by Queen, Nyna
At least that routine made it easy for her to track the passing of time. Alex almost wished it didn’t. Because since it did…
Something had gone wrong. There was no use in denying it any longer. When she didn’t report back at the appointed hour, the backup plan should have been set in motion. If everything had gone according to plan, someone would have come for her rescue by now. That no one had…
Alex’s craggy lips split when she pressed them together. Edalyne and Stephane had told her about the special way of communication they had established should Darken ever be blacklisted. They’d said, if he received their message, he would know it was an emergency. They’d said, if he was at all able to, he would come immediately.
But he hand’t come. Which most likely meant … it meant Darken was…
No! Alex’s lips pressed harder onto each other until she tasted blood in her mouth. It didn’t necessarily mean that Darken was dead. There could be other reasons for his delay. Sure there could. He might have been held up by something.
She was grasping at straws, she was aware of that, but she wasn’t ready to accept this particular conclusion yet. Probably never would be.
Not that it looked like she would be having much time for grief. Besides, despair and guilt already filled her to the brim. Why had she come up with this stupid plan in the first place? It had been doomed to fail before they even got started, and she’d known it.
Yes, she had known it, and she had accepted that risk. As had Stephane. But still, to think of Darken’s brother rotting in a death cell or, worse, being executed because she had persuaded and pestered him into joining her lost cause… To think what it would do to Max, and Josy, and Edalyne… All the lives she had gambled with to realize her mad plan only so that she could get a shot at her own personal happily ever after…
And Darken… Alex’s lips trembled. Darken.
Exhaustion and tiredness leached every drop of physical and mental strength out of her, not even allowing her the relief of tears. Sweet Jester, she was so tired. So drained and empty. Nothing but an empty vessel, ready to be filled with pain. Pain, turning into agony, turning into hours, turning into eternities, turning into pain. A never ending cycle of dread.
Alex vaguely heard her torturer fiddle with his tools but couldn’t concentrate on it. She drifted in and out of the pain-filled fog, unable to keep a clear thought while the pain scraped away layer upon layer of her mental skin, leaving her raw and soul-naked in a salty sea of agony. She wished it would stop for a moment. Just one moment. She was so horribly tired.
Please, let it stop.
She hadn’t realized that she had moaned the words, until a soft, soothing voice murmured beside her ear, “I know, my dear. You’re tired.” A gentle hand stroked her hair. “You want to sleep, no?”
Alex whimpered softly. Sleep. Yes, she wanted to sleep. Great Mother, she wanted to sleep so badly, her body painfully convulsed at the thought of it. To stretch out only for a second … ah, to forget…
The voice caressed her, sympathetic and full of understanding. “You’re in pain, no?”
Pain, yes… Sweet Jester, the pain. She wanted it to stop. She would do anything to make it it stop. “Please,” Alex groaned and her body trembled. “Please … s-stop.”
“It’s okay, my dear,” the voice soothed. “I can make the pain go away.”
Alex wanted to believe that voice. Oh, how she wanted to believe it, but something, some subtle instinct, told her that the voice couldn’t be trusted for some reason.
She tried to pull back but the hand tightened in her hair, not hurting, yet not letting her go either. It slid down to cup her face. “I can make it better, see?”
A water-soaked piece of cloth touched her bloody lips. Sweet, cold water. The tissue burned on the cuts, but Alex still greedily sucked on the wet cloth while her parched body screamed for sustenance. More, more!
But the cloth withdrew before it could even start to quench her thirst, leaving her aching for more. Her whimper turned into a low, desperate snarl.
“You want more?” the voice asked softly, and the cool cloth touched her forehead, soothing away the burning ache there. “Then you will get more. Much more. But first I need you to do something for me.”
Fingers caressed her cheek before lifting her chin up. “Can you do that for me? Can you be a good girl?”
If it made the pain stop, she could. Anything to make it stop. Alex weakly nodded her head, too exhausted to speak.
“Good girl,” the voice crooned. “I’ll make the pain stop. Soon. But first, tell me what I want to know.”
The voice was right beside Alex’s ear, low and reasonable, urging her to do its bidding. “Who else knows about the Master’s organization, about the prison camp, the murders. Tell me, and I promise I will make the pain go away.”
The fingers holding her chin increased their pressure, matching the urgency of his words. “Names. Give me the names, and I’ll make it stop. Just a few paltry names in exchange for some water and some sleep…”
Alex shuddered. It would be so easy. Saying a few names and the pain would stop. She wanted it. She wanted it so much. Right now, she would have killed for a gulp of water, for just a few moments without that pounding, grueling pain munching her body between its vicious teeth. Just a few names. Part of her was almost ready to give in. But the other part…
With immense effort, Alex forced her eyes open and glared at her torturer. Her cracked, swollen lips split. “Go to hell!”
The torturer gave a small, regretful shake of his head and reached for his tools.
“I’m afraid you first, my dear.”
DARKEN slumped against the mural beside the arch and looked down at the three dead bodies strewn across the yard. Blood dripped from the tip of his sword, hissing sharply when it touched the cobble-stones. The magic of the ghost-ring was already fading around him.
Rojas’ empty eyes stared up at him without an expression, dull black stones in the rugged landscape of his scarred face.
Their deaths had been swift. It was the only concession Darken had been able to make. In a battle of weapons and magic in which steel clashed against steel and will clashed against will, his will to survive had proven to be stronger than theirs to fulfill their duty, and while his death magic countered their coordinated magical attacks, they had stood no chance against the deadly wrath of his sword. He had cut through them like a vicious whirlwind, without mercy, impossible to stop.
Darken closed his eyes and rested his head against the cool stone. His hands shook, but it wasn’t from physical exhaustion. No, his body was still riding the aftershocks of his blood-induced high, still brimmed with the ecstasy of being sheathed in a darkness that wasn’t as rich and comforting as a woman’s womb but just as intoxicating.
Inside him, his magic squirmed, deceptively docile and pliant, like a content beast after a lavish feast.
Once unleashed, it had howled and buckled inside him, a torrent of destructive fire racing through his veins, begging him to kill. He had craved their pain. Oh, how he had craved their pain, yearning for the succulence of the other men’s souls, the bitter-sweet taste of their desperation.
Darken exhaled sharply and clenched his hands into tight fists. He had fed. But only enough to kill—no added pain, no prolonged death agony, although it had cost him a lot of strength to restrain himself that way.
Right now, he was almost satiated, a feeling that wouldn’t last long. It never did. Yet while the killer in him was more content than he had been in weeks, the rest of him felt worn. Tired. Empty to the core, and repulsed by the fact that some part of him had deeply enjoyed the killing.
He turned his hands and studied the gold-and-black tattoos on their backs. There was no splatter of blood on them, but he still felt as if they were slick with the hot, red liquid of life.
Even now.
Even now, though he had left the Order, they were still forcing him to kill, and with every person he killed, he f
elt their firm hands still holding his leash and wanted to scream. Still a puppet on their bloody strings, dancing to their sick tune.
Even worse, this time his victims hadn’t been strangers. He had known and respected both Rojas and Jyulian, in Rojas’ case even genuinely liked the man. Now they were dead by his sword, and he was the one left behind to deal with the bloody pieces. He should probably be angry or resentful—they had tried to kill him, after all—but the only emotion he could muster was regret.
More men dead. More good men crushed by the wheels of a conspiracy they weren’t part of and knew nothing about. Nothing but tools in a bigger game.
With a soft sigh, Darken opened his eyes. His gaze fell onto the face of the blond youngster whose body had dropped inside the light cone. The pale light reflected on his handsome face, turning the rich golden skin sallow. A look of genuine surprise was etched into his features. To the very last, the young buck had thought himself invincible—until Darken’s blow to his gut had proved him wrong.
Death had washed the sneer from his face and without the cocky expression, he looked shockingly young, just like a boy, really.
Darken’s mouth tightened into a thin, slashing line. Another dead kid. Another sapling cut down before he could grow into a tree, before he had a chance to find out what kind of man he could become. His only fault: juvenility. That—and being born with the wrong talent. A talent he hadn’t asked for, that neither of them had asked for.
Usually, juvenility was a vice Darken could easily forgive, but today he had exploited it mercilessly. There would be no redemption, no second chance for this one.
His memory served up the image of another cocky youth. Belaris, too, had thought himself indestructible before age and experience had turned him a tiny little bit wiser. Not by much, though. Darken pressed a fist to his mouth.
I always bet on you.
Yes, Darken thought bitterly. You did bet on me. And look where it got you.
How many more men were going to die until this was over? How many more would he have to kill?
The answer to that was as simple as it was brutal: it would never be over—at least not until it was his blood watering the ground and his torn flesh feeding the crows. The Order would never stop hunting him.
The Provost’s harried voice reverberated in his ears. You have the power to end this, Darken.
Yes, he would end this. But on his terms, not theirs.
First, however, he had to hide these bodies and cleanse the murder scene. The longer he could keep the next death squad from picking up his trace, the more time it would give him to find a place to recover and get some much needed sleep.
The rusty light of dawn creeping across the ragged city outline urged him to hurry. Luckily, the graveyard waited just beyond the wall, its misty ground eager to swallow up the evidence of his crimes. It was one of the reasons why Darken had, cold and calculating, chosen this site for their confrontation. A glacial smile tugged at his lips. The Order’s training was too deeply ingrained in him.
He pushed himself off the wall and flinched as a sharp pain stabbed his side. When he touched his hand to his ribcage, his fingers came away bloody. He grimaced with a soft curse. One small slip, one little opening, but it had been immediately punished by a nick of Rojas’ blade.
Pulling up his shirt, Darken quickly inspected the wound. It was only a shallow cut, but it still needed to be cleaned and treated. If it got infected and he was struck by a fever, he would be easy meat for his pursuers.
All in due time.
Darken took a step towards Rojas’ corpse. Something grazed the back of his head. He spun in place with a snarl, teeth bared and sword risen for the strike.
Behind him was nothing, only the stone wall. His nostrils flared as he scanned the still dark yard for hidden attackers. Empty. Yet the feeling was still there. The feeling that he wasn’t quite alone.
Again, that featherlight touch. Darken wheeled around, his magic racing through his blood, ready to explode outward and kill whoever thought could creep up on him. But—nothing. Wait! He stood very still, his heart beating in his fingertips. There was nothing physical, but something was there, something … inside his head!
Tense to the point of tearing a muscle and still filled to the brim with his magic, Darken slipped inward into the vast darkness of his mind, focusing on that subtle invading touch. He quickly found its source, a humming thread that buzzed like a mental bee in the deep, velvety silence. He was about to swat it away and tear the thread apart, but hesitated.
There was something strangely familiar about the feeling of that thread. It drew him in, called to him—almost like a voice that was calling his name.
Suspended in the endless darkness, Darken wavered. It could be bait to lure him into a magical trap. Some magics involved mental manipulation and those spells were nothing to trifle with. If he was right, and he triggered the spell, he might find himself locked in a cage of pain, unable to control his body, or worse.
But there still was this familiar something.
Cautiously, like a mountain feline smelling prey but sensing a hunter’s snare, he followed the tug along the thread, allowing it to lead him through the subtle darkness.
It was like floating blindfolded through the night, guided by a bodiless voice toward an unknown destination. It led him to a softly pulsing knot of darkness that was even deeper than the surrounding night, a glowing black bubble lit from within. When he floated closer, a hot tangle of emotions seared him. Irritation. Exhaustion. And a knife-sharp sense of urgency.
Still wary, he reached out with a mental finger and touched it, ready to withdraw immediately if it turned out to be some kind of trap.
*Darken,* a deep gravel-grinder voice filled his mind, faint and choppy, the way it was when you used a halfborn mobile over a great distance and the reception was bad. *Finally.*
“Blayde?” Darken spoke the name both in his mind and with his lips, unable to mask his surprise, then swore viciously. *How did you—?*
*Never mind that now,* Blayde interrupted sharply, although his voice sounded strained as if he were hefting up weights while speaking. *Your sister-in-law is desperately trying to locate you, but it seems you are beyond her reach.*
Darken froze at the wall. There was only one reason why Edalyne would try to locate him with her magic. Something had happened to his family, something terrible!
Fear burned through him at the same time his hand shot up to his chest where the small, flat disk of the porta unicanis that he always carried with him was hidden in a secret inner pocket.
In case he was ever declared rogue—not a farfetched possibility considering that the Order had it in for him since he’d first defied them—he and Stephane had devised a way for his family to contact him, should they truly need him. Since it could be tracked by magical means and therefore amounted to nothing short of a call for a suicide commando, it was an absolute last resort. His family wouldn’t call him for anything less than a life-and-death emergency.
All his fears came crashing down on him. Darken was already running toward the hiding spot of his hover-cycle, ignoring the nagging ache from the wound in his side.
The porta unicanis was a special little device. You could think of it as a single-use one-way portal that was primed at a specific location where the device’s counterpart was stored and would magically transport its user there without needing the assistance of a Portalist or a Teleporter. However, Portalist magic was used in their creation, and they had a bad reputation for malfunctioning, especially if you bought the cheaper versions available in the open market. In the best case, you ended up at the wrong place, in the worst, you didn’t end up anywhere.
Well, Darken had not the slightest doubt that his own device would work. Purchased from the most renowned supplier of Arcadia’s military, Stephane had manipulated this particular set of disks in several ways with his gift for magic crafting. If the receiver device on his family’s side was activated, the main
device in Darken’s possession would respond so that he knew that they needed him, allowing him to initiate the transport home. To avoid others from being able to summon him this way, the receiver was protected by a blood sigil so that it could only be activated by blood of his blood, which meant that only a Dubois could trigger the device.
As a further precaution, the signal could only be sent to Darken’s device if his current coordinates were entered into the receiver. That’s where Edalyne’s clairvoyance came into play. To get his coordinates, his brother’s wife would have to locate him. The combination of these precautions, while not completely excluding it, reduced the risk that the mechanism could be employed by a third party to get ahold of Darken.
There was a snag, of course, as there always was. Although Edalyne was a level two Clairvoyant with a naturally strong gift, her talent was still limited to a certain radius around her own position. It consisted of about two hundred miles before it gradually got jumpy and eventually failed. Which was why she hadn’t been able to locate Maxwell and Josepha when they had teleported all the way to Bhellidor.
Darken’s mind was racing faster than his legs, the urgency inside him blending with Blayde’s, whose mind was still loosely connected to his.
After leaving Alex behind at Helton Manor, he had rapidly created some distance between him and every known Dubois family seat while at the same time making painstakingly sure to stay within Edalyne’s location range, ready to come running should the Master or his minions try to target other members of his family next.
However, that was before he’d paid his little home visit to the Provost’s house and waved the red rag. As he’d expected, it had drawn the Forfeits in the area to him like goaded bulls, and the moment he’d realized that a death squad had taken up his trace, he’d been too busy trying to shake them off to closely monitor his distance from the family, needing all his skills to stay ahead of them. At some point, he must have crossed the invisible line that cut him off from Edalyne’s reach, rendering him unable to receive their call for help.