Authors: Charlotte Boyett-Compo
Tags: #Romance, #Fantasy, #Fiction, #Adult, #General
not."
Conar jerked, pulling away from the priest, running the back of his hand across his mouth. The words
were like daggers burying themselves under his flesh, burning brands sloughing off portions of his skin,
twisted hemp flaying his bared back, opening up his soul.
"You must make the choice, Conar, or it will be made for you, and you know who will bid first for you."
Kaileel’s face filled with tight concern. "Do you want Tolkan as your master?"
"No!"
"Then declare yourself to me and I will do my best to see that pain is minimal."
Conar didn’t trust the man. He hated him. He feared him. His lean face filled Conar with a revulsion so
deep he found it hard to breathe. For a long time he couldn’t speak, couldn’t say the words that would
seal his fate. He had no choice, and knew he didn’t. But handing over his soul to this man was killing him.
Shadows of his past filled his mind, the instruments of instruction so degrading, so vile, they had turned
his body into a screaming mass of agony and shame. He could not stop the fearful shivers coursing
through him and looked away from Tohre’s anxious face.
"On my love for you, Conar," Kaileel told him, "I will swear no others will lay hands to you after you
have declared me your master." He watched with avid fascination as a single tear eased down Conar’s
cheek.
There came a ragged breath and a tremble of Conar’s lips. "Is there no other way?"
"None. You knew that before you came."
A hard shudder went through Conar’s body. He lowered his head, defeated. "I will give myself to you."
"Of your own free will?"
Conar glanced up at the triumphant face. "If that’s what you want to call it."
"You will not fight me?"
"I will not fight you."
"You will do as I bid?"
Conar’s voice was weaker, less sure. "Just promise you will let me go back to her when this is done,
Kaileel."
"You will do as I tell you?" Kaileel repeated, twisting the dagger deeper.
Conar let his gaze slowly return to Kaileel’s hated face. He looked into those vengeful eyes with
indifference and sighed. "I will do as you tell me as long as I am allowed to return to my lady." His voice
was flat, emotionless.
Tohre smiled. "Then it is done. I shall have her returned to your brother, Legion, at once."
"And Galen?"
The High Priest shrugged. "What do you want done with him?"
There was no longer any anger or spite or revenge in Conar’s face. Only bleakness and terrible
resignation showed on the handsome visage. He took a deep breath and slowly let it out. "Send him
away, Kaileel. Get him out of the country before our father finds him and sends him to prison for what
he’s done."
In surprise, Tohre’s head turned slightly to the side. "You would protect him after what he has done?
After being the cause of you finally coming to us?"
He met the Priest’s look. "He is my brother. You used him to get to me. Despite what he is, what you
have made him, I will not see him punished for something you caused."
"So be it. No harm will come to him as long as he does not interfere in our business."
"And after the…the…" Conar couldn’t say the words.
"Your consecration to Us?" Kaileel finished. "You will be free to return to Boreas, and the life you were
living."
"And then?"
"You will use your new powers as we see fit."
Tohre left him standing alone in the center of the room.
Kaileel’s footsteps had already died away, but the stench of the man still permeated the room. Conar
stumbled to a low stone bench and sat down heavily, his hands hiding his face from what he had done.
He had no illusions about the kind of power of that Kaileel had spoken. He would be able to summon the
demons and entities that Tohre could. He would also be at Their beck and call.
Slowly he lowered his hands and raised his head, staring into space. From the moment he had learned it
was Galen who had Liza, he should have known he would end up at the Abbey. They had been trying all
his life to capture him. Now They had. He could no more fight Them on Their level than he could soar
across the tips of Mount Serenia’s highest peaks.
They might well allow him to go back to Boreas, even sit upon the throne of his homeland, but They
would rule him; They would control who and what he was. He might even be allowed to keep Liza at his
side, but it wouldn’t matter. After the Rites of Passage, he would be One of Them, and Liza would be
lost to him forever.
He was lost.
Legion A’Lex moved his hand to Liza’s brow and frowned when she buried her face deeper into the
softness of her pillow. He turned to Healer Cayn. "She will be all right, won’t she? There will be no
aftereffects of the drugs?"
"She’ll be fine, Legion," Cayn assured. "No doubt she will have a vicious headache when she fully
awakens, but there will be no problems." He arched his tired back, for he had been sitting at the young
Princess’ bedside for nearly a day.
Lord Legion nodded relief. "I’m staying here. As long as Conar is away, I want someone to be with her
at all times. We won’t take a chance of letting her slip through our fingers again."
"The prince might well slay his twin if he finds him." The healer looked into Legion’s tanned face. "Not
that anyone would blame him. It was a vile thing Galen did."
"More so than usual."
"He held her at Norus for nearly a month, didn’t he?" Cayn inquired, tugging the young woman’s covers
over her shoulders.
"Why do you ask?"
Cayn didn’t like being the bearer of bad tidings, but he knew a decision had to be made. "I examined
her at the King’s request. I think you know what I found."
From his place at the foot of Liza’s bed, Teal du Mer glanced at Legion’s set face.
"He raped her?" Legion hissed.
Cayn nodded. "She is with child."
Teal whistled softly. Hearing such damning news put a whole new light on the situation. He said quietly,
"Conar will kill him."
A’Lex made a rude sound with his lips and turned away from Liza. "When we found her sleeping in one
of those filthy dungeon cells at Norus, I hoped to find Galen nearby. I wanted the pleasure of skewering
that slimy rodent on the tip of my broadsword. It’s just as well I didn’t find him. Conar will want Galen’s
blood on
his
sword."
"He’s not to find out," Cayn told him.
Legion stared. "At Papa’s orders?"
"Aye, I am to abort the babe."
Teal flinched. Even if Liza was awake and agreed to such a thing, Conar might not had he been there.
"Will you tell her?"
"No," Cayn sighed.
"That’s well enough," Hern Arbra said as he walked into the room. He was there to stand guard, at his
King’s orders, so Legion could rest. He had already been apprised of the young Princess’ condition.
"She would grieve even if the babe be Galen McGregor’s."
"If Conar had waited before going off like a madman, he might well have been with us when we found
her and this discussion would be moot," Teal reminded them. "He won’t like what it is you will be doing,
Cayn. We all know how he feels about abortion."
"Why did Jah-Ma-El lie to your brother?" Cayn asked, ignoring du Mer. He didn’t like the idea of
aborting an innocent babe anymore than the gypsy. "I heard it said that he told Conar the lady was not at
Norus, that she had been taken elsewhere."
"Jah-Ma-El really believed that," Teal told him. "Bent, the executioner, found that out when he was
questioning Jah-Ma-El last eve."
"Conar isn’t going to like it that Jah-Ma-El was tortured, either," Legion snarled. "He didn’t want that to
happen."
"That wasn’t his decision to make," Hern Arbra said from the far side of the room. "That was the King’s
edict."
"But his own son…" Cayn said, shaking his head.
Hern sniffed. "Prince Conar has been missing for over a week. King Gerren has sent men all over this
kingdom, and there has been no word of the prince’s whereabouts. If loosening the tongue of one
son—one of no importance—can bring about news of another—much loved and needed—then the King
did what was right."
"Jah-Ma-El’s a human being…" Cayn argued.
"I wouldn’t make that distinction," Hern snapped.
Cayn regarded the man with unease. "I don’t suppose you would, Hern."
"Don’t get high-and-mighty on me, Cayn Summerton!" Hern grunted, shifting a chew of tobacco in his
mouth. "You don’t care anymore for that weasel than I!"
"If we only knew where Galen went," Legion interrupted. "Conar is most likely on his trail."
Hern squinted. "I’m beginning to think he took wings and flew to Diabolusia. The brat could be following
him there. If it’s Galen he’s after."
"Where else would he have gone?" Legion asked. Something in the big, muscular man’s attitude as he
leaned negligently on the hearth irritated A’Lex. "Do you know something we don’t?"
Hern crossed his arms over his chest and one booted ankle over the other. "Seems to me he would have
gone where he thought the lady was."
"She was at Norus," Teal put in, flinching as the hard, cold blue eyes turned on him.
"Aye," Hern agreed, "but the brat didn’t know that, du Mer."
"If you know something, Hern—" Legion started to say, but Hern’s gruff voice stopped him.
"If the brat thought she was gone from Norus, then his lady wasn’t there when he left. You might have
found her
after
he’d gone, but that was what you was
meant
to do." He faced Legion with a widespread
stance of challenge. "The brat went to where he knew her to likely be found."
There was such self-assurance in Hern Arbra’s expression, Legion had to concede the man might
possibly be right. "And where would that have been, Hern?"
"Hern may know, but he won’t tell," Prince Chase Montyne said from the doorway.
Hern grunted, but made no comment. He’d never cared much for the sissy-looking blond-haired heir to
the Ionarian crown. The blue eyes were too soft, the thin body too lean, the handsome face too vapid for
Hern’s taste. Chase might well be the best archer in the Seven Kingdoms, but Hern thought him too
effeminate.
There was a heavy look of misery on Chase Montyne’s face, as if sensing what Hern thought of him.
"No matter how you feel about me, I am a true friend to Conar. I only want to help."
Legion felt the undercurrent between the two men. He wondered what they knew about one another to
cause such acute shame on Chase’s face and such intense dislike on Hern’s.
"It don’t matter how good a friend you are to him,
Highness
," Hern stressed. "Can’t no one help him do
what he’s about. But he should have been stopped from going to that place."
"And how the hell was I to stop him, Hern? You tell me that. Where the hell did he go anyway?" Legion
asked, exasperated with the veiled remarks.
Hern jabbed a strong chin toward the Ionarian prince. "Let him tell you. I have things I must be about."
He stomped out of the room.
"Where, Chase?" Legion snarled.
"I think he may have gone to Corinth."
"Corinth?" Teal questioned. "To the Temple of the Winds? Why?"
"A good question," Legion injected. "Conar has no dealings with the Temple anymore. Why would he go
there?"
Teal shrugged. "To ask for help in getting Liza back?"
Chase looked away from du Mer. How could he tell them their friend had gone there to sell his soul?
* * *
with Legion and Teal. They would keep her safe for him. He laid down the scroll and stood by the tall
window that looked into the subterranean courtyard of the Great Abbey. The rocky layers of crimson
and emerald formations housed the Garden of the Furies: the twisted, demented statues of the
Domination’s pantheon of gods. He looked with disgust at the black marble monstrosities, some so vile
to look upon it hurt his eyes. He could still name a few of them, but he tore away his gaze, his head
aching. The firelight cast from torches imbedded among the rocks and ledges within the underground
courtyard was the only light entering the room in which he stood.
He leaned his head on a pane of glass and was not surprised to find the window’s surface unpleasantly
warm. After all, they were near the very pits of the Abyss. If you looked far off to the left along one
jagged ledge, you could actually see the thick iron doors that led into the Pit.
He could hear the Storm brewing outside even though he was a good mile under the earth. The howling,
keening dirge of hell-sent wind carved a pathway through his gut like the sharpened blade of an assassin.
It moaned; it hissed; it spat at him through the dark room. They would be coming for him soon, for the
Storm had been called up just for him.
He had toyed with the notion of trying to escape, but he knew he was being closely watched. He could
feel the eyes on him even now. Hot and angry for his blood. They waited, lurked, itched for his final
capitulation.
Shivering, he pushed away from the window where the light from the torches cast his haunted face in red
and green relief. He forced himself to sit in the room’s only chair, folded his hands between his knees,
and hunched forward, trying desperately to calm his rapidly fraying nerves. Every sound made him jump,
and he would look about expecting to see guards coming for him.