Royal House of Shadows Box Set: Lord of the Vampires\Lord of Rage\Lord of the Wolfyn\Lord of the Abyss (43 page)

She glanced down at their linked hands. “I’m not brave.”

“Being brave isn’t about being unafraid. It’s about functioning through the fear.”

“Like I said—not brave. I freeze. I don’t mean to, but things happen and I just…stand there.”

“If Candida knows the spell to unseal the standing stones, you don’t have to come with me. You can go home from here, your duty fulfilled.”

It was oh, so tempting. But at what cost? If this was all real, then so was the threat to his homeland and siblings…and to Dayn himself. And although rationality screeched at the thought, she was still drawn to him, even knowing he was a vampire. If there was a chance she could help him, she wanted to try. So she forced the words past logic and reason, saying, “Along the bottom of the picture was carved words that translated to ‘Here they can part, each to their own.’ Even my maman said
it was an odd ending for the story, since the woodcutter and the girl go off together.”

He nodded slowly. “It wasn’t about them—it was about us. We both need to go there to get back—you to the human realm, me to the kingdoms.”

The thought shouldn’t have brought a twinge.

She nodded. “I should warn you, though. A good man—my partner, my friend—died a few months ago because I froze at the wrong time. You can’t trust a coward like me to have your back.”

If he had knee-jerked the “you’re not a coward” response, she wouldn’t have listened, just as she hadn’t to anyone else who had said the words. She knew what she was. But instead, eyes darkening, he brought up his free hand to touch her cheek, as if brushing away a tear she hadn’t shed. “Sweet Reda, you’ve had a time of it, haven’t you? Don’t worry about having my back. I can take care of us both.”

Her heart shuddered at the quiet promise, which was backed up by the implacable determination in his eyes. He had so much riding on him already, yet was stepping up to take more because she needed him to, which made him a better man—vampire or not—than the others in her life, save for the partner she had lost.

Dayn, too, was lost. But he was working to get himself found.

Did she make the move? Did he? She wasn’t sure of that, wasn’t sure of anything except that their lips were suddenly a breath apart.

This was the moment she should hesitate, she knew,
the time when freezing in place would be the smarter, safer thing to do. Here, in this strange realm, in an almost-embrace with a man who was nothing like her, she should back down, back away. But the heat that raced through her made her feel suddenly alive, when she had been numb for so long that she had mistaken it for living. And they had their endpoint already: the Meriden Arch, forty-eight hours from now.

Two days,
she thought.
What’s the harm?

So she didn’t back down or away, but instead held her ground as he moved in hard and fast. And kissed the hell out of her.

S
oft warmth against his lips. Silky heat on his tongue. Spice and flowers. Curves.
The sensations rocketed through Dayn. Gone was any hint of reserve or control, leaving him only able to act and react, not think or plan.

Growling low in his throat, he crowded her back against the tree until their bodies were aligned, pressed together, touching from knee to chest. He kept his hands on her face, willing them to stay there with the last threads of his control, knowing that if he touched her—really
touched
her, the way he was suddenly dying to do—that he would be truly lost. Although in that moment, he couldn’t remember why that was a bad thing.

It had been two decades since he had held a woman
out of anything other than necessity, since he felt a burn that went beyond the physical to something more. But now, as their tongues touched and slid, as his body went tight, tense and hard, he wasn’t just kissing a woman. He was kissing a dream he hadn’t been aware of having.

She thought herself a coward, yet had a core of strength. She had lost someone close to her and blamed herself for it. And she didn’t—couldn’t—understand how much that hit home for him. He didn’t know if the grief and guilt in the kiss was hers or his, but those emotions eased as the heat rose between them. And for the first time in a long, long while, he didn’t feel alone.

Warm skin beneath his palms. Urgent fingers at his waist, his back, his shoulders, sliding into his hair. Heart pounding. Body tightening. A trickle of magic and moonlight, and—

“Abyss.” He broke the kiss, pressed his forehead to hers. “We can’t do this right now.”
Priorities.

She was breathing just as heavily as he, and her fingers dug into his wrists, but she nodded. “Yeah.” And neither of them mentioned the “right now” or the way it left open the option of “later.”

He stepped away, not letting himself reach for her again. “We’ll stop at Candida’s first. She’s got some things I’ll want to bring.” Like the poison she had designed for the sorcerer, and maybe a trick or two that could help him keep Reda safe. Because while she couldn’t be his top priority, she had very definitely become his responsibility.

The thought bumped up against the promises he had
made to his father’s spirit, but didn’t unsettle them. He was headed where he needed to be going, with the woman who was to guide him. And when he went to Elden, he’d be going alone.

They set off along the track.

The cold, moonlit night had gone quiet, suggesting that the pack had moved on. Reda kept up easily, though she had to take three strides for every two of his. And although he told himself to think about what he needed from Candida, and the route they should take to reach Meriden Arch safely, without running afoul of the packs whose territory they would be traveling through, his thoughts kept circling back to the woman at his side.

As a younger man in Elden, he had gravitated toward the women of the queen’s Special Guard and assertive, weapon-savvy guardsmen’s daughters, as Twilla had been. And in the wolfyn realm he had spent most of his time with Candida or Keely—both alpha bitches, strong leaders. Not the kind of women who would weep or admit their fears. Reda, on the other hand, wore her emotions out in the open, without subterfuge. Yet, strangely, he hadn’t wanted to move away when she cried, hadn’t been impatient with her tears. Maybe part of that was because he understood what it felt like to be uprooted and lost, and, more, to have failed a loved one. But another part of it was less easily defined—he had wanted to hold her, comfort her, protect her, kiss her. And now that he knew her taste and the sexy sound
she made at the back of her throat when they kissed, he wanted to do all that and more.

At the thought, his skin heated and his gums itched where his secondaries burned to be set free.

The response was even more discomfiting this time around, because his blood drinker’s power was threatening to lock on to her, binding him more deeply than he could afford. Or was it just that drinking and sexual arousal had become inextricably linked in his mind? Maybe it was as simple as that.

He willed his secondaries far into hiding and quelled the magic. And he resolved to be on his guard.

After nearly an hour’s hike, they turned up the last narrow track leading to Candida’s cave, where she lived the lone existence she preferred, close enough to the pack to mediate squabbles and provide the healing and auguring that were her specialties, yet far enough away to discourage drop-in visits.

“Hope she’s not out running,” he said as they headed up the last ridge, which crested right before where the high hilltop flattened out in front of Candida’s cave. “She doesn’t go out with the pack every moon time, but will take a run now and then.” Aware of Reda’s nerves—which were understandable given that she’d been raised on the
Rutakoppchen
version of wolfyn lore—he continued, “She’s an inventor, one of the best at figuring out how to take human tech and make it run off magical power cells they use for energy here. In fact—”

He broke off, blood icing as he scented smoke, thick with the rank odors of searing hair and burning flesh. Worse was the prickle of stale, foul magic.

“No!” he shouted.
“Candida!”

He bolted over the last rise with Reda at his heels.

The entrance to the cave was a churned-up mess, with wisps of dark smoke curling around the top edge of the unlit opening. His heart hammered a sick, awful beat as he ducked inside and hit the lights, bringing up the glows strung throughout the cave and illuminating a scene of utter chaos.

And murder. Because amid the strewn wreckage of the wisewolfyn’s supplies and household goods lay a huge mound of gray-buff fur.
“Candida,”
he rasped, crossing to her and going to his knees. “Gods. What did she do to you?”

The wisewolfyn’s eyes were a pale, milky white, her throat torn open, her body badly burned, with patches of fur gone and the angry red flesh pitted with deeply charred stripes. A length of sword-stock metal protruded from the dying fire, suggesting the means for that torture. And torture it had been. The witch, Moragh, had hurt her, burned her, no doubt mind-raped her…and most likely all while he and Reda were hiding together in the small cave, waiting for the wolfyn to move on from the standing stones.

Again, he’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. If he had realized the ettin hadn’t stumbled through the vortex accidentally, if he’d been paying attention to the magic fluxes in the air…

“I’m sorry.” Reda gripped his shoulder.

Resentment welled up, though he knew it was misplaced. It wasn’t her fault they had gotten off to a rocky start; it wasn’t anyone’s fault. But it all sucked nonetheless.

“She was strong,” he grated. “She resisted the mindspeak, tried to hold on to her secrets.” Thus, the hot iron. “The magic got to her in the end, though.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Her eyes.” He gestured stiffly. “The white is a sign that she’s been emptied out by mindspeak.”

Reda sucked in a quiet breath, but didn’t move her hand from his shoulder. Her grip was firm and strong; it said,
I’ve got your back
and
I’m sorry.
And maybe even
I’m here for you,
which was something he was very unused to.

After a moment, he continued, “The wolfyn normally revert to human form when they die. This says…shit, it says to me that Moragh stripped her all the way down to feral before she died.” Which would have been a horrible fall for the proud, highly civilized wolfyn. She would have hated dying in wolf form, would’ve hated him seeing her like this. And she would have despised knowing that the witch had broken her.

“Should we do something for her?”

It took him a couple of heartbeats to figure out what she was asking, but far less than that to see that it was impossible. “No. We need to get moving.” He pulled himself to his feet, hating the necessity. At the question in her eyes, he added, “Moragh sent her servant to
tell the pack that I’m a blood drinker. Odds are, they’re already on the hunt.” He paused. “I’m sorry.”

“Why? You didn’t do this.”

“I didn’t stop it, either.” He turned for the back of the cave. “Grab what you think you can use.”

“Does she have any archery equipment?”

He stopped and turned back with a raised eyebrow.

“I was a junior archery champ three years running. The family rule was that each kid had to get good at a weapon. I think my father wanted to…” She shook her head. “Anyway, I can shoot. And I’m going to need a weapon.”

“In that trunk over there,” he said, gesturing. “Grab whatever crossbow bolts you can find, too, and another waterskin.”

“Got it.”

While she rummaged, he took a deep breath and faced the back wall of the cave. Then, tapping into the energy flow that enabled the powers of the wolfyn, he said softly, “Let that which is hidden be revealed.”

The rock face shimmered and then disappeared, revealing stacked rows of brightly painted, intricately carved drawers.

Behind him, Reda gasped and something clattered.

“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s just low-level cloaking magic. It’s not a big deal.”

“It is to someone like me.”

Which just reinforced the fact that they came from two completely different worlds that intersected here, in this strange halfway realm. The knowledge tugged at
him, but he ignored the tug and focused on the racked drawers trying to figure out which of Candida’s tricks he could use to keep himself and Reda alive long enough to get to Meriden Arch, and from there, gods willing, home. And, in his case, to war.

At the thought, he reached first for the small red-capped leather tube that contained a smaller glass flask. An inch of amber syrup clung to the bottom, barely moving when he shook the carrying case. “What’s that?”

“Poison,” he said without looking at her. “I’m going to use it to kill the Blood Sorcerer.”

Reda didn’t let herself dwell on the way the things she found packed away were familiar yet not, knock-offs that were ever so slightly wrong in their details. She didn’t let herself dwell on how seeing Dayn do magic had shaken her to her core and, more, how it had aroused her, as if her libido was reacting to a surge of power she hadn’t felt anywhere else. But while she was so busy not thinking about all those things as she loaded her rucksack with additional provisions and strapped a dozen arrows on the outside, she had far too much leeway to think about the clash between the pretty bedding and clothes in the trunks that lined the wall…and the wolf carcass that lay nearby.

Only it wasn’t just a wolf, was it? It—
she
—had used these blankets, worn these clothes, chosen the now-broken knickknacks.
Candida,
she thought, glancing over at the motionless form, not sure if what she was
feeling could be classified as pity, revulsion, confusion or all of those things at once. Probably the latter. She pitied the woman who had hung an abstract slash of color on the wall, yet reviled a species that, even in war, could enthrall, seduce, use and then discard women.
It was a long time ago,
she reminded herself. But still. The potential was there. More, the power was there.

Yet Candida had died trying to protect her blood-drinking friend.

Apparently finished gathering what he wanted, Dayn moved away from the racks to cover Candida’s body with a heavy woven robe. He stood for a moment, whispering what she thought was a prayer, or maybe an apology.

Her heart bumped lightly in her chest and a new warmth moved through her, strange and unfamiliar. Tenderness.

He’s a blood drinker,
she reminded herself, but the warning bounced back with a rebuttal that came from deep within her:
perhaps, but he’s also a prince.
Those things were both his birthrights, and both were labels that did nothing to describe the man himself. Dayn the blood drinker was dark and sexy; Dayn the prince was driven and determined to fulfill his promises. But at the same time, Dayn the man was very real.

Back home, her friends said she was too picky, that every man came with a mix of good and bad things, that she had to find a mix that worked for her rather than holding out for Mr. Perfect. What they hadn’t gotten—what she hadn’t been able to make them
understand—was that she wasn’t looking for a flawless man; she wanted one that was larger than himself, who cared about more than his car and flat-screen, and whether or not he got promoted at work. She wanted someone who combined her father’s rigid code of ethics and military heroics with her mother’s empathy, whimsy and lust for adventure.

She wanted the woodcutter, the storybook prince. And she had found one—for the next forty-eight hours, at least.

Finished, he turned to her, caught her watching him, but said only, “You ready?”

Standing, she slung the rucksack over her shoulder, where it joined the unstrung bow. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

He nodded. “I got the poison I wanted—which she didn’t finish testing, so I have no idea if it’ll work or not—along with a good supply of wolfsleep sap, which is roughly like chewing gum in your world, but also works on wounds. And this could come in handy.” He dug into his battered rucksack and held out three small lumps of greenish stuff that had the consistency of putty and an oily sheen.

Reda wrinkled her nose, though any smell they might have had was buried beneath the foul smoky taste that coated her mouth and throat. “What are they?”

“Wolfsbene.”

She eyed the stuff with new interest. “A repellant?”

“Not
bane,
” he corrected, “
bene.
As in
benefits.
It enhances their human forms, giving them added
strength, speed and stamina. It’ll work for us, though not to the same degree. Think of it as rocket fuel for human forms.” He tipped the lumps into a small envelope made of smooth tree bark, and handed it over. “Keep this on you. I’ve got more, but I want you to have your own in case we get into a situation where you need it and can’t reach me.” He paused. “There are side effects, so only use it when you absolutely have to.”