by K. F. Breene
“He is fast,” someone breathed.
“Yes, for such a big man,” someone else added.
The crowd sucked in a breath as one of Cayan’s punches landed in Kallon’s side. The breath whooshed out of his lungs and his eyes took on a crazed look. He was probably bashing Cayan mentally to buy himself a second. Cayan shook his head, his brow furrowing, trying to push his physical advantage but needing to spend more effort mentally.
“Kallon is at full power. He is no longer taking Captain’s measurements,” Tanna said behind Shanti.
Kallon held back a little, doing with Cayan what he’d always done with Shanti. “There. Now. Let’s see what Cayan does,” she said.
Cayan advanced. He was power and strength, ready for the other man to submit. A pulse of pure thunder ripped from him, blasting the other man with such force that Kallon stepped back. The crowd shriveled together, feeling the blast themselves, trying to block as a group.
Cayan’s body launched at the other man, another pulse shooting out, the crowd groaning right along with Kallon. Everyone reached for each other, wanting to connect and merge power, needing to fortify their shields. Weed was produced quickly, everyone who had it taking a bite to ease the pain—the burning and stomach churning was better than a blast of Cayan’s might.
Cayan started landing punches, hard strikes to meaty areas, bruising tissue and bone, all easily healed with time and Marc’s remedies. Shanti’s power surged and boiled, wanting release, reaching for Cayan, wanting to merge with him and fight together.
Kallon backed across the clearing, unable to fight back, or to retreat from both the physical and mental assault, outmatched in both. He took a knee and put up his hands, trusting Cayan to stop his advance. Cayan did, standing over the other man panting, worn out and worked hard.
“Our Captain is scary, right?” Rachie said from somewhere with pride in his voice. “I’m right to be scared shitless of him!”
Kallon stood slowly and rolled his shoulders. He put a hand to his side. “At least you don’t bite.”
“Don’t drag me into this!” Shanti said as she stood. Smiling, she clapped Kallon on the back, harder than she needed to.
“Thank you,” Kallon said, wincing.
“Shanti Cu Hoi,” Cayan said in a strange voice. He dropped to a knee before her. “Will you marry me?”
With a flush, Shanti tried not to notice all the people staring at her. She swallowed as Kallon stepped away, giving them room. She opened her mouth, maybe to say no, but “Yes” tumbled out of her mouth.
Clapping and cheers filled the clearing. Cayan’s lips connected with hers again, sweet and delicious. “Finally,” he said, his smile so bright it could block out the sun. “C’mon, let’s head back. There’s something I want to show you.”
“I bet it’s big, and I bet she’s already seen it,” Mela hollered. Everyone laughed as Shanti hurried Cayan away from the group. They’d only get raunchier, which wasn’t as big of a concern as them getting grabby.
Alena stopped them, still looking tired from so long without sleep when she was alone in the city. “S’am. From what we’ve seen, it seems my poison hit about as many as we thought it might, but…”
“It helped,” Shanti said firmly. “You couldn’t be expected to rid a whole city of Graygual with one pot of stew.”
Alena shrugged and looked at the ground. “High expectations. I just wish I could’ve helped in battle—” She’d been kept back until the city people had taken to the rooftops.
“We can only do so many jobs, Alena.” Cayan leaned forward, catching her eyes and making her shrink back. “You did good. You fulfilled your place within this army. Shanti’s Honor Guard has never done things the normal way. You are the only one who notices. Trust me.”
“That’s certainly true,” Shanti said, covering the woman with a blanket of support. “Now go learn to use that sword.”
“Yes, S’am,” Alena said, hurrying away.
“She’s dedicated,” Cayan said, noticing Marc sitting by himself. “As is he, when he wants to be.”
“He’s taken it upon himself to learn more about the Gift. I think he’s under the impression that I won’t make him fight if he finds another useful skill.”
“My men are experienced, and he’s the doctor. They weren’t going to sacrifice their chance to get healed if they got injured. I don’t blame them. You put him at too much risk.”
“Usually there isn’t a choice.”
“Captain!” someone hollered, urgency in his voice.
Shanti’s stomach flipped over and worry started to eat away as she recognized the pain pouring out of the man. She spread out her Gift, feeling more sorrow and some confusion.
“Sir, it’s the prisoner.”
Cayan started jogging immediately, and Shanti followed right behind him. They covered the distance to the officers’ quarters in no time. When they got there, they both slowed, taking in the broken door hanging on one hinge. Shanti stepped through after Cayan and immediately felt her stomach drop to the floor.
There, on the ground with blood coming from a hole where his eye should have been, sprawled Daniels. Tomous was strewn on the floor across the room, one of his arms at an unnatural angle.
Heart in her throat, Shanti rushed to him, feeling for a pulse on his neck. Her Gift was pulled away, covering the city and then identifying each mind as Cayan searched for the prisoner. A pulse pushed at her fingers, strong and sure.
“Get Marc,” she yelled. One of the Westwood men peeled from the door and took off at a run. “There’s no point, Cayan,” she said, touching Tomous’ arm. It was hot to the touch. Only an idiot wouldn’t know it was broken. “He can hide from your Gift, remember.”
“Fuck!” Cayan picked up a chair and threw it against the wall. He walked toward the window and looked out, pain coursing through him as Daniels lay on the ground behind him. “How did this happen?”
The man who had summoned him, solemn and heartbroken, spoke up in a rough voice. “Tomous was guarding him. Daniels came to question him, I believe. We heard a commotion and came to see what was the matter. We found them like this. No one went by us.”
Shanti looked around the room, feeling the grief from Daniels burying into her chest. She rubbed her eyes as Kallon and Rohnan came running, feeling her through the link. Rohnan stepped into the room and then found the object of her pain. He paused, and then slowly walked to the wall and leaned his back against it, looking at the ground.
“Summon someone from this town that knows this building,” Cayan said with murder in his voice. “I want to know how someone could get out.”
“Yes, sir.” The man hurried from the room.
It only took a few moments for a skinny man with scars up and down his arms to skulk into the room. His hollow eyes and missing teeth accentuated his slumped shoulders. It didn’t take her Gift to know that he was emotionally dead from some trauma or other. It didn’t take her experiences to know that the Graygual had something to do with it.
“This room?” the man said in a scratchy voice ruined from hours of screaming. The man dragged one of his feet as he made his way across to the far wall beyond the fireplace. He touched a decorative ornament and then pushed on a brick at the fireplace. A door latch disengaged within the fireplace, opening a crawlspace. “Goes through to a tunnel outside.”
“Why wasn’t I told of this?” Cayan demanded in the traders’ language.
The man shrugged and stared at the distant wall. “I was tortured for that information once. Seemed a shame to just offer it up. Lazy, that.”
A blast of power scoured the room, making Rohnan stiffen.
“Yeah, that’d be about it,” the man said. “Yours would probably hurt more. You got more power.”
Cayan stalked right in front of the man, trying to bend to catch his eye. “Do you want death? Because I can grant it right now.”
“Cayan,” Shanti warned, working her Gift into Tomous to try and ease the pain kee
ping him from making it back to wakefulness.
Cayan straightened up and exhaled. “How many more of these tunnels exist?”
“Two. One in the guardhouse in the front, and one in the mistresses’ chamber at the other end of this building.”
Cayan’s whole body flexed and another blast of power leaked out of him. He looked at Kallon. “Seal those up, and then scrub this city free of Graygual.”
Kallon, despite never having answered to Cayan before, nodded and jogged out of the room. Cayan knelt by Daniels slowly, his face a terrifying mask of rage. Inside of him, though, something was breaking. Grief was rising up and threatening to overwhelm him.
Before Shanti could get up and go to him, Rohnan was there, laying his hand lightly on Cayan’s shoulder. They’d lost a few dozen men and women in the battle, all hard to bear. They’d grieved together, buried them, and sang to remember them. The pain was acute, but in this, they’d thought themselves safe. They were shut in a city with excellent defenses.
They should’ve been safe.
But with Xandre, they would never be safe.
“He has his prize back,” Shanti said as she noticed clean slices on the ropes on the floor. “And he had help.”
“You think this is the inner circle?” Cayan asked as he hung his head, not shrugging off Rohnan’s hand.
Shanti knelt beside him. “No one outside this city would’ve known where we kept him. He was in here because people would think we took this room. They wouldn’t suspect he did. No. I think this was an inside job. He had help.”
Cayan leaned toward her a fraction. “None of my men, or your people, would know about that tunnel.” He straightened up as Marc ran in with wide eyes.
He saw who was on the ground and sagged. “No.”
“Our rest is over,” Cayan said. “We need to let down the drawbridges, get this city back on its feet, and find Xandre. This ends. I will not lose any more to these side battles. I want him dead.” He stalked out the door without a word, on the verge of breaking and not wanting his men to see. He had to stay strong for them. It was his burden to bear.
Shanti sat next to Daniels quietly. Rohnan lowered himself down behind her and threw an arm around her shoulders. Cayan was right. This needed to end. The more they stalled, the more people they would lose. Xandre would just get better and better. He had probably fortified a few of his cities, and he’d only lay more traps. Eventually, they would have no one left.
“It’s time to hunt,” Shanti said quietly as a tear tumbled down her cheek. “He’s somewhere, and we will find him. Keep your eye out, Rohnan. If the person who did this is in our army, his emotions will give him away. He’ll lead us right to Xandre.”
“Do we tell the Captain?”
“No. We tell no one. We let him go unchecked, right through Xandre’s back door.”
They sat for a moment, huddled together, mourning their loss. After a while Rohnan said, “I am ready for this to be over, Chulan. I am ready for my life to begin or end. I am tired of this half-life.”
“Me too, Rohnan. Me too. It won’t be long now.”
The End
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
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Try Another Book by K.F. Breene
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This book turns up the heat and moves into an urban setting. It isn’t for everyone, but for those who want to try something a bit crazier, it’s free.
Synopsis:
Sasha has grown up with one surety: she’s not normal.
She sees things in the darkness that no one else can see. Mysterious men cloaked in shadow, moving through the night. The problem is, pointing out invisible people is a fast track to a padded cell. Orphaned at age five, Sasha quickly learns an important survival tip: keep her mouth shut and stay out of the spotlight.
Until one night, everything changes. She and her boyfriend, Jared, find themselves stranded on the wrong side of town. Suddenly, the men she was convinced were hallucinations, are very real. And very dangerous.
As a new world opens up around her, she meets him. The Boss. An alpha leader who entrances her mind and tugs on her body. Primal and sexual, his people have a different set of rules. And they don’t always play nice.
As danger rises up around her, her differences may be the only thing that saves her life. She must embrace what she’s tried so hard to hide, while resisting the person her body craves most. Sasha has finally found her shadow men, and they will change her life forever.
Excerpt:
As I met his black eyes, his puzzled expression deepened. “You’re human…”
“We established that, yes. What I want to know is, if I am human, what does that make you? And why do I notice you when others usually don’t?”
His head cocked to the side. His easy balance, his lethal edge; he was like a blade resting on billowing silk. “Very few humans are able to withstand our pheromones. Fewer still to break a Kolma once it has been placed. You’ve not been trained, that’s obvious; so how is this possible when you’re definitely human? Do you possess the blood of another species?”
I could barely think past the pounding ache of my body, begging to touch him. I needed to get a grip! He was revealing some very interesting factoids I needed to jot down in my mental notebook.
His nostrils flared. “Charles was right; your arousal is a unique scent. Like a spicy, warm drink on a mid-winter’s night. It rises above other smells, entrancing the mind.”
“Umm,” charged with questions, determination, anger, and demands, I thrust forward, “Listen, what did you mean about withstanding the…pher-thing? Or breaking the other thing? How can you trap someone’s head with pleasure? Because I’m pretty sure—not positive, but pretty sure—that Jared is straight. And also, I really think we should circle back to what the hell you are, and why nobody knows that you exist? Because this whole people scattering thing is not normal, and I think an explanation is probably in order.”
He stepped closer, not hearing me, or not caring that I spoke. His eyes looked at me like I was a life-sized riddle. They delved, searching. He took another step, forcing me to retreat two steps to keep distance between our bodies. Another step back had my back to the wall.
A small smile curved his lips. “I exude pleasure, you run. I exude fear, you come calling. You want me, I can smell it. I can feel it, almost like a palpable thing. Give in to it. Yield to me.”
Oh God I wanted to. His body was mere inches from mine, his intense eyes looking down into my soul from a face out of a Renaissance painting. The power of him, the sheer strength, had strange, primal fantasies running amok through my head. My core tingled, my chest surged, and my nipples were so hard they could cut this stone wall.
Why had I come here, again?
~*~*~*~
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Into the Darkness
Also by K.F. Breene
Darkness Series
Into the Darkness
Braving the Elements
On a Razor’s Edge
Demons
The Council
Shadow Watcher
Jonas
Charles
Warrior Chronicles
Chosen
Hunted
Shadow Lands
Invasion
Siege
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About the Author
K.F. Breene is a USA TODAY BESTSELLING author of the Darknes
s Series and Warrior Chronicles. She lives in wine country where over every rolling hill, or behind every cow, an evil sorcerer might be plotting his next villainous deed while holding a bottle of wine and brick of cheese. Her husband thinks she’s cracked for wandering around, muttering about magic and swords. Her kids are on board with her fantastical imagination, except when the description of the monsters becomes too real.
She’ll wait until they’re older to tell them that monsters are real, and so is the magic to fight them. She wants them to sleep through the night, after all…
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