She sighed.
Damian.
Hadn’t he already threatened to do the same thing to Mina in so many words?
A bitter tear escaped her eye as she tried to wrap her mind around this vicious twist of fate, as she struggled to make sense of her inexplicable grief, her deep sense of loss, when it came to the reality of Damian and the absence of Dante. For truth be told: Her sorrow went much deeper than her fear of Damian; it went much deeper than the substitution of one tyrannical master for another. If Mina was being honest—and at this point, why not?—then she had to admit that, despite her best attempts to avoid it, despite railing against it, she had somehow become attached to Dante Dragona.
On some subtle, hidden level that she couldn’t explain, she had come to look forward to those midnight-blue eyes, to watching the dark, haunted soul within gaze back at her with so much passion—so much hunger—and she knew that, despite all his warnings, his endless admonitions about service, duty, and obligation, wanting nothing more from her than her obedience, she had still hoped, if not believed, that he would one day grow to love her.
Mina Louvet had fallen for the eldest dragon son without even knowing it.
And while it may not have been love—and it certainly wasn’t mutual—the seeds of possibility had been sown.
Trust had not fully blossomed…yet.
Honesty was still emerging…slowly.
And their tenuous foundation was still so deeply mired in the thorns of fear, inequity, and obligation that it rarely rose to the surface. Yet and still, Dante had somehow stolen her heart.
And now, all of that—whatever had been possible between them—was as dead as the soldiers and Lycanians who were falling on the beach. Like the fleet of unsuspecting vessels still sailing this way, those who would meet the wrath of a dragon with the dawn, Mina’s hidden hopes and dreams were as good as dead, soon to be burned to ash.
Two deep, husky voices jolted Mina out of her musings, instantly bringing her ears to attention, her thoughts to the current situation—there were two males crossing the ravine, and they were headed her way, sauntering in the general direction of the maple tree.
Acutely aware of the imminent danger, she quickly scurried behind the trunk, ducked down into a squat, and peeked around the base to watch the men approach. Blessed Spirit Keepers, they must have come within seven paces of the tree before stopping, checking their surroundings to make sure they were alone, and then resuming their conversation.
“Ten coppers for the slave,” a tall, skinny shadow said, his chapped, reedy lips drawn back in a smile, his nearly translucent skin gleaming pale, due to the hour.
“Exactly ten,” the other male replied. This one was clearly a warlock—his dim, witchy eyes gave him away, not to mention the long brown cloak fastened at his neck.
The shadow clapped the Warlochian on the back. “You’re a fair man, Sir Robert.”
Mina’s breath hitched in her throat.
Sir Robert Cross?
Then this was him?
She leaned forward to take a better look, careful not to rustle any leaves on the ground or jostle her canteen, praying that the moonlight wouldn’t cast a shadow beyond the tree.
Sir Robert held out his filthy hand and waited patiently as the shadow retrieved a leather purse, counted out ten coppers, and dropped them in his palm.
“When do I get the girl?” the shadow asked.
Mina’s ears perked up.
“You will have her soon enough,” the warlock answered. “We do have to be a little bit…discreet.”
The shadow snarled, clearly disliking the answer. “You wouldn’t cheat me, would you?” The warlock’s eyes glowed red, and the shadow took a cautious step back, raising one hand in supplication. “No offense intended.”
Sir Robert smiled then, his sorcerer’s eyes dilating with artificial mirth. “Do think before you speak, Rohan. I would hate to see a pleasant transaction turned into something less civilized.” He smirked, and it distorted his already unpleasant features. “Besides, you are this close to having a fresh young bedmate to do with as you please. Why spoil that now?”
Mina’s stomach clenched in nauseating awareness: Great Nuri, these men were foul.
The shadow gulped and extended his hand, instantly appeased. “Of course, of course,” he muttered, nodding his head like a dolt.
The two shook hands and turned to depart, heading back toward the narrow ravine, and Mina’s heart nearly jumped out of her chest.
No!
No, no, no, no!
Sir Robert Cross was right there!
Standing directly in front of her.
She couldn’t let him vanish.
She had to know what he knew; it might be Raylea’s only chance.
Turning the various outcomes over in her head, Mina quickly assessed her options: If she confronted the warlock directly, it would be to her peril. For all intents and purposes, she was a traveling maidservant, a commoner, alone in the forest—she would become Sir Robert’s next available slave. If she stayed to the trees and bushes, tried to follow him and listen, she would only make it so far before they approached the hub of the camp, and she would never remain undetected in the midst of so many travelers. If she tried to attack him and restrain him—well, yeah, that wasn’t going to happen—she would die in some horrific manner, right there beneath the maple tree. And if she somehow got detained, was not able to make it back to the beach before dawn, Damian would discover her hoax, and he would probably have her head.
She didn’t know what she had expected when she had set out for the camp. Perhaps she had hoped to stumble across a group of captives; to run into Raylea, herself; or to meet up with a lesser foe or an ally, perhaps a sympathetic human who would discreetly share information or intervene with the slavers on Mina’s behalf—pretend to purchase a slave in order to gain information.
None of that mattered now.
This was the fate she’d been handed, and she had to make a choice right now.
Recognizing that the only true weapon she really possessed was her identity—she was the Sklavos Ahavi to one of three princes of the Realm, and Sir Robert Cross, as well as the shadow, certainly feared Damian Dragona—she removed the hood from her head, stepped out from behind the tree, and took a confident step forward, ignoring how she really felt. “Greetings from the province of Umbras,” she said in perfect Warlochian.
Robert Cross spun swiftly around, and it was immediately evident that he was a sorcerer of tremendous power: His eyes flashed red, his cloak began to float behind his back, and his feet rose several inches off the ground. He was prepared to strike at the intruder.
Mina held up a graceful hand, careful to keep her voice both steady and calm. “You would be wise to think before you act, Warlochian. You don’t yet know who I am.”
The warlock narrowed his malevolent gaze on Mina, even as the shadow began to slink back into the shade, blending in with his surroundings. How incredibly creepy, Mina thought.
“You look like my next twenty coppers,” Sir Robert snarled boldly.
Mina’s expression darkened with anger. “Well, then you’d better look again.” The Warlochian tongue flowed so smoothly from her lips that the mage tilted his head in surprise, leaned forward to angle his ear, and then furrowed his brows, as if he were trying to make out her accent.
“A commoner does not speak with such a fluent tongue.” Sir Robert floated back to the ground. “Who are you?”
Mina took three confident strides forward. “I am the mistress of Umbras, the Sklavos Ahavi of your royal prince, Damian Dragona, and I understand that you have my sister.”
This caught the warlock off guard. His cocky demeanor lessened and he smoothed his brow as if erasing all hints of emotion. “Yet you speak Warlochian?”
“I speak all your vile tongues,” Mina replied, without hesitation. This time, she answered in Umbrasian before repeating the phrase in Warlochian.
Rohan hissed from the
shadows in acknowledgment, and Sir Robert nodded his head. “I see.” He crossed his arms over his chest and narrowed his already scrutinizing gaze. “And my lord, the prince of Umbras, has sent a woman to the traders’ camp to confront a powerful mage of his brother’s kingdom…alone? Hmm.” He pursed his lips and sneered. “What’s wrong with this picture?”
Although she was a bit surprised to hear how fast news from the castle had spread, reaching the major players in the Realm, Mina held her ground. So Sir Robert knew about the provincial assignments already? Good. That meant he also knew about the Sklavos Ahavi, who each female had been given to. He knew Mina was telling the truth. “Doesn’t matter,” she snapped. “Anything and everything could be wrong. I could be acting on my own. I could be a rebel or a recalcitrant mate—’tis really none of your business. But what is truth, and what does matter, are these three simple facts: As the Sklavos Ahavi to the prince of Umbras, you are forbidden to touch me. In fact, you are not even supposed to look into my eyes.” She stiffened her spine and raised her voice. “And don’t fool yourself into thinking no one’s watching; you and I both know it would be a simple task for Wavani the witch to cast a seeing spell in order to find out what happened to Prince Damian’s consort. Now then, the second fact that should concern you is this: The slave trade is illegal, and your king does not support it, which you already know. So I’m sure he would be quite eager to hear that Sir Robert Cross, a citizen of Warlochia, and Rohan, a disloyal shade, exchanged coppers in the forest for the purchase of a fifteen-year-old girl, and at the battle of Dragos Cove, no less, when they were supposed to be serving the Realm. Hmm. I don’t believe that is something you would like me to repeat, which brings me to my third and most salient point: You took my sister, and I want her back. We can either make a trade—my sister for my silence—or we can split hairs over the details and both get caught, in which case we all die at the hands of our beloved prince. The choice is yours, and I don’t have a lot of time.” She tapped her foot on the ground to demonstrate her point.
Sir Robert Cross stirred uneasily, his upper lip twitching with disdain. He opened his mouth to comment, but a horrible snarl brought him up short: a terrible rumbling from within a nearby cluster of bushes, a roar so ferocious that it clapped like thunder, striking terror into the wicked mage’s heart…and Mina’s, too.
In the blink of an eye, two enormous feline beasts sprang forth from the bushes, their almond-shaped eyes ablaze with fury, their sharp, lethal fangs protruding from their gums like twin polished blades, their saliva-soaked lips twisted back in matching, maniacal snarls.
Lycanians!
Shifters had escaped from the beach.
“Oh dear goddess of mercy,” Mina breathed. They had broken through the soldiers’ barricades—they had breached the princes’ final line of defense.
She spun on her heels to run, her heart thundering in her chest, and everything happened at once: The first beast sprang toward the elusive figure in the shadows, toward Rohan the shade, and the second deadly creature sprang at Mina’s back.
Chapter Twenty
The battle at the beach had waged on for five harrowing hours, leaving a bloody trail of carnage in its wake: humans missing their limbs and heads; shadows deflated into mere husks of their former selves; and warlocks withered from the inside out as their magic consumed their organs at the moment of their deaths.
Dante, Damian, and Drake had fought like wild things alongside their faithful subjects, struggling to keep the Lycanians at bay, desperate to contain them in the cove, needing to buy just a little more time until the king’s feral dragon could awaken at dawn to destroy the last of the initial invaders as well as the remaining fleet.
The sun typically rose at 6 AM, and by 2:30 AM, the battle had become precarious at best—the ferocious Lycanian beasts had attacked, pursued, and hunted their prey as if they possessed no fear of death. And in a fleeting, chaotic moment, when Dante, Damian, and Drake had been surrounded by the enemy, two feline shifters on the outskirts of the scuffle had bounded away from the beach, scurried into the night, and headed swiftly inland toward the provisional encampments, bent on wholesale slaughter.
And still, there were countless ships sailing their way.
Noticing the breach in the defensive battle line, Damian had called frantically to his brother for help: “Dante! Go after them! Don’t let them get away! If they reach the settlements, they’ll murder everyone in sight, and other shifters will follow. I’m fine. We’ll be fine!”
Prince Drake, who had been facing off with a ten-foot serpent, its powerful tail coiled around his legs, had nodded with fury. “Go, Dante. You’re faster than me.” He hadn’t needed to say the rest: and Damian is better equipped to control our shades and warlocks.
Although Dante hadn’t liked the idea of leaving his brothers alone, he’d had no other choice. Damian had been right. If the shifters made it to the temporary encampment—or worse, if they made it to the actual settlements—there would be a night of mourning like nothing the Realm had ever seen. The dead would be too numerous to count.
Hesitating just long enough to see Drake dispatch the serpent, Dante had slowly nodded his head. “Father will be here at dawn,” he’d reminded his brothers, as well as the courageous soldiers, and then he’d slipped into the night.
Now, as he broke through a thick patch of brush and entered a small circular clearing, just yards away from the traders’ ravine, a shocking and terrifying sight drew his attention away from his quarry.
Mina Louvet!
Damian’s Sklavos Ahavi.
Standing beneath the low-hanging branches of a maple tree, wearing a simple, dark brown doublet cross-laced with black threads, over a plain white underskirt, the attire of a house-servant, and she was facing off with a warlock and a shade.
What the hell was going on?
“You took my sister, and I want her back. We can either make a trade—my sister for my silence—or we can split hairs over the details and both get caught, in which case, we all die at the hands of our beloved prince. The choice is yours, and I don’t have a lot of time.” She was nearly trembling with barely leashed rage, yet she held her chin at an authoritative angle and tapped her foot on the ground with impatience. She was clearly desperate and channeling her fear.
Before Dante could make sense of the strange meeting—how the hell had Mina made it to the traders’ camp, and what the heck did she hope to accomplish, other than losing her life?—the two escaped shifters sprang from behind a nearby bush, one of them lunging toward the shadow, the other charging at Mina.
Dante sprang into action as if he had been born for this moment, careening into the werecat’s side and knocking him off target, pitching him away from the Sklavos Ahavi. The cat shifted position in midair, rotated its flexible spine so it could lunge at Dante’s throat, and forced them both downward toward the ground. The moment they hit dirt, the shifter sank its lethal fangs deep into Dante’s neck and began to tear at his flesh.
Dante stiffened and let out a roar, his inner dragon consumed with rage.
Shocked by the ferocity of his own feral nature, Dante jolted and bucked as a spiked tail shot forth from the base of his spine, crackled through the air like a brandished whip, and wrapped around the shifter’s neck with lethal dexterity and ease. Dante tightened his grip on the Lycanian’s throat, choked off the beast’s air, and yanked the werecat backward with his tail as he dislodged the wicked fangs. Wielding his tail once more, this time as a lever, he coiled it around the werecat’s waist, spun him onto his back, and pounced on top of him, glaring into his eyes with a matching bestial stare. He sucked in a deep breath of air and sent it back as a blistering column of fire, scorching the werecat’s features from the surface of his face.
Dante’s own wounds healed instantly, even as the werecat’s skull began to melt.
Yet it wasn’t enough.
Not nearly enough…
The beast had to die!
He had
threatened the dragon’s female.
“Mine,” Dante snarled in a red delusional haze, and then he dipped his head down to the shifter’s chest, released his own lethal fangs, and tore out the Lycanian’s heart with his teeth. In the space of a moment, he shot into the air, coiled like a serpent about to strike, and hurled his body at the second Lycanian, who was now devouring the shade. With one angry swipe of his claws, Dante punctured the beast from the side, wrapped his fist around the knobby spine, and yanked, removing the vertebrae from the shifter’s body.
The Lycanian sank to the ground, eyes still open wide in death, and the dragon whipped his head around in a daze, unconsciously retracting his tail.
Humans were rushing from the encampment, heading toward the fray, gawking in fear and surprise, even as the warlock sidled up behind the female, trying to conceal something in his right hand.
A knife?
Was he going to stab her?
“Go back!” Dante roared at the crowd, his voice bellowing like thunder. “The next human who so much as glances this way goes up in flames!” As the ferocity of his wrath shook the ground, and the crowd took off running in the opposite direction, Dante took three long strides toward the Warlochian, crushed the hand that was holding the blade, and sank his fangs deep into the thick, ridged collarbone, just beneath the warlock’s throat.
The dragon’s female screamed as he drank, inhaling blood, heat, and essence.
“My prince, please, stop! Don’t kill him.”
The dragon dismissed her pleas, intent on destroying this thing that had dared to threaten what was his.
“Dante!” Her voice was growing louder—frantic—more insistent. “Oh gods, Dante, please. He took Raylea! He has my sister! Or at least he might know where she is. The girl who gave you the doll—he made her a slave. If you kill him, I’ll never find her. Please, Dante; stop!”
The dragon snarled with displeasure and sucked even harder.