Out Of The Darkness (29 page)

She was praying, pleading to the goddess to save her babe and let Kindara die in his place.

The door burst open, and men rushed in. Cass jumped back as Cormac ran right through her. She could almost feel him passing through her spirit. He dropped to his sister’s side, as Barlaam started to heal her.

Nalik was there, too, and Cass cried out at what he looked like. How was he still alive? He was so thin she could count his vertebrate through his skin. He was covered with blood and bruises. His hair was singed around his head. “Nalik…”

She tried to step toward him but stopped. She could not comfort him here.

Kindara saw him and fought her own brother
’s hands. “You! You should have died in his place! You had nothing to care about, but he had everything I will hate you for this until the day
you
die. May the goddess curse you for your sins! You should be dead.”

“And the goddess forsook my very pleas for that very thing. I am sorry, Kindara. So fucking sorry.”

Nalik stood and walked out of the room, head high and back as straight as possible. Cass followed him, angrier at Kindara than she had ever been anyone in her life.

Nalik made it down the hall one stumbling step at a time. Others were there. Someone shouted his name, but Nalik didn
’t turn around.

He just kept walking.

Thirty feet outside the door he collapsed into Theo’s arms. Theo and Aodhan carried him away.

Chapter 53

Cass fell down and cried into her hands. Aureliana picked her up. Cass looked at her. “Why did you show me this?”

“Because there is one more thing you have to see. Brace yourself; you’re about to get a view from the driver’s seat.” The world spun again. This time Cass recognized where they landed. “We’re in his head, kiddo. Enjoy this rare opportunity. There have been a few times I’d have loved to jump inside Ren’s head to figure him out.”

There
she
was. Cass easily recognized herself, standing just on the edge of the goldfish pond. It was her first night there—she recognized the dress she was wearing. She’d ruined it that night, grinding soil into the skirt.

Nalik had been the one watching her that night, wasn
’t he? She’d felt someone with her, and had known that despite what her sister and the others had said at dinner,
she
was perfectly safe in the gardens. Because he watched.

And that
he
had been Nalik. She’d never put it together before; had almost forgotten it.

“Just watch what happens and listen to what he thinks and feels.”

The humming drew him to the grotto first. The sound was beautiful, and Nalik Black wasn’t used to beautiful things. Not anymore. The last thirty years had been filled with the dark, the ugly, and the most rotten that either his Kind or human could devise.

Cass hurt for what he was feeling in that moment.

He could feel the filth on his soul from what he’d been doing for the last few months. He’d poured over every file and scrap of information he could find in the remains of that bastard Leo Taniss’s laboratory searching for the files that contained information about him.

He
’d found nothing. Nothing that pertained to his family or those he knew at all. And that more than the royal summons from a man he’d once considered one of his closest friends was what had brought him back to the place that had been his home for so many years.

Until thirty years ago.

Now he just returned to Dardanos when he had to. An Equan had obligations to his family House, after all. And there was nothing stronger than loyalty to the Black name. It had been beaten into him at a very young age that he would bear responsibility for every Dardaptoan who carried the Black name or wore the scarf color of his House. He carried their safety, and until he stepped down from his duties as Equan he would continue to meet his obligations.

Once he was dead that burden would pass to his next heir—whoever that currently was. Since his brother
’s death thirty years ago, Nalik didn’t know who had taken that place.

And he hadn
’t asked.

Let the unlucky bastard deal with the fall out of Nalik
’s death on his own. It wouldn’t be his concern, after that, would it?

He pushed the hateful thought aside, berating himself. He was their leader, he had to prepare the next to take his place.

It was the way it should be done. The way his grandfather should have trained him up in the ways of the Dardaptoan people when it became clear to the prognosticators that Nalik would be leading a new branch of Blacks to the New World so many centuries ago.

Instead he
’d been beaten bloody more times than he could count, while the older male had sought to train him to protect their people. Every time the youth Nalik had fallen to the ground the senior Nalik had whipped him harder.

An Equan had to be strong, had to fight every adversity and adversary to lead.

It was only when young Nalik had picked up the sword and learned the art that was warfare had his grandfather been satisfied.

Nalik had learned his lessons well.

No matter how much he wanted to die, he wouldn’t. Couldn’t.

Until his House was in order.

He followed the humming to the grotto his sister had loved so much as a child. How many times in her short seventeen years had he sat on the rocks and watched over her as she had swam and played in the pool? He could still hear her laughter on the night wind.

?? Had had a beautiful laugh, so full of love. He and his brother had sought to protect that laugh, that heart of great beauty and hope.

And because of his failure to protect them all she was gone. Bled to death on the floor of Taniss’s slaughterhouse, at Nalik’s feet. While he’d been helpless to protect her. His hand—the one not scarred and branded with Taniss’s inventory number—dropped to the handle of his grandfather’s sword.

He smelled Taniss blood. His heightened senses, strong before Taniss
’s vile experiments, had only grown more powerful with whatever it was Taniss had done to him—had him picking out multiple strains of the bastard’s blood in the very place he’d least expected it. Taniss blood—and most of it female.

Damn them all.

He struggled with the urge to find those females and wipe them from this place. It was a simple matter of killing a female of any Kind, especially human. If he had been a different kind of male he would have. And felt completely justified. Erastine’s face swam in his mind. She had been so young.

It took a moment for the fog to clear from his mind; at least enough for him to see the young girl kneeling by the flowers. She wore dark clothing, and that hid her some. But he should have seen her. Her skin was pale in the moonlight, her hair long and so dark even he could not see the true color of it in the night.

She was thin, fragile. Beautiful. And not much older than his sister had been at her death.

The humming was coming from her. He fought the urge to step closer, to touch her.

To see if she was real.

He heard rustling in the bushes and he forced himself not to pull his sword. He recognized the
scent of the male now. Heard the soft sounds of a woman being loved by her mate.

And he smelled even more Taniss blood.

Aodhan’s mate was a Taniss, too, then. Damn him. Damn them both. Taniss.

As was the girl at the grotto.

The goddess’s curse had hit him once again.

Cass knew it had. Because it wasn
’t just Aodhan who’d mated with her cousins, her sister. No wonder he’d felt so abandoned by his friends. So betrayed. Time sped up around them, and there he was again.

Nalik watched Cassandra from the window of his family sitting room. He always watched her when it was this late in the day. When the males under his command were inside and she had little defenses against whatever threats may still lurk. He watched her every night until she was inside and safe.

His mother stood at his side. “I know what she is to you. Filthy whore.”

“Do not ever call her that again.” He didn
’t even look at his mother. “She is much more than you will ever understand.”

“She
’s filth, like the rest of her family. Deserves to die. They all do. And they will. They will get what’s coming to them. In the end. For what they did to your brother and sister. You should be the one to kill them.”

Nalik turned then. His hand shot out and he wrapped his fingers around his mother
’s throat. It was the first time he had ever touched her in anger. “You will never speak such ill again. Especially of my Rajni. She is no more responsible for her grandfather’s evil than I am my grandfather’s.”

“Your grandfather wasn
’t evil. He was a good man. A noble and famous one. He made you what you are. You should be proud of him!”

“Every Kind has its evil. Dardaptoan or human. Do not forget that.” Nalik released the bitch who
’d whelped him. “You do anything to any of the Taniss females—especially
mine
—and I will have the skin flayed from your back nine times over. The way your noble and famous father did mine before I was old enough not to piss my pants. I will kill for her without blinking.”

“Even your own mother?”

“Especially my own mother. Because I know what you are capable of. You will
never
harm Cassandra. In any way.”

“So you protect
them
then?
They
killed your brother and sister! You dishonor them!”

“Then so be it. She is my
Rajni and everything that is
good
in this world. You will not take that from me!”

Cass hurt for him so badly. Why had his mother hated him so much? How could she not look at him and see what a good man he was?

“She is vain, spoiled, and sanctimonious. She hates living amongst the peasants. But she likes the prestige this tribe can bring. Her old one is still stuck in the past ways. Very primitive.” Aureliana was still there. “Nasty. I’m glad I don’t still live there.”

“He watched me every night, didn
’t he? I could feel him sometimes. Why didn’t he come closer? Say something?”

“He was afraid to. He
’d lost everyone he’d ever loved, and to this day I think he still blames himself. He’s never forgotten Kindara’s words, her curse.  I don’t think she realized how powerful those words were. I didn’t know, until recently, what had happened between them.”

“I am so angry with her right now.” Cass felt compassion for Kindara, but had Kindara none for Nalik? He
’d been hurt that day, too. Didn’t anyone see that? Or care? “They could have grieved together. She didn’t have to push him away.”

“I know. But she was hurting in that moment, and blaming herself, too. It was her idea to go that day, you see? And Nalik had always protected everyone. That was the one time he
’d failed. I don’t think she even remembers what she said to him. They’ve not really spoken to one other more than casually since that day. He is afraid to get too close to her. He doesn’t want to hurt her more now. Even now. Especially now that she is finally happy again. He was bringing toys of Iavius and Erastine’s that he’d saved from their infancy. He was going to give them to Kindara’s babe.”

“Was?”

“There was an attack on the
dharanlji.
It’s a special life force that the goddess used to make our people. I don’t know how she did it. Nalik, Aodhan, Rydere, and your father and uncles were there. Nalik saved them all. But he was hurt.”

Cass needed to get to him, see how badly he was hurt. See it for herself. “Are we finished here?”

“I don’t know. Are we?”

Cass took a deep breath. Stood. “I think I am. I think I understand now.”

“I’m glad one of us does. Let’s go back to Phaenna’s cottage. We are finished, but I’m not sure Nalik is. And we cannot get out of here without him. We do have one more stop to make, I think.”

Cass blinked, and then they were back in
her
room at Rathan’s castle. She could see herself sleeping in the bed. She was naked.

Nalik was at the window. It was that night, then. He was outlined by moonlight and stood naked. So strong. His muscles bulged where he braced himself on the window sill. The tattoos were just dark patches on his skin.

The scars of her grandfather’s torture shown white in the moonlight. She’d seen them, of course, but the somehow they seemed worse now than they had then.

He turned and walked back to the bed when the sleeping version of Cass shifted beneath the blankets. He slipped in the bed beside her and pulled her against his chest. He kissed her hair. He held her for a long time; Cass was vaguely aware of
the sky lightening outside the castle, though only a few minutes had passed for her and Aureliana. Finally, he looked to where she and the other woman stood.