“I’m sorry,” Bael whispered to Kett, horrified, but he didn’t think she heard him. To his men, he babbled, “Leave it. Don’t kill it. Leave some for me, I mean. I’ll come back later. When I’ve rested. Later. Lock it up, it’s talking rubbish. I need to get out of here.” He barged past the guards. “There’s no fucking air. It stinks. Move!”
They let him pass, and then he heard the heavy door scrape shut.
Underneath the sound was the dry wheeze of Kett’s laughter.
The hot bath and soft bed held no appeal for Bael now. Pacing his locked chamber, cold with horror, panic and guilt, he clutched at Var, who pressed close to him as an anxious, angry little cat.
Kett was a shapeshifter. She’d kept that from him the whole time! How could she have done that, especially after he’d told her that he was a Mage? The one thing that might unite them, and she’d kept it to herself.
Because she doesn’t want to be united with you, his conscience said. She went off fucking a whore the first chance she got. She clearly doesn’t want you.
Thoughts reeled around Bael’s head. Could Kett have killed his mother? No, she’d been a teenager. Not that Kett as a teenager wouldn’t have been lethal, but still. Albhar said she’d been an older woman. Kett’s mother? Maybe. Maybe Kett had been wearing age as a disguise. He wouldn’t put it past her.
And that wasn’t even the worst thing.
He set down Var and picked up his scryer, distractedly trying to remember what he’d been told about using it. Concentrate on the person you want.
The rock got warm in his hands. It vibrated. And then a voice was saying, “Bael? Are you all right?”
He opened his eyes to see Chance looking up at him from the face of the scryer, and nearly wept with relief.
“Your majesty,” he said, and she laughed prettily.
“You don’t need to go through all those formalities, Bael,” she said. “You’re practically family.”
“Yeah,” Bael said doubtfully. “Listen. This is really important. I think the Nasc are in danger. Can you warn them?”
Chance instantly snapped into business mode. “What is it?”
“There’s a ritual,” he began. “It involves a Nasc and a shapeshifter. And death. I think.”
“Hell,” she said when he’d finished explaining what he’d worked out about Albhar. “Do you think they’re allied with the Federación?”
Cold sweat bathed Bael anew. “Well, now I do,” he said. “I thought you and-and your father had killed them all?”
“They’re like vermin,” Chance said venomously. “There’re always a few you miss, and that’s enough to start again. We’ll warn as many as we can. Thank you, Baelvar.”
With that she signed off and Bael was left in his remote castle, surrounded by the enemy and feeling like a giant bruise, inside and out. The tear on his back meant that manifesting wings would hurt like hell, and if he was going to carry Kett he’d have to turn into a big creature like a dragon, which required a hell of a lot of energy he just didn’t have.
Var looked up at him, feline eyes narrowed, and Bael laughed suddenly.
“What was that my old dad used to say?” he asked, picking up his twin and pressing his face against Var’s soft fur. “It’s not a problem, it’s a challenge.”
Var started to purr.
“Exactly,” Bael said, and felt invigorated for the first time in days.
Chapter Sixteen
Night fell over the Vyishka mountains. Here in the northern part of the Realm of Asiatica, darkness came swift, cold and impenetrable.
Var rose from the black mountains as a dragon twenty feet long, and glided silently toward Kett’s turret. Bael, dressed in a swirling long cloak, strode up the tower and made loud comments to each guard he saw about alternately beating the shit out of the shapeshifter and raping it to hell. They guffawed and cheered him on, and Bael wanted to kill all of them.
He reached the top, demanded entry and, right on cue, someone outside yelled, “Take cover! A dragon!”
The guard with Bael hesitated, and Bael pushed him at the stairs. “Go,” he said. “Go shoot at it or something.”
He shoved the door open before the man had even gotten around the corner, and stopped, taking a mental breath.
Kett lay huddled on the floor, still naked, her skin gray and caked with blood. Her ribs, clearly visible through her thin flesh, rose and fell shallowly with each breath. The wound on her shoulder was horribly swollen, streaks of red running down her arm, the skin cracked and oozing.
She looked a minute away from death, and murderous rage rose up within Bael.
“Kett,” he said, falling to his knees by her. “Kett, can you hear me?”
“G’way,” she mumbled, her voice barely a rattle. “F’koff.”
“Not gonna do that, sweetheart.” As Var landed on the roof of the turret with a heavy thud, Bael carefully lifted Kett from the floor and wrapped her in the warm clothes he’d hidden under his cloak.
“No,” she rasped. “’M dead. Useless. Can’t use me.”
“You’re never useless, darling. Now shush a minute.”
He covered her with his body as Var began to rip the roof of the turret away. From outside came the sounds of shouting, the order to fire, but Bael knew that was useless since a dragon was covered in scales almost everywhere. Men were running up the steps of the tower toward them, but they hadn’t even gotten close by the time Var tore through the roof and picked Bael and Kett up in his claws.
Roaring, he began to flap away, breathing a satisfying jet of fire down into the turret and incinerating all the guards who’d cheered Bael on when he’d said he was going to rape Kett.
It would have been a perfect getaway, were it not for the arrow that struck Var’s wing, the only significant part of a dragon not covered by scales.
Buffeted backward for a second, Var screamed and rained fire down on the archers in the courtyard.
We don’t have time for this to hurt now, Bael told his twin. It can hurt later, but not now.
And for the first time, perhaps because it was the first time he’d truly needed it, the magic worked. His wing painless, Var righted himself, his grip so tight on Bael that even through his thick cloak and doublet he was breathless.
He could have merged with his twin for strength, but Var’s claws were too big, too sharp, to hold Kett without hurting her more. So he stayed human and held her as closely and tightly as he could.
Her shoulder wound oozed through her clothes. She didn’t move.
She barely breathed.
He grabbed her close, desperate, not knowing what to do.
“I’m so sorry, Kett,” he whispered, sobs breaking his voice. “Please get well again. You can beat me up as much as you’d like. Just stay alive, sweetheart. Just stay alive.”
Sobbing, tears freezing on his lashes, he pleaded with every god he could think of to heal Kett.
But the gods, as ever, remained silent.
Kett wasn’t entirely sure what she was imagining and what was real.
She was fairly sure she imagined the dragon picking her up and flying off with her in its claws. After all, she knew dragons pretty well and they rarely picked up anything they didn’t intend to later eat. The dragon holding her, however, did so gently, as if recognizing she was hurt.
The cold seemed realistic. And the pain. The terrible throb of her shoulder that made it almost impossible to move…she couldn’t have imagined that. It was worse than when the tiger had ripped open her leg, because then she’d only been alone for less than an hour before the Maharaja and his hunting party had found her, taken her in and cared for her.
Hmm, the Maharaja. She’d been entertaining his court just before the whole cave incident. Had he been Albhar in disguise? Her delirious brain superimposed the Maharaja’s dark, plump face over Albhar’s pale, lined one, and dismissed the thought as ridiculous.