Drake of Tanith (Chosen Soul)

by Heather Killough-Walden

  There was a sensation coming from Drake. It wasn’t unlike the waves of power she’d always felt coming off of him, but it wasn’t exactly the same either. It was heavier somehow. Stronger.

  Darker.

  Oh Abaddon.

  Drake slowly closed the distance between them, his gloved hands at his sides, his black armor-clad form never looking more ominous to Raven. When he finally stood less than a foot away, he stopped… and looked up to meet her gaze.

  Raven’s heart sank. She licked her parched lips, felt her throat fight the dryness it had adopted, and said, “Is it Drake?” She paused. “Or Darken?” Her voice was so soft, so clearly choked with emotion.

  Drake didn’t reply. Instead, he held her gaze with his for what felt like forever. She could read nothing behind those eyes whose irises bled with fire, and with each passing beat, she felt more and more lost.

  Finally, Drake turned to regard the men who held her. “Release her,” he commanded calmly. His voice had not changed. She would know his voice anywhere. And damn the sound of it, because it allowed Raven to hope.

  At once, the men let her go. Together, they each went to one knee, their heads bent low in respect. “We’re yours to command, my liege,” one of them said.

  The guard’s carefully spoken words went through Raven with a verifying reverberation that scraped along her soul like fingernails. She hated what they meant.

  Drake had killed the last king – and would now be taking his place.

  He’d done it to save her, to protect her. Just as Darken and Asmodeus had planned, Drake had come here for her. She was the reason he had given up his freedom and would be remaining in Nisse indefinitely.

  With that thought, Raven swallowed hard. Her stomach dropped like lead. Asmodeus had told his son that she was meant to be his queen. Would she be trapped here with him?

  And if so… did she mind?

  Her head spun, her heart throbbed, and through it all, she couldn’t take her eyes off of him. She didn’t want to. He was the most beautiful man she had ever laid eyes on, and at the moment, he was probably the most deadly.

  He was also very, very close. She looked from his eyes to his lips, from behind which she knew his fangs could erupt with frightening speed. She looked at the strong curve of his neck, recalling Darken’s earlier temptation of her. Then she looked down at his black-gloved hands and remembered their strength. She took a shaky breath.

  Drake watched the guards kneel, but didn’t respond to them. Instead, he slowly raised his gaze to level it on Raven, and she looked up into his eyes once more.

  After a moment, he asked “Are you hurt, Raven?”

  Raven had no idea. She was aching all over, but was fairly certain that she was doing it to herself. Otherwise, she was all but numb.

  She shook her head.

  She wanted to touch him. How much of the Drake she knew was left in that dark, ridiculously powerful six-foot-five frame?

  The heir to Nisse regarded her with an all-knowing, molten metal gaze. His silver-red eyes flashed with a lightning bolt of warning just before he moved forward, grabbed the back of her head by her hair, and bent her back to claim her lips with his.

  All thoughts were immediately blown from Raven’s mind like so many dried leaves scattered on an Autumn wind. Her hands flew to his leather-clad chest, her fingernails digging into the material of their own accord as she felt Drake’s other arm slide around her waist to pull her into him.

  She could feel him enter her mind then… and she let him in.

  As if he’d taken her by the hand to lead her through a door, Raven’s eyes closed on the real world and entered the one in her head. Stars spun, their sprinkle dust trails painting pictures across a midnight sky. A white flower budded, bloomed, and changed colors. The seasons turned, and a storm came and went, and a rainbow cast the atmosphere in an array of splendor.

  She was flying, the wind in her hair, the taste of freedom on her tongue. She was eating chocolate, smelling lavender, holding a warm blanket to her naked skin. Naiads surfaced in the forest, pixies spun around an ancient oak, and somewhere a unicorn raised its head. She saw it then, its glowing body and bedazzled horn, and she saw the blood red ruby that winked at her in a magic light.

  Music was playing; it was a song without words that beat in time with her heart. It brushed her soul with fingers of silk, caressing it with hope.

  She ceased to be in that moment.

  Drake of Tanith was in complete control, his kiss deep, fierce, and desperate. Without mercy, he opened her up to his magic, and the heat of his spirit branded her to her core. She melted under him, his inexorable fire infusing her mind and setting her body to blaze.

  Raven, his voice whispered. The softest whisper, the most tender word ever spoken. It was an oath, and it was a prayer.

  Raven felt the world tilt beneath her and knew she was falling. But she couldn’t catch herself; she would do nothing to break this kiss. And it didn’t matter, because every once in a while – when it mattered – falling was okay.

  Raven….

  There was more urgency in the name now. The desperation in his kiss leaked into the tone of his voice as it floated through her mind. He deepened the kiss, demanding that she give him everything, taking it all from her as if there were no tomorrow. Raven, he said again, the word now a plea.

  Finally, Drake’s hands slipped from her hair and back to her upper arms, and there they squeezed. With the slow and tight hesitation of a man who can’t quite come to grips, Drake broke their kiss.

  Raven opened her eyes. Drake’s gaze burned silver-red, fierce and fiery. She’d lost all sense of time; the guards were gone, and somewhere a clock was chiming.

  One.

  “Raven,” Drake said, his voice shaking with charged emotion. “Listen to me and do as I say. Take this.” He grabbed her hand from his chest and turned it over, pressing something small into her palm. He closed his own gloved hand over it.

  Two.

  “Use it to get out of here. Get as far away from me as you can.”

  Raven was sure she must be dying, her chest hurt so much. “Drake, I – ”

  “No arguments,” he shook his head quickly, cupping her face in his hands.

  Three.

  Drake closed his eyes briefly, squeezing them tight as if he could make reality step back for a second. But it didn’t work. “Take Loki with you. Get out of here and don’t look back.”

  Four.

  “Because when that clock strikes twelve, Raven, I will be king of Nisse.” He opened his eyes again, and his burning irises struck a wretched chord in Raven’s heart. “I will come after you. There is nothing I won’t do to find you and bring you back to my side.”

  Five.

  “Gods, Drake, please – ”

  “No!” He suddenly shouted, shaking her just enough to get his point across. “Don’t you hear me, Raven? I said I will hunt you down, I will use every means within my power, and you’ll be trapped here!”

  Six.

  Again, he shut his eyes, and this time Raven could feel the hiccup in the energy around him as he did so. He wasn’t struggling with the outside world – but with the world inside.

  Her fist was still clutched tight around the item he’d placed in her palm. He opened his eyes, speared her with a gaze that scared the Hell out of her, and leaned in to hiss his next words across her lips. “As far as you can go, Raven,” he whispered. She could feel the tremor in him now, deep and horrible.

  Seven.

  “Because I swear to you that I will never stop looking. And I’m good at finding people.”

  Raven inhaled sharply, choked on her breath, and released it in a sob. She was helpless against it. Drake reached down, grasped her wrist, and raised her hand roughly, drawing her attention to it. She opened her fingers.

  At the center of her palm sat a perfect red ruby. It was the one she’d seen in the unicorn’s horn.

  Eight.

  “Use it now,” h
e told her.

  Raven stared at the gem. How?

  “Now!” he bellowed. A wave of Drake’s power washed over her, and Raven almost cried out. She’d never seen Drake this way, could not even have imagined it. He was terrifying and beautiful in equal, incredible parts.

  I don’t know how! she thought. But even as she thought it, she knew that wasn’t true. Inside, she knew what to do. It was a part of who and what she was.

  Nine.

  Raven didn’t hesitate any longer. She hadn’t been counting the chimes, but there had been too many, she knew. Time was running out.

  With another sob of hopelessness, Raven raised the ruby before her and allowed it to work its magic. She had so little strength left. She’d been drained by her struggles with Darken and Asmodeus. But the unicorn’s freely given gift had a power all its own, and it worked for her now.

  Ten.

  The portal shot to life, a vortex of swirling magic that resembled a chunk of lead dropped into a spinning pool. She watched it dart forward and expand outward, and marveled at how she was already beginning to go numb.

  “Raven,” said Drake. He said it softly, his gentle tone suddenly at odds with the rush of time and the chaos of pain that her actions were creating in them both.

  Eleven.

  Raven turned to look up at him.

  His formerly burning irises had gone pure silver once more. They seared her with their familiar, lightning-white heat, and widened the chasm of earnest agony that had been promising to go numb only a split second before.

  “I love you,” he told her.

  Behind her, the portal coalesced.

  Drake moved forward, roughly grasped Raven by the arms, and shoved her into the waiting vortex.

  Twelve.

  *****

  “Magus!”

  Loki bellowed it at the top of his dust-choked lungs. He put all of his fear into it, all of his hope, and all he could do was pray that he’d not only made the right decision, but that if he had, the god of magic could hear him through all of this.

  I’m a god, Loki. Of course I can hear you.

  Loki’s eyes shot open.

  A field of green grass stretched over hills that expanded to the line of the horizon. A gentle breeze brushed past Loki, ruffling his blond hair. It smelled like cherry blossoms. Somewhere nearby, a creek babbled.

  Loki turned from where he was standing to find Magus sitting on the lowest branch of a cherry blossom tree that was much larger than any he’d ever seen before.

  He frowned, turned in a full circle, and came back to the young-looking god. “What happened?” he asked. “Where am I?”

  Magus smiled and stretched his arms out. “This is Immaloria,” he told Loki as he gestured to the vast, starkly beautiful land. “It’s the in-between realm.” He dropped his arms and turned his gaze back to Loki. His eyes went from green to blue to green again. “It’s the one place he won’t be able to find you.”

  Loki was so confused, he hadn’t even reached baffled yet. “Who?” he asked.

  “Lord Drake of Nisse, of course,” said Magus as he hopped down from the tree, landed gracefully and straightened himself out again.

  Lord Drake? Loki thought. That didn’t help. He swore under his breath, his tone utterly bewildered and his words muffled by the hand he then ran over his heated face.

  “Where’s Grolsch?” he asked, not really knowing what the hell else to say.

  “I sent him to his hometown,” Magus replied, shrugging a little. “He’s been wanting to go and visit anyway and he would have been bored here with you and your sister.”

  “My sister?” Loki’s head was spinning, but the mention of his sister had a focusing effect on his attention. “Where is she?”

  Magus cocked his head to one side and his gaze took on a far-away cast. “Oh… I’d say she’ll be joining us any second now.”

  Loki did another full turn, once more not seeing anything but miles of fresh, thick green grass and just the one tree. Something occurred to him then. It was a sobering thought. He turned back to Magus.

  “I’m dead, aren’t I.” It wasn’t a question, and even if it was, he wasn’t so sure he wanted an answer. Especially since Magus had told him his sister would soon be joining him.

  Magus’s smile was both easy and deeply amused. “No,” he said simply. “Not dead.” He began to walk away from the tree, his gaze dropping to the green grass beneath his boots. “Though you’re not strictly alive here either, I suppose.” He glanced at Loki. “In Immaloria, you don’t technically exist.”

  Loki was about to ask him to elaborate when the air around them shifted. The wind picked up, pulling past him at a surprising rate. He turned, as if to see where the air was going. Before him, a portal was opening.

  “Ah,” said Magus. “Right on time.”

  Loki stepped back as the portal expanded and then settled down. A second later, Raven’s black hair blurred before Loki as her body came shooting out of the portal’s center. He tried to catch her, but was too late to prevent her from landing on her back and rolling with the force of the impact.

  “Raven!” Loki cried, racing after her.

  The portal closed.

  Loki made it to Raven’s side as she rolled onto her hands and knees and, with her brother’s help, pushed herself into a sitting position.

  “Raven, what happened?” he asked as he began looking her over for broken bones or open wounds. There were none that he could see, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.

  Raven didn’t answer. Her hair hung before her face, obscuring her features.

  “Raven?” he asked, a little quieter this time. He moved, just a touch, in order to get a clear view of her face, but she moved away. Loki frowned, a new string of fear unwinding within him. Slowly, he raised his hand. Her long black hair was quivering, shaking with the tremble in her body. Loki gently brushed his fingers along the strands that were hiding her features and tucked them behind her ear.

  Her cheeks were wet.

  “Raven?”

  She hesitated a moment more and then turned to look up at him. The pain and loss Loki saw reflected in her dark blue eyes would haunt him for a very long time. He saw there in those bottomless depths a woman who had begun a journey as a child filled with a soul too old for her – but who had grown through hardships and struggle and adversity, into a strong and powerful woman with a good and powerful heart. And now that heart was breaking.

  He didn’t even have to ask what had happened. Somehow, he knew. What Magus had said about Drake made perfect sense now. And the fact that Loki was sitting here with his sister could mean only one thing. Drake had let her go. Through it all, despite everything, the Bounty Hunter of Tanith had put her needs before his own.

  That meant he loved her.

  There was a part of Loki that at one time would have balked at such a possibility. As a follower of Haledon, he would have believed it impossible for a devil to love. But now? Now…. Loki felt strange. Lighter. He realized, as he stared down at his sister, that he was suddenly free of the choke of such limited philosophy, and that the veil had been pulled from before his eyes. There, in the emotion of his sister’s crying eyes, he saw the truth. Good and bad were relative. So were Heaven and Hell.

  Loki pulled Raven into his arms and squeezed her tight. She went limp there, her sobs soft but deep, pulled from the very core of who she was. He rocked her, as their mother had done with them when they were little. Over her shoulder, he looked up at the god who yet stood beside the massive cherry blossom tree.

  Magus held his gaze, his expression telling Loki that he knew what he’d been thinking – and that he was pleased. Loki placed his hand gently on his sister’s head and mouthed the words, “Thank you.”

  Magus waited. A gentle breeze brushed the scent of cherry blossoms by.

  Then the god nodded – and disappeared.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Zeta felt it the moment it happened. She could imagine th
at everyone in every realm could feel it to some degree. It was a vital kind of sensation, like knowing when your heart skipped a beat.

  There was also the clock on the wall. It struck twelve with a definite and final sort of sound, and Zeta knew that this night the chimes had delivered upon them a different era.

  She smiled. It was time.

  In the next room, her mother slumbered. Down the hall, down several flights of stairs, and in a separate wing of Castle Eidolon, her father remained in his throne room, dealing with the last issues of the day.

  The delegates from the other realms would be leaving just now, perhaps wondering what it was that they’d just felt in the air, what had whispered across their flesh with the twelfth stroke of midnight, but most likely brushing it off as nothing more than fatigue. When they were gone, King Oberon would be alone.

  Zeta crossed the room with calm, cool purpose, her long legs eating up the distance with incredible grace. Her gem-beaded silks fanned out behind her until she reached the same secret cache in the wall that she had visited earlier that week, when she’d given Raven Grey the cloak and circlet that had protected her beyond Eidolon’s walls.

  It was with Raven in Zeta’s thoughts that the princess re-opened the cache and, this time, pulled out a small crystal vial. She paused and turned the vial slowly in her hands, allowing the light to catch the intricate facets of its carvings. Inky black liquid coated the jar’s interior.

  It had been given to her by Lord Darken – the king of assassins.

  Few things could kill an elf. There existed only a handful of magics, only certain weapons, and it took incredible skill to beat an elf in battle. Something special was what it took – and that was what Zeta now held in her hands, which wasn’t surprising. If anyone in the realms was capable of doing away with a member of Fae royalty, it was Darken.

  Zeta pulled the stopper out of the bottle and spoke a short, powerful incantation. Then she waited. After a few seconds, the black liquid inside began to smoke, rising into the air over the crystal container. Zeta placed her hand above the growing cloud of smoke. The black wisps of ash curled into her skin and were absorbed before they disappeared. A few moments later, all of the liquid was gone. Zeta tossed the crystal vial into the fire.