doubled back. Lurking outside his own bedchamber window, he heard the cheating
ones indulging in their sinful pursuit. The knowledge destroyed all that was good
within the man’s friend that day.”
Pain filled Lord Kheelan’s handsome face.
“Fury and betrayal lashed at the man’s friend. In his pain, he called out to the most
evil demon he could conceive and promised himself to the demon’s service if only the
man he had loved and trusted, respected and admired would be punished for the sin he
had committed against their friendship. With him in his punishment, the friend wanted
his treacherous wife to share in the retribution.”
The High Lord’s jaw clenched, a muscle bunching.
“What the friend did not know—or else had forgotten in his grief—is when you
bargain with evil, you give up more than just your soul. Evil wants everything. It wants
all. In exchange for punishing the lovers, the Evil One wanted innocent blood, innocent
lives as well, and because the friend was so stricken with hatred, he agreed to
Yn Drogh
Spyrryd
’s terms.
“‘You will stand at the head of my army’, the Evil One ordered. ‘You will be my
general and command the
Flaiee
.’
“Seeing only the revenge, the retribution he so yearned to have at hand, the friend
signed the agreement in his own blood. This friend—Lesh Spiosyn—became the general
of the
Flaiee
, the demon warrior horde that was unleashed upon his homeworld in a
bloody frenzy that had never seen the like.”
A single tear slid slowly down the High Lord’s cheek.
“Let loose, the
Flaiee
raped and ravaged and destroyed everything in their path, but
these vile entities do not just kill when they fall upon their victims. They annihilate.
They eradicate, obliterate, exterminate, extinguish all living things with which they
come into contact. By the time they were through, other than the general and his
demons, there was no one left alive on Rysalia Prime save one man and one woman. No
field had been left unsalted. No water had been left without poison. Everything was
burned to the ground, trampled, torn asunder. Nothing moved upon the entire face of
the planet nor would for over a thousand years. Thankfully a few dozen inhabitants
120
BlackMoon Reaper
had fled the planet before the destruction. One of those was the infamous hero’s mother
who was pregnant with a sister of the great man.”
Lord Kheelan hung his head, put a trembling hand over his eyes.
“Lesh Spiosyn had his revenge. His wife had been the plaything of over fifty
demons before her body was crushed and broken. Her lover had been brought to
ground, bound to a tree and made to watch as the woman he lusted after was torn apart
before his very eyes. He was forced to watch as the four-year-old child he loved more
than his own life was ravished in front of him, her body fed to the war-hounds. Nearly
insane with grief, he spent two days lashed to that tree with the screams of his people,
his mistress and his child ringing in his ears.”
Morrigunia turned Her face toward the High Lord.
“As his own punishment for what he had helped to bring about, Lesh Spiosyn
changed from a handsome warrior to a hideous demon that fated day. His body became
twisted and pebbled with warts, his hands turned to claws, his feet to paws, his
fingernails to talons and teeth to fangs. All because a selfish man had given in to his
baser side and helped to destroy an entire world.”
The goddess pointed a rigid finger at Lord Kheelan.
“I found this disgraced warrior whimpering like a lost child as he hung from his
chains on that dead tree. He pleaded with me, begged me to kill him, but I refused. That
would have been too quick, too easy, and he needed to atone for his crimes so I made
him a Shadowlord and brought him here—away from the mother and sister who were
the only kin he had left. I did, however, relent and allow him to be reunited with the
sister.”
“But you’ve made him suffer ever since,” Lord Naois said.
The Triune Goddess nodded. “Aye, he suffers, Naois, and he will continue to suffer
for he has yet to learn from his mistake. Even now, he is ruled by
Rouanys
, the
Archdemon of Lust. Even now he yearns for what will never be his. He aches for what
he knows he can not have.” Her green eyes flashed verdant fire. “For what he knows I
will never allow him to have!”
Aingeal flinched when her husband reached out to cover her clenched hands with
his own. She looked at him with tears misting her eyes. “Cynyr—” she began.
“Shush,” Cynyr said. “You’ve no reason to apologize.”
“No, she does not,” Morrigunia said, “for she has done no harm. She can not help
what this weak, pathetic man feels for her. But he is not the only one suffering. If he
hears the screams of his people dying around him, his baby girl crying for him to come
to her aid, his mistress pleading for her own life, he also hears the piercing phantom
shrieks of the wife he betrayed each time Lesh Spiosyn impaled her upon his thorny
shaft before she died!”
A pitiful sound escaped Lord Kheelan’s throat and he shot up from his chair. He
skirted the chairs where his Reapers and their ladies sat, running as he made for the
121
Charlotte Boyett-Compo
High Council chamber doors. Neither Penthe nor Giles opened the portal for him, but
he didn’t seem to notice as he jerked it open to flee the room.
The Reapers and their wives had turned to watch the High Lord’s departure in
stunned silence. Slowly they turned around in their chairs to look at the goddess.
“He is a good man,” Lord Dunham said.
“Aye, he is a good man, but he is a man still in need of atonement,” Morrigunia
agreed.
“How much longer will that take,
Mo Regina
?” Naois asked.
“When I am satisfied he has atoned,” She replied. She looked at Cynyr. “Do you
trust your lady?”
“With my life,” Cynyr answered.
“Then go to him, Lady Aingeal,” the goddess told her.
That said, the Triune Goddess vanished in a puff of pale orange smoke.
Aingeal’s face crinkled. Her hands were beneath her husband’s.
“It’s all right,
mo shearc
,” Cynyr said. “He needs you.”
She searched her lover’s eyes. “He’ll never have me. You do know that, don’t you?”
Cynyr smiled. “Aye, I do know.”
She found him curled up on the floor of the solarium with his hands tucked
between his knees. He was sobbing like a child, his shoulders heaving. The tiles beneath
his cheek were slick with his tears. The sounds coming from him tore at her heart.
Sitting down beside him, she lifted his head to place it in her lap, smoothing the
dark hair back from his high forehead.
“Hush now, sweeting,” she said. “You’ll make yourself sick.”
She said nothing else, just let him cry himself out because she realized he needed
the release of all the hurt and anger that had been building up in him for so long. At last
his hitching breaths ceased and he lay quiet—one hand hooked around her knee.
“You can tell me anything, Kheelan,” she said. For a moment she didn’t think he
was listening but then he began to speak.
“I have begged Her to let me die but She won’t allow it,” he said. “I want to die,
Aingeal. I am so gods-be-damned tired of living!”
She stroked his back. “Don’t say that, Khee,” she said.
“No one would miss me if I left this place,” he said. “No one!”
“That’s not true,” she said in a reasonable tone, but a tone that she knew she would
one day reserve for her young son. “I would miss you.” She cupped his cheek. “I would
mourn you, Kheelan Ben-Alkazar. Outside my husband and son, you are the most
important man in my life.”
“Yet you can’t stand for me to touch you,” he accused.
122
BlackMoon Reaper
She was silent for a moment then stroked the tears from his cheek. “I think I know
how that woman felt,” she said. “Your friend’s wife.” She pushed his hair back from his
temple. “You are an easy man to love.”
Bitter laughter erupted from the High Lord and he pushed out of her lap, crab-
walking his way to the wall, pressing his back against it, drawing his knees up. He
wrapped his arms around his chest as though he were freezing.
“Oh aye, I am a fucking lovable old bastard, ain’t I, Aingeal?” he snarled, wiping
the back of his hand under his chin where tears were dripping then hugging himself
again. “People are standing in line to visit with me, to invite me to sup with them.”
Another sour laugh came forth. “My card is so fucking full I don’t know who to ask to
dance first!” He wiped his palm along the edge of his jaw. “Shit, I’m just the beau of the
ball is what I am!”
Aingeal sighed and drew her knees up to lock them within the circle of her arms.
“You can be a son of a bitch when you want to and I think that’s most of the time, but
you know what?” She canted her head to one side, watching him.
“What?” he snapped.
“It’s all an act,” she said. “It’s a way to keep people at arm’s length because you’re
afraid they’ll get too close and either they’ll hurt you or you’ll hurt them.”
His dark eyes narrowed. “Aye, well, look at my fucking track record, wench! That
seems to be what I do best! Hurting people, destroying them. Hell, I fucking destroyed
a whole gods-be-damned fucking planet!”
“One more fucking and I’m going to get up and leave,” she told him, chin in the air.
“I mean it.”
The bravado seemed to go out of him like air out of a balloon and his shoulders
slumped. He let out a small, frustrated moan.
“I hate myself, Aingeal,” he said, lowering his head. “I fu…” He pursed his lips,
frowned then ended by saying, “I hate myself.”
“Hate the man you were if that makes you feel any better, Khee, but don’t hate the
man I know you really are.”
“You don’t know the real me, Aingeal!” he yelled at her. “If you did, you’d get the
hell out of here and never look back!”
“Then tell me who the real Kheelan Ben-Alkazar really is,” she said. “Make me
understand the man you think you hate.”
“There’s no thinking about it,” he growled. “I do hate him. I hate him more and
more every day.”
“And I grow fonder of him more and more every day even if he is a mean-spirited,
arrogant, haughty, overconfident, self-centered, self-absorbed, egotistical, pigheaded,
conceited know-it-all with a god complex.”
“Hey, don’t hold back now, wench!” he snapped at her. “Tell me how you really
feel!”
123
Charlotte Boyett-Compo
“Are you going to stop blubbering like a little girl?” she countered.
Kheelan made a rude noise, flung out a dismissive hand, top lip quirked with
disdain. “If you don’t stop insulting me, wench, I swear I’m going to blow snot on you.”
Aingeal grinned. “Now that’s the High Lord I’ve come to know and love.”
The Shadowlord slowly raised his head to give her a piercing look. He searched her
eyes. “Don’t say what you don’t mean, Aingeal.”
Her grin slipped away. “All right, Kheelan. We’ve danced around this for months.
Let’s talk about it. Tell me what you want to, what you need to and I’ll listen then we’ll
never bring it up again.”
“And that’ll make it easier?” he countered.
“No, but it will be out in the open. Everyone in the Citadel knows how you feel. It’s
not a secret.”
He banged the back of his head against the wall once, twice, three times then shook
it as though clearing it of treacherous thoughts. “By the gods, I’m as evil as Morrigunia
paints me, aren’t I? Sitting here lusting after another man’s wife. You’d think I’d learned
the first time what harm that can do.”
“Where is Annwn?” she asked.
Kheelan’s forehead furrowed at the sudden change of subject. “What?”
“Where is Annwn?” she repeated.
“Rysalia,” he bit out. “Why?”
“And Rysalia is divided into how many actual worlds?”
“What has that got to do with…?”
“Humor me,” she said. “How many worlds constitute Rysalia?”
He rolled his eyes. “The Federated Moons of Rysalia are in the Cairghrian galaxy of
the Aduaidh Quadrant of the megaverse. There are three sectors of planets among the
Federated Moons. The Northern Sector is Rysalia Prime, the Southern Sector is Basaraba
and the Middle Sector is Annwn.”
“From whence came Lord Arawn.”
“Aye, though he was born on one of the moons, he is not really a Rysalian. Only
those born on Rysalia Prime are considered true Rysalians.” He narrowed his eyes at
her. “What does it matter?”
“I once heard Arawn, Cynyr and Phelan talking about famous warriors. They were
discussing the heroes of…” She frowned. “I can’t remember the name of the capitol on
Rysalia Prime.”
“Asaraba,” he supplied, looking away from her.
“Aye, that was it. Arawn brought up the Battle of Asaraba and how the two co-
commanders of the Rysalian Fleet almost single-handedly destroyed an entire armada
of Diabolusian ships. Cynyr asked the names of the co-commanders and Arawn said
that was well before he was born but he remembered one of the men—Lesh Spiosyn. I
124
BlackMoon Reaper
remember that name because all three men shuddered. I asked them why that reaction.