Summoned and Bound (Summoned Series Romances Book 3) (3 page)

That plan lasted right up until the moment she re-entered the room.

“I brought you some rags to dry yourself. I’ve found some clothes for you, too.”

The soft melody of her voice rekindled the fire in his blood, and his cock hardened despite the icy bath he’d just endured. “Thank you.”

“My master instructed me to see you settled. I’m simply obeying orders.” She made her way to him, ignoring the water pooling on the floor.

She was still a few steps away when she lost her footing and slipped. Vamir caught her before she hit the floor.

“I’ve got you,” he murmured.

“Thank you.” Her lovely mouth turned up into an expression close to a smile as she looked at him, and that delicate, floral scent hit him again. It was stronger this time, reminding him of wildflowers and sun-warmed meadows. Desire flared, hot and insistent, and for a moment, he was tempted to kiss her. He wanted to crush her to his chest and promise her that he would take her away from this nightmare of a life.

What in the hells is wrong with me?

“You don’t have to thank me for doing my duty, little one.”

“Carrying me is hardly your duty,” she protested, a slight furrow appearing between her pale brows as she puzzled over what he’d said.

“My duty is to protect any elemental who needs it. Always.”

“Well, the threat from the floor is over, so you can put me down now.” She pointed toward the ground, but he noted that she hadn’t phrased the statement as an order.

“I’ll put you down by the door, the floor is dry there.”

She arched a pale brow at his logic, and there was no missing the smile that touched her lips. “If you’re trying to save me from getting soaked, perhaps you should have considered the fact that
you
are just as wet as the floor.”

He laughed, the unfamiliar sound filling the room. “So much for my dashing rescue.”

Gwyn couldn’t remember the last time someone had touched her without inflicting pain. The close contact made it impossible to ignore her growing attraction to the new arrival. Her fingers itched to touch him, and her heart raced as if she’d sprinted from the top of the citadel all the way down to the lowest levels.

Once they reached the doorway, Vamir stopped, but he didn’t let go of her.

“You have to let go of me now,” she told him.

He started to set her down, but then his muscles tensed and his jaw set as he resisted obeying. “I’m
really
starting to hate this fucking slave collar.”

“It’s easiest if you don’t fight it.” Gwyn found herself stroking his cheek in an attempt to soothe him.

Vamir turned his head to brush a light kiss to her palm. “I’m a warrior, little one. I won’t stop fighting until I’m dead.”

“Then you won’t live long,” she said, seized by a sense of loss at the thought of his dying. She’d seen so much death and suffering that the idea of another life ending shouldn’t have bothered her, but it did.

He finally put her down, letting her body slide along his in a way that made her breath catch. His eyes gleamed with mischief, and she knew he’d done it deliberately.

“What?” he asked when she frowned at him. “Your robe was already wet, and now I’m drier.”

“That sort of thinking will ensure that what little time you are alive is spent being punished for insubordinate behavior. Please, Vamir. I do not want to see you punished.”

“I don’t intend to be here long enough for that to happen, little one. But I will try to behave in the meantime.” He brushed back a lock of her hair from her face and gave her a strange look, one that made her heart beat a little faster. “Would you really care if I were punished?”

“I would. I may be surrounded by misery and suffering, but that doesn’t mean I take any pleasure in it.”

“How long have you lived like this, mistress?”

“A hundred years or more. Enough time has passed I’ve lost track of exactly how long ago I was summoned. And you must stop talking about escaping. No one’s ever managed it.” She had witnessed firsthand the deaths of the handful of slaves who’d tried to flee. Some nights she still heard their screams in her nightmares.

“When I leave here, little one, I intend to take you with me. I think a hundred years of darkness is enough for any soul to endure.” His fingertips caressed her cheek lightly before he lowered his hand to take the rags she held.

“When you leave here, it will most likely be with your ring on my finger as I deliver you to your new master. Will you still want to rescue me when I’m the one stealing your future?”

“Unless that torc around your neck is purely decorative, then you’re just as much a slave as I am. You’re not responsible for anything you do while you are under his control.”

Vamir used the rags to dry himself as they talked, rubbing briskly to help warm himself up after his cold water bath. He could see the guilt in Gwyn’s eyes as she spoke of taking him to his next master, and he found himself wondering how many times she’d had to perform that task.

She shook her head, her eyes darkening to a stormy gray. “You don’t understand. I’m my master’s right hand. I remember every summoning and have memorized the name of everyone I’ve delivered to their new owner. I’ve lived with the darkness so long, I don’t know any other way. Even if you do find a way to escape, you shouldn’t take me with you.”

“Why not?”

Her fingers strayed to the collar around her neck. “Because until I am freed, I am his servant, and I will betray you the way I have betrayed all the others. You can’t save me or protect me from the things I’ve done.”

Vamir didn’t argue with her, but he knew she was wrong. She had memorized the names of her master’s victims, holding their memories in her heart and carrying the weight of her guilt at what she’d been forced to do. The darkness hadn’t consumed her, not yet. She could still be saved. For now, though, he changed the subject. “What will happen to me now?”

She handed him a slave’s robe and a pair of felted wool slippers large enough to fit him. “If you’d been the feral species we were expecting, then you’d have been sold as a pit fighter. Likely, that’s where you will still end up, but our master will not decide until he’s tested your abilities.” Her expression darkened slightly. “If you impress him, he may keep you as breeding stock before selling you.”

“Breeding? You master actually…” The haunted look in her eyes told him everything he needed to know. With his stomach roiling in horror at what she’d told him, he tugged the robe over his head and tried to ignore the rough scratch of the wool against his back. It fell to mid-thigh and had no sleeves at all, but it would have to do.

“He does. It would be one of the ways you could earn that hot bath you were asking about earlier,” she said.

“You were right, I was better off not knowing. I can’t father children, though, so I’ve no value as breeding stock.”

For the first time in his life, Vamir was grateful for the unique circumstances of his birth. Garda males were always born in pairs. The brothers were raised and trained together, fighting as a team and protecting each other’s backs. They claimed a mate together, too, binding their souls to one woman. Only soulbound mates could conceive, and Vamir was the only male of his race to be born without a twin.

His solitary existence reminded some of his people about an ancient prophecy, but Vamir didn’t believe in ancient riddles. Whatever his destiny was, he refused to consider that it had already been planned out and predicted by an oracle that’d been dead for centuries.

Gwyn tipped her head and gave him an assessing look, considering his admission of sterility. “If that’s true, then you’ll be sold as a fighter for certain. If you have any abilities that make you exceptional, the master will want to know of them. The more he can charge for you, the better you’ll be treated while you’re here.”

If he revealed the true scope of his abilities, it wouldn’t take long for the master to figure out Vamir’. Even if the sorcerer had never come across one of the Garda before, there was only one race in the planes able to transform themselves into beasts made of solid stone. They were the subject of legends on dozens of worlds, and Vamir’s luck could only hold so long. If the sorcerer didn’t recognize him, then he certainly would the moment he transformed. “I’m not a feral, but I can alter my form, change my skin to something like stone so that it acts as armor.”

“That’s an unusual talent. I imagine it’s rather handy, too.” She handed him the slippers she had been holding, and once he had them on, she pointed back down the hall they had come down earlier. “Follow me, and I will take you to your cell. Once we’re there, I suggest you get some rest. Tomorrow, your new life begins.”

Gwyn started walking, confident that Vamir would follow. The torc around his neck would ensure he obeyed. They hadn’t gotten more than few paces when he broke the silence between them.

“I know he told me to call you mistress, but are you permitted to tell me your name?”

The question caught her off guard. “I…I suppose I am permitted, but what does it matter if you can’t use my name?”

“When I think of you, I would like it to be by your real name. My thoughts are still my own, even if nothing else is,” he said.

His words held a certain wisdom, and she found herself stopping so that she could turn to face him. Gwyn had learned that names held a certain type of power. To give another being your name meant that you were offering up a piece of yourself. The names of every slave her master summoned was inscribed on the ring that controlled them, part of the magic that bound them to his will. Gwyn preferred to be known simply as the mistress, to hide behind the title and to protect what little remained to her, but she found herself wanting to give this man her name.

She tried to convince herself it was only so she could speak the words aloud once more, that he would be gone soon and no threat to her, but she knew better. If he knew her name, then he would remember her, and maybe her life would not be quite so lonely if she knew there was one other person out there who knew her name. “I’m Gwyneth Annaren.”

His eyes widened for a brief moment, and then he bowed low. “I am honored to meet you, Gwyneth Annaren.”

“You shouldn’t be honored at all. You’re here with me because you had the ill fortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and ended up being summoned into slavery by mistake. If anything, you should be regretting that we ever met.”

He straightened and flashed her a cocky grin that made her heart stutter in her chest. “Maybe I should, but I don’t. I’m starting to think I’m exactly where I need to be.”

“Then perhaps you’ve gone mad. You wouldn’t be the first.” She turned her back and started down the hallway, doing her best to calm herself as she walked.

“I’ve not lost my wits, thank you very much. All things considered, I think I’m coping rather well.”

His words were laced with laughter, and she wondered if he might be a little mad. After everything Vamir had lost today, he shouldn’t be laughing, or flirting, and she was quite certain he just done both.

Vamir fell in behind Gwyneth, still trying to wrap his head around what he’d learned. He knew who Gwyneth was, probably better than she knew herself. She’d been little more than a child when she had vanished from the gardens of her home. The only daughter of two of the most powerful elementals alive at the time, she’d gone missing only days before the plane was to be sealed off to protect the inhabitants from the Magi. Her disappearance had sent shockwaves through the population and broken the hearts of her parents.

Forced to choose between searching for their child and protecting the entire plane with the spell they had personally created, Gwyneth’s parents were faced with an impossible choice. In the end, they had cast the spell. They had begged Vamir and the others who stayed at the outpost to watch for the ones who had gone missing and protect any they found, most especially their little girl. In all the time since, Vamir and his guardians had never found a trace of the ones who had been taken, not until today.

He’d been wrong before. The fates weren’t fucking with him. They’d sent him to the person who needed him the most. He’d wanted a purpose, and now one had been handed to him.

***

Chapter Three

Gwyn answered her master’s early morning summons with dread in her heart. He normally left her to her duties during the day, especially when there was a new slave to train. To be called to the Magi’s quarters so early in the day didn’t bode well.

Vamir’s eyes had haunted her, even after she’d fallen asleep, filling her head with fractured dreams and long dormant memories. She heard her momma singing a lullaby, the boom of her daddy’s laughter, the faces of loved ones long gone. Her past, locked away for so many years, came back to her in a disjointed jumble. Scents and sounds, places and people she had banished to the deepest corners of her mind. In her sleep, she couldn’t stop it, and by the time she awoke again, it was too late. Her mind overflowed with memories of the past, too many to ignore.

She woke with tears on her cheeks and one recollection standing out above all the others. A pair of creatures with skin like granite, their aquamarine eyes glowing softly in the twilight as they perched outside her window, guarding her bedroom. They were Garda warriors, her guardians, and they were the same race as Vamir.

Gwyn had bathed and tidied herself, composing her mind as she washed away every trace of her tears. If the master noticed her distress, he would want to know why, and the power of the collar would force her to confess what she had remembered. If that happened, Vamir would die, but only after they had wrested every secret from him and left him shattered and broken.

He was the first denizen of Essa she had seen since the day she’d been summoned, the only one who might be able to tell her what happened to her people and why no one had ever come looking for her. She had to talk to him again and then she had to find a way to free him before the master realized exactly who and what he’d summoned.