Defy (28 page)

Although his instinct was to argue, he found
himself holding her gaze to hear her out.

“Come with us to get Tate,” she said with a
flash of her charming grin. “Or follow us at a discreet distance so
that you can bring us back as soon as we get to her. We promised
Tate we’d come and get her. We can’t back down from that promise
any more than you can go against your orders. There must be a
compromise here somewhere.”

He realized she was right, and was on the
verge of entertaining her suggestion when Harold’s thought came
through. After processing the new information with a quick blink,
he looked around the group standing around him.

“Commander Harold just sent word,” he
announced. “They’ve found evidence that there are two males,
probably Mercesti, tracking Tate. I have new orders. If I find you,
I’m to join you in the search for Tate.

“And hope we get to her first.”

Zachariah’s decision to brew the
truth-inducing tea was spur-of-the-moment. He had been working very
hard to ignore the unwanted feelings invoked by his last encounter
with the bouncy-haired female. He told himself he didn’t care about
the identity of this vague male who was supposedly on his way to
“rescue” her. If she had some damn fool fantasy in her head and
wound up getting herself killed because she was wrong, what did he
care?

After a couple hours of pretending he wasn’t
thinking about her, he finally acknowledged his frustration that
she refused to tell him who was coming after her. She refused to
tell him a lot of things, he mentally grumbled. She had wound up in
her current situation for a reason: she was impulsive and needed
looking after. Damn it.

And just how, he asked himself, could a being
look after her if she wouldn’t provide essential information?

His frustration continued to grow as the day
lengthened and he followed in Nyx’s footsteps. He was only
traveling in
her
direction to get closer to his kragen
companion, he told himself. If his pace was rather brisk, well, the
exercise was good for him.

Although he considered the idea of projecting
himself to her through meditation, he decided against it. She did
things to him that—well, he couldn’t explain his reaction to her.
In his millennia of existence, he’d never felt this way, a fact
that added to his frustration. He couldn’t risk things turning down
that path again. The last thing she needed was to experience these
emotions toward him of all beings.

When he stumbled upon the alitheia bush, the
germ of an idea sprouted into a full-blown plan. If nothing else,
the female who had so unexpectedly entered his life had taught him
to explore concepts that defied logic. He figured he had nothing to
lose in his attempt.

He waited for the sun to begin setting before
stopping for the night and starting the fire to boil the water he
needed to make the tea. At first, he figured actually brewing the
tea would be a waste of his time, as he planned on visiting her
through her dreams. Then he decided that it couldn’t hurt to have
as many specific details in place within the realm of consciousness
as possible before he visited her.

As the sunlight faded, he did something he
had been attempting to avoid for days: he tapped into her
consciousness so that he could sense when she was about to go to
sleep. Then, timing it very carefully, he steeped the tea in his
canteen and forced himself to merge with her consciousness as
thoroughly as possible so that he slept as soon as she did.

He also focused his thoughts in an effort to
bring every possible detail into the dream state, including the
brewed tea and its qualities. He tried to recapture whatever it was
about himself that allowed him to touch her when he was meditating,
hoping to gain more control of the dream. He relied on the power of
suggestion and mental influence to bring his plan together.

It worked perfectly.

He was still amazed that she accepted the
canteen from him without question. Even in their unusual, connected
state, he figured she would at the very least ask him what he
offered her. The female had no sense at all.

Tate, he reminded himself. He now knew her
name.

He took her heated threat in stride. If he
had been in her position, he imagined he would be making much more
creative threats himself. On top of that, he didn’t doubt her in
the least.
Archigos
Gabriel probably
would
hunt him
down.

“And after Uncle Gabriel finishes with you,”
she added, “my dad will probably kill you as painfully as
possible.”

As to that, he couldn’t say. Since she said
it while under the mental influence of the tea, she certainly
believed it to be true.

Caleb was a young Gloresti. Just over the
century mark by now, he figured. He remembered training him. Caleb
had been particularly skilled in swordplay, hand-to-hand combat and
throwing weapons. Now that Zachariah thought about it, she had the
look of him in her height, taut musculature and coloring. He idly
wondered if her twin brother, Tiege, did, too.

He couldn’t believe how much he’d missed. The
fulfillment of the Great Foretelling. Grolkinei’s destruction. The
existence of half-human Estilorians. And, of course, their
offspring, the Kynzesti.

He had to admit it was rather fascinating. It
also made him question for the first time in fifty years whether
being isolated from the rest of Estilorian society was such a wise
choice on his part.

“Do you also have the ability to reproduce?”
he asked, deliberately turning his thoughts.

He ignored the tears that continued to flow
from her eyes. It was only natural for her to resent his actions,
he reasoned. She was fully realizing the error in her assessment of
his character, after all.

She shrugged in answer to his question.

“You do not know?”

“None of us has joined with anyone.”

He watched her cheeks turn pink after the
confession and told himself he wasn’t affected by the innocent
reaction. “How old are you?”

“Seventeen. I think.” Her brow furrowed.

“You think? How could you not know?”

“I don’t know how long I’ve been away from
home. I was due to turn eighteen not too long after Nyx took
me.”

He thought about that for a moment. “Judging
by your condition when Nyx brought you to that cave, I would say
you have been away from your home between one to two weeks.”

She didn’t reply. Her deep blue-green eyes
bored holes into him as she managed to push some of her pent-up
anger through the effects of the tea. Her pupils were huge. Her
normally expressive face was slack. He could see by her shaking
hands and twitching arms that she was actively trying to fight the
tea’s effects.

He wasn’t feeling guilty, he assured himself,
even as he reluctantly admired her will to fight. That was a trait
she also shared with her father, he recalled. “Do you have the same
reproductive organs as a human female?” he wondered.

“Why are you asking these questions?”

Surprised because she hadn’t just answered
his question, he realized the effects of the single sip of tea were
wearing off. He’d have to speed up the interrogation process if he
wanted more answers.

“I am only just learning about your class,”
he said impatiently. “I want to learn more about you.”

“Why?”

“Do you have the same reproductive organs as
a human female?” he pressed, ignoring her question since he wasn’t
sure he could answer it.

“Yes, but none of us has menstruated. Quincy
doesn’t know why, since humans usually start by around the age of
thirteen.”

He considered this as he studied her. She had
already mentioned Quincy when telling him about her family
structure. She seemed particularly fond of the Corgloresti male,
something that bothered him more than he cared to admit.

“You said you cannot fly. When does a
Kynzesti have this ability?”

“Technically, when we turn eighteen.”

“What does that mean?”

There was a pause as she continued to try and
fight the tea. He watched her efforts with an inexplicable mix of
edginess and pride in her. Eventually, she replied, “Clara Kate was
able to do it when she turned eighteen. As of the time Nyx snatched
me at Sophia’s flying lesson, Soph hadn’t yet learned how to bring
forth her wings.”

“And you are all kept at the place you
consider your home? No one at the Estilorian base has met you?”

Another tear trailed down her cheek. This
time, she reached up with one hand to wipe at her cheek. “I don’t
like you asking me these questions,” she replied, evading the truth
with another truth. Her response as well as her movements served as
further signs that the effects of the tea were fading.

“Have you been introduced to the rest of
Estilorian society?” he asked.

“No. Our parents felt it would be safer if we
were fully trained to defend ourselves and had the ability to fly
before leaving the safety of our home.”

Her parents had obviously been right, he
thought. “You have been trained to defend yourself?”

“Yes.”

“In what disciplines have you been
trained?”

She recited a list that made him realize her
Uncle Gabriel had played a large part in planning her defensive
training regimen, as had the other elders. It included everything
from intense physical exercises for cardio and muscular
strengthening to meditation and protection against mental
intrusions. When she mentioned the weapons that had been created
for her by the elders, his interest was again piqued.

“Nunchucks?” He carefully looked her up and
down, not having noticed the weapons before. If his gaze lingered a
bit in certain places on her well-formed body, he was merely trying
to determine where the weapons might be. “I want to see them.”

“I don’t want to give them to you.” Her voice
hitched and her body all but vibrated as she struggled to resist
his request.

He raised an eyebrow and moved closer. He
scented the fresh, lemony essence of her hair and skin as he paused
inches from her. When her eyes met his, he bent down closer to her
ear. “Either you hand the weapons over to me, Beautiful,” he said,
“or I shall find great pleasure in taking them from you.”

Ariana didn’t know how a being could be so
afraid and still function. She was pretty sure her heart was just
going to stagger to a stop any moment now. In fact, she rather
hoped it would.

When she was led from the mountain at sunset
to begin the day’s hike with her captors, it had been to find the
mountainside swarming with Mercesti. No longer was she traveling
with less than fifty Mercesti. Oh, no. Their numbers were well into
the hundreds now. Possibly even over a thousand.

Once she pushed past her astonishment, she
realized that Eirik had sent some of his primary band of Mercesti
out to recruit others to his cause. He probably wanted as many of
his class as possible to witness his anticipated ascension to
greatness when she led him to the scroll and he used it.

It was a thought that made her feel ill.
Although she told herself she should refuse to cooperate with
Eirik’s demands and just accept the death awaiting her, she hadn’t
found it in her to do it.

The bottom line was that she was a
coward.

Every time she started to get herself worked
up to a point where she considered stopping, Deimos drifted closer
to her. He had taken to flashing his fanged teeth and licking his
lips when he was near, actions that repulsed and terrified her.
Eirik also walked close to her, his eyes moving over her frequently
and, she suspected, missing nothing. He had to growl commands at
Deimos more than once to keep the creature from attacking her.

“Why can we not have the female?” one of the
newer recruits asked. His red and malevolent eyes scoured over her
when he spoke.

“Because I have so commanded it,” Eirik
responded coldly. “She is needed for the moment and shall not be
harmed.”

For the moment…

That phrase was what finally gave Ariana the
strength to do what she needed to do. She realized she had been
harboring some small, selfish hope that she could get out of this
alive. But Eirik had just clearly said that she would remain
unharmed only so long as she was needed. She imagined that the
moment she located the scroll, he would unleash Deimos on her or
turn her over to the many males now traveling with them. She never
stood a chance.

She thought of Tisha, her silly,
wardrobe-obsessed friend whose only mistake had been in losing
another friend’s necklace and wanting to find it. She thought of
the many other Estilorians back at Central, many of whom she also
considered friends. She thought of the brave daughters of Saraqael
and their many children, all of whom represented hope for the
future of all Estilorians.

Would she be the one to bring a reign of
terror, led by Eirik, down on their heads?

Stopping in her tracks, Ariana made her
decision. She would no longer be a part of this, no matter the
consequences.

Eirik approached her as the Mercesti troops
all came to a stop. His eyes met hers as he stopped inches in front
of her. Without a hint of lingering fear, she began unbuckling the
uncomfortable harness they had crafted for her to carry the heavy
broadsword on her back. Her gaze never left his.

“What is it you think you are doing?” he
asked.

“I’m doing what I should have done in the
first place. I’m quitting.”

The harness finally came unbuckled and slid
free of her shoulders. The sword clanked to the earth with a solid
sound that made her decision feel more substantial.

Lifting her chin, she said, “I’m ready to
die.”