“Phoebe,” I said, unable—or maybe unwilling—to completely hide my reluctance.
“Well, Phoebe. I understand you’ve been chosen as the priestess of the gate. You’ve probably been told you have the ability to ‘save the world from monsters’…” He flourished a hand.
“It appeared they were performing the confirmation ceremony when I arrived,” Commander Abel said.
“But it was not completed?”
“No, I don’t think so,” I said. It seemed so hopeless now. We would never be able to return to the Temple a second time, would we?
“Good timing, then. You narrowly missed their clutches,” Leonidas said.
“Whose clutches?” I demanded.
“The Elders.” He sighed. “I’m sure you know that in previous centuries, the Elders had a great deal of influence on people’s lives all over the world. Finding the priestess and her guardians and helping to instill them at the gate was only a small part of what they did. They had a great deal of power. There is magic in the stones they take from the earth, and they carried them everywhere, using that magic in some cases to help and heal, but in other cases, to exert control. They had more power than the kings. More power than anyone. Tell her about your ancestor, Commander.”
“One of my ancestor was banned from the religion,” he said. “All services and rituals. It effectively cut him out of society. Just because he dared to question the Elders.”
“Wait, so you’re trying to tell me the Elders have been the bad guys all along?” Sure, it doesn’t sound at all suspicious for the guy who’s conquering everyone to complain about other people having too much power…
“Simple terms…but, to some extent,” Abel said.
“Bad guys.” Leonidas laughed. “I like her. You remind me of my little niece,” he told me, which insulted me vaguely because I was pretty sure his niece was like, five. Did he not notice that I was a grown woman? “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“So you’ve been saying.”
“And I’m sure you’re not convinced.”
“If the Elders and the priestess kept out the monsters, I don’t see how this could possibly be better,” I said. “Our whole country is stuck in place. People are scared even to gather berries in the fields. The land is full of abandoned farms. It’s just plain sad. If the Elders are corrupt, okay, but why can’t there still be a priestess?”
“They created the priestess. And they control the priestess. That’s why you must be confirmed at their temple first. You are not a natural phenomenon.”
“Then ask them to let you control the priestess, in exchange for—something—and you can close the gate!”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t work. They can’t just let someone else control the priestess. We have to accept that the monsters exist. We’re working on better weapons to stop them, ways to block the ‘gate’, which by the way, is actually an extensive series of caverns. Many people don’t realize that. You don’t really want to live in a cave, do you? Do you really want to be a priestess anyway? It’s not a very respectable job for a young women, when you get down to it.”
“I—I don’t know.”
“You’re tired and confused,” he said. “I’ll take you back to the palace—”
“I’m keeping her here,” Abel said.
Leonidas looked up at the interruption. “In your home? You’ll be gone on your next endeavor before long.”
“For now, I’m keeping her,” Abel said. “The others died in the imperial palace. People think I killed them.”
“They committed suicide. Phoebe’s fate is in her own hands. But they certainly won’t change their opinion if this one dies in your house.”
Hmm. Did this mean Abel thought the other priestesses had been murdered by Leonidas? But if he did, surely Leonidas would be offended. Instead, he just shrugged. “Would you rather stay here, or come back with me to the palace?”
These were not good choices. Obviously Abel did the Emperor’s bidding. But as much as I didn’t like Abel, I kept thinking of Himika telling Leonidas she would never bow to him. I wondered what he said into her ear. He gave the order to kill Elder Dion. If he wanted to convince me he was working for good, he was going to have to try harder than this.
“I’ll stay here,” I said.
“Until the commander gets back on his ship, then, you may stay here,” Leonidas said. “I’d better go. I still have that dinner with the ambassador from Tacho. Excellent work, Commander.” He stood up. Someone brought him a hat and cloak. Commander Abel bowed stiffly as Leonidas put the plumed hat atop his wild dark golden mane and the servant pinned his cape to his shoulders.
Abel didn’t move an inch until a door shut in the far distance.
“You could have behaved with more deference,” he said.
I pressed my lips together stubbornly. I knew I shouldn’t open my mouth, so I didn’t. I imagined myself home again, where the Emperor was so far away, no one ever thought of behaving with deference. I was so excited to see him when I was Strawberry Girl. I definitely knew better now.
“Well,” Abel said. “You are by no means safe. I want to keep you under supervision by men I trust. I have letters to write. I’ll tie your hands loosely if you want to keep yourself busy with some needlework or teacup painting.”
“Teacup painting?”
“It’s a pastime of noble ladies. Painting on teacups.”
:Oh, well then,” I said. “What happens to the teacups afterward?”
“You drink out of them, for gods’ sakes, it’s a teacup.”
“It sounds silly.”
“I’m a solider, I don’t know what girls do. It doesn’t matter. Just…follow me.”
“My sigils are still hurting…”
“Your sigils, eh?” He paused. “What if…” He started walking down the hall. I guess I was supposed to follow.
“What if what?”
“The other priestesses looked like they committed suicide. We have a suspicion that the Elders use the sigils as a means for controlling the priestesses. When one priestess is killed, the power passes to another girl. Suppose that when a priestess is captured, they have some way of quietly taking her out through the magic she carries on her own body…”
“They wouldn’t do that!” I scratched the burning sigil on my forehead.
“It’s just a theory,” he said. “But one worth considering. If you didn’t have the sigils, you wouldn’t be a priestess anymore, and maybe you could go home.” He paused. “I’d like to take a look at them. Your modesty will be preserved. I’ll have Mrs. Maxwell in the room for a chaperone.”
“Oh, you already carried me around in my underwear, and I’m also your prisoner, so I don’t think we really need a chaperone. If you’re going to be a jerk, I don’t think anyone’s stopping you.”
“I am not going to be…a jerk. But, suit yourself. Don’t say I didn’t try to preserve decorum,” he said coolly.
We adjourned to a library where a reading couch sat in a big bay window that offered plenty of light. “Sit,” he said. “I see the one on your forehead. It keeps pulsing. A symbol of some kind…” He put on a pair of spectacles and looked close. The spectacles were the only hint of his age, although I knew he had been commanding the Black Army for like twenty years. He hardly looked a day over thirty, if that. “Do you know what it means?”
“No.”
“Mm. There are four of them, right? Explain this to me.”
“Yes. On my breastbone, my pelvis, and my tailbone. The glow when my guardians touch them, and…” Hmm. How to explain this.
“During congress?” he said, his tone faintly withering. “It’s a very primitive sort of magic. Drawing power from a woman. It’s like that legend…”
“Some harvest goddess or something?” I have to admit, I had never been a good listener. Not in school. Not even when someone was trying to tell me a story. I was always the kid that fidgeted and interrupted.
He took a blanket off the
back of the sofa and handed it to me. “If you don’t mind, perhaps you could cover up your legs with this and let me see the pelvis sigil?”
“Sure, fine,” I said, a little amused that he was going to some pains to make sure he didn’t see my underwear after he held my almost-naked body for like five minutes. When I took the blanket, he looked out the window with his back to me, his hands crossed below the buttons on the back of his coat.
“A goddess of peace,” he said. “She saw that humans and monsters were always killing each other, and so she married both the human king and the monster king, and shared her bed with each, and had a child born of the two. And the child ruled over both kingdoms with wisdom. They were born of human, monster, and god.”
“Well, that sounds handy,” I said, standing up and wrapping the blanket around me from panties to ankles. I kept it really low on my hips so he could see the sigil fully. I don’t know if there was any point. But it kept my mind more occupied than needlework.
“Of course, priestesses don’t have to sleep with monsters,” he said.
“Ri—ight,” I said, hesitating over the thought of Niko. “I’m covered up now.”
“Hmm.” He didn’t look as closely at the sigil on my pelvis. “It’s still burning, isn’t it? How bad is the pain?”
“It’s—almost more urgent than painful, really. Like really needing to pee. But at the same time, very different. Like, kind of painful and kind of itchy, and—oh, I think it’s much worse when I try to think about it. What if it never goes away?” I leaned forward, clutching Forrest’s sigil with my hand.
“What if I—” Abel put his fingers to the sigil on my tailbone, below the skirts I had pulled up and bunched up on front of me.
I convulsed. His touch sent something through me that eased the pain.
I gasped.
His hand yanked back.
“Wait—that helps,” I said.
A feeling rose up within me. A sudden awareness.
The sensation I had been trying to find, all along. I clutched the stone pendant and yanked it off my head. “Abel…you’re my guardian.”
Chapter Nineteen
“Step back,” he said, his pale eyes turning almost translucent. His pupils were unnerving gray dots in the pool of a frozen blue lake. “I am not your guardian.”
I shouldn’t have told him. But if the book was correct, his sigil was on his pelvis too. I couldn’t just touch him with the stone without taking off some of his clothes.
“You are. And I know you feel it.”
“I will never act as your guardian. You won’t touch me with that stone.”
“The stone might seal the deal, but you already feel it,” I said, remembering how the idea of the priestess had haunted Gilbert long before any of us became what we were. “Abel, haven’t you ever wondered if the emperor is the one who’s lying about everything?”
“I’ve seen the Elders’ corruption. I am never going to let them get their magical claws in me and dictate how I will live.”
“The bond I have with my guardians…just doesn’t feel like a bad thing.”
Of course, until now, my guardians weren’t lackeys of the emperor who killed people in the public square. Why was I trying to convince him? What would Forrest, Gilbert, Niko or even Rin say if I brought back Commander Abel as the fourth guardian?
“Never mind,” I said. “I don’t want you anyway.”
“Very well. We’re done here.” But he was still standing there.
“Where is this sigil?” he asked.
“It’s…there.” I pointed to the spot, right where the bottom button of his jacket fell.
His jaw worked back and forth once before he said, “I was badly scarred there from a childhood accident.”
“An accident, huh?”
“So my father said.”
“Do you trust your father?”
He flicked the button open with a quick motion of his glove and pulled down the waist of his trousers, baring a sliver of scarred flesh. “Go ahead and try it, then. See what happens.”
Whatever had happened looked like a nasty burn, the skin marred with mottled red scar tissue, and it had definitely targeted the sigil specifically. Someone had tried to erase the mark. Would that work? Before I touched him with the stone, I brushed his skin with my fingers. I drank in the bond between us; weak compared to the others, but growing stronger every moment our skin was in contact.
He was shaking faintly. “Stop.”
“I might be able to heal you,” I said. “Do you remember when or how this happened?”
“I was very young.”
“Someone knew you would be a guardian and they tried to stop you.” Sensing that he was about to put up a resistance, I placed the stone against his skin.
Pinpoints of light flashed under the scar. He jerked back, his neck craning toward the ceiling.
I stepped away from him. His skin was melting away and twisting; he was changing. I had almost forgotten that he was a shadow guardian and how Niko had almost turned into a monster. Beneath his human flesh, a sleek white head emerged, a neck covered in shimmering white armored scales. I had never seen a monster like this. He crawled out of his clothes, spreading wings that were almost translucent.
He thrashed, hissing at me when I tried to come close. He ran erratically to the other side of the room, a long tail sweeping the floor behind him. His arms and legs had clawed fingers and toes that rumpled the rug. The hands were very much like a monster, with thumbs and fingers and sharp talons that could have torn me up easily. Around his cheeks and elbows and running down the back of his spine were jagged ridges. He seemed to have more bulk as a monster.
“Abel!” I held out my hands.
The monster made a sound somewhere between a screech and a roar. Ice formed on the carpet where his breath fell.
“Do you understand me?” I asked. “You’re a shadow guardian. I guess that means you…turn into a monster. Niko is also a shadow guardian. I changed him back when I kissed him. Just let me get close…”
“Hss…” The monster crouched.
He was beautiful, really. Graceful, like something from a storybook or a dream. It was impossible for something like this to exist, a beast that looked carved from ice. But here he was. I stroked his muzzle. He stayed very still.
“It’s okay,” I said.
He hunched down.
I kissed the tip of his snout.
He quickly started transforming back, shrinking down into a man. Before he had even fully transformed back he was already reaching for his jacket. He stood up on shaky limbs and thrust his arms through the sleeves, turning away from me. The jacket was fine except that the buttons had popped off, but his shirt was torn up. He picked up his trousers and shoved his legs into them, still turned away from me. Then he wheeled on me.
“If you ever speak of this, I will kill you. I will never be your guardian. Whatever you did to me, it will not happen again.”
“Abel—don’t you think—”
“Never.” His voice was rough. “The Elders are trying to sabotage my family by making me into one of their tools. They must have done it long ago. They planned for me to find you, didn’t they? But I am Lord Abelard du Lac, Commander of the Black Army. You will not bring me down.” He buttoned his jacket up and grabbed the blanket to cover up his lack of shirt. Then he stormed to the door and threw it open.
“Guards!” He coughed.
“Yes, sir?”
“I think I’m taking a chill. I’m going to bed for the afternoon. Tell Mrs. Maxwell to bring me the tea and brandy. And I’ve changed my mind about the girl. She’ll be safer with the emperor. Bring her to the palace.”
He met my eyes one final time. “Goodbye, priestess. We will not meet again.”
I watched his retreating back. Before the guard tried to tie my hands again, I pulled Niko’s dice out of my pocket.
Four again.
It won’t be as easy as it would have been this morning, b
ut we should still succeed.
I wasn’t giving up on him, or any of my guardians. Damn it, I was going to save the world.
Thank you for reading! To make sure you don’t miss a release or any of the side stories revealing extra tidbits about the guys’ lives before Priestess Awakened begins, sign up for my mailing list. Thank you to my beta readers for suggestions for side stories! The first one shows how Gilbert and Niko met. Also, please come chat with me on Facebook or drop me a line at [email protected]! As I write this, I’m working furiously on book 2, Priestess Bound. I’ll be putting up the preorder on the day this goes live, so stay tuned! (I also usually forget to update my back matter…so half of you will read this when the book is already out, ha ha.) In the meantime, you might like my series of steamy and adorable fairy tales in a world where humans dwell alongside goblins, faeries, elves, with a lot of very sexy spells and very happy ever afters. Read on for a preview of Beauty and the Goblin King!
Beauty and the Goblin King Preview
Maybe I was the girl Clara didn’t want me to be. Here I was, with the goblin king, and I didn’t want him to stop.
For the past ten years, the Goblin King has stayed locked away in his caverns. He only opens his doors for one purpose: he will give one gold coin for every night a girl is willing to spend with him. Despite his fearsome reputation, his fangs and claws, the girls come back safe and sound, and they never say a word about it. One must be very desperate to accept such an offer…or very curious. Well, everyone says curiosity has always been my downfall. Too clever for a girl so beautiful.
Now my family is on the brink of losing everything. My sister Clara knows the goblin king’s story has always intrigued me, and she’s willing to sacrifice me to get her hands on his money. But I finally have the chance to sate my curiosity.
Priestess Awakened Page 19
