Set to Flame (Flame Series) (3 page)

“
Alena!” the sharp voice brought her around to stare into the eyes of the barbarian as his heavy stride carried him toward her. 
I guess he speaks after all
, she thought as the man stepped forward and seized her arm.

“I was looking for you,” she said as if she indeed had been, though she knew he did not believe her, doubted even more he understood her.  He dragged her along behind him, but when they reached the women’s quarters he did not stop until he stood outside her chamber.  With a sneer and a satisfied smile he shoved her inside and closed the door behind her, locking it. 

Seeing the barren room, she knew she was being punished.  She knew she had Phillip to thank, his retribution for her not being where she was supposed to be.  The unfortunate thing was, although her room had been stripped and there was not one item of comfort left in it, she would still be taken to Ghalib if he beckoned for her.  In a flash, she would have her jewels on, and a magnificent dress to match so she could be presented to her master.  If he summoned her tonight she might even be able to pass the night in a comfortable bed.  She snorted at the notion and hoped it would be the uncomfortable floor where she would find her sleep tonight.

Two days passed before all her things were toted back into her room.  Two days of punishment had not fazed her.  She couldn’t help but wonder if the other women here were so susceptible to punishments such as those.  Of course, they were.  They fought over the Emir and all the little trinkets and baubles he provided to his women.  It was enough to
make Alena sick.  With her things came the summons from Ghalib requesting her company.  Request.  That was the term used, but if she did not accept the request she would be bodily carried, and tied to his bed.  Helpless, whether tied or not, that was what she was.  It was much better if she just lay down for him than fight him.  To fight meant she found herself bound, or worse, Ghalib would call a eunuch or two for assistance in order to make her comply.  Despite they could not breed and these could not speak to describe what they saw, they still had eyes, and Alena hated them as much as she hated Ghalib.

Alena
went through her trunks.  Being a favorite whore of the Emir had its benefits if one could be bought so easily.  She found the vial in the bottom, beneath some of the less lavish of her clothing.  These women were not above thievery and this one item she felt would bring untold trouble down upon her head.  One of the concubines had given it to her with the warning it would put the Emir to sleep.  At least she thought she had, with the language barrier she may have meant something else entirely.

A knock came on the door, and it opened almost instantly as
Alena hurriedly put the vial back in the trunk between the folds of clothing and pulled a burgundy gown from the top as she turned.

“Leave the dress,” the
weaselly man said.  Phillip, a fellow Christian, Alena would rather lie with Ghalib than suffer this man’s presence for one minute.  His thin, blond brows drew together over ice blue eyes when she did not immediately respond.  He seemed to be her liaison, and was only one of the three people in the entire palace she could effectively communicate with.  He was not trustworthy so she had vowed early on to steer clear of him and that left her in the dark.  Even now looking at the neckline of the gown a smirk crossed his thin face.   

She looked down at the dress.  After the Sheik took her virginity he showered her with dozens of beautiful dresses to wear for him.  The only problem was they all looked to her like the dresses of a whore.  She destroyed some beautiful dresses in order to cover her breasts.  It took her two days, her fingers were stiff and raw before she finally put the needle aside and collapsed from exhaustion.  Of course, the Emir got her more of the indecent ones she had no choice but to wear.  He had frowned at the gowns he’d seen her in that she altered, and he did not like them, went so far as to tell her not to wear them again, but he had not known they had been altered by her. 
Ghalib would remember the burgundy gown and know the first time he saw her in it was the first night she had spent in his bed and it had a much lower neckline.  She imagined he would be quite angry. “He has sent clothes for you.”

Alena
pushed the dress back into the trunk and closed the lid.  She refused to follow Phillip, nearly racing to the door in order to make her own way to the baths where not even he could follow.  The process of being readied for an emir’s pleasure was humiliating in the extreme.  The other women relished the attention, enjoyed the pampering, but all Alena craved was to be left alone. 

The servants took more than two hours to bathe and dress her.  They chose the royal blue dressing gown of velvet with white mink lining the scooping neckline and the hem of the dress.  Her hair was stacked atop her head and lo
ose, black tresses escaped and fell down around her shoulders.  The blue she knew brought out the hidden blue of her eyes and transformed the color from their usual bright green to an even more vivid blue.  She knew Ghalib was intrigued by her eyes and the person who chose her clothes always chose the material that most flattered her eyes.  She would like to take a knife to that person.

“My lovely
Alena,” Ghalib welcomed from his position reclined on his giant bed.  He motioned her forward, and she knew that was the last place she wanted to go, but she also knew she had no choice.  Her steps slowly carried her toward the bed, and she wondered again when this man would tire of her.

~  
~   ~

The door banged open, and Marcus had the urge to leap to his feet, but it would be a waste of energy.  Garrick was pushed into the chamber.  He staggered to the side, nearly falling on Marcus.  Garrick’s arms came up to brace against the wall over Marcus’s head in an effort to keep from hitting the ground.  Immediately warm liquid fell onto Marcus’s cheek, and he looked up at his friend.  A deep gash ran down his neck from his ear, following the scar that already existed, down stopping only before reaching his throat.  They could not kill him after all, for all they knew he was the leader.  But they could add to his pain by cutting into existing scars.    The scar down the left side of his face, had been cut open.  It ran from the corner of his eye all the way down to his chin  They had also laid the scar open along his neck, making the wound fresh again.

Now the blood flowed freely from the cuts.  The man’s eyes rolled in his head, yet the pain had not entirely consumed him for he walked of his own accord and managed to push himself from the wall to make it to his place among his men.  He made no sound as they chained him back to the wall.  He stood for only a moment before his legs gave out and he fell in a heap.

Then the three men were reaching for Devlin, unchaining him and dragging him away. 

“No!”
Cyrille commanded them, but they did not yield as all the men chained in the room lunged to their feet to strain toward the boy in a futile attempt to grab him.  Cyrille became a wild man as he fought the chains.  Long after the door closed tight the man yelled for the bastards to bring the boy back.

“Garrick?” Damien asked when
Cyrille grew hoarse and settled back down. 

The man did not respond.  By all appearances he could be dead.

A cold fear began to settle in Marcus’s chest.  They were going to torture the boy next.  He felt bile rising in his throat, constricting his breathing.  He had to think of something else, something to take his mind off the situation he could not stop, the pain he was yet to experience.  The vision of the angel came to him.  She had not visited in several nights, he had lost track of how many because time had no meaning here.

He wondered again who she was.  Why was she obviously taking the risk to help them?  Just thinking of her brought on her scent, the delicate touch of her hand.  He feared they had found her out and was punishing her.  Would they kill her? 

“When they come again I will ask them to release you for the information I hold.”

All eyes turned to Damien. 

“You cannot,” Cyrille was the first to reply.  Perhaps, because he knew the rest of the men were unable to order their leader as could his brother.

“They have taken Devlin,” Damien said with calm Marcus envied.

“And they will take the king’s army if you do not hold the secret,” Cyrille declared.

“I have no choice.  Richard’s army can defend itself.  My concern is for my men.”

Cyrille scowled at his brother and Marcus knew for certain the man had not had the last word on the subject.

~  
~   ~

The stone was slippery from the dew of the night as she hurried across the courtyard to the prison.  The guard had his own mistress, a kitchen servant who met him almost nightly for a romp behind the prison.  The thought sickened Alena.  Who would seek out the company of a man?  They were all drooling wastes of oxygen with their high handed ways.  Quietly she slipped into the dimly lit corridor, taking the key she hurried down it to the end and the large cell where the men were kept.  She did not understand why they were shackled as well as placed behind a locked grated door, but she did not understand men and war so it was a matter she did not waste her time pondering. 

Reaching the door she almost dropped the keys her hand shook so violently.  Sliding it into its hole the sound seemed to ricochet off the walls, all the way out to the guard and his lover.  The lock opened with a clanging echo that shook the entire building.  As she pushed the heavy bars open the hinges creaked, and she thought the entire building might collapse around them.  She eased herself into the cell and pushed the door closed behind her but left it unlocked. 

Turning back to the men and boy, she gasped.  There was no boy.  Tears immediately threatened, but she knew she had no time for that.  She looked to the man on her right, the one they had been beating on and saw they had been at it again.  One eye was almost swollen shut, and a cut had laid open his cheek where a trickle of dried blood rested just below it.  He sat as if his ribs were sore if not broken, holding his arm tight against himself as he looked up at her.  Her eyes travelled on to the burly man who offered her a smile.  The dark man was the worst with the deep cut along his jaw to his neck, along his chest.  She saw the torturers had tried to trace existing scars.  Did a cut hurt worse if it followed a scar?  Were their tormentors simply finding pleasure in the new ways they could create pain?  The idea turned her stomach.  The two nearly identical men were still uninjured, and she couldn’t help but wonder at this.  If she wanted information she would have started with one of the brothers in order to get the other to talk.  They were obviously family to each other, which made them weaker.

The dark one did not raise his head when she entered and still made no indication he was aware of his surroundings.  She gave everyone their ration, each received a little more tonight since the boy was missing.  Her stomach twisted in knots at all the possibilities that could befall a boy in this man’s game of war.  They all nodded their thanks, all except the man who tried to touch her the last time she had come.  In his soft
gray eyes was an accusation, she could only guess it was concerning the boy.  She had the keys after all.  She had the means to release him, to save him from whatever tortures they were putting him through.  She knew him to be a squire, but she could not guess whose.  Was he dead now along with his dreams of chivalrous knighthood?  The man’s fingers touched the back of her hand as he took the bread.  Despite the anger, she saw in his eyes she felt the gentleness of the caress on her skin.  She was frozen for a moment as she looked down to make sure it had been only fingers and not burning embers.  Raising her hand, she lifted a piece of his brown hair from his forehead where it had caked to the dried blood there.  It was soft, so soft she had a nearly irresistible desire to move her hand through it.  She backed away quickly and turned to the dark one.

She forced the fear down her throat as she moved toward him.  He was not as large as his companions, but she found him far more sinister.  Just his stares from previous evenings made her flesh crawl, and she had to fight the urge to say a prayer to guard against the evil that seemed to lurk in his obsidian eyes. 

She knelt before him, and retrieved the medicine she had brought to treat their cuts in her little sack.  What the man needed was needle and thread to pull the deep cuts together, but there was no way she would be able to hide the stitches.  She opened the wine skin that had been filled some weeks previously with medicines she had been instructed to apply to the rope cuts on her wrists and ankles.  It was all she had, the best she could do.  Deciding on a course of action, she raised her eyes back to the dark one and gasped, his dark eyes were trained unwaveringly on her.  He did not offer her a smile or any encouragement that he would not break her neck, only studied her silently.

Alena
did likewise, envying his long dark lashes that only seemed to darken his eyes more.  His skin was perfectly tanned nearly an olive from the sun.  This man was a man who killed, she could feel his coldness.  Looking at him her simple vinegar and water mixture with the hemlock seemed as if it would be ineffective. 

The man had to be in pain, but it did not appear in his eyes.  She weighed the skin of vinegar in her
hand, the smell of which she hoped would join with the smell of piss that was prevalent in the chamber.  She studied the cut along his jaw.  The man had two terrible scars on the left side of his face.  One looked as if it came dangerously close to killing him.  It began near his ear and bit deeply across the skin and stopping only a hair’s breadth from his jugular.  Ghalib’s men had cut them both open.