by Lora Leigh
Caedan glanced at his brother again, baffled by the feeling Daelan communicated with the kings, but unable to decipher what conversation they shared.
King Kellan leaned forward upon his throne, his gaze moving about the warriors assembled before him. “Have we volunteers? Have I warriors who would champion a Spry princess of delicate form and tender heart?”
“Aye, sire.” Daelan stepped forward.
Caedan stared at his twin in true shock.
They? Champions? To one of a delicate body and a tender heart? What joke did his brother play?
Their kings sat upon their thrones, gazes narrowing on Caedan rather than Daelan. “What say ye, Caedan?” Aherin asked softly.
Caedan would not consider ever naysaying his twin, the eldest of birth, but later he might question his sanity. They had sworn to await one last chance to hold the one who came to them from the human lands and whose magick perfected theirs. That was no Spry ancestor’s magick she possessed. Why would his brother align with this cause after having made such a vow?
Stepping forward, he faced his kings confidently. “Aye, sires,” he answered the question. “The house of Dungarrin champions the Spry princess and requests permission to begin preparations to collect her immediately.”
Both Kings Kellan and Aherin were silent then, Muse between them, tense and watching Daelan closely.
Was it the tiny goddess his brother spoke with?
“Prepare your warriors and gather your weapons.” King Kellan sighed then. “We will begin preparations to rescue us a princess.”
The boy prince seemed to wilt.
He slid against the iron bars of his cage until he sat upon the floor, his arms wrapping around bony knees with a grip born of a courage that even many men, human and magick alike, did not possess.
The tears were dried, large blue eyes reflected grim purpose and resignation that Caedan found distasteful. His gaze lifted to his rulers to find them watching him expectantly.
“House of Dungarrin.” It was Muse who spoke, her voice a wash of warmth and gentle compassion, as soft as the breeze that caressed the Whispering Mountains, as mysterious as the hush that could descend over the Mystic Mountains.
The young prince’s head lifted from his knees, his senses perking with a young man’s solace as though he sought to convince himself he had heard that sweet, gentle sound.
“Aye, Lady Muse,” Caedan and Daelan spoke as one.
“What plans have you for your young brother?” she asked then. “I would know, as caretaker of this fortress, before all is prepared and your warriors begin your journey.”
Caedan glanced to his brother.
“We request, Lady Muse, that this prince, whose courage and mercy have been proven in his quest to save a sister considered heinous in his land, be guarded by the just and compassionate mercy of our sister Select’s embrace until our return. He will be given asylum in the house of Dungarrin until the death of Alistair the Perverted,” Daelan requested of her.
Caedan near grinned at the bewilderment that crossed young Quin’s features.
The boy was confused, and well he should be.
With a gentle smile Muse waved her delicate hand, clearing the mists of the Ogre’s Obsidian Hall and allowing the child to see the champions chosen to forever guard his princess.
But of course, Quin’s gaze went first to the demi-goddess whose mesmerizing beauty was unlike any the boy could have seen until this moment.
She was tiny and appeared frail, dressed in the leathers of a Sorceress warrior, a lethal sword strapped to her hips and tethered to her thigh, small daggers sheathed to the unique Braillan silver arm bands she wore about her firm upper arms. Young Quin would not be able to help his fascination with her.
Then the boy’s eyes widened farther as they went around the hall and to the warriors watching him with no small amount of amusement.
Legend told that Ogre were gruesome to behold. One-eyed, grotesque of visage and without a feature that could be called pleasing to the eye.
For the most part, there was some truth in this.
Ogre were always male, large, powerful warriors whose magick lay in the strength of strategy and war, and in the ability of their bodies to heal. They were well honed, with no great handsomeness as Wizard Twins possessed, and they were scarred from years of battle in the Causeway.
Grotesque? Caedan near smiled, for he knew what the young prince saw.
Magick shimmered like an aura of glittering spora across the pitch-black eyes of each male present. Powerful bodies, tall of stature and heavy of bones, padded with precise, well-trained muscle that served them well in battle.
Prince Quin’s gaze moved instinctively to both Daelan and Caedan.
“Wizard Twins,” he whispered, as though awed.
Daelan grunted at the thought. “Nay, young prince,” he growled. “Wizard Twins are as princes to our land, heirs to the greatest magicks. We are but the warriors sworn to defend their boundaries and rout from it the humans who would destroy their worlds.”
A smile then lit the young prince’s face. “Great warriors you truly are,” he declared. “Beware though, my sister may be weak of body, but she is strong of will and a certain…ability to test even the strongest temper. Uncle Finn has oftentimes said she would tempt even the One to rain down the fires of Shadow Hell upon her defenseless head.”
Caedan was aware that his brother was amused, even as he sensed the truth of the boy’s words. As well as the laughter the suddenly far-too-pleased child was holding back.
“Rather than roasting piglet this eve, I am beginning to fear that perhaps roast prince would have been far better fare,” Daelan assured the hall’s inhabits.
“There’s not meat upon my bones at all,” the prince assured him with the most solemn of tone, a false appearance if ever there was one. “I have been told by strong and knowledgeable warriors that I am far too bony for even a king’s snack. As a warriors’ meal, you would be left with your belly growling at its lack of proper fare.”
Laughter filled the hall.
If there was one thing the Ogre knew a great and abiding respect for it was courage.
And this young prince, playful and filled with earnest charm, had such in abundance it seemed.
Caedan prayed to the Select and to the One simultaneously that his sister shared such a quality as well.
She may well need it before her ordeal concluded and she found herself the filling in an Ogre Joining.
Chapter Three
Magick, it was forbidden in the Secular lands.
Any human even suspected to have displayed such a heinous talent was to be brought before King Alistair before she reached her woman’s age where all manner of perversions were practiced upon her in such cruel manners as to scar her female spirit forever more.
For it was said that if a magickal female is taken before the age that her powers peaked, then forever her power would be trapped inside her.
Would hers be trapped since sharing her magick with the warriors of the Causeway? They had not taken her fully. Well, unless the touch of magick counted.
Princess Arabella Alistair knew what her fate would be the day she faced her father and his guards mere moments after she had crested the path leading back to the fortress.
They had awaited her silently, their expressions condemning as her father ordered her taken. They had brought her back to the fortress and to a hidden room where guards had held her still and her father had pierced her wrist with his blade, bleeding her into a blood-stained chalice.
There, the proof of her birth was found in the gleaming sparks of power that infused the rich liquid like diamonds sewn too heavily upon scarlet velvet.
Crystalline spores of power were unable to survive within human soil it was said. Only a human of descendent magick whose spark would soon find flame could gather the spores to themselves as she must have done with the mists of the Vale and guard them within a radiant soul.
Though w
hat a radiant soul was, she wasn’t certain. She knew only that it was what Elvetta Crae’all had sworn she’d glimpsed within Arabella.
Basically it had meant then exactly what it meant now. She was doomed.
Her mother had warned her as a child that the time of a reckoning would come, that hiding the magick of the family of Crae’all would end with her.
Yet her mother, Elvetta Crae’all, had not just sought out the king’s attentions as a young woman but sought to merge her line with his, hoping perhaps Alistair would soften in his hatred of magick.
Who knew what her wayward mother had thought to accomplish by not just wedding the perverted king, but giving him a daughter as well? A daughter of magick. A child he would…
Bile rose in her throat.
She could not countenance such a destiny.
The father who had rode her upon his shoulders as a toddler, who taught her to ride and to hunt the stag, who he had claimed such favor in, he would now pervert?
It could not be.
Yet here she stood, clad in one of her finest gowns, chained to the icy, damp wall of a dungeon she had not known existed far below the castle.
She a princess, cherished and adored, had watched her father’s gaze turn cold, his expression suddenly hardened with a fury she could not bear the sight of as he condemned her a magickal “get”.
She had cried her tears.
She had raged. She had begged the guards who had overseen her care since the death of her mother many years before. Yet it was as though they heard her not. They stared at her now as they would stare at the barely dressed barmaids she had oftentimes glimpsed them preparing to ride.
A shudder raced through her as a ragged cry nearly fell from her lips.
Never could she have imagined such betrayal. Never could she have imagined she would ever find herself without a single champion to aid her cause.
And perhaps she would not be so adrift had she heeded her warriors’ demands the many times they commanded her name and that of her house. But she was the daughter of Alistair the Perverted. Who would wish to admit to such a family line?
At that thought, the great iron doors to the dungeons clanged open and rattled with steely purpose.
“You have company.” Trine, a guard whose daughter she had been friends with all of her life, spat the words out as though in distaste.
He was burly, his face square and possessing no beauty at all. Still, she had always seen him as stalwart and dependable. A good father to Maylana, and a firm hand to his son Brine.
Behind Trine came near a dozen guards dragging the hefty weight of two warriors such as she had never glimpsed in but one realm.
Easily half over six feet tall with heavy muscle and powerful forms, the warriors looked as powerful as the sturdy oak. Far too powerful to have been taken by the likes of these guards. Yet they did not resemble the warriors she’d given herself and her magick to either.
“What manner of crime have they committed?” she asked sadly as Trine opened the door and the guards dragged the lax bodies into her cell.
Was there actually room for both? Not hardly, for two well-muscled arms flopped through the iron bars to fall to the stone floor beyond.
“The crime of breathing,” Trine grunted. “They say they’re from the Rinah Pass Province, but warriors such as those do not exist in Secular.”
“They do not appear to be Wizard Twins,” she observed, regret filling her that her father had found other victims to torment.
“Wizard Twins? I think not,” Trine mocked. “The king’s liege sensed no magick in them as they sensed building in you, only the ignorance of having stopped in Eldorah. Of being giants among men in a land where no giants exist.”
With that, he locked the cell doors once again and stepped to follow the guards already leaving the dungeon.
“Trine,” she said his name softly, watching as his back stiffened, his fingers forming fists at his sides.
“Say what you must, quickly,” he commanded her, his voice carrying the sound of a man in much pain.
“No one will tell me how Quin fares.” She fought to hold back her tears at the thought of her little brother. He was so small and always so frightened.
Trine said nothing but terror washed through her at the tightening of his shoulders and the slight dip of his head.
“Trine, please. How does he fare? Does he revile me now? Has he not asked for me?” Tears choked her voice, barely held back by the pride Alistair had always claimed she had far too much of.
“The little prince cannot be found,” he told her, his tone barely audible. “When last he was seen by the guard attempting to capture him last morn he had disappeared into the Causeway.”
Arabella attempted to swallow past the sobs that would have torn from her soul. “Why would he do such?” She shook her head in disbelief. “Nightmares of that desolate place plague him often.”
Trine shook his head. “I know not. I must go now…”
“Trine, please…” Someone had to find Quin. He was but a boy.
“Do not, Princess,” he sighed, his tone weary rather than filled with the hatred or anger she had heard before. “I can find no way to help either the young prince or his much-beloved sister.”
Arabella forced back her tears. “And would you, Trine, if you could?”
He turned back to her then, his brown gaze filled with regret now that no others were there to witness the weakness.
“I and those of my house have fought to find a way,” he said softly then. “I dare not risk my own daughter, Princess, or the son who will tend me in my old age should I see those days pass. We are but three, and I cannot read men’s minds to learn if others would aid me as well.”
“Mayhap, aid the ones who have come for her instead.”
Arabella’s gaze jerked to the warriors. Their lashes had lifted as they stared up at her while she spoke to Trine, and she near gasped as the sudden realization of their origin. It was there in their eyes, shifting colors of magick as though magick spora sparked in eyes of dark, midnight black. There were no whites framing the endless midnight of those gazes.
Black hair, unruly and mussed around their hard faces, their cheekbones high, though both were scarred, hardened. They did not appear to be twins, though perhaps she was mistaken in that, for their looks were clearly closely related.
“And how should I aid you?” Trine hissed as Arabella fought to control a sudden heat beginning to rush through her veins. As the warriors’ gazes melded into hers, her heart raced and her muscles trembled as though weakened.
These were her warriors. Yet how could this be?
“Ensure the tunnel is without soldiers until we have her from the castle.” Dark, deep, that voice of her dark warrior had something fluttering in her belly that she had never felt before, even with him and his brother.
The warriors rose to their feet, so tall she and Trine both were forced to stare up at them in surprise.
“Think you that I could possibly do so?” Trine’s amazed anger wasn’t lost on the warriors or herself. “It is all I can do to keep them from falling into this vile place to rape her themselves.” He raked furious fingers through his graying dark hair and glanced to the dungeon door once more. “They are as the werewolves that prey within the Causeway and howl out their craven hunger each night. Should I keep them from falling upon her and ending her innocence before some chance at her escape be found then I shall count my soul as forever bound for the Garden of Nirvana for that act alone.”
They stared at Trine for long moments then, as though his disbelieving anger and dramatic claim was as a child’s outburst they had yet to figure out.
“Matters not.” Her golden-hued warrior shrugged nonchalantly as his dark eyes seemed to sink inside her spirit. “Those whose eyes glimpse us will not see morning’s light but for you. Had you not shown her kindness though in these final moments, then ’tis a fate you would have shared as well.”
A frown pulled at
Trine’s brows. “And who are you that you could make such a claim?”
“The ones who have claimed Prince Quin as a brother of courage and rare bravery and shall endeavor to ensure his sister is reunited with him before the twin moons kiss the soil of Yarba this eve.”
“Quin?” Arabella whispered her brother’s name in hope as the surprise of seeing her warriors before her was supplanted by her concern for her brother. “You took him from the Causeway? He has such fear of it.”
“Fear?” A slight tug at her golden-hued warrior’s lips as his brow arched in arrogance assured her he did not share her belief of her brother’s fears. “That chuck has no fear of the Causeway. Nay, with naught but a sword he faced the Ogre themselves and demanded a champion to ease the plight of his most vulnerable sister.”
Moving to her, a powerful hand gripped the chains secured into the stone wall above her and pulled them free as though they were not enchanted nor locked about her wrists.
“Do you seek ease to your plight, Princess?” His head lowered, his lips at her ear as he whispered the words. “Do you seek the punishment we promised for refusing us your name and that of the house you belonged to? Know you, we would have rescued you long before this had we known.”
Her head rested against his chest, moisture filling her eyes at his gentleness. “You did not reveal your name, or that of your house,” she reminded him, her voice husky as she fought to hold back her sobs. “And how could I reveal the craven evil of that which I was born into? Such shame tore at my soul when faced with the honor I found within the mists.”
“I am Caedan, twin to Daelan, and we are of the Ogre house Dungarrin, aligned to tribe Taithleach, guardians of the Causeway and all its realms.” His lips brushed against her cheek. “And you are ours.”
Chapter Four
“What…?”
“Forgive me, Princess,” he begged her leave gently, pulling back as she stared up at him, silent and still with her shock. “The manacles are indeed enchanted. Once this place is behind us though, the magick of them will weaken and they will release you easily enough.”