Kissed by Death - Book three of the Trueborn Heirs Series

by Queen, Nyna

  He couldn’t explain any of this without opening the doors to a conversation he’d rather not start in the middle of a minefield, especially when that conversation promised to be the worse minefield still.

  Ironic, wasn’t it? He had wanted so much to have her in a place where she couldn’t run from him, and now that he had her in exactly that spot, he realized that he, too, had no means of escaping if their conversation didn’t go as desired.

  Alex perked up one slim eyebrow at him. “Well, sugar?”

  Still waiting for an answer. Darken pressed his lips together. She had the better senses. Since she was here, it would be unreasonable not to make use of them. If it had been anyone but Alex, he wouldn’t have hesitated for a second.

  Alex was already displeased with him. If he played superior now, she would never forgive him.

  Darken invited her with a sweep of his hand. “After you, lady.”

  They progressed a lot faster after that. Alex confidently picked her way through the grassy hills, leading them up the slope in gentle curves, sometimes stopping and puzzling for a second before picking up the step again.

  Darken was so close behind her, he could feel the warmth of her body, making sure to step precisely where she had set her feet before. He still held onto the scanner rod with one hand, but it was more a gesture than anything else. His life was completely in Alex’s hands now.

  The night sky sifted pearly moonlight onto the mountain side, illuminating the mist pooling above the ground like whispers of Ghost’s Breath that promised sweet dreams but hid nightmares instead while they performed their odd little shadow dance across a field of bombs. The moment held a strange kind of intimacy, yet, at the same time, Darken felt the gap between them which seemed larger than the width of the mountain itself.

  In the past few weeks, there had been situations in which he’d thought that she was reaching out to him, but now he wondered if he’d only interpreted them that way because it was what he desired in his sleepless nights. He thought back and tried to remember one single instance in which she’d made an explicit move toward him and found none. A lot of delicious banter, true. But whenever they had touched, it had been him who had initiated it. Could he have misinterpreted her so badly?

  Fruitless musings leading him nowhere. And if you don’t stop brooding and start to concentrate on the mission, you’ll get the both of you killed!

  Before them, pieces of cracked pavement poked through the dirt. The remains of a former street. They stepped onto the safe terrain of the asphalt and a little tension dropped from Darken’s shoulders. At least, as long as they stayed on the street, they were safe from the landmines.

  Darken glanced at his acum magnis. “According to Belaris’ coordinates, we should be getting close. Only a few hundred yards.”

  The slope steepened sharply as they followed the broken street. The forest around it was getting thicker again, a mesh of dark green surging against the steep rock face that rose into the sky in front of them, growing higher and higher as they conquered the serpentine road.

  Suddenly, Alex stopped. Darken’s hand immediately went to his sword.

  “There are people up there,” she whispered.

  “You sure?”

  She just looked at him.

  “Alright, alright. How many?”

  She adopted a look of pure concentration. “It’s hard to tell but I would guess at least a dozen. And they are using magic. A lot of magic. I can also hear an engine running.”

  Now that she said it, Darken heard it too, the low rumble of a magic-fueled coach.

  Darken unsheathed his sword in a fluid motion. “We came here all the way. It would be impolite not to say hello.”

  The road took a sharp turn, and they slunk off into the grove on its left side, using the shadows of the trees as cover as they rounded the bend.

  Approximately fifty yards ahead, the street ended abruptly at a heavy, iron-shod gate. To both of its sides, a massive dark wall, studded with gun turrets and small watch towers and topped with rolls upon rolls of gleaming barbed wire, reached twenty-five feet into the sky. To the right of the gate, the wall seemed to grow right out of the flat rise of the mountain. The street bent and followed the wall, trailing the mountain and getting lost somewhere in the forest again. It had probably been the access-road from the side of Tharsis. To the gate’s left, the wall curved, the tree-covered ground at its foot narrowing until it dropped away in a steep ravine. It conveyed the impression that the prison camp was clinging to the mountain side like an ugly stone baby to its mother.

  The gate stood open, but the entrance was blocked by two bulky mountain vehicles. Standard Arcadian military design, armored and camouflaged. Darken lifted an eyebrow. Rather unlikely that the army would be paying a visit to this place, and in the middle of the night, too.

  Beyond the vehicles, flickers of light and voices muffled by the thick stone walls indicated busy movement.

  A hand touched his shoulder. Alex put a finger to her lips and nodded toward the wall at the left side of the gate.

  Darken inclined his head. He followed her as she skirted the prison wall and slowly crept closer to it, his sword ready in his fingers.

  The tree-coated area along the wall tapered quickly, becoming a stretch of barely twenty feet in width before dropping off in a sheer cliff behind them.

  About ten feet from the wall, Darken and Alex went to ground and crouched in a cluster of trees. This close, even Darken, without the help of shaper senses, felt the magic pouring out of the invisible cracks in the stone. His own magic responded, pulsing eagerly inside him, black shadows crawling underneath his skin, hoping for a moment of carelessness to snap free. It had been too long since he had last fed, and his body was reaching that state of urgent restlessness, that all too known pressure calling him to a place without mercy where everything would be painted in blood. Perhaps the Order’s officials were hoping that if they just granted him leave long enough, he might lose it and slaughter his family. He could already picture their silent celebrations. Well, he had no intention of playing into their hands.

  Darken tightened his mental grip on his death magic and studied the wall. No sign of neglect. The barbed wire looked brand new and the gun turrets, while deactivated, could have been part of the defense system of any Forfeit convent. This was high-grade equipment right there and of the highly expensive kind. Was that what Governor Ferhus’ and the others’ money had been used for? If so, it had been well spent. The place looked like it could withstand a siege.

  No wards were active on the walls as far as he could see, but there was no way Darken would be able to climb it without any special equipment. Alex, perhaps. But all that barbed wire at the top might prove a problem even for her, as well as those watch towers, although most of them didn’t seem occupied at the moment, and the few shapes he could spot up there didn’t seem particularly interested in what was happening outside of the walls. And why would they be? Nobody was supposed to be inside this area.

  Still, getting past them without raising an alarm would be a real challenge.

  Beside him, Alex pursed her lips. “Well, that’s not a ruin.”

  “I’m glad you pointed it out, or I might have missed that.”

  Alex glared at him. This time it was Darken who responded with a lazy smile.

  What goes around, comes around, darling.

  “Who’s there?” a male voice called.

  Instinctively, Darken grabbed Alex by the waist and hauled her behind a tree, pressing her against the bark with his own body.

  The beam of a magic torch flickered among the trees like a ghostly will-o’-the-wisp, bouncing up and down. Heavy boots crushed the underbrush, coming from the direction of the gate.

  Darken squeezed Alex a little tighter between him and the tree trunk, which was barely wide enough to hide both of them, breathing calmly through his nose. The scent of Alex’s hair filled his nostrils. He felt her heartbeat against his chest, the rise and fall
of her breast. Against his better judgment, he leaned forward an inch and inhaled deeply, closing his eyes. Ah, Alex.

  So close. He would only have to dip his head to let his lips touch her neck, to take a taste of her silky skin…

  With the most undue timing, his body reacted to the soft female thighs pressed against his loins.

  Darken dug his nails into the bark. Alex stiffened in his arms, and he felt her breathing speed up.

  Don’t move, Alex. Please, don’t move.

  Darken increased the pressure of his fingers on the bark, fighting the need of his body with all of his will and carefully peered around the tree trunk.

  The frizzy shape of a man peeled from the shadows between the trees, trailed by a second, taller one.

  “What’s the matter, Jasper?” The taller man puffed slightly as he jogged to catch up with the one in front of him. A third one followed directly on his heels. All of them had drawn spellguns.

  Damn! Darken bared his teeth in the darkness.

  “I heard something,” the man closest to them, Jasper, said. The light of his torch raked the ground, coming dangerously close to where Darken and Alex were squeezed together against the tree.

  “You always hear something, Jas,” the second man said irritably. “How many more times do you want to send us on a wild goose chase?”

  “This time I really heard something.”

  “Probably just a wolf or sometin’,” the third guy muttered sneeringly. “Nobody ain't stupid enough to move up ‘ere—‘cept for us, o’ course, and we have our orders. We’re already behind schedule. I ain't getting me hide tanned because ye thought ye heard sometin’. Let’s get back in and be done with it.”

  “I tell you, I heard something,” Jasper insisted stubbornly. “I think … I think it was a woman.”

  Beneath Darken, Alex hissed softly.

  “A woman!” The guy beside Jasper scoffed. “And I’m the Prime of Arcadia. You’re fantasizing because your old ball and chain isn’t giving you the time of day anymore.”

  He and the other one chortled.

  Jasper stopped, his face twisting into an angry expression. “Laugh all you want, but I did hear something!” He spun, pointing his torch into the trees. It slipped right over the tree where Darken and Alex hid. They both held their breath simultaneously. “And I’ll prove it to you.”

  He raised his spellgun a bit higher and called, “Come out with your hands in the air, whoever you are! We’ve got guns pointed at you!”

  His gun was pointing at a tree stump, and the way he held it wasn’t exactly encouraging with regard to his shooting abilities. Still, three spellguns could do enough damage, even in the hands of bad shots, and the other two men didn’t strike Darken as complete fools.

  Jasper took another step in their direction. If he were to swing his torch only a couple of inches up and left, he would be pointing it directly at Darken’s face.

  Darken relaxed, gently releasing his breath, and tightened his grip on the hilt of his sword, readying himself.

  Below him, Alex’s body became taut like a spring, and her hand on the bark was suddenly studded with razor-sharp black claws.

  And here comes the spider…

  It was almost uncanny how aligned their minds worked. They would have to act quickly and silently if they didn’t want to alert the entire camp of their presence. With the ravine only ten feet behind them, they wouldn’t have much maneuvering room, although Darken wasn’t too worried about that.

  Jasper inched forward another step.

  “Yo, man!” The one at the back called, suddenly sounding uneasy. “Don't walk down there. ’S not safe. There’s mines ’n stuff outside of these walls.”

  Jasper rolled his eyes. “I’m just taking a quick look. Don't have a cow!” He shook his head.

  “Chickenshit,” he muttered to himself and spat to the side.

  He held up his torch and moved forward.

  Something popped with a dry, metallic click. It was an almost inaudible sound, and yet it rang in Darken’s ears, impossibly loud.

  For a quarter of a second, everything seemed frozen: Jasper’s mouth dropped open and his eyes widened, boring straight into Darken’s—just before the world exploded.

  An ear-deafening blast shook the hillside.

  Alex! It was the only thought Darken could muster before the ground buckled and sprayed the air with rocks and earth. He dropped his sword, yanked her to him and spun, meaning to shield her with his body from the worst of the impact—in the exact moment she did the very same thing.

  They collided in the air. Alex’s shaper speed and strength gave her the slightest edge, and Darken felt himself being shoved backwards. The ground vanished beneath his feet.

  Nooo! His hand closed upon Alex’s arm and he held on with all his strength. An enormous shockwave hit them and pushed them both backwards off the slope, sending them flying, Alex’s hair flaring around her in a silver cloud, mouth open wide in a scream that was swallowed by the blast.

  For an almost silent moment they were hovering in the air, clutched together in a desperate embrace, cocooned in the peace of the center of an exploding star.

  Time caught up and they hit the ground in a tangle of limbs, rolling and tumbling down the ravine, hitting rocks and trunks. Trees flashed by them in the darkness in a sickening blur. As flying debris triggered more mines, more explosions went off around them, like corks popping out of champagne bottles, raining sticks and stones down on them.

  A tree appeared out of nowhere, and they smashed into it with their legs. Pain seared Darken’s shins but the impact wasn’t enough to slow their tumbling descent.

  Darken growled and tried to blink through the layers of pain and dust while they toppled down the ravine wrapped around each other. Pine branches feathered his vision, flickering in and out of his view and then suddenly—nothing.

  Before them the world ended.

  Frantically, Darken tried to grab onto something—a stone, a branch, anything—but his fingers only caught a fistful of pine needles and dirt. He dug his hands and heels into the earth, attempting to slow them, attempting to find some kind of leverage, but couldn’t find any hold. There was nothing he could do to stop them.

  The mountain ended, and they fell.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE ground punched Alex in the back. Pain exploded in her neck and raced down her limbs, momentarily paralyzing every muscle. The world blurred, blotting in and out of focus. Her ears were filled with a shrill, white ringing.

  For a second, she could do nothing but lay there, gasping and wheezing and trying to suck tiny portions of air into her lungs, which seemed to have shrunken to the size of peas.

  Alex heaved and blinked against the bursts of blackness. About ten feet above her, the sharp edges of the mountain slowly peeled out of the darkness. Only a short fall, thank the Great Mother. And apparently landing on her backpack had prevented her head from smacking on the ground full force. Which couldn’t be said about the rest of her body. It felt as if she’d been put through a giant mangle and then battered with a potato sack full of rocks.

  With a low groan, Alex extended her arms, attempting to push herself upright. Her right hand hit a yawning void. Alex’s head whipped around. Only a couple of inches from her hip, the mountain broke off sharply as if chopped off by a giant’s axe, plunging into endless darkness.

  Sweet Jester! With a yelp, Alex jerked away from the edge and bumped into something hard and warm.

  Darken!

  She rolled over a bit too quickly and was hit by a wave of dizziness that munched her insides until they attempted to turn outwards. She pressed her forehead against the stony ground to keep herself from vomiting on the spot. Clenching her teeth, she fought the sickness back and propped herself up, hissing in pain when her left wrist refused to support her weight.

  Darken was on his side, his back towards her. He wasn’t moving. Cold rushed through Alex’s veins as she reached for him with tremblin
g fingers. Was he unconscious or…?

  The mountain shook. Alex froze with her hand hovering above Darken’s shoulder. All around her, little pebbles jumped up and down from the ground, click-click-clacking against the naked stone. Some of them jittered off the ledge and vanished in the bottomless chasm.

  A deep, rumbling noise rolled down the mountain side. Soft at first, it quickly became louder and louder until it was thundering toward them like a galloping herd of panicked horses fleeing from a pack of cougars. Except this wasn’t a stampede. This was something far worse. A land slide!

  Panic surged through Alex. Her gaze flickered around. The ledge they had landed on extended only a couple of feet in every direction. There was nowhere to go. Great Mother, they would be dragged down into the deep!

  The mountain moaned like a living creature that had been stabbed with a dagger and was squirming in its death throes. They only had seconds left.

  Above them, the rocks formed a small overhang. Not enough to really cover them, but better than nothing. With a guttural outcry, Alex grabbed Darken’s lifeless body, ignoring the scream of pain from her own, and wrenched it under the overhang, then threw herself on top of him and pressed them both against the mountain face.

  Not a second too soon. With a primeval roar, tons of loose earth and uprooted vegetation gushed over the edge of the mountain in a thundering waterfall of dirt, pitching them into complete darkness. Alex screamed both in fear and pain as stones and hard clumps of dirt pelted her back, pummeling already sore skin. She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her face against Darken’s shoulder, praying for it to be over.

  It ended as quickly as it had started.

  Suddenly everything was quiet. The only remaining sound was that of Alex’s blood pounding in her ears and her too quick breathing echoing loudly in the sudden silence.

  Alex slowly raised her head and coughed. The night air was so imbued with dust it was nearly impossible to see and even harder to breathe. A few last grains of sand trickled down on them from above, almost as an afterthought.