Forged: The World of Nightwalkers (39 page)

Yup. He was still there. Still real. Still looking for all the world like he was expecting an answer.

All this time … he had meant it. All those times he’d made her feel as though the sun rose and set with her … they had been
real
.

“You doona love me,” he said dejectedly, his breath leaving him on a deflating sigh. “I’m sorry. I thought maybe … Och, I’m an ass!” He went to get up and she lunge forward to keep him on his knees.

“No! No, I do! I … I …”

I do!
Kat thought.
I do love him! All this time I kept telling myself I was seeing too far into things, that I was making things up in my head … but all this time … I do!

“You do?”

“Yes, I do,” she breathed.

“So … will you please marry me, Kat? Or is this too soon?”

“No! Not too soon!” she said hastily, gripping his hands harder as tears leapt into her eyes. “Just soon enough! Oh my God. Oh my God! I never thought …”
She began to cry in earnest and he hastened to his feet, wrapping big arms around her.

“Never thought what, Kat?” he asked gently as he comforted her.

“I never thought I would get married,” she sobbed. “I was always thinking … what if I pass this disease down to my kids? How can I expect to find a man who would put up with living in the dark? And now … here you are … all handsome and big and … 
here
.”

“Oh aye. I’m here. And I’m no’ going anywhere,” he promised her.

“A-are you sure? I mean, you never even said or acted like this was something you might want.”

“Are you trying tae talk me ou’ of it? Because it willna work,” he warned her.

She sighed and smiled. “Okay, then. Just checking.”

He chuckled. “You still have no’ answered my question. Will you marry me?”

She grinned up at him.

“Oh. Aye,” she said. “A great big aye!”

“Good,” he said with a relieved sigh. “Now give us a proper kiss.”

“Aye.”

“Stop that. You sound like a bloody pirate.”

“Aye.”

“Kat …”

“Aye! Aye! Aye!” She whooped and jumped up into his arms. He accepted the leap with a laugh. He hugged her tightly to himself, as always careful not to hurt her.

“I’ll always be careful no’ tae hurt you, Kat lass.”

“I believe you,” she said with a smile as she hugged him back. “I really do believe you. And I promise not to hurt you, too.”

“You canna hurt me. I’m forged from stone, lass.”

“Mmm. Just the same. Some parts of you, while hard, are not always made from stone.”

“Here I am being serious and you’re being lewd and dirty.”

“I am not!” she gasped. “I didn’t mean that!”

“Sure. Whatever you say, dear.”

“Ahnvil!”

“No, I mean it, I believe you,” he said kindly.

“Stop it!”

“I understand, you’re no’ that kind of girl …”

“Ahnvil! I am, too, that kind of girl!”

“See, I knew it all along.”

Kat threw back her head and laughed. “You’re horrible.”

“Oh aye. But you said aye, so now you’re stuck wi’ me.”

“That I did,” she said with a happy sigh as she hugged him again. “And that I am.”

Read on for an exciting preview
of the first book in
Jacquelyn Frank’s new Immortal Brothers series

CURSED BY FIRE

The heat was unbearable, searing and constant, burning his skin until it crisped. He could smell the aroma of cooking flesh and knew it was himself that he smelled. It was all too familiar, singeing and sinking into his nostrils, a vile stench he would never forget. Would never be allowed to forget. As usual the metal around his wrists burned first, glowing a hot red … as though it could melt away or be smelted along with his flesh. But it never melted away … it held true time and time again. He had torn at them, strained against them. Every time the fire came he prayed it would melt his hands away first, allowing him to slip free.

But that was not how things worked here. There was never going to be freedom for him. His was an eternal damnation. He had sinned against all of the gods and they, who usually warred among themselves, had come together to see him punished. That was how deeply he had sinned.

He and his brothers had been chained and entombed in this forsaken cavern, and their immortal lives, the ones they had dared to wrest from the secrets of the gods, were now their curse as they died again and again. Death by fire. Or rather, as near to death as was possible for an immortal. He suffered and singed and crackled to a crisp until his lungs could no longer breathe in the flames, until his marrow boiled within his bones
and until his chains held only a desiccated corpse turned mostly to ash.

And then the flames would subside and slowly, ever so excruciatingly slowly, his body would heal. Flesh would rebuild itself along the lines of his bones, cell by cell, one healing piece of sinew after another. Immortality repairing itself, birthing him new again, making his skin supple and whole and preparing him to be fresh and healthy and ready to be burned all over again.

The chains he wore went around his forearms in a gauntlet from wrist to elbow, and for good measure a bolt had been shot through each, spearing through the flesh and bone of his forearms from one side to the next, making certain there was no way he could slide free of them. Not that it was necessary. These were chains forged by gods. If you were dressed in the chains of the gods there would be no freedom from them until the gods decided to set you free.

He laughed, the sound hollow in the echo of the abated flames. But they were growing again, he could hear them with his newly healed eardrums. He had long ago ceased begging the gods for mercy. They had not heard him although he had screamed for it endlessly for hours. For days. For decades. For centuries. He no longer knew how much time had passed and it had ceased being important to him. Nothing was important to him. His lot in this existence was merely to burn and to suffer. Again and again, over and over.

You thought you deserved eternal life. Now see what your ambition has won you. See it. Feel it. Deserve it
.

No. No one deserved this. True his crimes were brash and arrogant, but they had been crimes of hubris, not unabashed wickedness. He had never been evil incarnate.

But he dared not think to himself that he was blameless for his lot. No. Nor did he dare blame the gods. Oh,
he had cursed them. Screamed their names and damned them. Renouncing them one moment and yet pleading to them with utter devotion mere hours later. Such was the nature of torment like this.

But he had not tried to blame the gods or bargain for his release or promised to be the most devout of men should they set him free. No. He knew that freedom would now be wasted on him. His mind was so scorched, so torn, it was nothing but a wasteland.

No. He would simply sit here and burn. He did not even think of his brothers any longer. How often he had wished he could turn back time, wished that he had heeded Garreth who had tried one last time to recall them from the task they had set for themselves. But by then they had almost reached the mountain’s pinnacle. By then they had already fought and killed two manticores. By then they had almost frozen to death exposed on the face of Mount Airidara and even then Garreth had been dying at their feet and the only way to save him was to continue onward. But all of that had been excuses, for at the heart of it all had been nothing but selfish desire for the power of immortality. As warriors they faced death every day and without fear, but what they wanted was the glory of being invincible. Like the stories of the demigods, the gods own children or special heroes that had been awarded immortality as a prized gift for their service to the gods. And he had first tried to obtain the gift through his deeds. Winning battles and waging war, overtaking heathen lands and building monuments to the gods, teaching their ways to the untaught. They had converted land after land into the lands of the shield goddess or the god of peace and tranquility. But the gods had been unimpressed and had offered no reward for their service.

And now he knew why. He knew it was because they
had never really done any of it in the name of the gods. They had done it for their own ends and for no other reason and the gods had seen through them.

The four brothers had grown tired of waiting for the gods to get around to rewarding their so-called faithful servants and instead had researched a tale, told to them all through their lives growing up, about the hero Gynnis, who had climbed a great mountain and had found atop it a fountain of gold and gems and within that fountain had been the waters of immortality. One sip of these waters and they would be gifted with youth, health and life everlasting. The waters would heal all wounds, new and old, they would erase the hardest years from face and form, and again … life everlasting.

And through much work, much research, much capturing of holy scrolls from holy cities, Jaykun had finally concluded that the fountain was on Mount Airidare. It could not be anywhere else for all other mountains had reportedly been conquered by other men and there had never been tales of success of finding the fountain. No mortal other than Gynnis had ever gained immortality by drinking its waters. So by process of elimination and by the use of many signs and landmarks in those holy scrolls they had known it would be there.

After days of deadly progress, days where they could have and should have failed dozens of times, they had seen the pinnacle and there, running free and gleaming of gold and gemstones, had sat a fountain where water should be frozen solid, but was not. They were in the thinnest air the world had to offer, that was how far up near the field of heaven they were. They could barely breathe it was so thin.

But laying eyes on that fountain had been like a bolt of pure oxygen and exhilarating, revitalizing energy. Just from the sight of it.

And still Garreth had tried to stay them. Upon seeing it he had hesitated and asked them to rethink this, had claimed a sense of foreboding. But they had ignored him and had pressed on and in the end all four of them, even Garreth, had drunk deeply of the fountain’s waters.

It had truly been the most miraculous thing he had ever known. His battle scarred and weather frozen body had healed before his very eyes. Frostbite that had claimed at least three of his fingers had reversed itself, revealing warm pink flesh once more. Old battle wounds, like the one that had nearly severed his left leg from the rest of his body had rehealed, the tightness and pain he had dealt with every day since evaporating with alacrity. The scar itself had disappeared from beneath his many layers of clothing. He had not needed to see it because he had felt it. And in the reflective surface of the fountain’s waters he had seen the years melt away from his face until he looked as he had looked fifteen summers past, a younger man in the prime of his life, no more then thirty no less that twenty five from what he could see. Garreth, previously near death, had sprung up to his feet laughing and full of life once more.

And then … then the gods had come. With a mighty storm of fury and clouds full of lightning and thunder, snow driving them down to the ground, the ground itself hauling and shuddering with rage. Oh yes, they had come.

You dare steal this reward when you have not deserved it in Our eyes? You dare to do so without permission, without honor? You will pay for your folly, foolish, arrogant worms. You will pay for your immortality with blood and bone and flesh. We cannot take this gift back, but We can see to it that you wish you had never dared to think you could push the hand of the gods to your will and your liking
.

Then he had been thrown down from that mountain
and into the deepest chamber in the eight hells and had been left there to burn. He did not know what had become of his brothers, Garreth, Jaykun, and Maxum. He could only assume they had been thrown into similar caverns and were suffering similar fates. He had been alone ever since, day after day, with nothing to keep his interest and nothing but the fire for company.

So Dethan was not prepared when, just as the fires were about to roar to life once more, the softest waterfall of sparkling light appeared before his eyes. It started small, with just a falling dot of light, then two, then twenty, then hundreds. The sparkling bits of light began to fall into the shape of a woman. Then, in a flash, a woman of dark hair and blinding beauty was standing before him.

He blinked hard several times, trying to rid himself of the vision. It would not be the first time he had hallucinated under the stress of his torment. But there she stayed and there she stood, wearing a dress so glittering and beautiful it refracted the firelight like diamonds might do. Or perhaps kitomite, which was harder and more brilliant than diamonds. Yes, that was it. The dress, he realized, was a suit of chain-mail armor, fitting her form with perfection and looking as stunning and impervious as it must be if made from kitomite.