The Keeper's Flame (A Pandoran Novel, #2) (32 page)

Orange cat-like eyes glowed in the darkness, illuminating a face of dried earth. A Pykan. The sorcerers that had hunted me on Earth all the way through the Arborenne when I’d been with the Del Contes. No one had seen a sign of them since the event with Lord Tiernan.

The Pykan hissed, stepping toward me, and I took a step back but bumped into another one.

It grabbed my arms, and I barely slipped away, only to fall right into the arms of the other. It held me tight as I struggled, kicking and punching, trying to writhe free, but its grip was like an iron vice, its frame like kicking stone.

Without thinking, I kicked with my bad ankle. It felt like someone was ripping my foot off. I cried out in pain, and the Pykan’s grip around me tightened.

The other Pykan stood before me with a cruel smile.

“What do you want?” I spat.

The Pykan tilted its head, studying me. I hated its eyes. They were unfeeling, cold and callous. They were everything that was wrong with this world. “You insist upon running from us, princess.” Its voice was slippery; its breath smelled of rot and death. “And yet all we want is to help you.”

“Help?” I winced against my vice. “By holding my arms behind my back?”

The Pykan moved to my other side. “All we want is to offer our counsel.”

“If your counsel was worth hearing, you wouldn’t have to trap me in order to give it.”

The fury of the Pykan burned hot, and its orange eyes narrowed. When he smiled, my blood turned to ice.

“Tell me, child, what’s it like, not having magic?”

“Why are you…?” I started yelling, but my voice trailed. There was something about the way the Pykan had said that, something about the way it was looking at me. I stopped struggling. “Why?” I asked. “What do you know?”

It waited there, quiet and satisfied. “Your magic,” it said. “It has been blocked.”

The word dropped in the air like a brick.

I gasped. “Blocked?”

“As in a strong barrier has been placed around your magic, preventing you from accessing it.”

That couldn’t be true. He was lying. He had to be.

The Pykan circled me. “I know you can sense it,” it continued. “But when you reach out, it is like a vapor. The magic—” it held up a cracked hand and grasped at the air “—it slips through your fingers.”

“You’re lying.” My voice trembled.

The Pykan stopped before me, eyes boring down on mine. “Am I?”

A lump lodged in my throat.

It wasn’t lying.

“But who…?” I whispered.

The Pykan looked pleased. “Why don’t you ask your grandfather?”

No. That wasn’t possible. “No, he hated me because I—”

“—didn’t have magic?” the Pykan finished. “No, he hated you because you
had
it. You were a threat to him. You were a threat to his kingdom,” the Pykan spat with deep loathing.

My heart raced as my breath came quick. Me? A threat? The Pykan had to be lying. I wanted him to be lying.

“Search yourself,” the Pykan continued. “You know what kind of man your grandfather is. Is it really that unrealistic?”

No, it wasn’t.

“All you’ve wanted is to have magic. To be an equal. With magic, no one could lock you away, no one could taunt you, attack you when you are so…vulnerable.”

Denn.

My stomach twisted at the memory and bile rose in my throat.

“I can give it back to you, princess. I can break down the barrier so that you can have your magic.”

The Pykan wasn’t lying, and I felt sick.

All this time. Months of pain and sorrow, anger and frustration. If I’d had magic, I could’ve had Fleck out of here by now.
I
could’ve been out of here by now.

I gazed back into the Pykan’s cat-like eyes, weary. “Why would you do that?”

“In exchange for the unity stone.”

I blinked. “The unity stone? Why do you need me?”

The Pykan’s eyes narrowed. “Because we can’t unlock its power. Only a champion can.”

“Why me?” I asked. “Why not find one of the others?”

“Because, you, princess, are a Pandor, and only a—”

A crack sounded in the distance, and the Pykan’s head spun.

In its momentary distraction, I moved. I slipped from the grasp of my assailant and ran.

Bolts of light shot from behind me as I sprinted through the forest. They landed in trees—the snow—but each one missed. I dodged one, landing hard on my bad ankle. Pain seared up my shin, and it was all I had left to pick up each leg. I had to keep moving; I couldn’t lead them back to Vera. If I could just lose them…

My ankle gave out and I slipped, plunging into water.

A thousand tiny needles pricked over my skin as I kicked and swam, but my fingers wouldn’t bend. My legs and feet were like anchors, pulling me down, deeper into the ice-cold water.

With a last burst of strength, I kicked myself upward, and my fingers rammed into a thick layer of ice. I pushed and clawed and shoved, but my escape was sealed. My lungs were bursting as my head started feeling fuzzy. My feet pulled me down, deeper and deeper into the cold water, but I was no longer cold. Warmth spread through my insides, but it didn’t reach my legs and arms—I couldn’t feel them anymore.

Exhaustion rolled over me in one forceful wave and the world around me turned dark.

Chapter 21

Identities

I opened my eyes to an orange glow. A small fire crackled and burned beside me, and just beyond it was Vera. She was sleeping on her side, her breathing
slow and even and peaceful.

I was in the shroud. Leather clothes were draped over the stool that stood beside the fire. My clothes. My boots stood upright beside them, unlaced, my dagger lying flat across their toes, and I suddenly realized I had been stripped down to my bra and underwear, tucked beneath a few layers of blankets, with a wool beanie on my head.

With a start, I sat; my skull felt as though someone had attacked it with a jackhammer.

But…how did I get here?

I had brought Vera in the tree, but I had heard a noise and left, and had run into Pykans. The Pykans had told me something—what was it they had said? I couldn’t remember.

And then I remembered running away from them and falling into water and everything had gone cold and dark.

How had I ended up here, inside the tree, practically naked under blankets with a hot fire beside me?

I heard soft tread in the snow, just outside the tree. I snatched my dagger from my boots, shoved it under my blankets and lay down, pretending to sleep.

The moment my eyes shut, someone stepped through the opening and into the tree. I could feel their gaze on me like I could feel my own heart beating. I fought against my pounding head, trying to get a sense of the person at the entryway, but all I could feel was winter—endless winter.

The person moved past me, past the fire, and I lifted my lids a fraction…

It was the dark rider.

I blinked to make sure I was seeing correctly.

Impossible. It didn’t make any sense. Had he…?

He set a few pieces of wood at the far side of the room, and then crouched at the fire with his back to me, dressed all in black like a shadow. A very cold, very lethal shadow. He was fidgeting with something in his hands, head bent in focus.

Now.

As quietly as I could, I sat, held my blanket with one hand and my dagger in the other, and slid toward him.

Just a little farther…

I pressed the tip of my dagger between his shoulder blades.

He went still.

“Who are you?” My voice was rough.

He was silent, and I dug my dagger in deeper. “I asked you a question.”

He raised his gloved hands in surrender. Slowly, he grabbed the dark mask near the top of his head and pulled it off. Dark hair spilled free and he turned his beautiful face to me, his emerald eyes piercing.

My dagger slipped from my hands and clanked on the stone, echoing in the small chamber.

My world started spinning. I opened my lips, but all that came out was a soft puff of air.

No, it couldn’t be. How was it possible? All this time…it couldn’t have been him. The dark rider had lived decades ago.

Alex’s jaw clenched as he stared into my eyes, unyielding, his lips tight.

“This whole time,” I whispered, “it’s been you.
You
are…the dark rider?”

Alex didn’t let go of my gaze. “No.”

“But…”

“The dark rider is dead, Daria,” he continued, his voice low and deep and threaded with hesitation.

My face showed every ounce of confusion and bewilderment I felt.

“Months ago, I decided to disguise myself,” he continued, slow and even. “I was worried about what was happening in this world and that the king had done nothing about it, so I decided to look into it myself. Lord Tosca agreed and suggested I go in disguise, because if anyone saw me about, they would attribute it to his mistrust of the king, and the king would see it as treason.”

I swallowed, feeling a hundred emotions at once. “So you decided to disguise yourself as…a killer?”

“No.” Strain carved lines in his face as his dark brows knit together. “The people started those rumors. Once I began hearing of them, I expressed my concern to Lord Tosca, but he thought it would play in our favor. At least it would raise the people’s alarm since King Darius didn’t seem worried, and it did. Once people get an idea fixed in their mind, they’ll see whatever it is they want to see, and in this case, everything bad that happened was the fault of the dark rider.”

I stared at him in disbelief.

Okay, fine, Alex was the dark rider, but that didn’t answer a few other minor things. “You tried to kill me!” I said.

He was the one bearing disbelief this time. “What are you talking about?”

My whole body trembled. “That day—the first day I saw you…in the forest…you led me straight to Denn.”

Anger burned in his eyes and his fists clenched at his sides. “Not on purpose.” His voice shook. “I didn’t intend for you to see me, and I shouldn’t have risked it. I was about to jump in when I saw Thad coming. Once I saw you were safe, I left, but I should’ve stayed and killed Denn then.”

By the look on his face and the sound in his voice, I knew that he would have.

I swallowed, pushing back the memory as my stomach turned. “What about the arena?” I asked. “You brought those things to life, I saw you—”

“That was a Pykan.”

A Pykan?

The figure
had
been cloaked, and I’d just assumed it had been the dark rider. Fine, so maybe I’d been wrong about those two, but I wasn’t done yet.

“What about the unseen?” I asked. “I saw you there right after they attacked Vera, and then at the castle…”

Alex’s eyes were locked on mine. “Pykans, and I can only assume they sent the unseen after Vera.” He glanced at her, his eyes brimmed with worry. “The unseen that attacked you…I destroyed.”

He hadn’t sent the unseen after me. He had killed it and saved my life.

Again.

I slumped back, feeling overwhelmed and confused, as everything dumped on top of me. Not confused by what he’d said, but confused on how to feel about it.

I knew Alex wasn’t a killer, but it was difficult convincing my feelings to accept another emotion when they’d been stuck on fearing him for so long.

Alex watched me. The fire crackled and shadows flickered across his face, sharpening the angles, and even though I couldn’t feel him or get a sense of his emotions, I could see the anxiety on his face, the apprehension and affliction, waiting to see how I would react. Afraid of how I would react.

And I still didn’t know how to react. I was stuck somewhere between bafflement and joy—joy that Alex was sitting right here before me.

“You were the one that left me Cicero’s directional,” I said.

Alex was quiet.

“And you knew that was me that day in the courtyard,” I said.

Alex looked at me, guarded. “I didn’t know
how
, exactly, but I knew enough.”

Of course he had known. Nothing got past him, at least when it came to me.

I glanced away and my eyes settled on my clothes, draped over the stool.

My clothes.

Heat rose to my face. I certainly hadn’t taken them off.

“Did you…?” I asked, peeking back at Alex.

Alex glanced down, and I started feeling warm all over.

Oh. My. Gosh.

“I’m sorry, but I didn’t have a choice,” he said in a whisper. “They were soaked through, and there wasn’t anyone else to help.”

I swallowed. I mean, it wasn’t like he’d never seen me in a bikini before, which was pretty much the same as my bra and underwear, but somehow it wasn’t. Somehow it was totally different. Everyone saw you in your bikini. Only
I
saw me in my bra and underwear.

And now
he
had.

A few years ago, I wouldn’t have given it a second thought. But now? Completely and utterly horrifying.

It felt like my entire body was on fire, but I couldn’t stop the thought from flitting through my mind. Had he…liked what he’d seen?

You can’t seriously be thinking that right now. He was kind of preoccupied with saving your life!

“They’re probably dry now,” he added, still not meeting my gaze. I thought his voice cracked a little. “Here.” He had started reaching for them, when I said, “I’ve got it.” I pushed past him and gasped.

My ankle burned so badly I stumbled forward and Alex caught me.

“What is it?” he whispered at my ear, slipping his thick arm around my waist and helping me sit down.

I tried ignoring the feel of him against me. “I’m fine…”

“Yeah, you look fine.” He arched a dark brow.

“It’s just my ankle. I sprained—”

“Which one?” He let go of my waist, made sure I was stable, and moved to my feet.

It hurt—really hurt. “My left—ow!”

“I haven’t even touched it yet.” He glanced at me the way Dad looked at me sometimes, which was somewhere between concern and “stop fighting and accept my help.”

I swallowed as the burning sensation pulsed and throbbed.

He lifted the edge of my blanket and, very carefully, placed his palms on my ankle, studying it. His hands were so warm. “It’s not…broken…”