My hands would not stop shaking. I had never felt like this before.
This was my life. The entirety of my life, the good and the bad, the truth and the lies, the bonds that had formed over decades.
I had grown up with the emperor, since he was just a boy called Leony. He was three years older than me. I’m not sure it would be accurate to call us close as brothers…but cousins, at the least. Our relationship was one of mutual respect and a lifetime of memories.
“I want to talk to you as a friend,” he said, when I got back.
I nodded, unsure whether this brought me relief or more concern.
There was Leonidas, and there was Phoebe. One I had always known, and the other was a young woman I would never have crossed paths with in my normal life.
But she had a hold on me. I sensed it from the first. It grew too strong to deny when she awakened my sigil. I couldn’t stop thinking of her face and how much I wanted to see it again.
I tried to dismiss the thought, but it was persistent as an itch. Phoebe promised me things I had never even thought to have: joy, pleasure, understanding.
We settled in a small game room within the castle, rarely used, with old tapestries on the walls and heavy leather chairs. No servants attended us. Leonidas poured us each a drink from a dusty old bottle and hooked his fingers around the two crystal goblets.
“Your arm bothering you much?” he asked, as I took the drink with my right hand.
“Not really…”
“Hrm. But something is. Abel, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier about the sigil. I was just a kid, same as you were. My father told me about you, but most of the time I don’t even think of you as any different. He told me to keep it secret, and by the time he died, I wondered if there was any point in putting that in your head. You were so good at what you do.”
“Part of that is because I have strange abilities I never talk about.” I looked at the drink and didn’t really feel like pretending it would do much of anything. I had never been able to achieve a drunken state.
“You have an uncanny sense of things, don’t you? At least it’s easy enough to hide.”
I can turn people to ice.
Leonidas didn’t know that. I was careful with my power; I had never lost control of it until I almost killed Phoebe’s other guardian. That was much too close…
“Sir Kal knows what I am. Word will spread that I let the priestess go.”
“It’s all right, Abel,” Leonidas said. “I don’t want to lose you, that’s what matters most. We’ll see if the priestess will go south and leave us alone.”
“I don’t think she will.”
“Well, then, we’ll have to think of something that works for everyone.”
I should have been happy to hear this. I don’t know why it made me clench inwardly with a sense of dread.
“I don’t want to see her…” I was weakened by the priestess. Nothing had ever weakened me before.
“She really gets to you, doesn’t she?” Leonidas laughed. “In some ways, I would like to see it. I wonder what would happen if you were the only one.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“If her other guardians were dead, and the priestess only had one guardian—you. Of course, we can never let her open the gate, but if you kept her for your own, she would make you strong. And she could never say no to you, could you?”
“That sounds…” I swallowed, trying not to betray myself to him. “That’s wrong. Maybe she couldn’t resist our magical bond, but she would hate me. And I’m not much for the sort of affection she would need.”
“I don’t know. It isn’t taking all that long to change Himika’s mind. Once the priestess understands that she would have a good life here, I think her objections will melt away quickly.”
Truthfully, I found Leonidas’s wooing of Himika to be in very bad taste. I knew he had to marry, but I thought he should have accepted one of his past prospects.
“Why do you want Himika in the first place? She’s so sickly.”
“She is beautiful and pure. No one has ever touched her before. And there is something very strange about her illness. If I could find a way to heal her, I would give her everything for the very first time.”
I must say this: I had long worried what would happen to Leonidas after we conquered Gaermon. The southern kingdom had been the prize for so long, and now that it had fallen, there was nothing much left anymore except to maintain the power he and his ancestors had built.
I already knew Leonidas was not much for maintenance. His most appealing quality had always been his enthusiasm and excitement. We were opposites in that way; where I was cold and detached, he was warm and immediately interested. But as the only boy and the only heir, he had been extremely spoiled since childhood. Anything he wanted, he was given. Every woman wanted to marry him, and he always found some fault in them to justify pushing them away. Nothing was ever a challenge for him, and over the years I had seen his enthusiasm slip into boredom and even, at times, a taste for cruelty.
No wonder Himika was his ultimate prize, even more than Gaermon. Even a country could fall easier than a woman’s heart. She hated him and she wasn’t strong enough to bear children, maybe not even for sex itself. But if he could heal her and win her heart, he could see everything for the first time, through her eyes.
She might keep him from the darkness…for a little while.
“Sometimes it’s good to want something you can’t have,” I mused. “I feel an attraction to the priestess, but I don’t want her. She would distract me from my work.”
“What work? There’s nothing left. We have control of the entire realm.”
“I beg your pardon, Your Eminence, but we still have to keep it.”
Leonidas sighed. “Oh, please, we’re alone. ‘Your Eminence’? What is this? Leony. No one calls me that now. I’m getting old and it’s terrible. No one warns you how fast it’s all over. One day you’re a boy and the next day you’re past your prime. You’re the only one who stays the same. You don’t age as fast as the rest of us. How do we explain that one? Sooner or later we’ll have to force you into retirement, but shouldn’t you have some children first? It’s our last chance to have boys growing up together.”
“Priestesses can’t have children.”
“I’m sure we can think of something.”
“I never knew you wanted me to have children.”
“I didn’t, when I thought I had all the time in the world! But look how quickly those guardians got rid of Homar. He’s been with me for years.”
Damnit. I had never made so many mistakes. I had killed Homar for finding out the truth, and it turned out that everyone knew it anyway. What a waste. Of course, deep down I knew why I had killed him. He laid a hand on Phoebe and my instincts did the rest.
“Abel…,” Leonidas said. “Your only tie is to the priestess, correct? Not the guardians themselves?”
Tread carefully… I didn’t know what to say. “Yes, that is true.”
“They pose some risk to my life as long as they live…”
“Your Majesty—“
“Abel, I want you to come out well from all this. I want the priestess to love you; for you to dry her tears and give her a good life when it’s over, and maybe she’ll even soften up your edges so you can actually enjoy that retirement when the time comes. You trust me, don’t you?”
He’s going to kill them. He will leave her standing alone for me to deal with.
A chill passed over me, both of horror and thrill. I had to stop him from doing this, but I didn’t know how to stop him; I followed his orders and obviously he truly trusted me, or else he would never have allowed me this much leeway. I had no doubt that he could have easily killed Phoebe already. He was letting her live because of me.
In the end, he would make sure I would have her: the woman my body and in fact, my entire being, craved against my will. At least I could satisfy the need inside me.
Th
is is no different from anything else I’ve done at his order. I’ve always gone to war for him, and the guardians are enemies of the crown. It’s as simple as that…
Leonidas stood up and I stood up with him. He gave me a back-slapping hug. If you got him alone, if you got Leony and not Leonidas, he was affectionate with everyone and since he was my emperor, I had to pretend I liked it, although I had never liked being touched. I suppose it made sense now. I couldn’t remember my parents ever hugging me, but I now knew that they had burned my skin.
“They’re staying down by the docks in that smugglers’ house,” Leonidas said. “Should be easy to keep an eye on them. Take a little vacation and await my direction. This will be an easy one for you, my friend.”
“Don’t kill them,” I said.
I don’t even know why I cared, except for Phoebe’s sake. But maybe it wasn’t just for Phoebe. Fighting with Sir Forrest…it was hard not to admire another man who would do anything for her.
“Send them to the Isles,” I said. “They can’t hurt you there.”
Leonidas rubbed the wrinkle forming between his brows, and then his eyes wandered to one of the tapestries: ‘The Emperor Strikes Down the King of the Norningren’. His ancestor’s eyes bulged white with the fury of battle, in the shadowed scene of horses and blood and dark armor.
“I will keep blood off your hands,” Leonidas said. “I promise, Abel.”
Chapter Fifteen
Phoebe
For almost two weeks, we were on lockdown in Niko’s house. None of us would leave, even Niko himself, while he secured us all an invitation to Emmaline du Barien’s next party. This apparently wasn’t easy because Forrest and Gilbert and I were basically peasants, and peasants didn’t normally get to go to parties like that. Strings had to be pulled. I could tell Forrest thought this was pretty stupid, and yeah, a party didn’t exactly sound like the coolest move on the game board.
But then, I don’t think even Forrest knew what else to do. Obviously the Emperor knew exactly where we were and when Niko said the only thing saving us was the fact that we couldn’t open the northern gate from inside his compound, it was a convincing argument.
“Sometimes patience is the very best weapon you can wield,” he said, more than once.
Wretch, it must be said, was the least patient member of the party. I was terrified one of the servants would accidentally let her get out. She was always meowing and circling around the windows and scratching at absolutely everything. She tore up all of Niko’s curtains. I accidentally reminded him I was a total bumpkin because this horrified me—do you how expensive curtains were in Istim?—and he just shrugged.
Really, it distressed me because I thought I knew what she wanted.
Abel. She had started with Niko, then gone to me, and finally…to Abel. Winged cats are the companion of dragons. There was something she was trying to tell us.
For the first time, we could really settle in and get to know each other. Forrest was slowly letting down his guard with Niko and I think they actually had a lot of respect for each other, even if they wouldn’t admit it. Niko and Gilbert got along like the two halves of a duo they had actually been—sometimes arguing but often knowing exactly what the other was thinking. Gilbert and I took to performing for the women downstairs waiting for their ships to come in. It was a welcome distraction for them and us.
But it wasn’t all late night dancing and lazy mornings drinking delicious coffee. Of course not. Besides the general sense that at some point, we would make a move and all the danger might return, we hadn’t heard a word about Rin, and Gilbert was quietly losing his mind over it, I could tell. I tried to be extra nice to him.
Niko was always working, and he managed to track down the old address of the long lost Margaret, sending one of his cohorts to talk to her family, only to learn that they had left the city after Margaret died.
I was certainly curious about Margaret, but I wasn’t expecting much would come of the information. Everyone involved was dead or gone.
“The whole neighborhood remembers them,” said the girl who tried to visit Margaret’s old house. She was a tall, scrappy teenager with brown hair shoved into a messy bun, a patched blue dress and men’s shoes; one of Niko’s little spies who could blend in well. “But they said they all left at once. Even Margaret’s grown sisters and brothers who had moved out and married. Must’ve been dangerous to go outside the gates, but no one knows exactly why or which town they went to. I got the lady next door to write down their names and ages. I know her dad was a blacksmith. I didn’t know what else to ask about.”
“Keep at that trail,” Niko said. “See if you can find anyone who knows what happened to her. A doctor who might have treated her for the pneumonia, for instance.”
I knew what I already suspected. Margaret was a priestess. I took the list from the girl’s hand because she was holding it out like somebody take this.
Her handwriting was really, really bad. But even with bad handwriting, I could catch my own father’s name.
Lucian Praeus.
“Oh—oh—oh—“ I sputtered. This was not what I expected to see. “Lucian Praeus. Lucian Praeus!”
“You know him?” Gilbert asked.
“He was my dad! Margaret’s younger brother. That’s—I mean—I don’t think he ever knew why his sister died. I’m sure my mom would have mentioned it when she found out I was the priestess.”
“So the blood does run in families,” Forrest said.
“I don’t even know anything about my family,” Gilbert said. “My father, especially. It could explain why Forrest was approached by an Elder, but I never was. He would have been easier to track, in that case. But if we found out who the guardians were in the past, we might find out…”
“That’s true!” I hoped this would cheer him up.
“Of course, they probably don’t care about the child of a whore.”
Forrest handed Gilbert his flask. “Come on, Gilbert. Chin up. They might care about a guardian and a talented bard.”
Gilbert blushed. “Are you trying to suggest I drink away my pain?”
“Works for me,” Forrest said. “At least, until the heartbreak fades.”
Niko looked at them as Gilbert took a long swig, and then he turned back at me. “I’m glad that devil’s brew has never impaired my judgment.” He pulled Wretch off the curtains. It went without saying, but the whole time we were trying to have this conversation, we were interrupted with a piteous, “Mrooo-ooow” as she hung off the curtains and looked at us with her head upside down.
“So, what do we actually do with this information?” I asked, trying to take Wretch from him in our ongoing silent battle for cat ownership.
“Patience, still patience,” he said. “We’ll keep pulling threads.”
“Ugh.”
“The du Barien party is tomorrow evening. What do you want to happen? Battles? Explosions?”
“Well…no.”
“Are we not keeping you sufficiently amused? I could probably fix that. At least for tonight…”
Forrest shot a warning look over and took the flask from Gilbert before he could finish it off.
“You’ve all definitely been amusing me,” I said automatically, but as I looked at them all gathered together, I felt like something was actually missing.
We’d been getting along better every day, with plenty of time for lovemaking in private as well as everything else. The awkwardness of our early days and how I could please all of them (they definitely didn’t have any problem pleasing me) was starting to give away into a comfortable routine where I knew, for instance, that Gilbert and I usually found some time before we got ready for our evening performance, Forrest would always spend the night with me, and Niko would usually just appear during the day at some point and say something that turned me on instantly.
But the book was pretty clear on the fact that the guardians were supposed to work together—in love and war. Maybe the love part was even
a sort of training. I mean, you had to learn to communicate without words to some extent, and cooperate. Even though it was pretty draining on my magic to handle them all at once, it made us stronger. My men should be as strong as possible before we went out into a potentially hostile world.
“I want all of you tonight,” I said. “At once.”
Forrest rocked on his heels with a stubborn look and Gilbert glanced furtively at Niko, who was the only one to seem unfazed. Of course.
“I’m not sure—“ Gilbert began.
“Phoebe—“ Forrest said.
“We’re stronger together,” I said. “In the book, it says that you can perform different spells together if you do this sort of thing.”
“I think we need the Elders to do the spells,” Forrest said.
“Do we? It doesn’t hurt. Anyway, I’m ready. It won’t kill you. Give me half an hour and then join me in the bedroom. And if you’re not there, you don’t get to touch me for a week. I know at least one of you will show up.”
I left the room again, although I really wasn’t sure if I was doing the right thing. I just knew this had to happen at some point, and if I didn’t insist, they were never going to cooperate. I had grown up thinking I was just an ordinary girl, and most of the time, I still felt like an ordinary girl, but I had dragon blood. I kept thinking of that legend Abel mentioned. The goddess of peace who married the human king and the monster king, and let them both draw power from her sex, then had a child with the blood of each.
Was it just a legend after all?
Of course, if I’m the descendant of a goddess, I need to act more like it.
Polaris was changing the bedsheets when I walked in. “Oh—hello, my lady.”
“Hey, could you help me?” I asked.
She immediately stood at attention. “What can I help you with?”
“I need to—um—can I have that outfit from before? But also, maybe something to cover it up. It would be good to have a few layers to disrobe. Something sexy.”
Polaris looked at me. “You seem anxious.”
“Yes, I am, thanks for noticing.”
Priestess Bound Page 11
