Crown of Crystal Flame (53 page)

Lord Shan stuffed the last of his porridge in his mouth, then pretended to cough, as if he’d swallowed some of the food the wrong way.

Torn between suspicion and alarm—the High Mage would definitely not be pleased if his prized prisoner escaped him by choking to death—the torture master took a step towards him.

Lord Shan moved so fast his hand was a blur. One moment he was gasping for breath, the next, a red-handled dagger quivered in the torture master’s chest, one guard collapsed across Lord Shan’s body, his mouth working soundlessly as blood gushed from the gaping hole in his throat, and the pike he’d been pointing at Lord Shan was buried in the eyeball of the second guard. The third guard died on the point of a second red-handled dagger gripped in Melliandra’s fist.

The thud of falling bodies and the clatter of the pikes against the stone floor brought the guard outside the door running in to investigate. He died before he took his second step into the room, the dagger from the torture master’s chest buried hilt deep in the newcomer’s throat.

Melliandra leapt across the room to drag the fallen guard inside and close the door. “Well, I guess you really can gut a man with your little finger.”

He flashed her a look so flat and cold and full of death, she knew he’d earned every awed and terrified word ever spoken about him.

“That is the least of what I can do.”

“Lillis! Lorelle!” Ellysetta’s magic gathered, twisted into agony as it battered helplessly against
sel’dor
bonds. The scream ripped from her throat. “Noooo!”

The twins’ terror beat at her. “Ellie! Ellie, help us!”

“Stop it! Please, stop this!”

The High Mage stood unmoved by her tearful plea. “You know how to stop it. The choice is entirely yours.”

Her fingers clutched the railing, yanking at it with enough force to rattle the metal bars in their anchor holds. Another magic rose. Cold and sweet, untouched by the painful bane of
sel’dor.
She dared not grasp it, not even to save her sisters. To save them now, with that magic, was to doom them to a worse fate than death.

But as the sounds of the
darrokken
grew closer and the screams of her sisters more frantic, Ellysetta knew she could not just stand there and let them die either. She was not some helpless victim. She was a Tairen Soul, a champion of Light, a defender of the innocent. She was the daughter of Shannisorran v’En Celay, Lord Death, the greatest Fey warrior ever born. What would her father do? What would Rain do?

They would fight.

And if they couldn’t fight with magic, they would find some other way.

In a move so fast she shocked even herself, Ellysetta lunged backward and struck out with both hands, using her
sel’dor
manacles to deliver crushing blows to the windpipes of the guards holding her chains. They doubled over in pain, gasping for air, and dropped her chains. She caught the trailing ends with a quick flip of her arms and spun towards the High Mage.

His hands were raised. Something stung her on the chest and neck. She managed two more rushing steps in his direction before the world went black.

Using the keys to the table restraints Melliandra found on the body of the dead torture master, she freed Lord Shan from his bonds. Once she was done, he took his dark red crystal in one hand and clenched his jaw briefly as green magic glowed around his fist. When he opened his hand, his crystal was set in a silvery chain, which he fastened around his neck.

“My mate? Elfeya?”

“In the next room. To the right of this one. Here.” She tugged the tunic over her head to reveal the cache of gleaming Fey steel daggers set in their leather sheaths and harness straps slung across her chest. “You’ll want these.” Quickly, she pulled the belts free and handed them over.

He was off the table, reaching for the weapons. “My swords?”

“I had to leave them hidden. They were too bulky. But I brought you the sheaths. Wait!” She grabbed the blue robes she’d stolen from the Mage Halls, but he was already out the door, dagger belts slung crisscrossed over his naked chest, sword belts in hand.

She ran after him and nearly tripped over the body of a guard who must have come from the adjacent room to investigate. Melliandra muttered a curse, dragged the dead guard inside the torture chamber with the others, and thanked the Dark Lord that this part of Boura Fell wasn’t frequented as much as others. The idiot Fey was going to ruin everything if he left a trail of corpses in his wake. The alarm would sound, and he’d never get near the High Mage.

She ran into the other chamber, intending to upbraid him for his carelessness, only to stop in her tracks. Lord Death had slaughtered the remaining Eld with an impressively tidy finesse. Three bodies lay crumpled on the ground, a single, neat little wound in each guard’s chest or throat the only sign of violence. That wasn’t what robbed her limbs of the ability to move. It was the sight of Lord Death and his mate—or, rather, it was the look on Lord Death’s face as he helped his mate from the restraining table and ran shaking hands over her hair, and the radiant glow on her face as she gazed up at him… as if simply standing in each other’s presence had flung open the gates of some unimaginable paradise and enveloped them both in a world of warmth and joy. That look struck Melliandra like a hard blow, and her eyes began to burn like they had the time the flue in the
umagi
den got blocked and filled the room with smoke.

She averted her eyes and cleared her throat to ease its aching tightness.

“You promised you would kill the High Mage.” She interrupted in a raspy voice, as much to break them apart as to remind Lord Death of his vow. “You agreed that if I freed you, you would kill him.”

Lord Death lifted his mate’s hands to his mouth, but when he turned to Melliandra she was relieved to see that his expression was once more cold and dangerous. “So I did.”

Releasing his hand, Lord Death’s mate went to the nearby table laid out with the torturer’s implements. She took a pair of stubby metal clippers the torture masters used to cut through fingers and toes and began snipping away the
sel’dor
hoops piercing her ears. Metal clinked against stone as she pulled each hoop free and tossed it to the ground.

“Well? Will you honor your promise?” Melliandra insisted.

“I honor all my oaths.” Lord Death knelt beside one of the fallen guards and laid a hand on his leather armor. Green light began to glow around his hands and spun out to encompass the fallen guard. The guard’s armor disappeared and re-formed on Lord Death’s body as sleek, dark leather the color of spilled blood. He spoke a word and the swords she’d left hidden in that empty room materialized in their sheaths. His crystal gleamed like a dark prism on his chest. He rose to his full height—looking every bit the deadly Fey warrior of legend—and went to his mate, who had finished with the hoops at her ears and was slowly peeling back the metal bands around her upper arms, freeing herself from the hundreds of sharp, needlelike teeth sunk into her flesh. His hands gripped her bare shoulders, and he touched his mouth to her temple. Her eyes closed, and she leaned back against him but only for a moment. When her eyes opened again, her expression was as cold and resolute as his.

“Vadim Maur has our daughter,” Lord Death said. He met Melliandra’s eyes. “He dies today, or we do.”

When Ellysetta woke again, she was lying on a stone floor. Her head was pounding, and just opening her eyes seemed too monumental a task. She shifted, trying to lift a hand to her head. Chains rattled and dragged across stone.

“That did not go at all the way you dreamed, did it?”

Despite the effort involved, Ellysetta forced her eyes open. She was lying in a dark room. A single lamp, suspended over her head, cast a circle of light around her. Vadim Maur sat on a stool at the perimeter of the light’s circle, watching her with his cold silver eyes.

“It seemed like such a perfect plan. The dream was so vivid and you feared it so greatly, I thought you actually might succumb.” He shook his head. “This next part, however, might still do the trick. Lorelle, my pet, give us a little light, will you? “

“What?” Ellysetta sat up straight.

Confusion and dawning horror her as a sweet, voice replied, “Yes, Master Maur,” and a flicker of Fire lit a pair of candle lamps held in the hands of Lillis and Lorelle.

The twins stood behind Vadim Maur, dressed neatly in black velvet gowns, their curls brushed and tied back in black bows. Their eyes were pure black to match, and sparkling with dark red lights.

“Nei,”
Ellysetta choked. Oh, gods! Not this. Not her sweet, beautiful, innocent sisters. “Lillis. Lorelle.
Nei.”

“You know,” the Mage said conversationally, “it came as quite a surprise to discover that your Celierian sisters both possess strong magical gifts, including quite a significant talent in Azrahn. It certainly made them easier to claim—once my new torture master persuaded them to accept the first Mark. Of course, their magic doesn’t hold a candle to yours, but they’ll be quite useful, nonetheless.” His cold silver eyes watched her closely. “Gifted female breeders are not as easy to come by as you might think.”

She lunged for him, teeth bared, no thought in her mind but to rip him into bloody bits with her bare hands. Her chains were no longer held by guards. They were bolted to the stone floor, with no give. The collar around her throat ran out of slack first. Momentum made her fly off her feet. She landed hard on her back, choking for breath and tugging to loosen the collar around her neck that threatened to strangle her.

“There isn’t a Hell hot enough for you,” she snarled when she could speak. “You’d best kill me now, because if you don’t, I swear by all the gods you will die by my hand.”

He laughed with genuine humor. “I worked centuries creating you and expended countless resources getting you back. Are you really so foolish as to think I would throw all that away by
killing
you?” He shook his head. “No, I won’t kill you, Ellysetta.” He gestured to the guard behind her, who immediately grabbed her head in a viselike grip. The Mage stepped closer, ran a hand down one side of her face in a disturbingly gentle caress. “You know what I want. You can surrender now, without pain, or you and everyone you love will suffer until you do. And when I say suffer, I mean you and your loved ones will crawl on your knees and beg me for death. But I won’t give it to you, Ellysetta. I intend to keep you alive for a very, very long time.”

She jerked her head back to avoid the poison of his touch and tried to snap at him with her teeth, but the guards held her too tight. In the end, words were her only weapon. “My parents survived a thousand years of your torture. All I have to do is to survive long enough for you to make a mistake. And when you do, I will destroy you.”

“You forget one thing, my dear.” He ran a thumb across her lower lip. “For every one of those thousand years, your parents had each other. You, however, are all alone. Or soon will be.” On that cryptic note, he turned, and said politely, “Lorelle, my sweet, give us more light.”

Lorelle’s Fire magic spun out, and half a dozen sconces along the walls flared to light.

Ellysetta’s heart slammed against her chest.

On the other side of the room, his naked body heavily manacled and chained to the wall, was Rain. A stocky brute of a fellow stood beside him, next to a table loaded with torturers’ implements, and as the brute stepped into the light, Ellysetta’s jaw dropped.

“Den Brodson?”

“Hello, Ellie.”

Ellysetta stared in disbelief at Den Brodson, the son of a Celierian butcher who had, at one time, been Ellysetta’s (wholly despised) betrothed. The months had not treated him kindly. He was a young man, but his hair, greasy and unkempt, was now liberally streaked with gray, and there were deep grooves along the sides of his mouth and bags under his blue eyes. His ruddy complexion had faded to a sickly olive gray. His stocky build had softened to doughy fleshiness.

“Oh, Den… what have you done?” There was only one reason he would be here. He had sold his soul to the Mages. She shook her head in horror. As much as she’d always despised him, Ellysetta wouldn’t wish Mage-claiming on her worst enemy.

“Young Brodson has been surprisingly useful for a mortal peasant,” the High Mage informed her. “If not for him, my
chemar
might never have found their way to Teleon—and on to Dharsa. And he was quite adept at finding your sisters in Dharsa and bringing them back to me.”

“You monstrous
bogrot,”
she breathed. He’d always been a hateful bullyboy, but she’d never realized he could be such a fiend.

“You were supposed to be mine, Ellie Baristani!” he spat. “You bore my Mark! Your family signed the papers! You were mine!”

“I was never yours, Den,” she shot back, “and I never would have been! How could you think I would ever give the smallest part of myself to a foul Shadow snake like you?”

Blue eyes, surrounded by stubby black lashes, narrowed with sudden, glittering malice. “Well, you won’t be the Tairen Soul’s either, Ellie Baristani. At least not for much longer.” He looked to the High Mage. “Master?”

Vadim Maur nodded. “You may begin,
umagi.”

“Wait,” Melliandra said as Lord Shan started for the door. “You’ve been here a thousand years, but you don’t know Boura Fell. If you stumble around blindly, you’ll just get yourself killed or captured again.”

“Do you know where he’s got our daughter?”

“I know where he’s got the Tairen Soul—I heard rumors in the kitchens. If he’s still there, your daughter will most likely be nearby. If she’s not, I know of a few other places to check.”

“Then tell me quickly,” Shan said.

Melliandra started to tell him but then stopped. There was too much he needed to know—and he needed all of it to ensure his best chances of success.

“That will take too long. It’s better if I show you.” It took a lot for her to make that offer. All her life, she’d lived in a body that was not her own, possessed a mind that was invaded at will. She’d been abused, both physically and mentally, again and again. As one who had spent her life powerless, she never willingly gave of herself without expecting some personal benefit in return. And she
definitely
never deliberately made herself vulnerable—not to anyone. Until now.