I pushed against Amber as he walked into the night. "I can stand," I protested.
His arms tightened warningly around me as we entered a clearing where the other six men, and one other, a man who stood a head taller than the others, waited. Then again, I considered, looking at Amber's father, the paternal giant to my little giant. Maybe it was in my best interest to look weak and ill. Too bad it happened to be true.
"So, she has finally awoken," boomed a deep voice. Sandoor. Amber's father. He was a big man, though less heavily framed and an inch or two shorter than his son. Silver streaked his brown hair and years of harsh, unpleasant experience lined his rough face. His blue eyes, so like his son's, were darker, harder, and much, much meaner. He felt powerful.
"Is she sane?" Sandoor inquired in a tone that implied that it didn't mattered if I was or wasn't.
Amber nodded.
"That is of good fortune, although not particularly necessary." Sandoor's dark eyes fell on me like a nasty caress. "We just need the use of her body."
They might look the same, but he was nothing like Amber.
"She almost passed from this life. She requires a few more days'to recover fully," Amber warned in a low rumble, "or you may yet lose her."
"Ah, yes. She is a Mixed Breed. More fragile, though quite gifted, I am told." Sandoor's dark eyes probed me, a singularly unpleasant experience. "Very well. She has one day longer before I break her in." His smile—the look in his eyes—creeped me out most ardently.
Amber turned to go.
"Not so readily." Sandoor's perverse words and tone stopped Amber cold and I felt renewed tension sing in the arms that held me. "I did not give you leave to go yet. Do tarry. Set her down here." He gestured to a log, which served as furniture here, apparently, in this sparse, barren domain.
Amber placed me carefully down on the ground, propping me up against a fallen tree trunk. Much better than being supine, among this pack of wild and hungry rogues.
"How carefully you handle her, Amber," his father mocked. "How diligently you have tended her these past six days."
Six whole days! The revelation staggered me. No wonder I felt so weakened.
"How tenderly you continue yet to care for her," Sandoor continued, his voice a deep, unhappy taunt. He came to tower over me.
"That is not the manner with which we treat women here, Amber. If you are to stay amongst us, you must learn that we do not serve women, they serve us."
"I do no more and no less than what she did for me when illness befell me," Amber returned carefully, no challenge or inflection in his words.
"And what caused you to be ill, Amber?"
"Mona Sera punished me by having me withstand the rays of the sun."
"For what length of time?"
"Four hours."
The other bandits muttered with anger.
"Then it was not punishment," Sandoor remarked with dangerous softness. "It was an intended execution. Not because you did not serve her well. Oh, no. You no doubt foolishly served her to the best of your ability, as we all served our Queens. And like you, we were to be rewarded for our utterly stupid loyalty, our years of thankless service, with death." Sandoor glared down at me with pure, undiluted hatred that was quite unsettling. "Why? Because inevitably we grow too strong for our Queens and threaten their power. Hundreds, thousands of our best and strongest warriors have been slaughtered under the guise of punishment, and will continue to die in this merciless manner unless we wrest control from the Queens and have them serve us."
"Mona Lisa saved me," Amber protested.
"Because she needed you, a vulnerable new Queen."
"She is not like other Queens, Father."
Sandoor smiled upon his offspring most pityingly. "Have you not learned yet, son, that they all begin most sweet. But eyes that gaze upon you with warm eagerness and affection those first few fleeting years, quickly become hard, wary, and fearful as your power grows until, alas, they banish you from their bed." He bent down to Amber, whispering into his face. "And then they destroy you."
Sandoor drew back and raked my body with cold, hating eyes. "How sweet you must be to draw such loyalty from my son, a man fully grown, who should have learned much better by now the harsh lessons of life. And yet, most interestingly, you were able to save him, when he was but as good as dead. Show us your hands, girl."
If that was all he wanted, I was most happy to comply. The restraints prevented me from turning my palms up, requiring me to bring my arms up and bend them at the elbows, so that my palms were displayed outward.
"So you have the ability to heal as well as harm with those unseemly blemishes," Sandoor mused. "Perhaps we need not sever your hands, after all."
Dear sweet God in heaven. My hands fell weakly back into my lap and curled protectively into impotent fists as fear dried my throat so that I could hardly even swallow.
"And let us hope, for your sake, that you breed better than that other bitch and contribute something more beside another useless female," Sandoor said sneeringly. A bush rustled and the little girl, Casio, who had been hiding behind it, darted away.
And I suddenly knew why her eyes had seemed so eerily familiar. They were Amber's eyes. And Sandoor's, as well.
"She's your daughter," I said to Sandoor, dazed by the sudden knowledge. His and Mona Carlisse's. Casio, that little shy, wild creature, was Amber's half sister.
"She is nothing. Not a Queen or a warrior, although she may serve some use to my men in a few short years."
Sweet lord in heaven, he meant sexually. Her own sire.
I did not blame Sandoor or any of the other men here for fleeing their Queens, for becoming rogues. They were doing nothing more than merely surviving. Not after Sandoor's revelation, confirmed by my very own eyes and through my own mother's carefully planned actions. She had been cleaning house: killing off her most strongest threats, her most strongest men. I saw it clearly now. But I did hold Sandoor accountable for all his actions since then, for the needless unkindness that he deliberately inflicted with relish to those under his captivity, for his cruel actions to his very own flesh and blood. For that, oh yes, I held him most accountable.
"You are a monster," I rasped. "Far worse than any Queen who may have done you wrong once."
Sandoor's eyes narrowed in dangerous warning. "I determine whether you shall live or die. Do not forget that most pertinent fact." He whipped away, crossing to the other side of the clearing, and threw himself into the only seat present in this most rustic abode, a chair roughly hewn from wood. "Come forward to the center, Amber," he demanded from his crude throne.
Amber rose and walked to the middle of the clearing.
"Aquila. The lady, if you please," Sandoor said, and the man with the neatly trimmed Van Dyke beard knelt behind me and held a silver dagger to my throat.
Sandoor smiled most unpleasantly as Amber stiffened. "Behave, and the knife shall not touch her."
There was a deep, lusty groan and a faint feminine cry sounded in the distance. Light flashed out from beneath the door where we had been imprisoned.
"Ah, good. Balzaar will be in attendance shortly," Sandoor said. "You may remove Amber's restraints, Romulus."
A blond man of average height, with handsome unsmiling features, walked to Amber and began removing his cuffs. The door swung open and Balzaar emerged. Greeves secured the door with a heavy chain and both he and Balzaar joined us in the clearing. It was impossible to ignore the heavy tang of sweat and sex that clung to Balzaar's heavy frame.
"You have been most careful around your new Queen, my strong son. She does not fear you," Sandoor said in a careful, considering voice. "And I wager she does not know the reason why she should fear you, does she, Amber? Why Mona Sera feared you. Why she wished to destroy you. I believe—yes, yes—I do believe you should enlighten her. Show her. Show all of us."