Claimed by the Warlord

by Maddie Taylor

  “My brother was livid. I don’t find it hard to believe he took the risk and went through, but Darios? And he calls me reckless,” she muttered. “How will you even get back?”

  “With this,” Shiloh said as she held out a small round disc in her palm. “This is the retrieval device. If there is danger, push it and the portal will bring you home.”

  “If the situation wasn’t so extreme, this would be exciting,” her father told the girl. “What do I do?”

  “Step up on the platform and stand between the plasma cylinders. Brailen, who is our MDP technician, will do the rest.”

  “MDP?” Iyo repeated.

  “Matter displacement portal.”

  “I’m ready,” Aziros announced from inside the four luminescent columns.

  “This is insane, Papa. I can’t stop you?”

  “No, this must be settled.”

  “Beginning sequence,” Brailen announced. “Everyone stay back.”

  “Wait,” Aurelia cried. “He needs more than a puny photon pistol.” She spun to Iyo. “Give him your fusion blaster.”

  “And leave you unprotected? I don’t think so.”

  She wanted to take his handsome face in her hands and shake him. “We can get you another. A snow bear may be waiting on the other side to tear my father to bits.”

  He scowled down at her but removed his weapon. “Darios is going to owe me a rank advancement by the time this assignment is over,” he groused while approaching her father.

  “No,” Shiloh called. “Stay behind the red line. Once the sequence has started, we don’t know when it will deploy.”

  “Toss it,” Aziros advised.

  When he reached for it and Aurelia saw exposed skin beneath his sleeve, she cried, “He’s going to freeze.” Spying several coats on a rack in the corner, she quickly grabbed the heaviest one. Then grabbed another. “Heck, where he’s going, he’ll need all of these and then some.”

  Scooping every last one into her arms, she rushed back.

  “Behind the line!” Shiloh and Iyo shouted in unison.

  She skidded to a halt. “Catch, Papa.”

  He opened his arms. Her toss was perfect, except her bracelet caught on the sleeve of one. She yanked, but couldn’t pull free.

  “Let go,” Iyo roared as the lights in the room beamed brighter.

  “I can’t. I’m caught.” She searched for the clasp with trembling fingers.

  While she tried frantically to get loose, a hiss like an electric current filled the room. Her eyes rose to her father. She would have backed away from what she saw but couldn’t. Instead, her jaw dropped, and she stared at his translucent wavering image. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion from that point on.

  “Stop this, now,” Iyo demanded as he too gripped the coat and tried to pull her free, but the portal had already taken hold of her father, and evidently, everything he touched.

  “It’s too late,” Shiloh confirmed as if from a distance.

  Her gaze shifted to her guard, stunned to find him see through as well.

  Glancing down at the coat that tethered her to her father in the portal, she could see the floor through the sleeve and her trapped hand.

  “Fuck me,” she muttered, using the vulgar word for the first time in her life. Any other time, she’d have been mortified by her slip of the tongue, but right now, as her atoms disseminated before her very eyes, it seemed most apropos.

  IN A BLINK, AURELIA went from the perfect climate-controlled conditions of the lab to being colder than she’d ever been in her life. Her teeth chattered and, in seconds, she was unable to move, almost frozen. A swirl of warmth surrounded her suddenly.

  “Put this on,” Iyo ordered gruffly as he passed her the coat that had essentially leashed them to her father and dragged them both through the portal. It fell to the ground.

  Her sluggish mind understood him, but couldn’t make her body obey.

  “’Tis the transfer,” her father shouted over the wind. “I was told it might make some people feel disoriented.” Then he muttered, “I still can’t believe they actually did it.”

  “I can’t put her coat on without touching her,” Iyo told him. “You’ll have to do it.”

  “She’s not immune to me, son. Do it, but quickly.”

  He shouted next to her ear to be heard. “I’m sorry if this pains you, Princess, but let’s make this quick and find shelter.” She nodded, or at least she tried to then she though she heard him mutter, “Gods bedamned frigid weather. It dilutes my heat like pissing in the ocean.”

  She was too cold to feel anything when he took her hand and threaded it inside the oversized coat. “G-good th-thing I g-gr-grabbed them a-all.”

  “Yeah, say those words at my funeral because when Darios finds out I allowed you to transfer here, I’m a dead man.”

  “I-it w-was an acc-accid—” She gave up trying to speak when a violent wind gust took her out at the knees, and she fell into his tall frame.

  “Hell’s fire,” he cursed as he bent and picked her up. “Stay close to my heat, Your Highness,” he called to her father as he began slogging through the knee-high snow, which on her would have been up to her waist.

  “Wh-where are we g-going?”

  “To get us out of this wind, if nothing else.” In minutes, the gusts reduced by half as he led them behind a grove of tall trees. “How, in the gods’ name, do trees grow in this climate.”

  “They’re glacial,” her father said by way of explanation while huddling close to her as Iyo set her booted feet in the snow. “Are you doing all right, sweetheart?”

  “I don’t know. My brain isn’t fully functioning yet. Are all my parts where they are supposed to be?”

  “Don’t ask me to find out,” her irritated guard grumbled. “Darios can sort them all out later.”

  “What now?”

  He shot her father a fulminating glare. “Due respect, Your Majesty, but this was your idea.”

  “Up ahead,” Aurelia cried as flashing lights appeared out of the grayness. “Does that look like blaster fire?”

  Iyo turned and scanned the sky just as more lights flashed. “Could be. Stay here, while I scout ahead.”

  “No!” she and her papa cried.

  “Aeldorian survival guide rule number one,” she told him. “Never separate from your group. In whiteout conditions you’ll never find them again.”

  He nodded as the wind through the trees sent a whirl of snow into the air. “Makes sense.” He sent another blast of heat her way. “Besides, without me to keep you warm, you’ll be a royal icicle in minutes.” He turned his back to her and bent at the knees. “Climb on board,” he called. “You’ll have to hang on in case I need my hands to fight.” Once she’d wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist, he stood upright and held her hand out to the king. “I’ll take my weapon back, unless you’re a crack shot.”

  Her papa’s answer was to slap the pistol into his palm.

  “Here’s something I never thought I’d say,” Iyo muttered. “What I wouldn’t give for a pair of warm gloves.”

  Aurelia rooted around in the pocket of her coat, and, as all good ice planet natives did, pulled out the gloves the owner had tucked inside.

  “Here!” she called, dangling both in front of him.

  “No, you need them.”

  “I bet there is a pair in your coat, too.” She pointed at her father who was pulling a thick fur-lined pair from his borrowed coat.

  “What about a scarf and a hat?”

  “Now you’re pushing it, buddy.”

  Curled around his back as she was, she felt his big body shake. Was Stone Heart laughing? She’d have to wait to solve that puzzle because as they came out of the copse of snow-covered glacial trees, up ahead a battle was being fought.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “WE DON’T HAVE ENOUGH fire power,” Axton shouted over the roar of a photon cannon and the whistling wind. “Try the Atagan again.”

/>   “I did,” Darios called back. “No response, too much interference.”

  “Damn. The Northern Sector has always been a dead zone. Communication in and out is nonexistent. We should go back and return with more men, and weapons.”

  “Good idea,” he agreed. “But have these retrieval buttons been tested in a blizzard?”

  “I didn’t know they existed until a few hours ago, like you. Which angers me beyond reason. I need to know what Sidrah and her father are up to.”

  “It might have to wait, with all of my questions.” He dug the button out of his pocket, and glanced at his brother by marriage. “Ready?”

  “Darios!”

  He turned, swearing he’d heard a woman calling his name, but all around him was white. Perhaps, like a desert, the frozen Northern Sector played tricks on the brain.

  “Axton!”

  He spun, as did the prince.

  “Please tell me you heard that.”

  “My name, called faintly, yes.”

  Squinting, he made out two dark forms emerging from the snow. As they moved closer, he noticed one had two heads. What the hell?

  “I love her to my soul. She’s a part of me, but I’m damn glad she’s your problem now.”

  “Who?”

  Axton nodded toward the approaching figures. “Aurelia.”

  Once more, he strained to make them out. “You’ve gone as daft from the cold as I have. I see one short hunched-over form and one with two heads.”

  “That’s not two heads, that’s your man Iyo carrying my sister on his back.”

  Staring as they drew closer, it took a bit, but he saw Axton was right. Anger boiled up within him.

  “What do you mean by bringing her here?” he roared at his guard and longtime friend. “I trusted you to be stonehearted against her wiles, but she coerced you, didn’t she?”

  “I resent that!” she snapped, her usually pale face pink from the cold wind as she peeked over his shoulder. “I’m not here because I wanted to be; I’m not that crazy. My father is to blame this time.”

  “I didn’t insist on coming into an activated portal with a coat!” the king protested.

  “I tossed it to you. How could I know it would get stuck on my bracelet? Furthermore, you should be grateful I did or, as Iyo said, your royal...um—”

  “Ass?” he suggested helpfully when she apparently couldn’t bring herself to say such a thing to her father.

  “Yeah, what he said,” she agreed with a nod at his man, “would have been a royal popsicle already without that coat or Iyo to keep you warm.”

  “I think I used the word icicle,” Iyo deadpanned, before he burst into laughter.

  “I don’t find this funny at all,” Darios intoned, although he was quite shocked to see his friend so lighthearted despite their dire situation.

  “That she’s yours to deal with for life, I find hysterical!”

  “Put me down,” Aurelia demanded, clearly put out.

  He half expected the usually surly guard to toss her into a snowdrift, but he bent at the knees and let her gently slide off his back.

  When she tried to move around him to come to his side, she sank clear up to her waist in the snow. Iyo also found hilarity in this, although he reached for her, plucked her from the drift, and brought her the rest of the way to him. Darios took her in his arms and held on until she found firm footing, the whole while eyeing his friend who hadn’t laughed in several annums by his recollection.

  “I think he’s suffering ill effects from the transfer,” Aurelia suggested.

  “I’m perfectly fine, Princess,” Iyo quipped, no longer laughing but grinning—also a rarity. “Especially now that your husband has charge of you and I do not.” He glanced at the tall rocks they sheltered behind. “What’s the situation here?”

  “Sidrah and her loyalist are holed up in a cave just beyond,” Darios explained.

  “Please tell me you’ve seen Aunt Akira and she’s all right?”

  “Yes,” Axton answered. “She was walking under her own power when we arrived, although at gunpoint. We’re outnumbered and out-armed and were just about to transport back and return with reinforcements.”

  “Splendid idea, Husband,” an acid-infused voice hissed from above them. “But too little, too late. A trait I found most annoying in you these two annums past, among a vast array of other things.”

  They looked up. Standing atop the rock formation were at least six heavily armed soldiers, their weapons trained on them. Sidrah stood in the middle. He couldn’t see her face or form under the layers of fur, but she was smaller than the others, and the sneer in her voice was unmistakable.

  “I extended an invitation to King Aziros. That he brought along extra guests is rude, but I can use his bothersome children to my advantage. Having the entire royal family as my prisoners will make taking the throne unbelievably easy. Sadly, we have no room for you and your man, Warlord. Like an uninvited guest, I guess that leaves you out in the cold.”

  One of the men flanking her snickered at her pun.

  “Bring the others to the cave,” she ordered sharply.

  “You’ll not take them without a fight, woman.”

  When the muzzle of her blaster swung his way, he stepped in front of Aurelia, shielding her body with his own.

  “Aw, isn’t that sweet. New love. The mighty warlord wants to protect his little bride. New love is often altruistic and noble.” She shot Axton a hard look. “Not that I would know. But the princess’s little fairy tale ends here.”

  Sidrah turned to leave as her men jumped down, prepared to follow her command.

  “Get behind me and stay there, Aurelia, until I say it is safe.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “The witch is right, it ends here, but in my time and my way.” He didn’t so much as move, he didn’t have to, but he focused the heat of his anger outwardly. Instantly, the wind picked up, like a hot evening breeze on Voltarre.

  “He’s calling his fire,” someone shouted, panic in his voice.

  “So is this one!” another rebel guard exclaimed.

  He didn’t look but sensed Iyo’s assistance in the increased intensity of the heat they were creating.

  “Shoot!” another cried, but it ended in a yelp when the metal components of the weapon he held turned white-hot. His gloves suddenly burst into flames, and he dropped the smoking gun at his feet.

  One by one, all six of them cried out in pain and, in turn, dropped their now-melted blasters into the snow, the heat-fused discharged ports rendering them useless.

  Darios transferred Aurelia to her brother’s arms.

  “Protect her. I’ll be back in a moment.”

  Quickly, he scaled the rock in time to see Sidrah run the last few feet to the cave. A barrage of ice shards came hurling toward him. Behind him, Aurelia yelled, “Take cover!”

  But he’d had enough. He was tired, and ready to take his wife home.

  Once there, he planned to barricade them into the citadel’s south tower. It had one entrance, the lowest windows were three stories up, and except for deliveries of food and drink, no one was getting in to disturb them for a week—maybe two. Because the gods knew he’d had enough.

  Enough of people knocking at his door at inopportune times and demanding his attention. Enough of the restrictive clothing required by this frigid cold world. He’d surely had enough of men in furs who looked like wild beasts aiming weapons at his wife. And, for damn sure, he’d had enough of this conniving woman and her games.

  With a loud roar, he sent out a heat blast so powerful it shook the frozen ground. Above it, a wall of fire erupted. When the thousands of lethal shards met the flaming barrier, there was an audible sizzle as they melted—instantly—the water not nearly enough to diminish the intense heat.

  Next, he crossed his arms over his chest and stared at the mouth of the cave. The wall began to move, rolling toward the rebel stronghold at a velocity that made the glacial snow an
d ice beneath their feet rumble. With only a short distance remaining between the fire wall and the mountain, he turned and dropped beside her, shouting to the others, “Get down.”

  Darios didn’t give her a chance to react; instead, he yanked her from Axton’s hold, and, none too gently, hauled her against his tall frame. Curling forward, he forced her down in a squat while protecting her with his body.

  “Stay down and brace,” he ordered gruffly in her ear.

  With his body surrounding and containing her, she couldn’t have gone anywhere if she’d wanted to. Suddenly, the roar of the wind around them became deafening as it swept over where they hunched together. Her fingers dug into his forearms, holding on as it continued, unabated for several long moments.

  When, finally, the noise decreased to a whisper-soft breeze and an odd crackle, he murmured, “It is safe now.”

  As soon as he helped her to her feet, she glanced around to see what his fire had wrought. Smoke rose from the frozen ground, and the row of vehicles that had been aligned as a barrier to keep them out were scorched black.

  “Where are the—” She stopped, a sheen of tears appearing in her eyes. He didn’t need to ask why. Sidrah and her men were traitors to the crown, and when convicted, death most likely awaited them, but Akira was amongst them. With her gaze fixed on the smoking mouth of the cave, she let out a mournful whimper.

  “Your aunt is fine, little one,” Darios assured her quickly. “As are the others. Hot and a bit singed around the edges, perhaps, but otherwise unscathed by the flames.”

  “How is that possible?” She glanced at the puddle at her feet then up at him, wide-eyed with amazement. “Your fire wall was hot enough to melt a glacier in subzero weather.”

  “My abilities include thermo-protection, which means I can target specific objects while sparing others. In this case, the flames shielded any warm-blooded Aeldorians.”

  She gaped at him. “Why didn’t you do that before we arrived?”

  “It isn’t perfect, so I use it judiciously.”

  “He’s modest, Princess. His control is unparalleled.”

  “Can you do the same, Iyo?”