by Raine Thomas
Raising her chin, she nodded. “Yes, archigos.” She turned and hurried from the chamber.
His gaze shifted. “Sebastian, we need all of Central’s platforms programmed to those coordinates as soon as possible. And please have Lucas prepare Aurora and Titan. We’ll need them. Uriel and Ini-herit, it’s time to identify those who’ll be fighting. Use your best judgment. I don’t want anyone who isn’t ready going out there to be killed or getting someone else killed due to inexperience. Knorbis and Malukali, the same goes. Zayna, we need Scultresti with us who can generate quickly to heal others.”
The elders nodded.
“Jabari, we should have a meeting with all of the team leaders before we board the platforms. The Elphresti can present everyone with strategies that you believe will be the most successful.”
“Certainly, Gabriel,” Jabari said.
Caleb drew strength from Gabriel’s confident tone and decisive words. His emotions had him barely able to think. His gaze moved blankly around the room. He registered the looks from his fellow Gloresti. He noted concern, anger and sympathy among most of them.
Would any of them have prevented this if they had been paired with Skye instead? he wondered bleakly.
“Caleb and James, come with me,” Gabriel said then. “Everyone else, we’ll leave within the hour.”
Caleb’s feet moved one in front of the other behind Gabriel and beside James, but it was almost as if they moved independently of his brain. He didn’t look to either side as they passed groups of Estilorians who were just then getting the news. They all felt the sense of urgency flowing through Central as the alarm went out.
Were they thinking as he was that he was a failure as a Gloresti?
Gabriel led them to their rooms. He flicked his hand toward the door to his room before they reached it. It flew open. They walked inside and it slammed shut behind them. He went to the middle of the room and started pacing.
“I need a minute to—” he closed his eyes, inhaled sharply and shook his head. “God.”
Caleb realized then that his leader wasn’t nearly as calm as he had projected. James had gone to lean against the table. He was rubbing the flat of his palm against his chest, as if to ease an ache.
“I should have gone behind the waterfall with Amber,” Gabriel said as he paced, running a hand through his hair in obvious agitation. “One at a time. Damn it, I know better. I should have—”
“We,” James interrupted. “We should have. And now we have to live with the fact that we didn’t.”
Caleb didn’t reply. He was still standing just inside the door, his arms crossed over his chest. He couldn’t get any closer to the table where they sat as a family so often. His emotions suddenly leveled out, in direct opposition to the obvious upheaval being experienced by his brothers. He knew he had to push past his feelings if he wanted to get Skye back. Indeed, it was this ability to control his emotions that had proven to be such a perfect complement to her basic nature. He had to believe it would aid him in getting to her now.
After a moment, Gabriel abruptly stopped pacing. He turned to Caleb. “How did you know?”
Understanding, he replied, “Intuition. Something didn’t feel right. I tried to connect with Skye’s thoughts and couldn’t.”
Gabriel once again shook his head. “Privacy. I wasn’t connected to Amber’s thoughts during those two minutes because she deserves privacy. Jean-Marc and Tristan knew it and took advantage of it.” He resumed pacing.
“Poison,” James said, his tone cold. “If anything has happened to them—”
“Jean-Marc and Tristan have already made their choices,” Gabriel interrupted in a ruthless voice. “Traitorous bastards.”
Caleb had to admit that learning of Tristan’s involvement had hit him like a kick to the gut. The affable Gloresti had been unfailingly diligent in his training, and polite and friendly toward the sisters. He hadn’t given any indication that he was dissatisfied or grudging. Caleb would have gone into battle with him without a thought.
It really made him question his ability to judge character.
“Jean-Marc is obviously skilled with dampening,” Gabriel said. “He’s so skilled that he evaded Malukali’s detection all these months. He won’t be able to keep it up forever, but Grolkinei will have Layla and others on standby to pick up where he leaves off. We have to anticipate that we won’t be able to connect with the girls mentally when we’re down there.”
“The cats will find them,” James said. “They have an enhanced connection to Olivia that surpasses just sharing thoughts. Wherever Olivia is, Amber and Skye will be, too. The Mercesti will have to keep them together to keep their powers dampened.”
“I’m not sure that finding them is going to be the challenge,” Gabriel said. “Grolkinei wants to be found. He’s using the girls to draw the rest of us into battle.”
That was when it hit Caleb—the line of the Great Foretelling that had so affected the sisters. And the new beings who had once been considered unworthy outsiders will lead us all to our fates.
The prediction had been accurate, if not exactly literal. The sisters were leading them into battle…and it was now time to accept their fates.
Skye felt the many pairs of eyes on her and her sisters as they stood on the beach in their wet clothing and thorough bindings. Grolkinei’s red gaze shifted between the three of them after his cheerful greeting. He stood with his legs braced apart and his arms crossed over his chest. He wore a flowing light gray shirt with black pants and boots. There was a silver chain around his neck, a sword and scabbard around his hips, and two daggers strapped to his thighs.
“You should kneel in front of your betters,” he said in mild tones. He caught Amber’s gaze, which Skye imagined was scathing. “You have two seconds to do so or I will break Olivia’s fingers one at a time until you do.”
They knelt.
“How interesting,” he said as he walked slowly in front of them. He reached out to stroke Olivia’s cheek. She pulled back. The reaction made him smile again. “It will be fun to discover just what you will each do to protect one another.”
Skye’s heart rate hadn’t slowed in tempo since she first spotted Jean-Marc. But now, anger had her fear taking a back seat.
“Bow your heads,” he said.
Not having any choice, they did so. He chuckled. Then he turned to Jean-Marc and Tristan.
“Excellent work. You will certainly be rewarded for your efforts.”
“Thank you, my lord,” they said.
Skye wondered why it was the two traitors hadn’t yet converted to Mercesti. She could only guess it was because it wasn’t the Mercesti’s immediate intent to kill them. She supposed there was something positive to take from that.
Then Grolkinei unsheathed one of his daggers, making her rethink her assumption as her heart pumped violently. Since he was standing in front of her, he reached out and swiped the dagger down the length of her forearm. She barely felt the sting of the slice to her flesh, telling her the blade was exceedingly sharp. Warm blood quickly started flowing, dripping onto the sand. He walked over to Olivia and then Amber, doing the same to each of their forearms.
“Hmm. Not even a flinch from any of you,” he said with approval in his voice. He wiped the blood from his dagger and resheathed it. “Excellent.”
They sat there for several minutes as the blood continued to drip onto the sand. Skye’s neck was getting stiff from being bent down for so long, and she was pretty sure her feet were asleep. There wasn’t a sound around them outside of the waves hitting the shore.
Finally, he said, “That should send enough of a message. Bind their forearms.”
One of the nearby Mercesti wrapped some white fabric around her forearm and then lifted her to her feet as other Mercesti did the same with Amber and Olivia.
“It is time to move on,” Grolkinei said. He accepted something from another soldier and began shrugging it on. “Since none of you can extend your wings thanks t
o our ability to dampen your powers, we will carry you.”
She noticed another Mercesti pulling on a second harness. She recognized him as Angius. His gleaming bald head and savage, scarred features hadn’t changed at all since they had last seen him. He stared at Amber, who was deliberately gazing straight ahead at nothing in particular, by all appearances bored out of her mind. The third harness was tossed to a dark-skinned male with an abundance of hair spearing out of his head.
“Angius, you will carry Amber. Baldemar, you will carry Olivia. I will carry Skye.”
Joy, oh joy, she thought sourly.
Olivia and Amber both flicked glances at her as Grolkinei approached. His gaze swept consideringly from her toes to her eyes. Then he pulled out the same dagger he had used to slice her forearm.
Holding her gaze, he stepped to within inches of her. His voice was loud enough only for her when he said, “Your choice of clothing is unfortunately not suited to the harness.”
He slowly lowered until he was squatting in front of her, then used his dagger to slice the skirt of her dress. He cut the material away until the skirt reached just past her backside. He tossed the remaining fabric carelessly to the side. As he stood back up, he trailed his fingers along her bare leg.
“Even better in person,” he said meaningfully when he was again standing.
Struggling against her revulsion, she merely stared back at him and thought of the many ways Caleb would make him suffer.
Grolkinei and his commanders untied the bindings that joined her with her sisters and then situated them in the harnesses. Her heart hammered violently when he pressed her back against his chest as he secured the various straps. Her hands had once again been secured so that they were in front of her. Her arms were still tied tightly against her body, giving her very limited mobility. Once she was in the harness, Jean-Marc rebound her ankles.
She wanted to kick him in the face, but decided it wasn’t worth the sore toes it would cause her bare feet.
They lined up to take flight: her and Grolkinei in the middle, Layla and Jean-Marc on either side of them, and Angius and Baldemar on the outsides with Amber and Olivia. She realized that Grolkinei was taking no chances with the dampening effects.
A moment later, they were airborne. Flying was something she typically enjoyed. At the moment, however, she thought the alternative of having a root canal would have made her do celebratory back-flips. She couldn’t quell the shudder that went through her when Grolkinei’s arms went around her. It might have been the most logical posture for him and it might have even been serving as an additional security feature to keep her from plummeting to her death, but she wanted to break both of his arms clean off.
“You smell even better in person, too,” he said against the side of her neck. “Like ripe peaches.”
Her stomach lurched. Oh, please, she thought to herself as she screwed her eyes shut and swallowed bile, don’t throw up with this gag in your mouth. Please.
They flew for several hours. On a number of separate occasions, he sliced her with his dagger while they flew, allowing her blood to drip into the wind. She witnessed Angius and Baldemar doing the same thing to her sisters at different intervals and understood they were leaving a very clear trail. Three other times, they landed to rest. She and her sisters were cut then, too. After the last cut, she had wounds on both forearms and up and down both legs. Her body was a mass of pulsing pain and she felt light-headed. How much blood had she lost?
Her sisters were both also covered in blood and looked pale and woozy. She knew she was dangerously close to passing out. Only the knowledge that she would be leaving herself entirely at Grolkinei’s mercy if she did so kept her conscious.
“Last leg of our journey,” he said as he slowly wound a white bandage around her right thigh. She couldn’t even find enough energy to be concerned that his hands were in such an intimate place on her body. “If you will excuse the pun.”
She looked down at the small pool of blood that had gathered between her feet from this last injury. It made her sway.
“Uh-oh,” he said with a grin, rising and reaching out to steady her so he could secure her again in the harness. “It appears it is a good thing this was the last bleed. I do not think you will last through another one. I did not consider that you do not heal as quickly as full Estilorians.”
He was absolutely right. He was also unaware of the fact that her blood was nurturing two fetuses in her womb. The wounds she had received were all significantly more than mere scratches, and she was still bleeding. Even the injury he had first caused her hours before had bled through the inadequate dressing. She felt blood trailing down both arms and legs. It wasn’t gushing, no, but she feared the slow and steady drain would prove more than enough to cause considerable damage.
When her head drooped, she had to struggle to bring it back up. And as the world spun crazily around her and darkness ringed her vision, she had the random and final thought that it would be just her luck to end up dead by accident.
Chapter Forty-Five
The first wave of Estilorians reached the coordinates provided by Caoilinn two and half hours after the sisters had been abducted. Gabriel, James and Caleb rode on a platform with Aurora and Titan, Uriel, Ini-herit and Quincy. Several other platforms contained the class commanders and lieutenants. Over the next several hours, all of the remaining Estilorians would join them. They would all remain in communication through their mental connections.
Caleb watched the shoreline approach as their platform flew across the water. Had Skye been awake and aware, experiencing this same approach?
Their platform stopped right next to the one that had been used to transport the sisters. Before heading to the shore, they all transferred to the second platform to investigate. He was relieved to see there wasn’t any blood on it.
“I believe these vials contained the antidote Alastair mentioned,” Quincy said, having sniffed the empty tubes. “Because they are empty and there doesn’t appear to have been any trauma, I think the sisters were given the antidote in time.”
Caleb exchanged relieved glances with his brothers. Ini-herit found a few fragments of the cord that had evidently been used to bind the girls. It was a special material created by the Lekwuesti that was found only on the Estilorian plane. It was impervious to metal, meaning it couldn’t be cut by a knife or similar tool.
Not finding anything else helpful on the platform, they waded through the water toward shore. The cats leaped into the water behind them and swam. James sent a thought to the animals to remain in the shallow water to avoid contaminating any possible evidence left behind on shore.
The three spots of blood stood out like beacons as they neared the shore. So did the pink and green material that Caleb knew had been at least part of Skye’s gown.
Despite this distressing evidence, they pushed the obvious clues to the background and focused on everything else. There could easily have been a contingent of Mercesti waiting for them in the trees surrounding the shoreline. After careful scans by all of them, however, they determined that they were alone.
When they neared it, Uriel bent to study the area surrounding the blood. His burnt orange gaze swept across the sand. “There were hundreds of them here and waiting. Jean-Marc must have gotten the coordinates well ahead of time from Caoilinn and communicated those to the Mercesti.”
“How could he have sent thoughts to the Mercesti from Central?” James asked.
“That is a question for Knorbis and Malukali to answer,” Uriel said levelly. “What I can tell you is the sisters were brought to shore and were made to kneel. They were then cut so they bled. I believe the Mercesti are making a statement. The sisters are at their mercy, and first blood was drawn by them.” He paused and looked again at the sand. “I would guess this was Skye’s position, as it appears the sister kneeling here wore a skirt. You have said Amber and Olivia wore pants today.”
The brothers nodded. They each squatted near the blood. Ca
leb knew immediately that the blood near the spot Uriel indicated was Skye’s. His Gloresti senses picked it up like it was emitting a signal with her name on it.
“Judging by these lines in the sand between each of the sisters’ positions, they were bound together by the cord,” Uriel continued. “They would have had to have been separated before flight.”
Gabriel turned and nodded at James, who then sent out a thought to the cats. They came forward and scented the blood, moving from one pool to the next. Then they both turned and loped into the surrounding trees.
“The cuts would have been fairly deep to generate this much blood,” Quincy said. “I am assuming they are not going to allow the sisters to heal themselves, so their wounds will likely bleed enough to shed evidence for the cats to follow.”
Caleb supposed there was something positive to be had in that. It didn’t make him feel any less lethal toward Jean-Marc and Tristan, but at least they could be assured they were making progress toward finding their wives as they followed the obvious trail.
He wasn’t feeling as optimistic about it by the time they reached the third pools of blood. They had received reports from the Waresti following the cats on foot that there was a nearly constant trail of blood leading from the beach. Whenever the cats came upon one of the places containing an excess of blood, all of them landed to investigate.
“Doesn’t this seem like a lot of blood loss?” Gabriel asked Quincy as they stood over the latest collection.
“It’s quite hard to tell,” Quincy answered, looking closely at the blood pools. “Most of these areas are sandy, and sand absorbs blood. With the blood falling from the sky, being dispersed by the wind…it’s hard to tell.”
Caleb sensed Quincy’s concern, though. Although he didn’t know much about the physical differences between humans and Estilorians, even Caleb understood that this much blood loss was significant.
The blood on the ground so enraged him that he had to walk away from it. His avowed was out there somewhere in need of him, and he could do nothing but follow evidence of her slow torture.
