by Nalini Singh
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.
He waited until she was inside before pulling it shut.
She heard a lock click into place. “So much for trust.” A little surprised that she’d survived the Guardian of the Abyss, she looked around for something with which to create a pallet. The sacks of flour, perhaps, or maybe— “Jissa, you sweetheart.” A set of folded blankets, as well as a soft pillow, lay neatly in front of the stove that had been stoked so that it would burn all night, ensuring she’d feel no chill.
Unfolding the blankets with a smile, she realized one of them was heavy, stuffed with some kind of cotton. With that on the heated floor near the stove, it would be almost as comfortable as sleeping in a bed—something she hadn’t done for months, having been banished to an empty stone room in punishment for not heeding her father. He hadn’t locked her in, because he enjoyed tormenting her by making her watch her mother haunt the halls, Irina’s face puffy and bruised from his fists.
A sharp hint of iron.
It took conscious effort to make herself unclench her fists, force her mind away from her hatred of the man whose blood ran in her veins. Face burning with pulsing rage, she got up to throw ice-cold water on her cheeks before hunting out some more food. No matter if her stomach churned with memory, she had to keep up her strength if she was to tangle with the dangerous, golden prince who ruled this place.
Taking out a thick piece of bread, she cut off a hunk of smoky cheese and rolled it up. The first bite was delicious, settling her stomach, the second even more so. Then she heard the skitter of tiny feet. Breaking off a bit of the cheese, she walked to the corner where she could see the gleam of small dark eyes, the skeletal push of bone against skin. “Here you go, my little friend.”
She retreated after placing the cheese on the floor. Only when he’d eaten the food did she approach again and leave a second piece. It would not do to feed him too quickly when he had been starving so very long.
The same could be said for the Lord of the Black Castle.
She’d attempted too much too soon in speaking of Elden and his father at once, driven by the knowledge that time was running out at an inexorable pace. From his violent reaction to King Aelfric’s name, it was obvious that the Blood Sorcerer’s twisted spell was even more entrenched than she’d believed. Not even a crack marred the carapace that was the black armor that held him locked away from his past.
Worry turned her gut to lead, made the food lose all taste, but she forced herself to finish the sandwich, then a small apple. What strength she had came from her own blood, and she couldn’t afford to allow that blood to grow thin and weak. If her father found her…
Bile, bitter and acidic, rose up in her throat.
“No,” she whispered. “No.” He wouldn’t find her. She’d only discovered the location of the youngest prince because of her visions. Even then, it had taken her five attempts to get to a realm most knew only as the most terrifying of legends. The first two times that she’d failed hadn’t been so bad—she’d been able to return home before her father noticed. The third time, she’d ended up with a fractured forearm after landing wrong, and the fourth…the Blood Sorcerer had been waiting for her.
Her skin tightened as if under the lash of a razor-whip.
“But I didn’t break.” A fierce reminder. That night, as her back was shredded, so much meat exposed to the air while she lay naked and chained to a massive stone table carved with channels that sent her blood trickling into collection pots, she’d managed to convince the Blood Sorcerer that her spells had been fueled by a wish to find a talisman that would cure her mother.
He’d believed her; he found it vastly amusing how much it hurt her that Irina never so much as acknowledged her presence.
“No matter what you do—” he’d paused to rub his finger over a seeping wound “—she belongs to me.” A chuckle as he stepped away to flick the whip almost desultorily over her already ruined back.
Blood seeped out of her ravaged flesh, sliding down her ribs and into the channels. “She’s my mother.” A mother she loved.
Another laugh, deep and from the chest, as if he had never heard anything so ludicrous in his life. “Then I give you leave to discover this wonderful talisman. Do show it to me when you find it.” A stroke of the whip over her shoulders. “I think my pets will enjoy their time with you.”
Spiders—huge and mutated for use in another spell—fell from the ceiling to crawl all over her body, their furred legs rasping over her flesh, their mouths sucking on the raw meat of her back. Panicked, she tried to use her sorcery to escape, but her father was stronger and the restraints held.
The entire time they terrorized her, he sat where she could see him, a small smile on his face.
THE GUARDIAN OF THE ABYSS flew across the skies, his wings slicing through the night air in much the same way as that of the bat over to his right, his wings as leathery and as dark. He didn’t know where his wings went when he landed—they simply appeared when he needed them and ceased to exist when he no longer wished them present.
A gift from the Abyss.
He thought of Liliana’s tale of a realm without magic and snorted again. As if such a land could ever exist. An instant later, his mind pricked at him with the other part of her story, the part about that place
, the name of which he couldn’t even think about without a thunderous pain in his head, an anvil striking at his skull from within. He flew harder, faster, in an effort to escape the relentless pressure.
A whisper of oily evil.
Having located his prey, he moved toward it with furious swiftness. The man-shaped shadow was running over the ground in a vain effort to escape his fate, heading toward the borders of the realm. The majority of the condemned woke up from death to find themselves in the howling cold of the Abyss, but some were able to claw themselves to a stop in the badlands.
They had to be caught and sent through the doorway, for he would not take the chance that they might turn in the other direction, and seek to possess one of the villagers. However, sometimes, he allowed them to run—because waiting out here were creatures who could catch even shadows, crunching them up with sharp teeth before spitting out screaming, mangled tears of black.
It was a lesson no one had ever wanted to repeat.
Sweeping down on wings designed for deathly silence, he clamped his hands over the figure’s arms. It thrashed, panicked that anyone could restrain it—for it was little more than smoke—but the lord of this place had always been able to hold those destined for the Abyss.
After all, that was the reason for his creation.
Crying, scared, a small child in a dark, dark place.
Guessing the alien images and emotions were the result of an attack by the creature in his grasp, he entrapped the shadow using thick black ropes infused with his blood, ensuring there’d be no more attempts at coercion. Then he flew through the cold, moonless and starless night, impatient to capture the others and return to the Black Castle. To get rid of his burden, nothing more.
But after he landed, the shadows locked up in the cages from which nothing could escape, he strode not to his room, but to the kitchen. The lock on the door was no impediment. Everything in the Black Castle obeyed its lord, flesh or ether or metal. Everything except the woman fast asleep on the floor near the hot belly of the stove.
Stepping closer, he stared down at her. She wasn’t beautiful, this Liliana with the potent magic in her blood that he knew and yet could not name, this storyteller who told him outlandish tales as if she thought them true. Her nose was too big, her eyes too close together, her hair so much black straw.
But…
He watched her until she sighed and turned toward him, as if in welcome.
Crouching, he reached for her—and saw the gauntlet around his forearm, the spiderweb crawling across the back of his hand to turn into sharp claws above his nails, indestructible armor that kept him safe from evil, and shut him away from the world. He rose, his hand clenched into a fist, and left the room, closing the door behind him.
He stared at the lock for a long, long time.
If he left the door unlocked, she might decide to leave.
He snapped the lock shut.
It had nothing to do with Liliana. He just wanted to hear the rest of her ridiculous tale.
CHAPTER SIX
LILIANA WOKE TO THE SOUND of small feet moving around the kitchen. “Jissa?”
“Yes, it’s me. I’m making sweet, sweet chocolate.”
Liliana jerked into a sitting position at once. “Where did you get it?”
Jissa smiled, showing a row of pointed white teeth. “He brought some once. Nowhere, where, I don’t know.”
Astonished at the idea that the beautiful monster with eyes of winter-green enjoyed chocolate, Liliana rose to her feet, reaching back to twist her hair off her neck. “He must like it very much to have searched it out,” she said, heading to the washing bowl in the corner.
“I made him some the first time he brought it, yes, I did. One sip he took and said it tasted not right. Not right.” Jissa poured the liquid into two small cups. “Is right!”
Face washed and dried, Liliana came to take a sip of the rich, sweet liquid that made her toes curl. The only reason she knew and adored the taste was because the cook had had a weakness for it, and the kind man had shared his store of it with her on the days when her father had brutalized her to silence. Violence and chocolate were indelibly linked in her mind, but she refused to let that diminish her pleasure in the treat. “You’re right. This is perfect.” Licking a droplet off her lips, she remembered the cook reaching for something to sprinkle on top. “Unless…”
Jissa, having started to pull together the ingredients for a loaf of bread, wasn’t paying attention. “Shall we make fruit porridge this morning, Liliana?”
“Perhaps we can put the fruit in the bread,” Liliana muttered, putting down her chocolate to rummage through the cupboards. “It will taste lovely toasted.”
“What do you search for?”
“Cinnamon.”
A mournful shake of her head. “No, don’t know. Don’t know at all.”
“I’m sure it must be here.” If the youngest son of Elden had found chocolate and brought it home, then he may well have hunted out the spice that was so very common in his homeland that it was put in everything from casseroles to sweets…to a little boy’s chocolate.
A squeak met her when she opened a lower cupboard.
“Mouse? A mouse!” Jissa turned with rolling pin held high, her face scrunched up into a scowl. “Nasty creatures! Show me, show Jissa.”
Liliana closed the door. “It was only a squeaking hinge. Don’t forget the sugar syrup or the bread won’t taste as sweet.”
“Oh, dear!” Distracted, Jissa dropped the rolling pin onto the table and ran to get the syrup.
Soon as she was far enough away, Liliana opened the door a crack, put her finger to her lips and whispered, “Have you seen the cinnamon?”
Small black eyes gleamed at her in the dark before her little friend darted out and along the edge of the cupboards to the very corner of the kitchen, where it slipped under a set of tall shelves just as Jissa returned. “Oh, you must help me, Liliana,” the brownie wailed. “He won’t, won’t like what I make. I don’t want you thrown back in the cold, so cold dungeon.”
“I’ll help, don’t worry. Just give me a moment.” Having reached the shelves under which the mouse had disappeared, she looked at the rows upon rows of identical dark brown jars, not a label in sight. “Well,” she muttered, then glimpsed a flash of sleek gray run up along the side of the shelving. An instant later, one particular jar was nudged forward a bare millimeter.
Grabbing it, she twisted the lid open to find several long sticks of cinnamon. A bit old, but they had held their scent. “Thank you,” she mouthed.
The mouse twitched its nose at her before disappearing behind the jars.
Turning, she walked over to put the jar next to the small tin of chocolate. Then she helped Jissa finish preparing the fruit bread, made a few crisp pastries covered with jam and churned some fresh butter.
“Oh, but there is no meat.” Jissa twisted her hands. “He will growl and snarl and my bones will clatter, clatter against one another, they will.”
Liliana had heard the Guardian of the Abyss growl, and while terrifying, it had also haunted her sleep in a startlingly different fashion—she’d dreamed of him making the same feral sound against a woman’s…against her skin. And now that she’d allowed herself to recall it, she couldn’t stop the sinful cascade of a lush fantasy that surely meant she was mad—for what kind of a woman would want the dark lord in her bed?
“Snarling and growling.” Jissa continued to fuss. “Meat, he will demand. Meat!”
“We’ll see,” she said through a throat gone dry, and began to grind the cinnamon until it was a pile of dust that she scooped back into the jar. “Now, where’s the milk?”
THE GUARDIAN OF THE ABYSS hadn’t slept. He never slept. When the Black Castle went quiet for the night, he walked the halls in the company of ghosts. Sometimes, he went back out to hunt, for that was his reason for being, and sometimes, he went searching beyond the village and to the twilight lands, for those like Jissa and Bard.
/> He didn’t know why he’d saved the brownie and the big lug. No one had ever asked him, but perhaps his strange storyteller would. If she did ask such an impertinent question, he’d tell her it was because he needed servants. A lie. He wondered if she would know, if she would challenge him. Hmm…
Striding into the great hall with that intriguing thought in mind, he halted.
The table was set with toast and pastry and fruit. But that wasn’t what stopped him. It was the scent in the air, sweet and spicy at the same time. Aware of Liliana standing with suspicious meekness by the table, he crossed the black stone of the castle to take his seat, picking up the cup of steaming liquid at his elbow.
Rich and dark, he recognized it as chocolate. But that scent…
Drawing it in, he felt his mind spark, tumbling him headlong into memories that couldn’t be his own, but that he found himself loath to repudiate.
A woman’s laughter. Soft hands on his brow. Contentment.
“Drink.” The whisper came from beside him. “Drink.”
Looking up at his prisoner, who was most certainly a sorceress, someone he should not be listening to under any circumstances, he nonetheless lifted the cup to his lips. Sweet and wicked and wild, the taste seared his senses, took him to places he didn’t know, showed him a kaleidoscope of faces he’d never seen in the Abyss.
The woman’s face was the strongest. Eyes so bright and green, hair the color of sunlight, and a face of such beauty and grace it hurt him to look at her. But she was laughing, this being formed of purest magic, leaning forward to press her lips to his forehead.
Stubborn, so stubborn, my baby boy.
“What sorcery is this?” he asked, slamming down the empty cup and rising to glare at the woman who had likely poisoned him.
Liliana didn’t flinch as she should. “No sorcery, my lord. It is merely a spice named cinnamon.”
Cinnamon, he can’t have enough.