by Nalini Singh
“Yes.”
“I’m the Lord of the Black Castle. I can say whatever I want.”
She didn’t know whether to scream or laugh. “You’re not the least bit civilized, are you?”
He gave her the strangest look, as if she’d asked a silly question. But to her surprise, he answered it. “I live at the gateway to the Abyss.”
“Yes, I suppose the civilized graces aren’t exactly useful here.” If she wasn’t careful, he’d turn her as wild. To be quite honest, she wasn’t sure she minded.
THE GUARDIAN OF THE ABYSS slept that night. Dreamed. Of the firedancers and the castle with the pennants flying in the wind. A castle with windows full of golden light and sparkling music that floated across the night-dark lake to tickle his ears where he lay on his back in a small rowboat.
“Is it time, Nicki?” he asked the man with silver eyes streaked with gold who sat beside him.
Carefully stowing the paddle so they wouldn’t be stranded in the middle of the lake, his brother shook his head and came down on his back beside Micah, stretching out his big, muscled body on the blanket they’d borrowed from the stables. It was kind of scratchy, but at least Mama wouldn’t yell at Micah for spoiling her soft fleecy blanket like she had the last time.
“Is it time now?” He wiggled in excitement.
Nicolai said, “Not yet.”
Micah liked lying there with Nicolai by his side. Nicolai was the strongest, with the most powerful magic. Breena was the nicest, and Dayn brought the best, most interesting things to show him. Micah, though he was the smallest of them all, was the “stubbornest,” everyone said so. He liked being the stubbornest. Especially when it made Mama blow out her breath and then laugh. And laugh.
“Is it time now?”
Finally Nicolai said, “Yes. Look.”
Micah sucked in a breath as the first star streaked across the sky. He didn’t talk for the whole time the stars fell to earth, so entranced that he forgot to wish until Nicolai whispered for him to, “Hurry, or it’ll be over.”
Micah didn’t want to miss even a minute of the sky magic, but he squeezed his eyes shut and made his wish. It was a strange wish had he thought about it, but he made it as the stars streaked across the sky, and forgot it by the time he scrambled out of the rowboat onto the rocks that led up to the castle.
But when the Guardian of the Abyss opened his eyes, he remembered.
“I wished that we’d all come home,” he told Liliana the next day, while she tried to make something in the kitchen. “An odd wish, don’t you think?”
Liliana gave him a startled look, her lips parting as if to say something, but then she pressed those lips back together. Lips he wanted to nibble at again. Prowling around the bench where she was rolling out the dough, he put his hands on her hips from behind. “Did you make up your mind about kissing yet?”
“Micah.”
Pushing aside a tendril of her hair, he buried his nose in the curve of her neck. She smelled of the soap he’d given her, flour and something sweet. He decided he wanted to eat her up, so he took a bite.
She jumped. “Micah, did you just bite me?”
He thought about whether to answer her or not. She’d tasted good. He might want to take another bite later. Better if she didn’t have warning. “You didn’t tell me what you’re making.”
“Biscuits,” she said, shooting him a suspicious look before returning her attention to the dough. “Normally I’d do it with dried lushberries, but since we haven’t had a chance to dry them, Jissa found me a box of raisins.”
REGARDLESS OF HER OUTWARD calm, Liliana wasn’t sure she drew a single breath until Micah moved around the bench to pick up a small green fruit. That was when she noticed something incredible. “Your armor.” It had vanished from his arms, all the way to his shoulders.
“Hmm.”
His response startled her less than the fact that his skin was tanned, his muscles defined against skin stroked with warmest gold. “You don’t always have the armor on.” She’d assumed it was part of her father’s twisted spell, but what if the armor had been created by the powerful magic of a small scared boy thrown into the void without anyone to catch him as he fell?
“When are the biscuits going to be ready?”
Looking down, she saw that she’d finished with the preparation. “Not long.”
Micah walked over to pull open the oven door, the muscles in his arms gleaming in the heat. She felt her abdomen go tight, her mouth suddenly bone-dry.
“Liliana.” A deep, coaxing voice. “It’s not night yet, so I can’t kiss you. But you can kiss me.”
Blushing, she put the biscuits in the oven, watched him close it, wanting to lick and kiss her way down those arms. “Where are Jissa and Bard?” she asked, waving a hand to cool her face.
“Playing chess.”
“Oh.” She went to pour a cup of tea, but her hand was trembling so hard she sloshed it. Putting down the pot, she said, “Go away. I can’t think with you here.” And she needed to think. He was too deep in her heart now. She didn’t want to take him back to Elden, to the evil that awaited there.
But she must.
If she didn’t, Elden would fall forever.
And Micah would never forgive her.
She choked back a harsh laugh. He was never going to forgive her, no matter what. The touches, the kisses…they were stolen. Even knowing that, she couldn’t stop herself. She would continue to be a thief for the fragment of time that remained.
It wasn’t all selfish, she tried to convince herself when guilt reared its ugly head—he’d begun to shed his armor. Every instinct she had told her that that armor needed to be completely gone before he’d remember Elden. And once he remembered, he’d have to rebuild the armor for the biggest fight of his life. But time…time was trickling by so fast. She had only until the moon rose full again, the final midnight too close.
“Liliana.”
Clenching her hands on the edge of the bench, she said, “The biscuits smell good.”
“So do you.”
She folded her arms, stalked across to look him in the face. “I’m not beautiful, Micah.” It had to be said, because such sweet lies hurt. “You don’t have to say things like that.”
His lashes, thick and silky and long, swept down over those amazing eyes, lifted again. “Yes, you are.”
That tone of his voice was already intimately familiar. “Just because you say so doesn’t make it true!” She felt like stamping her foot like some bad-tempered child.
“I’m the Lord of the Black Castle,” he reminded her once again with dark arrogance. “My word is law. Don’t forget to think about our kisses. I’ll lick up your taste again come sunset.”
Liliana was still staring at the closed door minutes later when her smallest friend in this castle full of old magic and whispering ghosts skittered over her foot in sharp reminder. “The biscuits!” Grabbing a cloth, she opened the oven and pulled them out in the nick of time. “Well,” she murmured, looking down at the twitching nose of the inquisitive creature who had come to look quite healthy, “I think, for that, you get a whole biscuit to yourself.”
She swore he chortled in glee.
MICAH LEFT LILIANA A VIVID silver dress this time, the threads so fine they picked up every shimmer of light and multiplied it a hundred times over. She would look like a falling star, he thought, and he would kiss her.
His body heated within the confines of the black armor, and for the first time, the weight of it irritated him. Still, he couldn’t take it off, not tonight. The air had grown heavy with a shadowy energy that told him the condemned roamed the badlands—they had to be collected before they did harm.
“I’ll return two hours after moonrise,” he told Bard as he left. “Tell Liliana to wait for me.” As he stepped out into the velvet dark of the night, his wings unfurling to take him into the air, he thought of her kiss. The village women had attempted to lure him many a time, but underneath all their s
eductive looks lay a tremor of fear, a quivering hunger to dance with danger.
He had no desire to kiss a woman who would shiver because she was afraid. Liliana shivered, too, but not because she was afraid. His lips curved. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t kissed other women—he knew she shivered because she liked it. Especially when he licked his tongue against hers. He wanted to lick her in—
A rush of oily energy. The stench of putrefaction.
Fully armored once again, though he didn’t recall a conscious thought making it so, he went after the soul. From the smell, it was a blood sorcerer. Not like Liliana. This one had spilled innocent blood and the taint clung to him.
The sorcerer, his body shrunken in death, his eyes endless pools of red, tried to drown him in a barrage of razor-sharp power. He ignored it. It was an old trick. The shards attempted to sink through the armor, and held such evil that one succeeded in causing a small burn in the black.
Using the cold power of the depths of the Abyss, he turned the shards back on their maker. The sorcerer screamed, high and shrill. Micah reached him to find a whimpering ball, shredded as if he’d been run through a great razored net, until the night was visible through the patches in his nonphysical self.
“The Abyss awaits you.”
“No, no.” The sorcerer’s voice was less than a whisper, his magic dulled.
“How did you die?” For he was close to absolute death, his shadow self fading.
“I was sacrificed.” Voice almost lost now. “He seeks his possession.”
For another dark sorcerer to have sacrificed one of his own, he must’ve needed a vast amount of power. “Who?”
But the sorcerer was gone, faded into nothingness. Frustrated by the thought that he’d lost the chance to discover some important truth, he spent the rest of the midnight hours in a fury, collecting those destined for the Abyss without mercy.
Evil lingered everywhere. It was a thing to which he’d long become accustomed, for that was why he existed, to cleanse the lands. But tonight, the evil was darker, thicker, more insidious. Something in him keened, as if mourning a great loss, panic stuttering in his chest.
Time was running out.
He didn’t know what that meant, didn’t know what he had to do. But he could feel time trickling by at an ever-increasing pace. Each day that passed, each hour that passed, the darkness continued to spread, to dig its roots ever deeper.
Hurry, Micah.
Driven, he flew hard and fast, but found nothing except shadows, their evil tainting him, making him unclean.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
LILIANA HAD BEEN WAITING for Micah long beyond the moonrise. When he did walk in, he went straight to the dungeons, his power rolling heavy and potent through the hallways. It seemed it took an eternity for him to return; she busied herself setting everything out on the table and lighting the candles.
Her hands trembled. “Stop it, Liliana. It’s only going to be a kiss…maybe a little more.”
Hard boot steps on stone. The slam of a door. The opening of the one to the great hall and more footsteps much closer now. Used to the way he crowded her, she turned from the table, bracing her back against it. But he wasn’t behind her. He stood several feet away, his entire body encased in black, razor-sharp points arcing over his nails.
Her stomach fell. “What’s wrong?” His face…she’d never seen it that way—so closed and distant and without emotion.
“The hunt was long. I need to bathe.” Turning on his heel with those cold words, he left the great hall that she’d emptied of all inhabitants, including the ghostly ones, in anticipation of this night.
She didn’t know what to do. For a minute, she just stood there, lost. Then her dress shimmered in the candlelight and she almost crumpled under the wave of humiliation. Pinching out the candles, she covered up the food, and made herself carry it all back to the kitchen, store it away. “Don’t break,” she ordered herself, though her chest ached, her heart terribly bruised.
It was better this way, she told herself as she left the kitchen to walk to her room. Now she’d be able to focus on her task without being distracted by the wild emotions that had held her hostage today. Already, the Lord of the Black Castle had reclaimed his name. Soon, he’d reclaim his title.
Then she’d take him home, to the castle of Elden, to the family that awaited him. Her father had to die, and so she would kill him, though the power needed would require a human sacrifice. Whatever fantasies of exile she’d allowed herself, she’d always known the brutal truth: it would be her own throat she’d slit for the death spell. But before she did that, she’d restore the blood rulers of Elden, bring the heart back to the land.
Perhaps then, the daughter of the Blood Sorcerer would go not into the Abyss, but to a peaceful forever good-night. She didn’t expect to be sent to the Always, the place where the good went after death. She hoped only for an end to her existence. Or she had…before she met Micah. Before he kissed her, made her feel so very alive.
Pulling the silver dress over her head once she reached her room, she put it carefully in the closet. That dress wasn’t made for someone like Liliana. It was better for her to wear the browns she’d always worn. Tucking her hair behind her ears, she went to pick up her coarse old dress, but then remembered it was in the laundry. She had only the beautiful chocolate-colored dress Micah had given her, and she couldn’t bear to wrinkle that.
Naked but for her underwear, she checked the door. It had no lock, and there was no chair to put underneath the doorknob, but who would come inside? Bard was likely standing watch outside Jissa’s room as he did every night, unbeknownst to the brownie, and the Guardian of the Abyss couldn’t wait to be far from Liliana.
“Enough,” she snapped, annoyed at her self-pity. “Tomorrow, I’ll start to push. And push hard.” Micah had to remember his destiny soon, or it would all be for naught.
MICAH WASHED AND WASHED, but still, the evil clung to him, a pernicious stain. He couldn’t touch Liliana, couldn’t taint her with it. Frustrated and angry, he thrust his hands through his hair, his overriding thought to be clean!
Magic whispered over him, magic of a kind he’d never before tasted. No. That was wrong. He had tasted this magic before. A long, long time ago. It was his magic—but not of the Black Castle. It came from inside him, whispering of a place that was both alive…and dying. His body turned rigid, but before he could follow the ominous thought to its root, it was gone. And he was clean.
“Liliana.” Now he could go to her. Except the heavy moon, only days away from being full, told him it was late. She’d be curled up in bed fast asleep.
Maybe she’d be naked.
He bared his teeth in a smile and opened the door.
Having put her in a room no one could reach without going past his own, he made the journey with quick steps. No light showed beneath her door, but he hesitated for less than a second, too hungry to taste her again to worry about waking her from her sleep. After all, she knew full well he wasn’t civilized.
The room was drenched in moonlight. Liliana lay on her front, her face turned to the side on the pillow, the sheet pulled up to just below her shoulder blades. Those shoulders were bare, glowing with warmth.
Curling his fingers into his palms, he closed the door very quietly behind himself, and simply watched her. Perhaps he shouldn’t be invading her privacy in such a way, but he couldn’t bring himself to care, not when it was his storyteller. Stroking his gaze down her body, he wished that sheet would disappear…then smiled, because there was no need to use magic to make that happen.
Walking across the floor, he went to—
He froze, having never seen her back close up. It had been hidden by the steamy water in the bath, the marks not as visible under the crisscrossing lacings of the red dress, but there was no impediment to his vision now. Anger roared through him, a ferocious beast. Who had dared lay hands on her? Who? Enraged, he tugged down the sheet enough that he could see how far the ma
rks went.
Thick and white and ridged, he knew they’d been made with a whip.
Not a single beating. It would have taken repeated and brutalizing strokes of the whip to create the pattern of scars that went as far as the curve of her waist. He didn’t push the sheet down any farther, though rage made him want to examine every inch of the damage.
Shaking, not trusting himself to touch her, he turned away and stared at the moon. But he couldn’t leave the room, couldn’t go without having his questions answered. Once he could speak without yelling, he sat on the bed beside Liliana’s sleeping form. She stirred at once. Wariness stiffened her shoulders, her hand fisting on the pillow.
“Liliana.”
“What’re you doing here?” Jerking, she went to pull up the sheet he’d tugged down.
He stilled her efforts by the simple expedient of putting his hand flat on her lower back. When she froze, he moved that hand gently over her, his anger a violent thing, but his need to… He didn’t have the words. He’d never felt such a rage of emotion. “Who did this?”
She flinched at the ice of his tone. “No one.”
“You will tell me.” And then he would drag the monster into the Abyss.
Her spine went rigid. “He is no one to me. Do you understand? No one.”
He heard her own anger, the pulsating ribbon of it threaded through with pain. “You won’t speak his name.”
“No.” A hesitation. “Not until I need to.”
He thought about it. He could push her, bully her—and he was quite capable of that—but he had a feeling that might make her cry. He didn’t like it when Liliana cried. So he took a deep, deep breath and crushed his anger into a small, tight ball that he hid away deep in his heart. It would be released when the time came, when he knew the name of the man who had dared hurt the woman who lay so still and wary beneath his touch.
Only when he was certain the black rage within was contained, that it wouldn’t hurt her, did he bend his head and press his lips to her shoulder. Her skin was warm, silken where unbroken, sleek where the scars cut across it.