Dark Humanity

by Gwynn White

  The dryad’s leaves and branches were made from copper and silver. They swayed with clockwork precision in a wind that did not exist. Anyone trying to cling to those branches would be in for a rollicking ride.

  Even five feet away from her, heat radiating from her iron belly warmed his skin. The stench of burning coal mixed with the acrid herbs was enough to stump what little access he had to his magic. Not to mention the dull ache it set up in his head and the nausea in his stomach.

  There would be no advantage here, no latent strength, stamina, or speed.

  In this moment, when he needed his magic most, he was more human than he had ever been.

  This would be a dangerous climb. If his nerves survived today, it would be a miracle. The only blessing was that Jorah would be just as disadvantaged.

  Trojean’s killer was still to arrive for this final showdown between them.

  Even Aurora was late.

  That dreadful uncle of hers and all his cronies had arrived half an hour before. They gathered at the foot of the dryad in clumps, their malice oozing off them like poison mist.

  Farther afield, ordinary citizens waited to watch their princess claim a consort. By Maleficent’s mighty wings, Raith prayed that Carian would kill Jorah and that he would be that consort.

  He and Carian had been the first to arrive at the dryad. While Raith had dug deep to find something to engage the two musketeers on guard, Carian had sneaked inside. With Carian hidden deep in the cogs, Jorah would not see him until it was too late.

  “The other suitor. He’s coming!” a voice shouted.

  Jorah indeed strode purposefully toward the dryad. He grimaced up at it with obvious distaste. Then his eyes settled on Raith. Jorah’s magic may have been as stymied as Raith’s, but he still shivered at the iciness in the dragon’s expression. A short nod, and Jorah took his place next to Raith to wait for Aurora.

  Raith considered speaking but changed his mind.

  They stood side by side in heavy silence.

  The hair on the back of his neck was beginning to curl when a shout from the crowd alerted him to the arrival of Aurora’s carriage. It pulled up next to the dryad, and the bodyguard hopped out. He helped the ugly princess down and offered her his arm. Clearly, if she was going to make it to the very top of the dryad, she would need all the help she could get.

  But instead of heading for the open door leading to the wrought-iron spiral staircase in the dryad, she stopped at Artemis.

  “I assume the musketeers have searched the Guardian. We would not want any intruders interrupting the trial.” Her voice carried to Raith.

  As Artemis looked her over with contempt, Raith’s hackles rose. “It’s been guarded since dawn. No one could get inside.”

  Aurora’s lip curled, as if she were looking at something truly repulsive. “I am tempted to send Zandor in to make absolutely sure.”

  Raith froze as he waited for Artemis’s reply.

  “Aurora. Your tardiness has already delayed matters,” Artemis said. “Wasting time to search a guarded dryad will not endear you to your people.”

  Would he add anything about the time it would take for her to climb the stairs?

  Wisely, perhaps, he didn’t. Given what Raith knew of Aurora, she would not take kindly to that. At worst, it could inspire her to command every musketeer here to search every inch of that dryad.

  Zandor whispered something to her. Aurora bit her lip and then nodded. When she allowed him to lead her through the door into the dryad, Raith’s breathing resumed.

  And then it was the long wait while she climbed the stairs to the dryad’s face.

  Aurora stopped on the narrow spiral staircase, which snaked up a pole in the very center of the dryad, for the umpteenth time to catch her breath. And to mop sweat off her face. It ran down her torso and her legs in rivulets. She was already parched and exhausted from the exertions. But even as she peered up into the shadows above her, she could barely make out the end of the spiral.

  All around her, cogs—some big, some small—clacked in rhythmic chaos, driven by the fire roaring in the sealed-off furnace below. The cogs moved in a perfect cycle of darkness and flashes of light that filtered in from outside the construct.

  To add to her misery, the stench of burning coal and herbs was almost unbearable. Her head throbbed, and nausea threatened to rid her stomach of its lining.

  But with Zandor’s steady hand supporting her and her own hands gripping the central pole, she climbed.

  She had to, because Artemis, a group of his most loyal Intelligentsia, and half a dozen musketeers were just a couple of twists behind her. Why they hadn’t gone on ahead, she would never know.

  It just added to the stress.

  And why he needed six musketeers would have been a mystery to anyone but her: They had to be here to arrest her and Zandor when Jorah won.

  But even with all the pressure she was under, she still kept her eyes peeled as she climbed, looking for possible places someone—Carian—could hide in the dryad.

  After what happened to Keahr, she didn’t trust Raith and his brother one bit. It had only been Zandor’s gentle reminder that searching the entire dryad before the trial started would take hours. A delay of that length would mean it would be nightfall before Jorah and Raith started their climbs. It was not fair to expect Jorah to scale the monstrous construct and kill Raith in the dark.

  She had acquiesced.

  One foot ahead of the other. Just keep doing it.

  By the time she reached the platform that stretched out behind the dryad’s eyes, she was doubled over with a burning stitch in her side. She gulped the pain away as Artemis, his cronies, and his six musketeers filed onto the platform. It didn’t leave much room.

  Aware of them all watching her, she forced a straight back and tried to glide gracefully to the Ryferian flag hanging limp in a stand—the only furnishings in the lookout point.

  Understanding exactly how the flag felt, with heavy arms she managed to drag it out and stumbled with it to the railing—the dryad’s long eyelashes. The wind whipped her hair into her eyes as she peered far below to where Jorah and Raith waited for her to wave the flag—their signal to start climbing.

  Zandor stood at her shoulder. “Need help?” he whispered.

  Over her dead body would she give Artemis the pleasure of seeing her struggle. “No, I’ve got this.”

  She leaned over the railing and let the wind billow her flag. It ripped from her hands and rocketed into the trees at the edge of the forest.

  Laughter from the Intelligentsia.

  Her stomach sank.

  She hoped that wasn’t a portent of things to come.

  Jorah grabbed the only copper branch that dipped past him and Raith on the dryad’s steady rotation before the parasite reacted to the flag flying wildly in the breeze.

  As the branch lifted him into the air, it swayed and danced as if it were alive.

  The leaves and joints groaned against their bolts, and he said a quick prayer that it would hold his weight. He swung his leg over the rough, circular tubing, riding it like a horse—tasked with jumping over countless leaf fronds on its way to the dryad’s solid metal framework.

  Thankfully, this far from the trunk, the heat from the furnace had dissipated and the metal wasn’t painfully hot to the touch. That would change when he reached the trunk.

  The respite from the heat didn’t mean that the rest of his body didn’t ache from the foul energy leaking from the evil monstrosity.

  As fit as he was, by the time he scrambled to the steel frame, he was out of breath. He took a moment to check on Raith.

  With no easy branch to grab onto, the parasite had yet to start his climb.

  Jorah grunted his satisfaction.

  But hanging on the outside of the hated construct would not get him into a position to terminate Raith when the incubus finally figured out his route. For that, he had to get into the heart of the dryad.

  He squirmed around t
he see-sawing branch until he faced the dull, black metal cogs. They spun quick and sharp.

  Big gaps opened up every few seconds, showing off the dark inside of the Guardian before snapping closed again. If he timed this wrong, he’d lose a leg or an arm.

  He refused to dwell on that possibility.

  Heat from the furnace danced in eerie waves up the walls and across the cogs. It was unpleasantly hot. Sweat beaded his body, and his hands stung.

  That was the least of his troubles.

  His branch either swung too fast for him to wriggle through any suitable gaps, or, when the branch’s rocking slowed, the gaps closed too fast.

  Damn it.

  The branch swept around in another never-ending circle.

  To make matters worse, the parasite had reached the first line of cogs some thirty feet below.

  Jorah held his breath as his branch rose sharply. With it, the cogs began to move apart, the gap growing wider and wider as he drew nearer.

  He was less than a yard away when the gap stopped growing, the cogs on the brink of moving back together and closing up his chance.

  Jorah closed his eyes—and leaped.

  He hit the wall of cogs with a painful oomph.

  They responded by clacking closed.

  With just seconds left, he wriggled through the closest gap. Like a shark’s teeth, they snapped at him. One of them scraped across his boot, leaving a long cut in the leather as it crunched closed behind him.

  It didn’t matter. He was inside.

  Now all he had to do was wait for Raith to appear below him. And then he would strike.

  Raith was eye level with the first set of cogs. His fingers curled around its glowing warmth, he swung his free arm up and grabbed a second cog.

  It moved down a notch, like he had changed the time on a giant’s pocket watch, taking him with it. He held on tighter, waiting for the clattering teeth to lock.

  They caught—and then the cogs started a slow, upward rotation.

  He made the mistake of looking down as they swept up. Even though he was no more than thirty feet high, a fall could mean the difference between winning and losing.

  Nausea roiling, he quickly looked up. The sun pierced his eyes, preventing him from seeing how much he had left to climb. Maybe it was a good thing.

  And then movement caught his eye. Jorah diving into the cogs.

  Raith’s heart skipped a beat. Was that good or bad? Would he find Carian and kill him before Carian could strike? Or would Carian act first?

  Not knowing was agony. It gave impetus to his climb.

  Legs steadied against the Guardian, he let go of his cog and lunged for one farther up the frame. It moved, locking against the cog he clung to.

  His arms should have been groaning with the strain of holding him up and climbing.

  They weren’t. It had to be the effects of his potion. That knowledge gave him courage and, with it, even more determination to get this torture over and done with as quickly as possible.

  Timing the rotation of the cogs as best he could, he swung like a monkey up the construct. The higher he climbed, the more his confidence soared.

  A mere foot or two from the spot where Jorah had vanished, the entire mechanism juddered. A cascade of sound and movement. Raith gasped, then as the clack of turning cogs rattled down the dryad, he shuddered.

  His arms jarred and he lost his grip. His feet slipped from their purchase.

  Arms and legs flailing, he was falling. And there was nothing he could do about it.

  Above him, on the very last cog beneath the dryad’s face, Jorah stood, immovable as a statue. He had trapped the cogs in place.

  Instead of the incubus crashing to his death, Jorah watched as a passing branch scooped Raith up into its tangle of silver-and-copper leaves. The parasite hung on as if his life depended on it—which it did. Jorah growled a curse at Maleficent.

  “The mighty Jorah Thalyn.”

  He froze.

  Carian. Of course he would have hidden in here. Aurora had been right to want to check.

  He peered over his shoulder. The giant of a man had strapped himself to the central pole of the spiral staircase half a dozen feet from Jorah. He seemed unarmed.

  Not surprising. The parasite would have told him that Jorah had drunk a blood elixir.

  Could he jump across to reach Carian before he struck? He had to.

  But first he had to turn to face him, for not even he could jump backward with any accuracy. At least not without his dragon’s wings.

  “Dragon shape-shifter,” Carian droned. “On the high council of Warrendyte. Legendary fighter.”

  Conscious of the death-defying height of the cogs he perched on, Jorah quickly shuffled around.

  “First in line for Princess Aurora of Ryferia’s hand. The man who killed Trojean. Now to be murdered by a mere human.”

  Carian’s huge body smashed into him—and Jorah was falling.

  Carian laughed. “Oh, the songs they’ll sing in Warrendyte! The great Jorah Thalyn died fighting for an ugly horse-faced whore.”

  Jorah tumbled. Straight off the cog. Ninety feet up in the air.

  He controlled his trajectory with his arms and legs, as he would with his wings and talons. It didn’t help. He flailed for the closest cog, but his fingers grazed it as he flew by.

  A ring of branches bobbed beneath him. Sturdy, he hoped. He steadied himself for a crash, but he slid through.

  His eyes flew wide open. These branches were puny. They would never hold his weight.

  Still, he lunged for the closest offshoot. His hand tore through the cold metal, but no blood dropped.

  And still he was falling.

  Thirty feet.

  Again, he lunged. His fingertips snatched at a willowy sprig.

  He closed his fist around it—and then juddered to a halt. Something in his shoulder ripped.

  He gasped in pain as he hung like a chrysalis on the end of a twig some twenty feet from the ground. A fall would injure him, but he would survive it.

  But it meant he would not get to Aurora before the parasite.

  Another type of pain hit him. Longing, disappointment, and jealousy that anyone but him would have Aurora. Not to mention that he had staked his life on winning her hand—a life he now very much wanted to live.

  “No,” he snarled. Raith cannot win. Not with Artemis threatening my mate.

  Not with every Magical life at stake.

  He swung his legs up to grip the branch so he could crawl back into the game.

  An ear-numbing screech of stressed metal. The branch he held—

  A squeal. A judder. And then he was falling.

  His leg hit the ground. Pain rocked through him as it buckled. Broken.

  And then his head hit—and he remembered no more.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Aurora didn’t breathe. Didn’t move. Didn’t blink.

  If there was a god, or a goddess, she internally cursed them with every cruel, disgusting, damning word she could dream up. And then she cursed Raith as he scrambled up the dryad toward her.

  Far down on the ground, Jorah didn’t move.

  Was he even breathing? He looked so incredibly small. Not at all like the dragon she knew, but a mere man. A broken one. Tears welled, but she swept them away. No one could know that her insides churned, or that she wanted to vomit at her loss—and his.

  Zandor clutched her hand, and she barely registered it.

  A loud, slow clap behind her finally made her jump. She blinked her staring eyes. If her blood hadn’t gone cold and still, it would have roared in merciless anger as Artemis rounded on her.

  “Well done, Aurora. You’ve killed another one.”

  He’s not dead. He’s not dead.

  She had no way to know.

  Artemis faced his audience of sycophants. “Unfortunately, gentlemen of the Intelligentsia, this is not my niece’s first kill.” A cruel smile. “And I am not referring to the trials, either.�
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  So this was it. The accusation. And Jorah wouldn’t be at the mermaid to meet her as he’d promised. Unless Niing and Keahr managed to take him there. If he was even still alive.

  Given Niing’s size and Keahr’s injury, that was unlikely.

  You can’t focus on that now. You have to survive Artemis. Remembering her quest to be incarcerated in her bedchamber, she wiped her face of emotion and turned to meet Artemis’s cruel, malice-filled eyes.

  They danced with excitement.

  “I had my personal alchemist study King Lazard’s food the night he was killed,” Artemis called out. “They found that it was laced with digitalis.” His voice rose. “My traitorous niece failed to save her king on purpose. It was she who poisoned him with plants found in her garden.”

  A roar of protest—against her—from the Intelligentsia. So much for a fair hearing! They had already found her guilty and condemned her.

  Fire burned in her belly. Her throat. Her tongue. All she wanted was to fly at Artemis, to fight him, and to defend her case, but with arrest now imminent and no support from her subjects, she had to ensure he sent her to her apartment. To argue would not help that quest.

  Artemis stepped back, eyes running from her feet to her head, satisfaction blazing in his face. “You have nothing to say? No sharp wit? No pithy comeback?”

  She bit her lip, then burst out, despite her better judgement, “I would no more have harmed my brother than fly to the moon. I loved him with all my heart. And how would killing him have served me? The law had not been changed to allow me to take the throne. You all know that. Why would I not have waited until that was done?”

  “Because you had already planned the marriage trials!” someone shouted. “You didn’t need the law changed!”

  Her stomach clenched. Was everything she had done since Lazard’s death to work against her?

  Zandor shifted next to her. She gripped his hand to stop him from going for his bow and arrows. Whatever happened, they had to stick together. Killing one of these men would get him killed in turn. That would drive her insane with rage, and she would attack Artemis.

  That would not end well for Zandor, her, or her kingdom.