“Wait, responsible how?”
“He trusted Malgore, and in so doing he compromised everything.”
“I see. . . . So how did you get the relic back?”
“Ten thousand elves marched out from Elvindom and crossed the Shining Sea. From the other side of the mountains an army of twenty thousand knights rode out from Ivonhain. Our two armies met at Delfin Lake in the heart of the Glittering Mountains, and there we fought for three long days against the gremlins and wolves in the fortress of Salum, so that but twelve of our strongest warriors could scale the cliffs of Salum and infiltrate the enemy stronghold. For every one of the enemy we felled, a hundred elves and men died on the sandy shores of the lake, but we were successful in recovering the relic. Not more than a thousand men and elves retreated from that battle.
“We returned later, with another army that was less-hastily assembled and better prepared to siege the fortress. We razed it with scarcely a casualty. Since then the mountains have been known as the Skull Mountains, and the lake as Ossein Lake, for the bones that litter its depths. The ruins of the fortress of Salum are now known as the City of the Dead.”
Aurelius was frowning. He had a sudden flash of déjà vu. “I think I’ve been there.”
“Where?”
“To those places. I’ve been there. When we were hunting the relic, Malgore took us to Ossein Lake.”
Esephalia answered with a long, aching silence.
“What’s wrong?” he finally asked.
“Did you spend the night there?” her voice was suddenly serious, almost accusing.
“Yes . . . why?”
“Then you may not wish to survive tomorrow.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The first battle of Salum was fought with the gates of time still open. We didn’t know it until later, but every elf, man, gremlin, or wolf who died there is still there, trapped in a realm that exists beyond time. Their souls can never leave this world, and without bodies they are in eternal torment. Over the millennia, their suffering has made them bitter, twisting them into unthinkably evil beings. They
cannot
know you are here.”
“Uhh . . . what do they look like?”
“Nothing but wraiths and shadows; they can take any form, but nothing of substance unless they’ve found some soul-less bodies to inhabit, and that would take the work of a necromancer.”
Aurelius grimaced in the semi-darkness of his cell. “Well, that’s what I saw, shadows. They came to me in a dream and they were chasing me through a dark forest, asking me what I was doing here. Then I woke up and there was a shadowy thing in my room.”
Esephalia was silent for a long time. When she finally spoke, her voice was barely a whisper: “If you do not leave soon, they will come for you, Aurelius. They will find you, and they will kill you, and then they will take revenge on anyone else they can find. They would do unspeakable evil to our world.”
“Why? Why do they care about me? What did I do to them?”
“Their world, the world in which they are trapped is tied to the existence of the relic. It exists in all times, even in yours. When anyone travels through the gates of time, they are awakened by the movement, and they cannot rest until that person travels back. They are the timekeepers, the
Watchers
; they make sure that destiny runs its proper course. Your presence here is keeping them awake, and every moment they are awake, they are suffering because of you.”
“Then I need to find the relic even more urgently than I thought.”
“Does Gabrian know of this?” Esephalia asked.
“No, but Malgore does.”
The elvish woman made an impatient noise in the back of her throat. “Malgore will not care! You
must
tell Gabrian!”
“I don’t know if I’ll have the chance.”
“If you die, it won’t matter. If you don’t, you will not have long to return to your time before they come after you.”
“Well, I doubt you have anything to worry about, then.”
“Do not be so sure. Gabrian is more powerful than you know. Yet if he even suspected the Watchers knew about you, he would not help you to live through the battle tomorrow.”
Aurelius laughed lightly, though he felt the grave circumstances weighing him down. “A good thing he doesn’t know, then.”
“Do not be so sure. They will try to drag you down with them, Aurelius.”
“What?”
“If one of the Watchers kills you, you will become like them, doomed to spend eternity in torment. Or worse, they will try to lure you out of your body, and you will trade places with one of them.”
Aurelius swallowed thickly. “Maybe I should let Thorin kill me.”
There was a long, dark silence, punctuated only by the sound of Reven’s snores and the dripping of water inside their cell. Then, Esephalia broke that silence with an ominous whisper that somehow still reached Aurelius’s ears: “Maybe you should.”
Aurelius slept fitfully till noon of the following day. Possibly his last day on Meridia. Despair fell around him like a cloud of poison, choking his every breath and making his eyes and throat sting with the knowledge of what was to come. He was not a fighter—a gun-runner in his world, a fair shot with a plasma pistol, a rogue and jack-of-all-trades, but not a fighter, much less a fighter with swords, bows, tridents, and fists. The few fights he’d been in over his lifetime had been alehouse brawls, and by and large he’d lost those. Now he’d be fighting to the death, and he wouldn’t have the luxury of losing. The very thought of it stole his appetite and made him weak with a light, shuddery feeling that clung to him like a wet blanket. And if he were to believe the elf, winning would be no escape either, he would be hunted down and killed by undead warriors.
Lunch arrived with a scraping rasp of metal on the dirty stone floors. The guard lingered with a chuckle and an evil grin. Aurelius looked up. It was the warden.
“Any last requests?”
Aurelius paced over to his food and sat down on the floor. He grimaced at the gruel and asked, “Some better food?”
“Hah!” the guard laughed. “It never hurts to ask.” With that, he walked off. Aurelius ate lunch anyway, knowing he’d need his strength, but he ate only half and pushed the other half across the floor to Reven who grunted his thanks and then proceeded to swallow the meal whole. Aurelius watched him with a pitying kind of guilt. Apparently the wolf man was not exempt from the charges of stealing just because Aurelius’s sentence had not yet been decided, and Reven had no maiden to offer a challenge for him, so the queen would be both his judge and executioner.
Reven, however, would be given a lighter sentence because of his indirect involvement with the crime. He was to fight twelve battles in the Ring. Should he survive, or should a maiden grant him favor and pay his bail, he would be allowed to walk free. Bail was set at four pearls, which apparently standard currency among the maidens in Meria. There didn't seem to Aurelius to be a lot of use for the currency since food and clothing were free, and labor and quarters were both assigned based on a mermaid's status and the size of her family. Status, as far as Aurelius could tell, was a factor of nothing but how many mates a mermaid had, and how desirable they were. Also a factor seemed to be how many children she had and how beautiful they were.
While Aurelius was musing over all this, there came a banging on the bars of the cell. He looked up from gazing at the floor where he was still seated after eating his lunch.
“Visitor for you!” the warden barked gruffly.
It was Lashyla. She stood in the semi-dark with every curve neatly outlined in the pallid red light. Half-shaded by shadows, Aurelius couldn’t distinguish whether she was naked or clothed, but the mermaid’s version of clothing was scant enough that it hardly made a difference.
The cell door rattled open, and Lashyla stepped inside with the warden. Aurelius rose slowly and she stopped before him to look up at him with the wide, terrified eyes of a child—the child she ought to have been after little more than one year of life. He still couldn’t believe she was so young.
“Aurelius . . .” she whispered, reaching up to stroke his cheek.
He met her gaze with a slack expression of defeat and despair. “Have you come to say goodbye?”
Her eyes, already glistening wet with tears, grew still more glassy, and then he saw a trickle of moisture running down one lovely cheek. In that moment his heart, which he’d kept so jealously guarded against her charms, leapt out for her, and he wiped that tear away. “Hey.”
She closed her eyes and looked away, unable to bear looking at him any longer.
“Hey,” he said again. “I didn’t spend the last three days getting beaten with stick-shaped swords to give up now. I’m not dead yet.”
“No . . .” she said, her voice cracking on the word. “Not yet.”
He cracked a dry smile. “Your faith in me is encouraging.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to . . .” She trailed off shaking her head.
In that moment, she was so weak, so vulnerable, so different from the Lashyla he’d known—the Lashyla who spent every waking moment trying to seduce him, subdue him, dominate him, and ultimately make him her sex slave, that now he felt something, something
powerful
stirring inside his chest, rushing through his veins with insistent force.
He circled her bare waist with one arm and grabbed her at the nape of her neck, crushing her to him. His lips found hers with possessive, pent-up need, and now he dominated
her
, questing and conquering. He was her master, and she his slave. As she responded to his kiss with a more submissive version of her usual passion, he knew that she was acutely aware of the reversal, and for a wonder, she tolerated it—even welcomed it. When they finally broke away from each other, she let out a heartfelt sigh. Their foreheads touched and they spent a long moment catching their breath.
“Aurelius,” she whispered.
“Lashyla,” he whispered back.
“We still have time,” she said.
He felt a sharp return of his old suspicion, and he withdrew a little to look her in the eye. “What do you mean?”
She looked away and shook her head. “Never mind.”
“No, tell me,” he said, his hand finding her chin and forcing her gaze back to his.
She searched his face, eyes flicking left to right and back again. Then she bit her lower lip and risked it. “I want you, Aurelius. I’ve wanted you since before we met, only I didn’t know it until the day we did. I think . . .” She hesitated. “I think I’m falling in love with you.”
Aurelius blinked in shock. “I thought mermaids only had use for their men as . . .”
“As what?” she asked, suddenly indignant. She fell back a step, her expression clouding angrily. Without even knowing what he was doing, he took a step to follow her, to keep her close. “As objects of pleasure and slaves to do our bidding? How can you be such a fool? You don't think us capable of love?”
“I . . .” he trailed off.
She took another step back, and he matched it, taking her in his arms once more. He pulled her to him, though he felt her resistance. When he pressed his lips to hers again, she was unresponsive. He paid no attention, but changed his approach, kissing her softly, offering apology without words. He felt the rigidness in her taut body relax, weakening and softening. By now his blood was humming fiercely in his veins and his heart hammering in his chest. The instant she began to respond, he backed her against the bars of his cell with the force of his passion, and he pinned her there, kissing her more ferociously than he’d ever kissed a woman in his life. She responded with equal heat and tried to reverse their positions so that he was pinned rather than her, but all her strength was nothing against his. After a while she seemed to realize this and relaxed once more, letting him do as he would. Before he could help himself, his hands were all over her, and he even forgot that Reven was there, lurking somewhere in the dimly-lit cell, able to see everything in the bold clarity of a wolf’s acute night vision.
At last Lashyla broke away with a gasp for air. “Aurelius,” she whispered. “Let us go to my quarters.”
Aurelius took a moment to catch his breath and felt the trickle of sweat running down his back. “So you can have your way with me?” he asked with a wry grin.
She took his hand in hers and squeezed it,
hard
. “No, so that you can have
yours
.”
Aurelius felt his pounding pulse quicken still more, and he sucked in a slow, calming breath. Lashyla slipped out from under his arms which pinned her in place, and she dragged him slowly by his hand in the direction of the open cell door. Aurelius felt a jolt of surprise to see the warden standing not five steps away, having witnessed everything. He watched Aurelius with a grin, nodded once, and said, “A good last request.”
* * *
Two guards accompanied them from the Ring’s cell block to Lashyla’s quarters. There seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary in this type of last request; the warden made no fuss, and the guards no comment. Aurelius allowed himself to be led back to Lashyla’s room like a sheep on its way to slaughter. He couldn’t resist. Not now. Not with his situation so dire, his life left to live so short. All he had left was the moment, and if he didn’t live for it now, he wouldn’t even have the luxury of regretting it later.
Those thoughts spurred him on, adding fire to his already boiling passion. The resultant mixture was potent enough to overwhelm any reticence he still felt over consequences or principle of the matter. Making things all the worse, he felt his brain clouding more and more with every second he spent in Lashyla's presence. It was a terrifying combination: his desire, her beauty, and her potent pheromones, fueled by her own desire—it was stronger than anything he’d ever before felt in his life.
When they finally reached her quarters, they closed the door behind them with a sigh of relief. The guards stayed outside, since their mating had already been witnessed once—although Aurelius reflected dimly that it hadn’t been him they’d witnessed with her. . . .
It had been . . .
Lashyla fell upon Aurelius with a raging fire, roiling furiously, igniting him and devouring him before he had a chance to properly think. He had to struggle to remember what it was that had given him pause. . . . but the thoughts kept dancing out of reach.
At last he gave up and succumbed to the hazy warmth and blinding, beguiling force of the moment. He took her lovely face between his hands and kissed her powerfully. She weakened at the knees and fell back onto her bed. He followed her there, caging her between his arms and taking her lips between his in alternating soft and possessive strokes. Supporting himself with one hand, he reached down with the other, cupping her breast, squeezing her nipples until she gasped. He raised one knee between her legs, parting them and putting pressure between, and she became a sudden tempest, sucking and biting his neck, and ripping at his clothes with her hands. With no regard for finesse, he tore her bra down the middle and bent to devote attention there whilst she gasped and whispered in his ear, “I love you.”
He didn’t take a break to reciprocate the sentiment. It would have been a lie. How could he love her after so little time? How could he know who she was and what she was like in order to love her for the person that she was? He’d be loving without cause or reason. Desire was easier; fire cared not who it devoured.
He bent to suck her nipple, rolling it on his tongue, and then bit it—hard. Overcome, she gasped and dug her nails into his back. Her hands roved up under his tunic, tracing the rigid lines of his chest and stomach. He felt a shudder of delight as the sensations overcame him, and then she had grabbed him in both hands and she was toying with him with surprising skill. For a moment the fight left him. His eyes closed involuntarily, and his breath came in short, ragged gasps.
Suddenly she slipped out from under him and with a surprising burst of strength she flipped him onto his back. Stunned, he gazed up at her while she smiled triumphantly and climbed on top. She bent low over him, her hair falling in a luxurious grotto around his face, shielding them both. In that moment, all that existed in the world was her lovely face and her warm body pressing against his. Her pouty red lips glistened invitingly and close. She pinned him in place by his arms, then kissed him, only the briefest, most tantalizing kiss, and then she withdrew with a teasing smile.
He looked up at her, his eyes wide with need and disbelief. He tried to sit up and take the kiss that she’d not quite given him, but she held him fast, and he lay back, defeated. She smiled broadly, and then did it again, a teasing taste, but nothing more. It was infuriating.
Twice more she kissed him like that, until his passion overcame him and he lifted her bodily off him. Surprise was written all over her face as he flipped her under him once more. Now he gave her a taste of the same. His fingers trailed lightly down, tracing circles around her nipples, then lower still, his touch light and provocative.