Dark One's Bride

by Aldrea Alien

  Murmurs of agreement followed his question.

  So the barbarian led these men. How deep did their loyalties to the behemoth run? Were they less servants of Ne’ermore and more mercenaries?

  There was the hushed, carefully placed, pad of a boot, then the squeak of a hinge in dire need of oiling. Some sort of rarely-used entrance? “Wait here,” the high-voiced man said. “And be quiet whilst I see if the path is clear. If they catch us, we’ll end up just like those poor blighters who took on the Dark Lord.”

  Did he mean recently? If that were true, it meant Lucias was still alive. Enraged and possibly unaware of her full predicament, but alive.

  “He should’ve let me put a bolt through their heads when I had the chance,” the second man grumbled. “It would’ve been the merciful thing to do.”

  “And have ye give us away? Ye can’t say they weren’t warned. Did ye see how fast he got out those glowing symbols? And that voice…” There was a faint vibration to Clara’s left—a leg, perhaps—as the man seemed to shudder. “If that didn’t come straight from the deepest parts of Hell, then I’m a Punegeain veil dancer.”

  Clara leant back. She wriggled her hands, trying to curl her fingers around far enough to work at the knot.

  “What do we do with the other one?”

  “Leave her,” the first man suggested. “Can’t do nothing all tied up. Can you, lass?”

  A muffled scream was Sweetie’s only reply. Gagged.

  “And if she escapes?” the second man demanded. “Be better to slit her throat now and be done with it.”

  Another scream, higher and definitely pleading.

  Clara thrashed, she bumped into someone’s legs. The man staggered, but seemed to regain his feet. “Don’t you dare touch her!” she shouted around the mouthful of sacking.

  Whether or not they understood her, Sweetie’s screams fell to whimpers.

  “We’ll bring her with us,” a fourth man said, the tone brokering no room for quibbling. “They’ll want a way to control the Dark Lord’s whore and she seems eager enough to see that the girl lives.”

  Her knuckles brushed against the smooth, chill stone at her back. She felt along it, seeking a rough edge to help cut the rope. Mortar turned to dust under her fingers, revealing a corner. The rope ran along the edge, sliding without a sign of growing weaker.

  Abandoning the effort, she turned to slowly squirming her way along the wall, aiming for the sounds of fighting. If she could draw the right kind of attention her way…

  “I thought I said to shut your traps?” a high voice suddenly hissed. A hand fell on her shoulder, the thick fingers digging into her flesh. “And where did you think you were going, my lady?”

  More hands grasped her. There was the softest of grunts as they lifted her back into the air, then the door squeaked once again. A cold breeze hit her damp skin. She was out of the castle and, from the feel of it, fast ascending a flight of stairs. With her heart attempting to pound its own way free, Clara redoubled her efforts to escape.

  Somewhere above them, bells clanged. Had their presence been noted?

  “Quick,” the high-voiced man snapped. “We haven’t much time before the big guy leaves.”

  Her ears, already straining for any sound of pursuit, caught the click of a carriage door. Her side thumped against a floor that gave with a rocking, creaking motion. The weight of a small, screaming and thrashing body landed on her. Sweetie.

  The door slammed shut. Something banged on the side and their surroundings lurched to the clatter of shod hooves upon cobblestone.

  Wriggling her way between the seats, Clara found enough purchase to haul herself into an upright position. One wrist—slick with sweat or blood, she didn’t know—slid within the bindings. She tugged some more, using the edge of the seats as leverage.

  One hand slipped free, then the other. Tearing the sack off her head, she took in her surroundings. A carriage, not too dissimilar to the one Lucias’ men once shoved her into.

  Sweet Goddess, please, not this. She couldn’t be confined like this again. Anything but this. Screaming and with the walls seeming to shrink with each breath, Clara clawed at the door handle.

  Locked.

  Undeterred, she pounded on the door, first with her fists, then lashing out with her feet until her heels were sore. The wood protested eagerly enough at each thump, but refused to yield. She slammed a shoulder against the window. It might as well have been made of stone.

  Dashing the tears blocking her vision, she rested her forehead on the smoky glass to stare at the world beyond. In the late night, her only witnesses were dying torches and a few alley cats. How long would it take the castle inhabitants to realise she was gone?

  Sweetie cringed on the opposite seat. In the gloom, her eyes were dark holes in a ghostly face, but they were at their widest. “What’ll happen to us?”

  “To you? Nothing bad, I’ll make sure of that.” Clearly, they didn’t want her dead or she’d already be so. That gave her leverage.

  But first, she would need to meet her kidnapper.

  A mighty boom shook the carriage. She scrabbled across the seat and peered through the back window just in time to see a great cloud of dust and fragments of stone burst from the side of the castle.

  Up and down the street, dogs barked into the night whilst people shouted for an explanation from their windows and doorways. She watched them with the bitter knowledge that, should she choose to scream for help now, no one would hear her.

  The sharp crack of a whip pierced the noise. Clara tumbled about the carriage, clinging to the seat, as they lurched forward. Again, the driver wielded his whip, pushing the horses faster still. She braced herself, every bump they hit jarring through her spine.

  Eventually, the way became so bouncy that even the driver must have considered it rough, for the carriage slowed.

  She risked a peek out the window. They’d left the city boundaries. She caught sight of the castle again as they climbed a hill. The dust had settled and a portion of the building was missing.

  Lucias. What had happened to him? Had the barbarian finally completed his task of slaying the dreadful Dark Lord?

  “What are we going to do?” Sweetie asked, still huddled on the opposite seat.

  If Lucias was dead, then why would they take her? The answer there was simple. They wouldn’t. So I am to be used as bait. Clara punched the carriage roof, biting off a few choice swears that would’ve had her mother reaching for the switch. She felt so helpless like this.

  Think, girl. If she was bait, then clearly someone thought he would come for her or they wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of kidnapping her. So logically, if the enemy wanted him to leave the kingdom, he should take the opposite course of action.

  That would mean forsaking her.

  Clara sat back in the seat, the thought chilling her. Was she not expendable?

  The answer there, although she would never admit it to a single soul, was a rather stinging ‘yes’. Even as his wife. It wasn’t as if there was the slightest chance of her being with child. Lucias might consider her as his only option there, but realistically, any woman of childbearing age could give birth to the next Great Lord. He didn’t have to love them, or even like them, to get the deed done.

  Thinking of what should be an intimate act between lovers in such a clinical fashion twisted her insides into a thousand knots, but that seemed to be how everyone else viewed it. Not him. Lucias would not have waited if he felt the same way. And he swore he’d tear apart the world for me. Whether he did so because she wished it or to rescue her, wouldn’t matter to him.

  “Lucias will come,” she murmured, partially to reassure herself as well as Sweetie.

  “So, we wait for him to rescue us?”

  Did he know Sweetie was missing along with Clara? Did it matter when they were together? He’d come for Clara.

  And when he did pursue her, he would no doubt do so without thinking of the consequences.

&nbs
p; Nothing she could do about that except pray there was someone in the castle he would listen to who had enough sense to come up with a plan before acting. But who would even know where to begin his search? Or what to look for? She could’ve sworn no one saw the carriage leave, for surely they would’ve stopped these men from completing their kidnapping if they had any idea.

  Just like their tales. Wasn’t that the basis of some Endlight folktale Thalia told her about, where the bride was abducted before her husband got to consummate their marriage?

  Clara shook her head. The one thing she wasn’t doing was waiting around for five years in the hope that someone would aid in her escape. Or marry my kidnapper. Once a lifetime was enough.

  She would need to win their freedom and return to Endlight well before her husband had a chance to mount a rescue party. She just needed a chance.

  “No,” she said, her thoughts still ticking over the consequences of any action. “We’re not going to wait.”

  “Then what?”

  Where were they headed? Ne’ermore. There was a good possibility that was their destination. She may not be able to elude her kidnappers out in the wilderness, but if Ne’ermore was anything like the rabbit warren of streets back home, then she’d be in her element.

  The walls may keep her husband from getting in, but they wouldn’t stop her from getting out.

  Unfortunately, such a plan involved entering the city in the first place and that gave Lucias far too much time to do something stupid, like believing he could enter enemy lands without an army at his back. You better have more sense than that. She refused to think she might have just married an idiot.

  Her gaze flicked to Sweetie. Away from the shadows of the city buildings, the weak moonlight filtered through and illuminated the girl’s pale skin. Just as Clara’s hair singled her out, the girl would have a lesser chance of casually blending in.

  So what could they do?

  Clara straightened in her seat. “We are going to rescue ourselves.”

  THE END

  About the Author

  Mother. Animal Lover. Vampire. Fangirl.

  Aldrea Alien is a New Zealand author of romantic speculative fiction of varying heat levels.

  She grew up on a small farm out the back blocks of a place known as Wainuiomata alongside a menagerie of animals, who are all convinced they're just as human as the next person (especially the cats). She spent a great deal of her childhood riding horses, whilst the rest of her time was consumed with reading every fantasy book she could get her hands on and concocting ideas about a little planet known as Thardrandia. This would prove to be the start of The Rogue King Saga as, come her twelfth year, she discovered there was a book inside her.

  Aldrea now lives in Upper Hutt, on yet another small farm with a less hectic, but still egotistical, group of animals (cats will be cats). She self-published the first of The Rogue King Saga in 2014. One thing she hasn't yet found is an off switch to give her an ounce of peace from the characters plaguing her mind, a list that grows bigger every year with all of them clamouring for her to tell their story first. It's a lot of people for one head.

  Read more at Aldrea Alien’s site.