“Shame to waste you, stud, but I have my orders. It’s okay,” she soothed him. “Look at the bright side, at least you know you’ll die with a huge sin on your head and no chance to repent. Aww, don’t look like that,” she purred, actually cooing at him as she had once seen Winifred do to Friedlow. “Light won’t be that bad, I’m sure. M’gnone will eagerly gobble up the soul of a priestly morsel like you, all tarnished and tortured.” She met his eyes with total sincerity then. “Are you ready to die?” she asked softly.
He pushed aside the pain to understand she was trying to save his life by what she was doing. Or somebody’s life. He gave her a curt nod. “Do your worst, bitch,” he coughed out, blood tart on his tongue and appearing on his lips. He saw her hesitate when she saw it, but this time he dug his fingers into her thigh cruelly to force her to act.
“When I pull this out,” she noted with an amazing dispassion that did not match her worried eyes, “you will bleed to death in an instant. Any last words?”
“Yeah,” he forced out in a gurgle. “Get the fuck off my dick, k’ypruti.”
She laughed at that, actually. Really laughed. He had meant to crack as wise as he could, the urge to alleviate her emanating guilt so very strong. Brendan watched Daenaira slowly come around from her amusement.
“Don’t feel so bad, lover,” she all but hummed, her tawny eyes picking his up with incredible specificity of intent. “You’ll be in good company today. They will mourn your death beside Sagan’s and Magnus’s, two of the greatest priests in Sanctuary. They will count you a hero for giving your life in the slaughter that brought them down. Regardless of your shame, no one will remember you that way except for those who find you here. Naked, soiled, and sated.”
She paused long enough to blow him a kiss in the air, and then yanked the sai free while dismounting him in a single fluid movement. He thrashed, the pain excruciating, and tried to suck for the breath to scream out, but she had punctured his left lung. Brendan gasped weakly, suffocating in blood, and not needing for a single instant to pretend like he was dying…
Because he was.
Dae ran out of the bedroom and into the bath. She fought the urge to wash herself clean beneath her skirts. She was choking on guilt, fear, and emotion, but she could feel Nicoya watching, could feel her gloating, and it made her sick. She had shamed Brendan, and then she had wounded him so badly he might die by her hand after all. She had tried to angle toward his shoulder, but she’d been off and she knew what the blood on his lips meant. Still, she pushed her devastation stubbornly aside. She wouldn’t show a flicker of remorse to Nicoya. She simply couldn’t afford to. All she could do was pray it wasn’t obvious to the bitch how distressed she truly was. Dae knew she would have to be very clever or she would be dead—and so would Sagan, Brendan, and Magnus. This corruption did not end with Nicoya. Someone had killed Tiana while Nicoya and Shiloh were busy elsewhere. That person could help Nicoya in her quest to destroy everything.
And gods forbid Magnus should fail in his battle and fall to Shiloh!
No. She had to have faith that would never happen. Shiloh would not hurt anyone else ever again. She knew Magnus, and even if he were about to die, he would take Shiloh’s evil with him. That much was over and done with.
Except the idea of Magnus dying made her physically sick to her stomach. Another emotion she had to swallow down as she paused to wash blood from her hands and the sai. Above the sink was a mirror, and she simply knew that it was one of the viewing portals into this room. She could hear Brendan gasping, growing weaker and weaker, but there was nothing she could do.
Nothing.
She needed to force herself to think of all of the lives that would be ruined if Nicoya got control of Sanctuary. Church and State would eventually go to war as the power-hungry handmaiden tried to rule more than just her roost. She would never be satisfied with Sanctuary if she thought she could have their entire world.
Daenaira ran from Brendan’s rooms into the corridor, her hands still wet as she wiped them and her sai against her skirt. Nicoya appeared moments after she did, her sword sheathed and her eyes shining with delight. She clapped like a child ready to open a gift, bouncing in her merriment.
“That was gorgeous! Did you see the look on his face? I loved it! I must say, disappointing ride for you, wasn’t it? Short fused, hmm? Where was all that blessed control these men are supposed to be taught when they are young?”
Daenaira shrugged and sheathed her sai nonchalantly. “I think it’s been a while for him, that’s all. Nice, fine cock in any event. Rather hated to not give him a second run. But you said we had things to attend to?”
“Mmm, so I did. I am going to go after Sagan. You find somewhere to wait for Magnus. Best wash up, though. He’ll smell another man on you and that will be the end of it.”
“Trust me, he’ll never know,” Daenaira assured her. “Are you certain you can handle Sagan on your own? Don’t need my help?”
“Oh, I’ll be fine. Besides, we’re never alone. After all, I have Drenna and M’gnone on my side, now don’t I?” She winked broadly. Then, with a laugh, she turned and lightly ran down the corridor toward wherever it was that she sensed Sagan to be.
Nicoya’s third power was Daenaira’s curse. She couldn’t go back to Brendan or do anything to save his life. She knew as well as she knew her own heartbeat that Nicoya would be tracking her every movement to make certain she didn’t betray her in any way.
Fighting the horrible urge to scream and weep all at once, she forced herself to walk away from Brendan’s rooms without looking back. There was one thing Nicoya was all too right about. The last thing she wanted was to encounter Magnus while she smelled of another man. She felt suddenly ashamed and dirty for what she had done, the guilt of tempting a good man beyond his tolerances weighing on her like nothing she had ever felt before. She had hurt people very badly in the past—physically, that is—and had never regretted it. This was something else entirely, and she felt it like a stain on her soul. And that wasn’t even taking into consideration that she knew he was dying as she left him alone. All she could do was pray that the rapid healing of his body was enough to sustain him until help arrived.
She began to pray.
True, heartfelt prayer with hope and faith she had never felt before poured out of her soul and whispered past her lips. Hera had taught her prayers, and she had learned them, but she had repeated them all by rote, never feeling the passion she had seen in so many others in the temple. But she felt it now. She had to believe with all of her heart and soul that evil could not be let loose so easily on the world of her people. Not when there were those like Magnus and the twin regents who were trying so hard to make it a better place. A place where hidden slavery could be abolished one day. A place where anyone, even the most insignificant woman in the most concealed corner of the world, could suddenly rise up and find a purpose, and yes, even happiness. Before this day had turned so critically wrong, she had been honestly happy.
She rounded the corridor hall and crashed full force into Magnus.
He grabbed hold of her arms, steadying her even as he stared at her. Relief entered his golden eyes, and his entire body seemed to shake with repressed emotion as he suddenly dragged her up against him.
She hugged him as tightly as he hugged her, gratitude and joy at seeing him alive and completely uninjured flooding through her and rushing the urge to sob up on her all over again. She could smell the amazing richness of his skin, dosed with the cold of the outdoors and the thickness of adrenaline. She breathed deeply of him, resisting the urge to weep. She had so much she needed to do before she allowed herself the luxury of falling apart. But something about the sanctity of his arms around her made her feel…
Brendan.
The scent of the other priest on her skin rose up to interfere with her intake of Magnus’s wonderful aroma and suddenly she lurched back away from him, tearing out of his hold and backing up. Of course, it would do little good u
nless she went far enough away, but it wasn’t about that. It was about touching him, soiling him with the body that now, she felt, had betrayed him. She hadn’t had sex with Brendan, but it was as good as—or so it felt. But the worst part was knowing she had pushed his closest friend in Sanctuary into humiliating disloyalty against him.
And Magnus had already been betrayed enough to jade him forever.
“Dae?” he asked, confusion rushing over him as he stepped closer to her. She hastily backed away, holding out a hand to stay him even while she wrapped the other around herself in protective dismay.
“No. Don’t touch me.”
Her words lashed at him, and she saw ghastly pain fly through his golden irises. She hadn’t meant it that way! Gods, there was nothing she wanted more than to be held by him right then. His embrace had such power to make everything seem like it would be brought to heel and calmed just because he was there!
“Brendan,” she said in strangled dismay. “He’s dying. Magnus, you have to go. Help him! I need to…I have to find Sagan.”
She needed to back up the other warrior. There was nothing she could do for Brendan. Magnus was what Brendan needed. Sagan would need a fighter.
“Dae, what in Light are you talking about?” he demanded.
“Brendan is dying! In his rooms! Please help him!” she cried in a panic, jerking away when he tried to capture her again. Then she was running down the hallway away from him, leaving him with an untenable circumstance.
Brendan was dying?
The words echoed through him with a strange sense of surreal impossibility. What did Brendan have to do with this epic battle? Why would Nicoya take the time to hurt him? Where was Nicoya now?
All these questions and more reeled through him, but he knew he had no choice. He had to let Daenaira go while he went to see if his friend needed his help. Whatever was upsetting her, she was alive and well. She could wait, even if it screamed against every fiber of his being to do it.
Magnus rushed down to Brendan’s rooms.
He didn’t bother to knock, bursting into Nan’s old chamber and cutting through the bath to find Brendan. He was halfway there when the dark tang of blood struck him.
Oh gods.
He broached the doorway to Brendan’s chamber and instantly saw his friend sprawled back across his bed, but what he’d heard first was the tortured gasps that weakly attempted to draw air into his damaged body. Magnus had heard that sort of deathly rattle before and knew, even before he reached his friend, that he was almost out of time.
“Brendan! What—?”
Magnus had knelt on the bed and was reaching out toward the wound killing his friend, his instinct to cover the spot where blood was bubbling in mixture with air as it escaped his chest.
But he froze.
He froze because there was the sudden, pungent aroma of sex beneath that rusty odor of blood. And he realized that he could all too easily identify at least half of the combination.
Brendan reached out, grabbing desperate hold of his sleeve, using what had to be the very last of his strength to force Magnus’s attention onto him. But the senior priest found himself all but blind with fury, hurt, and utter devastation.
This is why she didn’t want me to touch her.
“What did you do,” he heard himself snarl out as various unrealized clues filtered into him. The scent of blood and Brendan on Daenaira. The wound Brendan bore and the two smaller punctures on either side of it that marked it as caused by a sai. The sai he had made for her. Daenaira had run Brendan through, mortally wounded him, and it was clear she had done so just after some kind of sexual encounter. She had left him lying there, naked and dying, and had escaped him.
“No,” Brendan gurgled when he saw the dawning realization in his friend’s gold eyes and the contempt and rage that was bursting up behind it. “Not what you think.” Oh, he might die, Brendan thought fiercely, but he would not do so before he made his friend understand Daenaira was not to blame; that she had had no choice. He believed that with everything inside of himself. “My fault,” he gasped weakly. “This…my fault.”
“Then I assure you, it is exactly what I think,” Magnus growled in vicious threat. “And you should be very glad you are already nearly dead.”
Brendan’s mind was hazed with pain, muddled with onrushing unconsciousness, but he suddenly understood that Magnus thought he had forced himself on Daenaira. His eyes widened in horror at the very idea, and he tried to push away the feeling of hurt that rushed through him to think his best friend would think him capable of such a heinous act. It was easy enough to do, however, when he knew what he had done was just as bad. At least, it was to his mind.
He shook his head, tightening his grip on Magnus’s arm.
“It was an act…” he rasped. “Someone…”
“An act?” Magnus hissed, leaning over him and baring his teeth as he came within inches of his face. “You smell of my woman and are drenched in your own spent seed. At least one of you was not acting.”
Brendan could only nod curtly. He couldn’t deny that.
“Watching,” he finished his original thought. “Someone was watching. Dae…no choice. Don’t let her…blame herself…when I die.”
Watching. Someone was watching.
The words drilled through the black and red wall of outrage suffusing all of Magnus’s senses and thoughts. Alarms rang through him as everything he’d learned from Shiloh resurfaced to combine with his understanding that there had been no sign of Nicoya when he’d found Dae. Somehow, she had managed to free herself from the dangerous and treacherous handmaiden. But how?
He got the overwhelming feeling he needed to think faster, that he was being slow and dumb at the worst possible moment. Grinding his teeth together, he reached and sealed a harsh hand over the wound in Brendan’s chest. The other man groaned at the agony, but his next breath came a little bit easier, though it still rattled with fluid.
“The truth,” Magnus growled in demand, his contact more than enough to compel the other man. “Did you force her?”
“No. An act. I swear.” Brendan’s eyes reflected his desperation that Magnus believe him. “I…lost control. Not her fault. Not her fault.” He sucked for waning breath. “This sin is mine. I beg you…” Another weak breath. “Forgive. Absolve.”
Magnus stared down at him hard. He knew Brendan spoke with truth and sincerity. The other priest knew he was dying and wanted absolution for the sin he’d committed against his mentor. He wanted to be forgiven by the ones he had offended with…
Was it lust? Dishonor? Betrayal? All of those? What in Light had happened between him and Daenaira? Clearly, whatever it was had shamed her because she had forced herself away from his touch. And yet, she had desperately begged him to help save the life of a man she had apparently tried to kill. It made no sense! The only one besides Daenaira who could make sense of it was Brendan, who could barely speak. Magnus reconciled to being left in the dark for the time being. No matter what, Brendan was seeking repentance, and that could not be ignored. It was true, sincere, and everything he knew Brendan to be…
He couldn’t have imagined how hard it would be to push down the choking territorial wrath that barked and snarled in his head in response to the scent of his woman all over this man, but he managed it somehow and reached for the handset of the telephone without letting go of Brendan’s wound. It wasn’t until he had finished calling for medical assistance that he remembered one crucial detail.
“Why is she looking for Sagan?” he asked aloud, not even intending to include Brendan in his thoughts.
“Next…victim.”
He looked down on Brendan with doubt. He made it sound as if Dae were following some kind of hit list. No. He didn’t know what had happened here to cause this mess, but he would never believe she was going around picking off priests like ducks in a shooting gallery.
No. Not her.
Nicoya.
“Oh fuck! Fuck me!” He exploded in
movement, as if he wanted to run away, but his hand was glued to the chest of a dying man. That little fool! She had discarded him and sent him to be nursemaid while she went and fought against a threat which she had no real concept of! He’d been so mottled up with emotions that he’d just been relieved to see her alive and unharmed. Damn her!
Brendan made a sound.
Magnus glared at him when he realized it was a weak little chuckle. Brendan’s eyes spoke volumes of amusement as he watched Magnus twist in the wind over this insane, stupid little girl who was going to get herself killed.
“I’m glad you find this so amusing,” Magnus barked down at him. “She’s going to get herself killed! Nicoya was the one probably watching you both, by the way, and it turns out she has been the one doing all of the penance assignments I was giving to Shiloh! She has turned herself into a warrior and given him the credit for it. Now Daenaira is off chasing her down, thinking she can keep her from causing any more damage!”
Now Brendan’s eyes cleared of amusement and rounded with worry. He grabbed Magnus’s hand with limp fingers and tried to push him off his chest.
“Go,” he croaked.
“No.”
Yes!
Magnus frowned. He shook his head when his brain cried out in opposition.
“You’ll die if I leave you now, and I know Dae didn’t want that,” he said. He swallowed thickly. “They’ll be here for you soon. She’s okay. She’s—”
He stopped speaking because suddenly he couldn’t breathe. He had never known such overwhelming emotion in all of his life. He felt as if it were too much, that he was on an overload he just couldn’t handle. The feeling of utter helplessness and devastation was so alien and so unwanted. How? How had this happened to him? Why had this happened to him? What in the names of both his gods were they trying to tell him? To teach him? What purpose could all of this serve? All of this…fear?
He was numb and on autopilot by the time help arrived for Brendan. He simply dropped his hand from his peer and turned and walked out without a single word to answer the questions the healers were flinging at him. He had no time for them. For anything. Time, he realized, had run out the moment she had left him in Dreamscape. He should never have let her go. And once he found her, he never would again.