by Isabo Kelly
The deeper they moved, the darker the surroundings, until the light from above was no longer sufficient for her to see by. She overstepped on one of the stairs and would have fallen, but Althir turned with amazing speed and caught her arm. When she got her feet under her, he released her. He’d managed to grab her right on one of her many cuts, but since a little sting from the cut was nothing to a broken neck, she bit her tongue on her hiss of discomfort.
She must still have flinched, though, because he leaned close enough to whisper, “Are you okay? I didn’t hurt you?”
“It’s nothing. Keep going.”
He paused half a beat longer, but she gestured him forward, and he turned back toward the slow descent. She did sheath one sword though and put her hand on his back to keep from falling again. He must have been able to see better than her because he continued without any hesitation.
Then a faint light appeared from below, not enough for her to see by, but enough to guide her in a specific direction. She kept her hand on Althir’s back, however, and didn’t think too hard about why the physical contact made her feel better.
When they reached the bottom of the stairs, the faint light turned out to be a small gas lamp that illuminated a small vestibule. A single, closed door was the only way to continue forward.
She leaned against Althir’s back and murmured, “More soldiers?”
He shrugged and studied the door. Then before she could gasp, he opened it. This time, no attack came.
Scowling, she released her breath. “You have to stop doing that,” she muttered so low she wasn’t sure he’d hear.
He must have, though, because he smirked over his shoulder before moving through the door. She followed slowly, raising her sword just in case.
There was more light through the doorway, but not so much as to temporarily blind her. Where she’d expected more gas lamps, the light actually came from small braziers lit with flickering flame. The scent of incense was stronger now, almost cloyingly sweet. She wrinkled her nose and had to pinch it a couple of times to keep herself from sneezing.
When she looked around, she realized the basement was huge, a lot larger than she would have expected given the size of the building above. Gold inlaid wooden pillars lined the outside of the circular space. The floor was covered in dark green and gold marble, the golden streaks catching the firelight and glittering. At the very center of the room was a simple black pillar. Atop the pillar sat what looked to be a very ordinary ceramic vase topped with a copper lid.
The List, she thought, realizing only in that moment the full significance of what they’d come for. Her heartbeat hammered as she started toward the pillar.
Althir stopped her with a gesture. “Let me. There might be magical traps.”
“That you can avoid?” She raised her brows.
“No. But they’ll hurt me less.”
“Althir…”
He didn’t give her time to argue before closing the space to the vessel. Since he still held his sword, he reached toward the ceramic vase with his free hand. She hissed, flinching in anticipation of something nasty happening.
Just as his fingertips touched the copper lid, Mina felt something move behind her. She started to swing around but was stopped short by a knife at her throat.
Then a sweetly feminine voice said, “Step away, Althir.”
Chapter Twelve
Mina held her breath as Althir turned slowly to face the new threat. He was smiling, that smug smirk that set Mina’s teeth on edge.
“Talliah. Good to see you again.” His voice was smooth, his tone light and pleasant.
“Oh, I’m sure you are,” the woman behind Mina said with a chuckle. “So eager to see me you went out of your way to find me.”
“Well, I would have. But I’ve been busy.”
“So I see.”
From the corner of her eye, Mina saw movement. She expected more of the List Guardian’s soldiers. Instead, two of the traitor elves stepped from behind two of the support pillars, closer to Althir. She recognized one. He was the first elf they saw after entering enemy territory, the one who’d seemed to sense Althir inside their first hiding spot. He was tall, slimmer than Althir, with pale blond hair, blue eyes and skin a beautiful light brown that only highlighted the lightness of his hair.
“I am less happy to see you, Liroc,” Althir said with a sardonic twist to his lips. “Though not entirely surprised.” He glanced at the other elf, a tall, red-haired man, with features so perfectly angled he looked unreal. “And Vernil.” Quieter, he said, “Not tainted… So. You killed the Guardian, then?”
Vernil didn’t respond.
Althir glanced at Talliah. “And you’re here for the List. But why? Why now?”
“Preemptive strike,” Talliah answered easily.
“At least one of the others is making a play for the List?” Althir asked. “Interesting. Unexpected.”
“Oh, given the direction of the war, not so unexpected.”
“Is that why you’re trusting two elves with the knowledge? Do they know what needs to be done to open the vessel?”
“They know the rewards they’ll receive for helping me,” she said, her voice silky and seductive.
Althir’s eyes narrowed just a little. “They don’t know, do they?” But he spoke so softly it was more a comment to himself rather than a question he expected to be answered.
“Drop your sword, Althir,” Liroc said in an even voice, his lips lifted at the corners just a bit in a very slight smile. His relaxed body language and raised brow gave off a sense of satisfaction with the situation, but there was a gleam of anticipation in his narrowed eyes.
The other elf looked on without any expression at all.
Althir held up his sword and studied it a moment, lips pursed. Then he tossed it away. “Poorly made weapon anyway,” he said. “Nothing like what we’d get back home, eh, Vernil?”
Vernil blinked once, his only response.
Liroc said, “The blade is still sharp.”
“But ugly. I hate ugly things.”
Something that Mina couldn’t interpret passed between the two elves as they stared at one another.
“Enough,” the woman behind Mina said. “We’ll have plenty of time for questions and insults once Althir is on my altar.”
Mina tried not to react but knowing for certain one of the Sorcerers stood behind her sent a jolt of terror up her spine. Her breathing sped despite her best efforts and her hands trembled. She was still holding one sword—the Sorcerer hadn’t bothered to disarm her or make her drop the weapon, but Mina had to firm her grip to keep from dropping it on her own.
Althir crossed his arms over his chest and considered the woman behind Mina, his head tilted slightly. “I have better uses than your altar, Talliah.”
“True,” the woman purred. “And believe me when I say I intend to take advantage of all your uses, dear Althir. But first, a question.”
“Ask away.”
“You’re here acting on behalf of the Sinnale. As soon as I learned you were in our territory again, I knew you’d be after something significant. And based on what Jacine told me when I put her on my altar, after discovering she’d revealed too much to you, I suspected you were here for the List. But why? Why do the Sinnale want it? None of them practice magic. It’s of no use to them.”
He shrugged. “No idea.”
Mina realized Jacine must have been the servant who told Althir about the List, and the Sorcerer had tortured and killed the woman for that slip. The thought made Mina’s stomach roll, but Althir showed no reaction to the news at all. Did he even care that he’d cost someone her life like that?
“Come now,” Talliah said. “You risked falling into our hands for nothing?”
“Oh, I’m sure they have some use for it. Maybe to hand over to my former sovereigns. I don’t really care.”
“They offered you more than we could?”
“Of course not. But they offered me what I wanted.”
“Which was?”
His gaze flicked to Mina before he looked back at the woman over her shoulder. “The opportunity to leave this cursed city and be done with this nonsense.”
The woman’s knife moved ever so slightly against Mina’s neck and Mina closed her eyes, a quick blink to control her reaction to the threat.
“Really?” the Sorcerer asked. “You just wanted to go away?”
Althir lifted a brow. “What else would I want, given my options?”
The Sorcerer leaned around far enough to look at the side of Mina’s face. Mina didn’t glance directly at her but did try to get a look at her from the corner of her eye. She got a glimpse of dark hair, white skin, and full, pink lips.
“And what about her?” the woman said.
“What about her?” from Althir.
“Was she part of the offer from the Sinnale?”
“Not outright. But…” He trailed off and lifted his hands, palms up.
“She’s delicious. Have you had her?”
“Not yet.”
“What were you waiting for?”
“She calls to my Shaerta. I’ll get two, maybe three, rounds with her. Look at that body. I’m going to need half a night just to thoroughly satisfy my taste for her tits. I was waiting for a moment when I had enough time to indulge.”
“Then what?”
“After I fuck her a few times, she’s useless to me.”
“So you don’t care if she dies now?”
“It would be a waste. But there are other women to fuck.”
“Too true,” the Sorcerer purred again and straightened away from her inspection of Mina’s face.
Mina pressed her lips together, trying not to show any physical reaction to what Althir was saying, but his easy dismissal of her was hard to hear. He sounded like he meant every word. His indifference was so natural it could hardly be feigned.
Had he been pretending at the tenderness she’d seen in him upstairs? Had she fooled herself into thinking he was more than the rude, arrogant traitor she’d thought him before this mission?
He didn’t react at all when the knife at her throat shifted so that the sharp edge pressed more firmly against her skin. No gesture, not even a blink to indicate he might care if she died.
“I wish we could keep her,” the Sorcerer said, her tone actually regretful. “I wouldn’t mind indulging in these beautiful tits of hers either.”
Mina jumped when the woman squeezed her breast, but she kept her gaze focused forward, watching everything Althir did. Still no reaction, only a slight head tilt and a disinterested stare.
“But I’m afraid needs must,” the woman sighed.
The knife at Mina’s throat dug deep enough to draw blood. She held still as all the fear and anger, the sense of betrayal and failure all drained away under the sure knowledge that she was about to die, to finally join her family. There were worse ways to go. And a sliced throat was quicker than a Sorcerer’s altar, or being turned minion.
She stared at Althir as she waited to die, a part of her acknowledging how much she hated him in that moment for his betrayal. But even her anger over that couldn’t permeate the numbness settling over her.
Because she was watching him, she caught his gaze when he looked directly at her, then ever so slightly nodded down toward her sword. She blinked.
“Are you sure you want to waste killing her here?” he said, his gaze moving back up to the Sorcerer. “Lot of hate in her, for some reason. She’d make a fabulous sacrifice.”
“Offering her up to me now?” The woman’s voice rose in amusement. “Why, Althir. I didn’t know you cared.” A very brief pause and then she murmured, “But who precisely do you care about?”
“Oh that’s easy. I care about me and only me. You know that.”
The woman laughed, a light, happy sound. “My dear, dear Althir. I have never doubted, not once, that your main interest was always you.”
He smiled, a sexy lifting of lips that made Mina frown again. Because the knife about to take her life shifted, moving away from her throat this time until the flat side of the blade rested against her chest, just below her collarbone.
Althir’s gaze lowered a little, almost coyly, but Mina saw the way he focused in on her sword. Her frown deepened. Her short sword would hardly kill a Sorcerer. They had protections.
True, the swords were elf made, and elf weapons were able to get around a lot of the Sorcerers’ spells. But this close, surely the woman behind her had protected herself even from an elf sword.
Then Mina remembered Althir specifically telling her this weapon could cut through a lot of magics. Did he mean something like this? And could she believe him now? She pressed her lips together in a tight line.
If she was going to die anyway, she wanted to go down fighting, not as a blood sacrifice on this woman’s altar, and not as an easy, motionless victim. She didn’t even bother to tighten her grip. She simply sighed and swiveled around in a tight arc to the Sorcerer’s side, plunging her sword through the soft flesh just beneath the woman’s ribs.
Talliah’s eyes widened at the surprise attack. She glanced at the sword, looked up at Mina with a glare that held the power to kill, and raised her own knife. Mina dragged her weapon sideways, cutting across the woman’s abdomen as she ducked under the swing of the knife, working on instinct more than thought. The blade still sliced across her shoulder, but it didn’t do any more damage than the numerous cuts Mina had already accumulated.
She continued to drag her sword through the Sorcerer’s belly, only pulling free and jumping away from her when she sensed the knife dropping toward her again.
The Sorcerer stumbled a step, the momentum of her lunge with the knife throwing her off balance. She looked down at the gaping wound in her stomach, then up at Mina.
“Shouldn’t have been possible,” she choked, and blood bubbled out of her mouth. “But my name… Can’t use it now.”
She lurched toward Mina again, the knife still clutched in her fist, but the wound slowed her and Mina danced away. The Sorcerer fell face first onto the hard marble. Blood spread from her wound in a wide circle that soaked the woman’s body and seeped across the floor.
For reasons beyond logic, Mina did not want that blood to touch her. She walked backward, watching it spread and keeping her distance.
She was as surprised as the woman had looked. She’d actually killed a Sorcerer. Shock made her forget for too long that other enemies were still in the room. When thoughts of the other elves startled her back to the present, she spun to face them.
Only to see both sprawled across the marble, Liroc with two arrows sticking out of his chest, Vernil with a single arrow through his throat. Her mouth dropped open as she faced Althir, and her eyes widened when she spotted the bow in his hand.
“But…elves can’t kill other elves. Everyone knows that. It’s why the Sinnale were asked to kill the traitors, why your king and queen started trading weapons with us again. How…?”
Althir dropped the bow over his head, once again angling it across his back. “Taboo is not the same thing as impossible,” he said in a flat voice. “That fact was emphasized to me when my own brother held a knife to my throat.”
After everything that had just happened, Mina wasn’t sure she could take any more shocks. She wasn’t even sure how to process this latest bit of information.
She stared at nothing and shook her head, too stunned to think.
Althir snatched the List vessel off its pedestal while she tried to recover enough to function. “We need to get out of here,” he said, gesturing to the Sorcerer’s body on the floor. “That made a lot of magical noise. Everyone with even an ounce of magical ability within a hundred-mile radius just felt that.”
Her adrenaline jumped again, pushing her to movement finally. She ran back toward the stairs with Althir at her side. Every nerve stood at alert, waiting for the next attack, but none came. They left the List fortress in a rush without encou
ntering any more soldiers or guards. But when Althir would have turned back in the direction of the border, she grabbed his arm.
“This way.” She dragged him a few feet, then started to run.
“This is moving farther into Sorcerer territory,” he muttered, not even sounding winded.
“I know.”
“Which means we’re moving farther away from where we have to go.”
“I know.”
“Why then?”
“Because they will look for us in the other direction first.”
The streets were virtually deserted as night had moved on and the battle must still be engaged. Mina was counting on the distraction of that battle to give them just a little time to reach a safe place.
A place she hadn’t entered since the war began.
“I hope you know where you’re going,” Althir grunted.
“I know exactly where I am,” she assured. They plunged down the backstreets and dark alleys, covering the short ten blocks that took her home.
Chapter Thirteen
Walking into her former home, Mina’s heart ached for all the losses. She hadn’t been here since just after the war started, when the initial invasion swept over this part of the city, pushing the populous west if they wanted to survive.
She took Althir in through the back entrance, directly into the bakery kitchen. Her family had owned two shops, a bakery and a chocolatier—the results of a good marriage between her grandmother, whose family were bakers, and grandfather, the offspring of chocolate experts. Each shop had its own kitchen and the family had occupied the two floors of rooms above the shops.
She’d spent most of her time learning how to make chocolates, so that kitchen held the most memories. The bakery was a little less painful, but even less painful was still overwhelming.
The deliciously rich scents that used to fill this building had long since drifted off, though a very faint hint of vanilla and cinnamon hung in the air underneath the aroma of disuse. She tried to keep the tears welling in her eyes from falling as she studied the area.
