The Warlord

by Gena Showalter

  He’d marked her, staking an undeniable claim. Yet he must kill her. Were he to save Taliyah, the way Solar had saved his siren, he’d only delay the inevitable. The second he received the curse, he lost the ability to protect her from phantoms. Ascending ceased being an option. For five hundred years, they required hibernation to survive. And when they awoke? What then? The wedding and killing of another woman? What about the wife who lived?

  No couple was more doomed.

  To confess to his men or not? There might be no need. Stardust faded with time. The scent dulled. Roc had only to keep his distance from the temptress to make it go away. But the thought...didn’t settle well.

  He stalked around a corner and punched a wall. On impact, his knuckles split. Blood trickled over the stardust, hiding it.

  He’d never acted so volatile before. Usually, he remained calm, regardless of the situation. But then, his carefully crafted world had never teetered on the brink of total collapse before.

  Though his excess energy remained unchanged with his second punch, a flicker of common sense prevailed. Why worry about this? He was a warlord first and foremost, a gravita bride still just a bride. A sacrifice. A gravita bride was the greatest sacrifice of all, perhaps even the tipping point necessary for his ascension.

  For the first time, he must part with something...precious. Future happiness with the woman destined to rule at his side. The family he’d so badly craved.

  Punch, punch, punch. Upon his next turn, he spotted Ian. His brother toiled over a section of wires protruding from the wall. Undoing one of Taliyah’s traps?

  He wouldn’t tell his men about the stardust, he decided. Not until he’d worked up a plan. They had enough to deal with at the moment.

  So altruistic, Commander.

  His brother noticed him and leaped to attention. “Phantoms have arrived?”

  Roc looked ready for battle? “Not yet. I’d...like to speak with the prisoners.” Yes. That. He had questions about Taliyah, and they had answers. “Continue with your duties,” he said, then flashed to the dungeon.

  In an instant, cold replaced warmth. A scattering of torches lined the wall, providing the only source of light. Like any well-used dungeon, centuries of torture and abuse stained every visible surface.

  He stalked down a darkened corridor, cells on either side of him. Other hallways branched off here and there, offering more cells, but he remained on his current path. At last, the lockup at the end of the corridor came into view. The harpies roamed about in varying stages of undress. As some washed their clothes in a tub of water and snacked on fruits, breads and cheeses, they debated whether Mara qualified as a General. Taliyah’s doing?

  Roux paced in front of the cell, mumbling again. What puzzle plagued him? He usually figured things out by now. “Why don’t I remember? What don’t I remember?”

  “Be at ease, warrior,” Roc told him, using his gentlest voice.

  The male jerked and stopped, then slowly turned, facing him. Their gazes met, those red irises haunted. “Some of the invasion is wiped from my memory. What did I do? Why did I do it?”

  “You fought at my side.” At first. Minutes before the harpies issued their surrender, Roux had frozen, doing nothing, saying nothing.

  “What are these thoughts?” Roux pulled at his hair. “They aren’t mine.”

  Were he anyone else, Roc might suggest he showed signs of a phantom possession. But no phantoms had been present during the battle. Nor did a phantom possess the power to penetrate an Astra’s shields, not without time and never without the warlord’s awareness.

  The harpies stopped what they were doing and approached the bars. Voices rang out.

  “Are you our new warden? Bummer. I liked the last one. He struggled to form a complete sentence. The best quality in a man, I always say.”

  “Let’s see. We’ve gotten to interact with the brainless Scarecrow and the heartless Tin Man. Does that make you the Cowardly Lion?”

  “Have you ever wondered what it’s like to have your skin ripped off your body in one piece, turned inside out, then shoved on?”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m here to learn more about Taliyah Skyhawk.” Why not bargain with these prisoners? Surely they desired other amenities.

  “Oh, what perfect timing!” a female called. “I was just telling the girls how much I’d love to help you get to know our T-bomb better.”

  “Having trouble intimidating your new bride?” another cackled. “I hope she gags you with your own testicles.”

  They snickered at each other, as if he were a fool for coming here. He absolutely was.

  “Do I have nothing you want?” he asked.

  “I’ll give you a Taliyah fact free of charge.” The only redhead smiled slyly at him. “She’s the one who stopped the great zombie apocalypse in our nineteenth century.”

  He’d caught up on the world’s history before invading Harpina. “There was no zombie apocalypse.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Did you know Taliyah—”

  Roc lost track of her words as Silver’s voice boomed through his mind.

  —We have the first phantom trapped.—

  “Stay here,” he commanded Roux, wiping all thoughts of his gravita from his head. Using the mental link between them, he unearthed Silver’s location and flashed.

  Halo stood at the warlord’s side. Ian appeared next to Roc. They occupied a midsize building. A bar he’d visited before, during one of his preliminary visits. The place once brimmed with harpies. Now, no bodies. Tables and chairs were pushed aside. At the edge of the dance floor, an embodied phantom trudged a continuous circle inside a prison of trinite.

  Swaying from side to side, she droned, “Get inside, embody, walk around, tell Roc. Get inside, embody, walk around, tell Roc.”

  Orders from her master. Whatever Erebus commanded of his creations, they repeated over and over as they obeyed. A checklist.

  The phantom had pallid and waxen skin with no distinguishing marks and eyes of milky white that stared at nothing. She wore an ill-fitting gown. Widow’s weeds, of course.

  Erebus always sent his phantoms in widow’s weeds. A reminder of the worst day of Roc’s life.

  Black lines branched from her eye sockets, a sure sign of hunger. How long since she’d fed? Years, he would guess. Until she completed her master’s mission, she couldn’t eat.

  A single meal powered most phantoms for months. Erebus preferred to keep his puppets starved for decades, however. When they finally had a chance to eat, they gorged.

  “She never approached the wall,” Halo said, stroking his strong jaw. “Erebus must have flashed her in.”

  Roc gripped the hilt of his three-blade. Like the Astra, Erebus didn’t need a key to enter a realm: he was a key. But he left telltale signs of his presence. A glaze of frost everywhere he stepped. Ice crystals in the air. The stench of death.

  “He can’t enter the realm without alerting us.” A possibility: Erebus flashed the phantom without needing to touch her. A skill Roc had once believed only Ian possessed.

  She hadn’t dwelled here before the wall. He’d found no trace of phantoms, embodied or otherwise, during his many trips.

  “Get inside, embody, walk around, tell Roc.”

  Seemed Erebus wished to pass along a message.

  He looked to Silver. “I’ll deal with the phantom. I’d like you to—” Don’t say it. “—make and deliver a set of lightweight chains to my room. Within the hour. For the bed.” Well, you said it.

  The warrior blinked with surprise. “I see.”

  “The cuffs aren’t meant to cause pain.” He said no more. With Taliyah, Roc must be prepared for anything. The thrill meant nothing.

  Silver nodded, a stiff incline of his head. He flashed from the bar.

  Let’s get this over with.
Roc strode to the cage, appearing before the phantom.

  She whizzed up to the bars, her foggy gaze locked on him. An arctic chill seeped from her, frost spreading over his alevala. A phenomenon caused by all phantoms.

  “Tell me your message,” he ordered.

  Words spilled out. “You know what she is to you, but you don’t know who or why she is. You don’t know what.” No longer did she mumble. Her monotone voice proved as chilling as her temperature. “Allow me to tell you. She is a Skyhawk, a harpy, a snake...and a phantom. You wed one of mine, Commander, but you can’t kill her until the required time. Do you know what she’ll do before then, Roc? Whatever I tell her. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha.”

  That fake, mocking laugh... Roc struck, shoving the three-blade deep into her chest. Black blood poured from the wound as she collapsed. As seconds ticked by, she evaporated into nothing. His disgust for her remained.

  Rooted in place, he snapped, “She lied.” No way Taliyah was a phantom.

  “As if we didn’t already know that,” Ian replied. “We’ve never iced over in her presence.”

  “More than that, Erebus always lies,” Halo assured him.

  “He sows doubt, nothing more,” Ian added.

  “Yes.” Absolutely. Which meant the god had known Taliyah was Roc’s gravita before Roc.

  You know what she is to you...

  Erebus mixed truth with lie to incite panic, nothing more. Taliyah wasn’t a phantom. She was cold-blooded, yes, but he warmed her. An impossibility with phantoms. Her irises were clear. No black lines smudged the skin around her eyes, indicating hunger. She was smart. No phantom possessed the skill to fake such intelligence.

  Unless Erebus had figured out how to make others like himself.

  16

  “Mother,” Taliyah called, hurrying through the fortress. Nothing had changed in the Realm of the Forgotten. Lavish, unsullied by dirt, debris or time, and vacant. Where were her loved ones? She planned to check on Tabitha and talk to Neeka, then finish off the immortals stored in the dungeon. They’d still had a little life in them, last time she’d been here. The perfect appetizer. Soon, Roc’s army would become her all-you-can-eat buffet.

  Maybe Neeka knew what Roc did to her skin? In select places, she glittered. Where she glittered, she burned. Where she burned, she ached. Where she ached, she wanted.

  Taliyah wanted so bad.

  For Neeka, she flipped every switch, flickering the lights. “Mom. Momma. Mooom. Mother!”

  Taliyah quickened her step, entering the library—Whoa! She ground to a halt. Her nape grew real cold, real fast.

  Confused, she reached behind to pat the area. Frost? On the brand Neeka had given her two thousand years ago? Or yesterday or whatever.

  “Hello, daughter.”

  The craggy voice came from behind the desk, where a huge leather chair swirled around, revealing a man with pale skin, black eyes and a hooked nose. Curly blond hair hung over a prominent brow. A thick beard with a wealth of braids covered an equally prominent jawline. Across his lap rested a blade with jagged edges. The extraordinary hilt seemed to swirl, as if he held a small piece of a universe.

  Erebus. Here. Heart thumping, Taliyah palmed two daggers. A thousand thoughts, questions and emotions bubbled up at once. At the forefront: anger.

  “You know I exist,” she said, doing her best to remain conversational. For centuries, she’d wondered about the man despised by everyone who’d ever met him. A villain willing to murder his own daughter to ruin Roc. Hadn’t her hubby warned her of this? “Where are my mother and my friend?”

  “I did nothing to them, I assure you. They were gone when I arrived. I’ve no plans to harm you, either.”

  Truth or lie? For Neeka, she suspected he spoke true. Not because he hid an honest side. Did he? The powerful oracle saw him coming, no doubt about it. Bet she even left her best friend a message. Where... There! The mirror hanging behind the desk. In the reflection, Taliyah spotted a note on the wall, the letters painted in blood. We’re fine!

  Okay, then. She could proceed without removing her father’s head.

  He wrinkled his nose at her. “You reek of Astra Planeta.”

  That is his first comment to me, post greeting? “Save the commentary,” she snapped. “What do you want from me? Why are you here?”

  One corner of his mouth quirked up. “I bet you’re maddening to the Commander. The sanctimonious Roc is so rarely challenged. I must say, I’m glad fate chose you as his gravita.”

  Her ears twitched. Don’t ask. Don’t do it. “What’s a gravita?” Well, she’d asked.

  “A mate.”

  She gulped. “Mate, as in another name for bride? Or mate, a term meaning...consort?”

  With all kinds of relish, he told her, “Consort.”

  No. Nope. He lied. He must. She knew she wasn’t Roc’s mate. Not because he’d shouted his thoughts on the matter before stomping off and avoiding the topic altogether. But because of...reasons. He couldn’t consider Taliyah his mate.

  “You are skeptical,” Erebus said. “Daughter, I knew you belonged with him before your birth. Why do you think I put you in his path?”

  “Wrong. I put myself in his path.”

  He shrugged, unperturbed by her denial. “You wear his stardust. A substance the Astra produce only for their gravitas. It acts as a warning to others.”

  Stardust... Like the white-hot glitter on her skin? She did remember reading something about it during her studies. But she couldn’t...she wouldn’t... Argh! What if she was Roc’s gravita? He’d marked her without permission.

  The possibility infuriated her...mostly. Had he deduced what she was to him from the first moment? Was that why he’d blurted out you the first time he’d seen her? But why marry her just to kill her? Why—Wait.

  “What do you mean I belonged to Roc before I was born?”

  Her father stroked the handle of his weapon. “I...see.”

  He was an oracle?

  Relish in full force, he asked, “Do you think Roc will die in your stead?”

  Okay, enough of this. “I do think he’ll die in my stead, yes, because I won’t give him a choice. I won’t back down, I won’t give up, I won’t surrender.” Taliyah Skyhawk fought until the very end.

  Blink. Suddenly, Erebus towered in front of her, and the brand on her nape blistered her with cold. Calm. Steady. She remained in place, standing her ground.

  “You don’t know how glad I am to hear this.” A creepy smile contorted his face. “You will destroy Roc for me.”

  Possessive instincts swamped her. “No, I’ll destroy Roc for me. His death is mine to mete out.”

  “Oh, I don’t want him dead, daughter. I want him miserable, and you are my chosen tool. Why do you think I bedded your mother?”

  “I’m no one’s tool. And go ahead and mention my mother and threaten Roc again. See what happens.” Like Roc, Erebus was a god with incredible power. But so what? She might not be a General—yet. She might be hungry and a little weak, but she had combat skills and a petty streak no one could guard against.

  Erebus canted his head, his gaze twitching. He grinned. “The true fun is starting. Roc knows you’re gone, and he’s far from pleased. Enjoy your evening, daughter. I know I will.”

  As she lunged to strike, he dematerialized. She spun, panting, the brand cooling.

  Minutes ticked by without incident. Finally, she released the pressure on her limbs and straightened, her mind reeling. What just happened?

  Roc couldn’t know she was gone. She currently resided in the Realm of the Forgotten. He didn’t even remember her name. But what if he did know she was gone? What would he do upon her return?

  A beat of apprehension left her floundering. The sooner she returned to Harpina to scope out the situation, the better.

  She rushed to the dungeon to
feed and—“No!” The men were gone, a note from Neeka taped to the cell door.

  Cruel to be kind. Sorry not sorry!

  “Why, that little...” Though Taliyah’s trust in her friend remained unbroken, she struggled to find a higher purpose in this. Why leave her in a weakened state around the Astra? Especially now?

  Mood souring, Taliyah clasped the key to Harpina. Here goes nothing. The fortress vanished, her bedroom appearing.

  A battle plan formed. Find Roc. He might be sleeping, allowing her to continue on with her night of hunting and feeding. If he remained awake and impossibly aware, she needed to know it now, now, now.

  Wait. Darkness encompassed the room. When she’d left, lights from the chandelier had shone brightly.

  Roc’s scent filled her nose. Intense heat caressed her skin from behind, and she froze. He was nearby. And he’d just caught her reappearance. He might not have known she’d left before, but he knew it now.

  Heart thudding, she slowly turned...and there he was. Reclining in a chair near the hearth, enveloped by thick, black shadows.

  “Would you like to explain yourself, wife?” He switched on a lamp, light chasing the shadows away, revealing harsh and quiet rage.

  Going on the defensive, she snapped, “Do I need to explain? We’re at war, and I’m using every weapon at my disposal.”

  Her honesty threw him.

  When he opened his mouth to respond, she added, “If you complain about this, you’re only admitting you’re afraid I’ll win.”

  He regarded her coldly, intently.

  “Did you know I’d left the fortress before I appeared or after?” she asked. For that matter, “How did you remember me?” The Realm of the Forgotten should have wiped her from his mind the moment she’d arrived there.

  “How could I forget the bane of my existence?” He straightened gradually. A long-sleeved shirt covered his arms and chest, hiding prime real estate. Leather pants hugged his thighs, and metal-tipped boots protected his feet.