On the edge of her vision, she spied Lucias shuffling in his chair. The squeak of leather on leather filled the room, masking the rumble in her stomach. He sat at the head of the table with her sitting just to his left. As far as she could make out, they were alone.
"Clara," he breathed. "I do wish you would eat." The glint of light on metal spoke of him picking up the carving knife. No such implement had been gifted to her, just a fork so blunt and fat it might as well have been a spoon. Anything sharp appeared to have been carefully placed out of her reach.
There was the soft squish of a blade slicing through meat.
Her gaze flicked down to the food-laden table, her mouth watering at the sight of the pinkish flesh being placed on the plate in front of her, before returning to stare at the wall. "I'm not hungry, my lord." It would've been easier to refuse if the bare stone could offer up something to look at beyond its dark surface.
Lucias set the knife down with a sigh. "It has been two days." The words came softly, as if he spoke to a spooked cat. His chair creaked as he leant forward. "You must know by now I will not negate my decision."
She did. He'd been most adamant about it. "I still believe Katharina would've been a better choice, my lord."
"Perhaps she would, although I have my doubts." With his elbows resting on the table, he steepled his fingers. "It is you which... intrigues me. Thrice you have tried to escape and thrice you've failed to get much further than the main stairway." His dark eyes glittered in the candlelight. "Yet you continue to defy me."
She snapped her head back around to stare at the wall. "And I shall do so until my dying breath, my lord." Her last attempt had been somewhat spontaneous. To test out the loyalties of his men. She hadn't expected it to be undying.
"Do you not worry I will force you?"
Coldness washed over her. He could. No doubt as easily as he had lifted her onto the horse. Easier in fact, seeing there would be no lifting involved. Her gaze dropped to her lap. He wouldn't even need to resort to his magic. Just his own hands. And the power they had at their command. "Then why don't you?"
Lucias chuckled mirthlessly. "My father learnt the folly of force. And paid for it with his life."
Slain at Ne'ermore. No one here would tell her why. He likely could, but she couldn't bring herself to ask him lest he mistake her curiosity for her something else.
With his left hand—it was always the left he used, although he seemed to handle the sword at his hip with the other hand readily enough—he filled her goblet. "At least drink something, I promise there is nothing more within than apple juice."
She itched to take up the cup and drain it of the sweetness it held. Juice. Not wine like he drank. No attempts to get me drunk then? Already, there were beads of water forming on the metal. She licked her lips and stayed her hand. Her stomach gave another tiny rumble. She'd been surviving on cups of water for the last two days. "I'm not—"
He snatched the goblet off the table, the cloudy juice sloshing over the rim, and downed the liquid in one gulp. "Nothing more than juice," he snarled, wiping the back of a hand across his mouth. "Do you not see it now? Can you not believe I don't seek to harm you? It's the furthest thing from my mind."
"Then please, my lord, let me go."
"Go?" he roared.
Clara flinched. She closed her eyes, her fingers deftly entwining themselves into her skirts, and braced herself for the slap that would surely follow. Her cheek tingled in anticipation. She risked a peek when nothing came.
The goblet flew down the table, rebounding off the wood and hitting the floor with a dreadful clang. "Go?" The word growled through his teeth. His eyes seemed to glow with an inner fire. They sparkled with a pale silvery-blue glow, the subtle colour of his eyes lost to the dark inferno of his rage.
She shrank into the chair.
A flicker of pain darted across his face. "Do not look at me so!" His fist slammed onto the table. Plates bounced, cutlery rattled, wine slopped out of the pitcher beside him. "I will not have you fear me." He pushed himself from the table, his chair skidding across the stone floor, to stand and pace the room's length. "How can I prove I mean you no harm?" He halted before her, distanced only by a slab of wood and the wealth of silverware it bore. "What must I do to win your trust, Clara? Tell me."
Let me go. She shook her head. It would be foolish to repeat such a request. "There is naught you can do to make me willing to stay, my lord." She would not yield to him. She would find a way to be free. "Force me if you must sate your desire, but I will never wish to stay. And you will never have me trust you."
"Sate?" His laughter rang out, icy and mirthless. "Is that what you think this is about?" He shook his head, further messing his hair. "I would not have sent them out, would not have kept you here for so long, for even a night of empty pleasure." He leant on the table, his veins bulging along his forearms. "If I wanted that, I'd have paid for it and would've had far less trouble, too." Those dark intense eyes grew wild with hunger as he stared at her. "What I want," he grated from behind clenched teeth. "What I need, is a son. An heir to take my place when I have passed on."
An heir? So he did want her here to bear him a child. She'd thought his desire for a babe was the reason, but hoped it wouldn't be true. No wonder his head servant had preferred Lillian with her docile manner and wide hips.
"You—" She moistened her lips, wishing she still had the goblet of juice at hand. "You have no children?" Surely he would not have kept to himself over the years. The way he looked at her, both unnerving and enticing, spoke of a man who knew exactly what to do with a woman once she was within reach.
One corner of his mouth lifted in a sneer. "Despite the rumours the other kingdoms like to spread about us, I am no savage. I do not rut with every woman I come across." His gaze dropped to the table. "Able as I am, I, unlike my father, would prefer being able to trust someone before letting them share my bed."
Surprised to find she'd been clutching her skirts tightly to herself, she forced her hands to smooth the wrinkled linen. "I find that hard to believe, my lord."
One brow lifted. His lips parted, the ghost of a laugh passing through them. "Ah Clara," he breathed. A hand ran through his hair, drawing the wayward strands from his face. "If we had but known each other well before my father's demise..." Candlelight shimmered in his eyes as he glanced up at her, a soft smile tweaking one side of his mouth. "I was a different man then. Certainly harder to anger."
Clara bit her tongue and let her gaze run along the tapestries adorning the far wall in an effort to remain silent.
Lucias straightened. "I understand there's a lot you need to adjust to before you can accept your new position. I can, and shall, wait for a time to let you come to me on your own. On this, you have my word." Turning his back to her, he marched towards the door, his boot heels clicking against the stone. "Do keep in mind my patience is not eternal. I cannot risk being the last of my line forever. Not without endangering the kingdom and her people."
"The kingdom will survive." Maybe not as it once had, but its people would carry on the same as always no matter who ruled them. It wasn't as if the Great Lords were deeply involved in the day-to-day running of the land they ruled. How many would even notice his absence?
Lucias halted, his hand gripping the door handle. "Will it?" Still holding onto the handle, he twisted to face her. "Tell me, have you ever feared walking the streets of your village?"
Her chin rose, pride for her beloved Everdark swelling in her chest. "Not until your men came and kidnapped me." Even on the darkest nights, the streets were the safest to be found for miles.
He waved the taunt aside. "And of the roads between? They were also safe for the common man to travel?"
"Of course they are." Everyone knew it to be so. When not invading lands or pushing back any invaders who dared to attack, the army spent its time tracking down those few who broke the law. Then they come here. Locked in an iron box to meet their punishment.
"Well there you have it. None of this protection will continue without one of my blood to carry on."
She bit her lip and frowned. The Great Lord's rule is absolute. But surely a kingdom's existence didn't hinge on something as flimsy as the life of its ruler. Cities couldn't crumble in an instant and the land wouldn't fall into chaos just because there was no one to take up the mantle of Great Lord. Then why does he sound so sure? It couldn't be true. Could it? "Then why did your father go to Ne'ermore? Why take the risk?" Yes, Lucias' father had an heir, but it seemed foolish to willingly head into danger.
The door squeaked as he leant against it. "For love, of course." Folding his arms across his chest, he shrugged. "What other reason could possibly be good enough to risk one's life?"
Walking the land of their enemies would've been dangerous enough, but to try and enter the city... Well, the old lord must have realised how slim his chances of survival would be. He'd have known the likelihood of returning. "Surely for him to step even one foot into Ne'ermore was suicidal." Clara peered at Lucias, trying to decipher his emotions. Such a thing must have occurred to him too. His face was too guarded. She wished he would come back to the table, it'd been easier to eke out his feelings then.
He waved a hand about in vague circles. "Well, perhaps not if he'd actually made it into Ne'ermore. My father was attacked whilst traversing the nearby land. It's all hills around there, leagues of it, perfect ambush territory." A jerk of the head flipped the hair from his face. "It's why the city's never been taken. They've built it on the highest hill they could find. Whole place looks like a stairway to the clouds, but you can't march an army up to the gates without them knowing well beforehand."
"And your father... You think they saw him?" Saw him and undeniably thought themselves favoured by the Goddess to be given such an opportunity.
His lips, already thinned with repressed anger, twisted. "I doubt it. The fool took only a three-man escort, along with my mother." He shook his head. "Although, I suppose he wouldn't have been any better off with an army at his back."
Clara bit her lip again. An army wouldn't have stopped his death? "How did he die?" She held her breath, expecting him to relate of how an assassin had slipped into his tent at night.
"On the head of an axe wielded some blood-thirsty barbarian who was likely already on his way here to deal to my father anyway." Again his hand combed through the dark mess of his hair. "Or so she tells me."
"Who?"
"My mother." His boot scuffed against the floor. "At her behest, one man was kept alive to send word to me of my father's death." He grimaced. "Not that I needed it. My family have a way of knowing when our predecessors have passed on and I met the messenger on my way back from the eastern border."
"Your mother?" she blurted, unable to believe what she'd heard. "What sort of mother would do such a thing?" Even her own mother, a woman as unforgiving as stone, wouldn't have been so cruel. She'd loved her father, cared for him as he had wasted away and, although she hadn't hesitated in beating Clara, her mother never did it for something undeserved.
Sighing, he walked back to the table and proceeded to pace its length. "She was—" Lucias halted and scrubbed at his chin. "Still is, I suppose... a lady of the Raven Household, foremost in the Ebony Court at Ne'ermore. My father had her abducted within the first few days of the siege there." He eyed her, a brow lifting. "You've heard of this time?"
Clara nodded. Everyone had heard of the Ne'ermore Siege. It'd been the last time their lord had dared to invade the surrounding kingdoms.
"Well, when they finally managed to push him out of the kingdom, she got dragged along with him." Lucias plucked an apple from the bowl as he passed, tossing it from hand to hand. "Naturally her people came after her, but..." He shook his head, giving a dry chuckle. "Their strength has always been in those mighty fortresses. Such skills are useless without several feet of stone between their men and an enemy."
She was kidnapped. Undoubtedly with even less of a desire to linger here than Clara, yet the woman had still given her captor a son. Through force? No one mentioned where exactly the Great Lords got their women. Foolish to think they'd all been willing to serve. I have to get out of here. She frowned down at her plate. But how could she possibly hope to escape when an army hadn't been enough to free her predecessor?
Clara poked her fork at the meat he'd piled onto the silver dish, watching the juice pool around the bottom slice. Death would be the easiest way to end her captivity. Her stomach cramped as she went to push her plate away. There is no escape through starving to death. To die was to give up. A concession of her being too weak, too much his lesser, to fight back.
She stabbed the beef, lifting a generous chunk free to gnaw at it like a starving mutt. Tender, it succumbed in one bite. Rolling the morsel around her mouth, she savoured the taste after two days of living on water. She'd not eaten meat since her father had fallen ill and even then the cuts he'd brought home had tasted nowhere near as good as what she ate now. Swallowing, she took another bite.
Movement across the table drew her gaze. Lucias was smiling at her like she was some pup who had, after much training, at last obeyed a command.
She'd rather die than let him touch her, but far better to have him fall instead. To be free once again, for that alone she would fight him until the last drop of strength had been wrung from her soul.
Chapter Six
Clara descended the steps. The clash of metal on metal echoed from somewhere in the halls below. She clutched her skirts, quietly delighting in the silk against her fingers. Her mother rarely let her touch such fine cloth; now it swathed her from neck to toe—or at least from chest to toe. The silk was dyed blacker than ink with highlights of red as richly dark as her hair.
She'd caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Her guardians, having finished dressing and grooming her to what she assumed must be the standards of a Great Lord's mistress, had then all but dragged her from the room. She resembled a walking, bleeding shadow. Even her hair, carefully teased and bound into two buns, was now framed by the dark points of a collar. Like an oversized crown or the velvet crest of a black dragon.
Slipping a finger beneath the soft leather strap they'd fastened around her neck, she eased it forward enough to soothe the tortured skin lying beneath. I'll throttle whoever came up with this design. She hadn't minded the fussing over her. It had bordered on pampering. This, however, had to be the most foolish means of anchoring such a heavy netting of wire and fabric that she'd ever come across. It tugged at her throat with each step, digging deep whenever she tried to turn her head.
"This way, mistress." Clara's guide, having already reached the bottom of the stairs, beckoned her onwards. With her wrinkled hand shaking, the woman indicated a passageway Clara hadn't been led down before. The metallic clash, louder now, came from one such hall.
Clara hadn't expected to see women here. Something in the way people spoke about the Citadel's servants always suggested men. True, the women she'd seen were advanced enough in their years to be grandmothers—she wouldn't have been surprised if the eldest had claimed to have great-grandchildren—but they were women nonetheless.
Like the other servants she'd met, they had the same flat look in their eyes. She'd listened to their soft voices as they spoke amongst themselves, about trivial matters and seldom with any feeling. It reminded her of the cheap travelling theatre she'd seen some years ago. There'd been no spirit behind their voices. The lines they'd rehearsed were just... words.
Would she end up like those women? Like the one she now followed through the unfamiliar corridors? Hard to imagine what could be capable of draining someone of all emotion.
The metallic racket ahead grew closer and sharper, punctuated by the grunting of men and an occasional hiss.
She hesitated as the hallway walls on one side gave way to a set of carved pillars. Sunlight lit up a floor bereft of the black and red carpet under her feet. Silhouettes flit back and forth along the worn stone
as if in some intricate dance, the delicate way the shadowy lines of swords brushed each other at odds with the clang of metal on metal. One of the lines dipped to hit the greyish shoulder and a yelp came from within the yard.
"Oh come now," Lucias said as the other's silhouette knelt at his lord's feet. "Get up! It's only a flesh wound."
Clara drew level with the first pillar. The smell of sun-warmed air and dust reached her on the faint, curling breeze. The area before her stood open to the sky and was ringed by thick benches and wooden figures. At one end of the grounds stood a handful of men. They seemed to hover on the edge of shadows gifted by the building, waiting to spring forth at a word.
Another man, the lord's stricken sparring partner, knelt in the middle of the yard. Blood flowed from a wide gash in his upper arm, running over reddened fingers and continuing on to drip off his elbow onto the dry earth. He lifted his head to stare up at Lucias. "But, my lord, it's to the bone."
"Oh?" Lucias paused in wiping the blade of his sword. "S'pose you should give it a minute or two then." He waved the man away to an empty bench. "Next."
One of the men separated from the group. He ran out into the sunlight with a jump to stand before his lord.
The first sparring partner scurried off to one side, collapsing onto one of the benches. His wound still bled, although no longer as heavily. No one else seemed to be at all concerned with his health. Was no one going to assist the man? He'd bleed to death without proper attention.
Hitching up her skirts, she strode out into the sundrenched square. She couldn't call herself the daughter of a seamstress and not have been able to sew. Since the age of ten, her mother had insisted she learn. Granted this was flesh and not fabric, but the principles of needle and thread were largely the same. She even knew where some of the necessary equipment still lay, but first she needed to stop the bleeding.
Dark One's Mistress (Dark One Trilogy Book 1) Page 5
