by Isobael Liu
Lilian knew it was a little girl who had become disoriented when she ran into the woods without thinking of the dangers, only to hide.
She pushed herself harder, jogging along the path, into the forest which bordered the backside of the compound. As Lilian went deeper into the forest, she soon found herself lost as well. She stopped for a bit to catch her breath and get her bearings.
Ten minutes later, there was no child in sight. Her psychic feelers could detect the girl though, picking up on her distress, now amplified. The girl had to be close. She turned a bit, adjusted her path, and headed off once again.
“It’s Lilian!” she called out. “If you can hear me, come toward me!”
There was a burst of elation and then it was gone.
Not just the elation, but also all emotions. She froze in place.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are.” The words were spoken in a graveled voice, but the tone seemed to slither and ooze with sinister intention.
Lilian knew that voice. She’d heard it before, in her nightmares.
The h untsman!
The shadowy man who had trapped her in the pit.
“Lilian? What’s wrong?”
“Matthias! He’s here! The huntsman!”
Lilian felt the explosion of rage in Matthias, but she had to block it out in order to concentrate on what was going on here and now.
Her palm burned and throbbed, and the baying of the hounds came from a distance. A shudder went through her.
“Tsk, tsk,” came the hoarse, harsh toned words. “One should never run into the woods alone, little girl. Don’t you know there are bad things which exist?”
“Like you?” she asked as her eyes scanned the area where the voice came from.
A cold touch skittered along the back of her neck and she spun around.
Some yards back stood the shadowy figure of a man, tall and lanky, dressed in black. She couldn’t see the details of his face, however.
“Your words are disrespectful,” he growled.
Lilian gasped as an onslaught of psychic feelers struck her. She scrambled to block them, but with so many of them, she couldn’t devote all of her attention on the mental attack when she was threatened physically as well.
“We’re on our way!”
The mental attack withdrew and she took a deep breath, shoring up the barriers in her mind.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
Lilian heard the grinding chuckle, followed by the baying of the hounds, closer than before.
“Amras must have told you, dear girl.”
Lilian eyed him with wariness. “The Winter King. Ulwe. You’re my uncle.”
“Do not presume since your father is my brother you can claim a relation to me. You are an abomination, tainted by your human blood. You are nothing more than a vessel, a slave.”
She bristled. “I’m not an abomination, and I sure as hell will never be a slave!”
He laughed in his harsh, coarse tone. “That remains to be seen, if you survive.”
The hounds were getting closer. She could hear them crashing through the forest on their way. She gathered the energy around her in preparation.
The man moved from his spot, but did not come closer. He skirted the edge of her vision, staying in the shadows. She was sure he used magick of some sort to conceal his features because she should have been able to see him with more detail.
To hell with it, she thought, and launched the first attack.
He must have been expecting something because he was quick to raise a shield to block the telekinetic punch she lobbed at him. She dove for cover behind a small grove of trees.
“Not very nice of you,” he growled.
There was a loud explosion and tree bark showered the air around her.
“I was going to kill you, but now I think I will let you live, as my personal slave. I can think of plenty of tortures to repay you for your disrespect.”
The tree began to scream in horror, and she covered her ears with her hands to block out the sound. It wasn’t the sound, but the pain emanating from the tree which hurt the most.
“I'm going insane! How can I feel the pain of a tree?”
The shadow man, Ulwe, barked a laugh. “So close to your Chrysalis! Do you feel its pain?”
He caused the tree next to her to explode and shriek with pain. She cried out in horror as the same sorrowful whine emanated around her. He battered at her mental barriers as well, weakening her further. The onslaught of the attacks and the pain drove her to the ground, onto her knees.
“Lilian!”
“Daughter!”
Two male voices in her head, both on different mental paths.
She was lifted and shook hard. She looked up into Ulwe’s face, seeing him for the first time, without a veil of magick. He ripped her hands from her ears, snarling.
“You are mine, and your powers will be mine!”
Lilian reacted. Not with her powers, not with her magick, but physically.
Lilian brought her knee up, rather hard, connecting it with his groin, and he released her as he exclaimed aloud in pain. She couldn’t understand what he said, but it sounded like cursing.
Rather than give him the chance to recover, she followed with a spinning roundhouse kick, aiming for the side of his head. Her heel connected with his jaw; she felt the hard jarring of bone against bone, but rather than knocking him over, he shoved her away from him and she hit a tree behind her, knocking the wind from her.
The hounds were very close, by the sound of their snarling and baying, and she watched as Ulwe grinned a slow, evil smirk at her. He wiped his mouth, smearing black blood across his cheek.
“You will pay for that.”
Lilian gasped for air and saw behind Ulwe, there stood the hounds. They looked like wolves, large and dark, with red eyes. They snarled and bared their teeth.
“Hold on!”
Lilian tried to stand, but Ulwe waved a hand and pinned her to the tree. As she struggled to free herself, his head jerked up and he stared behind her. With a cold, vicious snarl, he shifted his form, becoming a large black crow. The hounds launched themselves at her, only to be met with the Lupine in their wolf forms before they could reach her.
She found herself freed and she skittered around the other side of the tree for cover as the creatures battled. She could hear the snarling, feel the rage from both sides, and her body sucked in the energy. It filled her, energized her, revitalized her, and she panicked. She tried to bolt away from the battle scene, to put distance between her and the killing rage she was feeding from. Before getting far, she collided with someone and out of instinct, stood her ground and fought.
She heard some words in a foreign tongue, but ignored them and kept fighting. There was too much fear in her mind, too much rage building in her from the battle, for her to comprehend what was going on.
All of a sudden, it was as if someone flipped a switch and her body went still. She was awake and alert, but unable to control her movements, her own body. She was lowered to the ground with gentle care, although still held in someone’s arms.
After a bit, someone leaned over into her view and smiled.
The hawk man. Behind him, her father appeared.
“Keh por et pai?” Amras asked as he knelt beside her.
The words were odd, yet the tone musical, soothing.
The hawk man smirked and handed her over to her father. “Ai desore caes thews kalar ti.”
Amras took her into his arms and the hawk man touched her forehead. She was in control of herself once more and exploded with anger.
“How dare you! You can’t just…just…”
Hell, what did he do to me?
The stranger and Amras looked at one another, grinned, and then back at her, which peeved her off.
“Daughter, this is Talis.”
“I don’t care if he’s…wait, Talis?” She frowned. “The High King?”
Talis bowed to her. “I am.”<
br />
Lilian would have been horrified if she hadn’t been angry.
“Still, you just don’t grab someone after they’d just been fighting. You don’t sneak up behind someone.” Her words sounded more peevish than angry, even to her ears. She sighed.
Talis nodded with feigned seriousness. “I will remember next time.”
“Was that the Sidhe language?” she asked. “What you were speaking earlier?”
Amras nodded. “Did you understand?”
“No, but it’s beautiful.”
“I asked him, ‘what did you do to her’ and he replied, ‘I stopped her from killing me.’”
Lilian’s face heated and she glanced at Talis who smiled.
“Lilian?” Matthias was checking on her.
Lilian struggled, broke from her father’s arms and scrambled to her feet. The fighting was over, but she could detect pain. There were wounded. She hesitated to go to the battle scene.
“Are you hurt? Everyone all right?”
“We have some wounded but no one from the Lupine died. Go with your father. You don’t want to see this.”
Lilian frowned. “Matthias?”
“It’s all right, lilia mea. Go. Take your father back to the palatia. We will be there soon.”
Matthias didn’t mention Talis. Did it mean he wasn’t aware of the stranger or…
“He does not know of my presence,” Talis said. “I have kept my presence unknown for obvious reasons.”
Lilian looked at him. “How did you know I was thinking of that? Are you in my mind?”
Talis smiled. “Do you have wine?”
Lilian looked at her father, who smiled and winked at her. She sighed. “I’m sure I could find some.”
She started back toward the compound and with them following, she muttered, “This ought to be interesting.”
Talis laughed.
Chapter 9
Lilian was rather irked Matthias had blocked her from using the connection between mates. Although she could just enter his mind and get the information she wanted, she knew his views on that, and he might see it as her not trusting him. Still, she didn’t like this secrecy he had going right now. She worried about him and Tiberius, and not knowing what was happening made her anxious.
She watched as her father and Talis entertained the children and more than a few adults with their magick and antics.
The Sidhe were fun loving creatures, it seemed, and adored children. Watching the two men act like the children they entertained was rather amusing, and she wasn’t the only one who laughed as Talis and Amras danced, played tricks, and made the children shriek with joy.
By the time the warriors had returned, Lilian, like most of the adults, was wiping tears of laughter from her eyes, and the children were so wound up, the cacophony was deafening.
Talis and Amras took their bows and were immediately surrounded by the children, all clamoring to get the men’s attention.
“What in the world?”
Lilian chuckled at Matthias’s confusion. “My father and Talis were entertaining the children.”
“Entertaining? It sounded like a full fledge battle was going on. Who is Talis?”
She turned and watched her mate approach from the woods. Behind him, she could see the bulk of the group heading off a different route, carrying something between them. “Talis, the High King. He’d been shielding his presence in the woods.”
“Why?” Matthias sounded suspicious.
“Because I didn’t want Ulwe to know of my presence.”
Lilian looked at Talis in surprise. He had used the same, private mental path a mated couple used.
Matthias growled in her mind.
“Explanations later,” Talis announced.
As Matthias stopped at her side and wrapped an arm around her, Talis and Matthias stared at one another. After a few moments, Matthias nodded and looked at her.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I’m fine. How is everyone? No one hurt?”
“All healed, and cleaned up. We should take this into the meeting room.”
Lilian didn’t like how Matthias looked weary, and yet more dangerous than she’d ever seen him. Something was wrong.
She looked at her father. “If you and Talis would come with us? We’re going to have a meeting, it seems.”
Amras and Talis both gave a nod and followed as Matthias and Lilian led them into the palatia. Along the way, Matthias called out to a couple of servers in their language. Both bowed their heads and hurried off.
“Food and drink,” he said to her in explanation.
Lilian smiled.
The smiled lasted right up until she walked into the meeting room, noted the gathered Lupine warriors, and the captured enemy, a human, chained. She tensed.
“Easy, baby. He’s secure. He has some answers.”
The prisoner snarled and lunged in her direction, but could not move very far or very well. Even in human form, the prisoner was still very savage in demeanor, wild and vicious. His eyes still red, his ears pointed, and his hair ragged and dirty. His clothes were disgusting, and she could smell him even from the door.
The Lupine, save two, took seats at the long table and Amras and Talis sat down on the far end. She was torn, but opted to sit with her father and Talis. It was also farthest from the prisoner.
Even so, the prisoner continued to struggle within his bindings and glare at her.
“It seems these creatures are targeting Lilian specifically. A room full of potential victims and he concentrates on her alone,” Amras said.
Lilian wasn’t thrilled. Neither was Matthias, based on his reaction to Amras’s words.
“Every one of those ‘hounds’ as Lilian called them, are Shifters. They are not of the Lupine, neither my clan nor our cousins’ clan, the Remus. The bastard children of outsiders perhaps.”
Lilian listened as she concentrated on the prisoner. She eased her way into his mind and would have recoiled from the sheer hatred and evil which had poisoned his thoughts, but knew she had to dig deeper, to find out more. She knew the Custodes Secreti and the lengths they went through to gain their people, their agents and Knights.
She noticed it was getting much easier to use her abilities. she wasn’t sure if it was because of the practice she was getting, or as Ulwe had said, her Chrysalis nearing. She’d have to talk to her father about what the Chrysalis was and what it meant.
The prisoner’s mind had become a twisted labyrinth of darkness and pain. She kept seeing a worm in the memories, and the worm was associated with pain. The conversation going on around her died away, became nothing more than background noise, as she concentrated on the prisoner’s memories.
Forming a sword of light, her mental self cut away at the evil in the prisoner’s mind, bringing light to the darkness, and healing wounds associated with the worm. She could feel the prisoner’s rage at first, and confusion, followed by an inkling of hope.
His name was Khayyam, she learned.
Lilian continued to cut through the poison, to reveal the man beneath the monster.
Ulwe had taken him, as a young boy, about ten years of age, and began his training. Khayyam had been an orphan and had nowhere to run when the torture began.
The pain had been excruciating. The mental anguish Ulwe had inflicted was far worse than any physical damage he could have done, but Ulwe needed his body whole. He needed a personal guard, a soldier, and his own elite assassin. Through mental torture, he twisted the boy through the years until Khayyam became the monster he was today.
Not anymore.
Lilian made sure she went through every corner of Khayyam’s mind to clear out the shadows, to bring light to the darkness, cutting and slashing through the evil until it retreated, unable to find a hiding place, and when she head Ulwe’s howl of rage echoing through Khayyam’s mind, she knew she had won.
When she disconnected from his mind, Khayyam was on his knees, sobbing, everyone looked confused, a
nd she was sick, weak with hunger, shaking uncontrollably. She tried to stand, but almost fell over, and would have if Amras and Talis both hadn’t moved as quick as they did.
“What’s wrong?” Three distinctive voices asked her, two on individual paths, the third, Talis’s voice, echoed both paths. It was a very strange sensation.
Lilian shook her head and glanced up, toward the prisoner. “His name is Khayyam. Get some food and drink and take the chains off him.”
Talis touched her brow and she felt him in her mind. She tried to eject him, but was too weak at the moment, and he too strong in his abilities.
“You still wouldn’t be able to,” she heard Talis say.
“What do you mean?”
“I am the High King. Until I relinquish the crown, I am the most powerful of our kind. Why do you think Ulwe wishes to unseat me and take the throne?”
“What can’t you do?”
There was a long silence in her mind before she heard his reply. “I can’t be free.”
Lilian considered his answer.
“I can’t have my own life. I must be in charge of everyone. Even outside of the Mists, in the humans’ land, I must make decisions for the best of my people. I am tired. Ulwe knows this and uses it to his advantage.”
Lilian hadn’t thought of it like that before. All of a sudden, she realized what he had said. Until he relinquished the crown. Did it mean he was looking for a replacement? Was it the reason why he was here instead of in his realm?
“Let me see what you did.” Talis went through her memory, like a fleeting and gentle ray of light. If she hadn’t been aware of her abilities, and how to use them, she would have never known he was there.
Definitely a far cry from Ulwe’s methods on Khayyam .
Of course, following it was an alarming thought. Talis could twist someone’s mind in so subtle of ways they wouldn’t know it.
Talis burst out into laughter and handed her off to Amras.
“Your daughter has a keen mind and sharp wit about her.”
Amras grinned and his eyes twinkled. “Thank you, My Lord.”
Talis looked at Matthias, still amused, from what she could see. “Your prisoner won’t be a danger now. Do as she says.”
Matthias lifted a brow and glanced at her. “What did you do?”
