Lord of the Abyss & Desert Warrior (24 page)

“Kill him!” the Blood Sorcerer screamed.

Fighting the souls with his power, Liliana protected at his back, Micah tore apart their shadow selves, but there were many and he was far from the Abyss. Their icy fingers penetrated his armor to touch his heart and
he had to use every ounce of his strength to keep them from closing those fingers around the organ.

Then he heard,
“Leave.”

Screaming, the ghosts were sucked back from whence they came, Liliana’s blood sorcery powerful…because so much of her life’s fluid stained the ground, stained the wall. The Blood Sorcerer screamed in rage and whirled back inside the tower room. Not following, Micah turned to cup Liliana’s face. “Do not do the death spell. Trust me one more time and do not cast the spell.”

Tears shone, turning her eyes into a shimmering mirage. “I won’t let you die.” Blood-soaked words.

“One more time, Lily,” he repeated.
“Don’t leave me.”

“Go,” she whispered. “I won’t be able to stop him until the moment of death.”

No.
“Not unless you promise.”

“Elden—”

“Means nothing without you.
Promise
you won’t do the spell.”

A tear rolled down her cheek. “I promise.”

Turning, Micah slammed into the door to the tower room, breaking it to pieces as, from the corner of his eye, he saw the snapdragon crisp the centipede to help out two mountain trolls who were currently bashing it with hands heavy as hammers. The tiny being began to scamper up the steps.

Watch over her.

It was instinct to issue the command, to reach in and touch the snapdragon’s mind. For it was of Elden, and Micah’s magic knew it. Not waiting to see if it obeyed—he knew it would—he walked into the magic room, the feared Guardian of the Abyss once more, with his armor that covered every inch of his flesh but for his eyes.

The Blood Sorcerer lifted his glistening red hands
from the body of the man he had just butchered—one of his minions from the look of it—and laughed. “You’ll get no power from the land. It’s mine!”

Micah strode forward, only to slam into an invisible wall. No matter how hard he hit it, it refused to break. Reaching for the ancient power that had slumbered where the Blood Sorcerer could not reach, the power that was of his blood, he drew it to his armored fists and began to pound at the invisible wall. Cracks appeared, sizzling red across the surface. Hissing, the Blood Sorcerer began to chant an incantation.

Micah punched through—to find himself assaulted by a tornado created of blades so sharp they cut through his armor, drawing blood. Slamming aside the blades with a snarl, he reached for the sorcerer who had hurt his Lily.

Liliana’s father, drenched in the lifeblood of the man he’d killed, smiled and pointed with a hissed command…and Micah’s armor disappeared, leaving him acutely vulnerable to the blades that began to whirl again. As his blood flew to speckle the air, he continued to stride forward, but the man who had eyes as reptilian as his Lily’s were warm, laughed. “You’ll be cut to pieces before you ever touch me—and I will bathe in your blood. Such powerful blood. Like your mother’s.”

Micah’s rage was such he almost didn’t hear the whisper in his mind.
Still, Micah, still.
The voice of a ghost.

Liliana’s voice.

T
HE BLADES DROPPED
.

The Blood Sorcerer’s rage made his eyes protrude, his veins bulge. “I should’ve strangled that whelp in her crib!” Overturning a table of magical potions in front of Micah, he backed away. “She’ll be dead soon enough, anyway. Then I’ll lick up her blood.”

The taunt had the opposite effect from the one intended—it told Micah Liliana was alive. All he wanted to do was finish this so he could return to her. But in one thing the Blood Sorcerer was right—bloated as he was by his most recent sacrifice, his sorcery was too strong for Micah to defeat.

Not alone, Micah. They are here.

Liliana’s voice again, showing him things he’d forgotten, reminding him that the land, the animals, weren’t the only things he knew here. Reaching out with something inside him that had no name, no form, he searched for the blood that called to his own.

Nicolai.

Dayn.

Breena.

The ties of his lineage soared through him, filling him to the brim with power, and it didn’t matter that the Blood Sorcerer called in an army of tiny insects that acted like sandpaper across his skin, peeling the flesh from his arms, his face. Shoving through the virulent
swarm and then the sorcerer’s blood shield as if it didn’t exist, he gripped the monster’s neck, and dragged him to the window. “Look,” he said, forcing the man’s eyes to the forest that was a blazing conflagration. “By the time we are done, there’ll be nothing left of your legacy.”

A laugh bitter with evil. “Then you will have to kill Liliana.”

Micah slammed the Blood Sorcerer’s head against the stone, cracking his skull. “She is not your legacy,” he whispered in the man’s ear before he snapped his neck. “She is her own.”

The insects disappeared with the Blood Sorcerer’s death, but Micah wanted to make sure the evil wouldn’t rise again. Picking up the sword he’d dropped by the door, he hacked off the man’s head and gripped it by the hair as he ran back to Liliana. She lay with her chin slumped on her chest.

“No!”

Her chin lifted, her eyes struggling to stay open—but she saw his trophy. “He’s dead.” A red smile.

Throwing the head at the snapdragon, who caught it in an eager mouth—crunching it down with greedy glee before waddling past for the rest of the body—Micah wiped off his palms on his thighs and cupped Liliana’s face. “You must not die, Lily.” He tried and
tried
to close her wounds with the deep magic within him, but his power it became clear, was not one that was of healing.

“…all right.” A whisper.

“No,
no
.” Feeling wet down his cheeks, he realized he was crying. “You’ve made me cry, Lily. I will throw you in the dungeon for many days.”

When her lashes fluttered shut, he growled at her. “Help me! Tell me what to do!”

The earth, Micah. I read about…

The thought seemed to hold the last of her strength, because her head dropped forward and then was motionless. Refusing to believe that she was dead, he began to wrench the spikes from her body. When another man thundered up the steps, past the dead centipede, Micah turned only long enough to see—to recognize—silver eyes streaked with gold before returning to his frantic task. “She can’t die.”

Nicolai began to pull out the spikes with him, both of their hands drenched in blood within seconds. Grabbing Lily from the wall the instant they’d removed the last spike, Micah ran down the steps, past a startled woman with soft brown hair, and outside into the twisted gardens. This earth was too broken, too polluted, to heal as it had once done for the royal family, long ago. But he had to try. Laying Liliana on the ground, he cut his palms, pressed them to the land.

The earth began to green under his palms, but too slow, too slow. Then another pair of bloodstained hands appeared on Lily’s other side. A third pair—that of a green-eyed man with dark hair. A fourth, feminine and delicate as the blond hair that haloed his sister’s face. And the land grew green around Liliana.
“Save her,”
he whispered to the earth.
“Save the one who helped save you.”

The earth tried, but it was too damaged and Liliana was not of Elden blood.

“No, no!”

“Micah, I’m sorry.”

Ignoring his sister’s voice, so full of sorrow, he gathered Liliana’s limp body into his arms, refusing to let go. “Help me, Lily,” he whispered again, burying his face in her hair. It ignited a memory, of another time when he’d
held her in his lap, her hair brushing his chin…blood perfuming the air.

“Slit my wrist.” He shoved it at his sister’s face, and he would always love her for the fact that she didn’t hesitate. “Take, Lily,” he said, pressing his wrist to her mouth, the wounds on her body, every part of her he could reach. “You have no need to murder me in my bed. I give you this freely.”

An endless pause before her body jerked, the sorcery within her taking control. Because Liliana, sweet, gentle Liliana, who kissed him so soft and touched him as if he would break, was a far greater sorceress than her father had ever been. That was why the evil man had hated her so—even using only her own blood, she had traveled to the Abyss itself, a feat beyond extraordinary.

To repair her body, all she’d needed was the fuel to ignite her power.

Liliana’s blood stopped flowing, her hand spasmed…and finally, she opened her eyes. He wanted to yell at her, but he waited until he was certain every one of the holes in her body had been repaired before dragging her to his chest and telling her all the terrible things he was going to do to her.

Arms wrapped around him, she kissed him, halting the flow of his words. He decided he would allow the kiss, but since he couldn’t make her naked here, he had to stop it. “Why did you change your face, Lily?”

Liliana lifted her hands to her face at that quizzical question, terrified her father had cast a final vengeful spell. “Is it very bad?” she whispered to the man who held her in arms of steel.

“I suppose I’ll get used to it,” he muttered, then kissed her again using his tongue and squeezing her bottom—
as if his brothers and sister, and other people, weren’t standing right there.

An instant later, she decided she didn’t care.

I
SUPPOSE
I’
LL GET USED TO IT
.

Liliana stared at her reflection for the thousandth time since the day that had changed the fate of Elden. The woman she saw in the mirror was Irina’s daughter, with a face of such luminous beauty that it had made Micah’s siblings and their mates stare, and hair so silken it was a mirror. It seemed her father’s death had
broken,
not created, a spell, one he must have put on her as a child.

Why, she would never know. Perhaps it was as Micah said—he’d feared her power and so had tried to break her. Or perhaps he had enjoyed the control it gave him over her and others, too. He would’ve gained cruel pleasure in watching men stumble over one another as they tried to win the hand of such an ugly woman. But in the end, the joke was on him.

Because Micah had loved her then, and he loved her now. He was the only one who didn’t stare—because to him, she was simply Liliana. Liliana, whose eyes remained a nowhere color that Micah called storm-sky and had decreed were nothing like her father’s. Liliana, whose body hadn’t changed much where it mattered. While her legs were now the same size, her back remained a mass of scars and she still had small breasts and a large behind, both of which Micah liked to see naked as much as possible.

Blushing at the thought of how he’d woken her this
morning, so big and demanding between her thighs, she played with the emerald-and-diamond ring on her left hand, the central stone the color of a certain lord’s eyes. It was one of his mother’s, he’d told her, part of the hoard they’d found beneath the castle.

He had given it to her because he was going to marry her.

“It is customary to ask,” she now said as she turned to watch him button up a black shirt over that chest she’d licked and sucked and kissed not long ago.

“Why?” He shrugged. “I’m not giving you a choice.”

She surely shouldn’t encourage him, but when a woman loved a man so very much, it was difficult to be stern. “Let me.” She did up the buttons, shaking her head when he slid his hands down her back to curve over her bottom. “So your brother Nicolai is to take the throne?”

This was the third time they had returned to Elden— Micah couldn’t remain far from the Abyss for long, for it would unbalance the realms, glut the badlands with shadows. Yet he also had a deep, unquenchable need to heal the earth here, though the presence of his siblings meant he didn’t need to stay on a permanent basis.

So they came and went, the journey far easier now that her father’s spells had unraveled, his monstrous creations dying without his sorcery to sustain them. They most often traveled overland—the night-horses had claimed Liliana and Micah as their own, biting the nonmagical horses they’d been about to mount when they arrived at the inn the second time. The temperamental creatures were awfully possessive—much like the man she adored with her every breath.

“Yes,” he said, answering her question about Nicolai. “He will rule with his mate, Jane.”

Jane was tall and slender and appeared fragile, but she
would make a strong queen. She was also not a princess. Neither was Alfreda, Dayn’s chosen. Breena’s mate was a berserker, quite wild and as uncivilized as Micah she was sure. Not a one had turned a hair at having her become part of the royal family. “I think,” she murmured, “your brother will be a great king.”

“Yes.” Petting her, he bent his head to kiss a line down her neck. “Dayn and his mate will be staying in Elden and taking over the guard.”

She shivered, stopped buttoning and began unbuttoning. “And your sister?” His sister, who had become a warrior, something that had caused her older brothers intense astonishment. Micah, of course, had simply offered to let her borrow his weapons.

He sucked over her pulse. “She travels with Osborn and the boys to his homeland, so that her mate can teach his brothers what it is to be an Ursan warrior.”

“Yes.” She wove her fingers into his hair, holding him to her. “The berserkers are needed still.”

“Hmm.” Continuing to kiss her, he began to walk her backward, toward the bed. “They will not be strangers to Elden, as we are not.”

Allowing him to press her down onto the bed, she waited for him to shrug off his shirt and prowl up to cover her. But instead of kissing her once there, he braced himself above her, his expression solemn. “I am the Guardian of the Abyss, Liliana. I will never abandon my duty.”

“Of course.” She caressed his chest. “You can keep your promise to the land by visiting regularly.” Short, intense bursts of working with the earth, they had discovered, had the same impact as if he stayed continuously in Elden.

“Will you mind living in the Black Castle?”

“Living there was the first time in my life that I was happy,” she whispered. “The place where I found you. You’re my heart. Jissa and Bard and Mouse are family.”

To her gratitude, Jissa had not blamed her for her father’s evil, and remained her very best friend.

“You—Bard, too—can die in truth now, if you choose,” she’d told the brownie, though it caused her terrible pain to think of a world without Jissa. “Leave the Black Castle for a day and a night and you will wake in the Always.”

Jissa had shaken her head. “The Bitterness would cry, cry. And without me, you will get into more, much more trouble with the lord. Dungeon you will live in.” A laughing look. “And…I would like to play more games of chess with Bard, he with me. Together we play.”

“Is it only chess you two play?” Liliana had jested, overjoyed at Jissa’s choice.

Except the tips of Jissa’s ears had turned pink.

“Jissa.”

Lips curving at the memory, she met eyes of wintergreen. “The Black Castle is home.”

Micah’s smile shattered her, it was so very bright, and for her alone. “There are less servants there, too,” he muttered, referring to the people of Elden who had begun to come out of hiding in droves to help set the castle to rights for Nicolai’s wedding, “which means I can make you naked far easier.”

Laughing, she stroked her hands into his hair and tugged him down for a long, lazy kiss that ended with his hand on her breast and her leg cocked around his hip. “I will be planting some flowers, though.”

He reared back. “At the Black Castle?
The gateway to the Abyss?
”

Kissing his jaw, she nuzzled him. “And I want more
comfortable furniture—my mother will be visiting, after all.” Irina, too, had been freed from her ensorcellment. She did not know her daughter, but had touched Liliana with love from the first. The bonds would only grow deeper in time.

Micah groaned, began to pull up the red,
red
gown he’d brought her, so very pretty and dusted with gold. “As long as you don’t try to make the dungeons appealing. That I will not allow.” His hand on her thigh, rough and proprietary.

Shivering, she tugged him closer. “Done.”

Micah rocked against her. “Lily?”

“Yes?” she said against lips firm and sinful.

“We’re getting married in an hour. I already spoke to Nicolai.”

Her mouth fell open, and then she began to laugh. “My beautiful, arrogant, wonderful lord,” she said, kissing his jaw, his cheeks, his neck. “I can’t wait to be your wife.”

“Now tell me you love me.”

“I love you.” She kissed the spot she’d once bitten on his lip. “Shall I say it again?”

A delighted look. “Yes.”

He made her repeat it ten times. Then he said, “Your name is written on my heart, Lily.”

It made her cry. He yelled. Then he kissed her.

By the time the day was done, she was married to the Guardian of the Abyss, in the gardens of the Royal House of Elden that had come back to life. The snapdragon behaved and didn’t fry any of the guests.

T
HE ASERIA FLOWERS ARE
blooming again in what was once the Dead Forest and is now a young, green playground, with saplings reaching for the sparkling blue sky. The
firedancers have returned to circle above the castle at twilight, providing a show to which nothing can compare, and the lake runs clean and sweet once more.

There is still much to be done, but laughter fills the castle and the land, for the time of darkness is past and the blood of Elden walk its roads once more. This truth I write with untrammeled joy.

—
From the Royal Chronicles of Elden, on the one hundred and seventy-eighth day of the Reign of King Nicolai and Queen Jane