The Outcast (10 page)

Watch for more Dardanos, Co: The Adrastos & Dardanos, Co. Novels

In 2014 and 2015 from

Calle J. Brookes and Lost River Lit.

A Warrior Blind

WOULD
she always have the nightmares? She dreamed of the warrior every night. Remembered the look on his face, the total apathy, when he’d shoved her at Ramorakin, the keeper of his slaves.

That expression on her
 
Rajni
 was one of the last clear images she had, and would ever have. How was she to face that? Her own mate, the one destined for her by her goddess, had thought so little of her that he’d thrown her to a monster. And then he had walked away.

It was by the grace of the goddess that Bronwen Sebastos still lived. She pulled the thick blankets around her body in a useless attempt to ward off the night’s chill. The demon realm was colder than her home in Colorado, but it wasn’t the night temperature that froze her soul.

She didn’t know how many hours she sat in her bed, unable to see even if she had flicked on a lamp, but she sensed when true morning came. She could feel the heat of the sun filtering through the window. Bronwen contemplated just staying in her bed, remaining there at least for the day—if not the rest of her life.

Why not? It wasn’t as if she had much use now, stumbling around pitifully, using the walls to guide her through this place that was more her prison than her home. She missed her home so much.

But returning to Colorado was not an option now. Not with the wars of these realms inching ever so closer to Gaia, to Colorado, to Relaklonos where she now sat. War was coming, one that was predicted to be the worst one in any realm’s history, and she was a healer.

A useless one. A burden to those who loved her.

Those who loved her were probably waiting on her for breakfast. A forceful knock sounded and Bron knew who it most likely was. He came by her room every morning to plague her; she never answered. What was she to say to Koios?

Thank you for making me into something to be pitied, dependent on those around me for care?
 He was supposed to protect her, to love and cherish her from the moment they met.

Instead he’d nearly killed her.

Had she not possessed the soul of a healer she would have died already. Dardaptoan healers were unique. There were a limited number of them, and each had a tiny piece of the original healer’s soul lodged within their hearts. That healer—now immortalized, though unnamed—would never truly die. Which meant that it took far longer for healers to die when injured.

Whatever the slave keeper had done to her, she had yet to die from it. And she probably wouldn’t. No matter how much she wished it.

She wasn’t like her foster mother Aureliana. The older woman had cared for her frequently as an infant and child when her brothers Thadd and Theo hadn’t been able to. Aureliana had chosen to deny herself her 
Rajni
 for nearly ten months after meeting him. She’d thought she was protecting the big warrior from her inevitable death at the hands of a Beansidhe. But they’d figured things out between them almost three months ago, and now they were happy together. The way 
Rajnis
 were supposed to be.

Auri had chosen not to mate her male. Bronwen had had that choice made for her through his actions. His disdain.

But now he wanted something from her, and was proving relentless.

**

Koios waited. He knew the girl healer would have to come out of her chamber eventually. And he was prepared. He could wait no longer to make things right between them. His time had run out, and he had to return to his own kingdom. Lothicano could ill afford his absence 
and
 his brother’s. And Sinrik had a mate and child to think of. Until his twin convinced that mate to return with him, Sinrik’s need to remain in this damned place was far more pressing.

Sinrik had a family, Koios wasn’t sure what the healer girl was to him. He’d abandoned the idea of making her a slave, a
 
servilla.
 But he owed her his protection and some sort of restitution for what had happened to her while technically in his keeping. That he had not been present for most of those two weeks mattered little. He had taken her from the ones who protected her and she had been damaged. That made him responsible.

But the girl was proving extremely stubborn in allowing him to care for her, in allowing him to regain his honor. He had plans to set her up in his castle, provide her with attendants and anything else that she needed. He had a vague plan of allowing her to remain as companion to his twin’s mate, with whom he knew she was particularly close. He would allow her to live a life of completely luxury, doing anything that she pleased. Her new blindness prevented her from doing much else, didn’t it?

Her door opened and he kept himself as still as his warrior training would allow. She would not realize he was there, not until he was ready to make that fact known. He would grab the girl and flash her to his castle in Lothicano. It was the only option he had left. It would be up to his brother to make Koios’s apologies to the girl’s family and caregivers.

But Koios had made his decision several days ago, and nothing would deter him.

She felt her way along the wall and took tiny steps that barely moved her forward at all. He was two inches past seven feet in her world’s measurements. He estimated she was two feet smaller, or thereabouts. Warrior youths hit that size around their tenth birth year. What had he been thinking? A 
servilla
 this female would never make. Her hair was brown. Nothing remarkable about it, just dirt brown and worn straight and long down her back. Her eyes were covered by dark glasses, but he remembered the unusual yellow color well. She had strangely feline eyes, typical of her Kind. And she had the delicate beauty of features that could lure an unsuspecting male victim to the bloodsucking Kind’s side.

It did not work on Koios. The girl was too small, too weak, too not of his Kind for his attention to stray in that direction.

Perhaps he could keep her as a pampered pet. It was not unheard of in his realm for oddities from other worlds to be kept and coddled. And though the high queen of this world was of 
her
 Kind, this little Dardaptoan female was very unusual.

Koios forced those thoughts away. Similar thoughts to these were what had gotten him into this predicament to begin with. He’d seen her when she’d first stumbled upon him—literally—and had wanted her. He had yet to be able to explain it, even more than a year later. But it was the truth. He’d wanted her in his home, so he’d taken her.

He’d justified it with the fact that Healers of her Kind were immensely prized for their abilities. They were taken by just about any other Kind in any other realm. He could have sold her for three hundred times her weight in his world’s most precious currency.

Something his kingdom could have used a year ago.

She was within his arm’s reach now; she was so vulnerable, wasn’t she? She did not even know he was there.

That made what he was about to do even more despicable.

Koios reached out.

Kennera

Levia Palace, West Tower

The sound of her people’s prayers, prayers that she could not answer, twisted her heart every moment of every day. She could not help them, could not guide them as a goddess was supposed to. She had failed them for almost three thousand years, and that was unforgivable.

She no longer blamed the Wolf god. Eiophon had not controlled her actions, she had. She was the one responsible for her people; she did not deserve their continued honor and reverence.

All she could do was watch them through the sieve that bubbled within the center of her rooms at Levia. It was by the grace of the goddess Nelciana that her people had yet to become extinct. Her beloved Dardaptoans numbered less than two hundred thousand — the Wolf god’s numbered four to five times that.

She had mere months before she and Eiophon would be freed from their imprisonment. He had already vowed through the stone and magic barrier that separated his half of the palace from hers that when they were set free, he would raise his army against hers and erase her and hers from Gaia completely.

All because she had dared to think she loved him.

For three thousand years she’d questioned her stupidity.

A prayer rose from the sieve, louder than the others, and she turned to it… It was Kindara Jareth, a healer Kennera felt particularly guilty about. Kindara had suffered so greatly in the last thirty years, and Kennera had been unable to help her much at all.

Kennera bowed her head and sent the patient beneath Kindara’s hands a bit of her own strength. It was Aureliana, a woman with a warrior’s spirit, wounded protecting Kindara a few days earlier while in another realm. Relaklonos was even older than Gaia — Kennera had always been frightened of the demon inhabitants there and had discouraged her people from venturing into those strange lands. Kindara had defied that order in search of medicinal help for their people. And she had found it.

Perhaps she should have encouraged her people to explore other realms rather than avoid them. Kindara had found actual medicines that worked for their people amongst the demons.

Kennera could not help but fear the discovery came too late.

Even with Kindara’s medical finds, the Lupoiux could so easily wipe the Dardaptoans from Gaia.

And Eiophon had vowed to do just that.

Eiophon

Levia Palace, East Tower

“You cannot wage war against her people,” Erasomophus warned him. “Have you learned nothing in three thousand years? You cannot upset the balance so greatly.”

“She must pay for what she has done,” Eiophon stated, but his words lacked heat. Did he still believe as he had three thousand years ago? He had mere months until he could put his plans into action. Yet the desire to do so was strangely missing.

“What has she done that is greater than that which you have done?” Lothonos asked. “Did she curse your people? Yes. Did you curse hers? Horribly so. And why? Because she dared to have a crush on you when she was young and innocent. Were it me, I would not have treated her thusly.”

No, the intellectual god would not have. He would have adored the Girl goddess who was more silly than practical. Eiophon would be caught in no such idiocy. “You would have put her upon a pedestal higher than those Dardaptoans of hers have. They give her wreaths of flowers and citrine twice a year!”

“They love their goddess and have faith in her. Can you say the same for your beasts?” Lothonos’ words were more potent for the lack of passion behind them. The God of Logic remained collected in most situations. It was only with the girl goddess that he appeared warm. “Much could be said for that kind of loyalty.”

“Foolish creatures, just like their goddess.”

“Foolish no more.” Erasomophus shook his head, a strange sadness in his silver eyes. A grief almost that of a father. “They struggle for their very survival.”

“How do you mean?”

“Your curses were strong and long reaching. As so much time has passed, more and more of their females are dying. What happens when there are no more? Their Kind will not be able to continue. Not much longer. And neither will she…” Lothonos’ normally stoic countenance showed strong grief of his own. “Her time nears, I am afraid…”

Eiophon cared not for the other gods’ dramatics. “How so? Is her heart so broken, then?”

“Do not be flippant. Death of a deity is always terrifying. It can cause a rupture we will never recover from.” Erasomophus was the oldest of the men, at four times Eiophon’s considerable years. “Her death will unbalance us all… unless she shifts her power to someone first.”