by Jessi Gage
“What’s being done to find him?” Magnus asked as he stood with her cradled in his arms like a child.
Neil responded, but of course, she didn’t understand him.
She squirmed. “Put me down. I can stand. What did he say?”
“He says they’ve sealed the city gates. That means he’s still in Chroina. Don’t worry. We’ll find him.” He didn’t put her down but strode from the throne room carrying her. Neil kept pace at his side.
Magnus shot off orders like arrows. “Send a unit into my hunting grounds. Have another scour Glendall. Go to the stables and see if any horses are missing. Ask the stable hands if they’ve seen him. He can’t have gone far.”
To his credit, he seemed shaken by Neil’s news and intent on finding Riggs. If readiness and action hadn’t rolled off him in palpable waves, she might have wondered whether Magnus had arranged to remove Riggs from the pact by foul means. But he hadn’t. His fashing was genuine. He believed she and Riggs were lifemates and separation from him might cause her to fade away like Aine.
A few days ago, she would have scoffed at the notion of bonding so closely with any man that his absence would cause her to fade away. She wasn’t scoffing now. As it began to penetrate that Riggs was missing, some vital part of herself seemed to wither. It felt like her soul was curling in on itself, protecting itself from the horrible possibility of a lifetime without her wolf-man.
No. She would not give quarter to such ridiculous notions. Lifemates. Bah. Legend and folklore were making her overly sentimental. She wouldn’t swoon and mope that Riggs was gone. She’d bloody do somat about it. She’d not soak in a warm bath and trust others to locate that which belonged to her.
Riggs might not be her lifemate, but he was her pledgemate. He was her love. Hers.
Think, Anya.
She started with what she kent. She’d last seen Riggs standing with his uncle as Magnus took her into the keep. Not an hour later, Neil had come running to the king to claim Riggs had fled, which was a bloody lie if she’d ever heard one. Neil had been the last one to see him and was also the one to report him missing.
Words from a lifetime ago came to her. “Where ye last saw ’tis where it shall be found. Look harder, child. Our treasures doona fade into thin air like magic.” She didn’t have many memories of her mother, but that was one. She’d lost her favorite figurine and had given up all hope of finding it. But her mother had refused to let her give up. She’d listened to her mother and returned to the last place she’d seen it. Sure enough, a more thorough search revealed the porcelain doll under some shavings near the woodpile. But she’d had to get on her hands and knees and brush the shavings aside. She’d had to look beyond what was plainly visible.
Still carrying her, Magnus turned into a carpeted corridor with lower ceilings and fine pieces of furniture on display, a residential part of the keep. He and Neil were discussing their strategy for finding Riggs. She studied Neil. His gaze shifted a mite too often. He nodded too enthusiastically when the king dictated commands. He struck her as more distracted than he ought to be, as if his mind were in two places at once. A sense of wrongness made the skin at the back of her neck prickle.
What have you done, you sly mongrel? What are you hiding?
If he’d hurt Riggs, she’d gut him. Slowly.
They turned another corner and Magnus brought her into a lushly appointed suite that smelled of orange blossoms. A copper hipbath steamed in front of a crackling fire. A delicate table laden with breads and cheeses stood next to the bath. ’Twas a paradise amidst chaos. She wanted no part of it.
“You’re no’ leaving me here. I’ll help search the castle.” The shaking in her soul demanded action.
Magnus set her on her feet and pressed somat into her hand. “I should not have taken this from you. I acted rashly. Here.”
She looked down. Her gemstone! She closed her fingers around it.
“I will be busy searching for your lifemate,” Magnus said. “I would not have you unable to communicate your needs to Daly. And I would have you secure here in the chamber that adjoins mine.” He motioned toward a closed door across the room. Between the door and a marble fireplace, standing still as statues, were the distinguished ageing gentleman she’d noticed earlier, and a young lad with a mop of blond hair.
She blinked at the wee ane. He appeared no more than eight or so. But Riggs had told her the youngest child had been born eleven years ago. Could this be…
“Travis,” Magnus said reverently. “He’s the youngest of us, the Pride of Chroina. He helps care for the ladies when they come to visit Glendall. Now he is your servant exclusively. He and Daly will tend you. Ask of them anything, and if it is within their power, they will see it done.”
The distinguished servant inclined his head in greeting. The lad beamed at her, showing a great deal of pearly white tooth.
“I won’t rest until your lifemate is found,” Magnus said. “This I swear.” He started to leave.
“Wait!”
Magnus paused in the door. Neil watched her over his king’s shoulder.
“A private word,” she requested. “Please.”
Neil frowned.
“Go. Find the trapper,” Magnus said to Neil. Then he shut the door on the man and the guards. “Quickly,” he told her. “There is much to be done.”
“Your war chieftain lies,” she said. “Please tell me you can see it.”
His mouth made a hard line. His gaze was intense on hers, but while she watched, it softened, grew weary. “Your lifemate would not have fled. No force on Earth could make a man abandon his lifemate. Unless everything I’ve read on the topic is false.”
She didn’t bother correcting the lifemate notion. The point was Magnus believed her. Riggs wouldn’t have run away. Neil was hiding somat. A horrible thought struck her.
“Did Neil tell you everything Riggs and I learned about the women in Larna?” Riggs had taken her and Neil a short distance from the camp and told him their suspicions. Riggs had trusted him to share the news with the king. They’d both assumed he would do it right away.
Magnus’s eyebrows snapped together. “Women in Larna?” He had no idea.
Och, she’d been too concerned with Riggs’s wellbeing when she’d told the king her story to bring up the other women at that time. Then, once Magnus had taken her gemstone, she’d been too angry with him to fash about those women. She’d been selfish not to make sure he kent about them.
“Bloody lying traitor that one is.” Fury rolled over her at the thought of Riggs’s uncle deceiving him. She clenched her fists until the gemstone tried to carve itself into her palm. “I willna take the time to tell you how I ken it, but ken it I do. There are women being held captive in Larna. Human women like me.” She spoke urgently, kenning action must be taken immediately to find Riggs. She also spoke quietly, aware Neil could have his ear pressed to the door. Valeworth had taught her never to underestimate a wolf-man’s hearing. “If not for Riggs, I would have been added to their number and no one in Marann would be any the wiser. The Larnians I had the misfortune of meeting referred to the women as Bantus’s harem. There’s more that Riggs and I overheard from the trackers. Suffice it to say they confirmed our suspicions. If Neil didn’t share all that with you then he must be involved. And he’s the last one to have seen Riggs. What if he did somat to him to keep him from telling you about those women?” Her hands shook with concern for her pledgemate. She’d never fashed this much over another. She’d never even fashed this much over herself.
Magnus had gone completely still. His eyes blazed. “Women,” he said. “Human women? In Larna?”
“Aye.”
He straightened. ’Twas his turn to clench his fists.
Poor Magnus. He’d kent nothing of this. She watched emotions pass over his face like clouds over the sun. Rage, betrayal, guilt. Finally, he said, “I’ve suspected for some time my second has been moving against me. Now I know Neil is in it too. But why would that in
volve women of your kind?” His jaw clenched and unclenched as his gaze went unfocused on her in thought.
Och, a plot against Magnus. What had she and Riggs stumbled into? A flare of sympathy penetrated her fashing. It had to be difficult enough to rule a nation almost depleted of women without one’s closest councilors acting against one. “Doona ask me what they’re up to. I just hope you have some powerful allies to counter having your second and war chieftain against you.”
“Do not fear, precious one.” He laid a hand on her shoulder. “I am not without supporters. I had just hoped I wouldn’t have to call on them so soon. Keeping women in secret is a violation of our treaty with Larna and grounds for war. But before I gather my faithful and march for Saroc, I vow to exhaust every possible resource to find your lifemate.”
He faced a political plot against him and still, he made finding Riggs a priority. She wouldn’t let him shoulder this duty alone. Riggs was her pledgemate. She’d help find him. “The bailey where we dismounted, that’s where we’ll begin our search. Someone must have seen where his uncle took him.”
“That’s where I’ll begin my search. I can’t look for him effectively if I’m worried about your safety on top of a duplicitous war chieftain and a second who thinks to steal my throne. You’ll stay here with Daly and Travis and with four of my most trusted men at the entrances. You are not to leave under any circumstance.”
A retort rose in her throat, but she bit it back. He made sense. From what he said about Neil and Ari, it sounded as if her safety was far from guaranteed. Turned out Chroina wasn’t half as safe as Riggs had assumed.
Riggs. Her heart tore with longing to lay eyes on him. Don’t let him be dead.
“Fine,” she agreed. “Well. Go on with you. Find Riggs and you’ll have one more ally, and a strong one at that.” She waved him to the door, eager for him to begin his search, aye, but also eager to question Daly, who had seen Riggs outside the stable and might ken where Neil had taken him.
Magnus put his hand on the latch. “I will, precious one. Stay here, and do not fear.” He stepped into the corridor.
“Thank you for the gemstone,” she said as he pulled the door closed.
He paused. “You’re welcome,” he said with a wan smile, and then he was gone.
Only after the door had closed did she remember how Neil had interrupted them before she could explain her reaction to the portrait over the smaller throne. Magnus had said the likeness was good. She agreed. Quite good. But the likeness wasn’t hers. No. The lovely face rendered in expert strokes was that of another chestnut-haired Highland lass.
The portrait was of her sister, Seona.
* * * *
Riggs fell for what seemed a long way before hitting a hard surface. The landing knocked the wind out of him, but he hadn’t hit as hard as he’d expected. That eerie red light disappeared, leaving him surrounded by the darkness of a narrow stone cell. Now this was what he’d expected to see when Neil took him down to the dungeon, only he never expected to end up on this side of the bars.
A small, barred window set high in the wall let in the scent of brine. A different part of Glendall’s dungeon? But Glendall wasn’t situated close enough to the harbor to account for such a strong ocean scent. What had Ari said before the soldiers shoved him through that strange light?
“Give my regards to Bantus.”
Ari had spoken with Neil about sending him to Saroc. Could it be? Could he be more than a week’s journey from Anya, way up at the northern tip of Larna? The possibility alone was enough to make his heart pound with terror.
He tried to sit up, but his wrists were still bound behind him. Tightening his abdominal muscles, he got himself upright. Too fast. His head throbbed with pain. He was lucky he hadn’t lost consciousness from that blow. The dagger wound in his neck had soaked his collar with blood, but it wasn’t too deep. It’d scab over by morning. It was the non-physical insults that would evade healing. His uncle’s betrayal, not just of him, but of Magnus. The separation from Anya. Both twisted like knives in his gut.
Grunting with effort, he got to his feet and stood at the bars along the front of the cell. The light was meager, but he could make out the dark gray, almost black color of the stone making up the walls. There was only one place black rock was harvested and used for building. Northern Larna. He was in Saroc. In Blackrock Castle, Bantus’s home.
Ari had sent him here using a magic stone. He’d called on the name of some dark god.
Shite.
And Ari was in Chroina. With Neil and Anya.
He roared and banged his shoulder against the bars, trying to break them. They didn’t give.
Maybe if he could get his hands free he’d have a chance. He searched the cell for any loose or protruding pieces of rock he could use to cut through the rope. A turn around the barren space revealed nothing sharp enough. He tested the bonds. Too tight to wriggle out of. Too strong to break. Damn.
A distant rattling sound like a key in a lock made him hold his breath to listen. The shriek of a heavy door on rusted hinges. The stomping of several pairs of shoes descending some stairs. If he wasn’t mistaken, there were three shod men and one with bare feet.
“Bull, go on ahead and prepare the play room.” A voice so deep, it was almost distorted.
“Yes, sire.”
Sire? Must be Bantus. Great.
One set of footsteps shuffled ahead of the others. They grew closer as “Bull” came toward Riggs’s cell.
He shrank back into shadows before a man in a faded blue war kilt and worn work shoes lumbered past carrying a lantern. The Larnian soldier had arms the size of tree trunks and a chest like a boulder. Riggs could see how he’d gotten the name Bull. The soldier never glanced in his direction. His footsteps continued down the hall and turned down another.
Scuffling and whimpering sounds came from the direction Bull had gone. It sounded like several frightened animals cowering together. The whimpers reminded him of when he’d first heard Anya’s cries in the Larnian forest.
The human women. They were being kept in a cell not far from his own.
Bull’s heavy footsteps paused. “Yeah,” he said in his grating voice, “you know what’s coming, don’t you? Who’s it going to be tonight, huh? You, pretty thing? Yeah, you with the big tits. I hope so.” He grunted and moved on. Riggs heard him unlock a door beyond the women’s cell. Then he heard nothing but feminine whispers in a language he didn’t know.
Fucking bastard, stopping to taunt the women. Danu help him. Riggs’s worst fears about what could be happening in Larna were being confirmed right before his eyes. He had to get out of here. Had to stop this.
Unhurried footsteps approached his cell from the direction Bull had come. Three more men.
“Any requests, gentlemen?” Bantus’s voice.
“Whatever pleases you, sire,” said one man.
“Can I have a turn?” said another. “It’s been so long since I’ve had my pleasure with a female.”
“Tsk, tsk. Have you learned nothing, Myre? Those who request anything but their king’s pleasure get the beam. Reddick, when we get in the play room, hang him up and strip him.”
“Yes, sire.”
“No! Not the beam! I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I only desire your pleasure, sire!”
A cold chuckle. “Too late, Myre. Too late. Reddick, hang him facing away from the festivities. For being a sniveling ass kisser, you lose the privilege of watching.”
Festivities. Bantus spoke of abusing women as if it were sport. Maybe he could provide a different kind of sport to distract him and spare the women tonight.
When the men came up along his cell, he stepped up to the bars. “Larnian filth,” he spat. “King Magnus should have wiped you all out while he had the chance.”
The men stopped. He instantly knew which one was Reddick and which was Myre. Reddick was tall and lean with piebald stubble covering his head. He had a craggy face and cruel, orange eyes. Myre carried a lantern a
nd a ring of keys. He was smaller, scarred, and hunched with shame. The third man was King Bantus.
Though Riggs had been in Blackstone before as a spy, he’d never had the displeasure of meeting the lord of the castle. But he’d heard of him. Rumors abounded of a pale king as cruel as he was tall. If his height was anything to go by, Riggs was not looking forward to sampling the man’s cruelty.
Dressed in a pristine blue war kilt and nothing else, not even shoes, Bantus stood at least seven feet tall—the first man Riggs had ever met taller than him. Blond fur covered a lean, muscular chest. Straight, silver-blond hair hung over his shoulders. He faced the cell, hands clasped at his belt, and smiled a toothy smile. Like most Larnian nobles, his teeth were sharper, more wolf-like than Maranners’, a remnant of Jilken’s magical breeding with wolves.
“Look, gentlemen, we have a new guest.” That too-deep voice was like mud in Riggs’s ears. He wanted to shake it out, never hear it again. He was not to be so lucky. “What’s your crime, soldier? Or are you a soldier?” Bantus appraised his common clothing with eyes the white-gray color of an overcast sky. “Hmm, a commoner. Why would Ari send me a Maranner commoner?” He clapped once. “Ah well, no matter, I’ll see to your comfort once I’ve had my entertainment for the night. Myre, I’ll allow you the pleasure of fetching Fluffy before I hang you from the beam. Bathe her and prepare her for me.” The men started to walk away, toward the cell housing the women. Unacceptable.
He pressed his face to the bars. “Is Fluffy one of your she-wolves?” he called after them. “I heard you Larnians had grown desperate since you failed to hang on to your own women. But desperate enough to mate wild animals?” He scoffed. “King Magnus should have put you all out of your misery twenty years ago.”
Bantus stopped. He came back to face Riggs. “Do you know what separates a strong ruler from a weak one?” He didn’t wait for Riggs to answer. “A strong one grabs hold of the opportunities fate gives him. A weak one squanders them. Do you know what your golden lion is?”
“A brave warrior. A wise leader. A champion of women.” For all his personal anger with Magnus, he recognized the good his family’s rule had done in Marann. Especially when compared with Larna’s rulers.