Daughter of
the Diamond
-Book IV of the Elementals Series-
by Marisol Logan
THE ELEMENTALS SERIES
BOOK I-Lord and Servant
BOOK II-The Second Talisman
BOOK III-The Twin Dragons
BOOK IV-Daughter of the Diamond
BOOK V-Queen of the Earth (June 2017)
This book is a part of a series, and thus is best if read in the order above. An APPENDIX of people, places and terms has been provided at the back of the book for your convenience if you choose to start the series with this book, or need a quick reminder, of people, places and terms from previous books.
Thanks to the readers who have followed these characters through their stories. I write for you, and I write for them.
Copyright © 2017 Marisol Logan
All rights reserved
Cover Design: Romacdesigns
Editors: Jessica Evans and Jessica Young
-I-
Strelzar clicked his tongue in disapproval as he watched the seamstress resize Veria's uniform for the third time in a month.
“Don't do that,” Veria warned.
“Would you prefer I shake my head?” he teased.
“I would prefer you just say what's on your mind,” she replied.
He sighed and plopped himself down on the lounge, giving the seamstress a sideways glance. Veria was certain she knew by now what the constant alterations were about. She wasn't a stupid girl, and she had children of her own, Strelzar had been able to ascertain from listening to her unspoken desires to get home to them.
But, she didn't know who was responsible for the condition at hand, Veria thought. They had been pretty tight-lipped about that, for good reason. There was a good chance the child Veria carried in her increasingly swelling abdomen belonged to the King of Londess.
“Darling, Jeyna,” Strelzar smirked his most charming, polite smirk and reached out for the seamstress's hand, which he was just able to grab from his spot on the chaise. She blushed as he squeezed her petite, creamy hand in his. “How much do you make in a month, my love?”
Veria watched as she squirmed happily under his sweet words, soft touch, and wickedly perfect grin. Rolling her eyes at Strelzar behind Jeyna's head, Veria was glad that she had grown entirely immune to her mentor's impeccable looks and plenteous charms. He shot her an almost imperceptible warning glance before turning his attentions back to the petite young seamstress.
“Oh, about one gold, when all is said an' done, Master Strelzar,” she squeaked.
“Is that it?” he cocked his head and bit his lip.
Oh, Fire, Veria thought to herself. He loves being called 'Master'...
“Yes, Master Strelzar,” she repeated.
His eyes fluttered and he looked the thin-framed, orange-haired girl of no more than twenty up and down. Veria cleared her throat.
“We would like to offer you three gold a month to not speak a word of anything you've seen or heard, or will see or hear in my quarters,” Veria stated plainly.
Jeyna whipped around to face her, much to Strelzar's visible dismay.
“Oh, Commander!” Jeyna gushed. “I-I would've done it for free because you an' Master Strelzar are so kind ta' me, but...well, Commander, this will be wonderful for my children! Things 'ave been rough since...since my dear Jerold died in the fishin' accident.” Her head dropped to stare at her hands, clutching her sky blue muslin apron. Behind her, Veria saw Strelzar's eyes twinkle at Jeyna's mention of being a widow.
“You deserve it, Jeyna,” Veria said softly, rubbing the poor girl's shoulder comfortingly. “And your children, after what you've been through. But, you especially. You have been a wonderful help to me during this time, and you've been so loyal to Mast – Lieutenant Plazic and I. This is the least we can do.”
“Thank ye kindly, Commander,” Jeyna said, nodding her head and smiling at Veria.
“Just Veria, please,” Veria requested, growing increasingly tired of being called Commander with each passing day in her post.
“I think I'm all finished with the fitting, Miss Veria,” Jeyna curtsied and slid it off of Veria's frame. “I'll just take it home tonight and do the stitchin'. I'll have it to ye 'fore dawn.”
“You are a gift to be cherished, Jeyna,” Strelzar said from behind her, and she blushed again as she draped the black vest over her arm and prepared to leave.
“Oh, Master Strelzar, ye flatterer,” she squeaked with a smile at him, and she shuffled out of the room with giggles pealing from her pink lips.
As soon as she was out of hearing range, Veria took Strelzar into a disapproving glare.
“What?!” he asked in feigned shock.
“You are disgusting,” Veria spat.
“Oh, please,” Strelzar scoffed, waving her judgment away with a dismissive brush of his hand.
“I understand your dry spell, Strelzar, but I've never seen anyone overjoyed at the mention of death, no matter how much it could benefit them,” she lectured, changing out of the shirt and pants of her uniform and into a nightgown.
“What if I told you he beat her every night until his death?” Strelzar posited with a hand out in front of him like it were holding the question on an invisible serving platter.
“Did he?” Veria gasped in shock.
“I haven't the slightest, I'm just asking what if he did? Then is it okay for me to lie with her? Haven't had a red-head since...well, you know.”
Veria scowled at him and threw her pants at his face. He caught them and fell back in the chaise with laughter.
“You broke a friend rule!” Veria accused. “No talking about your...relations with my mother,” she said with disgust as the words exited her mouth.
“You broke a rule, too!” he rebutted, shooting up from his reclined position on the chaise.
“Oh, really?” Veria questioned, her hands on her now supple hips. She remembered like it were yesterday when they were bony shelves, jutting out unhealthily after the long, stressful journey to the border between Govaland and Tal'lea. Now they were plumping with the stores of fat the body seemed to think it needed during pregnancy, and starting to be pulled and stretched as her abdomen started the expansion that would soon give her away and render her a useless whale in a matter of months.
“Yes, really,” Strelzar nodded.
“And what rule is that?” Veria asked.
“You interrupted my conversation with a beautiful woman before I figured out if she was married or not,” he stated plainly.
Veria rolled her eyes at him. “Well, she told us she's a widow not a minute later.”
“You got lucky,” Strelzar smirked, pointing a finger in her direction and narrowing his eyes facetiously.
“I do not feel anything remotely close to lucky lately, Strelzar,” Veria sighed.
He laid back in the chaise again, rubbing his forehead in concern, and echoed her sigh.
She surveyed the outline of the swell of her midsection through the semi-sheer cream silk of her nightgown. It wasn't noticeable in her uniform, as Jeyna had been doing an incredible job of letting the clothes out, and slightly altering the cuts to give the illusion of Veria's previously svelte figure.
But after almost four months, there was no way she could hide it much longer. The tiny, round pouch that had made its presence known just below her belly button would do nothing but grow every day now, and very soon would be noticeable to everyone, including King Browan.
King Browan, whom she saw daily through her duties with the Elemental Guard. King Browan who would assume the child was hi
s, with good reason, as he and Veria had spent months making love to each other on a clandestine schedule.
Andon would return from his extended stay in Esperan any day and certainly assume the child was his, as well. Not to mention that he was definitely the father of her daughter, Irea, now almost a year and a half old, a fact that she couldn’t bring herself to tell him until she saw him in person and he had finished his sabbatical.
They'd had a rocky relationship, but Veria knew him well enough to know exactly what he would do: he would break off his engagement with his fiance, Lady Emmandia Haleshore, immediately and propose to Veria, and want to raise Irea and the unborn child together. He was too good a man not to make her a respectful woman, not to take care of his family. And that word...family. He wanted a family. Was it more important to him than his title, which Veria was certain he had only attained to make himself a prospect for her, or his wealth, or his career?
He would probably even move them all back to that beautiful little house in Barril, the seaside capital of Esperan, with its beautiful tropical foliage and turquoise buildings...
His mother's house. The last place he had kissed her and held her and told her he loved her and wanted her.
And then told her he had used his powers to wipe her memory...a memory of them together, making love not an hour after his father had announced his engagement to another.
“If you're going to fixate on Lord Villicrey all night, I'll go to bed,” Strelzar groaned.
“Oh, shut up,” Veria muttered, striding over to the chaise and sitting next to him. She typically forgot that her second-in-command, her mentor, her dearest friend, made a particularly distasteful habit out of listening to everyone's desires all the time, even the deepest ones, the ones they themselves might not consciously know they have. “I'll desire what I want and you desire what you want.”
“Mm, Jeyna...” he purred jokingly.
“This is why I don't listen in on your desires,” Veria groaned. “You are a hound.”
“I told you, Birdie, it's second nature after two hundred years. I can hardly stop it if I wanted to, and when the desires are particularly loud, like in the case of your dirty little Esperan cottage filled with children, I can't ignore no matter how much it bores me.”
“It's not dirty,” Veria rebutted.
“Everything by the sea is dirty,” Strelzar argued knowingly. “Everything.”
“You sound like my mother.”
“That’s because your mother has fantastic taste.”
Before Veria could make a comment about their mutual lack of humility, a knock sounded at the door.
“I swear, this job...” Veria sighed, heaving herself up from the chaise, already starting to feel the ache in her joints and back that accompanied her condition.
“You are not decent,” Strelzar said, jumping out of the chair like an agile man of twenty. “Get a robe on. I'll answer it.”
As Veria pulled on a thick, velvet dressing robe, Strelzar whipped open the door to her chambers—the Commander's suite of the Elemental Guard's barracks.
“What do you want at this hour?” he barked, always taking pleasure in being hard on the castle staff.
“The King requests your presence in his library, immediately,” the messenger guard said, timidity creeping into his tone. Obviously, he was one of the guards who believed the rumors about Strelzar and how insane and dangerous he was.
Veria remembered how she had heard, and believed, those exact things about him, years ago, before she made the journey to his home and met him in person. Sure, he was eccentric and unpredictable, and deeply attached to his craft, and he could be the most dangerous Mager in the world if he chose to be. So could she. But the man she called her dearest friend was loyal, intelligent, proper, and placed too much stock in his carefully crafted image to ever do something that could actually be construed as insane.
“Allow Commander Laurelgate to get dressed, again,” Strelzar snapped, “and tell His Majesty we will be there shortly.”
The guard nodded and left without a word. When he was gone, Strelzar shut the door and turned back to Veria with a distraught look on his perfect, ageless, stubble-framed face.
“These late-night meetings always go so fantastically well,” he grumbled.
“You think...?” Veria asked, cocking her head at him as she peeled the velvet robe off, followed by her night gown.
“I do think,” he nodded. “That's exactly what I think.”
Veria and Strelzar entered the library cautiously, coming upon a scene that was entirely too familiar—Browan's brawny body hunched over a desk in despair. Veria peered around the rest of the library as soon as she was through the threshold of the door. No one else was in the room this time.
Just them. They approached Browan together, standing on the opposite side of the desk from him, close enough to each other they were practically touching elbows. Veria, preparing herself mentally for whatever the King was about to say to them, felt the overwhelming desire to grab Strelzar's hand to comfort herself. And, since he could hear it, he grabbed her hand and squeezed it, a motion that did not go unnoticed by Browan as he looked up from the papers on his desk.
“Shut the door,” he said briskly, his tone cold and hardened.
They both latched onto the energy of the wooden door and its metal handles and frame, pulling it closed—their strength combined causing it to slam shut more forcefully than intended, though Veria took secret delight in it. She could see a smirk pulling at the corner of Strelzar's stony lips, and she knew it delighted him, as well.
“I'm afraid I have another mission,” Browan said after a dramatic clearing of his throat. “For the Twin Dragons.”
It was exactly what they thought. Exactly what they had been dreading.
“Well, then, you have plenty of reason to be afraid,” Strelzar snarled.
“Spare me,” Browan groaned, holding a hand up in front of him. “I have little time for conceited yet idle threats, Lieutenant.”
“Are you implying that I, Strelzar Plazic, the Terror of the Southern Seas and Destroyer of Morenet, the greatest Fire Master to ever walk the earth, is accustomed to threats of the inconsequential variety?” Strelzar questioned facetiously, cocking his head at the exhausted-looking King.
“Conning a lusty monarch out of her small kingdom's entire wealth doesn’t exactly strike me as dangerous, Plazic,” Browan sneered.
“So you do own a small kingdom,” Veria muttered, suppressing the chuckles that filled her chest.
“Owned,” he corrected. “I sold it for triple the amount it was originally worth.”
“To whom?” she asked.
“My father,” Browan said. “Morenet was a mining kingdom that covered the entirety of the peak region. They produced almost a hundred percent of the world's precious gems. My father was...extravagant. Plazic hoarded the country's exports for decades, adding unprecedented taxes to the gems and nearly breaking the entire market.”
Strelzar grinned proudly from ear to ear next to her, and she found it even more difficult to keep her laughter caged.
“King Barlond made me an offer I couldn't refuse,” Strelzar said. “Sell the kingdom to Londess and let them take over the gem mines, which were easily the most boring thing I had ever had to deal with in my entire life, for a sum that no man would shake a finger at. He also allowed me to keep a good chunk of the rubies that were in Morenet's property at the time, for which I was, as you can surmise, quite grateful.” He threw Veria a wink and squeezed her hand again. “Anyway, Morenet was nearing depletion on many of its mines, and shortly after the purchase and incorporation by Barlond, a much more fruitful set of gem mines were discovered just north of Volglang. I think I got the better end of the deal, wouldn't you say, Birdie?”
“Oh, yes, it certainly sounds that way,” Veria agreed, unable to strangle a chuckle that jumped out with her words.
The interaction between the two of them, and the story in question, obvious
ly angered Browan, whose fists were clenched and eyebrows furrowed.
“And now, you work for me,” Browan growled icily, “so let’s get back to how you are my secret weapon and if you fail this mission, you will both be dead.”
Veria swallowed hard, a singeing, nervous knot joining the already unsettled and queasy feeling in her stomach, thanks to the baby growing inside it.
“By all means...” Strelzar drawled mockingly, waving a hand in front of him as he bent forward into a dramatic bow.
“Here's your target,” Browan said, sliding a slip of parchment at them brusquely. “He claims to know your identities, and threatens to expose all three of us to the Tal'lean regime unless I pay him a continuous hefty sum.”
“So pay him,” Strelzar snapped. “I understand protecting the kingdom from invasion, but I refuse to do your dirty work by offing your blackmailers for you.”
“I, unlike my father and the former Queen of Morenet, will not allow myself to be blackmailed by deranged, overreaching Magers,” Browan spat with disgust.
Strelzar snatched up the parchment. “He's a Mager?!” he uttered.
Veria peered at the map, which pinpointed a location in the northern section of Govaland. A remote castle called...
“Kortamant,” Strelzar muttered in horror.
“What?” Veria snapped her head up to look at his face, which now squarely set dagger-like, hate-filled eyes at Browan.
“He wants us to kill Ellory Mielyr.”
-II-
The Twin Dragons, having just been given their second mission, stayed up well after the meeting with the King in argument, sitting cross-legged in front of the fire in Veria's den as they usually did.
“You can't go,” Strelzar said. “That's final. I won't let you.”
“Excuse me?” Veria snapped. “You can't make these decisions for me, Strelzar. I know you think you can, but you can't.”
Daughter of the Diamond: Book IV of the Elementals Series Page 1
