Release (6 page)

Ariana wrinkled her nose. “How would that work?” She took another drink of champagne.

Risciter opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted by a muffled roar of rage from Keirth, who’d regained consciousness and was now struggling against his bonds in his chair.

“Ah,” said Risciter. “You’re awake.” He picked up his glass of champagne, strode over to Keirth, and ripped the gag out of Keirth’s mouth. “Miss Gilit and I are to be married. Care to drink to our health?”

Why was he giving Keirth champagne? He’d tried to kill Risciter. He didn’t deserve hospitality. The fire was very, very warm. Ariana slumped in her chair a little.

Risciter tipped the glass into Keirth’s mouth.

Ariana was feeling a bit drowsy. It had been quite an eventful day, after all. Maybe she could nap in this chair. The fire was so warm and pleasant.

Keirth spit the champagne in Risciter’s face. “You’re never getting married. I’ll kill you before you have the chance.”

Risciter laughed. “Making threats while tied to a chair? You’re either very brave or very stupid.” He pinched Keirth’s nose. “Now have some champagne, won’t you?” He poured the liquid into Keirth’s mouth and tilted Keirth’s head back. Keirth was forced to swallow.

Ariana’s limbs felt like they were made of lead. Her eyelids were drooping. Why was Risciter making Keirth drink champagne? And why did she feel so very sleepy? A sluggish thought of panic rose in her brain. Had Risciter drunk any of the champagne? She didn’t think he had. Was there something in it? Had she been drugged?

She tried to move, but her body wouldn’t cooperate. Things were growing hazy now, and her eyelids were so, so heavy. Her chin drooped against her chest.

And everything went pleasantly dark.

* * *

Keirth struggled to open his eyes. He was cold, and he was still tied up. The last time he’d come to, he’d been in the inn in town, tied to a chair. But now, he didn’t know where he was. He forced his eyes open, his head pounding from whatever had been in the champagne Risciter had poured down his throat. He was inside a ship, in the cargo bay. The interior lights were lit, casting a blue-ish tint over a few trunks and boxes. Judging from the size of the bay, he was inside Risciter’s ship. This was a small storage space, suitable for personal belongings, not something big enough for commercial use. And judging from the heft of the gravity in the room, they were still planetside. The synthgrav in space felt a little different. Whatever Risciter planned to do, he must think it was better done in the anonymity of a colony planet. Ariana was lying a few feet from him. She was also tied up, and from the looks of things, she was still unconscious. He’d seen her nod off right when Risciter drugged him in the inn. Keirth tried to scoot across the floor to her, to make sure she was breathing. He wouldn’t put anything past Risciter. Women meant nothing to a man like that.

The sound of a throat clearing behind him.

Keirth twisted.

Risciter was sitting on a trunk behind him. He was smiling. In the scant light, he looked like a grinning demon. “She won’t wake up for a while. She had a good deal more of the champagne than you did.”

“Why drug her?” Keirth asked. “Isn’t she your girlfriend?”

Risciter just kept smiling.

“What are you going to do with her?”

Risciter stood up. He walked around Keirth’s body to stare down at Ariana. He nudged her with his toe. “Oh, you’ll see. I haven’t done it yet, because I want you to watch.” Risciter clasped his hands behind his back and strode over to another trunk. “I had a long time to think while I was traveling in hyperspace to Kush. Seven years, you said. Rilla Alley, you said.” Risciter traced the outline of the trunk with a forefinger. “Now, I can’t tell you how much time I’ve spent in Rilla Alley, so you’ll have to excuse me if I didn’t remember you right away. But then...” He turned his grinning face on Keirth. “How old were you then?”

Keirth gritted his teeth. “Fifteen.”

“Ah. I remember you were scrawny. I remember the look you had in your eyes. I thought that knock I gave you on the head finished you off.”

Keirth shook his head. “I’ve been looking for you. Waiting for you.”

“That’s adorable,” said Risciter. He smirked. “It’s really very cute. I have to congratulate you on being alive at all, of course. Good job.” He raised his hands and brought them together four times. Four sardonic claps. “I guess you wanted revenge, then, didn’t you?”

“I’m going to kill you,” said Keirth, even though he had to admit he wasn’t sure how.

Risciter threw his head back and laughed. “No, you’re not.
I’m
going to kill
you
. Properly, this time.” He heaved a huge sigh. “I’m really quite disappointed that I did such a shoddy job the first go.”

Keirth tested the ropes that held his wrists together. They were tight. Strong. He was trapped here. After all of this, Risciter was going to get the best of him. He couldn’t believe it.

Risciter crouched down next to Keirth. “I want it to be perfect this time. So, we’ll start at the beginning. We’ll each play out our roles like we did that night seven years ago.” He pointed at himself. “I’ll be me.” He pointed at Keirth. “You’ll be you.” He pointed at Ariana. “She’ll be...who was that woman anyway?”

“My mother,” Keirth growled.

Risciter put a hand over his mouth. “Oh. Really?” He laughed. “How terrible. How pathetically and horribly terrible.” He pointed at Keirth. “You’ve been trying to avenge your mother for all these years only to fail miserably now.” Risciter rose to his feet. “You were nothing but a street rat then, boy, and you might be bigger and older now, but you’re still a street rat.”

Keirth wanted to rip his face off. He struggled against the ropes.

Risciter laughed at him. “You can’t do a thing to stop me. You’re so angry at me, but you’re helpless.”

He
was
helpless. His attempts to get revenge on Risciter had all turned out badly. And when Risciter called him pathetic, he couldn’t help but agree with him. To make matters worse, he’d brought an innocent girl into it. He hadn’t meant to involve Ariana, of course, but it had happened. And now she was in danger. “You don’t have to hurt the girl. I’m the problem. Why is she part of this at all?”

“So gallant,” said Risciter. “Also pathetically adorable.” He wandered over to Ariana again. He knelt next to her and brushed her hair away from her face. “But you don’t understand. Before you interfered, I wasn’t allowed to hurt her.”

What was he talking about?

Risciter was still smiling down on Ariana’s body. “You see, there are people who are actually people, like her, and there are people who aren’t really anything.” He looked at Keirth. “Like you. Like your mother.” He turned back to Ariana. “But then you took her away. You compromised her honor—”

“I never touched her,” Keirth said. Was that what this was about? Did Risciter assume his girlfriend was ruined? Was he punishing Ariana for some kind of perceived affair? It was twisted, but Risciter wasn’t a good person.

“But you could have,” said Risciter. “You could have touched her all kinds of places. You could have done zillions of nasty things to her pretty skin. No one knows any differently. And so now...she’s not a person anymore either. So I can hurt her if I want.” He surveyed Ariana eagerly. “And I want to. I want to very much.”

Keirth was horrified. He knew Risciter was a terrible person. But this naked expression of delight in causing pain was more disturbing than anything he’d ever seen or heard of. Risciter liked it? He
wanted
to? Keirth’s stomach churned. He’d underestimated the duke, thought he was a pretty rich boy who didn’t care about his actions. Thought he was careless. But the duke was calculating and cold. He was some kind of monster. And Keirth didn’t know if he would be able to stop the duke, but he knew that someone had to do it, because evil like this shouldn’t exist.

It wasn’t just about revenge anymore. It wasn’t just about his mother. It was about removing Risciter from the earth, before he could inflict anymore damage.

“My mother wasn’t the only one, was she?” Keirth asked, his voice hoarse.

“Only one?” Risciter laughed again. “I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve done it.” He stood up, kicking Ariana carelessly. “Give me a yell when she wakes up, okay?”

Chapter Six

“Wake up,” said a voice urgently.

Ariana’s eyes fluttered open. Risciter had drugged her. Why had he done that? “Where am I?”

“We’re in the bottom of Risciter’s ship.” Keirth was lying next to her. He was tied up. Ariana tried to move and realized she was tied up as well. “He’s going to kill us both.”

“Risciter?” Kill them?

“He drugged you and tied you up. What’s it going to take for you to realize he’s not a very nice person?” Keirth sounded frustrated.

“I...” Ariana didn’t know. Everything was too confusing. She’d been kidnapped. She’d rescued Risciter. He’d turned out to be a pervert. She’d consented to marry him anyway to save herself from scandal. And now she was tied up with the man who’d kidnapped her. She couldn’t take this. She was going to lose her mind. “Why would he drug me? Why would he tie me up? He said he wanted to tell everyone we’d eloped to save us both from scandal.”

“And then he drugged you and tied you up,” said Keirth. “He obviously didn’t mean it.”

“But why?” It didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense, of course, but this little thing. This tidbit of senseless action. If she could unravel it, make it clear to herself, maybe then she wouldn’t go completely insane.

“It’s not important,” said Keirth. “We have to get out of here, before he kills us both. I thought that maybe if we lie back to back, we could untie each other’s hands?”

“Why would Risciter want to kill me?”

“Risciter’s insane,” said Keirth. “Will you try this?” He was already scooting around on the floor, positioning himself with his back to hers.

She did want to be untied, she supposed. And it had to be Risciter that had tied her up. Keirth wouldn’t have done it and then tied himself up too. Ariana didn’t think people actually could tie themselves up. But she knew Risciter. She and Risciter had been on countless strolls through the gardens of three planets. They’d spoken of politics and society and of their own desires for the future. She knew what kind of duke he wanted to be. She knew what kind of father he wanted to be. He didn’t kill people.

Of course, before today, she would have said that he didn’t sleep with three women at once or drug champagne or tie people up either.

She felt Keirth’s hands on hers.

“I can feel the knot on your wrists,” he said. “Can you find mine?”

She felt blindly a little bit until she did. “Yes, I’ve got it.” Her fingers dug into the rope, trying to untie it. The knot was impossibly tight. “I don’t think I can untie this.”

“Keep trying,” Keirth said.

She could feel Keirth’s hands on the knot at her own wrist, and she did her best to work at the knot on Keirth’s hands.

“I think I’ve got it,” said Keirth, sounding triumphant. “Stop trying to get my knot for a minute.”

She relaxed her hands. In a few seconds, her hands were free.

“Untie your feet,” said Keirth.

Ariana sat up. She felt for the knots at her feet. They were so tight. But if she calmed down, she could...yes! She managed to loosen the knot a little. And then a little more. She was free! She turned back to Keirth. “Let me try to get at your knot again.”

But Keirth was shaking his head. “No, don’t worry about me. He’s going to kill me quickly. What he’s going to do to you...” Keirth rolled over so that he could see the door to the bay they were in. “Get out of here.”

What was Risciter going to do to her? Ariana didn’t understand. She was so confused. She looked at Keirth, still tied up, and then at the door.

“Go!” he said.

She got to her feet and went to the door. She hit the button to open it. It blinked red at her. “It’s locked.”

“I know a universal override code,” said Keirth. “Pull the control panel protector down. There should be a key pad there.”

“There are universal override codes?”

“How do you think repairmen fix stuck doors?” Keirth asked.

She’d never thought about it before. She felt a little uncomfortable, though, knowing that locks didn’t really mean much of anything to anyone who had an override code. She removed the control panel protector. Sure enough, there was a key pad underneath. Number keys stacked in rows. “Okay, I see the key pad.”

Keirth told her the sequence of numbers.

She tried to keep up, but he was going too fast. She turned away from the door. “Let me try to untie you.”

“What? You can’t type in numbers?” Keirth sounded disgusted.

She hurried back over to Keirth and started on his knot. “I’d rather you do it. Once I get out there, I don’t know how to get out of the ship. What if I run into Risciter?”

“Haven’t you been on his ship before? How do you not know the way out?”

 “I’ve never seen this part!” She wasn’t having any luck with the ropes at his wrist. The knot was too tight. She couldn’t get her fingers into it to loosen it.

“Try untying my feet,” said Keirth. “If I can walk, we can get out, and we’ll find something to cut the rope with.”

“Okay.” She nodded. She’d never been so confused and so frightened before. Her heart was pounding. She turned her attention to the knot at Keirth’s feet. It was much less tight. It took her a few tries, but, like the knot on her own ankles, she was able to untie it.

Ariana helped him to his feet. His hands were still tied behind his back. The two of them went back over to the door. Keirth told her the override code, more slowly this time. She punched it in, and the two halves of the door slid open diagonally.

“Okay,” Keirth whispered. “Now, be quiet.”

They crept through the door into a dark passageway. Keirth nudged her forward. She really had no idea where they were. She’d never spent time on the lower level of the ship. As they kept walking, though, she recognized the engine room on her left. It was silent. The ship wasn’t moving.