No matter how much he may wish to at the moment.
“It is no insult if she wants it,” Irian groused.
“Go to sleep.”
“I’m dead, remember? Little good sleep does me. I’ll rest when you do, lad. And a good fuck would help us both,” he suggested slyly. As Aryn stared at the wall, Irian started to flicker into view, a little more in focus this time than he had been earlier. Aryn closed his eyes, but a sharp afterimage remained.
“Why in the name of the Holy Fire am I seeing you now?” he demanded irritably.
Irian tossed him a wolfish grin that seemed to glow in the dim room. “Wouldna ye like t’ know?” he taunted.
“If I didn’t want to know, I wouldn’t have asked,” Aryn muttered irritably.
“Would you two be quiet and let me sleep?” Tyriel said into the silence. “I do not know what you two are carrying on about but I hear your voices in the back of my head and it’s quite bothersome.”
Aryn thanked the Sacrificed God she hadn’t been able to pick out the words of the conversation.
And Irian chuckled before fading into silence.
Aryn developed a reputation for being a very possessive husband, but one who strayed. Tyriel was thankful there was no true bond between them because as the days turned into weeks, he developed a habit of leaving their room at night, and in such a small inn, his comings and goings could not go unnoticed.
And since his first visit was with the sister of one of the barmaids, Tyriel had the pleasure of learning about it. Not directly…the people in this inn were actually very kind. But with her kind’s sharp hearing, she heard it well enough as she passed down the hall.
Tyriel had already known there had been women—hearing names only added salt to the wound. She had smelled the woman and the sex on his skin as he came into the room, though he had bathed well. And if she wasn’t mistaken, she had heard a disgruntled sigh slither through the air. Irian wasn’t pleased with his wielder.
Tyriel was a bit displeased herself. And a bit hurt. After more than a month of the same treatment, it was only getting more painful. She was fighting an attraction to the sexy swordsman that just would not fade away and if he would just turn his midnight eyes her way—
“Bloody hell,” she hissed. In a fit of rage, she spun a dancing ball of fire in her hands, a harmless illusion, and then she lobbed it at the wall, watching it break and shatter into nothingness. “Bloody hell.”
Blood.
Hell.
Blood magick.
Painful slow death and sacrifice to the darkness below.
Burning, strong bonds came lashing out to bind her. Tyriel struck out, flinching as more magick swelled up out of the darkness.
She felt something reach out and grab her and she struck out, shielding automatically, flinging true fire at her assailant and feeling him flinch and bellow out in pain. She launched herself at him instinctively and searched…for just an instant…
Chapter Seven
Tyriel was polishing Irian when Aryn came through the door in the early morning on their day off. He spotted her and frowned. “That isn’t necessary,” he said.
Sliding him a neutral glance, she responded, “It is if I want to speak with the enchanter and you aren’t available. How are the houses in the Whore’s Guild? Finding them to your liking?”
He cocked a brow at her. “There’s a variety to choose from. Hard not to find one to my liking. They’ve men as well, if you’ve a need.”
She smiled a slow cat’s smile and said coolly, “I do not pay for sex, swordsman. If I have a need, I would handle it myself. Or find my own partner. But that is not why I ask.”
She watched as Irian flicked into view now that his bearer was there. She stood staring at the man who had used Aryn’s body to take her and felt the sadness nearly overwhelm her. He wanted her. This man who was long dead. Aryn so clearly did not. “The enchanter and I have been…discussing the situation. I had a problem of sorts when I did a bit of magick. Small, very small, but something seemed to have been waiting for it and tried to grab me. He failed, miserably, and I got an idea of what and where he was.”
“And what, pray tell, does the Whore’s Guild have to do with this?” Aryn asked, confused, looking from Tyriel to Irian.
“How do you feel about bloodsport in your sex, brother?” And the enchanter proceeded to fill Aryn in on what Tyriel had learned.
* * * * *
Aryn’s stomach was roiling.
His entire body shook with rage, yet he felt slightly ill.
Staring at Tyriel’s face, Aryn thanked the Holy Fire Irian had finally gone silent.
After what Irian had relayed, he wanted little more than to race down the streets and find the house she spoke of. And kill. Murder. Maim. Mutilate.
“Aye, and slowly,” Irian purred as he paced the room. “But it isna time.”
“At moon dark, Aryn. Only at moon dark,” Tyriel said quietly. “The mage was looking for a new offering. He has been looking ever since the past new moon last week. That one was a slave child one of his followers brought from outland. He feels safe in taking another from the streets here again.”
“And he was thinking on taking you,” Aryn guessed.
She laughed without humor, her amber eyes cold and wintry. “A bad thought, that. I imagine he is still regretting it.” Her head cocked and she closed her eyes. A smile, one almost sexual in its nature crossed her face as a small shiver raced through her body. “I can still taste his pain. Rarely does such a thing bring me pleasure.”
“But this did.”
“Like fine wine,” she said, raising her lids slowly and meeting Aryn’s gaze levelly, her mouth curving into a small, sated smile that had his blood heating. “I know his scent now, his blood, his feel. He cannot hide from me.”
“But he will know you as well.”
“No. He was too busy seeing me as prey to realize I was the hunter. He knows nothing about me, save that I have a magick that he wants badly. He felt magick and struck, thinking that I was weak and helpless. To him, all others are weak and helpless. He felt power, saw power, wanted power. So he tried to take it.” For a brief moment, she had wanted to run, to flee this nasty insidious evil that had tried to creep inside her—she longed for the woods, the plains, the mountains, for their purity and splendor.
For home.
Eivisa.
But first—there was a battle to win, an enemy to fight. A warrior in her heart, she had to answer the call she heard inside and find and destroy this evil. It felt like it had crawled underneath her skin and dug in, planted itself there, filthy, malignant, and growing. “He will come looking for me. I could let him find me—I suspect I can handle him.” A feral gleam lit her eyes and had Aryn wondering exactly what skills she had that she didn’t reveal. “Or I could continue to hide and if he doesn’t find me, he will look for another offering.”
“An offering to what?” Aryn asked softly.
“The Darkness Below,” she whispered. “He gathers power, harvests it from the young ones he kills. He takes the ones who have some sort of gift, be it healing or enchantment or even a touch of herb witchery. Any sort of magick will suit his purpose.”
“And there is also the brothel he runs—the ones he doesna kill, he breaks and they serve there it would seem,” Irian added softly, his voice gruff with sympathy for the girls.
“So why are we standing here talking about it instead of killing him?” Aryn asked, his voice rough and deep with rage. He held out his hand for his blade and Tyriel offered it with a lifted brow and a bow of her head. He closed his hand around the pommel, feeling his fingers settle familiarly around the curves and grooves, like an extension of himself. As he touched the blade, he felt Irian’s own rage. It felt like coming home, oddly, or like the other half of his own soul as he donned the sheath and settled the blade in position down his back.
Tyriel continued to sit on the bed with her legs folded, her long narrow feet bare, a slim
gold ring around her second toe winking at him in the dim light as she studied him with calm, appraising eyes.
“Aryn, if we go in there and kill him, be it with steel or with magery, you and I will be risking our necks. Now, it may just be, literally, a pain in the neck for me. But it would good and well kill you. And if my Da hears of a bunch of mortals laying hands on me for trying to help them, tsk, tsk, tsk, do we really need the army of the elvin kingdoms raining down on the mortals?” she asked, unfolding her legs and shifting to lie on her side, stretching her long legs out and crossing them at the ankle. “Da would be well and truly pissed, and I wouldn’t be very happy myself. And the gypsies would go quite insane once they heard of it. It would be mayhem.”
“Oh, then we ignore it?” he asked sarcastically.
“No,” she drawled, lifting her gaze skyward as if praying for patience. She took a deep breath that strained the laces of her chemise and Aryn wished she had bothered to don a little more than that and her breeches as her nipples pressed against the cloth, the peaks taunting him to madness. “We gather proof. And we let…reinforcements arrive. He is not alone. He has at least two other mages. I am good, quite good. But I am not stupid. And Irian, beg your pardon, there is only so much you can do without a body to call your own.”
“If the stubborn swordsman would let me use his—”
“It’s the stubborn swordsman’s body,” Aryn said stubbornly.
“And he has a right to it,” Tyriel agreed. “And I think we should establish that now. Can you offer your bond to no longer try to take over his body simply at your own behest?”
“I took a vow at my death, lady of the Jiupsu. Do you no longer honor vows?” Irian growled.
“We honor them. But you do not honor your wielder when you force your will on him,” she said coolly. “I understand your vow, better than you would think. It was a noble thing you did, I believe. But trying to force a man out of his body is not an act of honor.”
Irian was silent. And then grudgingly, “No more forcing my will at my own¼behest,” he grunted. “But when the need arises¼“
“Your version of need had better have been revised very recently,” Tyriel said softly, an edge to her voice.
Aryn stared at her, hard. And then he turned his head, searching for the flickering form of Irian, but the man had not reformed again. In the back of his mind, he heard Irian’s voice, but not his words, and watched as Tyriel lowered her lashes in acknowledgment, but no words were spoken out loud. “I think there’s something going on that I need to know about,” he said to Irian.
“Nay. Ye need not know,” Irian said. “My bond has been given. I’ll not be forcin’ my will on ye. But ye must be understandin’. My vow, I canna break, not now, not until I am no more.”
“Bloody hell, you stupid piece of tin, I’m here, aren’t I?” Aryn snapped, resisting the urge to take the blade off and fling it against the wall. It wouldn’t hurt the enchanter any and worse, he knew better than to treat a weapon like that.
“Exactly what sort of proof do we need?” he asked slowly, lowering himself to the floor, shifting Irian to an angle and staring at Tyriel with hard eyes. “And why do I get the feeling you’re going to send me to this house?”
She smiled nastily. “Have you any idea how many times I’ve heard ‘poor Tyriel’, or worse—’she must not be very good in bed if he has to wander so much’. Look at it this way, darling. You owe me,” she purred, batting her lashes at him. “Otherwise we could have waited until Jaren arrived.”
“Jaren?”
“Backup,” she answered. Her amber eyes gleamed. “One of my father’s men. An elvish…you would probably call him an assassin. He was one of my teachers. He will be here come morning. But you will sort of wander into the house tonight, have a drink, look slightly interested but embarrassed and then wander out.”
* * * * *
Aryn stood at the bar, unimaginatively painted black, and drank his ale. A slim little whore who looked to be all of eighteen, stood at his elbow, trying to coax him upstairs, offering to let him ‘discipline’ her in any fashion he chose. She wore nothing but heavy gold rings pierced through her nipples.
And her eyes were frightened.
Frightened. Almost all of the girls here were frightened, frightened and broken. Aryn was all but sick with it. This poor girl, he wanted to take her away and find her a safe place, some clothes to wrap around her slender body, wash away the paint they had applied to her face.
She didn’t want to be here.
So far, he hadn’t seen a single woman who actually looked pleased about where she was.
And the men looked all too pleased to have a woman under their hands to break, a woman they could make submit and yield and humiliate.
He wanted badly to take her out of there, but Tyriel’s words lingered.
And something eating in his gut stopped him as well.
There was something else going on here besides a whorehouse.
Something dark and evil that left a bad taste in his mouth and a sick feeling in his gut. And if he took this sad little waif out of here, it would destroy his chance of helping to figure out what. So he told her no, trying to act as though he was just checking it out and offered her a flirtatious smile and said, “Maybe next time…?”
“Eira,” she said with a sad smile before she left to go find somebody else. Only problem was, he had been the only one who didn’t look at her like he’d enjoy hurting her.
Aryn blanked his face as he watched one of the patrons bend his whore over his lap and administer a spanking. He didn’t exactly have a problem with spankings—but then the man stood and had her unfasten his breeches right there.
Now that, he had a problem with.
Especially when the young woman’s face flamed with embarrassment and she started to shake and fumble as she realized how many people were watching her.
“Bloody hell,” he muttered.
It only got worse when another man moved behind her and started to spank her as she started to suckle and lick on the man’s cock, her cheeks hot with embarrassment.
“Anybody can cut in,” a silken voice offered. “And if you pay…oh, twenty-five silvers, she’s all yours. Of course, Eira would be disciplined since she offered for you first.”
Aryn turned his head and met a pair of boldly painted blue eyes and a slicked red mouth. The woman staring at him had to be none other than the madam and she was dressed in a rather elegant evening gown. She dressed in rich clothing while her whores wore nothing.
Aryn set his ale down and started to decline, but then he saw the whip that was being pulled out. And he reached for his money belt instead. “How much for both?” he asked, sending the madam a smile.
He watched her eyes settle on his mouth and she hummed slightly. “I think I’d rather have you for myself,” she purred. “Too bad I have a policy of never taking a customer to bed.”
And so for the price of forty silvers, he had both lovely young women all to himself.
Aryn found himself staring into the eyes of two women who had more familiarity with rough usage than gentle, and he didn’t know what the fuck he was supposed to do.
But he sure as hell couldn’t touch them with the smell and sweat of other men all over them.
So he was shown to a rather opulent room and fed while the ladies were taken to bathe. One of the women moved to shove Eira and Aryn rolled out of his chair and caught her hand, smiling silkily. “I realize this is a house of pain and pleasure, but I’ve paid well for these ladies. Any marks on them tonight will come from me, and only me. Otherwise, I mark you,” he warned.
By the time they returned, he had decided to just leave. Slip them what little money he had left, and leave.
Eira took one look at his face and knew.
So did the other. Her name was Keely and she was a bit bolder than Eira. She moved like a spring storm, fast and light, sliding her arms around his neck and plastering herself to his front, cuddling h
er curvy little body against him and rocking. Then whispering, “They watch us, if you leave they’ll know…they’ll punish us.”
Aryn froze. He lowered his head and caught her face as if to kiss her, nuzzling his way around and down to her ear where he asked, “What?”
She giggled flirtatiously, ran her hands over his shoulders, and said, “You don’t belong in here. We both know that. But if you leave without fucking us, we get punished. We’re being watched. It’s one of the house entertainments.”
Well, hell.
Threading his fingers through her hair, he licked and nuzzled his way down her torso to take one of her pierced nipples in his mouth, tugging delicately on the golden loop as Eira moved behind him and started tugging at his clothes. He ushered them to bed and thought fleetingly, I know this isn’t what Tyriel had in mind¼
And then he plunged his fingers into Keely’s tight, narrow passage and listened to her squeal in startled delight and decided he’d been right. None of the patrons had ever given a damn about their pleasure.
So he worked his way down her body, spread her thighs and opened her, studying the smooth waxed flesh of her mound before lowering his face to her flesh and breathing in her scent—sweet and young, even if these bastards had broken her. She jumped when he opened her pussy and licked her, startled, she sobbed when he caught her clit in his mouth and worked it gently as he again slid two fingers inside her slippery sheath.
He felt her hands fist in his hair, heard her broken panting sighs as she lifted her hips eagerly against his mouth as he quickly brought her to orgasm before he pushed up and turned his eyes to Eira.
Her soft hazel eyes were glassy with surprised delight, and as he tumbled her into his lap, she gasped and threw her arms around his neck, arrowing in on his mouth and kissing him hungrily, mindlessly. Keely was soon at his back, sliding her hands between them, whimpering feverishly and jerking at the laces of his jerkin as he kissed Eira and slid his hand between her thighs to pet her naked mound.
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