Hels's Gauntlet [Forbidden Legacy 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (21 page)

“God, you’re a pushy bastard. Bound or not, I told you, I’m not going down on my knees for you.” Blood flew like spittle from Jacob’s mouth.

He was drowning in his own blood. Raw fury pierced Helcyon’s reserve, and he clenched his will on the tattoo. His thumb snapped back into place, and his nerves screamed until another utter oblivion threatened.

I am the master of my own destiny.
He couldn’t spare the breath to say the words out loud.
I am the master of my body. Heal.
His fingers flexed, sensation stealing up his arm until his biceps bulged.

His sweat-slicked back scraped against the wall, and his tattoo began to inch upward. Ignoring the protest in his shoulders, he snapped his right hand out and closed his palm around the hilt of his sword. He drew it from the air. He sliced down to sever the chains attached to his shackled ankles.

Weaving unsteadily, he walked forward a step. The iron points of the metal cilices ripped his flesh with every motion, but he ignored them and pulled his left arm taut so he could sever that chain. Cramps bunched his muscles, and he sucked in several deep, noisy breaths. The discipline of training kept him on his feet even when he wanted to collapse. His hand cramped on the sword, but he adjusted his grip and didn’t allow it to fall.

Limping, he shuffled along the wall and wedged his blade between the chains holding Jacob’s arms above his head. The magic infused blade hesitated against the cold iron, but cut through them neatly.

“Ow.” Jacob cursed as his arms fell and he slumped sideways. “A little warning next time—” The words choked off on a soaking, wet rasp as he heaved up another mouthful of blood.

Dropping to his knees, Helcyon ignored the blood running down his thighs and dragged Jacob upright. He switched the sword to his left hand. “I told you not to die. That was all the warning you needed.”

Grabbing Jacob’s chin in his fingers, he studied the Wizard’s glazed eyes. The brown in them retreated behind the widening pupils. He was in shock. The bond between them flared at the contact of skin on skin. Jacob’s injuries scrolled through his mind. His vital organs were shutting down. His heart beat a slow, sonorous rhythm barely keeping time with the sloppy, sticky breaths.

“Get off me.” Jacob tried to push his hand away, but Helcyon ignored the tug on his arm.

“Jacob, do you accept me as your lord?” Helcyon dug his fingers into Jacob’s jaw, pinching him. He gave him a hard shake. “Answer me, Jacob. Do you accept me as your liege lord, knowing that the bond between us must go both ways, your life for mine, my life for yours.”

“Get off me, Hels. I’m dying, the least you can do is leave me what is left of my pride. Get the fuck out of here and get our girl.” Raw fury lifted the volume in his words, but Jacob couldn’t pull his face free.

Helcyon leaned in, slanting his mouth across Jacob’s blood-stained one and pushed life into him, forcefully. The Wizard went from quiescent to struggling. His fist bunched around Helcyon’s wrist, and he jerked himself free.

“What the fuck!” The expletive wasn’t a question.

Grimly, Helcyon swooped back in and pushed more power from his wavering center into Jacob. He needed the Wizard awake and aware. Furious would work.

Jacob bit down on Helcyon’s lip, drawing blood, and punched a fist toward his chest. The weak blow glanced off him, but Helcyon released him.

“Knock that shit off, Hels. I don’t swing that way.” Better. He sounded better.

“Good. Then will you accept me as your liege lord, will you swear to Sword and Sun that you will follow me, give your life for mine, take my life for yours, bind yourself forever and always?”

“Really not the time for a marriage proposal,” Jacob grumbled and leaned away to spit the blood from his lips.

“Jacob, you’re dying. What I just did is masking that, but I can’t save you if you don’t let me. I can’t heal you, just as I couldn’t heal Cassandra from her injuries.” Desperation abraded his soul.

Jacob leaned his head back against the wall. “Death isn’t the reason I should make that oath. It’s binding, forever and always, and we don’t always get along.”

“No, we don’t,” Helcyon agreed. “But I respect you. I respect your strength, your knowledge, and your skill. You have sacrificed much of what you believed to be ‘truth’ to love our lady. You have stood by my side in battle and turned away from your hate and your anger to protect me. You have fought against your own, and you allowed me to enter that protected circle of friends you maintain. I am already in your heart, Jacob. Loving Cassandra gave us the chance to become friends. Now I am asking you to become my brother, now and forever.”

“Liege lord isn’t a brother. It’s a master.” Caution tensed the lines around Jacob’s eyes.

“It is what we make it to be. Would that I could give you the time you need to reconcile this choice, but your life is slipping through our fingers. Don’t make us live without you.” Helcyon hesitated, the thought bitter against his palate. “Accept me now, let me save you, and as the Gods are my witness, if you wish your freedom later, we will find a way to break that bond. You will be bound for as long as you wish it and not a moment longer.”

No liege lord allowed his supplicants to leave him. To do so would diminish Helcyon. He would fade. His immortality traded for a mortal life, but it could be done. He would do that for Jacob.

He would give up eternal tomorrows for a handful of years if the man would just damn well take it.

Jacob stared at him, his pupils contracting and expanding with every breath. “Can I trust you?”

“Yes.”

“Swear on the life of your unborn child that you will honor that promise if I request it.”

His child
. Helcyon’s heart contracted. His and Cassandra’s child needed them to live. That baby needed Jacob as well as himself.

“I swear on the life of my child, be it male or female, Wizard or human, I will give you your freedom no matter the cost to me personally. My life for yours Jacob, your life for mine.”

The Wizard closed his eyes, his labored breathing shallow again.

“I will accept you as my liege lord. You will have my loyalty, my fidelity, my honor, and my fraternity. My life for yours, Lord Helcyon, your life for mine.”

Relief swamped him and tears burned in his eyes at the old oath, albeit modified to more modern language, whispered from the dying Wizard’s lips. The silver bond within flared, trembling with life as it strummed a solemn tone. Images flooded into Helcyon’s mind. He saw Jacob’s birth, his first step, the first moment power flooded his body, the day he accepted Domoir, his first wife, the birth of his child, and the death of that child at a young age. He felt the man’s relief when his second born survived what the first did not, and more. Jacob’s life opened to him, spreading out in a cascade of images, hopes, and regrets. Peace rattled the chains of worry from his heart.

“This will hurt, my friend. But take my oath, my allegiance, and my stewardship. Live for me.”

It would do more than hurt. It would be agonizing. He planted his right hand against Jacob’s chest, over his heart. The black tattoo swirled in a roping pattern around his bicep, traveling to his forearm, and along his fingers until it drove into Jacob’s skin.

The Wizard screamed.

Anguish clutched Jacob’s soul. Paroxysms of pain stabbed through his chest, fisted around his heart, and flowed into his blood with every pump of the vital organ. He couldn’t breathe, lost in a turbulent ocean of insanity. His muscles jerked left, his bones snapped, and his soul peeled open as though afflicted by road rash.

Spots sparkled and danced in front of his eyes. Welcome oblivion hovered on the fringes of his awareness, but refused to suck him under. His teeth throbbed. His eyes ached. His skin burned. And still, the onslaught continued.

This wasn’t living.

This was Hel.

He blinked, and the world snapped from his fire-infused torture to a verdant green field, the farmland rich and ripe with the kiss of dew scenting the air. He tipped his head back, soaking up the sun warming his flesh. He lived for days like these, when the battlefield did not beckon and he could spare the time to visit.

Below the meadow where he basked in the sun, a lone farmhouse stood. A woman exited the door with a basket of laundry tucked under one arm. Her dress swirled around her ankles as she dodged the eager toddler racing out in his linen britches. The boy’s excited expression seemed matched only by the beast of a dog racing out to join them.

He grinned at the beautiful lady, with her dark brown hair piled high atop her head. She lived a simple life in her valley, far from the vagaries of the Courts. Like her neighbors, she raised crops to feed her family and tended a few animals. Her son raced toward the open grass, tumbling along with his dog, the animal’s great bushy head bobbing with every stride.

His son.

He sighed. The boy grew taller every time he saw him. The urge to descend into the valley and hoist the youngster high was a desperate ache in his chest. But he dared not call attention to him. The Lords of Wind and Water sought any weakness to slice away the borders of his territory. The aging King wasn’t interested in the settling of disputes. In fact, during the last great council meeting when acrimony tore at their fragile threads of alliance, the King dismissed them all to solve the issue on their own.

That resolution called for war seemed to trouble the dotty old man not one whit. The birth of a daughter consumed the man’s attention, and the Royal Court insulated itself against outside troubles, doling all their attention on that infant. He’d seen the babe just once during the fealty ceremony where the King demanded a pledge from every Lord to protect his newborn princess.

A confirmed bachelor, Helcyon resisted the urge of his brethren to seek betrothal with the infant. His mind and soul shied away from even that simple prospect. It mattered little that she would be betrothed a dozen times before she achieved her majority as was the custom of royal alliances. Helcyon did not want to be bound to the princess in that fashion.

Decided, he refused to examine his motivations any deeper. Not when the boy throwing a stick for his dog to fetch held his heart fast. He’d never longed for children, and he never understood why he’d descended to the outer villages during that Beltane three years past, but he found Katherine dancing in rounds about the fire and he’d allowed himself to seduce her.

Three nights of pleasure he rested in her arms, three nights of respite from politics, war, and bloody backstabbing. The sweet girl surrendered so beautifully, and it cost him to leave her. It cost him deeper still when a chance visit revealed her pregnancy to him during the harvest celebrations.

His son.

Snatches of the boy’s laughter rode the breeze to taunt him. He’d never longed for a child before Tristram came into the world. Now he thought of little else. His son, like all Fae sons, would ascend to his power in his sixteenth or seventeenth summer. When that time came, he could claim him. He would teach him everything he knew, strengthen his magic, and he would put the world at the boy’s feet.

Until then, all he could offer him was the safety of anonymity where no recalcitrant Lord could strike him down to punish Helcyon for a victory in the Court or on the battlefield. He feasted his soul a moment longer and forced himself to go, leaving as unnoticed as he arrived.

The next three years passed in a haze of bloody, filthy battles. When the Lord of Wind capitulated, the Lord of Water sought parlay. It took months to resolve the treaties, but the war finally ended. Helping his people to rebuild, mourn their dead, celebrate their births, and strengthen their resources consumed him. What few Wizards served him were scattered across his widening territories. He trusted so few in his inner council. Recent gains demanded more attention, and he charged each Wizard the task of locating new acolytes they could train.

Even now, his seventeen-year-old nephew, recently arrived at Helcyon’s court, settled himself into his appointed rooms. Kyrian begged him to give the boy safety and lodging. The young Wizard, barely awoken to his new power, would be trained. If he proved himself, then Helcyon would accept him as supplicant and sworn Wizard.

But that remained decades away. Helcyon disguised himself in glamour and headed to the hill country. He wanted to see his son. He needed to see the boy, and he would be a boy now, a boy of five and one half summers. He would see the glimmers of the man he would become.

He rode with impatience, forcing himself to take human routes, aware that spies could be anywhere. If any chanced upon him, they would believe he looked after all his people. It was what he did. The end of war did not extinguish the danger to his child.

The sun sank low on the horizon when he rode into the meadow above the homey little cottage. Dread curled through him. No smoke piped from the chimney. The field next to the home lay fallow, strewn with weeds and wild grass.

Helcyon straightened in the saddle. A shutter hung askew, and the cottage door stood wide open. Dropping back into the seat, he kicked the horse into a fast canter and raced down. He reined as they neared the door and dismounted before the horse stopped completely. Long strides carried him to the doorway, and he pushed inside.