by Meagan Hurst
“I wouldn’t over question her,” Z protested at once. “Especially not if she’s badly injured.”
“I’m not worried about you,” the Mithane replied. “Although you have a lack of concern about your own health, you tend to be overly concerned about the health of others. No, my dear, I am worried she will push herself to the brink of death in order to tell you what she thinks you need to hear. If I keep her from seeing you until she is well I think it will be better for all parties.”
He led her, no surprise, to the wing she shared with the Dragon. Stopping outside her door he nodded at it. “Go,” he advised. “Wait inside. If something changes that requires your presence I will send word.”
“You’re not allowed to heal her,” Z pointed out.
“No, but I am allowed to be in the room with her. I will personally reassure her that you are here and waiting to speak with her—when she is well. In the meantime you will be waiting in your wing, correct?”
“As the Mithane orders,” she replied sourly as she opened the doors. Pausing on the threshold she glanced over her shoulder and held his gaze. “Send Crilyne to me when you no longer need him, please.” Closing the doors behind her before the Mithane could answer, Z glanced around the empty wing of Arriandie that was supposed to be ‘home’ and sighed. She needed something to do.
Crilyne found her in the wing’s small library. Having surrendered to the inevitable wait, she was working on reorganizing the few hundred books that had come with the wing into something more user friendly than its original arrangement. Despite sensing the Shade’s arrival, she ignored him and continued to focus on her task—if he wanted to break the silence he was welcome to speak first. He was, however, vastly more patient than she was, and he had perfected the art of waiting—a few hundred plus millenniums would do that.
Placing the final book in its place, Z glanced over her shoulder and froze when she saw the amount of blood on the Shade’s clothing. Seeing the wild look in her eyes, Crilyne held up his hands. “She lives,” he was quick to assure her. “She is gravely wounded, but we got here well within time it will take to save her.” When she didn’t reply he continued. “I didn’t harm her further; Nivaradros is staying with the Mithane in order to calm her down. She was delirious and it took some time to convince her you were in fact within Arriandie. I did not stick around to discover the nature of her wounds. I came straight to you.”
“I wanted to keep you away from temptation,” she said without thinking, hating the words when Crilyne flinched. “I’m sorry—you didn’t deserve that.”
“Didn’t I?”
“No, you did not. I’m not great at playing the immortal game you chose to invoke, but that doesn’t mean I should forget everything you’ve done for me in the past.”
A small smile touched the Shade’s features. He was amused. She was not. He was wise enough not to voice his amusement, but she could see he was more at ease in her presence than he had been since he had arrived. She wasn’t certain it was a good thing, but she also wasn’t certain she could handle the constant tension that would otherwise be between them. “You don’t have to forgive me,” the Shade told her with a hint of the smile still in his eyes. “I’m not offended over your anger. It is justifiable.”
“It is, but I cannot afford to hold a grudge against you right now—no matter what the reasoning behind it is.”
“You can. You merely refuse to. Zimliya, now is not the time to soften yourself.”
“I’m not. If I show even the slightest amount of distrust around you it won’t matter if I order people to work with you or not; they won’t trust you and they will refuse.”
Crilyne shook his head and his amusement faded. “You don’t understand,” he whispered.
“That you delivered Kitra to Midestol on the orders of a being similar to the one I allowed to escort me to breakfast this morning? The same being that Midestol has an agreement with and who is responsible for my disappearing soldiers?” When Crilyne stared at her with something akin to horror, Z sighed and shook her head. “Murdering the Council—setting up Kitra—I’ve come to the conclusion that that is something you wouldn’t do under normal circumstances. Immortal games my ass. Crilyne, you would never, ever do that to me—not like that.”
“Are you so certain?” Crilyne sneered.
“I am positive. It’s not you. I’ve had a lot of time to think about things since everything happened. I could see Nivaradros doing this as a game—not to me, of course—but not you. You have never encouraged me to play the immortal games even when it was apparent I had to in order to achieve my goals. You always looked for another path. Playing them in order to force me to do the same is therefore something you would not have done unless forced, and there is only one group of powers you would bow to.” Her eyes pinned him to the ground on which he stood. “He threatened me—Midestol’s little ally—and you caved. He wanted the Rangers in turmoil and you permitted it because you were protecting me. Crilyne, I don’t need your protection from him.”
His expression could have been the face of a mountain. There was a lengthy pause before he exhaled at long last—a true sign of exasperation—and shook his head. “Has your immortality made you so careless so quickly? Are you that certain you would survive him? He is not your…being, as you refer to the one you know. He is far more—”
“Don’t let him fool you, Crilyne. He is far less powerful than the one who seems to be fond of me, and I’ve already beaten mine once in a fight. You should have come to me.”
“Have you forgotten how diminished you were? You were still recovering from an injury that damn near killed you. A similar attack that almost claimed your Dragon and he’s been considered virtually untouchable for as long as he has been alive!” Crilyne snarled. Now he was furious. Furious, yet filled with regret over the schemes he had been hiding from her.
“You still should have told me!” she growled back at him. Anger she had been suppressing for months began to make itself felt. “It hurts more to know you were protecting me than it does to think of the original betrayal!” Clenching her hands into fists she advanced on him. “I could have done something. I could have protected some of them if nothing else. You gave me no chance; you didn’t trust how I would react, and you tried to pass it off as though it was some game to you! Crilyne, you know me better than anyone but the Mithane; why didn’t you just trust me?!”
The Shade’s silence was thunderous, but like the storm he was emulating, it eventually broke. “I was uncertain whether or not you were the same woman I had known for so many years,” he told her coldly at long last. “You are, after all, having sex with the Dragon—you’re compromised.”
Stepping a step back as though she had been slapped, Z pressed her lips together and struggled to keep her anger somewhat contained. She really did not want to kill him, but he was acting like such an ass that she feared she would.
“What do you have against the Dragon?!” she demanded in a voice that was white-hot with fury.
Crilyne stared at her before he turned as though he intended to leave. Cursing him thoroughly in his own language, she sealed the door and forced him to turn back to face her. His eyes looked as dangerous as she knew hers must appear, but he didn’t raise a hand against her. Instead he regarded her with those cold black eyes and fell silent. This time it was a mocking silence and she refused to break it; if he wanted to explain he would get to start the conversation.
Eventually he did speak. “You have no idea who you are trusting, Zimliya,” the Shade said softly. “No idea at all.”
“I know what he’s capable of and what he has done,” she answered—aware they had gone through this before.
“No,” Crilyne countered. “You really don’t.”
Baryaris, she realized abruptly. He knew about Nivaradros’s role in Baryaris’s death. That’s what this was about. That’s what Crilyne distrust in Nivaradros with her had always been about. Baryaris had started uniting the world, and Nivaradr
os’s attack upon him, had any discovered it, would have been viewed as an act to destroy the unity. A unity she had brought back multiplied by a thousand. Baryaris’s murder was an undocumented event, but she had been there and she knew what had happened.
“I know about Nivaradros’s part in Baryaris’s death,” she told the Shade with a bitter smile. His features froze, and she knew her assumption had been correct. This right here was one of the sources of the Shade’s hatred for the Dragon. And the largest one.
“He told you?” the Shade demanded. She knew he would argue that Nivaradros had lied to her if she didn’t tell him the whole story, but she wasn’t sure the Dragon would understand her need to explain his actions. Still…Nivaradros wasn’t present.
“I was there,” Z revealed as her throat tightened. “I was there, Crilyne. Whatever you think you know about that day…you don’t know anything. Baryaris sent me to Nivaradros to accept the Dragon’s offer, but when I escorted Baryaris to Nivaradros’s side they began negotiations for terms.”
“Terms?”
“Baryaris wanted to sever the Rangers from Tenia, and he knew the Idiot was already planning to kill him. He offered the Dragon his life in exchange for Nivaradros’s silence. I was to bear witness.”
Crilyne’s expression was hard to decipher and he was making the attempt to shield her from his thoughts. He was, she could see, contemplating this new information, and she wondered how he had discovered Nivaradros’s involvement to begin with since only she, Baryaris, and Nivaradros had been present. She had sensed no other beings nearby.
“Tell me what happened,” the Shade requested after a pause. “And leave nothing out.”
Hesitating as she debated her course of action, Z eventually inclined her head in agreement and began to speak—starting with her arrival back in Arriandie thousands of years in the past following his actions against the Ranger Council. Crilyne was silent throughout her recollection. He twitched when she spoke of her first meeting with Nivaradros; it was clear he hadn’t expected Nivaradros to be curious of her existence. The Dragon’s intervention on her behalf likewise caught him off guard. Though he said nothing, his eyes narrowed and she knew he was turning the information over in his head. She spoke of her return to Arriandie, the conversations between her and her great-grandfather—the fact that he had figured out who she was—and of the following day when she had returned with Baryaris to where Nivaradros was waiting.
When it came time to speak of her great-grandfather’s death she paused, recalling how vicious the Dragon had been. She stumbled with her words for a minute, faltering and catching the Shade’s interest. She didn’t lie. Yes, Nivaradros had been cruel, but he had been in the starting stages of his Warlord years and he had been furious over Baryaris’s bargain. Finding her voice, she described it in detail, not bothering to hide her disgust over Nivaradros in the beginning, but when she spoke of her decision to speak, Crilyne raised a hand.
“He stopped his torture—stopped his attack—because you asked him to?” Crilyne pressed.
“He killed Baryaris instantly,” she confirmed as she met the Shade’s eyes. “Because I asked—except I didn’t truly ask, Crilyne. I spoke his name…”
“That’s all?”
“Just his name,” she whispered. “When it was over, I was hit with Rangers trying to figure out what had just happened. Rangers who didn’t know how to use their amulets. He was upset over my condition, and he warned me, Crilyne, of the dangers in the area. When I left to return to Arriandie, I ran into a Tenian patrol.”
“You should have died,” Crilyne breathed as he regarded her with an air of uncertainty. “Tenians were better fighters in this past.”
“I could have taken them,” she argued. “I would have been injured, but I believe I could have handled it. But a force of Midestol’s soldiers also showed up, and since I had to return with Baryaris’s body…I had no chance. I could have perished there—I would have had Nivaradros not shown up and burned most of them to a crisp.”
“He rescued you.”
“He carried both me and Baryaris’s body to a safe place,” she confirmed. A smile emerged as her mind returned to that day. “Crilyne, he was in his mortal form for me…I was wounded,” she admitted, embarrassed. “The blade had been treated with Keniss and Nivaradros was worried…” Her voice trailed off as she turned to face the Dragon who had managed to slip into the room without her knowledge.
“I was very worried,” the Dragon continued as though she wasn’t staring at him in astonishment. “She was human, but not mortal, and Keniss was working at a speed I had never seen on her because of it. It was a deep wound, and it had taken us some time to reach the spot I had chosen to take her.” Nivaradros’s eyes were midway between deep green and neon, but he did not seem alarmed or upset to have walked in on the middle of this tale.
“She was human,” Crilyne remarked to Nivaradros.
“She was immortal, and nothing like I had experienced before. Bold,” the Dragon stated with a strange smile. “When she first approached me she didn’t hesitate, and she was one of the very few beings alive at that time to address me not by the name of my youth, or by the title I had recently been given, but by a name I sought yet had no right to bear. She called me Nivaradros. Veilantras was the only other being to grace me with that name.”
Crilyne watched the Dragon intently, but the hostility that had smoldered between the two during even the most civil of meetings was gone. “You appeared to try to kill her when you met her in this time period.”
“I had grown tired of waiting for her, and it never occurred to me I would have to meet her as a mortal, human, hatchling with issues that I would have never even considered possible. She’s pretty solid and whole in the present; she was a shattered husk when she met me originally.”
“Would you have killed her?”
Catching her breath, Z stared at Crilyne in horror before moving her gaze to Nivaradros. The Dragon’s lips curved up into a self-loathing smile. “No, Shade, I couldn’t have; even at her most vexing stage she was intriguing and I knew what she had a chance to be. I did, however, have to test her. Her temper came out immediately when I made a threat against her health, and I could see the start of the woman I had met so long ago. I wasn’t willing to throw that away, though there was a strong chance that the woman from my past would never manifest in my future. And I had a reputation to protect. Had I appeared to hold any affection for her, both of us would have been in danger. As much as I disliked having to wait—having to keep my distance—she was not ready for me to approach her in any other manner than I did.”
The Shade shook his head. “You are a master at playing games.”
“It was either excel at them or die at a very young age,” Nivaradros said with a dark smile. “I have very few allies—the majority of them have become my comrades only within the last decade. It was far safer for me to be what everyone assumed I was than to try to dispute it and open myself up as a target. I became feared and I used it to my advantage.”
Z watched the exchange between the two carefully. Crilyne was impossible to read without touching their bond, but before she could even consider using it the Shade bowed to the Dragon. “It appears I owe you an apology, Nivaradros.”
“None is required,” the Dragon answered. “I played my game well to ensure my survival, and I have managed to fool even Veilantras more than once.” He glanced at her. “Azabell is healed enough for visitors—by the Mithane’s evaluation—but I was told to warn you that if you upset her at all he will have you removed with force.”
“Nice to know he trusts me,” Z remarked glumly before glancing at both of them. “Would you two like to join me?”
Chapter 2
Z was allowed to come into the healing wing after being briefed and threatened. After the fourth time of being stopped, briefed, and threatened, Z’s mood began to sour. When she reached the room Azabell was in, the Mithane moved to block her passage. She paused to glare
at him. He laughed and glanced at Nivaradros.
“She’s been through a lot on her way here,” Nivaradros explained as Crilyne entered behind them.
The Mithane’s eyes widened as Crilyne and Nivaradros exchanged a glance and then traded places at her side. “I see,” the Alantaion ruler murmured. “Crilyne, I expect you to remove her—or let the Dragon remove her—from the room if her temper gets the better of her. Azabell is wounded, and our healers have only limited abilities since they have been working without pause on the casualties from skirmishes brought upon my people.”
Z winced at the reminder of the many lives that had been lost in the recent months. Despite the fact Midestol had left behind small detachments of forces to fight to regain each kingdom, there had been other forces at play. She had taken multiple hits and done her best to minimize the loss of life, but there had been injuries and deaths. Thankfully, more injuries than deaths.
“I promise I will try not to upset her,” she assured the Mithane. “Shalion would be furious if I did.”
With eyes that were decidedly black, the Mithane stepped out of her way. She moved fluidly into the room, but with the caution of one who awaited an attack. Crilyne mirrored her movements as well; a habit she doubted he knew he had picked up over the years. It was funny how quickly she had almost forgiven him for the deaths he had caused. The wound was still there, but she had a new target: the being who had set Crilyne up.
She had to admit it was a thorough plan. Threaten her life and have the Shade risk losing her trust. With the Rangers in disarray, in theory things would be easier for Midestol’s ally to continue with his plans. In practice, the Rangers were furious at everything that had occurred and were throwing themselves fully into aiding their allies. They were out in greater numbers than the world had seen in more than a thousand years. She was no longer on the Council, but they trusted her judgment despite their anger with her. If need be, Z knew she could call on her people and they would answer, but in the meantime, they were out and about on their own, lending aid where it was requested. That was one of the things she cherished about the Rangers; they didn’t require leadership. In fact, she was starting to think a lack of leadership would be good for them. The Council had been almost full for too long; the shift was sadly a blessing in disguise.
