The Destroyer Book 4 (6 page)

I mounted the horse and tested the draw of the bow while atop. The weapon was meant to be used while on foot but I could make it work while on horseback. Then I pointed the steed to the north and kicked it forward. Perhaps I should have covered my head, so that I would be harder to spot from a distance. But no, I wanted them to see me coming.

At least I wasn’t bored anymore.

“Surprised to see me?” An armored hand wrapped across my throat and sharp claws dug into the sides of my neck. She stepped around to the front of my chair, obscuring the view of my tribunal. The dragons that had once been painstakingly etched into her green armor in beautiful detail were now distorted, gruesome shapes that twisted across the dull, melted surface.

“Yes!” I gasped out and her grip tightened around my throat. She lifted me up a few inches and my arms strained against the chains tied to the chair.

“Good!” she hissed. She reeked of both cooked and rotting flesh. The stench was strong enough to make my eyes water and my stomach turn. Half a million questions flooded my brain, and for a few seconds I could not make sense of anything except terror.

Absolute terror.

“Our friends did not think to inform me of your capture,” she sneered as she looked over her shoulder at the four other generals. I was high enough off the ground now to see their expressions. They looked almost as scared as I was.

“Shlara, we
—
” Malek began.

“Shut the fuck up!” she cut him off. “I’ll deal with your failures later.”

Her helmet had been modified to cover the lower half of her face. Her green eyes were still visible, but the skin surrounding them was burned and scarred like my left hand. Her irises seemed to glow with insanity.

“You thought I was dead. You thought that our business was finished, didn’t you Kaiyer?” Her grip tightened around my throat and the scent of my blood mixed with the rotting stench of her flesh.

I tried to answer but she was crushing my windpipe and I could only gasp. I thought she might relax her hold to allow me to speak, but instead she tightened her grip and my vision swam.

“Answer me, you fucking asshole!” She had always been strong, but I would have never believed she would have the strength to pick me up one-handed and pull me against the chains like this.

“You are choking him,” Alexia muttered from behind Shlara.

“So what if I am?” Shlara let me go and the chair fell back onto the stone floor with a jarring smash. I breathed deeply and fought against a gasp of pain.

“If you want him to answer you then
—
”

“Shut up!” Shlara screamed and Air punched through the room. My chair flew over backward and I had to pull my neck forward to prevent my skull from being crushed on the floor. Malek, Thayer, Alexia, and Gorbanni hung flattened against the far wall as if invisible hands held them up. Panic was plain on their faces.

“Why do you think you can question me?” Shlara pressed her face to Alexia’s. She must have leapt over the table in the half-second I was falling back in the chair.

“I’m sorry,” Alexia whispered. She had always been fair, but she looked almost white now.

“Sorry for?”

“Questioning you,” the blonde woman stammered and turned her head away from Shlara as much as she could. Alexia was not afraid of anything. Man, woman, Elven, I doubted she had even blinked as the dragons descended in the final battle. I had counted on her thousands of times to be the unemotional tester of my strategies.

I felt the Air leave the room and the four warriors slid down from the wall. Shlara then turned her insane eyes on me and slithered over to my chair. Her armored hand stroked my cheek tenderly and her breath came out in painful spurts.

“Do you know what this feels like? Being roasted alive like a pig? The itching, the burning, the stench of my own body? Can you guess, Kaiyer?” I closed my eyes and fought back tears. I had heard her scream and watched her die.

“I would like you to imagine the pain of this Fire. It burned straight through my flesh, to my bones, so hot they turned to ash. I tried to heal through it, but my mind was too focused on the pain of your betrayal. That pain was much worse. Everything you have ever told me was a lie. I believed in you, in your promises, in the future you sold to me. I planned my life around the deception you worked so hard to make me believe. I gave up every other chance I had for happiness for the hope that you would finally do what you promised.” Her claws continued to stroke my face. They were like alligator talons that could shred my skin to tatters with a quick flick of her wrist.

“You told me that we would be together after the war. You promised me children and a life. You promised to love me forever.” Her hand lifted my chin and I opened my eyes to meet her stare. She didn’t blink. She screamed so loud that I felt my ear drums seize and sputter. My hair was long enough for her to grab and she yanked my head back. “Why would you choose that Elven over me? You hated them. Your whole life was about hating them!” Her voice cracked between painful wheezes. “You meant to kill me, didn’t you? You were not fleeing; you were chasing her.”

She let go of my hair and turned to walk away toward the table. The four generals had not bothered to sit. There was an absolute change in the room. Before, my five friends were partners, and while Shlara had been the most capable, their opinions all carried equal weight. Now Shlara controlled the group. I saw her power in the fear each of my friends tried to hide when the burnt woman faced them.

“I told you he would come if we caught the bitch.” She made a hacking sound, like she was clearing phlegm from her throat. It sounded as if her throat was grinding pebbles together. The four nodded enthusiastically. She paced in front of the table and tapped an armored finger on the plate that hid her mouth. The gesture was so familiar, my mind spun through countless memories of her. My heart beat erratically and I shivered with cold sweat.

“Who decided not to inform me that he was here?” She pointed a finger back at me while her eyes remained on my generals, searching them for weakness.

The four stood silent for a few moments. Then Malek raised his hand slightly, like a child that knew he was about to be disciplined. Thayer and Gorbanni looked relieved that Malek had made the small movement.

“Of course, there are no coincidences are there my sweet Malek? You were always coming between Kaiyer and me. Why should that change now?”

“I just
—
” Suddenly Malek was pinned against the wall with Shlara’s sword sticking out of the right side of his chest. He gasped and blood dribbled from his open lips. I hadn’t even seen her draw the weapon, or move to impale him.

“I’ve found that when a person says ‘I just,’ something incredibly stupid is about to come out of their mouth.” He coughed up another mouthful of blood and reached his hand to the hilt of her blade.

“Leave that there. Think of it as your reward for insolence. You always wanted to put your sword into me, but now I’ve put mine into you. Isn’t that funny?” She laughed, a maniacal twisted sonata that made my stomach churn. Malek nodded slightly and moved his hand down away from the weapon. Thayer, Alexia, and Gorbanni looked at him in pity but they seemed too terrified of Shlara to make any sort of move to help their friend.

“I said: 'Isn’t that funny?' Why aren’t you laughing?” Shlara turned her helmet to regard the other three. They promptly forced smiles to their faces and small laughs out of their throats.

She turned her gaze back to me and I repressed a shudder of nausea. How in the fuck had this happened?

“Now.” Her clawed gloves stroked my face again. I tried not to cringe, but she didn’t seem to notice me shy away from her talons. Or she did not care. “What to do with you?”

She turned my head around in her hands to inspect my face. The terror hadn’t faded, even as the seconds ticked by, and I realized that I would have fought a dozen dragons again rather than remain trapped here with her.

“Torture? It would be fitting of course. Execution? Probably a given.” She bent down so that her eyes were even with mine. I could smell more of her rancid breath now and I was thankful I hadn’t eaten in a long time.

“The problem is that I am still so in love with you, Kaiyer.” Her voice softened slightly and I saw the faintest flash of humanity in her eyes before they hardened again. “Nothing I could do to you would repay the betrayal you have inflicted on me. Instead, I will just take what I’ve always wanted from you.” She stood up and laughed again.

“I may not be able to bear children. I have to peel this armor off in bloody pieces just to shit and piss. Without it, the pain is even more intense. The friction from even a breeze sears my skin with agony. I am relieved to put my armor back on. But the pain never leaves me. I do not need to eat or drink anymore. The Elements keep me alive now. Isn’t it wonderful?”

She turned to the silent generals and glowered at them. Each squirmed uncomfortably and looked away, like a cowed dog.

“This is how they are now, Kaiyer.” She turned back to me and took the few steps between us. She sat down on my lap sideways and flung her armored right arm over my shoulders. Her claws dug into my right bicep and she snuggled against my torso. “They don’t argue anymore, they just do as I tell them, like good little pets. Sometimes I miss our debates around the map table. But I do prefer it this way. I had to hold their hands through everything in the war."

“That isn’t true.” Anger spat the words out of my mouth and I temporarily forgot my dire situation.

“Kaiyer! There is some life in you yet. But your opinion hardly matters. If my previous statement applies to anyone, it would be you. I managed the entire army in the end, didn’t I? Oh sure, we had your name and presence, but everyone pretty much did as I said. Even you.” She tapped her finger on my nose playfully during the last sentence. Then she held her hand out behind her.

“Malek! I am tired of listening to you wheeze. Give me back my sword.” He nodded and reached up feebly to grasp the blade's hilt. He tugged once, twice, and a third time but the weapon didn’t budge from the wall. His eyes met mine and I could see the pain and suffering in them. Thayer stood a few feet from the long-haired man and we exchanged glances. I nodded to him and he moved toward Malek and raised his hand.

“Wait!” Shlara hissed violently. “Did I say you could help him?”

“No,” Thayer responded. The big man suddenly looked half his size.

“Pull the sword out, you useless piece of shit.” Shlara stood up from my lap and addressed Malek with enough venom to melt granite. “You were always so fucking weak. Always complaining about why you couldn’t have all the pretty little things you wanted. Always so jealous of Thayer’s might, Alexia’s cunning, Gorbanni’s bravery, and Kaiyer’s charisma. You never did anything useful unless one of us listened to your ridiculous complaints, patted you on the head, and told you that you were a good little boy. Pull the fucking sword out and hand it to me. Now!”

Malek seemed to recover a bit of his strength and gritted his teeth. His hands reached up to the pommel and he pulled, yanked, gasped, and finally broke the weapon free of the wall. Then he slid it out of his chest and coughed a pint of blood out onto the table. I had been impaled by weapons many times, and while we healed very quickly, the pain was still there and our minds believed such an injury was fatal.

He collapsed on the table with a wet sigh. Then the only sound in the room was his labored breathing and the dripping of the blood that flowed from his chest wound onto the tile. Then he stood up and walked toward Shlara, finally handing her sword back to her, hilt first. She took the weapon, wiped his blood off of its blade with the clean sleeves of his garment, and sheathed it.

“That is a good boy,” she said with mock warmth as she patted him on the head. I expected my spirited friend to lash out at her, attack her, scream at her, something. He would never have tolerated this treatment from anyone, not even her. Instead he sighed, almost gratefully at her touch, and returned to his spot at the table.

What the fuck was going on? Shlara was intimidating, monstrous even, and clearly strong. But there was no way she could stand against the combined might of Gorbanni, Alexia, Thayer, and Malek. I did not understand why they were allowing this.

“What were we talking about before Malek rudely interrupted us with his breathing?” She tapped her mouth guard again a few times. “Ahhh yes! You see Kaiyer, everything is perfect now. The Elvens are gone, you are mine, and the future is going to be just how I dreamed it would be. Isn’t it wonderful?” Her words might have carried a smile, but the thought of her grinning through her burnt and tattered lips behind the helmet made my stomach lurch with pity.