Candescent

by Zoey Ellis

  It was as though the en­tire at­mos­phere had sucked sound from the room, or as though ev­ery­one had stopped breath­ing. Em­peror Drocco and Thorec held the gaze be­tween them and like time never ex­isted, but in Drocco’s eyes, Thorec saw the ruler’s un­der­stand­ing.

  “Pick one Al­pha to as­sist you,” the em­peror said fi­nally.

  “Drocco,” the em­press gasped.

  But the em­peror’s eyes never left Thorec. “One Al­pha to help you and who will be hon­est with you if you are on the wrong track with this Omega. An Al­pha you will lis­ten to.”

  Thorec clenched his teeth, but he couldn’t deny that it was a rea­son­able re­quest. “Ro­clan.”

  The em­peror nod­ded. “Good luck, Gen­eral. I wish you well.”

  He turned to his em­press, who stared at him in dis­be­lief, and lifted her into his arms. She im­me­di­ately slipped her arms around his neck as though it was an au­to­matic po­si­tion that he held her in fre­quently. She pressed her fore­head to his, but her ex­pres­sion was still one of shock.

  “I trust him, Cai­lyn,” Drocco mur­mured to her as he walked to the door and left.

  * * *

  Chap­ter Six

  RIA

  The city of Ashens was busy, beau­ti­ful chaos.

  Ria had only been there twice be­fore—once be­fore the Lox had taken over and the other af­ter­ward, while the city was still re­build­ing from bat­tle. It had been re­designed to look stur­dier and more pow­er­ful than the pre­vi­ous de­sign but was no less im­pres­sive. The peo­ple were bold and bright, just like their clothes, and the en­vi­ron­ment was pos­i­tive and hap­pier than ei­ther time she had been there be­fore. The mar­ket hadn’t changed, though. It hummed and bus­tled so vi­brantly that Ria felt in­vis­i­ble among the crowd. Ex­actly like she wanted.

  She nav­i­gated to the stall she’d vis­ited yes­ter­day and waited.

  “I have it,” the mer­chant said as soon as he saw her. He picked up a folded pile of fab­rics and handed it at her.

  Ria ex­am­ined them. “The same uni­forms they wear in the palace?”

  “Iden­ti­cal in ev­ery way,” the mer­chant said proudly. “Ev­ery ser­vant uni­form in the size you asked for. We are the best at cus­tom or­ders, Miss, you won’t find any fault. Rec­om­mend me to your friends.”

  Ria shot him a dry smile as she tucked the fab­rics into her bag and paid him.

  She kept her head down as she hur­ried out of the mar­ket square and to­ward the tav­ern to meet her next con­tact. She had no rea­son to be­lieve that Gen­eral Thorec knew she was in Ashens, but he def­i­nitely would know by now that she had left Ariyon. The thought of his re­ac­tion twisted her nerves in an un­set­tling way.

  She shook the feel­ing off as she en­tered the tav­ern. The gen­eral didn’t own her, and the short time she spent with him didn’t mean any­thing. An­noy­ingly, her body seemed to think it did. The two nights she’d spent in Ashens so far had been filled with thoughts of him—his rough chuckle, his look of plea­sure, his mouth… She wasn’t sure how he’d man­aged to con­tam­i­nate both her body and her mind, but the way he touched her and the things he said to her were burned into her mem­ory from the mo­ment she lay down to sleep. They re­volved in her thoughts un­til she was slick be­tween the legs and trem­bling with de­sire.

  In the morn­ings, she man­aged to force them away by think­ing of what she came to do. She was back on task now. The moun­tain peo­ple had been ex­tremely use­ful and help­ful once she un­der­stood what was im­por­tant to them, es­pe­cially when she ex­plained that she had no al­le­giance to the Lox and did not want to up­set the treaty. All she had to do was keep go­ing, and her ex­pe­ri­ence with Gen­eral Thorec would even­tu­ally fade from her mind. She hoped.

  She slipped into the tav­ern and headed to the back. A Beta woman with short black hair sat at a ta­ble in the cor­ner, eat­ing heartily from three large plates. She barely looked up when Ria sat down, but she said, “Pay­ment?”

  Ria looked over the tav­ern for any­one watch­ing them, then set two hand­fuls of coins on the ta­ble.

  The woman took a few mo­ments suck­ing meat off a bone be­fore she even glanced at the coins. “Back­room. Top left shelf.”

  Ria frowned. “What? Why can’t you give it to me here?”

  The woman went back to her plate. “It’s too risky to carry around that amount of parch­ment with that kind of sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion on it. You have to col­lect it from the back room.”

  Ria’s mouth tight­ened. “This was not what we agreed.”

  “If you don’t want it, take your money back.”

  Ria glared at the woman, but she didn’t even pay her any at­ten­tion as she delved into her stew with her bare fin­gers. Stand­ing abruptly, Ria headed to the back­room, keep­ing her eyes open and stay­ing alert. She tried to avoid back rooms in tav­erns at all costs. They usu­ally only had one way in and out, and it was a dan­ger­ous place to end up alone, es­pe­cially for fe­males. The only rea­son why she didn’t protest too much was be­cause this tav­ern’s back­room had a win­dow, and at least magic was fully func­tional in Ashens. It wasn’t a com­pletely dis­as­trous idea to risk her safety for the in­for­ma­tion she was af­ter.

  She slipped into the back room quickly and qui­etly, then searched for the shelf. Fi­nally find­ing a large packet with the sheets of parch­ment she needed, she tucked the parch­ment into her bag, when a glint by the door caught her eye. She back away in shock as strands of magic gath­ered, weav­ing and merg­ing to­gether un­til a rip­pling por­tal beamed in the tiny back­room block­ing her from the door. Ria called on magic, pre­par­ing to fight if any­thing dan­ger­ous came through. Panic jumped into her throat re­al­iz­ing she was trapped and inched back­ward to­ward the win­dow. Feel­ing along the win­dowsill, she tried to see how easy it would be to open, but as her hand reached the lock, a fig­ure stepped through the por­tal.

  The woman was dressed in a so­phis­ti­cated silk tu­nic that was cut to ac­cen­tu­ate her curves. Her curly bronze hair had been twisted up ex­pertly, and she wore beau­ti­ful jew­elry en­crusted with col­or­ful gems. As she stepped for­ward, an­other woman stepped out of the por­tal be­hind her. This one was dressed like a Lox war­rior, ex­cept her en­tire out­fit was in red.

  Ria read­ied her­self for an at­tack. “What do you want?”

  “I am Em­press Cai­lyn,” the small woman said, “the Omega em­press. Apolo­gies for trap­ping you in here, I wanted to speak to you pri­vately.”

  Ria did not change her stance. “How can I help you, Em­press?”

  “I came to warn you. Your Al­pha came to see us at the palace. He in­tends to re­cap­ture you.”

  Ria’s eyes widened. Re­lief, fear, and ir­ri­ta­tion bat­tled for dom­i­nance within her. “Gen­eral Thorec is in Ashens? Al­ready?”

  “Yes. He knows you’re here to find an­other Al­pha, and he is not happy about it.”

  “He doesn’t have any say over me or what I do.” Ria scowled.

  “You are here to search for an­other Al­pha when you al­ready have one, my friend,” the em­press said, a lit­tle amused. “That would an­noy all Al­phas. And prob­a­bly all Beta males as well.”

  “He is not my Al­pha nor my mate.”

  “Oh.” The em­press seemed sur­prised. “But when I said your Al­pha was here, you knew who I was talk­ing about.”

  Ria flushed. “Y-yes, but… It wasn’t—” Damn it. She closed her mouth and started again. “He kept telling me I was. So I knew who you were talk­ing about.”

  “I see.” The em­press nod­ded thought­fully. “You don’t want him, then?”

  Ria tried to snap out a strong and re­sound­ing, “No,” but it didn’t come.

  A know­ing look en­tered the em­press’ eyes. “If you don’t know yet, that is fine,” she said l
ightly. “I wanted to make sure that you were aware and pre­pared, but it seems I didn’t need to worry.”

  “I am cu­ri­ous why you did worry, em­press,” Ria said, in­clin­ing her head re­spect­fully. “I am not an Omega based at the palace.”

  “I’m con­cerned about all Omegas,” the em­press said. “You were found by an Al­pha in one of our ter­ri­to­ries, and now he’s claim­ing you are his. It is a con­cern for me that you are will­ing, ob­vi­ously.”

  “I wasn’t,” Ria said sharply. “He claimed I was his pris­oner, and then he—” Ria strug­gled to find words to de­scribe the ex­pe­ri­ence. She had been bruised and marked and thor­oughly claimed by him in the most com­plete way an Al­pha could claim an Omega, and yet she had fought him to do it right. It was con­fus­ing her as to whether he could be wholly blamed for it.

  The em­press said noth­ing and sim­ply ob­served Ria.

  Ria eyed her, her con­fu­sion turn­ing into an­noy­ance. “If you were wor­ried I might not be will­ing, why didn’t you ar­rest him in­stead of com­ing here to warn me that he is plan­ning to re­cap­ture me.”

  “It was dif­fi­cult to have him ar­rested,” the em­press said. “He claims you are his true mate.”

  Ria’s mouth dropped open. The part of her she had si­lenced and ig­nored hummed with plea­sure, but her mind was more cyn­i­cal. “And you be­lieved him? Just like that?”

  The em­press took a breath as she thought. “Some­times we Omegas fight what is nat­u­ral be­cause we don’t rec­og­nize it. It’s dif­fer­ent for each Omega, but we are prone to ig­nore an im­por­tant part of who we are be­cause we’re not used to ex­pe­ri­enc­ing our­selves in that state. I’ve known Omegas who will never let their true mate see them when they think they are most weak. They don’t un­der­stand that it isn’t seen as weak­ness by their mates—it is when they are most at­trac­tive.”

  “So you think I should just give in to him?” Ria asked, in­cred­u­lously. “You think that an Al­pha who finds an Omega in the Lands should be able to do what he wants with her? Did he even re­port to you that he’d found me, Em­press?”

  Sur­pris­ingly, the em­press smiled. “Above all, we value when an Al­pha or Omega find their true mate, Ria. Gen­eral Thorec is se­verely adamant he has found his and that she is you. He wishes to prove to you that he is your Al­pha. Why shouldn’t I give him that chance? And if you are even part will­ing, why shouldn’t you?”

  “Be­cause!” Ria in­sisted. “Be­cause… he doesn’t lis­ten. And he is… an­noy­ing and…” Hand­some and com­fort­ing and sexy. She scram­bled to find more ap­pro­pri­ate words to ex­plain. “We… fight. It’s… chaos. We are al­ways com­bat­ive. That can’t be right.”

  “The Al­pha/Omega con­nec­tion is slightly dif­fer­ent for each cou­ple, Ria,” the em­press said. “The ques­tion is, do you like it when you fight? And if you do, why is it wrong?”

  For the rest of the day, Ria couldn’t get the con­ver­sa­tion with the em­press out of her mind. Above all, she was as­tounded Thorec de­scribed her as his true mate, that he had gone to the palace and had spo­ken to the rul­ing cou­ple. She didn’t know what to make of it. She tried to think of ev­ery sce­nario that would bring him here for her un­der dif­fer­ent rea­sons, but she could think of none that would in­volve him ly­ing to his Lox em­peror.

  Fur­ther, when she searched her­self for an an­swer to the em­press’ per­fectly rea­son­able ques­tions, she couldn’t find one, ex­cept that she al­ready had a goal to com­plete—a mis­sion she couldn’t aban­don. She had thor­oughly en­joyed mo­ments with Thorec, even felt that she pos­si­bly be­longed in his arms, but it was too fleet­ing to take se­ri­ously. She had promised to her­self that she would find the Al­pha she had been look­ing for, and she wouldn’t drop ev­ery­thing be­cause of one over­bear­ing Al­pha. Also, she didn’t want to sim­ply be­come his Omega and his prop­erty. She wanted her own life—to build some­thing that was Ria, with­out the in­flu­ence of oth­ers, who tried to mold and shape her into what they wanted. She shook her head, her mind firm. No, she couldn’t give Thorec a chance right now. Maybe once she found the Al­pha and set­tled into her life, she could think about Thorec again, if he even still wanted her. But not now.

  One of the things the em­press’ visit did high­light was that she had some­how alerted some­one of her pres­ence. The Beta woman had sent her to the back­room for the em­press, which meant she was too easy to find. Thorec was not stupid. He would be us­ing this as a chal­lenge to find her, and un­less she was alert and ob­ser­vant, he would suc­ceed.

  She’d moved to a new inn for the night, one she was fa­mil­iar with, and spent the evening pour­ing over the stack of parch­ment she’d col­lected. She knew there were a lot of Lox war­riors, but the list was enor­mous. It in­cluded their oc­cu­pa­tions and where they were based, across the East­ern Lands. Once she found who she was look­ing for, she would know how easy the next step would be.

  She found the name on page eight-seven. Jaythen. She frowned as she peered at the in­for­ma­tion by his name. Oc­cu­pa­tion: Lox War­rior—dis­charged, Lo­ca­tion: Lox Palace, Ashens.

  So he’d been dis­charged even though he was still at the palace? She stared again at the page. Lox Palace. She’d sus­pected it, but now she knew for sure she had to go there. Ex­hal­ing slowly with an odd blend of re­lief and frus­tra­tion, Ria set the stack of parch­ment down. At least she knew where to find him.

  She dressed sim­ply in a plain blue out­fit, some­thing that would blend in among the Ashens crowds, and en­sured she had ev­ery­thing she needed in her pock­ets, but as she moved around the room, some­thing caught her at­ten­tion. It was too quiet.

  The inn she’d cho­sen was a noisy place; the walls were thin, and the peo­ple who stayed there were rowdy mer­chants, who were al­ways jest­ing and shout­ing to each other at all hours. But at some point, while she’d been read­ing the parch­ment, ev­ery­thing had be­come silent.

  She tip­toed to the door and cracked it open. The cor­ri­dor was empty, and all the doors were shut. More un­usual be­hav­ior. Ria’s heart­beat pounded loudly in her chest. It had to be the gen­eral; he was here.

  Ria closed the door qui­etly and looked around the room. The win­dow faced an al­ley that she could es­cape down, so she knew the win­dow could be an exit. But Gen­eral Thorec was not stupid. She had used a win­dow to es­cape be­fore, so he would most likely have thought of that. Still, he couldn’t be in two places at once.

  She went to the win­dow and peeked out. Gen­eral Thorec stood a few feet away, hefty, hulk­ing, and still, star­ing right at her win­dow.

  Ria gasped, and backed away, her heart throb­bing in her throat. Shit! She spun in the room, look­ing around for any­thing she could use to fight or to help her es­cape, but there was noth­ing. He was a trained Lox gen­eral, and if he let her see him, he’d al­ready fig­ured out all the ways she could get out. There was only one way he couldn’t con­trol.

  Call­ing on magic, she be­gan to weave a por­tal that would take her as close to the palace as pos­si­ble. It was likely that the em­peror had found some way to iden­tify unau­tho­rized us­age of magic, so she wanted to avoid us­ing it un­less she re­ally had to. But it was the only way she was go­ing to get out of there. Now that she knew where Jaythen was, she just needed to get to him. She never had to come back to this room.

  Af­ter quickly en­sur­ing the room was left with­out any sign of where she could be go­ing, Ria stepped through the por­tal.

  * * *

  Chap­ter Seven

  THOREC

  Thorec watched the gleam of magic fade from Ria’s win­dow. He ex­ited the al­ley and walked around to the en­trance of the inn, where all the staff and guests waited out­side, watch­ing him ner­vously.

  “Here’s the key you asked for, Gen­eral,” the owner said
, shuf­fling for­ward.

  Thorec took the key and made his way in­side. As he climbed up­stairs, his an­noy­ance scratched at his thread­bare pa­tience. This was the worst place Ria could have cho­sen to stay. Al­though it was touted as a mer­chant inn, many crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties took place here, in­clud­ing whor­ing. That Ria was in the vicin­ity of some­thing like this en­raged him to the de­gree that he was pre­pared to rip out ev­ery­one’s throats for al­low­ing it. Still, that wouldn’t help him find her any quicker.

  Al­though he’d known where she’d been stay­ing for the last few days, he needed her to find the Al­pha she was seek­ing. He wanted to iden­tify the man and find out di­rectly from him what his hold on Ria was. Oth­er­wise, his ex­is­tence would loom over them, and Ria would never know that Thorec was will­ing to best any con­tender try­ing to lay to claim her.

  He opened the door to her room and looked around care­fully. It looked as if no one had been stay­ing there, but he knew she had only moved there ear­lier that day. There was no in­di­ca­tion that she’d eaten, and if she had any clothes, she had taken them with her. She’s even cleaned the floor to re­move signs of where she may have tread; this inn was not known for its clean floors. Smart, lit­tle chal­lenger. The one thing she left was a stack of parch­ment on the desk.

  He sifted through it, sur­prised at its con­tents. Ria had some­how man­aged to ob­tain in­for­ma­tion about ev­ery sin­gle Al­pha in the Lox. Some sheets turned over, as though she had been look­ing through them. The page that she had left in view listed all of the Lox gen­er­als, and when Thorec looked down the page, he let out a loud, gruff chuckle.