Crown of Gold and Ruin, page 70
“Oh shit,” Calain sighed. “Really, Tamaranthe? A portal? Where do you think you can possibly go? My Hellequin will hunt you down to the ends of the earth. Or even beyond.”
“I’m sure they will, half-breed. But I am not going anywhere,” Tamaranthe said, an oily smirk of satisfaction eking over her face.
She looked straight at Diana, and that dreadful, fanged, blood-spattered smile sent warning bells blaring in her head. The portal pulsed with magic, and Di thought she glimpsed the red interior of a tent within it, and fighting figures, swords and axes lashing through the air. She thought she heard the guttural sound of chanting.
Tamaranthe crowed, “It’s what coming from the portal that will give this game its fascinating end. Now, let us all try to remember. Who does Diana Blacknett love most in this world?”
* * *
Jaden ducked to wrench up an abandoned sword, lamenting the loss of Goldfire. The Lionsbane grinned maniacally, though Jaden could see the pain of his wounds etched around his eyes, in the tightening grip he had on both weapons.
As Jaden straightened and lunged in, intent to put an end to this battle, to finally take his revenge, agonizing injuries and terrible odds be damned, he paused. Agrenost and Gwyn had been locked in a frenzy of crashing axes, and one of the Bjornnan’s feinted strikes—again, with the blunt end of his huge weapon, as he seemed to be making it a point not to kill—struck Agrenost in his chest with a loud crack. The blow sent the muscular general stumbling backwards, his head snapping into a brazier, and making Agrenost snarl loudly in pain.
At this, Durran paused too, and regarded Agrenost with a stricken expression. Tangles of emotion feathered across his scarred face, too fast and too private for Jaden to decipher. Though there was definitely some form of twisted, bunched regret there. Agrenost caught the stare and jerked his head up. His hostile glare melted away immediately into something else. Something taut and wary and broken.
Durran’s second-long distraction made for the perfect chance.
Jaden prowled close and ran Durran Lionsbane through with his sword, ripping open a mortal gash from spine to belly. The general bellowed in rage, whirling with weapons whipping out, but by then it was too late. Jaden nimbly disarmed him of Goldfire, and with his ancestor’s glowing gold sword, plunged a wound deep into the Lionsbane’s chest. The traitor fell to his knees, clutching his wounds, and Jaden kicked his fallen weapon away.
Hollowness battered Jaden’s heart where victory should be. It was no true victory after all. He had killed the perpetrator of the crimes, but he did not have the power to undo those terrible crimes. He had not saved his people. He had not raised an army. He had failed.
Agrenost uttered a guttural sound as Durran collapsed to the floor, but other than that, a brief, frozen silence reigned. The scene was now bathed in the peculiar, guttering purple-silver light of the magical door pulsing against the tent. Most of the Blackcloaks had been killed, and the rest fled after watching their master being fatally wounded. Scythe and Trystan stood staring at each other as, bizarrely, snow and ice seemed to swirl in a corner of the cramped tent. Jaden distantly noticed Bria was fallen, her eyes closed and her chest barely rising. Megara, having finally ventured from her cowering corner, was trying in vain to shake her sister awake. Seth lay crumpled against a chaise, unconscious.
Jaden swore as Gwyn’s great axe came whistling at him through the sudden dimness in the tent, and he stumbled back, unprepared. He tripped over Marquan’s corpse as it bled purple onto the flagged stones. Gwyn lumbered over the body, grimacing and feinting as Jaden slammed out Goldfire in a clumsy attack.
“Time for the blood-oath to be fulfilled, King of Gold,” Gendelson rasped.
Jaden stared, wide-eyed. Sizzling electric energy raised the hairs on his neck. Something burned his back through his clothes and singed the ends of his hair. He whipped his head around for just a split second, looking to assuage his confusion, to gauge where he stood. The Verge blazed at him like a cunning, beckoning eye. Surrounded by the purple-silver iris, the portal’s pupil pulsated, black and bottomless like the underworld, crooning evil and lost, untouched spaces at Jaden.
That split second was all Gwyn needed.
With a roar, Gwyn leaped forward and crashed into Jaden, throwing him back with the sheer strength and vastness of his body. The Bjornann and the king both went tumbling through the portal, swallowed by that alien, engorged blackness at its heart.
Seconds later, the magic of the spell Marquan had cast dwindled, and the Verge blinked away into non-existence, as if it had never been.
34
Covenant
Jagged shards of color and darkness fizzed by Jaden as he hurtled through an endless, cavernous void. He couldn’t breathe the air in this alien space. It seared his throat and burned his lungs, so he held his breath and flung his arms out, scrabbling to find purchase, to steady himself, but of course, there were no walls, no stone, or marble in this vortex of ether he had been plunged into.
Finally, when he thought his lungs would give out for lack of air and his skin would peel off in red strips for the scraping, hissing tongue of the void lapping at him as he careered through it, he was cast into pitch darkness. His spinning came to an abrupt pause. From the gloom, the image of an ivory-pale fortress swam at him, sitting on a lonely volcanic island, darkness rising from the strange, bone-shaped towers.
Then he pitched forward, nausea clogging his throat, and collided through one of those blood-spattered bone walls into a massive white chamber. He plummeted to the smooth floor with a bone-creaking crash, his forehead thwacking so hard he saw black stars dot his vision.
A strangled gasp reached Jaden, and he struggled up, shoulders heaving from the exertion and terror of being hurtled through time and space. As he took in the inhabitants of the chamber, he was suddenly very, very glad he had the hilt of Goldfire clasped firmly in his hand. Corpses of Erzul lay on the ground, strewn on the floor, black blood flooding the place. Chills pelted down Jaden’s spine as he noticed the maimed cadaver of Galahad Rivier sprawled against a pillar, and beside it, Vralen, bare bodied except for a loincloth, the signs of torture upon him. A horde of terrifying inhuman warriors and two distinctly royal-blooded Frenalin whipped their heads to glare at Jaden. The winged demoness who had smothered him into unconsciousness during the frenzied battles on Elenon’s streets smirked at him with blood on her fangs.
And in the midst of it all, his twin sister. Looking terrified and haggard, bleeding claw marks all over her, Diana held a pale, serrated knife to the throat of a small, sullen-faced winged child.
“No!” Diana shrieked out, shaking her head jerkily. “You need to run, Jaden! GO!”
Jaden was frozen in shock. “What the hell?”
“Jaden, RUN. She’s going to—”
In the frenzied lash of a second, the unnerving mahogany-skinned woman, her wings now mangled and bleeding, was behind him. Instinct kicking in, Jaden sheared Goldfire out, stabbing it behind him wildly as he whirled away, but a hissed spell from the demoness and the golden weapon went skittering away.
Tamaranthe lunged at him, kneeing him in the groin with agonizing precision. He veered away, wheezing in pain. But her speed was inhuman, just as he supposed, she was too. She raked her claws down his side, flaring pincers of pain, and he stumbled to a halt, panting. In seconds, a gleaming black knife was shoved against his throat.
“Now you see, Diana,” Tamaranthe drawled, “what happens when you threaten who I love most.”
Jaden realized that the child Diana had in brutal custody was probably the winged woman’s son.
“Did you think such an act of folly would go unpunished? That you could walk out of Nymsar with leverage behind you and your head held high? Never,” Tamaranthe hissed. “For now, I have threatened who you love most in the world.”
Any color remaining in Diana’s fraught face drained completely, and her eyes, already so changed from the girl Jaden had last seen in Mount Faneia, grew hooded and so despairing, so broken and weary, it clawed at his heart.
“Where will we go from here?” Tamaranthe wondered, oily, taunting. She dug her knife deeper into Jaden’s neck, and blood boiled out in glinting streams.
* * *
“What do you want?” Diana asked. Her voice was flat. Toneless. She could hear the echoes of her demand resonant against the cursed bones of this forgotten island. “Let my brother go free, and I will unhand your son, and be your slave or whatever you wish for all eternity.”
“Diana, no!” Jaden gritted out. “If it is my life for your freedom, then I will gladly give it,” he rasped, his throat freely bleeding. The sight almost broke the sobs frothing in Di’s throat.
Diana thought she knew fear. She thought she had experienced the most terrifying moments, the grossest carnage that could be wreaked upon her emotions. She had watched Elenon burn, watched trolls and hydras and Frenalin hurl themselves at her to drink her lifeblood, watched as her own weapon sliced into an innocent man’s chest. She had thought herself well-steeled against a world of horrors. But this was different. Di and Jaden had shared a womb. They had emerged from their mother’s body into the world together, Jaden’s fist clutching Diana’s leg. He was her skin and her blood, the pulse that throbbed at her temples. His laughter had warmed her cold days, his tears had dried on her skin. He was her other half, and now it was his life for her enslavement. It was no choice at all.
“Let him go, Tamaranthe. Do with me what you wish.”
The Scrimtor’s eyes narrowed, serpents coiling around the lashes. “Now, I could do that. And you would free my son and it would all be a nice, peaceful ending. Except, if I free Jaden, he will run back to Elenon and reclaim his homeland and his crown, now that he has killed the Lionsbane.”
Di’s eyes flared in surprise, and Jaden nodded slowly at her in confirmation. Despite everything, Diana felt a bubble of relieved elation take root inside her at the knowledge the usurper had been killed. “What threat will my brother retaking his throne pose to you?” Diana asked.
“Why do you think I allied with Durran Lionsbane? There was a purpose to our destruction of Eria, beyond that of that pathetic general and his revenge.”
“Does it have anything to do with Morgonauth?” Jaden rasped.
Tamaranthe stiffened, and jerked the blade harder against Jaden’s tanned, scarred throat, and her brother choked. It nearly undid Diana. Her arm where the half-broken mage-blight caged her was tingling, tremoring. Some fell creature was shrieking in her bloodstream with every slice of pain her brother endured.
“Where did you hear that name? Who told it to you? Did Durran dare utter that name so freely?” Tamaranthe demanded.
Jaden scowled and spat out blood, twisting in vain. “Both the Lionsbane, and that treacherous mage, Marquan, mentioned that name to me. Though I do not know who or what it means. But I do know Marquan was a part of your plans. He was an ally to you, just as he was to the Lionsbane. That is how Durran got into the Shadowford so easily, and how Marquan knew to open a portal right here to wherever this accursed place is, so that when he lost to us, he would deliver us right to your waiting hands. Isn’t that right, Tamaranthe?” he demanded. “It’s all been a big, elaborate web trapping us from the first, with no way out. The only question is, what is the point of it all? Why the Erian royal family? Why us?”
“Because of your father’s sins,” Tamaranthe replied. “Because Eria is the crux of all that awaits beyond the veils of this world, waiting to ambush and plunder what is rightfully theirs. They will come with all their might, and we are but gatekeepers.”
“Who’s they?” Diana snapped. “Gatekeepers to what?”
Tamaranthe, the sadistic bitch, her knife grating redly against Di’s twin’s throat, had the audacity to start examining the black claws of her free hand. “Now I could answer that, but that is a dangerous question, with dangerous answers that neither humankind nor Frenalin have any business knowing. So instead,” she paused dramatically, “I will address the fact we are now at a standstill. Diana has threatened who I love most; I have who she loves most, and just one swipe of this dagger against this handsome king’s throat, and he will die.”
“I am not going to kill your son, Tamaranthe,” Diana gritted out. “I am not like you. Unhand my brother, and I will free your son, and we can strike a peace bargain. I told you I am willing to do anything if you let Jaden walk free.”
Tamaranthe barked out a laugh. “You think I trust your poisonous words, human girl? You won’t hurt my son? The audacity of it! The putrid lie! When all your kind has ever done is hurt me and my kind!”
“I would never harm a child!”
“Diana, you undermined that noble principle when you first raised a knife to my son’s throat,” Tamaranthe said flatly.
Diana gulped. No seas of morality, but perhaps rocks in sight, jutting from the thrashing waves, lured her to some semblance of sanity. She withdrew her knife. With one shove of her battered arms, she pushed the boy away from her. He tripped, and his wings came up to balance him.
Taliesin was staring at her incredulously, but Jaden gave her a small nod. He was relieved that she was still the sister he knew who wouldn’t harm a soul. If only he knew…
“Well, that was a foolish move,” Tamaranthe drawled. “For now, I have your brother, and I can so easily kill him, Diana Blacknett.”
Diana stalked up right up to the Scrimtor and her captive brother, so close she could smell the coppery tang of Jaden’s blood and sweat, so close she could count the glistening scales on the small vipers writhing around Tamaranthe’s crazed eyes and winding through her wild hair.
“You could, and probably will, kill my brother.” Diana paused. “Or we could play a game. For you so love games, don’t you, Tamaranthe?”
Cold interest sparked in the Scrimtor’s soulless black gaze. “I am listening.”
Diana had left the rocks, crossed the murky seas, studied all the luring, hideous, stunning creatures twisting within the waves, crooning at her to submit, to entrench herself in their exquisite disaster. She had beached on cold, windless sands, lonelier than the spaces spanning stars. The doors to the underworld swung open before her, a cleft in black rock, and Diana knew she had to step within, enter that scorched wasteland, and walk in those searing shadows.
“My brother’s life for Eria’s continued entrapment.” Jaden’s gaze splayed with horror. “And, my freedom, during one year that Jaden and I cannot be together. I have noticed that together, my twin and I pose greater threats to you and the likes of Durran Lionsbane than we do apart. I do not know why, yet, but it is the truth. That is another reason Durran placed the mage-blight upon me. For you and he knew, didn’t you, that I would strike off on my own to discover a way to break the blight? From the first, the whole sack of Eria was meticulously engineered to split Jaden and I apart, and you succeeded. Well,” Di continued, her heart breaking, the numbness only fiercest agony can inflict leaching all over her, “cleave us apart longer. Let it be part of the game.”
Jaden’s eyes were overbright.
“And what will happen during this year apart?” Tamaranthe asked, though fascination swam in her exquisite, serpent-framed face.
“Whatever you command us to do,” Diana shot back. “Give us a bargain, spanning a year, and at its end when we have succeeded, you will let us walk truly free away from your clutches, and we will be allowed to do whatever necessary to retake Eria with no interference. And you will never, ever hunt or ruin us again. You will never come near us again.”
The satisfied sneer that gnarled over Tamaranthe’s full dark lips set off warning bells clanging in Di’s head, but there was no going back now. This was the only way out of the lethal mess they had become entrenched in. Games upon long, deadly, heart-wrenching games; they were the only way to stand a chance against a master player, a master manipulator.
One jerk of Tamaranthe’s wrist, and Jaden went sprawling on the floor, far away from her weapons, gasping, spitting out blood, staring at Diana as if he had never seen her before. “A year,” the Scrimtor drawled. “So many possibilities. For your brother, I have but one path, and that is that he ventures nowhere near his fallen kingdom in that year. He has no grip upon Eria, no proximity to its throne, nothing but the meaningless, empty crown on his head and that gold sword of his.”
Jaden started to protest, staggering to his feet, bleeding everywhere, but Tamaranthe flung out an arm and silenced him.
“As for you, Diana Blacknett …”
Diana was shoved into that scorched underworld, and the door ground shut behind her, trapping her in the darkness.
Tamaranthe licked her lips with a forked tongue. “Let us call it a covenant.”
* * *
Jaden was reeling. As Diana and Tamaranthe leashed out the rules of the deadly, scheming game that would ensure their lives were protected for the next year, he stumbled across the corpses of Erzul to pluck up his sword.
Taliesin came up beside him.
“Why did you and the rest of the warriors here who have slain all these monsters not just band together and kill that bitch?” Jaden demanded of the silver-haired Frenalin prince. “We could have avoided the whole intricate, dangerous pact Diana is striking.”
Taliesin sighed, worry creasing his otherworldly face. “Not possible. My father, the king, dispatched my brothers and I,” he gestured at the dark-skinned Frenalin regrouping his petrifying troupe of warriors in a corner of the chamber, “to trap and kill Tamaranthe. However, he underestimated her. Tamaranthe has grown stronger over the years, and her power is bottomless. Besides, there are thousands of demons teaming in the oceans outside, just awaiting Tamaranthe’s orders to come and attack. The only reason Tamaranthe hasn’t used the demons yet is just another part of her fucking games. She doesn’t want to play all her cards too soon. And now, with Diana’s power diminished as well, Calain and I alone cannot stop the Scrimtor. Even if we attacked her now, all those monsters would emerge to overwhelm and devour us. And Calain, despite any alliance to me, will not risk his Hellequin against so many demons if payment isn’t involved. So you see, king-ling,” Taliesin ran a clawed hand through his hair, “the odds are so against us they have virtually turned their backs and galloped away. Diana knows this very well. None of us would be walking out of here alive if not for that bargain your sister is snapping into place with every word dallied with my bitch half-sister. She is saving us all with every breath she takes.”
