His chest heaving, Lukar came out of his battle haze to the thick smell of blood. His mouth salivated at the heady scent, and he shook with the desire pulsing within him. His need for flesh was unquenchable now.
His growl of disgust echoed with chilling results up and down the dungeon.
Nothing moved in any of the cells. Nothing breathed.
The steady drip of precious body fluid was the only sound he could hear.
The cell doors had been pulverized in the midst of his wrath. The prisoners never stood a chance against his power.
The woman had escaped yet again—this time without a trace. It was as if she had simply vanished. Except her cell door had been opened from the outside and the guards killed.
Too bad he had lost control of his temper. Any of the prisoners lying dead would have gladly told him what happened in exchange for his mercy.
A little calmer than before, Lukar wiped his blood-soaked hands onto his shirt and ignored the sweat dripping down his face and neck. Colm joined him a minute later, his tread on the stairs announcing his presence long before he arrived.
Lukar growled, “How did she escape?”
Colm gave him a respectful nod, then scowled. “The guards above heard the prisoners yell, but they didn’t think anything of it at first. Based on what Tair said, the prisoners often cursed the guards during the shift change.”
Lukar considered the information while watching with fascination as the blood pools grew larger. With a jerk of his head, he wrenched his gaze away and asked, “No guard above was killed?”
The councilor shook his head. “It provides a puzzle. If the woman isn’t here, and she did not escape by exiting the castle through normal means, then is she hiding somewhere we have yet to discover?”
“Or she had help,” Lukar spat, gesturing toward the key that still dangled from the woman’s cell door. He retrieved his sword and dagger, yanking both weapons from the bodies closest to him. “Who is this woman? No Pyranni would save a Kurite.”
Colm matched Lukar’s steps up the stairs to the main floor of the castle. “Unless—”
“Unless Kureto sent a rescue party for the woman,” Tair inserted before Colm could finish, following the small procession to the throne room. Another councilor joined them. “I’ll have the men continue their search of the castle,” Tair said with a sideways glance for Lukar’s approval.
Colm scoffed. “I doubt we’ll find her. The Kurites must have a bolt hole. The woman is gone.”
Lukar stopped and studied Tair. “Why did you wait to torture the woman?”
The man’s gaze was at once shrewd and full of regret. “I did not wait. You saw her that night. A wild creature had taken the woman’s place. Words held no recognition to her. I thought, at first, that she simply acted insane to save herself. I began my interrogation, but it soon became apparent that no amount of torture would change the outcome. So, I ordered her back to her cell and waited. I looked in on her every few hours to see whether the woman returned to her senses. If anything, the opposite occurred.”
“What do you mean?” Lukar asked, crossing his arms.
“The wildness grew by the hour, My King.” Tair stopped to search for the right word, then shook his head. “If she’d been an animal, I’d have put her out of her misery. Her rapid descent into madness was reminiscent to the rabid creatures we often must kill.”
“The woman was already mad, my brother,” Colm said with derision.
“No,” he argued, slicing his hand through the air, “you did not see her. When we first recaptured her, she spoke a stream of words, though they made little sense. Several hours ago, the only sounds that came out of her throat were snarls and growls.” Tair looked Lukar straight in the eye, and Lukar noted the hint of fear the spy master tried to hide. “I’ve never seen anything like it before. I don’t understand how or why, but she’s powerful. I advise caution if we find her, My King.”
The rumble of dozens of conversations spilled out from the hallway from the throne room, filling the silence that followed Tair’s description. Aware the councilors could hear him with the sensitive hearing given to them by Semnac, Lukar murmured, “Our Goddess was roused more than normal when in the woman’s presence. There’s more to this incident than we understand. Until we find this woman and learn why our Goddess regards her as important, our efforts must focus on invading Kureto. Councilors, keep Tair’s warning in mind when we do capture her.”
Colm bowed. “There is something peculiar about this woman, I agree. But her disappearance doesn’t change our course.”
“Semnac’s desire for the Kurite kingdom’s destruction is stronger than all the other kingdoms we’ve toppled combined,” Lukar confessed. “That alone worries me.”
They pondered that for a moment, listening to the rise and fall of voices a short distance away. Lukar strode forward, “Let us eat, then share the good news with our officers. We may not have much in the way of information regarding the Kurites, but our men’s restlessness is growing. We need a new enemy to defeat, and Kureto’s downfall will please Semnac.”
Every councilor hummed at the reminder of their coming meal. Each one had selected from a trough of bodies. Lukar licked his lips, and his heartrate jumped.
He had a fleeting thought that he should have cared that he wasn’t the only one losing control.
¤ ¤ ¤
Later that night Lukar paced the war chamber, bothered by the fact that they still knew so little about the Kurites. Pyran had been at war with Kureto for centuries. How could the king not have detailed notes regarding their enemy?
His body twitched, and he growled in disgust. A couple of steps later, Lukar almost tripped over his own feet when another uncontrolled shudder ran up and down the length of his frame. Sweat dampened his clothes in the middle of his back.
He managed to reach the door and open it. “Bring one to me,” he ordered.
Stumbling to the center of the room, Lukar fell into a chair. Tilting his head back, he traced the ornate painting around the edge of the room. After several breaths, his eyes kept returning to one section of the ceiling. The painting of a battle scene on the ceiling was odd, almost as if left unfinished.
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With a start, he sat up, ignoring his body’s reaction to the withdrawal symptoms with effort. Could it be as simple as the Pyranni king building a hidden room inside the war room? With a distinct lack of coordination, Lukar stood up and walked over to the wall, running his trembling hands over every inch he could reach. It was seamless, not a scratch or line to give away the hidden room.
But the idiot king had forgotten to have the ceiling’s mural repainted.
A woman’s muffled scream whipped his head around, though Lukar frowned in irritation. When the door opened after a brief knock, he commanded, “Gag her, but keep her close. Wake the war council. I need them all now.”
He turned back around and studied the wall again with renewed focus. He looked for a lever, but nothing stood out as an obvious mechanism to open the hidden room. He was rapping his knuckles against the wall when Alux hailed him from the doorway. “King Lukar, we have arrived at your behest.”
His attention still on the wall, Lukar ordered them inside. “Shut the door behind you.”
The scent of spilled blood made his nostrils widen, and his stomach growled with hunger. Feeling their questioning gazes at his back, Lukar continued tapping the wall until a deeper thud rebounded back to him. The hitched breaths behind him made him flash a feral smile.
Duxon asked, “A hidden room?”
Lukar grunted as he turned around. “Tear it down.”
Duxon opened the door, yelling for several work axes and hammers.
“The reason we could find no record of the Kurites is because the Pyranni king hid them?” Tair asked in disbelief. “Why?”
Lukar shrugged, but Alux answered, “By all accounts, paranoia held the king within its grasp. Despite his willingness to ally with us, I doubt he trusted many of his own people.”
A couple of his men rapped against the wall, sounding out the door’s dimensions. When the tools were handed over, Lukar backed up and watched them tear through the newly constructed wall. Once the dust cleared and his men removed the debris, his brows rose in surprise.
It wasn’t a room at all. Instead, the king had walled up a fireplace. Though large enough to walk into, the alcove was packed solid with stacks upon stacks of scrolls.
Barks of laughter filled the room. When they all looked toward him for orders, he twirled his fingers to hurry them along. “Bring them out.”
They retrieved the first set for him, and soon the table was covered with maps and detailed reports of Kurite movement on both sides of the border.
“King Lukar,” Alux murmured with a fiendish grin, “we now have what we need to conquer Kureto.”
Keeping his face inscrutable, though his eyes flashed with evil delight, Lukar said, “By the time the army is ready to move, we’ll have a strategy in place.”
When a tremor shook his fingers, he fisted them. His craving for flesh crawled through his hollow belly, making him curse aloud. Despite their latest find and the need to plan, his soul called for blood and the sweet screams of a dying woman. Ignoring the men around him, he stumbled toward the door. Sweat broke out again, dropping his core temperature. Unable to control his movements, his hand soon cradled a broken door handle.
Startling the guards with the suddenness of his appearance, Lukar growled his impatience. “Bring the woman to me.”
The woman barely made it through the door before he grabbed her by the throat and threw her onto the waiting altar, halting her in mid-scream. He disregarded his councilors’ looks of pleasure and hunger as he single-mindedly tore through the woman’s body, slurping the life-giving fluid from his fingers. He didn’t play with his food; he was too hungry. The woman’s pain-filled gurgles ended shortly after he started. As his stomach filled, his ability to think returned. With a satiated sigh, he plunged his knife into his meal’s entrails and stepped away from the altar. What little remained, he gave to his men, watching them as they fell onto the bloody corpse like ravaging beasts. They stripped the meat from the bones with practiced ease.
With his stomach content for the moment, Lukar could focus back on the constant need for action.
Semnac pushed at him, harrowing him at every turn, proving her patience was at an end. And it wasn’t sacrifices his goddess desired. She wanted to rampage through the Kurite kingdom, destroying every life within its border. He had no choice but to please her. The irony was that her constant presence made it impossible for him to concentrate on the tasks that would bring them closer to her goal.
¤ ¤ ¤
Lara woke up to Chion nudging her, his whiskers tickling her neck.
My Lady. Solara.
“I’m awake,” she mumbled before yawning. Pushing the hair out of her face, she sat up with a groan. Her body wept at the damage done, with every cut and bruise on her body crying for attention. A grimace twisted her face, and she moaned.
She shivered, noticing for the first time the tunnel’s cool temperature. Concerned, golden eyes looked over her.
Chion, I am okay, Lara tried to soothe her Ai.
Indignation colored every word he spoke. No, you are not. I was not able to protect you from capture.
“Chion,” she said aloud, “didn’t we already talk about this last night? You could not have known. No one knew what was going to happen. We all thought the Malirrans’ goal was to attack the school, not kidnap people for God knows what. Besides, you rescued me from certain death.” Her tongue peeked out to wet her dry lips. She croaked, “Y-You saved me, okay?”
Skye did, not me, he argued.
Ah, now she understood. Lara wrapped her arms around the paka’s neck. “Skye couldn’t have done the rescuing without your help.” Remembering the sheer evil she’d immersed herself in, she shuddered, tightening her hold on the paka. “I could not have escaped without you. And I don’t mean the dungeon. I’m talking about the other.”
He whispered through their bond, You had no other recourse except to cage yourself within your Tal’Ai magic.
She lifted a shoulder in a minuscule shrug. At the time, she thought there wasn’t another option. But now? Chion was right. She had put a cell of her own making around her, imprisoning her within the layers of insanity—which was insanity itself.
“Going insane was supposed to be a temporary fix, but I knew before I did it that I might not come back. I trusted you to get me out, to save me. Skye might have brought me back to awareness, but reality still seemed too dreamlike until I heard your voice. I don’t think anyone else could have done it—brought me completely back, I mean.” She moved closer to the warmth radiating from Chion. “I still feel it, you know.”
What do you feel?
“I don’t know exactly, but the entire city is shrouded in the stuff.” Lara raised her eyes to stare at the wall, trying to label it better than the single word that came to mind. “Evil doesn’t quite describe the feeling.”
She was so deep in thought, Lara didn’t hear Skye and Eiren sit down beside her. She jumped when Skye dropped a gentle hand on her shoulder.
The warrior’s puzzled expression urged her to explain. Eiren nodded to Lara in greeting. Shooting the small paka a brief smile despite the dark topic, she cleared her throat and said, “I first noticed it on the ship. The more time I spent on the ship, the more difficult it was to keep it from touching me. My shield helped, but it wasn’t enough. Nowhere near enough.” She shuddered in memory.
Skye asked, “You believe this evil you felt came with the Malirrans? It wasn’t already in Pyran?”
Lara rolled her lip as she thought about the question. Huh. She’d automatically assumed that the Malirrans were at fault, but maybe not. Thinking about it some more, Lara shook her head. “No, it definitely came with the Malirrans. If it was already in Pyran, I don’t think the ship would have had the same feeling. From what I overheard, the ship that held me never made landfall in Gharra before my presence.”
Skye’s gaze sharpened. Incredulous, he said, “They spoke in front of you. Were they that confident you could not escape?”
Chion huffed beside her, making her upper body jerk up and down since she was still wrapped around him like a scarf. Scratching the skin below his ear, she nodded. “They did talk, but they weren’t as careless as you think. The coil gave me the ability to understand their language.” She grinned, “Cool trick, right?”
The coil gifted you with the singular ability to understand all languages, not only ours? As Eiren so often reminds us, the God and Goddess have given us as many advantages as possible. Chion’s ears swiveled back and forth before he released a breath. Let us not turn from our original discussion. We must fully grasp what has occurred in Pyran.
Skye ran his fingers through his beard. “If Lara is right, then the Malirrans are carrying a darkness that we have no knowledge of.”
Eiren tapped her forepaw on the ground between them. After a moment, Skye repeated her comment. “Eiren wonders whether the evil Lara feels has created a magical ability that we’ve not yet seen.”
“Wait,” Lara said, sitting up straighter and dropping her arms from Chion. “They’re cannibals.”