by Aja James
“And you will love me for many more,” she agreed readily. “Mature love means that you will be able to distinguish what’s business from what’s personal. I already told you that I cannot Mate you. You are not a True Blood. There are things I must do as Queen. If you truly love me, you will support me in all things. Now kiss me and come watch the games at my side. I must finish getting ready for the ceremony.”
He stared into those hypnotic golden eyes for long moments, his heart twisting with agony in his chest.
She would not change her mind. He could not make her.
He released her hand with bloodless fingers.
She gave him a penetrating look but didn’t comment.
He knew that she thought this was the only way, Mating a powerful True Blood for political advantage. He wouldn’t blame her. She was his love, but she was also queen.
But he’d prove her wrong.
He’d show her there was another way.
*** *** *** ***
A short while before the first contestants were to take the stage of battle, the Elemental found what he was looking for.
Or, rather, who.
“They tell me you can weave all kinds of spells, sorceress. I need your Gifts presently,” the Elemental said to an old human woman who aided one of the Dark healers on standby on the outskirts of the encampment that surrounded the fortress.
Thousands of Dark Ones from far and wide gathered to both participate in, and observe, the tournament for Queen Ashlu’s hand. Humans attended as well from surrounding villages. Even a few Pure Ones watched from the farthest stands.
This promised to be a contest for the ages.
“Who’s they?” the gray-haired woman asked, her tone conveying clearly that the question was rhetorical.
“You have the wrong human, young prince. I have no Gifts to impart, only curses.”
She did not look in his direction, continuing to go about her business, pouring various liquids into different dishes and bowls and mixing herbs in a brew that hung over an open flame.
“I don’t have time to waste,” the Elemental said impatiently. “I have only a few moments before I must enter the competition or forfeit my place.”
“Go right along and enlist yourself, young feller,” she said dismissively, “why you should wait upon me is a mystery.”
“I need you to change my appearance,” he got to the point. “But only for the duration of the tournament and the Mating ceremony. I cannot appear as myself when I become the Queen’s Consort.”
She looked up at him then, finally.
For several long moments, she stared wordlessly at him, keeping her gaze locked with his. She didn’t look anywhere else, not even into his eyes. No, the Elemental felt as if she was looking directly into his soul.
“Ah,” she breathed softly. “I can see why.”
“So you will help me?” he asked urgently.
She was silent again while he fought the urge to fidget.
He desperately needed her witchery to enter the tournament. He’d win it on his own merits and accept defeat if that was his fate. But he was absolutely determined not to be defeated. He’d use all of his power to ensure his victory.
He could not lose Ashlu to another male. He would not.
“Why do you want to Mate the Dark Queen so badly?” she asked, her unblinking, intense dark eyes drilling into him.
“I love her,” the young prince said fervently. “I love her more than anyone else could ever love her in this world.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
As if she’d gainsaid him, the Elemental continued to list his reasons.
“I am the strongest fighter in all the realms. The most powerful. I can help her achieve all of her goals. I will be her greatest weapon and asset.”
“I don’t doubt that either.”
At last he paused, frowning with confusion.
“You want to know why I need the disguise—”
“No, I know why,” she said, and added with a peculiar sparkle in her eyes, “Dark child with a Pure soul.”
It was his turn to fall silent as he stared at her.
Was it so obvious what he was? Was his Pure soul some kind of taint upon his person? A shadow over his head? A weakness that wafted like a foul odor from his skin?
What he’d give to have been born a True Blood! He could proudly Claim Ashlu then. But because he’d been born Pure, then made into her Blood Slave, he was forever condemned as “not good enough.”
He was always “lesser,” never worthy.
“Have you ever thought that perhaps you weren’t meant to Claim her?” the old woman queried softly, somewhat tentatively, as if she knew he didn’t want to hear her question.
“That you were born as you are for a reason?”
“Never,” the Elemental answered immediately. “Ashlu is the one for me. I will defy the very Fates to make it so.”
“Is it just your birth that prevents the queen from accepting you?” she persisted, her squinty dark eyes almost kind, “Have you considered that there is another reason?”
The Elemental grew increasingly impatient.
No one ever spoke to him this way. Few people spoke directly to him, period. Most everyone was afraid of the “terrible” powers he wielded. He knew they called him names behind his back, for no one dared to confront him to his face.
But aside from the fear and awe, the Elemental simply didn’t care for the company of others. He wanted and needed only Ashlu.
“Why are you asking so many questions?” he returned. “Will you help me or not? I heard that you do not accept coins, but instead ask for promises in return for your spells. Ask me anything. I will give you everything within my power if you help me do this.”
She regarded him long and hard with shrewd, glittering eyes.
Finally, she said:
“A queen becomes Queen
A slave becomes Mate
A King falls in flames
A winner loses in games
A queen gives way
A Mate displaced
A Champion reborn
A King transformed.
A stone heart in fire
A soul dances higher
When True Love reveals
And old wounds heal.”
He blinked at her uncomprehendingly at the end of her stilted verse.
She simply waited for him to digest.
“I don’t understand,” the Elemental finally admitted. “What is it you want from me? What can I offer you to gain your aid?”
She cracked a small smile on that craggy old face, making the lines in her skin deepen unattractively. And yet, she looked strangely young despite all the wrinkles. Joy gave its wearer the appearance of youth.
“It isn’t fair for me to ask anything of you, young prince, for you have a long, long, arduous road ahead. But if I may, looking out for my Kind, as it were, if you ever run into red-headed witches like myself in the distant future, treat them kindly. Don’t make them cry. Even when they seem like the most frustrating little sprites.”
The Elemental frowned.
She made no sense at all!
What red-headed witches? Like her? But she was gray-haired…
And his time was running out.
“I promise I will do my best,” he said through gritted teeth, his infamous temper about to snap. “Now will you help me?”
“I will. But just remember that you asked for this. Don’t have regrets when it’s too late,” she warned.
“I never have regrets,” he countered confidently. “I only make different choices.”
She nodded and continued, “Know that I cannot conjure a face and form out of thin air. When you take the disguise, it will be in place of someone else with the same face and form. You will merely be borrowing what is his.”
“It cannot be a Dark One,” the Elemental inserted. “I cannot risk that Ashlu will encounter the real man later on.”
She reached for his hand with her own gna
rled ones and patted him lightly.
“So be it. When the time comes, be sure to choose wisely.”
The Elemental did choose that day, and he made many choices since. He always chose wisely for the benefit of the queen he loved. But he chose poorly for himself, though he would not know this until far into the future.
So far, that he’d long forgotten the witch’s prophetic, enigmatic words.
*** *** *** ***
Eveline woke up with a snap, sitting suddenly upright in bed, disheveled and bleary-eyed.
The dream she just had made her feel so ill she had to rush to the bathroom to throw up. But since she hadn’t remembered to eat before crashing her feeling-sorry-for-self ass on the bed a few hours ago, she could only dry heave.
Her skin was cold and clammy with sweat, her extremities shaking with stress. The witch’s words echoed ominously in her head.
A King falls in flames…
Ramses’ Challenge was—her eyes darted to the digital clock on the far wall—in less than four hours…
Eveline had an awful, terrible premonition.
Although the witch in her dreams was speaking from a long-ago ancient past, her words could be prophetic for any time in the future.
Even the present future.
As the Seer for the Pure Ones, it was Eveline’s role to anticipate and interpret these divinations. As the Scribe and now temporary Keeper, she knew without a doubt that history always repeated itself. So even if the witch’s words had already been played out in some distant past, it didn’t mean that similar events wouldn’t happen again.
A King falls in flames.
A winner loses in games.
Eveline scrambled out of her apartment wearing the clothes she had on the day before and raced down the corridors in an anxious blur to the Cove’s library.
She climbed the circular staircase that was suspended from almost invisible wire cables from the three-story domed ceiling to the secluded archival section that was tucked into a dark elevated corner. Ancient scrolls and tablets sat shrouded in mystery in their gilded cages, almost taunting her with their silence.
As usual, when Eveline reached out, the cages didn’t automatically open for her like the rest of the library did.
“Come on, you lovely, fickle things,” she coaxed, “open up for me. I just want to meet you in person. I promise I’ll treat you with the utmost care.”
She wiped her sweaty palms on her skirt and even patted down the parts of her birds-nest hair that usually stuck out haphazardly upon waking from sleep.
“I’ll be so gentle you’ll barely feel my touch,” she continued to book-whisper to the ancient tomes.
“I need to learn your secrets, my friends. I have a feeling you hold the key to a buried past, which could very well become present danger. I need your help to prevent calamities. Or at least to give them a wide berth. I need your secrets to protect someone I…”
Eveline stalled at the thought of Ramses.
What was he to her? Someone she was intrigued by, certainly. Attracted to, and that’s putting it extremely mildly.
Addicted to.
Intoxicated with.
She winced inwardly at that.
It made her seem so helpless and weak against his “charms.” It made her feel like she was no different from any other female who’d ever looked upon and interacted with him.
She didn’t like that idea at all. She didn’t like what it implied about Ramses and what it said about her. No, what she felt for him, or beginning to feel and growing exponentially by the day, was something deeper, stronger, and imminently irrevocable.
Even when he tried to bully her in their negotiations (though his bark was worse than his bite). Even when he rejected her in no uncertain terms.
She couldn’t even blame it on the Blood Contract. But she did blame it on their chemistry, confound it all!
“I wish to protect someone I care about,” she finally told the caged treasures.
“I don’t want him to get hurt. I don’t want to contemplate the possibility that he might ‘fall.’ He is a good, worthy male, I know this with every fiber of my being.”
Until she said those words aloud, Eveline hadn’t really known.
Ramses was a complex male. A dominant male. A sexual, powerful, mesmerizing male. He was difficult, vulnerable, controlled, yet also wild and passionate when he simply let go. But Eveline didn’t have a lot of evidence that he was “good.”
Jade spoke very highly of Ramses. She spoke highly of all of her former Chosen. She’d shared with Eveline that Ramses’ call sign was the “Sage.” This connoted a wealth of knowledge and wisdom.
Eveline could see it in his eyes. There was an ancient history there in those dark, obsidian orbs. And life-altering experiences across an existence that likely spanned several millennia.
He kept so much locked up inside. Hidden from observers. But she’d gotten glimpses of his past in her dreams, she was sure of it. There was no mistake who Prince Hulaal was. No one, across time and space, looked like this beautiful, sinfully sensual, magnificent male.
She didn’t recall all of the dreams upon waking, only flashes here and there. But what she did remember made her heart ache for the lonely boy he was, feared and shunned by everyone around him. Deceived by the one person he trusted.
Unloved, misled, misused.
And yet he remained true, stubbornly so. Disastrously loyal to the female who only ever exploited him since birth.
With conviction, Eveline said to the silent colosseum of books and artifacts in the library, like Roman senators gathered in circular rows, awaiting her address, standing in judgement:
“He’s been hurt enough, if my dreams are an accurate representation of reality. I don’t want him to get hurt again on my watch. Please help me.”
A ghostly murmur buzzed through the library like busy bees, the strange sound echoing through the shelves. A sudden breeze swept past Eveline’s face, tangling her hair, fluttering the loose sheets of paper on the teak wood table.
Click, chink, rustle.
One by one, the chain-suspended cages rattled open before her disbelieving, then relieved eyes.
Gingerly, Eveline carried the contents of the cages an armful at a time down the floating stairs to the giant table in the center of the library. When she was done, she spread the tablets out side by side and unrolled the scrolls one by one. Though she couldn’t understand the symbols or the writing on any of the ancient artifacts, she started to recognize patterns across them, and jotted the characters down in a large sketchpad that Clara had given her to take notes in.
Mumbling to herself, Eveline tried to sort through the clues out loud.
“An ancient contest…Yes, this must be it. Hand of the Dark Queen…”
It helped that there was actually the drawing of a hand on one of the tablets. There were many other hands reaching for the one feminine-looking hand in the center. Neat columns of text ran down the sides of the thinly cut stone.
“An unknown champion…”
The second Eveline touched a particular verse, flashes of light burst behind her eyelids.
In her mind’s eye, she saw a handsome stranger. Wavy hair the color of raw honey, with the luster of the finest amber. Even though she’d never seen him before in any of her dreams and visions or real experiences, he seemed familiar somehow. The way he moved through the gathered crowds. The impassive expression on his face. The clench of his jaw and the tilt of his head.
It was Ramses in disguise.
Her fingers moved on their own accord, glancing across more carved symbols.
Ramses defeated one opponent after another with such ease that the Dark Queen Ashlu quickly noticed him in the mock arena. She watched him fight with avid interest, sexual attraction and blatant admiration making her breath quicken, her pupils dilate. She wanted this beautiful stranger, no matter the outcome of the contest. She wanted him to win her…
Eveline moved to a different tabl
et, and the images in her head skipped forward in time.
Only two pairs of contestants left. The clear winner of the second pair that didn’t include Ramses was a male at least six and a half foot in height, perhaps even taller. With broad shoulders, a lean waist and heavily muscled torso and limbs. His hair was a brilliant vermillion, blazing hot like the rising sun. It waved around his face and stood up from his head in dancing flames.
And his eyes…Bright golden eagle’s eyes. They homed in on Ramses with calculation and determination…
Involuntarily, Eveline’s now shaking hands reached for a particular scroll, whose contents were tattooed in blood. As her fingers grazed the animal hide, more images flashed before her eyes.
They were the only two fighters left. The flame-haired Dark One and Ramses in his disguised form. First, they clashed with weapons. Both drew blood, dealing heavy wounds, their blades broken and discarded in the dirt. Then, they crashed together with bare fists and feet. Grappling, wrestling, hitting and kicking. Over and over they came at one another, both males evenly matched. The flame-haired opponent was taller, his limbs slightly longer, but Ramses was even more heavily muscled, and hitting his flesh was like connecting with stone.
Queen Ashlu had risen from her throne, too rapt upon the gruesome match on the battleground below to sit still.
The fighters rushed at each other for the last time, and then—
Everything burst into flames.
Her fingers literally burned by the scroll she was touching, Eveline snatched her hand back with a gasp and opened her eyes.
What could it mean? What happened back then?
Obviously, Ramses won, for he was here now. Alive. Did that mean that the other male was defeated and dead? Who was he? There was something so compelling about him. Something other. He had not been a mere Dark One. And what did all this mean for the upcoming Challenge?
Eveline shook her head to clear it.
Even if she didn’t know all the answers, she knew one thing for certain:
The Challenge must be stopped!
“A Fallen Pure One is the most pitiable thing. A Pure soul housed in a vampire’s body. A creature of night that survives on the blood of other beings. Like a parasite. So base, the Fallen is like an animal, but worse. Animal spirits are noble and pure. But a vampire is conniving and spoiled. It is a Pure One’s greatest shame to turn to the Dark side. Death would have been the wiser choice…”
