Dark Humanity

by Gwynn White

  She glanced over at Niing, Zandor, and—too crazy to be admitted out loud—Peckle to see if they knew all this.

  From their shifting eyes—even the cat’s—they did.

  Face hot with fury, she demanded, “So when did you plan to tell me? Or were you going to let Raith suck me dry?”

  “Of course not.” Niing gasped. “We did not know Raith would come when we sent out the invitations. And with Jorah here, winning the trials . . .” He took a quick puff on his pipe. “Why do you think I asked Jorah to come and fight for you? So you will have the support you need to take on Artemis and the Intelligentsia.”

  “A man in love with another woman,” she snapped, and then avoided looking at Jorah.

  He didn’t deny her claim.

  It hurt.

  It was time to take back control.

  She pushed Jorah away and forced her aching body to stand. “What do we do about Raith? Clearly, we can say nothing to Artemis or the Intelligentsia.” She threw a glare in the direction of her “friends.” They thought she would be so stupid as to betray something so deadly to their enemies?

  Niing and Zandor had the grace to squirm. The confounded cat just stared at her.

  Aurora broke eye contact first. It burned.

  Jorah jumped to his feet and walked over to sit on the window seat. “I have to beat the parasite in the trials. We have no other choice. The lives of every Magical in Ryferia depends on that. Not to mention my own. I staked it as part of a contract with a fae named Sabrisia. She will hold the chair on the Warrendyte council next term.”

  Well, that explained why Jorah was here.

  It also confirmed what she already knew: Lord Jorah Thalyn, dragon shape-shifter extraordinaire, would not be falling head over heels in love with her anytime soon. Best she guard her own heart with a fireproof wall.

  “Do I pretend to Raith that I don’t know all this?” She didn’t think she could.

  “He will know that we have told you,” Niing said with quiet certainty. “But his hands are tied, just as ours are. But that does not mean he’s not a huge threat—”

  “Jorah,” she said, cutting Niing off, still too angry to listen to him, “tell me everything you know about Raith and his brother.”

  Her eyes threatened to pop straight out of her head by the time Jorah had finished explaining to her about Raith’s diabolical potion designed to dodge the Guardians and his smoke-reaping ritual.

  She slumped down onto her bed. “So it is likely that Carian attacked Keahr?”

  Nods from everyone.

  “It would help immensely if Keahr saw him,” Zandor said. “We would then have proof we could use without implicating ourselves. We can have him arrested. That would hinder Raith.”

  He was right. Without proof, it was impossible to say anything to, or about, Raith. She considered the torn drape in Keahr’s bedchamber. Had her friend spotted Carian in the tussle?

  “We need to find out if she has regained consciousness.” She looked at Zandor. “Please go check.” She spared Peckle a scowl. “I would ask the cat, but he’s so stuck-up, I doubt he’d comply.”

  Peckle licked his paw and then washed his face as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

  “All he wants are the Guardians down,” Zandor said as he strode to the door. “Then, I promise, you won’t get him to shut up.”

  Aurora eyed the gangly tabby as she waited for Zandor to return with news on Keahr, still not quite grasping that Peckle could talk—like a human.

  Jorah stared out the window. Niing puffed on his pipe.

  She shook her head as she struggled to process the changes Jorah’s few words had wrought in her life. She had gone from being Infirm to powerfully Magical in a heartbeat. Who knew what other powers lurked in her subjects? Whatever they were, as their queen, she would do all in her power to help the Magical take their place as equals next to the—

  What were the non-Magical called? Untalented? She gritted her teeth against that awful title.

  No, in the world I will rule, we will be equal. No more Infirm and Able or Magical and Untalented. It’s the only way to create peace.

  Zandor threw open the door and led Keahr in on his arm.

  Her friend—a fae who controlled the air—was pale despite her dark skin and unsteady on her feet.

  “I know I wronged you, and I ask your forgiveness.” Keahr held up her bandaged hands. “Like everyone here, I operated out of fear.” A rasping sigh. “Fat lot of good it did me. I still got hurt.”

  “Did you see who attacked you?” Aurora asked.

  Keahr’s eyes glistened. A sorrowful head shake. “No. It all happened so fast. The knife. The hit on the head.” Keahr sank down onto the end of the bed. “I suppose he got my blood?”

  “You know about that?”

  “Zandor has just told me. I’m sorry. The last thing I want is for my magic to be used in a potion that destroys us all.”

  Aurora leaned toward Zandor. “You sure Raith didn’t hear you?”

  “He’d gone by the time I got there.”

  Aurora bit her lip. How was she supposed to face Raith again, knowing all this?

  Maybe it will give me some immunity to him.

  She could at least hope.

  But now another problem confronted her.

  She set her jaw into a firm line. She would brook no arguments. “I know we cannot outright accuse Carian of attacking Keahr or of killing the Infirm in the city, but we have to inform the captain that we suspect him. That way, we can at least try to protect our people.”

  Zandor slammed his fist down onto the table. “I mentioned it to him when I found the murdered musketeers. The captain wouldn’t listen. He said we have no proof, and therefore he can’t act.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” she snapped. “I will speak with him.”

  Zandor held up his hand. “Don’t waste your time, because there’s more.” His bleak voice made her hair stand. “He said, and I quote: ‘With the trials going on, I don’t have the time or the resources to worry about a few dead beggars in the city.’”

  Jorah bristled. He threw a protective arm across Aurora. “This isn’t just a few dead beggars in the street! It’s an attack on the Royal Princess’s handmaiden, not four feet from the princess’s door.”

  “Not to mention the dead musketeers,” she added with a shudder.

  A long sigh from Zandor. “He said that Lord Artemis has given him his orders. Nothing is to be done about the deaths in the city to cause trouble until after the trials. We are alone in this unless Aurora challenges her uncle.” A glower. “Which I don’t recommend. Not when he’s already got you in his sights.”

  Her chest ached. Not that Artemis hated her enough to leave her and her friends exposed to a possible assassin, but that her people were so divided that the death of Infirm—Magical—could be brushed aside in this political expediency. It had to change.

  She rubbed her temples against the beginnings of a headache. In the past, she would have looked to Niing for answers, but not today. She faced Jorah. “What do you think I should do?”

  Jorah’s face was grave. “Nothing infuriates more than an Untalented harming a Magical, but Zandor is right, our hands are tied. With Artemis’s trumped-up charges against you about your brother, challenging him will merely play into his hand. The best we can do is for me to win the trials. After that happens, I will keep you safe while we remove the Guardians.”

  She huffed out a breath at that logic. Still, how could she just accept the deaths of her people? She tapped her fingernail against her chin. “Why can’t one of us watch Carian?”

  Eyebrows rose around the room.

  “Who?” Jorah answered. “Niing and Zandor are both on Carian’s list. Keahr is injured. I will be taking part in the trials. You can’t. Too risky. That leaves Peckle. Will the presence of the cat stop Carian? I doubt it.”

  She pulled her shoulders back and slapped her hands to her sides. “So we do nothing?”


  Every hair standing, Peckle hissed.

  She rolled her eyes. “What’s he trying to say?”

  Niing decoded. “I think he’s offended by your assertion that he is of no use.”

  The cat’s tail flicked back and forward as he glared at her.

  Aurora wasn’t backing down. She glared right back. Peckle held eye contact with a belligerence that almost made her smile.

  Niing continued. “Peckle, you must follow Carian. If nothing else, bring us news of what he plans.”

  The words weren’t even cold, and Peckle sauntered out of the room.

  Bemused, she watched him go. She could grow to like a Magical, talking cat—even one as prickly as Peckle.

  Her mirth was swept away by the realities they faced.

  She ran a hand through her wild curls, resigned but still smarting that she had to accept the death of her people.

  But she had another worry to air. “The next trial. It’s held in the burrow. You’re all to pick a potion from my notebooks, which you must make. You will use the power it gives you in the final trial. Am I giving Raith an advantage if he is already tinkering with potion-making?”

  A soft laugh from Jorah. “Unlikely. I’m the only one of your suitors who will have any advantages at an alchemy bench.”

  Her pulse raced, and she couldn’t contain her excited smile that she and Jorah shared a common interest in something so important to her.

  Jorah’s face dropped. Apparently, the same could not be said for him.

  “Like you, Aurora,” he said, “I spent my youth in Niing’s burrow. Lessons on potion-making were unavoidable.”

  She frowned, trying to make sense of that.

  Jorah wasn’t much older than her—at least he didn’t look more than five or six years her senior.

  Jorah cocked his head. “Trying to work out how old I am?”

  “It would help with the timeline, yes.”

  “I’m close to two hundred years old.”

  She gagged.

  That won her a smile. “A young man, as dragons go.”

  “I—I see.” She did the math in her head. “That means you were alive when Nethric—”

  “Drove the Magical out of Ryferia. I was forced to leave almost everyone I cared for here. But only Niing and Peckle were alive when I paddled out of the harbor.”

  He had lost people—Magical—in the war.

  Another crooked smile. “Before you judge me, dryads are long lived, too. The last one I knew of was over a thousand years old when she died.”

  Another gasp escaped her throat. “How many dryads do you know?”

  Again, that unimaginable sadness from Jorah. “Just that one. No dryads escaped Ryferia when the Guardians went up.” His face twisted with hate. “We have the Untalented to thank for that.”

  “The people who killed the dryads and your . . . loved ones are not the same people who are alive today.”

  A snort from Jorah. “Maybe. But their hearts haven’t changed.”

  She frowned; clearly, Jorah was as critical about the Able as they were about the Infirm. Would this hatred never end?

  “My honor hates that I know this information about the next trial,” he said. “The only way for me to appease it is if I am equally as challenged as the parasite in the final event.”

  She eyed him with wonder. Having an advantage would never have worried her conscience. To humor him, she asked, “What do you propose?”

  “Let the final trial be fought out on one of the Guardians. That way, we will both be sick, miserable, and equally as weak. Equally as . . . human. Then the best man truly will win your hand.”

  She picked at the hem of her dress as she considered his crazy demand. She wanted to say that men who fight by honor die faster, but she didn’t. Jorah Thalyn would never understand that. “What if the best man turns out be Raith?”

  The cold stare Jorah leveled at her made her regret her question.

  She murmured, “Foolish of me. I’ve seen you both battle.”

  Jorah grunted, but his slow smile suggested he was somewhat mollified by her observation.

  Keahr cleared her throat. “Maybe we should make the last trial a quest to find Aurora.”

  Niing gasped. “You are not suggesting we make Aurora hide in a Guardian?”

  Aurora’s head shot up. “Are you? Because I’ve always fancied seeing inside a Guardian. Almost as much as I’ve wanted to get past one.”

  “It will make you sick,” Niing objected. “And weak. And then there are the stairs. Hundreds of them. It is too risky—”

  Aurora opened her mouth to interrupt, but Zandor got in first. “Enough, Niing. If it is what she wants, then let her do it.” He gave her a wan smile. “My days of over-protecting you are done. You are quite capable of taking care of yourself. And once you are queen, you will be taking care of all of us. Time we got used to it.”

  She could have kissed him—until she remembered what had caused this change of heart.

  Channeling Jorah, she shrugged to show her queenly disdain for him, Niing, and Keahr. “There is a dryad Guardian at the edge of the forest. We will use that.”

  Jorah touched his heart and bowed his head. “My thanks for your understanding.”

  She bit her lip, hoping she hadn’t made a terrible mistake by humoring Jorah’s weird dragon obsession with honor. And as for all the stairs she would have to climb . . .

  She pushed her fear aside.

  The only thing that mattered now was that Jorah won the next two trials.

  If he didn’t, she would be forced into a marriage with a monster who wanted her dead.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Mind a whirlpool, Raith tapped his fingers against a page in one of Aurora’s alchemy notebooks. It rested amid a clutter of flasks, beakers, and chopping knives on the alchemy table in Niing’s burrow.

  He had less than the allotted two hours left to brew a winning potion.

  The presence of four musketeers supervising the trial did nothing to calm his nerves—or his conscience.

  Across from him, Jorah sliced up a root for his potion in implacable silence.

  Raith’s face, where Jorah had hit him—twice—ached at the sight of Trojean’s killer.

  That Jorah had felt it necessary to knock him unconscious rather than speak to Aurora in front of him told Raith everything he needed to know: Jorah had somehow known about his and Carian’s plans.

  That meant Aurora now knew them, too.

  From the expression of fear and loathing that twisted the princess’s face when she had set out the trial twenty minutes before, she knew exactly what he was and what he and Carian had done.

  Raith’s insides curled with sorrow.

  Aside from his father, no one had ever looked at him with such intensity of hatred before. He would never have been exposed to such loathing when he’d limited himself to reaping trinket magic from animals.

  Trojean and Carian had certainly changed his world.

  After announcing the rules, Aurora had swept out of this stuffy, oppressive underground bunker, leaving him and the three remaining suitors to concoct a potion they would use in the next trial—to be held on a Guardian at the edge of the forest.

  In between stalking and attacking the Infirm in the capital, Carian was supposed to scout out the dryad for any advantages Raith could use in the battle with Jorah.

  The fact that he and Carian had not been publicly implicated in Keahr’s attack only meant that Aurora and her entourage—that now seemed to include Jorah—were also bound to secrecy.

  That could change at any moment.

  Raith feared for his life when that accusation was finally leveled. He had argued that case with Carian before coming here this morning.

  To him, it didn’t matter that Carian had stolen a vial of Keahr’s blood to add to the minotaur’s blood they already had. Or that Carian had insisted on continuing the killing spree despite Raith’s fervent objections. To Raith, this had all gone too f
ar.

  That was what his logic—his humanity—had argued.

  But all the while, his cravings had screamed at him that Carian was right to insist they continue the quest to find the other three Magical beings to complete the potion.

  In the end, Raith’s cravings had won out against his self-preservation.

  Much the way Trojean’s craving had with her.

  Despite loathing himself for his weakness, he had agreed to allow Carian to continue attacking the Infirm in the capital while Raith’s—and Jorah’s—attention was focused on this trial.

  Then Carian would brew the potion, and Raith would have access to all the magic his cravings demanded.

  In the meantime, Raith had his own potion to brew, which would be used in the next trial.

  He had yet to start his preparations, even though the clock ticked loud in the silence.

  He grimaced. Everything was further complicated by his lack of information on the next trial. That made choosing a potion to make that much more difficult.

  Someone would have to drink the stuff they brewed. The question was, would they have to drink their own potions, or would they swop concoctions?

  He didn’t know. Without that knowledge, even Carian had admitted that making a killing potion to narrow the field wasn’t an option.

  He was yet to choose a recipe.

  And still the clock ticked.

  He sucked in a calming breath and flipped through the pages of Aurora’s notebook again. Her extravagant, flowing text streamed before his unseeing eyes. Finally, a recipe jumped out at him: a strength potion. It would give the drinker enhanced strength for up to twelve hours if brewed for one and a half hours.

  He would only have enough time if he got moving—fast.

  The recipe called for a macadamia nut, the root of a fig tree, some steel shavings, an empty shark egg pod, a fresh oyster, and a measure of ground marble, all mixed together with spring water and then brewed.

  Pulse racing faster than the second hand on the clock, he strode to the ingredients table—and almost slipped on a broken egg.