by Tessa Dawn
Before Arielle could respond, a set of heavy footsteps approached outside the door, rustling a pile of dry leaves on the ground. Arielle stuffed all of her healing supplies beneath Keitaro’s blanket, even as the vampire drew to immediate attention.
“Take my hand again, now. And. Don’t. Even. Breathe,” he commanded.
The moment Keitaro snatched Arielle’s hand, she felt a visceral infusion of power transfer from his body into hers; and then just like that, she was rendered invisible by the powerful being beside her—and just how had he drawn upon such power in his weakened, compromised state, anyhow? With all the diamond that was flowing through his veins, he should have been incapable of hearing the lycan’s approach, let alone doing something about it. Rielle wept inside. She knew the cost of performing such a feat would cost Keitaro dearly: physically, mentally, and energetically. His pain would return with a vengeance.
Xavier stuck his head inside the tent and scowled angrily. “Who are you speaking with, vampire?”
Keitaro snarled, his face a virulent mask of hatred. “The ghostly apparition of the jackal who birthed you, lycan.” His fangs elongated in his mouth. “Unchain me, and let’s talk it over.”
Xavier raised a clenched fist and held it in the air, obviously wishing he could pummel Keitaro’s face in. “Haven’t you had enough pain for one day, slave?”
Despite his weakened state, Keitaro Silivasi hissed, his midnight eyes heating in his skull until they shone bloodred. “You’ve been torturing me for centuries, you useless bastard. I don’t even notice it anymore.”
Xavier laughed then, the sound both guttural and harsh. “You’re lying, vampire.”
“And you’re inferior, lycan. So now, we both know where we stand.”
“One of these days,” Xavier grit out between clenched teeth.
“Yeah, whatever,” Keitaro snarled. “Either do something about it or get out.”
Xavier spat on Keitaro’s chest and stormed out in a fury; no doubt, he was struggling to restrain himself from acting on his threats. When he was finally gone, Keitaro released Arielle’s hand and glared at the deposit of spittle running down his chest. “Wipe that shit off,” he growled.
Arielle dug out her white cloth and immediately wiped the saliva away, crumpling the dirty rag in her hand. “That wasn’t very smart, Keitaro. You have to stop—”
Keitaro leveled a cautionary glare at her, cutting her off mid-sentence. Although Arielle knew it was not meant to be threatening—the vampire had meant it as a gentle warning—it put chills down her spine just the same: She should have known better by now, to challenge Keitaro’s pride or his anger when they were all the vampire had left. Keitaro Silivasi was not afraid of death, and he sure as hell was not afraid of Xavier Matista.
Arielle sighed, feeling all at once remorseful and out of place. If Keitaro Silivasi could have taken his own life before then, he would have. As it stood, his existence was a long, endless repetition of suffering and slavery, a hell on Mhier, without his wife, without his beloved sons, without any hope for an end…without a reprieve. He wanted to provoke one or the other: a chance to exact vengeance or a chance to die as he wished.
If it hadn’t been for Arielle’s own captivity—she had only escaped Thane’s clutches ten years prior, just before her eighteenth birthday—she would have never met Keitaro Silivasi, and the vampire would have been virtually alone. No, Keitaro Silivasi survived because King Tyrus Thane wanted him to survive, and it was a cruel, prolonged torment for the Ancient Master Warrior at best, a twisted joke at the least. But Keitaro would never back down to a werewolf, and Arielle knew that, if one day, Keitaro provoked one of the vulgar beasts into killing him, it would only be another victory. Still, she couldn’t bear to see him take such chances. Keitaro was like the father she had never known. The rebel she had never met.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Keitaro said, interrupting her inner monologue. Before she could reply, he grasped her hand. “Promise me, you won’t come back, Arielle; I mean it.”
Arielle recoiled at his words. Not only had he snatched her hand a bit too brusquely, but he had called her Arielle, as opposed to the shortened version of Rielle, and that meant the vampire was deathly serious. “I won’t promise that. I can’t just leave you to the wolves.” She winked at him, hoping to underscore the twisted humor in her words. “I will not, Keitaro.”
Keitaro’s jaw stiffened. “Look at me, Rielle, and listen to what I’m telling you.”
Arielle met his gaze reluctantly.
“If the generals had not gotten drunk that night, if the sentry posted outside your hut had not passed out…” His voice trailed off, and he shook his head to dismiss the memory. “If Thane had gotten his way, if you hadn’t escaped ten years ago, when you were still seventeen years old, you would have been wife number seven, not Leah. And after her death, he would have chosen you over Paulina as wife number eight. After her, you would have been victim number nine, not Cassandra. The king has always wanted you, and you, slipping through his fingers, humiliated him. Made a mockery of his manhood…and his throne. This is not a game, sweet girl. We both know that all nine of his previous wives have been executed or murdered at his hands: If he doesn’t beat them to death, he eventually tires of them and has them killed.” He glanced at her long and hard before softening his voice. “Even with your rare, incomparable beauty, you wouldn’t stand a chance, long term. Every time Thane loses a wife, he sends his guard to search for you…again. This time will be no different. You need to go into hiding for as long as you can, and you need stay there until he has found another wife. I am not free, Rielle. I cannot protect you. He has never forgotten you. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Arielle nodded, understanding fully just what was at stake, what kind of risk she took every time she entered the encampment to see to Keitaro’s needs, to try and ease his endless suffering. “I do understand, and I will go into hiding again. But I can’t leave you at his mercy, not indefinitely. I just can’t, Keitaro. It’s hard to explain. I just…can’t.”
“By all the celestial gods, you are a pure soul, Rielle, and I love you like a daughter. Please, I have already lost my wife and my sons. Do not force me to lose you, too.”
Arielle’s eyes filled with tears, but she held back the ensuing river. “You are unspeakably dear to me, Keitaro.”
“Then promise me you will not come back.”
Arielle sat back on her heels and slowly shook her head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Silivasi. I just can’t make that promise.” She pressed her forefinger gently to his mouth to silence any protest. “Sleep well. Regain your strength for Sunday. I will light a prayer-fire for you in the Rebel Camp.”
Keitaro shook his head sadly, clearly wishing he could change her mind. “Go, now. I wish I could change your mind, but I know that you are as stubborn as an ox. Just be careful.”
“I will,” she promised.
“You better be,” he warned.
She smiled then and pressed a gentle kiss on his forehead. “Father of my heart,” she whispered.
“Daughter of mine,” he replied. “Be well, Arielle.”
She averted her eyes and bowed her head, ever so slightly, in the way he had taught her, in the way of the Vampyr. “Be well, Keitaro.”
Keitaro Silivasi sank deeper into the damnable blanket, the threadbare deerskin chafing his back, and tried to relax as the healing ointments began to work their magic on his raw, inflamed skin. He watched the bearskin flap over the doorway rustle, sway, and then settle into its normal position, as darkness, once again, enveloped the tiny hut. And then he closed his eyes.
Arielle Nightsong was truly the daughter of his heart, the one bright light he had in an otherwise miserable, endless existence. And her charitable visits, which she took at great risk to her health and her future—Thane would give anything to make her wife number ten—were more deeply appreciated than she could ever know. What point would there have been in telling her the upcoming ga
mes were rigged? That Thane would stack the approaching match heavily in Cain’s favor, even though the arrogant king had every intention of seeing to it that Cain never made it out alive. As it stood, Cain would be equipped with the weapon of his choice, not to mention a lethal entourage of three vicious rhino-beasts, all trained from birth to kill on command, while Keitaro would be forced to fight with his bare hands, still in a weakened state. There had been no point in telling Arielle that the chances of him making it out of the match alive were slim to none. No, Keitaro had done the right thing. She would find out soon enough.
He sighed and struggled to find a more comfortable position, such as it were.
It didn’t matter.
It was time.
Long past time, really, to finally exit this gods-forsaken realm and reunite with his wife Serena in the afterlife. A bare hint of a smile crossed his chapped lips as he, once and for all, accepted his fate.
At least he would have the ultimate satisfaction of taking Cain Armentieres out with him, murdering the vile alpha general of the Northern Clan of the Lycanthrope—the same one who had murdered his wife Serena so many centuries ago in Dark Moon Vale—on his way to the afterlife.
Perhaps this was why the gods had allowed him to live in such a barren purgatory for so long.
Of course…
“Sa razbun moartea nevestei mele, as mai suferii inca o mie de ani.” The words rolled off his tongue in his native Romanian language:
To avenge my wife in death, I would suffer a thousand years more.
three
Dark Moon Vale
Kagen Silivasi could hardly believe it: Nachari had completed the spell.
Using the materials Kagen had brought back from the four outermost directions of Dark Moon Vale, Nachari had managed to capture their essence, reconstruct their energy into an interwoven pattern that contained a portal at the center, and manufacture a spiritual doorway into another realm. There was nothing left to do but activate it in the valley, once they were ready to enter Mhier.
Well, that, and to go over their plans and the map one last time.
Unwilling to waste another second, Kagen and Nachari had called Saber Alexiares, asking him to bring his latest version of the map to the rooftop. To their surprise, the male had obliged them at once.
Nathaniel had returned to his sprawling cliff-side estate, right after dropping off the morbid trophy he had saved from Tristan’s kill—he had wanted to spend his last night home with Jocelyn and Storm. And Marquis was still at his traditional three-story farmhouse, hunkered down with Ciopori, which was fine. The princess wanted to take full advantage of Marquis’s last night in the vale, spending every waking moment with her mate, before the Silivasi clan ventured into the great unknown, perhaps never to return again.
Besides, Marquis really needed to center, to get his head on straight.
He was like a lit fuse ready to go off at any moment. He needed this time with Ciopori even more than she needed it with him. And, in truth, the impromptu meeting with Saber was only cursory—they had all gone over the map of Mhier at least twelve times already—they just wanted to be sure…
Of what?
Kagen couldn’t really say.
Now, as he aimed a Maglite flashlight at the drawing, shining the luminescent beam on a ternary group of tributaries that flowed just southeast of a steep, perilous mountain range, he could feel his temperature rising, his stomach tying up in knots.
It wasn’t as if it hadn’t all been real before…
It was all too real, to coin a phrase, but somehow, now that Nachari had made it not only real but possible, it was also all too much. Too overwhelming.
Too close to home.
Kagen stared at the heavy black flashlight resting squarely in his palm—and didn’t that just bring it all home?—it wasn’t as if a vampire needed a flashlight to see in the dark. Heck, it wasn’t as if Nachari’s rooftop wasn’t already lit up like a freakin’ evergreen on Christmas. It was just that they wanted this to turn out right so badly.
They needed Keitaro to be alive.
Everything, absolutely everything, was riding on the outcome of this voyage, and Kagen didn’t know how to control the variables: how to be any more prepared, any more deliberate, or any more careful than he was.
How to be any more strategic.
Like Marquis, he was also wound too tight for comfort, ready to splinter into pieces at the slightest provocation. It was almost as if something buried deep inside of him was stirring, a long-forgotten ember still glowing in the fires of his soul, and the slightest amount of kindling could set the coals ablaze.
Needing to get a grip on his emotions, to wrap his mind around concrete details instead of obscure possibilities, Kagen turned to regard Saber and Nachari. They were sitting side-by-side in front of Nachari’s adjustable drafting table, which was a remarkable occurrence in and of itself, considering that just under three months ago, the two had been bitter enemies; and they were tracing the various diagrams on the page with their fingers, pointing, fine-tuning, and adding important notations to the page. Surely, the fact that they could work together like this had to be a good omen, a sign of even better things to come.
Kagen shook his head, once again trying to dismiss the incessant rambling in his mind. He stepped up to the drawing, maneuvered his body just slightly to the side of the table—he did not want to disturb Saber and Nachari—and pointed at the upper right quadrant, just below an area marked The Arena, just to the right of a large, fenced-in parcel of land, denoted The Royal District. “The slave quarters, the huts, how many are there? And how many lycans act as guards on a typical night?” he asked.
Saber shrugged his broad shoulders, his characteristic scowl tugging the right corner of his top lip upward. “I don’t know. Salvatore drew seven in his original plat, but there could be more…maybe less.”
Kagen frowned. He pointed to a vast area of high-peaked mountains that divided the realm in half, north from south, giving way to two distinct valleys: On the northern side, the Mystic Mountain Valley housed the slave quarters, the place they expected to find Keitaro, and on the southern end, the valley became a rocky ravine, the Mystic Mountain Gorge, nestled beyond both banks of an enormous, turbulent tributary called the Lykos River. “The mountains are treacherous?” he asked, not really expecting an answer. “Subzero temperatures and steep, unexpected cliffs—are there strange animals, prehistoric beasts, that dwell here as well?”
Saber shook his head, studying the region more closely. “Mmm…don’t know that, either.”
Kagen shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He pointed to another quadrant, located just left of center on the map. “And this, the Wolverine Woods; are they as dense as they appear?”
Saber shrugged.
“They clearly separate two very large districts, the dwellings of the western pack, about ten miles above, and the domain of the southern pack, about fifteen miles below. What are these communes like? Are they townships, cities, or fortresses? Do they have modern amenities, or will we be walking into some medieval time warp?”
“Sorry,” Saber said evenly.
Kagen sighed in frustration. “And the king of the realm—you said his name was Tyrus Thane—is he still living?”
Saber glanced at Kagen through the corner of his eye. Instead of speaking, he simply held up his hands, the gesture saying it all for him: I honestly don’t know.
Kagen felt his alter ego stir, the character his brothers jokingly called Mr. Hyde, the counterpart to his rational Dr. Jekyll, and he wondered where all this intensity was coming from. Now was not the time to lose his cool. He pinched his nose at the bridge, trying to maintain his composure, and then he pointed once again at the map, his finger tracing the outline of the lower Lykos River, where it curved at the base of the Mystic Mountains, began to head east, and provided a natural barrier to the lower gorge and the Skeleton Swamps, just beyond a rocky crevice. “And the animals, the prehistoric bea
sts that inhabit the realm; you say we’ll find the majority of them here? Are any of them supernatural? Like lycans or vampires, something we should really be concerned about…prepared for?”
Saber didn’t respond this time. He simply pursed his lips together and looked off into the distance.
“Well?” Kagen persisted.
Saber met his eyes once more and frowned. “Kagen…”
“You don’t know.”
Saber raised his brows and shook his head. His eyes heated with insolence, but to his credit, he didn’t say anything rude or defensive. He didn’t say anything at all.
And this just made Kagen angrier. “Well, what the hell do you know, Dark One?”
Nachari leveled a heated glare at his brother, his chastening green eyes reflecting his disapproval. “No need to go there, Kagen. He’s telling us everything he knows.”
Saber rolled his shoulders and popped his neck to release some tension. “Nah, it’s cool. I’ve been called worse.”
“I bet you have,” Kagen snarled beneath his breath.
Saber clenched and released his fist, inadvertently snapping the pencil he was holding in two. He flicked it off the easel and gently picked up another one from the tabletop container, his shadowy eyes remaining fixed on the drawing. “Watch yourself, healer.” It was an icy warning: low, calculated, and laced with lethal intention.
Nachari gave Saber a sideways glance, beseeching him with his eyes. “Just leave him be. He’ll work it out soon enough. It’s not about you.” He turned his attention to Kagen. “You need to check your beast, Dr. J—he’s riding dangerously close to the surface.” His voice neither rose nor fell.
Saber licked his lips, and Kagen took a deep breath.
Work it out, indeed.
He needed to stay calm, focused.
After all, none of this was Saber’s fault. Saber hadn’t done anything to warrant this abuse, yet the knowledge, the very idea that the male had carried this information around for however many hundreds of years before sharing it with their family was sticking in Kagen’s craw like a burr beneath a saddle: irritating, stabbing, and constantly provoking. Just the same, Saber’s allegiance had been to the house of Jaegar—not the house of Jadon—there was no reason for the male to have approached the Silivasis, his sworn enemy, and divulged such a vital secret. At least not before he found out that he was truly one of them.
