Mercenaries (21 page)

The bottom seemed to drop out of her stomach. “You're an Outworlder?” she asked numbly.

Then she pushed the idea away. He couldn't be, because if he was, he'd leave. Zaria squared her shoulders and gave him her best cold look. “No. Stop playing games, Sebastian. This is no time for your jokes.”

“I'm not joking.” And for once, there was no humor in his eyes at all. “Dominor Xarles Ferrau hired me to get his son away from your mother.”

She stared at him for a long, sick moment, trying to grasp the depth of his betrayal. “You're not a Thrall?”

“No. That was only my cover so I could get into the palace.”

“You lied to me!”

He shrugged. “A man's life was at stake.”

The anger drained away at those words, and Zaria slumped. He was right, curse him to the Ten Hells. “But why tell me? Why not just . . . do whatever you came here to do?”

His green gaze grew searching. “I wanted to give you the opportunity to help avert the war your mother is courting.” He stepped closer, and she looked up at him, feeling the ache grow in her chest. He wasn't hers, and now he never would be. “Help me free Arnoux, Zaria.”

“I can't,” she said numbly.

“You can. Particularly given that helping him escape might be the one thing that will keep his father from declaring war.” Sebastian's sensual mouth drew into a cold line. “Or would you rather watch men and women die for your mother's ego?”

She shook her head in despair. “What you're talking about is treason, Sebastian! She's not just my mother, she's my Dominess!”

Silence spun between them, swirling with tension and suppressed anger. His eyes seemed to freeze into green ice. “Fine.” He went to the chest where she kept her armor and dug through it. When he returned to Zaria again, he held a new set of leathers. “Come here.”

She took a wary step back. “What? Why?”

Sebastian looked at her, his face utterly without emotion. “If you won't help me voluntarily,” he said coolly, “you'll make an excellent hostage.”

Stunned and heartsick at his betrayal, Zaria didn't resist as he dressed her in her armor, his movements as impersonal as if she were a doll, even when he pulled the plug from her ass. He did not, however, offer to untie her wrists. She was surprised at how much his distance hurt.

Yet somehow she knew he wouldn't physically injure her.

And despite everything, she was very much concerned about what the palace guard might do to him. He was one man alone. One man against the three hundred who protected the Dominess.

Those weren't good odds, even for an Outworlder.

As Zaria watched Sebastian dress in the loincloth that was all a palace Thrall wore, images kept flashing through her mind: of sword wounds marring that magnificent chest, of his glorious hair matted in blood, of his green eyes blank in death.

She swallowed bile.

No,
Zaria told herself, fighting panic,
He's got some kind of Outworlder weapon hidden somewhere, something that will allow him to free the Domince and escape. They would hardly have sent him in alone otherwise.

Yet there was nothing on his body that looked like it could hide a weapon. Not even so much as an earring. “Are you . . . are you armed?” she blurted.

He lifted a brow at her and took a sword down from her weapons' rack. “I am now.”

“That's not enough, Sebastian. All the guards have swords.”

His smile stretched coldly in the frame of his goatee. “I also have you, darling. Let's go.” He reached for her.

“You can't parade me through the castle bound like this,” Zaria protested. “You'll never even make it to the Dominess's pleasure quarters.”

Sebastian hesitated a moment, frowning as he considered the point. Finally he stepped behind her. Cold steel brushed her wrists as he sliced her bonds with one easy pass of his blade. Before the relieved sigh was out of her mouth, however, he rested the sword lightly against her throat. “Bound or not, I suggest you remember you're a hostage.”

Zaria swallowed. “Even with me as a prisoner, they're not going to let you take the Domince.”

“Oh, I think they will.”

“But—”

“But nothing. I've got it all planned, my sweet. First, it's the middle of the night.” Looping his free arm around her waist, he drew her tight against his hard, powerful body. “Second, I've got the guard's patrol routes scanned and timed. Right now we have the perfect window of opportunity.” He angled the blade up, forcing her to lift her chin. “And finally,” he whispered in her ear, his voice silken and suggestive, “I have you.” His tone hardened. “Come along, my sweet. I'm sure the Domince is more than ready to go home.”

Sebastian lowered the sword and caught her shoulder, pushing her lightly toward the door. Despairing, she went where he directed.

Why did she feel so bereft? He had been with her barely two days. True, she'd been wildly attracted to him, but then, her mother surrounded herself with beautiful males, so it was more than that.

He was intelligent, though this scheme to march through the palace and liberate Arnoux smacked of recklessness. And she enjoyed his irreverent wit, even as it sometimes scandalized her.

But more than that, Zaria had felt a sense of kinship, despite the supposed difference in their respective status. He, too, did not seem to fit the role he'd been assigned: She'd never met a less submissive Thrall in her life. It had made her feel less alone, less . . . wrong to feel this hunger to submit to him.

But he hadn't been a Thrall at all, so she was once again alone in her deviance.

Yet . . . Zaria frowned, remembering what he'd said to her just before he'd revealed himself.
What we just did was a particularly delicious and arousing game. There wasn't a damn thing unnatural about it, any more than it's unnatural for two children to play starships and pirates.

Could he be right? After all, she felt no particular need to submit in the rest of her life. She commanded Dom and Thrall alike in the course of her duties and thought nothing of it.

But if it was all nothing more than a game, what did that say about the rest of her culture, with its castes of Dom and Thrall, its Dominesses and Dominors?

And how immoral
was
it to kidnap a man in order to sexually torture him into becoming a Thrall?

Suddenly Sebastian stopped, grabbing her shoulder to bring her to a halt. Jolted from her preoccupation, Zaria glanced around at him. “What—?”

“Shhh.” He was looking toward the head of the corridor, a hard, intense expression on his face.

Then she heard it—a rapid swish and crack, punctuated with soft male grunts of pain. A sound she knew too well: a cat-o'nine tails being used to beat a man.

And that meant . . .
That bitch.

Fury roared over Zaria, and she started forward, forgetting all about her status as a hostage. Sebastian dragged her back. “Let me go!” she snapped.

He didn't even glance at her as he frowned. “If that's Ferrau being beaten, my scans say he's in a bad way.”

“Of course he's in a bad way,” Zaria growled. “My idiot mother let my sadistic bitch of a sister have him! Let me go!”

ASTONISHED, Sebastian looked down at Zaria's small, furious face, then reluctantly released his grip on her arm. So much for that submissive streak. She promptly whirled and snatched the sword from his hand. Bemused, he let her take it.

“Come on, we've got to move fast,” she snapped, “or he's dead!”

“Lead the way.”

She sprinted off down the corridor with him striding at her heels. They rounded the corner to see two stone-faced guards standing before the Dominess's pleasure quarters. Zaria didn't even break step as she headed for the double doors.

The two men automatically drew their blades and moved to block her. Sebastian swore softly as his heart jammed into his throat.

He knew he shouldn't have armed the little lunatic.

“
O
UT of my way!” Zaria snarled, lifting her weapon.

Both guards looked uncomfortable, probably not sure how to handle their sweet little Domina in what appeared to be a homicidal rage.

One of them stuttered, “But . . . but, Domina, the Domina Marcelle left orders she is not to be disturbed.”

“I'm sure she did, the sadistic bitch. Stand clear!”

“Domina . . .”

It was time for a little strategic intervention. Putting on his best expression of diffident concern, Sebastian shouldered between them and Zaria. “Now, mistress,” he began, “these men are only doing their . . .” Spinning, he slammed his fist into the first guard's jaw. The man went down like a sack of meal, knocked cold by nanotech-enhanced strength.

Before the second could bring his weapon into play, Sebastian grabbed his sword hand and twisted. Something snapped wetly, and the guard howled in astonished agony. The cry cut off as another hard punch put him down on top of his partner.

He turned to see Zaria staring at him with startled respect. “Well,” she said finally, “I don't suppose you did need a weapon.”

Before he could reply, a male voice screamed beyond the double doors, the sound raw with suffering.

ZARIA spun and jerked at the double doors, but they didn't budge. “She's got them bolted,” she said, wincing as another savage swish and crack sliced the air.

“Let me worry about that.” Sebastian lifted one muscled leg. She opened her mouth to warn him about the door's steel-reinforced core and frame; there was no way he could kick it open.

Then his bare foot hit the portal with a thunderous boom. Wood splintered, steel hinges and bolts shrieked, and the door toppled in with a crash. She heard Marcelle's started yelp.

Reminded of her fury, Zaria ducked around Sebastian and plunged inside to find Marcelle gaping at her, a bloody whip hanging forgotten in one hand.

Arnoux was chained to one of the room's marble pillars. Her stomach twisted at the condition of his back. If anything, he was in even worse shape than the Thrall she'd rescued a couple of days before. They had to get him to the Outworlders or he wouldn't live out the night.

“What are you doing here, Zaria?” Marcelle demanded, lifting the whip threateningly. If she'd noticed her sister was armed, it didn't seem to worry her.

Zaria fell into guard, sword held at a threatening angle. “Give me the key to those shackles, Marcelle.”

The Domina gaped at her demand. “I will not!” she spat. “I told Mother I would break Arnoux to the collar, and I won't stop until I have.”

“Think, you vicious little fool,” Zaria snapped, out of patience with her family's blind indifference to reality. “If you kill him, his father will raze this palace to the ground and murder every last one of us!”

Marcelle's eyes flickered, but she quickly recovered enough to sneer. “When I've broken him to the collar, he'll say he enjoyed it.”

“No!” Arnoux's voice was weak with pain and blood loss, but there was hate in the look he cast them over one bloody shoulder. “I will never yield to you, bitch. Never. Never.
Never!
” The last word was a hoarse bellow.

“All right, I've had enough of this.” Sebastian stalked over to the other man, wrapped a big hand in one of the shackles, and jerked. Its chain snapped with a musical clink. Arnoux's eyes widened.

“What?” The word was a shriek as Marcelle whirled toward the two men. “You dare!” She lifted the cat to strike.

Zaria lunged to grab the lash, jerking the whip from her sister's hand. “You will
not
touch him!”