Metal Mage 12

by Eric Vall

  Despite how agitated I was over the elaborate web the Baroness had woven in my honor, I couldn’t help grinning from ear to ear while I led Aurora inside.

  “Okay, this is kind of awesome,” I chuckled as I shifted a plank of rotted wood, and as the entrance sealed us inside, I felt Nulena’s enchantments lift from my skin.

  “We should do stuff like this more often,” the half-elf decided. “With the powers we have between us, we could cause so much trouble.”

  “I disagree. There are way too many strings being pulled right now, and honestly, neither of us would be able to keep up with so much deceit.”

  “Yeah, we’d just end up storming the room and killing them all,” Aurora chuckled.

  I glanced back at her. “Would we?”

  “I would,” the half-elf said with a shrug. “But you know me … I’m impulsive.”

  “One of the reasons why I love you,” I sighed as we came to a stop at the end of the passageway.

  “And one of the reasons why Nulena gets the awesome job,” Aurora muttered. “I can’t believe she’d risk so many mishaps just to protect you. I mean, I knew she loved you, but this is unbelievable. The king could die, the Master could take over the world, but if her plan works, you’re not looking over your shoulder for the rest of this war.”

  “Neither are you,” I said as my jaw locked at the thought. “I wasn’t worried about Ralish’s plans for me, Aurora. I told you that. He could have sent a dozen more assassins after me. I only agreed to this to protect you and Deya.”

  “Mason,” Aurora sighed, and when I looked over, there was a hint of sadness in her eyes. “There will always be people who dislike me and Deya for our elven heritage. I know you’ve never thought less of us for it, but you can’t change the way others feel.”

  “I know,” I admitted, “but I can make sure any asshole who’s stupid enough to target my family gets what’s coming to them. Frankly, I don’t care what it takes. I intend to see every one of them handled before our children are born, starting with Baron Ralish.”

  I felt Aurora’s hand squeeze mine at the words, and when I looked over again, she had tears in her eyes as she smiled up at me.

  “I love you,” the half-elf murmured. “Thank you for wanting a family with me. It’s more than I ever thought--”

  I cut Aurora off as I locked her against me, and while her body heated like a flame in my hold, I kissed her with everything I had to make sure she knew how much she deserved. The way Aurora kissed me back made my heart swell and my throat clench, and both of us were seconds away from making love right there in the hidden corridor when we heard muffled voices on the other side of the brick wall.

  “Wait!” Aurora gasped, and I froze with my hands already poised to rip the back of her bodice open.

  We didn’t move a muscle while we tried to steady our breaths and listen, but then my gaze drifted over Aurora’s shoulder, and my brows shot up.

  “Don’t move,” I ordered as I stared at the crooked brick only centimeters away.

  Then I carefully steadied Aurora on her feet, flipped her around to my other side, and pointed at the brick.

  The half-elf immediately clutched her hair at the roots. “We would be so bad at this job.”

  “Agreed,” I snorted. “Let’s leave this kind of stuff to Nulena from now on.”

  “Do you think she’s killing them right now?” Aurora asked, and her voice was barely above a whisper while she tilted her ear toward the brick wall.

  “I can’t tell,” I muttered. “All I can make out are men’s voices.”

  Aurora nodded. “Me, too. Maybe she’s--”

  The half-elf clapped her hand over her mouth as the tone of the voices abruptly changed, and they sounded panicked while they came closer to the wall. No one screamed, though, as Nulena’s voice joined the mix, and she spoke in a low, sinister tone that sent a shiver through my shoulder blades.

  Then we heard some kind of commotion followed by the sound of bodies dropping, and Aurora and I gaped in silence while we waited with bated breath.

  “She said your name,” the half-elf suddenly hissed.

  “Did she?” I asked.

  Aurora nodded and reached for the crooked brick, and as she gave it a shove, the wall in front of us shifted forward.

  Right away, my eyes dropped to the two bodies beside the hidden entrance, and I recognized them as two of the pawns the Baroness had mentioned. Now, they had taut black strings wound around their throats, and their expressions were blank and their faces were blue. The third pawn was in the same condition near the hearth as we came into the small study, but when I found Baron Ralish looking directly at me, I froze.

  For a second, I thought we’d come out too soon and botched the whole operation, but Nulena smirked without concern from where she stood.

  The Baroness had Ralish on his knees execution style as she held a taut black string around his throat with one hand, and the man’s eyes bulged with a mix of shock and fury as he recognized me.

  I was so caught off guard by the scene I’d walked into that I just stood there and stared, but when I chanced a look at Aurora beside me, the half-elf had an unforgiving smirk on her face as she sent a little wave to the baron.

  It looked like Ralish was trying to say something now, but no sounds were coming out, and when the Baroness stooped to bring her lips to his ear, his fury shifted to pure terror.

  “I think this might be my favorite thing about secrets,” Nulena purred as tears began to spill down the man’s cheeks. “They really are the only thing you can take with you to your grave.”

  Then the Baroness plunged a slender blade into the man’s ear as she chuckled mirthlessly, and my veins turned to ice as his pained expression went slack. Blood trickled down his neck as the light faded from his eyes, and I lost the ability to blink while I tried to process the many feelings I was experiencing at the moment.

  It was a very weird mixture of fear, pride, and lust for the most part, but there was a dash of sadistic joy from my daddy demon, too, and I couldn’t decide if any of this made me a bad guy, or if it just meant I was in love with an amazing woman. For exactly who she was.

  Aurora wasn’t nearly as stunned as me, though.

  “You nailed that!” the half-elf gushed. “The fear in his eyes, the partial suffocation, the last-minute reveal … and that line? Gods, I loved every second of it! This was all just … I love this. I love you!”

  “Likewise,” Nulena chuckled as she let the baron tip over and thunk to the floor. “We only have a short time to finish the job, though. I need you to burn the bodies of the other three, but don’t let your flames scald the floorboards. There must be no trace that they’ve been killed.”

  Aurora nodded as she sparked her flames, and I stared in a blank state while Nulena rushed to the desk near the fireplace. She rifled through four different drawers gathering various pieces of parchment, and she scattered some of them on the desk before she rolled up the others and tucked them in her cleavage. Then she returned to the baron’s body as she pulled a small knife from one of her garter belts, and she kept the blade poised to cut the string around his neck while Aurora finished burning up the other bodies.

  “Brush the residual ash under the rug,” the Baroness instructed. “There’s a soot broom on the hearth.”

  “Good call,” Aurora agreed, and as soon as every trace was gone, Nulena nodded.

  Then the Baroness cut the string free, and as blood oozed like a sieve across the floor, she grabbed a soapstone from the hearth and hurled it at the window.

  The sound of shattering glass snapped me out of my shock, and Nulena came over to stroke my cheek with a soft smile on her face.

  “Would you mind returning the stone to the hearth, my love?” the Baroness purred, and I mechanically summoned my Terra powers and brought the stone back to its proper place.

  Then I let Nulena pull me into the hidden corridor while she clutched my hand, and as cries of panic rose up a
round the house, we ran down the passageway to come out into the newly deserted room.

  I could hear the baron’s guests running for the study while several others just bolted for the front doors, and Nulena threw up a curtain of shadows as we hurried across the room. When she bumped into a doorstop, the entrance to the hidden stairwell opened, and by the time we reached the top, I could hear the nobility screaming over the body in the study.

  It sounded like even more of them had chosen to flee the scene now, and once Nulena shifted the candelabra back into place to close off the stairwell, she cloaked us in shadows to sprint through the upper halls. Then the Baroness called Deya when we got to the balcony, and I watched as the ebony women even jimmied the knob to lock the door behind us.

  Nulena was finished covering all our tracks when Deya swooped down on silent wings to hover beside the railing, and the ebony woman sent me a slightly giddy smile.

  “All done. Shall we?”

  A hazy grin spread across my face while Aurora and Nulena jumped onto Deya’s back, and as I lunged to join them, I could hear more carriages fleeing into the night as frantic nobles argued on the first floor.

  The orange moon was beginning to rise on the horizon while the black dragon soared over the trees to take us north, and as I really registered the intricacy of everything that had just happened, I slid my arms around Nulena’s waist to pull her tight against me.

  “Do you have any idea how much I fucking love you?” I chuckled into her ear.

  In the moonlight, I could see the ebony woman’s cheeks begin to glisten like a pearl, and as her two-toned eyes met mine, she let out a flirty giggle I never dreamed I’d get to hear from her.

  Chapter 21

  “What are the papers about, though?” Aurora asked the Baroness.

  Nulena had her hand in mine while I led her down the steps I’d built against the walls of Garioch, and once we got to the bottom, I altered the stonework while the Baroness patted the roll of parchment wedged inside her corset.

  “This is the paperwork that was drawn up tonight along with all of the nobles’ signatures pledging the funds for the project,” Nulena explained. “Since the three men you burned for me appear to have murdered Baron Ralish and fled with the documents, the nobles fear every treasonous part of their plan could be exposed.”

  “But what about Mason?” the half-elf asked as we neared the side door of the tavern. “Won’t the nobles still go after him?”

  “And my women,” I added.

  “Not necessarily,” the Baroness replied. “They’ll attempt to frame you for Baron Ralish’s murder, of course, since turning in the three men would ruin their situations. However, your alibi should be solidified if Shoshanne and Cayla have done their jobs.”

  “They could retaliate at a later time, though,” I said with a frown as I considered my beautiful half-elf.

  “Mason, do you think I would allow that to be an option?” Nulena chuckled. “These nobles still believe you’re the successor to the crown. Once your alibi is verified, and with this kind of evidence out of their grasp, they won’t be able to risk placing even one toe out of line. Their only option is to pay those men for the rest of their lives and hope to the gods you and Temin never find out about any of it.”

  I nodded as Nulena cloaked us in shadows, and the three of us wove our way through the halls of the tavern and to the staircase.

  “But if these nobles are paying dead men, they’re bound to catch on to what really happened,” Aurora pointed out.

  “That’s my favorite part,” the Baroness said with a devious glint in her eye. “The three dead men never collected their payment in person. This is why I had difficulty drawing them out on my own. However, they employed seven different stooges who collected on their behalf, and I purchased every one of them before I came to Garioch. Now, the nobles will be paying five times the price to the dead men’s stooges for the rest of their lives, and I will be collecting all of it.”

  I grinned. “You arranged all of this in only a few hours?”

  “Of course.”

  “Gods, you’re so good at your job,” Aurora sighed. “One day, I’m going to be as cunning as you.”

  “I can give you pointers,” Nulena offered, and I chuckled when the half-elf immediately jumped at the offer.

  I had both of my deadly women under my arms as we mounted the top of the stairs, but we all slowed our pace as we neared the door at the end of the hall.

  Even though I’d heard my women’s moans plenty of times in this life, I’d never experienced them from outside the room before, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t jealous of myself at that moment. Cayla and Shoshanne were clearly having an orgasmic time in there, but when I heard something that sounded more like a goat than a woman, I furrowed my brow and opened the door.

  We found Shoshanne and Cayla kneeling together on the bed in sheer purple nighties, and the healer was banging her arm against the headboard while the heavy oak creaked rhythmically. She was pink from trying to moan without laughing too hard, and the result somehow sounded even more sexual as her breath hitched into little shrieks here and there.

  I could appreciate the struggle, though, because Cayla had her head thrown back while she made the most ridiculous noises she could come up with, and when the two women saw me in the doorway, the princess’ eyes lit up as she got even louder.

  Shoshanne beat her arm harder against the wood as she pointed to me with a huge grin, and I’d only just cocked my brow in confusion when Aurora punched me in the gut with all her strength.

  Then I doubled over as a loud grunt wheezed out of me, and Cayla screeched my name in ecstasy.

  I was on my hands and knees trying to get my diaphragm to function again when I heard clapping and whooping from the other rooms in the hall, and my women had to bury their faces to stifle their laughter.

  Cayla just threw her arms up in victory the same way I always did, though, and Nulena scooted me into the room so my own laughter wouldn’t drift into the hall.

  “Have you guys been going at it like this the whole time?” Aurora snickered once she shut the door.

  “Of course, we have,” Shoshanne giggled. “Mason’s alibi is the most important part of this mission.”

  “Actually, me burning the three large men’s bodies was the most important part,” Aurora corrected.

  “Wasn’t killing Baron Ralish kind of the main objective?” I wheezed from the floor.

  “None of this would have been possible without the stealthiest dragon in the world, though,” Deya announced, and I looked over to see she’d returned to her elven form.

  “All of you did wonderfully,” Nulena chuckled.

  “No.” Aurora solemnly shook her head. “Nulena, you did wonderfully. Watching you work has changed my life.”

  “Agreed,” I croaked as I hoisted myself onto the bed.

  “Tell us everything we missed!” Deya insisted.

  All of my women immediately gathered on the bed while they dragged Nulena with them, and I kicked my boots onto the floor as I settled in for the night.

  I couldn’t help smirking at how eager they were to have Nulena explain every detail from the time we left Rajeen up to this moment, but the way my women all laid on their bellies with their chins propped up in their hands made it even sillier to me.

  Then Nulena curled up beside me, and she obliged them with the weirdest bedtime story I’d ever heard about a man named Baron Ralish who should have known better than to piss off Mason Flynt.

  I gradually realized this was the central moral of the story, but before the Baroness got to the end, I’d already dozed off to the sound of my women’s remorseless giggles. When I woke up at dawn, all five of them were sprawled around me in the same spots, and as I smiled at the ceiling, I felt like a giant brick had been surgically removed from my gut.

  None of my beautiful women would be targeted anymore, not by Illarians anyway, and I could do my damned job without having to wonder whe
n my next assassin would show up. It would be nothing but possessed maniacs and the Master to handle from here on out, and I had my amazingly cruel ebony lover to thank for it.

  I pulled the Baroness a little closer against me as I considered that giggle I’d heard from her last night, and I kind of wished I had more people I needed killed. Nulena was adorably energetic about her work when she was in the thick of it, and tagging along so I could admire the way she prowled around destroying people’s lives sounded like an awesome date night.

  Then I thought of all the ways we could utilize her skills against the Master’s forces, and even though I knew the Baroness hated the idea of saving the world, it didn’t seem like an impossibility. Lately, all it took for her to reprioritize was me asking her for help.

  On the other hand, I loved everything about her, including her carelessness, so I really didn’t mind letting her abhor my job all she wanted.

  She was definitely my new favorite weapon, though.

  The sun was beginning to cast a golden glow around the room as I woke my women so we could get to the train on time, but they all wanted to wait to eat breakfast at home since they missed Alfred’s cooking.

  Just hearing Alfred’s name made me miss our mansion all at once, and I convinced my sleepy women to get their things packed up as quickly as they could while I grabbed a quick bite in the tavern.

  Then I jogged down the stairs, and when I strolled into the loggers’ tavern, Krick and several others were already seated with ale in hand. Heaping platters of sausage links and fresh baked bread lined the long wooden table, and I dropped onto the bench beside them as Krick slid a pint my way.

  “Have a good night?” the grizzly man asked with a grin, and about ten loggers snorted into their ales.

  I cleared my throat. “Yep.”

  “I gotta be honest, I never knew a man could get a woman to bark like a dog in bed,” Krick chuckled. “How the hell ye’ do that?”

  “Um … ” I muttered as I slowly filled my plate.

  I couldn’t recall hearing any barking when I’d shown up last night, but we had been gone for a while.