Temperance

by Ella Frank

  Audra nodded, agreeing with her.

  “Okay. Let’s stick close to the wall, and then we’ll have to make a run for it.”

  “I don’t like this,” Fiona protested feebly.

  “We don’t have a choice,” Siobhan said. “We need to find Naeve and get the hell out of here.”

  “Fine. Let’s do this. The longer we wait, the more likely it is someone will come for us.”

  Siobhan watched her two sisters start off in the direction they’d agreed on and knew already that, if there were, in fact, soldiers or guards or whatever the hell these men called themselves protecting the castle, they were already after them.

  * * *

  Naeve shifted until she was sitting beside Kai on the bed. He hadn’t moved since he’d finished talking, and that had been several minutes ago. His hands were fisted and resting on his thighs, his back straight and stiff, his jaw clenched as if he were waiting for the devil himself to come and drag him to Hell.

  But he’d already been there, Naeve realized.

  What trauma this man had suffered as a child, to have to end your mother’s life to save her from the pain of an agonizing death. She couldn’t even begin to imagine.

  She wanted to reach out, to touch him and tell him that everything would be okay, but she knew they were just words. Words that would make her feel better from knowing that she had offered him something when, really, she had nothing that would ease whatever torment he was inflicting on himself.

  He’d clearly lived a secluded life here in his mother’s house. He believed he was guilty of a heinous act, and Naeve knew that his brother Ry’Ker had a lot to do with his self-imposed guilt.

  It was as obvious as the scar across his back.

  She reached over, placed her palm over his fist, and gently squeezed it, hoping that her touch would somehow convey that she did not find him to be the monster he so truly believed he was.

  He didn’t move as they sat there. She was covered in furs, and he was naked as the day he was born, sharing a moment Naeve knew was bigger than anything she’d ever shared with anyone before.

  This man had bared his soul to her, laid his transgressions at her feet, and was waiting for her ultimate dismissal of him.

  “Kai,” she whispered into the dark room, waiting for him to face her. When he didn’t, she shifted and kneeled on the bed beside him. “Kai?”

  Still, there was nothing but silence, so she traced a finger along the scar sweeping under his shoulder blade—that had him turning towards her.

  “You said your brother did this to you.”

  His troubled eyes held hers as his lips parted to speak. “Yes. As I knelt before my mother with my sword inside her chest, Ry’Ker… He stood, screaming at me about how I killed her, and I just stayed there, kneeling before her, wanting to die myself.”

  Naeve tightened her hand over his fist and held his stare, silently urging him to continue his tortured tale.

  “I lowered my head and thought that maybe, just maybe, Ry would end it for me. Because I knew that I would carry the guilt I was feeling forever. That it would haunt my very soul. But he didn’t. He didn’t kill me. He didn’t ease my suffering. He sliced open my back, and in a voice I’d never heard from my younger brother, he told me that he hoped someone showed me the same ‘mercy’ that I just showed our mother.”

  Naeve sucked in a startled breath at the cruelty.

  “He wanted me to die that day, but just as my mother suspected, Ry never had that in him. He could never be purposely cruel to another.” He paused and looked away from her, “Well, before that, anyway.”

  “So he left you there?”

  “Yes,” Kai replied, and Naeve tried to imagine the anguish he as a young man must’ve felt. “He left me in the room with our mother and walked out the door. It was as though he were a different person from that day on. I’d not only killed her, but I killed him too.”

  Naeve sat there in silence for a moment and wondered if she would have been that brave if need be. Would she have been able to end a life, to ease suffering?

  “You did what you had to do. Your mother knew that, just like she knew you were the only one who could do it.”

  He gave a short nod. “That may be so, but it still does not ease the burden.”

  She thought about his brother. The man who Kai said would protect her sisters, second only to himself, yet he’d just told a story about how he’d left his own flesh and blood to die.

  “What about your brother?”

  “What about him?”

  “Well, you said you feel like you killed the boy you used to know.”

  “Yes,” he admitted.

  “That man? He has my sisters…” she trailed off, and thought it over before she pressed on. “Should I be worried for their safety?”

  Kai took her hands in his and gave them a squeeze. “No. Do not worry for them, little rabbit. Ry’Ker would never hurt a woman. Not ever. His reaction to our mother should prove his unwillingness to harm a female. He won’t raise a sword to them…”

  Naeve believed him, but she felt there was something lingering. Something he wasn’t telling her.

  “But?”

  “Hmm?” he said, seemingly lost in thought.

  “But? It seems like there is something you aren’t telling me.”

  Kai gave a shrug of his shoulders and frowned. “Ry’Ker isn’t who he once was. That’s the truth. He’s much more controlled now. Cold, even. But I still have no doubt that he would not hurt a female.”

  Naeve nodded and then bit her lip between her teeth as she remembered Bastian. “What about Bastian? Is that what worries you?”

  Kai took a deep breath and cupped her cheek, as a crooked smile of disbelief stretched his lips.

  “Are you sure that sensualeer didn’t teach you to read minds?”

  Naeve gave a quick laugh at the thought of Bastian giving her lessons. “No. The last time I saw him, he was mad.”

  “Bastian? Mad?”

  She nodded and pushed her hair behind her ears. “He’d been trying to explain to us where we were and my sister, Siobhan, well… She can be a real pain in the ass, and she annoyed him. He did this crazy thing with his eyes, boomed a threatening message into our heads, then poof, disappeared and left us in the forest. Next time I saw him was when he was chained and unconscious at the castle.”

  Kai stood and dropped her hands.

  “Wait, what are you doing?” she asked.

  “That day at L’Mere, I tried to get Li’Am to release him to me, but he wouldn’t bend. I thought Bastian must have done something to you out in the forest. That he’d hurt you. But that wasn’t it. It was the disappearing. Damn, how could you do that, Li’Am?” Kai walked over to where his clothes were lying on the floor. He grabbed up his pants and shoved his leg inside.

  Naeve’s eyes widened. “What are you going to do?”

  He pulled his pants to his waist and tied them. “I don’t know. But I should be able to contact him by now, and still, there’s nothing. That can’t mean anything good.”

  Naeve climbed off the bed and walked over to him. “Contact him?”

  “Yes. Like you said—via his mind. Si’Bastian… He has gifts. Abilities none of us mortals possess.”

  “Wait…mortals?”

  “Yes. Ones who can die.”

  “Bastian can’t die?” she asked incredulously, her voice jumping a few octaves on the last word.

  Kai moved around her and picked up his shirt. Then he shrugged into it and pulled his hair free. “If he can, no one knows how. Sensualeers are beings we know very little about. Not many wander free, especially after the Empress terrorized the land. Most fear them, so if sensualeers are about, they certainly don’t shout it out loud.”

  “So, people are scared because of what they are?”

  “Yes, very much so.”

  “But not you?” she questioned.

  Kai seemed to think about that for a second before replying. “No.
I’ve never feared Bastian. I was always curious. When we trained at L’Mere as children, I would see him watching us from the East Tower. Then one day, he was talking to me in my head, and I thought it was the most incredible thing ever. I knew about people who could do that kind of thing but had never met anyone, and certainly not someone my age I could be friends with. Later on, after what happened with my mother, Bastian was the only one who knew what I was going through. He was the only one who could sympathize. He’d lost his mother the day he was born and had been blamed every day since for her death. We became…unlikely friends.”

  Naeve remembered the handsome man they’d met first in this place. The one who’d shocked her with magic balls of light and images of their mother…and their father.

  Yes, he and Kai were most certainly unlikely allies, let alone friends.

  “I guess I don’t understand. He just doesn’t seem dangerous.”

  “He’s different, and to many, that represents the unknown. It inspires fear, and for his father, it prompted disgust. He locked him away like a prisoner and said it was to protect the people. Really, it’s just for him to save face. And apparently now to hide this latest development of fading.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  “That’s Li’Am. Seraphine may be a tyrannical Empress, but Li’Am is her Commander and just as cold. Though he has many fooled.”

  “Like your brother?”

  “Yes, he is the biggest fool of all. You see, Li’Am is a master at showing no emotion at all. A trait I suspect he has honed since having a son who feeds off them. He has trained my brother to be the same.” Kai picked up his sword and told her, “So yes, I worry for Bastian. I can’t hear him anymore. It’s like he’s asleep…” As he marched to the door, he looked back over his shoulder and said, “I’m going to fetch you clothes. Push this chair back against the door handle.”

  She moved over to the door where he stood.

  “Oh, and Naeve?”

  “Yes?”

  “If Marcus comes near you again, you are to shove your knife deep inside his gut. If you do not, I will hunt him down and put it through his heart. Do I make myself clear?”

  Swallowing, Naeve nodded and watched as he left the room, knowing that his threat to Marcus’s life had been very real.

  Kai was exactly the kind of man who would kill for those he loved—even if it meant killing the ones he loved.

  The dawn of a new day was fast approaching, and in the early hours of first-light, Li’Am steeled himself to what he was about to find.

  He made his way out of his chambers and down the narrow hallway. There, he entered a staircase that wound down, past the main floor and below, to the dank dungeons beneath L’Mere’s quarters.

  Today, he would make his move, strike and seal the deal with Seraphine, and once he had it in place, he would bring the last two girls down here to have the keys implanted.

  As his boots hit the bottom step and he once again made his way past the cells with the captives, he refused to look at them. Refused to make eye contact with the men and women he’d been experimenting on for years. After all, he’d been doing it for a worthy cause. Without the knowledge he’d gained from them, he wouldn’t have his most powerful adversary, and tool, in the cell at the far end.

  Rounding a corner, he came face to face with Finn, who was once again standing guard. Li’Am stopped and glanced at the man, wondering if he would dare address him as he had the day before. He stood there waiting, expecting Finn to speak at any moment, but he did not. He merely remained silent and elusive.

  Li’Am told himself to keep moving, but instead, he heard himself open his mouth and speak. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. Then he demanded, “Speak. So I can at least refute it.”

  The noises that met his ears were moans and threats from the other cells, but from the guard? Nothing.

  “You dare to disobey a direct order?” Li’Am tried a threat, hoping it would prompt the man into action. When nothing happened, he stepped up until he was once again toe-to-toe with the older guard.

  Finn’s dark eyes were fixed on him, and Li’Am noted that the man’s face looked even more weathered today. How had he never noticed Finn’s age in the past?

  “I do not follow your orders, Li’Am.”

  As the words met his ears, Li’Am wondered at the control, the absoluteness of them. It was unnerving.

  “You are mistaken, guard. You most certainly do as I command.”

  Before he could even think of the hows and whys, the guard, who seemed to be pushing an age where he’d be slowing down, gripped the fur coat Li’Am had draped around his shoulders and jerked him forward until his toes were barely touching the ground. Li’Am stared into the black eyes glinting at him, and he saw Finn’s mouth curve in a seductive smile.

  “I follow no one’s orders, Li’Am, third born to the last Empress of Arcania.”

  Li’Am pulled away, and the man’s hands released him as suddenly as he’d first taken hold of him.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Hmm.” The low hum that reverberated through the hall was inviting, and it made Li’Am more than aware that he had somehow missed what was in front of him all along.

  Finn was a sensualeer. One who, for some reason, had aged but still managed to possess his magic even when surrounded by the mossfire bark.

  That made Finn extremely dangerous.

  This man had been watching over his son, yet he had somehow managed to fool him for all these years. There was no telling what he had taught Si’Bastian.

  Suddenly, Li’Am’s mind was a mass of chaos as he thought of how he’d sent Ry’Ker to free one of Bastian’s wrists. What abilities that they were not aware of did his son possess?

  Si’Bastian is only aware of what you know. But he is much stronger than you believe.

  Li’Am stumbled back as the voice trickled inside his head and into the firmly shut vault of his brain. How was Finn doing this? No sensualeer could penetrate his walls. It didn’t make any sense…

  It doesn’t need to, Commander. But be careful with this power you now possess… You never know whose mercy you shall one day be at.

  Not able to think of any words to respond with, Li’Am decided that Seraphine… She could wait a little longer.

  He needed to get to Ry’Ker.

  * * *

  They’d made it.

  Siobhan still couldn’t believe they were now just inside the woods, sitting behind several massive trees. But that’s where they were—and had been for the last few hours.

  She could see the first rays of light trying to sneak through the dense foliage from the trees, and she had no idea how Audra and Fiona had been able to sleep.

  Well, their mother had always said that they could sleep through a bomb. Apparently, a strange land and woods were just as easy for them. She, meanwhile, had spent the last several hours listening to every crack and snap of a twig, wondering if the sword she held in her hand would do her any good if she needed to use it.

  As she leaned her head back against the tree trunk, she closed her eyes and tried to remember what it was like to feel normal. The last time they’d all been ‘normal,’ they’d been in that stupid tarot tent and then ended up here.

  Which is one memory I’d like to fucking forget.

  As the thought left her, she heard a rustling behind her. Siobhan quickly got to her feet, shoving Fiona in the arm to wake her. When her sister’s eyes fluttered open, she raised a finger to her lips and mouthed, “Shh.”

  She took the handle of the sword in her hand and leaned around the side of the tree, trying to see who was coming. Squinting through the branches, she spotted…a goat? It was trotting their way. He was bouncing on all fours like he had springs inside his feet, and he looked ridiculous in amongst the eerie silhouettes cast by the tall trees.

  She was so shocked to see the silly little animal that it wasn’t until she heard, “Buttercup” that she realized the goat was not al
one.

  The healer.

  He was walking through the long grass, brushing aside leaves and twigs that were getting in his way. Every now and then, he would stop, take one between his fingers and sniff it before removing it from the branch and putting it in a pouch around his waist.

  Siobhan silently watched him, wondering what he was doing and if there was anyone else with him, but it appeared he was alone. Well, except for…

  “Buttercup!”

  The goat stopped where it was, turned its head back with its ears perked up, and then bounced its way back to its owner. When it reached the man, she watched him fall down to a knee and rub its head, while feeding it some grass.

  Hmm, she thought, devising a plan as she turned back to her sisters.

  “It’s the healer,” she whispered.

  “The man with the little goat?” Audra asked, looking at her for confirmation.

  “Yes, the goat herder. He’s out there with the damn goat.”

  Fiona’s eyes widened, and she leaned around to check for herself. When she came back to face the two of them, she asked, “What should we do?”

  “I don’t know about you two, but I’m pretty sure I can take on a guy who talks to goats. I say we kidnap him and make him take us to this Kai guy.”

  Fiona hesitated. “Umm, kidnap?”

  “Got a better idea?”

  She scrunched her nose up as though trying to think of one and then shook her head. “No.”

  “Then kidnap it is. It looks like he’s out smelling the flowers anyway.”

  Audra frowned as Siobhan picked up her sword.

  “What?” she asked her soft-spoken sister.

  “Don’t hurt him. He seemed nice, and he helped you.”

  Siobhan rolled her eyes, promising, “Yeah, okay. I won’t hurt him unless I have to.”

  Audra sighed.

  Siobhan gripped the sword in her right hand, wondering for a brief moment how men carried these heavy things around. But then she remembered the muscles on that Ry’Ker guy and it made more sense.

  She watched as the man walked closer to them. She’d decided to wait until he was passing by the tree they were behind and then—