  “How do I get there?”

  “Dark city danger. Daughter die in dark city.”

  “I know it’s dangerous. I want to help Nila. How do I find him?”

  She hesitated and watched her child run into the arms of a big man. The guy was covered in sweat from a hard day’s work, but he was extremely gentle with the little boy. When he took the child inside a house, the woman turned back to me.

  “Center of Kreu is cave. Tegod guard dark city. Drask hyven.” Kreu was the name of the island, “tegod” was the Dego word for troll, and she told me to be careful before she turned and headed for the house.

  I didn’t have magic like everyone else on this world did. Nano offered to teach me, but I was completely unrelated to any Guardian, so I had no natural talent, and I honestly had no interest. I read plenty of nonfiction as a child, but fantasy never fascinated me, so I never wanted magic.

  It took all day to reach the center of the island, and when I finally did, I was exhausted. Being a kept woman was no good for my cardio. As I sat on a rotting log to eat the food and drink the water I packed, I made the decision that when I returned to Nano, because I would, I would absolutely change things up. I can get a job.

  I finished off my meal and after catching my breath, I stood and approached the cave entrance. It was a dark, small hole in the side of a small cliff, covered in brush to the point where I would have missed it had I not known where it was. As I neared the dark doorway, a troll moved, blocking the path. It wasn’t that he suddenly appeared there. I realized my not-yet-husband had a hand in this because he had shown me this magic before.

  The Guardian was first and foremost an informant, which was a role he had been perfecting for over a thousand years. Therefore, his powers of stealth were unmatched. The entrance could not be concealed with magic as well as a living being with this particular spell. For as long as the guard of the entrance was unmoving, he was invisible. This made it easy for him to overhear the sins of betrayers or allow his enemies to walk right up to him. Since the guard knew me as the Guardian’s mate, he was simply informing me that he was there.

  This would be tricky. No doubt Nano would use some powerful magic or Nila would bulldoze anyone who stood in his way… I was human, so I had to do this the human way. I can do this. I can set an example.

  I smiled submissively and backed away, as if I had simply stumbled upon the cave during a hike. Having learned much of the culture of trolls, I knew they were lazy and not too bright. I made my way to the top of the cliff so that I could look down over the ledge where I knew the guard was, then dug the rope out of my bag. Luckily, there was a tree, because my plan would have been ruined if there hadn’t been. I secured one end of the rope to the tree trunk, found a large stone on the ground, and got into place. After about an hour of waiting patiently for the guard to relax, I tossed the rock as far as I could into the distance.

  The rock could be heard rolling down the hill and hitting another rock, which made a decent “clang,” and then went silent. The guard took three large steps forward before stilling again. It was the opportunity I needed; the guard was no longer blocking the entrance. I dropped the rope and climbed as quickly as I could until I was on the ground in front of the cave. I ran, quietly, into the darkness.

  * * *

  I didn’t stop running for half an hour, when I couldn’t do so any more, but then I nearly collapsed. I had reached the darkened tunnels of the under cities. There were trolls and goblins that would arrest me if they found me and return me to the surface, so I wasn’t out of hot water yet.

  It was cold. I clutched my jacket around me tighter, but I had forgotten about the unnatural chill of being this far from the sun, thus I hadn’t brought anything better. Worse yet, I had no idea which way it was to the High King city. What I did know was that I would have to rest soon.

  An hour or so later, I arrived at a small, abandoned city. A ghost town. There was no sound, not a footstep, yet it felt like I was being watched. The sensation followed me even when I found a small house to shut myself into for the night. Unable to bring myself to sleep in a stranger’s bed, I laid the blanket on the floor and slept on top of it.

  Unfortunately, finding sleep was a lot easier on the dark, cold floor than in the empty bed at home.

  * * *

  I woke to a firm hand on my mouth. As I grew up in the low-class end of Houston, this was the start of all my worst nightmares. I screamed and kicked even as a much larger man tried desperately to pin my legs one-handed and keep my mouth shut at the same time. Dile were ridiculously strong people, so the only thing I had on my side was surprise.

  “No scream, woman, or they hear!” the man whispered hurriedly.

  I immediately relented in my thrashing and he moved his hand slightly so that I could breathe but not speak. An instant before I bit his hand and demanded to be released, I heard heavy footsteps. The man let me go and pushed me under the low bed, but it was too narrow a space for him to hide in.

  “Who are you?” I whispered.

  “Name Vreko. Fight for High King.”

  “You know Nila? Is that how you know English?”

  “Kedgra fight for Nila seta. Kedgra all know English. We learn English to hide words.”

  Kedgra all… So Kedgra was most likely a group of people. “I’m looking for Nila. Where can I find him?”

  I didn’t get an answer because the sound was coming closer. There were people out there, searching. Vreko quickly hid in a chest by the front door, which was only barely large enough. I worried, because any bandits would check something like that, but there was no time to voice my concern.

  The door opened and five large men swaggered in. They searched the place, tipping over the table and destroying pottery, and found nothing of value. With every heavy footstep, my heart thundered until I was sure they would hear it. Luckily, they never checked the chest or under the bed.

  When each man left one by one, I almost sighed with relief… but then one reentered. He was the smallest one, but his face looked sort of mouse-like. If there was a person who
looked like scum, it was him. He scowled suspiciously at the blanket on the floor, which all the men had overlooked before.

  I knew I was in trouble when he went to it, got on his knees, fisted the blanket, and sniffed it deeply. Just as I expected, he started sniffing the air like a dog, then got up and sniffed in a wide circle around the room. He repeated his sweep, slowly getting closer and closer to the bed, until he kneeled beside it and contorted to see under it. I knew it wasn’t dark enough to hide, that I was caught, so I did what any frightened, desperate Texan girl would do; I kicked him in the face with my boot.

  First he grabbed his face in pain, which gave me a chance to crawl out from under the bed, but then he recovered quickly and reached for me. Although he was bleeding profusely from the nose, he was able to see well enough to chase after me. I threw open the door to escape only for my exit to be blocked by the largest of the five men, who obviously knew how to throw his weight around. He pushed me back with one massive hand into the smarmy arms of the bleeding blood hound.

  The bastard immediately snaked his hand under my shirt and leered. I wished very much that I didn’t understand what he said to the larger man. I wanted to call Dylan or Nila… but most of all I wanted Nano. He would have smacked them around and used powerful magic. All I could do was shudder and keep my mouth shut, not allowing them the pleasure of my scream.

  Funny… they were the first men who had ever successfully shut me up.

  As they started to drag me from the house, I was thankful they hadn’t found Vreko. There was a resistance, and the last thing I wanted to do was hinder that in any way.

  Just as I thought it, I heard the obvious opening of a chest a second before I was thrown to the ground. Vreko and the rat-man were fighting. The larger man, clearly uninterested, picked me up by the scruff of the shirt and dragged me outside.

  The abandoned town was crawling with scumbags carrying torches as they raided the homes that were once lovingly maintained. These were homes in which babies were born, children played, and men came home to their adoring wives. Everything that wasn’t taken was broken.