Drake of Tanith (Chosen Soul) (19 page)

“I know what my brother came to you about,” she continued, trying to give herself the strength to go on. She wasn’t supposed to be here. No Fae belonged in Abaddon. But then her brother was not supposed to have come either. The royal family was breaking all sorts of rules lately. She wondered how far it would go before everything… exploded. “And I know who you now seek.” She swallowed hard. “I have a proposition for you.”

The laughter was hard to make out at first, but it built slowly, surely, and soon it was wrapping itself around Zeta. It was like silk dipped in ice and flame, smooth and painful and chilling to the bone. Zeta hugged herself and briefly considered running. It was a mistake of enormous proportions to come here. What had she been thinking?

“Queen Zeta,” the voice said next. It dripped with a wealth of untold un-kindnesses. “How does that sound to you?” he asked as he slowly turned. Zeta sucked in a breath as the light touched the metal in his eyes and turned it to lightning. “Quite nice, I would imagine.” He smiled, stunningly, so ruggedly beautiful. And ridiculously deadly. “Good enough to risk your life by coming here.”

Only honesty will do
, she thought. “I would do anything,” she admitted calmly. At least she tried for calm. But she could hear her voice shake despite her attempts.

“Oh, I know,” he said easily. He stepped back – and Zeta blinked.

He’d disappeared. Zeta spun, instinct driving her movements. She had good instincts; she was an elf. And she was right. Darken’s tall form stepped slowly out of the shadow before her. He was now so much closer than he’d been before.

With every fiber of what will she had yet remaining, Zeta forced herself to remain still, to not step back.

“I’m listening,” Darken taunted, his silky voice low and promising.

Such dark promises….

Zeta swallowed hard, steeled her nerves, and said, “You want Raven Grey.”

No response. Darken’s eyes bored into her.

“You also want to be whole again. And I want to be queen. We can both get what we desire if you will do just one thing,” she told him.

Darken waited and the air became thick with the scent of his leather and the feel of his magic.

Zeta glanced to the right, and then to the left. What she was about to say next, she could barely find the strength to whisper. “Drake will become king when his father dies.”

Astriel would become king if Oberon were to leave the throne, whether living or otherwise. As far as Zeta and the political experience she’d garnered over the years were concerned, it was this way for the royalty in every realm. From father to son and on and on. She’d done a lot of thinking about fathers and thrones of late. And so it was with some clicking-in of the mechanisms of fate that this light of truth had dawned on her.

“And when that happens, he will become whole again,” she said. After she’d overheard her brother and her father speaking of Darken, Zeta had done a little research. She’d paid a visit to the ruined and abandoned library of the Blue Robes. She’d paid a few mages for some well-placed spells. Drake and Darken were indeed one, as Astriel had told Oberon.

And when Asmodeus died and Drake became king, Tanith would officially accept his place in Abaddon, repairing the soul he’d ripped in two when he’d turned away from his heritage and his land and left the nine circles of Hell. Darken would get what he wanted. Or part of it, anyway.

Darken’s lips turned up ever so slightly.

Zeta went on, encouraged now by the fact that she’d gotten the worst of it out and was still breathing. “You will be whole once more and more powerful than any other being in Abaddon. The king of Nisse can have anything he desires,” she said. “Including the daughter of Malphas.”

“And young Raven Grey,” Darken said, taking a step forward, “as the wife of the King of Nisse, will become an Abaddonian queen.”

Zeta lifted her chin, her gaze narrowing. Darken was way ahead of her, it would seem.

“And hence be forced to keep her end of a bargain that she so rashly made with a particular Fae princess,” he went on, the sound of hard, cold amusement lacing his deep tone. “Am I following you, your highness?”

“Perfectly,” Zeta said. There was no point in denying it. It was like he’d said. She would do anything to be queen. And when Raven Grey became the queen of Hell, she would have the power to wage war against the Fae kingdom should they not crown Zeta their queen.

Darken laughed again, low and mean as razor-edged silk. “Just checking.”

Chapter Eighteen

As the portal swirled to life in front of him, Drake looked down at the gem in the palm of his glove. It glowed bright red and pulsed in time with the forming portal. Their magic was linked. It was this way for unicorns; their nearly ethereal bodies existed in several planes at once, and so it was this particular type of legerdemain that they influenced. This was why a piece of their horn lent the user control over transportation magic.

Drake looked back up at the portal, squeezed the gem tight in his hand, and willed the magic to take him directly to Raven’s location.

Before him, the portal warped outward, growing temporarily brighter. Then it shifted, grayed out at its edges, and calmed down once more. Beyond its now settled rings, a misty land could be seen. Drake stared through the opening at this vast, meaningless, gray and white landscape and took a deep breath.

The portal beckoned, pulsing before him, and Drake didn’t hesitate. He could feel the coiling cruelty of the land that waited on the other side. He knew that it hungered for his sanity and that it wouldn’t be long before it had its way. Once he stepped through the transporting rings and into the mists of the Witherlands, he wouldn’t have much time to find Raven.

Quickly, he pocketed the ruby, jumped through the portal, and felt it tug at the fibers of his being. Transporting was hard on a body; it stretched and drained those who moved through its times and spaces. Drake took it in stride and prepared to land on his feet on the other side – when he sensed a disturbance in the waves of magic around him. They seemed to rip open, to be shoved aside as if something else was coming through after him.

Drake had barely enough time to process this and draw his sword before the portal was spitting him back out again and he was rolling forward across the marble-like ground and impenetrable mists of the Witherlands.

With expert ease, Drake came to his feet and spun.

And Darken laughed. “You should have just killed the unicorn, Drake. Would have saved you precious time, and I wouldn’t be here right now.”

Drake felt numb staring into his own features. He felt cold. He was gazing into the molten mercury of his worst fear, his most dreaded nightmare. He was looking at a part of himself he thought he’d left behind – and had never wanted to see again.

With resigned terror, he glanced down at the sword in Darken’s hands; it was the same as his own. He looked at the symbols on Darken’s armor, and as if to mock Drake, they mirrored the symbols on his own chest.

Drake took a step back. The mists of the Witherlands curled around his black clad legs. His mind told him Darken stood before him, and knowing how the Witherlands worked, his heart desperately wanted to believe that it was only this land’s inherent evil once more playing tricks on his brain.

But he’d felt the shift in the portal before coming through. And deep in that same heart, he knew the truth. The Witherlands might have loads of misery in store for him, but the one who stood before Drake then and there was no figment of his imagination. He was real enough.

Drake tried to think, to clear his mind of fear in order to make way for logic and planning.

Raven was somewhere nearby. He could feel her. He could almost smell her, like a whiff of promise and redemption in the land of the damned. The unicorn’s gem had worked, and the portal had brought him to the one he was seeking. But it had also brought Darken. He couldn’t call out to her now, no matter how near she may be. He couldn’t let her anywhere near him.

Darken looked down at his sword. And then, suddenly, he was sheathing it. Drake didn’t know what to make of the sudden action. He stood his ground, the hilt of his own sword gripped tightly in his gloved hand. He watched as Darken glanced at him, smiled a wry, devious smile that turned Drake’s stomach into lead, and pulled a second weapon from his shoulder.

Drake recognized this one. And when he did, the led his stomach had become began to rise up his gullet. It was a bow, one very familiar to Drake.

“Princess!” Darken called, his voice sounding far too much like Drake’s. Drake’s eyes widened.
No
, he thought. “Come this way!” Darken finished.

The bow belonged to a priest of Haledon. It belonged to Loki Grey.

“Drake!” came a response from somewhere in the mists. The female voice was a little unsure, a touch desperate, and very beautiful. Drake felt despair brush him then, and he closed his eyes.

“It was you who saved me from The Hunt,” he said softly. He now knew what had happened when he’d been hit and knocked unconscious. He now knew who it had been.

“You could have done it yourself if you hadn’t been so preoccupied – or weak,” Darken said, a slight reprimand lacing his words. “Love will ruin you, my friend. Luckily you have me to watch over you.”

Drake said nothing. He knew Darken was only taunting him, egging him on.

Darken sighed. “You would have been the catch of the century, Drake,” he said, an unspoken admiration in his tone. “With the madness of the Hunt upon you, you’d have carved a path of death to put all others to shame.” He shook his head. “You’d have been a contender for the position of Death God.” He squared Drake with a hard, meaningful look. “But that wouldn’t do. That isn’t your place, and you and I both know it.”

He hesitated, just a moment, before he raised his chin again and once more called out. “Raven! Over here!”

Drake’s heart skipped. “It’s to be like this then,” he said softly. If Darken had Loki’s bow – then he might have Loki as well. Drake and Raven had left them behind on the ground when the Hunt had come through.

And if Darken had Loki, then he had a bargaining chip that Drake could not compete with. Raven would do anything to save her brother. She would do whatever Darken told her to do.

In that instant, understanding dawned on Drake. He saw Darken’s plan as if it had been laid out before him on a table. It was a map outlined as clear as day, and the X that marked the spot was Drake’s doom.

Using Loki as bait, Darken would draw Raven to him. And then he would take her to Asmodeus. And Drake would have no choice but to do what his father wanted. Not if he followed his heart.

Darken was right. Love
was
to be his ruin.

“Imagine it, Drake. Hearing the clock strike twelve and knowing that your running is over. You’ll be king.” Darken laughed. “
I’ll
be king.”

“I
will
kill you, Darken,” Drake said.

Darken’s brow lifted. He appeared utterly unconcerned. It was chilling for Drake to look into this aspect of himself and see such cold, hard resolution. “And kill yourself?” Darken asked, clearly disbelieving.

A call came from the mists. “Drake?” Raven’s voice, closer this time. “Where are you?”

“Stay away!” Drake called out suddenly. It was all he could think of doing. Darken and he were matched in every aspect but one. Where Drake exercised restraint – Darken would not. He
could
not. It was not in his makeup.

Whether Raven heard or not, he didn’t know. He felt as if the entire realm were against him just then. And because his luck seemed headed that way, he was willing to bet that Raven either didn’t hear him, or was too stubborn to do what he said. They were both sunk.

“The bitch of it is, Drake,” said Darken now as he took a step forward and Drake took a step back. “Now that you see the error of your ways, it’s too late. You’ve already defied the old man. He’s through playing nice.” Darken shook his head, the expression on his handsome face both disappointed and determined. “He just wants to punish you now. And he knows exactly how to do it.”

There was a scrape of boot upon the ground behind Drake.

Suddenly, everything was happening too fast. Only the instinct in his blood was able to keep up. His movements blurred, as did Darken’s, and by some twist of incredible luck, he made it to Raven first.

She froze in his arms, something in her telling her not to struggle. Or maybe it was the shock ramrodding through her. After all, she was being held by him – and she was also staring at him where he stood several feet away, watching them both with cold metal eyes.

“Drake?” she whispered, the uncertainty painfully plain in her tone.

Darken wasn’t in a mood to fool around, apparently, because he immediately killed the game by lifting Loki’s bow so that she could plainly see it. “Come with me now, Raven, or I will kill your brother. Understand?”

Drake could feel the tension rip through the woman in his arms.

“Don’t listen to him, Raven. He would never do away with such a powerful playing card.”

Raven exhaled sharply, her breath shaky, her body now trembling. If he wasted the energy it would take to read her mind in that moment, he would most likely find her thoughts a jumbled mess. Drake was threatening her brother’s life. And Drake was telling her to ignore the threat. It was a terrifying, confusing game. But that was the Witherlands for you.

“Sure I would, Drake,” Darken shrugged, looking completely nonchalant. He turned to pace a few casual feet away. “After all, the priest isn’t the only one on the Terran realm that Raven cares for. And it’s always a good idea to do away with one hostage at the beginning, just so that everyone knows you're serious.”

In his arms, Raven’s body shuddered. “Let me go, Drake.”

Gods no
, Drake thought, his grip tightening. “They’ll kill you, Raven. Make no mistake.” If Asmodeus didn’t destroy her physically and snuff her out of existence, he would destroy her spiritually. Either way, the Raven he knew would be no more.