When he headed for the doors, she recognized Crynar.
“Sweet cheese and noodles,” she whispered under her breath then ducked and scurried to one side, pressing her back to the wall. He exited and strode quickly down the corridor, in the opposite direction, thank goodness.
Once he was gone, she watched the doors swing shut on their old-fashioned hinges. It took longer than the swishing electronic doors she had at home and aboard ship. Aurelia took the opportunity presented her and darted through them.
“GO EASY THIS TIME, my lord,” the physician urged before he left. “He is weak, and his respiratory status is still precarious. If you crush his trachea again, I might not be able to piece him back together a second time.”
He nodded his assent then waited for Crynar to leave before starting the interrogation. He’d be called back to take care of any damage his overlord caused, but the man had no stomach for blood outside his medical clinic. To get the answers he needed, Darios would follow his advice, but keeping calm while dealing with the man wouldn’t be easy.
Some of the alien women weren’t much larger than children but the Ophig scum had treated them with a heavy hand. He vastly outweighed Callae, and Daryk suspected his extra-large boot was responsible for her two cracked ribs. Aurelia hadn’t fared any better. From the swelling on her delicate cheekbone, her wrists bruised from heavy restraints, and the way she guarded her side in the throes of last night’s passion, snapping the vile creature’s neck would be too quick an end.
Convinced if he touched him his resolve would evaporate, he nodded at the truthsayer he’d brought along to do it for him. He waited until the older man took his place. Once he had his hand clamped firmly on the bend of the man’s neck, the inner aspect against his pulse point and the tips of his fingers splayed on his chest, the best position for discerning the truth, Darios began his questioning.
“How did you get past our shields?”
“We didn’t. Until you brought me here, I had never set foot on your hellish planet.”
“Truth,” the scryer exclaimed.
“Then how did you do it?” he demanded in a low growl.
“The Aeldorians have developed a new device, some kind of portal. I don’t remember the exact name. Once we pinpointed the women with our scanners, the machine transferred them through your shields to our ship without ever landing.”
“Impossible,” he grunted as a murmur of shock rose from his men.
“He speaks truth, Warlord,” the truthsayer affirmed.
“Did you take the Aeldorian princess the same way?”
“No. We had to land to do that. It was before we obtained the device,” the Ophig explained, extremely forthcoming, though he’d be a fool not to be in the face of Darios’ displeasure.
“To be clear,” he said evenly, though a tightness crept into his voice as he controlled his rage, “someone on Aeldor gave you the device as payment?”
“Yes.”
He sought further clarification. “They would have had to lower their defense shields and deactivate the alarm systems for you to land.”
“That was the plan,” the mercenary stated with a shrug.
“But why would they do that? She is beloved by her people?”
“I do not know, nor did I ask.” His apathetic expression made Darios want to wipe it from his face with his fists—permanently—especially when he added, “It was a job.”
Destroying Aurelia’s life meant nothing to him.
“And you just decided to stop by Voltarre and pick up three of our women on a whim?”
“We had a quota to meet, or the slavers cut our profits.”
While Darios’ lips twisted in disgust at his callousness, which he didn’t doubt, something didn’t ring true about his story. “I don’t believe it’s that simple. You knew we would follow, which would put us on the Napsalese ship along with the princess.”
“Uh...”
“You were setting us up to take the blame if the plan went awry!” Darios accused.
Bending low, he put his hands on his knees and got in the Ophig captain’s face. Close but not touching, he often used his size and proximity to intimidate, which usually made his enemy squirm and give up the information he sought. In this case, he wasn’t sure how long he could hold out with the man’s stench enough to make his eyes water.
“Admit it,” he demanded brusquely. “Your intention was to cast suspicion on us and away from the real criminal. It would mean war—again!”
“No, Warlord,” the worm replied, his air of indifference finally cracking along with his voice. “That wasn’t part of the plan, at least not from Aeldor.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I, um...” His eyes darted around as if searching for a way to escape.
“Speak, or I’ll shake it out of you,” Darios roared, his deep voice reverberating off the stone walls of the small cell.
“Because she wasn’t meant to be sold!” the captain exclaimed, trembling in the face of the warlord’s wrath. “We were hired to...”
“To what, dammit!”
“To make the princess disappear—permanently.”
“Truth!” the older man exclaimed, an edge of anxiety creeping into his previously sedate tone.
A rumble of anger erupted from his men.
“Aeldorian history repeating itself, for what, the hundredth time?” one asked with a bitter edge of sarcasm.
“Yes, but they’ve sunk lower than low to target a woman,” a second man remarked.
Another snorted in derision. “She’s a twin. What do you expect?”
“True,” a fourth man replied. “They are the most ruthless of them all.”
Disbelieving a captain could be so obtuse to not know his benefactor, Darios brushed the truthsayer’s hand away and gripped the man’s throat directly.
He felt Cogar and Iyo’s restraining hands on his arms. “I’m in control!” he told them. To the Ophig, he demanded, “Who ordered her death?”
“I do not know. I swear.”
“Truth, dammit,” he exclaimed then kept on going. “Someone hired you for this mission.”
“Yes, but I don’t know who,” he squealed.
Darios’ fingers flexed ever so slightly because he knew instantly that he did. “You are lying, which is as good as signing your death warrant.”
“Please, my lord,” he gasped. “I’d rather not say and make a powerful enemy.”
“Unless you’d rather die,” he snarled sharply in response, “you’d better answer, now.”
His threat worked, and the man exclaimed in a shrill whine, “We had a go-between who handled the negotiations. Once, he let slip the title of the man he worked for. We figured Prince Axton wanted his sister out of the way for some reason.”
“You lie!” a feminine voice accused suddenly. “My brother loves me. He wouldn’t do such a vile thing!”
Darios turned as did all of his men. Aurelia was looking on from the doorway, her body trembling, an expression of horrified disbelief on her pale, beautiful face. Too preoccupied with the interrogation, he hadn’t heard her approach, nor did his men, apparently.
When she swayed and reached out to catch herself on the doorframe, he wanted to go to her but trusted his scrying more than anyone else’s.
“Aurelia, we are handling this.” He jerked his chin at Iyo. “One of my men will escort you back—”
“You are spewing filthy lies.” Ignoring his order as if he hadn’t just given one, she bit out her words with contempt as she addressed the captain, “Axton wouldn’t do this. To harm me, his twin, would cause him pain. It would be like severing an arm!”
“He doesn’t lie, Princess,” the scryer stated. “Lord Darios is a truthsayer, as am I. We touch him and know he speaks truth.”
Her gaze drifted to where they both had a hand on their detestable prisoner.
She may not have witnessed truth scrying before, but had to know, as did everyone throughout Euphyrion, it w
as reliably accurate.
“Someone is making it appear my brother instigated this. I cannot, will not, believe it is true.”
Darios watched as her hands rose to her temples and rubbed, her head no doubt pounding. Visibly upset and still early in her recovery, he worried she would relapse. He wanted her away from this.
“Iyo, get her out of here,” he ordered, since Aurelia wasn’t listening.
When his man moved to her side, she backed away, shaking her head, vehemently. “There must be a rational explanation; I won’t leave until we learn what it is.”
“Some Aeldorian faction is against the peace, most likely,” Cogar suggested.
“Perhaps Staviros’ twin, King Aziros, is behind it,” one of the men suggested.
“No!” she exclaimed. “My father embraced the truce, as did our people. We don’t want war.”
“Nonetheless, they have instigated it,” another soldier said coolly.
With desperation on her lovely face and a sheen of tears in her beautiful pale blue eyes, she issued a plea which tugged at his heart. “Please, I won’t believe it’s true. I must go home and clear my brother’s name.”
Darios remained firm in his denial, for her sake. “There is much here we don’t understand. Until we do, and the architect responsible for this plot is identified, you will stay here where you are safe.”
“It appears Prince Axton has already been identified,” someone muttered.
“Silence,” he barked at his men as he released the Ophig captain and moved her way. “Aurelia,” he murmured, reaching for her, but she backed away from him too.
“He at least speaks his truth,” she exclaimed in a broken, distraught voice. “You call me a guest, but I’m really a hostage to be used as leverage against my father. Isn’t this why you rescued me?”
“Don’t speak foolishness. From the moment we boarded, well before we knew you were captured, we intended to rescue everyone on that barge.”
Her hand flew out indicating the Ophig captain. “Including him? Wasn’t he taken for a strategic purpose, the same as me.”
She wasn’t entirely wrong in her estimation, and he wouldn’t lie.
“Our women were stolen. We want answers and plan to seek justice. So, yes, using you to get both if it came to that was discussed.” Bending at the waist, he leaned forward, bringing them face-to-face for his next point. “Since then things have changed between us,” he reminded her softly. He paused, holding her gaze, hoping she would read his feelings and know the truth. “What hasn’t changed is the fact there is a traitor on your world who ordered your death.”
“Not Axton,” she insisted. “If I could speak to him, or my father—”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible. The dust storm has not diminished.”
Her eyes shifted to the Ophig. “Did you hear this go-between say my brother’s name?”
“No, but there’s only one prince on Aeldor.”
“So, you assumed it was him since I was the target? There are over a dozen princes in our star system. He could have been referring to any one of them. Repeat back exactly what you heard,” she insisted, defending her brother as proficiently as the finest legal advocate.
“Well, I, didn’t actually hear him myself.”
“What?” she demanded. “Explain yourself.”
“Ryker attended the meeting and relayed the information to me. He referred to him as ‘the High Prince,’ and as far as I know, one of those only exists on Aeldor.”
“Truth,” the scryer stated softly.
She turned to utter another frantic appeal. “My lord, surely you do not intend to condemn my brother on secondhand information. If the captain had survived, he would know, but you still couldn’t believe anything that passed between his rotten teeth.”
A palpable silence filled the room.
Darios’ gaze shifted to her briefly then back to the prisoner. “This isn’t the captain?”
She eyed the man with disgust. “No. He wasn’t quite so large, but stank just as bad.”
“You’re certain, Aurelia? In addition to their common stench, they all have yellow eyes and brown teeth.”
Her hand crept up to the bruise on her cheek, now an ugly purple and yellow. It showed signs of fading, though from the way she touched it, gingerly as if still tender, it must have been a vicious blow.
“Very certain,” she answered, her voice brittle and higher pitched than usual. “I doubt I’ll ever forget him.”
Darios strode back to the corner and jerked the man from his cot. He ripped the captains’ insignia from the collar of his filthy, soot-stained jacket and held it in front of his nose. “If you’re not the captain, who the hell are you?”
“I’m Lotho Bardet the copilot. The captain is my cousin Ryker.”
“Is?” he repeated sharply, keying in on one pivotal word. Was it a slip? “You think he’s still alive?”
“I, uh, can’t say for sure.”
“Why not?” he demanded, while giving the evasive oaf a hard shake. “What aren’t you telling me? Did your captain escape?”
“The smoke was thick, and we got separated. I don’t know if he made it out.”
“He speaks true,” Darios growled as he heedlessly dropped him. “You’re wearing his insignia to throw us off, damn you.”
“No. The heat and sparks were burning my skin, so I put on the first thing I could find. It just happened to be Ryker’s jacket.”
The truthsayer who had resumed his hold as soon as his overlord let go, stated quietly, “This is also true.”
“Flaming hell!” Rancor sharpened his voice. He wanted to break something in half, preferable the Ophig imposter. Instead, he moved away from temptation and sought his second’s valued input. “What do you think?”
“He couldn’t have escaped,” Cogar replied. “We would have detected a pod or shuttle jettison. And no one could have survived the blast.”
“If he used this new device, he could have gotten off the ship, undetected, before it exploded. Princess,” he deliberately softened his voice when addressing her. “What do you know about this portal?”
“I’m hearing about it for the first time, like you. It seems too fantastical to be real. If I could speak to my father or Axton—”
“Unfortunately, as I’ve mentioned, that can’t happen right now.”
HER PULSE POUNDED INSIDE her skull. Talk of devices that made people disappear then magically reappear vast distances away, Darios shouting loud enough to wake the dead, and outlandish accusations that her brother was trying to kill her all made the pain substantially worse. She hoped that any moment this horrible nightmare would be over.
But she didn’t wake in the warlord’s arms as she’d done that morning.
She eyed Ryker’s accomplice in her kidnapping. With both the old scryer and Darios’ hands on him there could be no mistaking his answers. Unlike her power, which left her to interpret the meaning of a wide range of emotions, Voltarrean truthsayers were said to be infallible.
What if they hadn’t posed the right questions? Or, suppose the man was being forced to lie by unconventional means? Hypnosis came to mind. It could be he was compelled to lie out of fear for a loved one. Would extreme duress alter the accuracy? There could be more to this than truth and lies, but how did she find out?
Acting on impulse, and under considerable duress herself, Aurelia did something she very rarely did. She rushed forward and deliberately clasped Lotho’s ankle.
Immediately, a violent tremor passed through her and she was inundated by a rush of coldness that rivaled the wind blowing down from the VentaGelida peaks in the dead of winter. Unable to stop it, a ragged cry escaped her lips.
“Aurelia,” Darios snapped. “Let him go.”
She wanted to obey his command—so badly—but, first, she had to sift through his emotions for some kind of clue.
Mostly, she sensed fear, though she didn’t find it surprising. Who wouldn’t be afraid with six large Vo
ltarrean warriors and their angry warlord looming over you demanding answers? Aside from that she sensed hints of avarice, selfishness, disdain for others—women in particular—and in larger amounts, apathy.
A flash of Lotho and Ryker running from the room after the explosion, leaving her to die a fiery death in a cage preceded images of other women in other cages, or bound to bed frames, or restrained to walls, some sobbing, some beaten with bruises on more than their faces, and in between all this horror, she caught glimpses of the captain’s vile face, grinning or laughing. Some of this had happened, the rest she imagined from what she knew had occurred, and all of it came from her head.
From the man himself, she felt very little.
That he simply didn’t care about the women he captured and sold into sexual slavery, made her physically ill. How could anyone be so entirely indifferent to the atrocities he enacted on other living beings? Except for when it came to his own neck then the coward shook in his stinking boots.
Thinking perhaps she wasn’t getting a good read, she adjusted her hold, adding the other hand as well.
Darios’ hands curled around her shoulders, and he uttered, “Don’t do this to yourself.”
She was about to let go, when another wave of emotion flowed through her hands and washed over her. These were raw, visceral, and very different from the first muted lot. They had an energy of their own, were completely negative, but weren’t coming from the Ophig swine.
She’d encountered this before, though not often. Most normal people sympathized with others experiencing grief, pain, fear, even happiness because they had been through something similar in the past. They responded most often with compassion—a kind word, a soothing touch, outrage on their behalf, or anger, even tears.
In Lotho’s case, he didn’t have these experiences to draw from. He was a soulless uncaring void. His victim’s terror couldn’t penetrate his hard, unemotional shell, so it clung to him on the outside, like a sticky residue. That left Aurelia feeling the suffering of the endless stream of nameless women the loathsome, unfeeling bastard had captured and abused then inevitably sold to another for more of the same, while he, who was incapable, did not.
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